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“All right, Miss Independence. I’ll have Jack leave the gate open.”
It was a subtle and not arrogant reminder that the two women lived in different social strata. Merrie’s home was a sprawling brick mansion with a wrought-iron gate running up a bricked driveway. There was an armed guard, Jack, at the front gate, miles of electrified fence and two killer Dobermans who had the run of the property at night. If that didn’t deter trespassers, there were the ranch hands, half of whom were ex-military. Stuart was particular about the people who worked for him, because his home contained priceless inherited antiques. He also owned four herd sires who commanded incredible stud fees; straws of their semen sold for thousands of dollars each and were shipped all over the world.
“Should I wear body armor, or will Chayce recognize me?”
Chayce McLeod was the chief of security for York Properties, which Stuart headed. He’d worked for J.B. Hammock, but Stuart had offered him a bigger salary and fringe benefits. Chayce was worth it. He had a degree in management and he was a past master at handling men. There were plenty of them to handle on a spread this size. Most people didn’t know that Chayce was also an ex-federal agent. He was dishy, too, but Ivy was immune to him.
Stuart’s ranch, all twenty thousand acres of it, was only a part of an empire that spanned three states and included real estate, investments, feedlots and a ranching equipment company. Stuart and Merrie were very rich. But neither of them led a frantic social life. Stuart worked on the ranch, just as he had when he was in his teens—just as his father had until he died of a heart attack when Merrie was thirteen. Now, Stuart was thirty. Merrie, like Ivy, was only eighteen, almost nineteen. There were no other relatives. Their mother had died giving birth to Merrie.
Merrie sighed at the long pause. “Of course Chayce will recognize you. Ivy, you’re not in one of your moods again, are you?”
“My dad was a mechanic, Merrie,” she reminded her friend, “and my mother was a C.P.A. in a firm.”
“My grandfather was a gambler who got lucky down in the Caribbean,” Merrie retorted. “He was probably a closet pirate, and family legend says he was actually arrested for arms dealing when he was in his sixties. That’s where our money came from. It certainly didn’t come from hard work and honest living. Our parents instilled a vicious work ethic in both of us, as you may have noticed. We don’t just sit around sipping mint juleps and making remarks about the working class. Now will you just shut up and start packing?”
Ivy laughed. “Okay. I’ll see you shortly.”
“That’s my buddy.”
Ivy had to admit that neither Merrie nor Stuart could ever be accused of resting on the family fortune. Stuart was always working on the ranch, when he wasn’t flying to the family corporation’s board meetings or meeting with legislators on agricultural bills or giving workshops on new facets of the beef industry. He had a degree from Yale in business, and he spoke Spanish fluently. He was also the most handsome, sensuous, attractive man Ivy had ever known. It took a lot of work for her to pretend that he didn’t affect her. It was self-defense. Stuart preferred tall, beautiful, independent blondes, preferably rich ones. He was vocal about marriage, which he abhorred. His women came and went. Nobody lasted more than six months.
But Ivy was plain and soft-spoken, not really an executive sort of woman even if she’d been older than she was. She lived in a world far removed from Stuart’s, and his friends intimidated her. She didn’t know a certificate of deposit from a treasury bond, and her background didn’t include yearly trips to exotic places. She didn’t read literary fiction, listen to classical music, drive a luxury car or go shopping in boutiques. She lived a quiet life, working and studying hard to provide a future for herself. Merrie was in nursing school in San Antonio, where she lived in the dorm and drove a new Mercedes. The two only saw each other when Merrie came home for the occasional weekend. Ivy missed her.
That was why she took a chance and packed her bag. Merrie wouldn’t lie to her about Stuart being there, she knew. But he frequently turned up unexpectedly. It wasn’t surprising that he disliked Ivy. He’d known her sister, Rachel, before she went to New York. He was scathing about her lifestyle, which had been extremely modern even when she was still in high school. He thought Ivy was going to be just like her. Which proved that he didn’t know his sister’s best friend in the least.
Jack, the guard on the front gate at Merrie’s house, recognized Ivy in the local cab, and grinned at her. He waved the cab through without even asking for any identification. One hurdle successfully passed, she told herself.
Merrie was waiting for her at the front steps of the sprawling brick mansion. She ran down the steps and around to the back door of the cab, throwing her arms around Ivy the minute she opened the door and got out.
