The Cowboy

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  "And he accepted your answer?"

  "Rafe, I swear I haven't communicated with him since that Saturday and I certainly have not handed over any of your precious secrets to him. I don't even know any of your secrets."

  "You saw the Ellington file."

  "I saw it for the first time this afternoon." Margaret closed her eyes and then opened them to pin him with a desperate gaze. "Rafe, I can't prove any of this. I am begging you to believe me. If Moorcroft has numbers he shouldn't have, then you must believe he got them from someone else. Please, Rafe. I love you too much to betray you."

  "Revenge is a powerful motivator, Maggie," Rafe finally said quietly.

  "More powerful for you than for me, Rafe."

  "Are you sure of that?"

  "I love you. When you came back into my life you opened up a wound I had hoped was healed. I was angry at first and frightened. And I didn't know if I could trust you. But I knew for certain the first night I was here that I still loved you."

  "Maggie…"

  "Wait, let me finish. Julie said something about what it had cost you in pride to find a way to get me back. She was right. I realize that now that I'm standing here trampling all over my own pride in an effort to get you to trust me enough to believe in me. Please, Rafe, don't ruin what we've got. It's too precious and too rare. Please trust me. I didn't betray you."

  "You love me?"

  "I love you."

  "Okay, then it must have been Hatcher, after all."

  Margaret blinked. "I beg your pardon?"

  "I said it must have been Hatcher who gave Moorcroft the numbers. He's been acting weird for the past six months or so, but I wasn't sure he would have the guts to actually sell me out. Hatcher's not what you'd call a real gutsy guy. Still, you never can tell, so I put some garbled preliminary information into the Ellington file to see what would happen."

  "Rafe, will you please be quiet for a moment. I am having trouble following this conversation."

  His brows rose. "Why? You started it."

  She eyed him cautiously, uncertain of his mood. For one horrible second she thought he was actually laughing at her. But that made no sense. "Are you saying you believe me?"

  "Maggie, love, I'd probably believe you if you told me you could get me a great deal on snowballs in hell."

  She was dumbfounded. Slowly she sank into the nearest chair. "I don't understand. If you believe me now, why didn't you believe me a while ago when you asked if I'd seen Moorcroft?"

  "Maggie, I did believe you," he reminded her patiently. "I asked you if you'd seen him before you left Seattle and you, with your usual straightforward style, told me you had seen Moorcroft, remember? You didn't deny it."

  "But you didn't let me explain. You told me I had to answer yes or no."

  "All right, I'm guilty of wanting a simple answer. I should have known that with you the explanation would be anything but simple. There are always complications around you, aren't there, Maggie? And you ran out the door without bothering to try to explain. What was I supposed to think?"

  "That I would never have come down here for revenge," Maggie declared in ringing tones. "You should know me well enough to know that."

  "Maggie, I know for a fact to what lengths a person will go for revenge. I also know how much I wanted you. It was entirely possible I'd deluded myself into thinking I'd really succeeded in convincing you to come back to me. God knows I want you back bad enough to tell myself all sorts of lies. But when you didn't deny the meeting with Moorcroft…"

  "Never mind," Margaret said urgently. "Don't say it. I'm sorry. I should have stood my ground and yelled at you until you believed I was innocent."

  Rafe's mouth curved gently. "You don't even have to yell. I'm always ready to listen."

  "Hah. What a bunch of bull. You didn't listen last year."

  "Yes, I did." Rafe sighed. "Maggie, last year you told me the truth, too. I listened to every damn word. When I caught you in Moorcroft's office you admitted immediately you'd just told him I was after Spencer, remember? You said you'd had to tell him—that it was your duty as a loyal employee of Moorcroft."

  "Oh. Yes, I did say that, didn't I?"

  "Our problem last year had nothing to do with your lying to me. You were too damned honest, if you want to know the truth. I'll tell you something. I would have sold my soul for a few sweet lies from you last year. More than anything else in this world I wanted to believe you hadn't felt your first loyalty was to Jack Moorcroft instead of me."

