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She backed up again, her eyes widening at the unexpected action, but he didn’t come any closer.
“When I was six,” he said with cold black eyes, “I wanted a birthday cake like the other kids had. A cake and a party. Simon had gone to town with Dad and Corrigan. It was before Rey was born. Leo was asleep and my mother and I were in the kitchen alone. She made some pert remark about spoiled brats thinking they deserved treats when they were nothing but nuisances. She had a cake on the counter, one that a neighbor had sent home with Dad. She smashed the cake into my face,” he recalled, his eyes darker than ever, “and started hitting me. I don’t think she would have stopped, except that Leo woke up and started squalling. She sent me to my room and locked me in. I don’t know what she told my father, but I got a hell of a spanking from him.” He searched her shocked eyes. “I never asked for another cake.”
She put the suitcases down slowly and shocked him by walking right up to him and touching him lightly on the chest with a shy, nervous little hand. It didn’t occur to him that he’d never confessed that particular incident to anyone, not even his brothers. She seemed to know it, just the same.
“My father couldn’t cook. He opened cans,” she said quietly. “I learned to cook when I was eleven, in self-defense. My mother wouldn’t have baked me a cake, either, even if she’d stayed with us. She didn’t want me, but Dad did, and he put her into a position where she had to marry him. She never forgave either of us for it. She left before I started school.”
“Where is she now?”
She didn’t meet his eyes. “I don’t know. I don’t care.”
His chest rose and fell roughly. She made him uncomfortable. He moved back, so that her disturbing hand fell away from his chest.
She didn’t question why he didn’t like her to touch him. It had been an impulse and now she knew not to do it again. She lifted her face and searched his dark eyes. “I know you don’t like me,” she said. “It’s better if I get a job somewhere else. I’m almost twenty-two. I can take care of myself.”
His eyes averted to the window. “Wait until spring,” he said stiffly. “You’ll have an easier time finding work then.”
She hesitated. She didn’t really want to go, but she couldn’t stay here with such unbridled resentment as he felt for her.
He glanced down at her with something odd glittering in his black eyes. “My brothers will drown me if I let you walk out that door,” he said curtly. “Neither of them is speaking to me.”
They both knew that he didn’t care in the least what his brothers thought of him. It was a peace initiative.
She moved restlessly. “Dorie’s had the baby. She can make biscuits again.”
“She won’t,” he said curtly. “She’s too busy worshiping the baby.”
Her gaze dropped to the floor. “It’s a sweet baby.”
A wave of heat ran through his body. He turned and started back toward the door. “Do what you please,” he said.
She still hesitated.
He opened the door and turned before he went through it, looking dark as thunder and almost as intimidating. “Too afraid of me to stay?” he drawled, hitting her right in her pride with deadly accuracy.
She drew herself up with smoldering fury. “I am not afraid of you!”
His eyebrows arched. “Sure you are. That’s why you’re running away like a scared kid.”
“I wasn’t running! I’m not a scared kid, either!”
That was more like it. He could manage if she fought back. He couldn’t live with the image of her white and shaking and backing away from him. It had hurt like the very devil.
He pulled his Stetson low over his eyes. “Suit yourself. But if you stay, you’d damned sure better not lose the apple butter again,” he said with biting sarcasm.
“Next time, you’ll get it right between the eyes,” she muttered to herself.
“I heard that.”
She glared at him. “And if you ever, ever, throw another cake at me…!”
“I didn’t throw it at you,” he said pointedly. “I threw it at the wall.”
Her face was growing redder by the second. “I spent two hours making the damned thing!”
“Lost apple butter, cursed cake, damned women…” He was still muttering as he stomped off down the hall with the faint, musical jingle of spurs following him.
Tess stood unsteadily by the bed for several seconds before she snapped out of her trance and put her suitcases back on the bed to unpack them. She needed her head read for agreeing to stay, but she didn’t really have anywhere else to go. And what he’d told her reached that part of her that was unbearably touched by small, wounded things.
She could see a little Cag with his face covered in cake, being brutally hit by an uncaring woman, trying not to cry. Amazingly it excused every harsh word, every violent action. She wondered how many other childhood scars were hiding behind that hard, expressionless face.
Cag was coldly formal with her after that, as if he regretted having shared one of his deeper secrets with her. But there weren’t any more violent outbursts. He kept out of her way and she kept out of his. The winter months passed into a routine sameness. Without the rush and excitement of the holidays, Tess found herself with plenty of time on her hands when she was finished with her chores. The brothers worked all hours, even when they weren’t bothered with birthing cattle and roundup, as they were in the warmer months of spring.
But there were fences to mend, outbuildings to repair, upkeep on the machinery that was used to process feed. There were sick animals to treat and corrals to build and vehicles to overhaul. It never seemed to end. And in between all that, there were conferences and conventions and business trips.
