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Lounging back in his chair, he stacked his booted feet atop a low file cabinet. “Well, that’s something. Lucy, I guess you’ve done all right for yourself.”
“It wasn’t me,” she corrected him quickly. “I didn’t do anything to earn it. It was my husband’s—his commercial real estate business.”
“But it’s yours now.”
“Yes.” She shifted uncomfortably. “But I didn’t—that is—” She caught herself. It was not part of her plan to explain every single thing to him. She cleared her throat. “Well, will you sell?”
Dropping his boots to the wooden floor with a thud, he got abruptly to his feet. He snatched up his hat, jammed it on his head and pulled it low across his eyes. With his big palms splayed over the desk, he leaned toward her. “Not if you had ten million, Lucy. Not twenty. Maybe from your rich sugar daddy you learned you can buy most things. But not everything. Not the Lazy S.” Straightening, he took swift strides away from her. “Thanks for coming. You probably won’t want to spend the night after all. It was...interesting seeing you again.”
“Wait,” she cried. Now she’d gone and done it. She’d insulted his masculine pride. “I didn’t mean to offend you.” But he was already pacing through the living room toward the front door. Hurrying after him, she caught her foot on a table leg and stumbled, nearly falling. He didn’t turn.
“Rusty,” she said, “I’m not trying to put you out of your family home.”
At the front door Rusty kept walking. “Sure sounds like it.”
Outside, afternoon sunlight momentarily blinded her, though the bright rays offered no warmth. Cold fall air bit at her exposed throat, numbed her fingers. “No...you don’t understand.” He was halfway to the barn. “Stop, Rusty, please,” she said again. “There’s more. I don’t want you to leave the ranch. I want you to stay on.”
In the shadows of the great barn, he slowed. He turned to face her, hands on hips. “Beg pardon?”
Reaching him, she knew she was wringing her hands but was powerless to stop. “I know about your financial troubles, Rusty. I know that before their deaths your brothers heavily mortgaged this place. Your law career in San Francisco was successful and you’ve made a good living, but it’s not enough to put the ranch in the black.”
His face hardened. “How do you know all that?”
Apologetically she said, “I’ve got my own lawyers. You know they can find out anything.”
With a snort he pivoted and disappeared into the barn.
She followed. Coming out of direct sunlight, she found it dark inside, and for a moment could hardly see. The air was cooler and full of the smell of alfalfa hay and animals. She wrapped her arms about her middle and suppressed a shiver. Long banks of stalls with horses inside, a tack room that held halters and bridles and work saddles and a grooming area took up the big barn.
She found him pulling on heavy work gloves and standing beside stacks of baled hay. “I’ll pay whatever price you ask, Rusty. I need the ranch. I... I need you.”
At this last he paused and gave her a slow up-anddown perusal. “For what, Lucy?” he asked in a dangerously quiet voice. “What do you need me for?”
Groping for courage, she deliberately stiffened her spine. “To manage the property, of course. To direct employees, make business decisions, buy livestock—I don’t know. For all of what’s needed. I...I don’t know the first thing about running a cattle ranch.”
He glanced derisively at her sling-backed pumps. “No kidding.”
Shivers began to tremble through her. She couldn’t back down now; he had to be made to understand. “I don’t know much about ranching, Rusty. But I do know one thing. The time I spent here was the best of my life. I need this place.” She gestured around. “It sounds crazy, but...I need that big old friendly ranch house. I need the smell of horses, hot from a run. I need familiar people around me. I...need the oak tree in the meadow.”
As he looked into her eyes she wondered if he understood her. She wondered if he remembered their aftemoon in the tree together—that day so long ago when she’d been weeping because her mother had declared that she found horses boring and cattle smelly. She was getting a divorce as soon as she could hunt down an attorney. She was bored, bored, bored—not least of all with her husband, Howard Sheffield, the “unsophisticated, countrified bumpkin” she had married in a temporary fit of Las Vegas-inspired insanity.
“We’ll be leaving the Lazy S,” Lucy’s mother had announced to her, “first thing in the morning!”
The memory sprang alive in Lucy’s mind, of her heartache and then of seeking solace high up in the tree, its shielding branches her only comfort. The scene was so tangible in her mind she fancied she could almost reach out and touch that sunset’s glorious golden colors. Almost touch the kind boy Rusty Sheffield had been.
