by Janet Dailey
“Why not?” A gentle quality took the roughness out of Chase’s craggy features.
A frown briefly wrinkled her forehead. “Because—”
“Chase!” Buck called and came trotting from the direction of the store. “What are you doing? Playing carry-out boy?”
“Meet me tomorrow at the fence line around ten o’clock. Can you make it?” Chase murmured quickly. She nodded uncertainly. Louder, he asked, “Where do you want me to put this sack? In the cab or the back of the truck?”
“In the back is fine.”
After setting the sack in the rear bed, he took the one from her arms and put it with the other. He touched a hand to his hat. “I’ll see you.” Then Chase turned to meet his friend. “Are you ready for that blueberry pie?”
“Sure am.” The last time Buck had seen the O’Rourke girl, he had labeled her a wildcat and a tomboy. Now he was picking up a different impression. His curious and dancing blue eyes studied the change.
The boldness of his inspection caused Maggie to become more self-conscious. She slipped the tips of her fingers into the front pockets of her jeans, hunching her shoulders forward to ease the strain on the shirt buttons. Her head was tipped at a proud and challenging angle under the rude stare, but Chase was turning away, prompting Buck to follow a second later.
Buck caught up with him in one stride, casting a half-glance in his direction. “I take back what I said about her the other day,” Buck murmured in a low voice. “You sure as hell can tell she’s a female.” As he opened the door to the café, he looked back at the girl. “Maybe it’s time I started calling on my neighbors.”
The gleam in his buddy’s eyes sent a ripple of unease down Chase’s spine. Buck tended to be careless of a girl’s feelings, lacking a conscience when it came to sexual conquest. That protective instinct bristled within Chase, arrogantly blind to the possibility that he wasn’t in a position to judge.
“Leave her be, Buck.” It was a terse reply, his tone bordering on hard authority.
“Why should I?” Buck challenged with a frowning smile and followed him into the café.
Chase attempted to smother the raw irritation with his friend and succeeded in making his voice light. “Let’s just say that I saw her first and leave it at that.” But there was a look of dark warning in his glance.
“Damn, but you’re selfish, Chase,” Buck teased. “I always share with you, don’t I? We nursed at the same breast, didn’t we? I even let you take my rightful place as the Calder heir, and this is the way you repay me.” He feigned a wounded look and swung his leg over the back of a chair to sit at one of the café tables. “Just for that, you can buy my pie. Hey, Tucker!” he called to the man behind the counter. “I want two pieces of your blueberry pie, and Chase here is paying for it.”
Chase noticed Angus O’Rourke sitting on a stool at the counter, but he let his glance slide past him to the rotund owner of the café. “Just coffee for me, Tucker, since I’ve been stuck with the bill.”
“Old Moneybags is trying to pretend he’s broke.” Buck laughed, an unlit cigarette dangling from his mouth while he searched his pockets for a match. “Got a light?”
“I’ve got a friend who’s a moocher.” Chase tossed a book of matches onto the table in front of Buck. “You get paid more than I do. What do you do with your money?”
“By the time I drink a little whiskey, play a little poker, and keep the ladies happy, it just seems to disappear.” Buck grinned and puffed on the cigarette.
Tucker crossed the small café, carrying two plates of pie and two cups of coffee in his pudgy hands, the front of his white apron stained with spattered grease and food. Nearly bald, his head was too small for his solidly round body. He stopped beside Chase’s chair to set the order down.
“Tell Webb my freezer is getting low on meat, so I’ll be out to see him one of these days to buy me some Calder beef to butcher.” His voice was a monotone, as if it required too much effort to alter its flat sound.
“I’ll tell him,” Chase promised and watched the big man amble back to the counter. He wasn’t deceived by the man’s slowness or voluminous bulk. That protruding stomach was as solid as iron. A year ago, Chase had seen him move with a swiftness unusual in a man Tucker’s size and level an obnoxious customer with a backhanded swing when the man had begun to use foul language in front of some townswomen. And he’d seen Bob Tucker hefting a whole carcass of beef like a sack of potatoes. He wasn’t a man to mess around with.
All the cowboys toed the mark in his place, or Tucker bodily threw them out. His food was the best around for miles, and the prices were reasonable, yet there was something about the man that Chase didn’t trust, but he didn’t know what it was.
At the counter, Angus O’Rourke had overheard the message Tucker had given Chase to pass on to his father. After two weeks, Angus was still brooding over the results of his confrontation with Webb Calder, growing more certain with each passing day that he had been cheated out of his just due. The sight of Chase Calder sitting in the café, virtually unpunished for the wrong he’d done Maggie, awakened the hostility in Angus. Instead of directing the heat of his anger at the one who aroused it, he unleashed it on the café owner.
“How come you’re doing business with Calder?” Angus demanded, yet keeping his voice low so he wouldn’t be overheard. “Ain’t he rich enough without you buying your beef from him? What’s wrong with some of us other small ranchers around here? You want our trade, but you’re not interested in doing business with us.”
Tucker paused in front of Angus, marble-sized eyes regarding him indifferently. “It isn’t by choice I deal with Calder. I have no more love for the man than you do. But I serve only quality beef. You other ranchers all have range-tough beef, so I have to buy from him to get decent meat.”