It was rare, Tess found, to have all three bachelor brothers at the table at the same time. More often than not, she set places only for Rey and Leo, because Cag spent more and more time away. They assured her that she wasn’t to blame, that it was just pressing business, but she wondered just the same. She knew that Cag only tolerated her for the sake of her domestic skills, that he hated the very sight of her. But the other brothers were so kind that it almost made up for Cag. And the ever-present Mrs. Lewis, doing the rough chores, was a fountain of information about the history of the Hart ranch and the surrounding area. Tess, a history buff, learned a lot about the wild old days and stored the information away almost greedily. The lazy, pleasant days indoors seemed to drag and she was grateful for any interesting tidbits that Mrs. Lewis sent her way.
Then spring arrived and the ranch became a madhouse. Tess had to learn to answer the extension phone in the living room while the two secretaries in the separate office complex started processing calving information into the brothers’ huge mainframe computer. The sheer volume of it was shocking to Tess, who’d spent her whole life on ranches.
The only modern idea, besides the computers, that the brothers had adapted to their operation was the implantation of computer chips under the skin of the individual cattle. This was not only to identify them with a handheld computer, but also to tag them in case of rustling—a sad practice that had continued unabashed into the computer age.
On the Hart ranch, there were no hormone implants, no artificial insemination, no unnecessary antibiotics or pesticides. The brothers didn’t even use pesticides on their crops, having found ways to encourage the development of superior strains of forage and the survival of good insects that kept away the bad ones. It was all very ecological and fascinating, and it was even profitable. One of the local ranchers, J. D. Langley, worked hand in glove with them on these renegade methods. They shared ideas and investment strategies and went together as a solid front to cattlemen’s meetings. Tess found J. D. “Donavan” Langley intimidating, but his wife and nephew had softened him, or so people said. She shuddered to think how he’d been before he mellowed.
The volume of business the brothers did was overwhelming. The telephone rang constantly. So did the fax machine. Tess was press-ganged into learning how to operate that, and the computer, so that she could help send and receive urgent e-mail messages to various beef producers and feedlots and buyers.
“But I’m not trained!” she wailed to Leo and Rey.
They only grinned. “There, there, you’re doing a fine job,” Leo told her encouragingly.
“But I won’t have time to cook proper meals,” she continued.
“As long as we have enough biscuits and strawberry preserves and apple butter, that’s no problem at all,” Rey assured her. “And if things get too hectic, we’ll order out.”
They did, frequently, in the coming weeks. One night two pizza delivery trucks drove up and unloaded enough pizzas for the entire secretarial and sales staff and the cowboys, not to mention the brothers. They worked long hours and they were demanding bosses, but they never forgot the loyalty and sacrifice of the people who worked for them. They paid good wages, too.
“Why don’t you ever spend any money on yourself?” Leo asked Tess one night when, bleary-eyed from the computer, she was ready to go to bed.
“What?”
“You’re wearing the same clothes you had last year,” he said pointedly. “Don’t you want some new jeans, at least, and some new tops?”
“I hadn’t thought about it,” she confessed. “I’ve just been putting my wages into the bank and forgetting about them. I suppose I should go shopping.”
“Yes, you should.” He leaned down toward her. “The very minute we get caught up!”
She groaned. “We’ll never get caught up! I heard old Fred saying that he’d had to learn how to use a handheld computer so he could scan the cattle in the low pasture, and he was almost in tears.”
“We hired more help,” he stated.
“Yes, but there was more work after that! It’s never going to end,” she wailed. “If those stupid cows don’t stop having calves…!”
“Bite your tongue, woman, that’s profit you’re scoffing at!”
“I know, but—”
“We’re all tired,” he assured her. “And any day now, it’s going to slack off. We’re doing compilation figures for five ranches, you know,” he added. “It isn’t just this one. We have to record each new calf along with its history, we have to revise lists for cattle that have died or been culled, cattle that we traded, new cattle that we’ve bought. Besides that, we have to have birth weights, weight gain ratios, average daily weight gain and feeding data. All that information has to be kept current or it’s no use to us.”
“I know. But we’ll all get sick of pizzas and I’ll forget how to make biscuits!”
“God forbid,” he said, taking off his hat and holding it to his heart.
She was too tired to laugh, but she did smile. She worked her way down the long hall toward her room over the garage, feeling as drained as she looked.
She met Cag coming from the general direction of the garage, dressed in a neat gray suit with a subdued burgundy tie and a cream-colored Stetson. He was just back from a trustee meeting in Dallas, and he looked expensive and sophisticated and unapproachable.
She nodded in a cool greeting, and averted her eyes as she passed him.
He stepped in front of her, blocking her path. One big, lean hand tilted her chin up. He looked at her without smiling, his dark eyes glittering with disapproval.
“What have they been doing to you?” he asked curtly.
The comment shocked her, but she didn’t read anything into it. Cag would never be concerned about her and she knew it. “We’re all putting herd records into the computer, even old Fred,” she said wearily. “We’re tired.”
“Yes, I know. It’s a nightmare every year about this time. Are you getting enough sleep?”
She nodded. “I don’t know much about computers and it’s hard, that’s all. I don’t mind the work.”
His hand hesitated for just an instant before he dropped it. He looked tougher than ever. “You’ll be back to your old duties in no time. God forbid that we should drag you kicking and screaming out of the kitchen and into the twentieth century.”