She had to keep going forward, stop reliving the past. “I-I’ve got an idea, Rusty, of what we might do here. We could bring in people who want a taste of country life—stressed-out people from the city. They could put on jeans and ride and help move cattle.” As a child she had gained so much here; was it any wonder she wished others to experience the same happiness? “I figure they could stay for a week or two,” she went on with growing enthusiasm, “enjoy this marvelous place. See what it’s like to—”
“A dude ranch?” He cut through her ardent stream with a disbelieving guffaw. “You mean to turn the Lazy S into a greenhorn hotel?”
“Well, call it what you will.” She shrugged, trying not to be put off by his discouraging tone. Once she could fully explain, fully define the entire scope of her vision, he would comprehend everything. “I’ve put a lot of thought into this, worked out the details in my mind. I realize the notion is new to you, Rusty, and you need time to digest everything, but it could be like a...a health ranch. We could put in a swimming pool, have yoga classes—”
“No half-dressed yogi is gonna run around here spouting New-Age manure.” His expression closed her off like the slamming of a door. “We don’t need any damn pool, either. We’re simple folk. If we get hot, we just jump in the creek.” Features stiff, he collected a pair of hay hooks and thrust them into a thick bale. For a disturbing instant she had the crazy notion he’d like to use the hay hooks on her.
To heft the heavy bale into a wheelbarrow, he braced his feet. “I don’t know how I’ll get out from under this financial mess, but I won’t sell the Lazy S. And it won’t ever become a dude ranch.”
But why not? she wondered, blinking at him.
Recognizing a brick wall when she slammed into one, Lucy felt fingers of despair reaching into her heart like tendrils of mist before an ominous fog. Her attorneys had been so sure Rusty would jump at the chance to avoid certain bankruptcy that she had counted on his agreement. And the lawyers, the accountants and the bank officials had all concurred: without her, he would go bankrupt.
Staring sightlessly at her hands, she supposed she could wait for the foreclosure and simply buy the property from the bank. But that wasn’t how she wanted it. She wanted the Lazy S and Rusty. If only as a business partner.
Deep inside her soul, a silent bell of loneliness and pain began its familiar, dismal peal. All her life, she’d quit everything she’d started, given in when she should have fought back, accepted “no” when she should have demanded “yes.” The lonely, pealing toll grew in her mind until she could almost feel its grim vibrations.
Not this time. She crushed the defeating voice inside. This time I’ll stand firm. She swore to it.
“You’re part of the deal,” she whispered to his back, her throat tight and aching. “Don’t you see? You complete everything.”
His biceps straining, Rusty lifted the bale into the wheelbarrow and rolled it to the bank of stalls, broke it open and methodically tossed six-inch thick flakes into feeder bins. In the end stall, a hungry buckskin mare whinnied. Rusty didn’t look up at Lucy. “What sort of man was he?”
She blinked. “Who?”
“Your husband, Lucy. Was he good to you?”
The unexpected question blindsided her. She couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“That’s not too personal a question to ask, is it? Was your husband—what was his name?”
“Kenneth.”
“Kenneth, then.” He tossed a chunky flake into the next stall. “Was Kenneth a man who treated his woman well? Were you happy with him?”
“I...I don’t, that is—” She licked her lips, took a deep breath and tried again. “Kenneth had many fine qualities.”
The narrow-eyed glance he shot over his shoulder sliced straight through her like a shard of broken glass. When they were younger, most of the time he’d barely noticed her. But on the infrequent occasions when he had, she well recalled his piercing, perceptive eyes. Always he’d appeared able to read her innermost thoughts.
Lucy swallowed and forced her mind back to business. “The ranch, Rusty. If you won’t let me help, how can you keep it? Who else could you turn to?”
As he faced her, finished with the afternoon feeding, she saw that his skin was drawn taut over his cheekbones; his brown eyes took on a hard glitter. Tension radiated from every line in his body, and she felt his frustration beating at her in waves. Jerkily he stripped off his gloves.
For a moment he stared at the ground. It was a strangely dejected look for such a confident, strong man. She wondered at it. At last he raised his head.
“Sell you half,” he ground out.
“What?” Lucy stared at him dumbly.
