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“No. I’m staying with a friend.”
She felt something possessive stir in her and hoped that he wouldn’t be able to see the sudden freezing of her features. A friend. A female friend? She knew that Bowie was no innocent, but until now she’d never wondered about his private life. What if he had a woman here in Phoenix...?
“I went to school with him, and we were in the same company for six months in Vietnam, until he was rotated out.”
“Oh.” She couldn’t think of anything to add to that. He was giving her a strange look already. “Well, good night, and thanks for the ride,” she said with relief as she stepped out and shut the car door.
Gaby hurried to her apartment. She noticed Bowie didn’t leave until she’d opened her door and gone inside. Through the curtains she saw the Scorpio finally pull away.
She didn’t move from the window for several minutes. Tonight had been a bad mistake. Going out with Bowie, for any reason, was going to have to be avoided from now on. He made her feel vulnerable, and that was the one thing she couldn’t afford to be. Especially not with Bowie.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_28e80bbb-dac8-508f-b77b-c90865c4d183)
IN BETWEEN WORRYING about Aggie and trying to come to grips with her sudden attraction to Bowie, Gaby spent her weekend going shopping and to a movie. By the time Monday morning rolled around, her eyes were dark-shadowed and she was ready for the diversion of work.
As she plodded through rush-hour traffic, her mind was busy with the speech she was going to make to Johnny Blake about her two-week vacation. It wasn’t really a bad time to take one—news was slow. And if she could sell him on covering the story developing in Lassiter, he might see it as a working holiday and be more receptive to it. Lassiter was southeast of Tucson, and out of Phoenix’s reporting area, but it would certainly make state news if things got hot enough. She could tell Johnny that, anyway. He liked a story that got picked up by the wire services. It made the paper look good.
Gaby thought that she might even enjoy spending some time at Casa Río. But whether or not Aggie was going to welcome her presence was anybody’s guess. How was she going to explain her sudden need for a vacation this time of year?
The other drawback was proximity to Bowie. The night before, she’d seen him in a totally new light. She couldn’t forget the touch of his big fingers around hers, or the way he’d suddenly come close to her at Mary’s engagement party as they’d gone between the parked cars. Her entire body had rippled with delicious feeling, and that frightened her. She didn’t really want to risk letting Bowie come close.
When she got to the office, Johnny was on the phone, murmuring into the receiver while he looked at her with a blank, preoccupied stare.
“That’s right,” he said. “That’s right. Look, why don’t you stick around there for another thirty minutes and see if you can’t get one of the jurors to one side. We need some idea of what’s going on. Don’t compromise their integrity—just see if you can get a handle on how the deliberations are going, okay? Good man!”
He hung up with a grimace. “Well, that’s as good as it’s going to get today, I suppose. I don’t know how we’re going to manage anything passable about the Highman case unless we can coax a juror into talking.”
“Try a juror’s wife,” she suggested with a grin.
He chuckled. “No wonder I keep you on, Cane.” He nodded. “You’ve got a devious mind.”
“Shrewd sounds better. Johnny, can I go home for two weeks? Before you speak,” she added, holding up a hand when he looked as if he might explode, “I’ve got an angle. I need a vacation. But there’s a big agricultural outfit called Biological Agri-market—Bio-Ag—trying to buy up land around Lassiter for some huge truck farming operation. It would have a favorable impact on the local economy, but its water usage and destruction of historic landmarks make it pretty controversial. There have already been a couple of death threats. I could sort of get a handle on things and have my vacation at the same time. What do you think? It could be statewide news,” she added quickly. “We’d scoop all the Tucson papers. We might even get picked up on the wires.”
He was thinking now, his lips pursed. “Statewide, huh?”
“That’s right.”
His small eyes narrowed. “Is anybody we know involved in this, Cane?” he probed.
She laughed. “Bowie. He’s going to fight it tooth and nail.”
“In that case, pack your bags. I still remember when he took on that cut-rate construction company project that cost two lives. Anything he does makes news these days. He’s a troublesome...” He cleared his throat. “Sorry.”
“He isn’t family,” she said, and was suddenly glad that he wasn’t. A picture of his hard, handsome features floated unwanted into her mind and she found herself feeling much too eager to go back to Casa Río.
“Yes. I keep forgetting that,” he murmured, watching her warm color. “Well, Cane, you have a nice vacation. Don’t forget to finish up your assignments today. You can leave first thing in the morning.”
