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Kaitlin did not like the sound of the words or the tone: they sounded a little too serious, somehow threatening. Still playing for time, she poured herself a glass of cool fruit juice before sitting down on a chair by the window. Flynn seated himself near her, long legs stretched out in front of him.
Steady eyes met Kaitlin’s. ‘Any idea why I’m here?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘Should I have?’
‘I’m wondering whether Bill Seally has been in touch with you.’
‘Bill?’ At sound of the name, Kaitlin jerked in her seat.
That morning, as on so many other mornings, she had woken and thought about Bill. Bill Seally. The ranch. The mortgage. Bill, friend of the family for as long as Kaitlin could remember, and holder of the ranch mortgage, had not pressed her hard for payment.
Kaitlin had often been grateful for the fact that Bill had been able to finance her father personally when money was short, that Dad had not had to go to a bank for a loan. Bill seemed to understand the gravity of her situation, he knew how hard it had been for her to take over the running of the ranch. Scrupulous about her obligations, Kaitlin made a point of paying Bill whenever there was money left over after the running expenses of the ranch had been met. Still, there had been times, especially lately, when it had been impossible for her to come up with the money.
‘What on earth does Bill have to do with your visit?’ she asked tensely.
‘We’ve done some business together.’
The eyes that held hers were cool as steel. The uneasy sensation was even stronger now. ‘What sort of business, Flynn?’
‘Can you guess, Kaitlin?’
An idea came to mind, but it was so horrific that Kaitlin could not bear to give it credence. She made an effort to suppress a great inner trembling.
‘I’m not in the mood for guessing games,’ she said flatly.
‘Fine.’ Flynn’s tone was crisp. ‘In that case, I won’t keep you in suspense. I’m here to talk about Bill Seally and the mortgage over your ranch.’
Kaitlin’s eyes were troubled. ‘What about Bill?’
‘When was the last time you made a payment, Kaitlin?’
‘I don’t think that concerns you.’
‘Believe me, it does. When was it, Kaitlin?’
‘Two months ago.’ She hesitated. ‘Maybe three...’
‘A long time to be overdue in your obligations.’
Kaitlin pushed a hand through her hair. ‘Do you think I don’t know that? I try to pay Bill whenever I can. Fact is...’ She paused.
‘Go on.’
‘There’ve been problems,’ she said after a moment.
One dark eyebrow lifted. ‘What kind of problems?’
‘Since Dad died—’ Abruptly, Kaitlin stopped the flow of the sentence.
She didn’t owe it to Flynn to tell him how badly her father had mismanaged his affairs, so that after his death Kaitlin had become heir to a host of financial difficulties. In fact, why should Flynn know anything about a situation that was growing more serious every day?
‘Problems that should be of no interest to you,’ she said flatly.
But Flynn was undeterred. ‘I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t interested.’
Dodging the issue was getting her nowhere, Kaitlin realized. Flynn would simply continue to badger her until she gave him an answer for some reason, he seemed to feel he was entitled to one.
Even then she took her time about speaking. Looking around the room, she took in the small details of her surroundings which she was normally too busy to notice: a picture that hung crookedly on the wall, a cobweb in one corner of the ceiling, a vase in which the flowers were dying. Signs of neglect that would have been unthinkable when her mother was alive. If only these small lapses of efficiency were all Kaitlin had to deal with.
‘Bill isn’t too concerned about my problems, so why should you be?’ she asked at last. ‘Bill Seally has always been understanding. He’s never minded if a payment was late.’
‘Don’t be too sure of that.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘Even the most understanding of men get nervous about money.’
‘Bill told you that?’ Kaitlin demanded.
‘In slightly different words.’
‘He sent you here?’ Her lips were suddenly stiff. ‘Bill told you to come to the ranch and remind me about paying? It’s so unlike him.’ She stood up abruptly. ‘He needn’t have done that, Flynn. He could have called me, could have spoken to me. We’ve never needed to communicate through a third party. We’ll work things out.’
‘Sit down, Kaitlin,’ Flynn said, not unkindly.
‘No! I need to speak to Bill.’
She was moving towards the phone when a hand snaked around her wrist, the cool fingers like ice against her burning skin. ‘Wait, Kaitlin. There’s more.’
‘Don’t you understand? Whatever it is, I want to hear it from Bill, not from you. I’ve never liked messages.’ Something drove her to add, ‘Or, in this case, the messenger.’
Flynn did not rise to the insult. ‘Sit, Kaitlin.’
His tone held a sure authority that made her feel cold. Slowly, unwillingly, only because she realized that in the end she would have to hear him out, she eventually did as he asked. ‘Well?’
Flynn let her have it straight ‘I own the mortgage now, Kaitlin.’
Silence greeted the words. A shocked silence. A silence that lasted almost a minute. The blood drained from Kaitlin’s face, leaving her face ashen. Her body was so rigid that she could not have moved if her life had depended on it.
‘You had no idea?’ Flynn asked at last.
‘None,’ she whispered.
Once more there was silence.
This time Kaitlin spoke first ‘Why didn’t Bill tell me?’
‘For one thing, I asked him not to.’
‘Why? Why would you be so cruel?’
‘Cruel?’ The dark eyes glittered.
‘You must have known I’d be shocked.’
‘Would you have been less shocked if Bill had given you the news himself?’
‘I don’t know... Maybe... At least I’d have had time to think about it before...’ She stopped.
‘Before?’ he prompted.