“I’ll sell you half interest. God knows it’s the last thing I want. I thought I could raise capital selling you a few acres. But you want it all, don’t you?” His eyes narrowed. “And you’re right. There’s little choice. The bank’s gonna take it if I don’t act. I can’t believe it, but you’re my best—and only—option.”
Wisely she refrained from telling him she knew this.
“I get full control over the running of the ranch,” he demanded. “You’ll be a partner, but mostly in name and on paper.”
Pulse beating wildly, she said, “What about my idea—opening the ranch to others?” She didn’t dare use the term he found so derisive.
“We’ll work that out,” he evaded. “And no promises. Meantime, the property will be appraised, and you’ll invest exactly half the amount right back here.”
“Certainly,” she said.
“And you understand that I have final say in everything pertaining to ranch business, at least for this year?”
“Sure, but—”
“One more thing. If I can raise the same amount you’re investing, I have the right to buy you out. Agreed?”
Lucy faltered. That wasn’t what she wanted at all. When he got enough money he’d simply throw her off the ranch?
He continued staring at her in his hard-eyed way.
The capital she’d agreed to invest was quite a healthy sum. Would he be able to raise it...ever? It seemed unlikely. Besides, if he could, by then he’d have gotten to know her better, maybe even grown fond of her. By then, perhaps she’d have carved out a place for herself on the Lazy S. It seemed an unlikely event.
“You get a year,” she said, thinking fast.
He looked stunned. “What?”
“If you can raise the money in one year’s time, I’ll agree to it.” Behind her back, she twisted her chilled fingers together, hoping against hope he’d settle on this. “And, I get my dude ranch. On that point you have to agree.” There, she’d said it.
Rusty’s mouth flattened. He squeezed his eyes shut and muttered a word she pretended not to hear. “Fine,” he spat out. “A year it is. And in running things here, you won’t interfere?”
“No.” A welling joy rose in her chest like champagne bubbles. She wanted to shout her delight to the world. She wanted to sing. She wanted to rush to Rusty and throw her arms around him.
“My word’s as good as a contract,” he informed her coolly, and instead of the hug she would prefer, he proffered a broad palm.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling tremulously. Enclosing his hand in both her own, she shook it warmly. “Thank you.”
What the hell had he done, Rusty asked himself an hour later as he walked to the corrals. Just what? The situation was impossible. Had he really agreed to sell his former stepsister half the ranch? And how were they supposed to live—together in the big house—a bachelor and a young widow woman?
Fighting down resentment, he watched her walk to her zippy, completely impractical sports car and retrieve a purse and a shoulder bag. Her body beneath the plain gray suit was compact, her derriere firm. Though not large, her breasts appeared well rounded.
Rummaging in the back seat, Lucy bent at the waist. The action hiked her skirt up several inches above her knees and presented him with a view of slim, smooth-skinned thighs. Outlined by the gray fabric, her rump curved sweetly: taut, yet rounded just right. He wondered how she’d look without the ugly suit. An image of a nude Lucy reclining on the navy sheets of his bed instantly flooded his mind. He found it alarmingly arousing.
Grimacing, he turned to go check on the automatic waterers. Great. Alone together in the house with an all-grown-up Lucy, and him already picturing her firm body unclothed and splayed on his bed like a centerfold.
It was crazy. He didn’t even like her. At least, he disliked what she’d forced him to do. Hated it, actually. His hands fisted.
Fortunately Fritzy was staying in the house and not in her cottage. She seemed happy living there; he didn’t think she’d mind staying on.
He entered his gelding’s stall and went to the waterer in back. The horse raised its head a brief moment from its dinner, chewing. Its dark eyes asked ancient questions.
What did Lucy want, really? Not for a minute did he believe that business about her needing the damn house and horsey smells. It was odd, though, the way she’d shied away earlier when he’d only bumped her arm. And how evasive she’d been when he asked about her husband.
Somehow he’d get the cash to buy her out. He’d work night and day, save everything. There were many ways other than raising cattle to make money on a ranch, especially one with the rich resources of the Lazy S. Ways his brothers hadn’t even begun to explore. He would tap them all.