But it rankled Tucker because it always seemed to him that Calder acted as if he were doing him a favor selling him Calder beef. Nothing was actually said or even suggested, but Tucker knew other cattle buyers made purchases by the lot, not one steer at a time. If he hadn’t been local, it wouldn’t have been worth the time or the trouble for an outfit the size of the Triple C to bother with him. They didn’t care about his business. It would suit him fine to take it somewhere else, but no one else had the quality he demanded.
“If the only thing that will suit you is Calder beef, then buy it from me,” Angus challenged. “I bought fifty head of his stuff a couple of weeks ago.”
“Fifty head?” Tucker eyed him with skepticism. “Where’d you get the money to buy prime stock?”
“That isn’t any of your damned business.” Angus sat up straighter on the stool, offended by the question that implied he was too poor to afford Calder cattle. “Are you interested in buying my beef or not?”
“You probably bought some of his culls, but I’ll stop by your place tomorrow and take a look.” Tucker didn’t put much faith in O’Rourke’s claim to owning prime Triple C beef. “I’ll be there sometime in the morning.”
“Don’t forget to bring your money,” Angus taunted and pushed his empty cup toward the heavyset man. “Put some coffee in my cup while you’re standing there blowing hot air.”
“If there’s any hot air circulating around here, it’s probably coming from you.” Tucker picked up the cup and pivoted his massive hulk to hold it under the spigot of the coffee urn.
“Wait until tomorrow morning and we’ll see who’s full of hot air,” Angus replied smugly.
After Chase had left her, Maggie had lingered by the pickup, aware that her father was inside drinking coffee while she and Culley ran his errands. To go into the café while Chase was there would, no doubt, start her father off on another of his tirades against the Calders. Just seeing Chase would probably set him off. Maggie decided the sensible thing to do was find her brother and see if he had completed his errands. As she turned away from the café, she saw Culley trotting across the highway where the hardware store sat. She waited by the truck for him to
join her, noting the scowl on his face.
“I saw you with Calder. What did he want?” he demanded, stopping in front of her.
“He helped me carry the groceries.” There was a lilt of defiance in her voice that questioned his right to insist on an answer. “Did you get the part for the well pump?”
“It didn’t come in yet.” His answer was brisk with impatience. “The conversation you had with him—I suppose you expect me to believe that you just talked about groceries.”
“We talked about a lot of things … that aren’t any of your business,” she retorted.
His mouth thinned into an angry line. “I suppose he wants to see you again.”
“And what if he does?” Maggie challenged.
“I suppose he asked you to meet him somewhere,” Culley guessed. And he ordered, “Stay away from him, Maggie. He just wants to get in your pants again. Can’t you see that? Haven’t you figured it out from the last time?”
“Is it so impossible that he might like me?”
“He might like you, all right,” her brother conceded. “But you don’t think for one minute that he’s going to get serious, do you? You are just the daughter of a small-time rancher to him. He’ll never think you’re good enough for a Calder.”
“Who says I want him to get serious?” she flashed. “A girl likes it when a man pays attention to her, but that doesn’t necessarily mean she wants to marry him! You may be content to be the son of a small rancher with dreams that will never come true, but I’m not. I want an education, because I’m not going to live like this for the rest of my life!”
“You are my sister.” On occasions, her brother’s temper could match Maggie’s. This was one of them. “I don’t want to see you get hurt. And that’s what is going to happen if you see Chase Calder again. One day you’re going to find yourself in trouble, and he’s going to forget your name.”
“I’m not going to get in any trouble.” Maggie denied that first. “And Chase has been nice to me.”
“That’s because he still wants something. But once he’s through with you, you’ll just be dirt to him. He’s a Calder. And if you have an ounce of sense, you won’t forget that. You’ll never be anything to him except someone to roll in the grass with. Stay away from him, Maggie. Don’t prove that I’m right,” he warned and brushed past her to enter the café, as if he were afraid if he stayed longer, he would do something violent.
Maggie stared at his retreating back. She was trembling, too, from the force of her anger. She yanked open the door of the pickup and climbed into the cab. She waited in stiff silence for Culley to fetch their father so they could return to the ranch.
But her brother’s words preyed on her, clouding her thoughts.
Chase was already at the fence line when she finally rode up the next morning. She had silently debated with herself for almost an hour trying to decide if she would meet him or not. In the end, she came because she had to find out if Culley was right about Chase.
Dismounting, Chase slipped between the barbed-wire strands of the fence to catch her horse’s bridle when she stopped it. Her gaze moved warily over his lazy smile of greeting without being able to judge anything from it.
“You’re late.” He moved to the saddle, reaching up to span her slim waist with his hands and lift her down. “I was beginning to think you couldn’t make it.”
“I was trying to make up my mind whether I should come or not,” Maggie replied honestly.
Her feet were on the ground, but he continued to let his hands rest on her waist. He felt her stiffness and was impatient with it. He had subconsciously been anticipating the melting softness of her. Bending his head, Chase sought to establish his dominion over her lips. There was a corresponding pressure to his kiss, but it was cool. He lifted his head to look at her, but her unwavering gaze was studying him, measuring him.
