Читать книгу To Claim a Wife - Susan Fox, Susan Fox P. - Страница 7

CHAPTER ONE

THE letter was as terse as a telegram.

Return to the Broken B. Jess Bodine dying.

Coulter City Hospital ICU.

RD

Caitlin Bodine wasn’t shocked by the news of her father’s grave illness. She’d known he was dying. News had a way of reaching her. It wasn’t that she still had many friends in Coulter City, Texas, but a man as important in ranching and oil as Jess Bodine was news anywhere in ranch country. Even in ranch country as remote as the plains of eastern Montana.

Caitlin had agonized for months over the news of her father’s worsening health. Agonized, wrote letters, then suffered his inevitable silence when her efforts to mend the breach between them failed as abysmally as always.

But then, her father had never acknowledged any of her other letters. Five years of utter silence from him should have been enough to convince her that their estrangement would continue to the grave. But that tiny spark of hope—the one she’d carried since she was a small child—refused to die.

It was a fact that she’d always idolized her father. It was also a fact that her father had rejected her. Her childhood craving to be accepted and loved by him still had the power to torment her, still had the power to seduce her back to Texas for one last colossal heartbreak.

Perhaps this time things would be different. Perhaps in the face of death, the old man’s thoughts about his only child had become remorseful. Perhaps he’d come to regret exiling her five years before.

But the bitter reality was that it wasn’t her father who’d summoned her home, it was Reno Duvall. Reno Duvall, the man who hated her.

Strangely, she dreaded facing Reno’s hatred even more than she dreaded another rejection from her father. Old memories stirred forcefully and panic sent a poison arrow through her insides.

Reno would never forgive her. But then, Caitlin might never forgive herself.

Reno Duvall walked down the hospital corridor to the ICU. He remembered Caitlin Bodine as an eighteen-year-old hellion, who’d dogged her father’s footsteps and engaged in a near cutthroat competition with his younger brother, Beau, for her father’s attention. She’d been a solemn, moody adolescent who hid her pain behind temper tantrums and frequent retreats to her secret place on the range.

She’d been a child perpetually frustrated and injured by her failure to live up to her father’s expectations, a child so pathologically jealous of his younger brother that she’d come to hate the stepbrother—the rival—who’d become her nemesis instead of the rightful member of her family that her father’s marriage had made him.

Had her jealousy of Beau been so bitter, so deep that she truly had caused Beau’s death, then allowed him to die? Witnesses had testified at the inquest that she’d done everything she could to save him.

But she’d failed. She’d been the one to put Beau’s life in danger in the first place, running off in another wild temper to hide out on the range. She’d known about the flash flood warnings in the area, but she’d ignored the danger.

Reno hardened his heart to the emotionally neglected child she’d been. Whatever had caused her tantrum that day, her selfish actions had set the stage for Beau’s death. Eighteen was too damned young to die.

Though Reno had sent for her to come home to the Broken B, he’d loathed the chore. Loathed the notion of ever coming face-to-face with the girt—the woman—who’d destroyed his family. His mother was gone now too, because of Caitlin. Her grief over her youngest son’s death had been as intense on the day she’d died as it had been the day they’d carried Beau’s slicker-shrouded body into the ranch yard.

A man couldn’t overlook that. Or the grim fact that Caitlin Bodine was kin to him, though there was no blood between them. No blood, that is, except his kid brother’s lifeblood.

Reno was about to enter the ICU when the elevator down the hall arrived. He sensed—he knew—the moment the doors slid open who would step out.

The past five years hadn’t changed Caitlin Bodine, yet the five years between then and now had changed everything about her.

She seemed taller now, prouder, almost arrogant. Her slender body moved with the poise and elegance of a model, but with a kind of confidence he somehow sensed was pure playacting. The coltishness of her slim figure was gone; she’d acquired a womanly roundness that sent a tremor of restlessness to his groin.

He made himself focus on her face. She’d lost the adolescent fullness in her cheeks. Her cheekbones seemed higher, her features sharper, more strikingly patrician. Her lips were the same, lush and naturally dark.

She wore her sable hair long and loose. It was longer now, rippling down her shoulders and back until it swung past her tight little backside like the thick flowing mane of a show horse. Long hair had always drawn him, but the sight had never hit him like this, never heated his blood in quite this way or sent it pumping through him like a hot pulse. It was just one more reason to nurse the hatred he felt for her.