“Yes, sir!” She grinned. “Thanks, boss.”
“Don’t thank me.” He held up a hand and smiled modestly. “I am but a poor, humble editor, doing his best to save democracy for future generations. Four score and seven...”
“You might write down that speech on the back of an envelope,” she suggested as she went out the door of his office. “Who knows? You could go down in history.”
He sighed. “Only if I changed my last name to Lincoln. Go to work!”
“You bet!”
The political interview was one she’d been angling toward for weeks. An older state representative—one of sixty representatives in the State House—had been accused of taking kickbacks on a highway project he’d supported. The charge didn’t quite ring true to Gaby, who knew the politician. He had a reputation for honesty that was nothing short of fanaticism.
What made the interview so special was that Gaby was the only member of the press that Representative Guerano would talk to.
“Where’s Wilson?” the white-haired legislator asked, darting quick glances around as they sat in the comparative security of his office in the state capitol building. “Is he disguised as a lamp?”
Gaby laughed. Her wild journalistic colleague had that kind of reputation, and it was really a pity that he worked for a rival paper. “Despite Wilson’s knack for turning up in odd places, he could only know about this meeting from me, and I don’t consort with the opposition.”
Representative Guerano chuckled deeply. “Good for you. Okay. What do you want to know, young lady?”
“Who’s after you and why, of course,” she replied with a twinkle in her olive eyes. “I don’t believe for a minute that you’ve taken money from anybody.”
He smiled gently. “God bless you for that blind trust. As it happens, you’re right. But I only have suspicions, no hard evidence. And I’m hardly in a position to start throwing stones.”
“Tell you what,” she said, leaning forward. “You tell me who, when, and why, and I’ll tell Johnny Blake. We’ve got an investigative reporter on our staff who can dig blood out of turnips.”
His tired blue eyes brightened. “Think so?”
“I do, indeed. Meanwhile, you give me a nice interview and I’ll print both sides of the controversy, just the way a good journalist should.”
“Isn’t this sticking your neck out?” he asked curiously.
She shook her head. “It’s good journalism. We like to print the whole truth. Sometimes we can only print half. But we never give up until we get to the bottom of scandals. That’s the only way to do it, to be fair to everyone involved.”
He nodded. “I can understand that. But meanwhile, a lot of damage has been done to my reputation.” He leaned back, looking every day of his sixty years. “You don’t know what a living hell it is to be at the center of a scandal, young lady. My family’s suffered much more than I have, but even if I’m cleared, the implication is still there. My career is finished, either way.”
Gaby was getting cold chills, because she had a pretty good idea of what a scandal could do to even ordinary people, much less people in the public eye. Her background, if it were ever revealed, could do untold damage to the McCaydes.
She snapped herself back to the present. “All I can promise you is that I’ll do a good story and that Johnny will put it in a prominent place. If you deny the charges and we can print your side of it, some people may listen.”
“If you mean that, about an investigation, I’ll give you all the help I can, and so will my staff.”
She nodded. “I can promise you that we’ll give it our best shot.”
“Then, let’s get to it. Ask whatever you like.”
It was a good piece—one of the best Gaby had ever done. And once it was in print, it would be a good time to leave the area for a while, until the heat died down. She never ran from trouble, but sometimes it was advantageous to walk around it.
Johnny Blake was delighted. He took the few unverifiable bits of information he’d been given and handed them over to Lang, the paper’s investigative reporter. Like a bulldog with a bone to chew, the veteran journalist went straight to work. Lang had contacts that none of the other reporters did. His stock of sources read like a Who’s Who of organized crime, but he always got what he needed, with enough printable sources to support the story. Other papers had tried to lure him away with everything from company cars to incredible salaries, and one of the television networks had even dangled an anchor spot at him. Lang just plugged away at his desk, amused at his notoriety, and never gave it a second thought. Gaby liked him. He was an old renegade, with a shady past and plenty of grit and style. He might not be society, but he was a reporter’s reporter. He’d clear Guerano, and Johnny Blake would have his big story for the month. The only casualty might be Guerano himself, because it was hard to undo a public accusation. With the best will in the world, the dirt stuck.
That night as Gaby packed she worried about encroaching on Aggie’s privacy, about interfering. She really was concerned, and knew she was just going to have to risk irritating her. The next morning she put two suitcases in her little white VW convertible, left her plants with a neighbor to water, and set out for Casa Río.