“I’m glad you came,” he stated.
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to talk to you,” Chase replied and tried to smile away her seriousness.
Her hands pushed at his arms to casually remove them from her waist so she could drift away from him. “I know that’s what you said you wanted.” Her voice seemed to imply that he meant something different. Chase followed her and she turned to confront him with her suspicions. “Culley says the only reason you want to see me is to have sex.”
For an instant, Chase was stunned by her bluntness before amusement took hold. “Are you always so frank?”
“Is it true?” she persisted. “Is that the reason you want to see me?”
The stubbornness in her expression told him that she meant to have a straight answer. He opened his mouth to assure her that he had decided she was too young and inexperienced, and his seduction of her the last time was a mistake he didn’t intend to repeat. But looking into her eyes, Chase realized he was only kidding himself. Given the chance, he’d make love to her again. That particular threshold had been crossed once and would be recrossed anytime the opportunity presented itself. There was no going back to an innocent, hand-holding relationship. The knowledge didn’t please him and he tried to avoid acknowledging it.
“I don’t know how often the Triple C could afford it, if it costs fifty head of cattle every time I do,” he jested.
Anger flashed in her eyes before she turned away. “That isn’t funny.”
He watched her take a step away and sighed, “No, it isn’t. But there isn’t a simple answer to your question, either.” She gave him a sidelong look, which he held. “I’d be lying if I said I would never want to make love to you again, because I would. But sex isn’t the only reason. If it was only physical satisfaction I wanted, I could get that from Jake’s girls. So it has to mean I want your company, too. I guess the truth is that I’m a little fascinated by you.”
“Why?” But there was less demand in the question.
Chase shook his head because he didn’t know. “Maybe because you are so honest and direct about what you think and what you want. Most women try to pretend. You haven’t learned how yet.”
“Is that bad?” She cocked her head to the side.
“No.” He smiled easily. “It makes you special.”
There was a profound truth to that statement that Chase was only just beginning to realize. There was satisfaction in possessing her body, but he wanted her more than that. This meeting was a test. If he tried to make love to her today, he’d lose her. But he knew, also, that if he didn’t have her this time, he would the next and the next. And she would come to him as willingly as she had the first time. Knowing that, Chase could wait.
“Both your father and your brother must have warned you about seeing me,” he guessed and challenged her to make her reasons clear. “So why did you meet me?”
“Because I wanted to.” The lift of her shoulders was an expressive statement of her independence, but she let her gaze swing away from him.
“Why?” It was his turn to persist.
“Maybe”—she glanced back at him, a gleam dancing in her eyes—“because you aren’t at all like what I expected a Calder to be.”
“What did you expect me to be like?”
“I suppose I thought you’d be pompous and arrogant,” she admitted a little self-consciously. “Heartless, too, I guess. But … you’re nice.”
Chase tried to hold back a smile, the corners of his mouth deepening with the effort. “A lot of people expect us to have horns and a tail. They tend to be amazed when they discover we’re made of flesh and blood like everyone else.”
Maggie laughed, a clear, pure sound. “Hardly like everyone else. Everyone else doesn’t own as much land as you do … or cattle, or horses, or anything else.”
“But we all have the same needs,” Chase insisted and held out his hand to her, “even if it’s something as simple as someone to walk with.”
She looked at him and smiled, then placed her hand in his. The sun was bright and the sky was clear. Out in the deep grasses, a meadowlark san
g.
The burly proportions of Bob Tucker filled the saddle seat, leaving no room between the horn and cantle. The size of him dwarfed the bay cow pony he was riding, a picture made more incongruous by the wide brim of the felt Stetson atop his small head, and contrasted by the short, slender rider accompanying him. Tucker stopped his horse close to the grazing cattle and shifted in the stirrups, the saddle groaning under his weight.
“I take back everything I thought, Angus.” He studied the rust-colored herd of white faces. “These cattle aren’t culls from the Triple C. They’re prime stock. How did you manage to persuade Calder to turn loose of them? Or am I looking at stolen cattle?” An indignant look crossed O’Rourke’s face. Before Angus could open his mouth to deny the allegation, Tucker laughed. “I guess if you’d stolen them, you wouldn’t be going around telling people you had them, would you?”
“I certainly wouldn’t,” Angus retorted. “They’re my cattle and I’ve got the bill of sale to prove it.”
“I’m not doubting your word.” Tucker was still smiling. “It doesn’t matter to me whether you have a bill of sale or not. It wouldn’t be the first stolen beef I’ve bought if you didn’t.” Cattle rustling was big business nowadays. Tucker knew a man could make a lot of money at it if he had the right connections. And he was never one to look down his nose at money. “The rancher is the only one who loses in a deal like that.”
“Yeah, and the guy who gets caught.”
“Do you know what the odds are against that?” Tucker glanced at O’Rourke and smirked. “In order to prove anything, they’d have to catch you in the act, and the chances of that happening are a million to one. Even if they did, the man would probably never go to prison. It’s a lucrative business with little risk involved. The days when a rancher would hang a rustler on mere suspicion are long gone.”