But when those incredible jewel-blue eyes, with their thick fringe of black feathery lashes, shifted and homed in on him, he suddenly saw the girl again. The child. The broken-hearted, angry, hungry-for-love child she’d been every day that he’d known her. Something moved in his heart, but he ruthlessly ignored it.

The moment she stepped off the elevator, Caitlin sensed Reno’s presence. Terror sent talons of actual pain through her, but before she lost her nerve—or showed a glimmer of weakness—she made herself look straight at him.

Five years had made Reno harder and more formidable than ever. She’d secretly loved him once, adored him. She’d hated his brother for his little cruelties and for the way her father had blatantly favored him. But she’d loved Reno Duvall. Loved him, fantasized about him, and cried into her pillow at night because he was just like her father: stern, remote, unattainable.

He was so big. His shoulders were so wide, his body leanly muscled and as hard as a work saddle. Beneath his overlong black hair, his rugged, weather-tanned features were handsome in the rough handsome way of Western men in their prime. But so hard. And unforgiving. Relentlessly unforgiving.

She recognized the harsh lights in his eyes and knew that he’d never changed his mind about her, that he’d never believed her innocence, never forgiven her. After all this time, he probably never would.

The hurt she felt wasn’t unexpected, but it threatened the poised facade she’d worked so hard for. Somehow, she dug deeper for the strength that heartache and banishment had forged in her.

She continued in Reno’s direction without faltering. She got within speaking distance, then asked, “Is he still alive?”

She knew the question sounded cold. She’d meant for it to. She would exchange no pleasantries with Reno Duvall. He’d slice her to bits verbally if she did.

Something flared in Reno’s eyes and they burned over her face. His voice was harsh.

“Said he’d see you when you got here.”

Reno eased aside and Caitlin walked past him. He turned and walked a half pace behind her as they entered the ICU.

The patient cubicles faced the nurses’ station in a semicircle. Caitlin looked through the glass walls into each one as they passed, until they came to the fourth. Reno made a brief gesture—she was aware of every move he made—and she stopped. Foreboding quaked through her as she stared past the glass.

At first she didn’t recognize the elderly man on the hospital bed. Jess Bodine’s hair had gone from iron gray to nearly white. An oxygen tube ran across his craggy face.

As Caitlin stepped into the cubicle, the blip of monitors made an impression and she took swift note of the array of machines that flanked the head of the bed. Though they’d walked in quietly, the old man heard and gave a restless move of his head before he opened his eyes.

Jess Bodine had been almost as tall as Reno, built as strongly and as hard. But the old man on the bed seemed smaller. He looked frail, his face deathly pale and more gaunt than lean. Even his brown eyes—when she got close enough to see—seemed faded.

The shock of discovering that her rugged, larger-than-life father was now a thin, broken-looking old man, sent a spear of anguish through her heart.

She was truly losing him. The reminder made a more painful impact on her than it had when she’d heard he was ill. Jess was so near death that it was clear to her that there was no time left to bridge the emotional chasm between them. She might never learn what it was about her that he’d found so unlovable.

Though Jess Bodine was pitifully wasted and weak, his eyes fixed on her and gleamed with recognition. A moment later, he spoke. The words of welcome and forgiveness she’d hungered to hear never came.

“You see she gets the blood test.”

The incredible demand was made of Reno. The shock wave of silence that followed made her ill. Her soft “Hello, Daddy,” was little more than a whisper.

Jess’s gaze flickered briefly, then dulled. “We’ll see whether you got the right to call me that.” The words were slow and labored, and finished on a rasp as he ran out of air and strength.

Caitlin was suddenly so light-headed that she reached for the side rail of the bed for support and gripped it. Oblivious to her reaction, Jess fumbled with the oxygen tube.

The charged silence in the small space, punctuated by the blip and whir of machines, lent an eerie unreality to the scene. He wanted a blood test. Caitlin’s mind was so stunned, so sluggish suddenly that the reason for her father’s indifference—an indifference that so many times had flared out hatefully toward her—began to make sense only by slow degrees.

After a few reviving breaths, Jess’s eyelids fluttered with relief, then fell shut. This time when he spoke, his words were slurred by weakness. “My blood inherits half the Broken B. Or Reno gets everything.”