That was sarcastic, and she wished she had enough energy to hit him. He was always mocking her, picking at her.
“You haven’t complained about the biscuits yet,” she reminded him curtly.
His black eyes swept over her disparagingly. “You look about ten,” he chided. “All big eyes. And you wear that damned rig or those black jeans and that pink shirt all the time. Don’t you have any clothes?”
She couldn’t believe her ears. First the brothers had talked about her lack of new clothes, and now he was going to harp on it! “Now, look here, you can’t tell me what to wear!”
“If you want to get married, you’ll never manage it like that,” he scoffed. “No man is going to look twice at a woman who can’t be bothered to even brush her hair!”
She actually gasped. She hadn’t expected a frontal attack when he’d just walked in the door. “Well, excuse me!” she snapped, well aware that her curly head was untidy. She put a hand to it defensively. “I haven’t had time to brush my hair. I’ve been too busy listing what bull sired what calf!”
He searched over her wan face and he relented, just a little. “Go to bed,” he said stiffly. “You look like the walking dead.”
“What a nice compliment,” she muttered. “Thanks awfully.”
She started to walk away, but he caught her arm and pulled her back around. He reached into his pocket, took something out, and handed it to her.
It was a jewelry box, square and velvet-covered. She looked at him and he nodded toward the box, indicating that he wanted her to open it.
She began to, with shaking hands. It was unexpected that he should buy her anything. She lifted the lid to find that there, nestled on a bed of gray satin, was a beautiful faceted sapphire pendant surrounded by tiny diamonds on a thin gold chain. She’d never seen anything so beautiful in her life. It was like a piece of summer sky caught in stone. It sparkled even in the dim shine of the security lights around the house and garage.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, shocked and touched by the unexpected gift. Then she looked up, warily, wondering if she’d been presumtuous and it wasn’t a gift at all. She held it out to him. “Oh, I see. You just wanted to show it to me…”
He closed her fingers around the box. His big hands were warm and strong. They felt nice.
“I bought it for you,” he said, and looked briefly uncomfortable.
She was totally at sea, and looked it. She glanced down at the pretty thing in her hand and back up at him with a perplexed expression.
“Belated birthday present,” he said gruffly, not meeting her eyes.
“But…my birthday was the first of March,” she said, her voice terse, “and I never mentioned it.”
“Never mentioned it,” he agreed, searching her tired face intently. “Never had a cake, a present, even a card.”
She averted her eyes.
“Hell!”
The curse, and the look on his face, surprised her.
He couldn’t tell her that he felt guilty about her birthday. He hadn’t even known that it had gone by until Leo told him two weeks ago. She could have had a cake and little presents, and cards. But she’d kept it to herself because of the way he’d acted about the cake she’d made for him. He knew without a word being spoken that he’d spoiled birthdays for her just as his mother had spoiled them for him. His conscience beat him to death over it. It was why he’d spent so much time away, that guilt, and it was why he’d gone into a jewelers, impulsively, when he never did anything on impulse, and bought the little necklace for her.
“Thanks,” she murmured, curling her fingers around the box. But she wouldn’t look at him.
There was something else, he thought, watching her posture stiffen. Something…
“What is it?” he asked abruptly.
She took a slow breath. “When do you want me to leave?” she asked bravely.
He scowled. “When do I what?”
“You said, that day I baked the cake, that I could go in the spring,” she reminded him, because she’d never been able to forget. “It’s spring.”
He scowled more and stuck one hand into his pocket, thinking fast. “How could we do without you during roundup?” he asked reasonably. “Stay until summer.”
She felt the box against her palms, warm from his body where it had lain in his pocket. It was sort of like a link between them, even if he hadn’t meant it that way. She’d never had a present from a man before, except the coat the brothers had given her. But that hadn’t been personal like this. She wasn’t sure how it was intended, as a sort of conscience-reliever or a genuinely warm gesture.
“We’ll talk about it another time,” he said after a minute. “I’m tired and I’ve still got things to do.”
He turned and walked past her without looking back. She found herself watching him helplessly with the jewelery box held like a priceless treasure in her two hands.
As if he felt her eyes he stopped suddenly, at the back door, and only his head pivoted. His black eyes met hers in the distance between them, and it was suddenly as if lightning had struck. She felt her knees quivering under her, her heart racing. He was only looking, but she couldn’t get her breath at all.
He didn’t glance away, and neither did she. In that instant, she lost her heart. She felt him fight to break the contact of their eyes, and win. He moved away quickly, into the house, and she ground her teeth together at this unexpected complication.
Of all the men in the world to become infatuated with, Cag Hart was the very last she should have picked. But knowing it didn’t stop the way she felt. With a weary sigh, she turned and went back toward her room. She knew she wouldn’t sleep, no matter how tired she was. She linked the necklace around her neck and admired it in the mirror, worrying briefly about the expense, because she’d seen on the clasp that it was 14K gold—not a trifle at all. But it would have been equally precious to her if it had been gold-tone metal, and she was sure Cag knew it. She went to sleep, wearing it.