  Margaret closed her eyes, feeling utterly wretched. "Are you ever going to be able to forgive me for that, Rafe? I don't know if we can go on together if you aren't able to understand why I did what I did."

  "Hell, yes, I forgive you." Rafe pulled two more glasses out of his desk drawer and splashed Scotch into each. He handed one glass to Margaret who clutched it in both hands. "I hate to admit it, Maggie, love, but I was the idiot last year. You want to know something?"

  "What?" she asked warily.

  "I didn't think I'd ever say this, but I admire you for what you did. You were right. In that situation your business loyalties belonged to Moorcroft. You were his employee, drawing a salary from him and you believed you'd betrayed his interests by talking too freely to me. You did the right thing by going to him and telling him everything. I only wish I could count on all of my employees having a similar set of ethics."

  Margaret couldn't believe what she was hearing. A surge of euphoric relief went through her. "Thank you, Rafe. That's very generous of you."

  Rafe took a swallow of Scotch. "Mind you, I could have throttled you at the time and it took me months to calm down, but that doesn't change the facts. You did what you thought was right, even when the chips were down. You've got guts, Maggie."

  She grinned slowly. "And out here in the Wild West you admire guts in a woman, right?"

  "Hell, yes. No place for wimpy females around here."

  "I thought you said I was soft. Too soft for the business world."

  "That's different. You're a woman. Being soft doesn't mean you don't have guts."

  Margaret got up, put her glass of Scotch down on the desk and walked around to sit on Rafe's knee. She put her arms around his neck and leaned her forehead down to rest against his. "You are a hopelessly chauvinistic, anachronistic, retrograde cowboy, but I love you, anyway."

  "I know," he said, his voice dropping into the deep husky register that always sent shivers down Maggie's spine. "I've been fairly certain of it all along but I knew it for sure when you grabbed me by the shirt a minute ago, shoved me into this chair and begged me to listen to you."

  "I did not exactly beg."

  He smiled. "Pleaded?"

  "Never. Well, maybe a little."

  His smile widened into a grin. "It's okay, Maggie. I love you, too. More than anything else on God's earth. And just to prove how insightful, sensitive and intuitive I can be, I'll tell you that I understand what you went through a while ago when you came in here and pinned me down."

  "You do?"

  "Honey, I know first hand what it's like to stomp all over your own pride."

  "Actually, it's not quite as bad an exercise as I thought it would be."

  "I don't know about that. Personally I wouldn't want to have to repeat it too many times. Once was enough for me."

  She relaxed against him. "What about Hatcher?"

  Rafe tipped her head back against his shoulder and kissed her exposed throat. "Don't worry about him. There's no real harm done. I told you I've been letting him see bad information. The Ellington deal is safe."

  "Yes, but, Rafe, don't you think you should try to understand why he did it?"

  "I do understand. He's a yellow-bellied snake."

  "But, Rafe…"

  "I said, don't worry about it." He kissed her full on the mouth, a long, slow kiss that made her tremble in his arms. "That's better," Rafe said. "Now you're paying full attention."

  He got up with her in his arms and carrie
d her out of the study and down the hall to her bedroom.

  A long while later Margaret stirred amid the sheets, opened her eyes and blinked at the hot, lazy sunlight that dappled the patio outside the glass door. She knew without lifting her head to see his face that Rafe was wide awake. His arm was around her, holding her close against his side but his gaze was on the bright light bouncing off the pool water.

  "You're thinking about Hatcher, aren't you?" Margaret asked.

  "Yeah."

  "What are you going to do, Rafe?"

  "Fire him."

  She didn't move. "And the Ellington deal?"

  "It'll go through."

  "This isn't just a case of beating Moorcroft to the punch, is it?"

  "No."

  "Rafe, tell me what you're planning. I have to know why this Ellington thing is so special to you."

  "It doesn't concern you, Maggie, love. Let it be."

  She sat up, holding the sheet to her breasts and searched his face. "It does concern me. I can feel it. Please tell me the truth, Rafe. I have to know what you're going to do."