The ranch was over twenty thousand acres in size, as many southeastern Arizona ranches were. The sheer immensity of open space was staggering to Eastern tourists. Even to Gaby, who’d lived here for years, the scope of it was almost unbelievable. One mountain was crossed, ending in an endless valley. That reached to another mountain, and beyond it was another endless valley, and so on. Cattle and horses grazed lazily beyond the highway, because open range was the law in Arizona. Considering the size of the ranches, it was understandable. Fencing thousands of acres would cost a fortune, and with the depressed cattle market, ranchers would certainly be hard-pressed to come up with the kind of money Gaby imagined it would cost.
The thought piqued her curiosity. She and Bowie had never talked about the cattle operation at Casa Río. Her dark olive eyes narrowed as she drove down the endless highway toward Tucson. She wondered about the impact of an agricultural operation on Bowie’s cattle. Not only would the enormous project use great volumes of water—which was still scarce in this part of Arizona—but it would use pesticides that would leach into the soil and add pollutants to the precious water remaining. Arizona rivers, with the notable exception of the Colorado, mostly ran only during the rainy months, when there was flash flooding. Wells provided the majority of the water in southeastern Arizona. There had already been one television special which had alleged that there were toxins in the drinking water around Tucson. Perhaps some conversations with the local U.S. Soil Conservation Service office in Lassiter might be of benefit. Gaby could see that if she wanted to do a proper job on this story, she was going to be involved in a lot of research.
She stopped to eat in Tucson before heading south through Tombstone to Lassiter. This was familiar territory. Lassiter was bordered on the east by the Chiricahua Mountains, where the Chiricahua Apache once reigned supreme. To the south and west was Tombstone, the site of the O.K. Corral gunfight, high atop its mesa. Far to the southeast was Douglas, on the Mexican border, and to the west were the Dragoon Mountains, where Cochise’s Stronghold was located. Near Bowie’s ranch was the famous Sulphur Springs Valley, once home to the Clanton clan, the archenemy cowboys who had faced the Earps and Doc Holliday at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone. It was a fiercely historic area, and although Gaby had no roots of her own, part of her could understand and appreciate Bowie’s love of the land. But as she drove through the desolate country, dotted only here and there with an occasional ranch far off the road, she wondered if Bowie had considered the job potential the agricultural giant would present here. It would require not only laborers, but heavy equipment operators, technicians, engineers, clerical people, truckers, and packers. The people who worked there could spend their paychecks in Lassiter, which would raise the tax base and help increase services to the townspeople. The unemployment ratio in Lassiter had been high, because a number of small ranches had gone under in recent years. Unskilled labor had no place to go except to one of the cities of larger towns in the area. A few local people worked in Tombstone during Hellrado Days in October—the anniversary of the gunfight at the O.K. Corral—where the Old West was re-created for the benefit of hundreds of tourists. But that was seasonal work, and many people in the area needed jobs that would last year-round.
The two sides of the story kept her mind busy all the way to Lassiter. She drove through it with a nostalgic smile. It was typical of most small Arizona towns—a combination of past and present, with adobe architecture in half its buildings, and modern design in the rest.
The pavement was cracked in most places, and the people walking about reflected the poor economy in the way they dressed. There was a lack of entertainment facilities for young people, since most teenagers left Lassiter for work in other towns when they graduated from its one high school. She looked at the landscape and tried to envision Bio-Ag’s huge operation settling here. Irrigated fields would spread to the horizon and the desert would bloom. She sighed, smiling at her own vision.
There were only a few shops in town these days, and half of them were boarded up from lack of commerce. The town had two policemen, neither of whom stayed too busy, except over the weekend when the local bar filled up and tempers grew short. There was a fire department, all volunteer, and a motel-restaurant. Several government agencies had offices here, some of which were only open part of the week. There was a newspaper—a very good one for a town that small—the Lassiter Citizen. And there was a radio station, but it was a low-budget operation with high school students manning the control room most of the afternoon and early evening. If Bio-Ag came, there would be some more advertising revenue for the media, and certainly plenty of newsworthy copy to help fill space.
Bowie would fight it, with his environmental priorities, and there were enough special interest groups to help him. Bio-Ag would need an ally. She smiled, thinking of ways to circumvent Bowie’s efforts.