The effort made Jess struggle for air those next moments. His ongoing difficulty set off a small alarm that brought his nurse. Reno took her arm to pull her out of the way, but Caitlin resisted when he started to lead her from the room.

Somewhere beyond her shock it registered that Reno’s touch was electrifying. When he tried a second time to lead her from the cubicle, she pulled away and retreated, her back to the glass wall as she watched the nurse examine her father.

The small crisis passed, and the monitors settled into an audible rhythm. The nurse turned toward them.

“He’ll probably sleep now. It’d be better if you came back in a couple hours.” She gave them both a faint smile, then waited for them to leave the cubicle ahead of her. Caitlin hesitated, then turned to make a swift exit. Reno followed at a more relaxed pace.

Once outside the ICU, she stalked to the elevators, escape the only clear thought in her mind. Her eyes were stinging with hurt, but the hot acid of old anger was boiling up like lava. Suddenly she was a child again, cast back into the abyss of her father’s bewildering malevolence.

Her first stab at the elevator button missed. Frustrated, she jabbed at it again, then snatched her hand back when the button lit up.

“The lab’s downstairs.”

Reno’s voice behind her made her jump.

Her low “Leave me alone,” was instant It was all she could do to contain her rising pain and fury.

The elevator bell sounded, but the door seemed to take forever to open. When it did, she had to move aside and wait for the passengers to step off. She heard Reno enter the elevator after she did. They both turned to face the front of the car as the doors closed.

“The will says that your refusal to submit to a blood test to determine paternity will disqualify you from inheriting.”

She heard Reno’s grim tone and felt a fresh nick of pain. She covered her reaction with sarcasm.

“If the rightful heir loses out, Reno Duvall will be boss of the Broken B.” She turned her head and glanced up at his unyielding profile. Her barb made no visible impression on him, and she was suddenly hot with resentment.

This was the man who—along with his spiteful brother and mother—had so easily won her father’s love and regard. They’d been strangers when Jess had met them on a trip to San Antonio, strangers who’d meant more to Jess Bodine from day one than his own daughter had ever meant to him.

The Duvalls had gotten everything else that had rightfully belonged to her. She wouldn’t let the last one get the Broken B, even if it was Reno. She’d have something of Jess’s—and she’d glory in the fact that he’d go to his grave knowing he’d failed to deprive her of this last thing.

And yet, even when the blood test proved she was Jess’s daughter, he’d fixed it so she’d receive only half the ranch. Half! He hadn’t mentioned the oil holdings or the several businesses he’d acquired over the years.

Emotions that were suddenly as volatile to contain as they were to identify, rose to an overwhelming pitch.

My blood inherits half the Broken B... Or Reno gets everything.

And what if the paternity test proved that Jess Bodine wasn’t her biological father? Her furious vow to keep a Duvall from getting everything faltered.

Depression sent a chill over her. She looked away from Reno and stared at the closed doors in front of her.

Her memories of her mother were hazy. She remembered a beautiful, loving, dark-haired woman, but Elaina Chandler Bodine’s face had blurred over the years. Caitlin recalled the funeral and how she’d later discovered that Jess had ordered all her mother’s things taken away, and every picture of her in the house removed. Caitlin had been crushed when Jess had scolded her for her tears and her questions.

As an eight-year-old, she’d been grief-stricken and terrified by her mother’s sudden death, but her father’s refusal to comfort her or to allow his dead wife’s name to be mentioned in his presence had deepened her trauma.

Though she could no longer clearly picture her mother’s face, she remembered with aching clarity those days and weeks and months that had followed her death. She remembered the terror and monotony of stomachaches and nightmares, and her terrible loneliness when she’d wandered the house like a tiny ghost, searching for the love and comfort of her mother’s presence.

That was when she’d become especially close to her cousin, Madison. Madison had also lost her mother, though in a different way. Caitlin’s mother had been taken from her by death; Maddie’s mother had tired of her responsibilities and had dumped her on their grandmother, who’d lived nearby in town. Though Caitlin had always thought Maddie’s loss was worse than her own because it was a personal rejection, at least Maddie’s mother was alive somewhere, so she could have hope.