Ivy was medium height and slender, with long, straight, pale blond hair and green eyes. Merrie took after her brother—she was tall for a woman, and she had dark hair and light eyes. She towered over Ivy.
“I’m so glad you came,” Merrie said happily. “Sometimes the walls just close in on me when I’m here alone. The house is way too big for two people and a housekeeper.”
“Both of you will marry someday and fill it up with kids,” Ivy teased.
“Fat chance, in Stuart’s case,” Merrie chuckled. “Come on in. Where’s your bag?”
“In the boot…”
The Hispanic driver was already at the trunk, smiling as he lifted out Ivy’s bag and carried it all the way up to the porch for her. But before Ivy could reach into her purse, Merrie pressed a big bill into the driver’s hand and spoke to him in her own, elegant Spanish.
Ivy started to argue, but the cab was racing down the driveway and Merrie was halfway up the front steps.
“Don’t argue,” she told Ivy with a grin. “You know you can’t win.”
“I know,” the other woman sighed. “Thanks, Merrie, but…”
“But you’ve got about three dollars spare a week, and you’d do without lunch one day at school to pay for the cab,” came the quiet reply. “If you were in my place, you’d do it for me,” she added, and Ivy couldn’t argue. But it did hurt her pride.
“Listen,” Merrie added, “one day when you’re a fabulously rich owner of a bookkeeping firm, and driving a Rolls, you can pay me back. Okay?”
Ivy just laughed. “Listen, no C.P.A. ever got rich enough to own a Rolls,” came the dry reply. “But I really will pay you back.”
“Friends help friends,” Merrie said simply. “Come on in.”
The house was huge, really huge. The one thing that set rich people apart from poor people, Ivy pondered, was space. If you were wealthy, you could afford plenty of room in your house and a bathroom the size of a garage. You could also afford enough land to give you some privacy and a place to plant flowers and trees and have a fish pond…
“What are you brooding about now?” Merrie asked on the way up the staircase.
“Space,” Ivy murmured.
“Outer?”
“No. Personal space,” Ivy qualified the answer. “I was thinking that how much space you have depends on how much money you have. I’d love to have just a yard. And maybe a fish pond,” she added.
“You can feed our Chinese goldfish any time you want to,” the other girl offered.
Ivy didn’t reply. She noticed, not for the first time, how much Merrie resembled her older brother. They were both tall and slender, with jet-black hair. Merrie wore her hair long, but Stuart’s was short and conventionally cut. Her eyes, pale blue like Stuart’s, could take on a steely, dangerous quality when she was angry. Not that Merrie could hold a candle to Stuart in a temper. Ivy had seen grown men hide in the barn when he passed by. Stuart’s pale, deep-set eyes weren’t the only indication of bad temper. His walk was just as good a measure of ill humor. He usually glided like a runner. But when he was angry, his walk slowed. The slower the walk, the worse the temper.
Ivy had learned early in her friendship with Merrie to see how fast Stuart was moving before she approached any room he was in. One memorable day when he’d lost a prize cattle dog to a coyote, she actually pleaded a migraine headache she didn’t have to avoid sitting at the supper table with him.
It was a nasty habit of his to be bitingly sarcastic to anyone within range when he was mad, especially if the object of his anger was out of reach.
Merrie led Ivy into the bedroom that adjoined hers and watched as Ivy opened the small bag and brought out a clean pair of jeans and a cotton T-shirt. She frowned. “No nightgown?”
Ivy winced. “Rachel upset me. I forgot.”
“No problem. You can borrow one of mine. It will drag the floor behind you like a train, of course, but it will fit most everywhere else.” Her eyes narrowed. “I suppose Rachel is after the money.”
Ivy nodded, looking down into her small bag. “She was good at convincing Daddy I didn’t deserve anything.”
“She told lies.”
Ivy nodded again. “But he believed her. Rachel could be so sweet and loving when she wanted something. He drank…” She stopped at once.
Merrie sat down on the bed and folded her hands in her lap. “I know he drank, Ivy,” she said gently. “Stuart had him investigated.”
Her eyes widened in disbelief. “What?”
Merrie bit her lower lip. “I can’t tell you why, so don’t even ask. Suffice it to say that it was an eye-opening experience.”
Ivy wondered how much information Stuart’s private detective had ferreted out about the private lives of the Conley family.