Her ludicrous proposal of turning the ranch into a vacation spot rankled. He vowed that the public hordes would come trampling onto the Lazy S only over his dead, decomposing body. A years-old scene came vividly to his mind: his father addressing him and his brothers, each word ringing with clarity.
“We must keep the land pure,” Howard Sheffield had exhorted his three almost-grown sons. “I won’t be around forever, and the ranch’ll pass to you, just as it did to me and my brother from our daddy.”
The three teenagers sat at attention in their father’s office and listened solemnly.
“You boys have to carry on the family tradition. It’ll be hard, I know, to resist commercialism, and this new business of catering to city slickers so many of our friends have succumbed to. It brings in money, but, by God, there’s got to be other ways.”
To Rusty’s seventeen-year-old eyes, his father suddenly looked old—Howard’s sun-roughened skin was splotched with benign cancers, his eyes rheumy. For Rusty it was a small shock, yet it came abruptly. His father was the burly, iron-willed constant on the ranch, the immortal bulwark for them all against a cruel world.
However, in that instant Rusty knew the first glimmerings of maturing youth: his father wouldn’t always be there to solve problems, to repair their mistakes made from inexperience. Someday, maybe soon, he’d have to grow up, take on full adult responsibilities.
“Dad,” he said, anxious and uncomfortable with his thoughts, “don’t worry. We’re not gonna let a bunch of strangers overrun the ranch.”
Howard fixed his youngest with a particularly penetrating stare. “See that you don’t. Jim Curlan’d give ten years off his life if he could get rid of his sideline. So’d old Harley Jacobson down at the Flying J. They need the money, I can understand that. God knows there’s more lean years than fat ones running a ranch. But as a result their spreads have been spoiled. All those damned idiots from the city playing cowboy, ruining good horses, getting underfoot, pistol-shootin’ at anything that flies by.” He snorted, then paused to look thoughtfully at each of his sons.
“Now, boys, promise me you’ll never sell out. Keep the Lazy S as it’s always been. In the family. Swear it.”
The memory receded on Howard’s binding dictum and the grave vow Rusty and his brothers had made. The fact that the other two had passed away now, leaving only Rusty to uphold the promise was entirely irrelevant. He’d given his word, and failure was unacceptable.
At the end of this year he would exercise the clause he’d write into his contract with Lucy. She would be gone. It would just take time, he knew that. From the training in his former career as a contracts attorney working for major corporate accounts, he would have no trouble wording their agreement into cast-iron legal language. Every clause would be phrased to favor him—and not Lucy Donovan.
The gelding moved to nuzzle his shoulder. The waterer was working fine. Absently he rubbed the horse’s withers. Something was wrong in Lucy’s life. Something...
Again the image of her jerking away from him came back and suddenly he knew. Thinking of it, he closed his eyes and wondered how he hadn’t realized it before.
Lucy had come to the Lazy S to heal.
He hadn’t told her everything. Wait until she found out that the ranch she’d just purchased half interest in came with an added bonus. Suddenly he grinned. What would she say when he presented her with a pinkskinned, milk-swilling, diaper-wetting, loudly squalling six-month-old baby?
Chapter Two
The ear-splitting squawk behind Lucy startled her so badly she whirled. Her purse and briefcase flew from her hands, skittered across the living room’s floor and slammed into the cabbage-rose-print davenport. Lipstick, keys and a checkbook hurled from the purse while file folders and assorted legal papers spewed from the briefcase.
Fritzy stood in the kitchen doorway. Her eyebrows were raised, but she was smiling. However it wasn’t the older woman with whom Lucy had enjoyed a reunion an hour ago that had startled her, but the grinning, drooling, chortling creature Fritzy held in her arms.
A baby. Fritzy was holding a baby.
“Sorry we scared you,” Fritzy said, the apology much too offhand for Lucy’s still-pounding heart, “but Baby sure does like squealin’.”
Lucy laid a hand on her chest “So I gather. Whose, um...baby is it?” Shakily she bent to stuff papers into the briefcase.
“Oh, didn’t Rusty tell you before he went back to branding?”
It was true that less than an hour ago Rusty had informed her tersely that he was “burning daylight” and stomped off toward the corrals.
The housekeeper went on airily. “The men’ve got to get those late calves marked before cold weather sets in and then moved to low pastures. Fall roundup’s not so important as spring, but—”