The road wound around past the sewage treatment plant and reservoir; then, it became a straight shot out to Casa Río. It was visible in the distance, far off the main highway, on a wide dirt road with fields that combined wildflowers and improved pasture. Bowie’s Brahman cattle grazed in that area, where cowboys during roundup would draw straws to see who had to brave the thickets of brush to roust out the strays. Prickly pear cactus, ocotillo, cholla, creosote, sagebrush and mesquite were enough of a threat, without the occasional potholes and diamondback rattlers that could give a horseman gray hairs.
On the other hand, there was clean air, open country, the most spectacular scenery on earth, and the glory of palo verde trees in the spring. There were red-winged blackbirds, sage hens, cactus wrens, and owls. There were rock formations that looked like modern art, and wildflowers bursting from the desert. Gaby had the top of the VW convertible down, and her eyes drank in the beauty of the landscape unashamedly. She had her memories of Kentucky—of lush green pastures and white fences and huge groves of trees—but they were pale against this savage beauty.
She crossed over the bridge that sheltered a tributary of the San Pedro. It was early for the summer “monsoons,” so there was barely a trickle of water in the creek bed. It was more of a sandy wash right now than the swollen, deadly creek it became after a good, heavy rain. Past the bridge was a long ranch road that led back from the flat valley into a small box canyon. There, in a small grove of palo verde and mesquite trees, stood Casa Río.
It was old. The beautiful parchment color of the adobe walls blended in with the mountains behind it. The house was two stories high, and despite its stately aged appearance, with wrought iron at the windows, and the courtyard gate that led to the porch, it had every modem convenience. The kitchen was like something out of a Good Housekeeping layout. Behind the house was a garage, and adjoining the house was an Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool that was heated in winter. There were tennis courts and a target-shooting range, and a neat stable and corral where the breeding horses were kept. Farther away was the working stable, the barn, and a modern concrete bunkhouse where the six full-time bachelor cowboys lived. The foreman, assistant foreman, and livestock manager—all three married men with families—had small houses on the property.
The driveway led around the house to the garage, but Gaby parked at the front gate, leaving her luggage in the trunk. She admired the only real home she’d ever known. There were flowers everywhere—pots and planters of geraniums and begonias and petunias. There were blooming rose bushes in every shade imaginable to either side of the house. The small courtyard garden had a winding, rock-inlaid path to the long front porch under the overhanging balcony that ran the width of the house. A staircase with inlaid tiles led up the side of the porch to the second-story balcony through a black wrought iron gate. There was a towering palo verde tree just beside it, dripping yellow blossoms, and a palm tree on the other side of the house. Ferns hung from the front porch, where wicker furniture beckoned in the shade of the balcony.
She opened the big black, wrought iron gate and walked into the garden, smiling with pure pleasure as she meandered down the path, stopping to smell a rose here and there.
“Always you do this,” came a resigned, Spanish-flavored voice from the porch. A familiar tall, spare figure came into the light, his silvery hair catching the sunlight. “Bienvenida, muchacha.”
“Montoya!” She laughed. She held out her hands, to have them taken in a firm, kind grasp. “You never change.”
“Neither do you,” he replied. “It is good to have you here. I grow weary of cooking for myself and Tía Elena. It has been lonely without the Señora Agatha and Señor Bowie.”
“Have you heard from Aggie?” she asked.
“Sí. She arrives today or tomorrow.” He glanced behind him and leaned forward. “With a strange hombre,” he added, “and Señor Bowie does not like this. There will be trouble.”
“Tell me about it,” Gaby groaned. “He talked me into coming down here as a chaperone, and God only knows what Aggie’s going to say when she finds me here.”
“When she finds you both here,” he corrected.
“¿Qué hablas?” she asked, lapsing into the natural Spanish that seemed so much a part of Casa Río because its staff and Bowie spoke it so fluently.
“Señor Bowie came an hour ago,” he said. “He seems to have had no sleep, and he has already caused Tía Elena to hide in the bathroom.”
She felt a ripple of pure excitement that she shouldn’t have felt at the remark. “Bowie’s here? But he’s supposed to be in Canada...”
“Not anymore,” Montoya sighed. “He left the project in the hands of his foreman and caught a plane to Tucson. He says that he cannot stand by and let his mother make such a mistake. He is going to save her.”