“We just knew that he drank,” Merrie said at once, when she saw her friend’s tortured expression. She patted Ivy’s hand. “Nobody has that perfect childhood they put in motion pictures, you know. Dad wanted Stuart to raise thoroughbreds to race in competition. It was something he’d never been able to do. He tried to force Stuart through agricultural college.” She laughed hollowly. “Nobody could force my brother to do anything, not even Dad.”
“Were they very much alike?” Ivy asked, because she’d only met the elder York a few times.
“No. Well, in one way they were,” she corrected. “Dad in a bad temper could cost us good hired men. Stuart cost us our best, and oldest, horse wrangler last week.”
“How?”
“He made a remark Stuart didn’t like when Stuart ran the Jaguar through the barn and into its back wall.”
CHAPTER TWO
IVY could hardly contain her amusement. Merrie’s brother was one of the most self-contained people she’d ever known. He never lost control of himself. “Stuart ran the Jag through the barn? The new Jaguar, the XJ?”
Merrie grimaced. “I’m afraid so. He was talking on his cell phone at the time.”
“About what, for heaven’s sake?”
“One of the managers at the Jacobsville sales barn mixed up the lot numbers and sold Stuart’s purebred cows, all of whom were pregnant by Big Blue, for the price of open heifers,” she added, the term “open heifer” denoting a two-year-old female who wasn’t pregnant. Big Blue was a champion Black Angus herd sire.
“That was an expensive mistake,” Ivy commented.
“And not only for us,” Merrie added, tongue-in-cheek. “Stuart took every cattle trailer we had and every one he could borrow, complete with drivers, went to the sale barn and brought back every single remaining bull or cow or calf he was offering for sale. Then he shipped them to another sale barn in Oklahoma by train. That’s why he’s in Oklahoma. He said this time, they’re going to be certain which lots they’re selling at which price, because he’s having it written on their hides in magic marker.”
Ivy just grinned. She knew Stuart would do no such thing, even if he felt like it.
“The local sale barn is never going to be the same,” Merrie added. “Stuart told them they’d be having snowball fights in hell before he sent another lot of cattle to them for an auction.”
“Your brother is not a forgiving person,” Ivy said quietly.
The other girl nodded. “But there’s a reason for the way he is, Ivy,” she said. “Our father expected Stuart to follow in his footsteps and become a professional athlete. Dad never made it out of semipro football, but he was certain that Stuart would. He started making him play football before he was even in grammar school. Stuart hated it,” she recalled sadly. “He deliberately missed practices, and when he did, Dad would go at him with a doubled-up belt. Stuart had bruises all over his back and legs, but it made him that much more determined to avoid sports. When he was thirteen, he dug his heels in and told Dad he was going into rodeo and that if the belt came out again, he was going to call Dallas Carson and have him arrested for beating him. Dallas,” she reminded Ivy, “was Hayes Carson’s father. He was our sheriff long before Hayes went into law enforcement. It was unusual for someone to be arrested for spanking a child twenty years ago, but Dallas would have done it. He loved Stuart like a son.”
It took Ivy a minute to answer. She knew more about corporal punishment than she was ever going to admit, even to Merrie. “I always liked Dallas. Hayes is hard-going sometimes. What did your father say to that?” she asked.
“He didn’t say anything. He got Stuart in the car and drove him to football practice. Five minutes after he left, Stuart hitched a ride to the Jacobsville rodeo arena and borrowed a horse for the junior bulldogging competition. He and his best friend, Martin, came in second place. Dad was livid. When Stuart put his trophy on the mantel, Dad smashed it with a fire poker. He never took the belt to Stuart again, but he browbeat him and demeaned him every chance he got. It wasn’t until Stuart went away to college that I stopped dreading the times we were home from school.”
Involuntarily, Ivy’s eyes went to the painting of Merrie and Stuart’s father that hung over the fireplace. Stuart resembled Jake York, but the older man had a stubborn jaw and a cruel glimmer in his pale blue eyes. Like Stuart, he’d been a tall man, lean and muscular. The children had been without a mother, who died giving birth to Merrie. Their mother’s sister had stayed with the family and cared for Merrie until she was in grammar school. She and the elder York had argued about his treatment of Stuart, which had ended in her departure. After that, tenderness and unconditional love were things the York kids read about. They learned nothing of them from their taciturn, demanding father. Stuart’s defiance only made him more bitter and ruthless.