‘Before seeing you.’
‘Do you really think it would have made a difference?’
Kaitlin’s face lifted to meet Flynn’s gaze. For one awful moment she wondered if she was going to cry: tears were gathering at the back of her eyes and a sob rose in her throat. But she managed to stop herself from weeping as anger stirred.
Furiously, she said, ‘You could have given me some warning before flying in here like some feudal lord. Any decent person would have let me know in advance. And don’t give me any of that nonsense about Southern belles—you knew how shocked I’d be when I heard what you had to say. The least, the very least you could have done, Flynn, was to tell me why you were coming.’ Her eyes sparkled with outrage and defiance. ‘This is still my ranch, Flynn. Whatever piece of paper you may own, this ranch is mine, and you are not welcome here.’
His gaze flicked her face. ‘What’s your point, Kaitlin?’
‘Arriving here out of the blue. Ordering Bill not talk to me. Knowing how shocked I’d be when I found out what you’d been up to. My God, Flynn, you must have been laughing your head off at me!’
‘Is that what you think, Kaitlin?’
‘I think you could have found a less dramatic way of telling me my fate.’
‘Now who’s being dramatic? It’s not as if the idea of a mortgage is new to you. Only the identity of the person holding it has changed.’
On the face of it, what he was saying was perfectly true. The ranch was heavily mortgaged, a fact that was never very far from her mind. Why then did she have this dread feeling that her world would never be the same again?
All at once, Kaitlin felt as if she could take no more. She had managed, somehow, to endure the loss of her parents and the hardships of the ranch. And now here was Flynn. Tough, arrogant, unyielding Flynn. He would not be as understanding as Bill had always been: if anything, he would be ruthless. Unable to hold his cool-eyed gaze a second longer, she dropped her head and put her face in her hands.
She flinched when his arm went around her shoulders. She hadn’t realized that he had left his chair.
‘Kaitlin,’ he said softly. ‘Are you crying?’
She lifted her head to look at him. Her eyes were dazed and a little damp, but she was able to say, ‘I don’t cry that easily.’
‘You never did, that’s one of the things I remember about you. You always were a gutsy girl.’
Gutsy... At this moment, when she did not know how to defend the attack on her beloved home, Kaitlin felt anything but gutsy. She yearned to lean against the hard body, to bury herself in it, to seek warming comfort from the man who had meant so much to her once. Yearnings that were quite inappropriate, for as she looked into the rugged face she knew that Flynn had become her adversary.
She twisted away from him. ‘Bill should have told me.’ Her voice was low. ‘Why didn’t he tell me, Flynn?’
‘I told you—I asked him not to.’
There was an emptiness as he moved away from her and went back to his chair. a feeling of coldness, of loneliness. Kaitlin had to force herself to concentrate on the issue at hand.
‘Why do I get the feeling there’s also another reason why Bill didn’t talk to me himself?’
‘What do you think, Kaitlin?’
‘Am I right?’
‘Maybe.’
‘What was it?’ She threw the words at him. And when he remained silent, ‘I need to know—don’t you understand? ’
‘Bill Seally,’ Flynn said deliberately, ‘is a weak man.’
‘No! You’re wrong! Bill is sweet and gentle and kind.’
‘I’m sure he’s all of those things. Bill hates making waves, he has a great need to be liked. He shies away from conflict, especially where friends are involved. A good friend’s daughter, in your case.’
Kaitlin’s cheeks were flushed. ‘He would have got the money I owed him,’ she said unhappily. ‘I’ve always tried very hard to keep up my payments.’
‘Not hard enough. You’re in arrears.’
‘I know that. But in the end Bill wouldn’t have lost any money. I was always utterly determined to pay every cent, including interest on back payments.’
‘How did you plan to do that?’
‘Profits from the ranch. Things are starting to come right, Flynn. Slowly, I admit, but it’s happening. It’s been an uphill battle ever since Dad died, but I’m hoping my financial situation will improve.’
‘You can’t blame Bill for having some doubts.’
The flush in Kaitlin’s face deepened. ‘If he felt that way, why didn’t he say anything? We could have talked. Bill knew how things were at the ranch. Knew that Dad had...’ She bit her lip. ‘He understood that I needed time.’
‘How much time, Kaitlin?’
‘I don’t know exactly.’
‘Bill didn’t know either, and the situation was beginning to worry him.’
She shouldn’t be surprised, Kaitlin realized. The signs had been there for some time, only she had been too preoccupied to notice them. There had been a strange restlessness in Bill and Alice, his wife, when she did see them, a way they had of not meeting her eyes when they talked. Bill and her father had been boyhood friends, classmates, their friendship was one of the few constants in her life. When her parents had died, Bill and Alice had been there, phoning her, extending invitations. Yet now that she came to think of it, she could not remember the last invitation: she had been too busy to wonder about it.
Kaitlin looked at Flynn. ‘You may not believe me, but I didn’t know about the mortgage until after my father’s death.’
‘I see.’
‘Until then I’d had almost nothing to do with the running of the ranch’
‘No part in the finances?’
‘None,’ she admitted.
She would not tell Flynn, who seemed to be holding her destiny in those very competent-looking hands, of her dismay when she had sat in the office of her father’s lawyer and learned that she had inherited the ranch. A hollow inheritance, for the ranch was so heavily in debt that it didn’t belong to her in the true sense of the word. Apart from the ranch, there had been nothing else.