He said the last tongue in cheek, and Gaby smothered a laugh. “Oh, my.”
“If you laugh, niña, make sure the señor does not see you do it,” he said dryly. “Or you may have to join Tía Elena in the bathroom. He has the look of the coyote that tried to eat our cat last week.”
“That bad, huh?” She shook her head. “Well, I’ll go see what I can do. Poor Aggie.”
“We know nothing of this man,” Montoya reminded her. “He could be right, you know.”
“He could be wrong, too.”
“The señor?” Montoya put his hand over his heart. “I am shocked that you should say such a thing.”
“I’ll bet,” she mused, grinning as she went past him. “Where is he?”
“In the house.”
“Where in the house?”
Montoya shrugged. “¿Quíen sabe? I have better sense than to look for him.”
She gave him a mock glare and went inside. Tía Elena, fifty, and severe as night in her black dress with her hair pulled back into a bun, peeked around the corner, her black eyes wary.
“It’s only me,” Gaby teased. She hugged the thin older woman and laughed. “Still hiding, I see.”
“Is it any wonder?” Elena asked, shaking her head. “I do nothing right, you see. The bed is made with colored sheets, the señor wanted white ones. I have polished the floor too much and he does not like it that it is slippery. The bathroom smells of sandalwood, which he hates; the air conditioner is set too low, and he is roasting; and I am certain that before dark he will find a way to accuse me of having the clouds too low and the sand too deep in the backyard.”
Gaby laughed softly. Bowie on a rampage could do this even to people who’d lived with him for years. She patted Tía Elena on the shoulder gently. “It will all blow over,” she promised. “It always does.”
“I am too old for such storms.” Elena sighed. “I will make a salad and slice some meat for sandwiches. The señora and her friend will arrive soon.” She threw up her hands. “No doubt the señor will accuse me of trying to poison the meat...” she muttered as she went back into the kitchen.
Gaby went down the long hall of the first floor, skirting the staircase that led to the upstairs bedrooms, past the sweeping Western motif of Bowie’s study, past the elegant grandeur of the traditional living room, past the library with its wall-to-wall bookcases, pine paneling, and leather furniture, past the huge kitchen, and down the covered walkway to the pool house. And there was Bowie.
He was cleaving the water with powerful strokes, easily covering the length of the Olympic-sized pool and turning with quiet strength to slice back through the water to where Gaby stood watching.
His head came out of the pool, his blond hair darker wet than dry, his black eyes examined her curiously. She was wearing designer jeans, but they weren’t tight. The long, trendy, red-and-gray overblouse disguised her figure, except for its slenderness and the elegance of her long legs. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail with a red ribbon, and her dark glasses were still propped on her head.
“Taking inventory?” she asked.
“Not particularly. You’re late.”
“I’m early, and what are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in Canada,” she reminded him.
“I couldn’t stop worrying about Aggie,” he said simply.
He put his big hands on the side of the pool, and with devastating ease, pulled himself out. As he got to his feet, Gaby found herself gaping at the unfamiliar sight of him in nothing but white swimming trunks.
They were very conventional trunks, but they did nothing to disguise the sheer magnificence of his powerful body without clothing. She’d seen him this way before a time or two, but it had never affected her so much. Bowie had a physique that was nothing short of breathtaking. He was a big man, formidable in height as well as size, but there wasn’t a spare ounce of excess weight. He was perfectly proportioned—streamlined from his broad, hair-covered chest to his lean hips, flat stomach, and long, powerful legs. He had a natural tan that the sun only emphasized, its darkness enhancing his blond hair and giving his body a particularly masculine glow. He wasn’t pale or flabby, and while there was hair on his chest and flat stomach and legs, it wasn’t unsightly.
Bowie wasn’t unaware of that keen, helpless scrutiny. He rested his hands on his hips, his black eyes narrowed, as he studied her expression with open curiosity. She’d never looked at him in quite that way before, and he found it disturbing. He found her disturbing. It hadn’t been only Aggie’s unknown suitor who’d brought him here today. He’d brooded all weekend about the way he’d felt when he’d taken Gaby to supper in Phoenix. It had worked on him until he’d put the Canada construction project in the hands of his project foreman and hot-footed it down to Lassiter.
Gaby didn’t know that, and he had too much intelligence to let her know. He was sure that if he signaled his interest, she’d turn tail and run. The very way she dressed spoke volumes about her repressions.