“But your father built this ranch,” Ivy said. “Surely he had to like cattle.”
“He did. It was just that football was his whole life,” Merrie replied. “You might have noticed that you don’t ever see football games here. Stuart cuts off the television at the first mention of it.”
“I can see why.”
“Dad spent the time between football games running the ranch and his real estate company. He died of a heart attack when I was thirteen, sitting at the boardroom table. He had a violent argument with one of his directors about some proposed expansions that would have placed the company dangerously close to bankruptcy. He was a gambler. Stuart isn’t. He always calculates the odds before he makes any decision. He never has arguments with the board of directors.” She frowned. “Well, there was one. They insisted that he hire a pilot to fly him to business meetings.”
“Why?”
Merrie chuckled. “To stop him from driving himself to them. Didn’t I mention that this is his second new XJ in six months?”
Ivy lifted her eyebrows. “What happened to the first one?”
“Slow traffic.”
“Come again?”
“He was in a hurry to a called meeting of the board of directors,” Merrie said. “There was a little old man driving a motor home about twenty miles an hour up a hill on a blind curve. Stuart tried to pass him. He almost made it, too,” she added. “Except that Hayes Carson was coming down the hill on the other side of the road in his squad car.”
“What happened?” Ivy prompted when Merrie sat silently.
“Stuart really is a good driver,” his sister asserted, “even if he makes insane decisions about where to pass. He spun the car around and stopped it neatly on the shoulder before Hayes got anywhere near him. But Hayes said he could have killed somebody and he wasn’t getting out of a ticket. The only way he got his license back was that he promised to go to traffic school and do public service.”
“That doesn’t sound like your brother.”
Merrie shrugged. “He did go to traffic school twice, and then he went to the sheriff’s department and showed Hayes Carson how to reorganize his department so that it operated more efficiently.”
“Did Hayes actually ask him to do that?”
“No. But Stuart argued that reorganizing the chaos in the sheriff’s department was a public service. Hayes didn’t agree. He went and talked to Judge Meacham himself. They gave Stuart his license back.”
“You said he didn’t hit anything with the car.”
“He didn’t. But while it was sitting on the side of the road, a cattle truck—one of his own, in fact—took the curve too fast and sideswiped it off the shoulder down a ten-foot ravine.”
“I don’t guess the driver works for you anymore,” Ivy mused.
“He does, but not as a driver,” Merrie said, laughing. “Considering how things could have gone, it was a lucky escape for everyone. It was a sturdy, well-built car, but those cattle trucks are heavy. It was a total loss.”
“Even if I could afford a car, I don’t think I want to learn how to drive,” Ivy commented. “It seems safer not to be on the highway when Stuart’s driving.”
“It is.”
They snacked on cheese and crackers and finger sandwiches and cookies, and sipped coffee in perfect peace for several minutes.
“Ivy, are you sure you’re cut out to be a public accountant?” Merrie asked after a minute.
Ivy laughed. “What brought that on?”
“I was just thinking about when we were still in high school,” she replied. “You had your heart set on singing opera.”
“And chance would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it?” Ivy asked with a patient smile. “The thing is, even if I had the money to study in New York, I don’t want to leave Jacobsville. So that sort of limits my options. Singing in the church choir does give me a chance to do what I love most.”
Merrie had to agree that this was true. “What you should really do is get married and have kids, and teach them how to sing,” she replied with a grin. “You’d be a natural. Little kids flock around you everywhere we go.”
“What a lovely idea,” she enthused. “Tell you what, you gather up about ten or twelve eligible bachelors, and I’ll pick out one I like.”
That set Merrie to laughing uproariously. “If we could do it that way, I might get married myself,” she confessed. “But I’d have to have a man who wasn’t afraid of Stuart. Talk about limited options…!”
“Hayes Carson isn’t scared of him,” Ivy pointed out. “You could marry him.”
“Hayes doesn’t want to get married. He says he likes his life uncluttered by emotional complications.”
“Lily-livered coward,” Ivy enunciated. “No guts.”
“Oh, he’s got guts. He just doesn’t think marriage works. His parents fought like tigers. His younger brother, Bobby, couldn’t take it, and he turned to drugs and overdosed. It had to affect Hayes, losing his only sibling like that.”