  He regarded her in silence for a long moment. "You won't like it, Maggie. You're too gentle to understand why I'm doing it."

  "I've got guts, remember? Tell me."

  He shrugged in resignation. "All right, I'll spell it out. But don't say I didn't warn you. The Ellington deal is the first falling domino in a long line that's going to end with Moorcroft Industries."

  Margaret froze. "What are you talking about?"

  "I've lured Moorcroft way out on a limb. He's mortgaged to the hilt. Going after Ellington will weaken him still further. There's no way he'll be able to fend off a takeover when I get ready to do it."

  "You're going to put him out of business? Destroy Moorcroft Industries?" Margaret was appalled. "Rafe, you can't do that."

  "Watch me."

  Horrified, Margaret grabbed his bare shoulder. "It's because of me, isn't it? You're going to ruin Jack Moorcroft because of what happened last year. He was right. The business rivalry between the two of you has escalated into something else, something ugly."

  "This is between Moorcroft and me. Don't concern yourself."

  "Are you nuts? How can I help but concern myself? I'm the cause of this mess."

  "No."

  Margaret shook her head. "That's not true. Answer one question for me, Rafe. Would you be plotting now to take over Moorcroft Industries if that fiasco last year hadn't occurred?"

  He eyed her consideringly. "No."

  "So you're doing this on account of me."

  "Maggie, love, don't get upset. I told you you wouldn't understand."

  "I do understand. I understand only too well. You're bent on revenge. You have been all along."

  "He's got to pay, Maggie. One way or another."

  She could have cut herself on the sharp edges of his voice. "You can't blame him because I felt loyal to him. Rafe, that's not fair. I'm the one you should punish."

  "It wasn't your fault you felt loyal to him," Rafe said impatiently. "I told you that. If it makes you feel any better, I don't blame Moorcroft, either. At least not for your sense of loyalty."

  "Then why are you plotting to destroy him?" Margaret asked wildly.

  "Because of the things he said and implied about you after you left his office that morning."

  Margaret was truly shaken now. "Oh, my God. You mean that stuff about me having been his mistress? But, Rafe, he was lying."

  "I know. I'm going to see he pays for the insults and the lies he told about you."

  "You're doing all this to avenge my honor or something?" she gasped as it finally sank in.

  "If you want to put it that way, yes. He shouldn't have said what he did about you, Maggie."

  Dazed, Margaret got out of bed and picked up the nearest garment to cover herself. It was Rafe's shirt. She thrust her arms into the long sleeves, sat down on the edge of the bed and clasped her hands. The enormity of what he was planning in the name of vengeance nearly swamped her.

  "Rafe, you can't do it," she finally whispered.

  "Sure I can. Code of the West and all that, remember?"

  "This is not funny. Don't try to make a joke out of it. Rafe, I can't have this on my conscience." She shook her head. "An entire company in ruins because of a few nasty remarks made by some male flaunting his latest victory. I can't bear to be the cause of so much destruction. I fully agree Moorcroft shouldn't have said those things to you."

  "Damn right."

  "Look, he was deliberately taunting you because he knew he'd won on the Spencer deal. You know how men are, always pushing, jostling, shouldering each other around. They see everything in terms of victory and defeat and when they see themselves as winners, they like to rub it in."

  "Thank you for giving me the benefit of your deep, psychological insights into the male sex, ma'am. I think I like the Code of the West approach better, though. It's simpler."

  "That's because you like to think in terms of black and white. Rafe, my father himself said that whole mess last year was one big area of gray and he's a great one for preferring things in black and white. If he can let it go, you can, too. We have each other now. That's all that really counts."

  "Moorcroft has to pay, Maggie, and that's all there is to it. Stay out of it."

  "I can't stay out of it. I caused it. You've said so yourself, often enough. Think about what you're doing. Granted Moorcroft was out of line in the things he said, but he doesn't deserve to be destroyed because of it. He's put his whole life into Moorcroft Industries, just as you've put yours into Cassidy and Company. Furthermore, there will be dozens of jobs on the line. You know that. These things always cost a lot of jobs. Innocent people will get hurt."