Their grandmother, Clara Chandler, had been almost as stern and unloving with Madison as Caitlin’s father had been with her. The two young cousins had sought the solace and comfort of family from each other, and together they’d survived childhood. The same age, they’d formed a deep bond and, at times, they’d been as inseparable as twins.

Until Beau Duvall was killed, and Maddie—who’d been madly infatuated with him—believed as everyone else had, that Caitlin was responsible for his death.

“This is it.”

Reno’s gruff voice penetrated the fog of pain and memory. It took her a moment to realize that the elevator had stopped and the doors had slid open.

“To the right and down the hall.” Reno’s low murmur prodded her to move. She stepped forward and walked in the direction he’d indicated.

With every step she took, the dread she felt grew. She’d failed every other test her father’s animosity and neglect had placed before her. Suddenly, she had no real confidence that she’d fare any better with this last one.

Caitlin walked into the heat of late afternoon. Her rental car was parked some distance from the hospital’s main entrance, so she started toward it, reaching into her shoulder bag for the sunglasses she preferred to wear while driving.

She didn’t know what had become of Reno. He’d vanished sometime after she’d filled out papers and was led to a room to have the blood sample drawn.

She rejected the idea of hanging around the hospital until her father was awake. After her first visit, she was certain there was no point in putting herself through a second one. If Jess Bodine had gone twenty-three years without softening toward his only child, she doubted that two hours would bring any significant change of heart.

The depression that had plagued her after her mother’s death was suddenly as heavy and fresh as it had been back then, but Caitlin resisted it. That and the mercurial temper that seemed to go hand in hand with it. She’d matured in these last years, become solid emotionally. Life’s little aggravations had no power over her. Her brief lapse after her father’s bombshell was just that—a lapse, nothing more.

As she reached her car and got into its stifling interior, she thought again of Madison.

How close they’d been, sharing their angst and agonies, making their own good times, whether on Maddie’s visits to the Broken B or during Caitlin’s visits to their grandmother’s mansion in Coulter City. No one cared when they wandered off, no one cared that they’d run wild, so long as they didn’t annoy their guardians.

The worst thing about the aftermath of Beau’s death was not that Caitlin had been banished from the Broken B. The worst thing had been how swiftly and completely Madison had turned against her. Maddie had known how much Caitlin had suffered, being supplanted by Beau. In the end, that knowledge had made it impossible for Caitlin to convince her lovesick cousin that she hadn’t deliberately caused Beau’s death. Madison had sided with everyone against her, and nothing Caitlin had been able to say convinced her otherwise.

The old gloom settled around her heart. Besides Jess and Maddie’s absent mother, Rosalind, Maddie was her only living relative. The reminder deepened her sadness.

When Caitlin pulled her rental car out of the parking lot onto the street, she caught a glimpse of the interstate highway sign. She was tempted to pick up her things at the motel and drive back to San Antonio. She could catch a plane to Montana by tomorrow.

Her father would be dead soon, perhaps in a matter of hours. He was probably right about her not being his child. A man surely couldn’t despise a child unless he was certain he had cause. She could drive away now and forget him and everything else, once and for all. She had nothing here, not even the Broken B. Now it would all go to Reno....

It was the thought of forever losing even a part of the ranch that finally made her go back to the motel with the intention of staying on in Coulter City.

The Broken B was home, such as it was. She’d missed the land, wild beautiful land that stretched for forty thousand acres beneath the wide Texas sky. Montana was beautiful, but Texas was home. The ranch she’d worked on up north couldn’t compare with the deep attachment she still felt to the Broken B.

The strong unbroken spirit she’d been blessed with stirred forcefully. If she had any hope of getting even a portion of what remained of her birthright, she had to stay. The stubborn will that had helped her survive the emotional devastation of her upbringing wouldn’t allow the thought of Jess Bodine denying her the Broken B.

Even if the blood test went against her, surely the fact that she’d been publicly claimed and raised as Jess Bodine’s legal child would give her some standing in the courts. She still had the large inheritance from her grandmother at her disposal. If she had to, she might be able to find the right lawyer and file suit to contest the will. It might take years, but the thought of thwarting Jess Bodine’s last hateful deed was tantalizing.

Reno was the only member of his family worthy of getting a piece of the Broken B, but if she had to, she’d go to war with him to keep him from getting it all.