  "For God's sake, don't try to make me feel sorry for the man or his company."

  "Then try feeling sorry for me," she snapped. "I'm going to have to bear this burden on my conscience for the rest of my life."

  "Hell. I was afraid you'd feel that way. I told you, you're too soft when it comes to things like this, Maggie. This is the way the business world functions and that's all there is to it."

  "You mean this is the way men function."

  "Amounts to the same thing. We still run the business world."

  Margaret leaped to her feet in frustration. "I can't stand it. I have never met such a stubborn, thick-headed, unreasonable creature in my whole life. Rafe, you are being impossible. Utterly impossible."

  "What the hell do you expect me to do? Act like that dim-witted Roarke Cody in Ruthless and let a multimillion-dollar deal go down the toilet just to please a woman?"

  Margaret faced him from the foot of the bed, her hands on her hips. "Yes, damn it, that's exactly what I expect."

  Rafe watched her with hooded eyes. "And if I don't agree to do what you want?"

  "I will be furious."

  "I don't care if you get mad. The question is, are you going to walk out on me?"

  "No, I am not going to walk out on you, but I am going to be very, very angry and I will not hesitate to let you know it," she shouted.

  "Prove it."

  "Prove what? That I'm mad? What do you want me to do? Take a swing at you? Break a lamp over your head? Believe me, I'm tempted."

  "No. Prove you won't walk out on me."

  "The only way to prove it is to let you go through with this crazy revenge plan. And I won't agree to do that. I'm going to fight you every inch of the way, Rafe, I promise you."

  Rafe laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back against the pillows. "You still don't understand. I want you to marry me. Now. Tonight. We can take a plane to Vegas."

  Margaret took a step backward, shocked. "Marry you? Tonight? Why? What will that prove? You already know I love you. What's the rush?"

  Rafe's smile was dangerous. "Maybe I still feel a little uncertain of you. Maybe I want to know you won't threaten to postpone the marriage as a means of manipulating me into doing what you want. Maybe I want to kno
w that this time you love me enough to marry me even though you're madder than hell at me."

  Margaret exploded. "You sneaky son of a… You weren't satisfied with the way I bloodied my knees in that little scene down the hall a while ago, were you? You want me to trample my pride right into the dust, don't you?"

  Rafe shook his head. "No. I just want to know that you'll marry me even knowing you can't change me and that you aren't always going to like the way I operate."

  Margaret threw up her hands in a gesture of exasperated surrender. "All right, I'll marry you."

  "Now? Tonight?"

  "If that's what you want. But I promise you I am going to argue this thing about crushing Moorcroft with you all the way to Vegas and back."

  Rafe grinned. "It's a deal. Get dressed while I phone the airlines and see how soon we can get out of here."

  11

  « ^

  Two days after his marriage, Rafe strode past two startled secretaries and straight into Moorcroft's office. Moorcroft looked up at the intrusion, his expression at first annoyed and then immediately cautious.

  "Well, hello, Cassidy. What brings you to San Diego?"

  Rafe tossed the Ellington file onto the desk in front of the other man. Then he removed his pearl gray Stetson and hung it on the end of the sleek Italian-style desk lamp.

  "Unfinished business," Rafe explained, dropping into a black leather chair.

  Moorcroft hesitated and then opened the file. He scanned the contents, absorbing the implications quickly. When he looked up again, his mouth was tight. "So you knew about my pipeline into your office all along? Knew Hatcher was keeping me informed?"

  "I figured something was going on. He used to be a good man. One of the best. But he's changed recently."

  "Probably because you've changed." Moorcroft leaned back in his chair. "And he didn't like the change."

  "Is that right?" Rafe casually put his silver-and turquoise-trimmed boots on Hatcher's richly polished desk. "What didn't he like?"

  Moorcroft sighed mockingly. "Don't you understand? You were his idol, Cassidy. The fastest gun in the West. Hatcher thought he was working for the best and he liked being on the winning side. But during the past year he decided you'd lost your edge."