Molly Darling

by Laurie Paige

  “No. They were returning the truck they’d borrowed.” Bill nodded toward the outdoors. “I’ve got a man on them.”

  “Now?” Molly couldn’t believe the two cowboys would have the nerve to show up on the ranch.

  “Yeah. Turns out they weren’t rustling.”

  “How do you figure that?” Sam eased down in a chair at the table and motioned the deputy to a seat.

  Molly brought coffee to the table and poured them each a mug before she started breakfast.

  “According to their story, they borrowed the truck to transport their cattle to their place about a hundred miles from here. My man picked up on the truck license when they were on their way back and called me. I told him to follow and keep me posted. When I realized they were heading this way, I came on over to see what was happening.” His eyes gleamed with amusement. “They filled your tank with gas when they came through town. Thoughtful crooks, huh?”

  Sam snorted. “How about bringing them in and let’s see if we can get to the bottom of this?”

  Bill went outside. In a minute, he returned with the two culprits behind him. The other cop took up a guard position on the porch. The cowboys took their hats off and stood in the middle of the room, shuffling from foot to foot.

  “You may as well sit down,” Sam advised.

  Molly cooked a pound of bacon, then started the pancakes. She set mugs out for the two rustlers and poured coffee for them.

  “You boys want to tell me your story before I shoot you?” Sam asked cordially.

  Molly gave him a startled glance. The two men looked at each other, then Tom started. “We weren’t stealing. Those cows belonged to us, free and clear.”

  “Yeah,” Sandy asserted.

  “How do you figure that?”

  “We found ‘em. They were range cattle.”

  “No brands?” Sam asked. He studied the two men while he sipped the hot coffee.

  “That’s right,” Tom said while Sandy nodded vigorously.

  Sam peered at Bill. Bill shrugged. “I have a man checking it out.”

  “If they were range cattle, why’d you hide them and make off in the middle of the night?” Sam demanded.

  An uncomfortable silence ensued. Finally Tom burst out, “We didn’t want you to steal ‘em from us.”

  Sam’s eyebrows rose at this statement. He shook his head slightly when Molly would have pounced on the ridiculous claim.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Our last boss did.” With that, the two men braced themselves as if expecting to have to fight their way out of the kitchen. They watched Sam warily.

  “Hmm.” Sam turned sideways, grimacing as he did and placing a hand against his sore ribs. He straightened his legs. “I guess you’re going to have to help me out. You’d collected a herd of range cattle, but your boss stole them from you?”

  “He said they were his, that we found ‘em on his property. That was a lie. We didn’t. We rounded them up in our spare time on open range and moved them to a pen. That was the deal.”

  Sandy broke in. “We worked for less wages so we’d have time to start our own herd. We were supposed to have the use of a pasture to keep them in until we had enough to move them to our place. He threatened to have us arrested for rustling if we took one cow off his land.”

  “Ah,” Sam said.

  Molly brought plates and silverware to the table. “Sit still,” she told Bill when he started to rise. “You might as well eat, too. Unless you’ve had breakfast?”

  “No, ma’am.” He sniffed loudly. “That sure smells good.”

  “Tell your assistant to come in,” she suggested. “He’s probably hungry, too.”

  Bill called the man in. She put syrup and pancakes and bacon on the table, then replenished the coffee mugs and took her place by Sam.

  She smiled happily. “This looks like a family meal.”

  “I’m gonna miss your cooking, Molly,” Tom said with a great deal of sorrow in his voice.

  “Why is that?” Sam asked. “Are you going to do your own cooking at the bunkhouse?”

  Tom and Sandy looked at him, puzzlement appearing on their forlorn faces.

  “It takes money to start a ranching operation,” he continued thoughtfully. “You might want to keep up your jobs here… unless you have a big hunk of savings.”

  Bill poured a pond of syrup over his stack of pancakes. “I take it you’re not going to press charges?”

  “No.” Sam poured an equal amount of syrup over his stack. “No law against moving your own cattle, is there?”

  “No, but what about the truck?”

  “Tom is the segundo. You give Sandy permission to borrow the truck?” he asked his new foreman.

  Tom nodded slowly. He looked as if he were dreaming and was afraid he might wake up at any second.

  “There,” Sam said to Bill, “he had permission.”

  “Well, hell, it seems I got out of bed at four for nothing. And I have the midnight shift again tonight. I ought to charge you for my overtime,” he told Sam before forking a big bite of pancake into his mouth.

  Sam merely grinned.

  The other deputy laughed. Molly did, too, then she leaned over and kissed Sam’s check.

  “Mmm,” he murmured, “what was that for?”

  “For being wonderful. Lass would never have forgiven you if you’d driven Tom away, and Porsche has a weakness for Sandy. He lets her sleep with her head in his boot at night.”

  “That probably works better than a flea collar,” Sam mused.

  That produced guffaws from everyone but Sandy, who turned a brilliant shade of red.

  Molly ate her breakfast, her heart at ease about their two cowhands. She and Lass had come to love them. “But what about the other rancher?” she asked, recalling the wounded man. “Did you shoot him when he found you?”

  “That weren’t us.” Tom shook his head vehemently. “Me and Sandy, we didn’t do no shooting and we weren’t on anybody’s property but ours, yours and the open range.”

  “Then who did it?”

  “Real rustlers,” Bill told them. “We’ve been keeping more than one outfit under surveillance this week. They were using old homesteads around here to hold stolen stock until they could get them moved. The state police caught up with them last night. That’s where I was when you called, Molly, helping out on a stakeout and arrest.”

  “Oh. So you knew Tom and Sandy weren’t part of it.”

  “Well, I knew they weren’t part of that gang, but I assumed they had a scam of their own going.”

  “All’s well that ends well,” she murmured with a glad smile at Tom and Sandy. Her faith in them had been restored. She heard Lass cry out. “There’s our girl. I’ll get her.”

  She went to the bedroom. Lass was standing up in the crib, looking like a prisoner planning an escape. “Hello, darling,” she said, bustling around the room.

  After opening the blinds, she washed the baby’s face, then dressed her in rompers and warm socks with grippers on the bottom. “Ma-ma,” Lass said.

  Molly paused, then finished fastening the snaps on the rompers. “Let’s go see Daddy and Tom and Sandy.”

  “Da-da.” Lass patted Molly’s cheek as they entered the kitchen. “Ma-ma.”

  Molly quickly looked at Sam. His gaze flicked to hers, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Would he mind if Lass called her Mother?

  She’d better ask before it became ingrained with the child. So far she’d referred to herself as Molly, but she wanted Lass to call her mother. It seemed natural and right to her.

  After setting Lass in the high chair, she spooned cereal and fruit into the rosebud mouth, feeling very maternal with the eyes of the men on her.

  Bill sighed and rose. “Time to go,” he told his assistant. “We need to get some sleep. No telling what adventures we’ll have in this crime-ridden county tonight.” Chuckling he and the other officer left.

  Tom and Sandy stood, too. “Do we reall
y have a job here for the rest of the summer?” Tom asked.

  “If you want it.”

  The men looked at each other, then at Sam. “We sure do.” They picked up their hats and headed out.

  “Well, that leaves us,” he said when they were alone.

  “Yes,” she said, spooning the last bite into Lass’s mouth. “I have a plan to help the Tisdales,” she told him and waited to see if he would explode in anger.

  “Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” he murmured, watching her with a pensive look in his eyes.

  She couldn’t tell if he was angry or not. “Do you want to hear it?”

  “Oh, yes. Please, continue.”

  “Well, I have a thousand shares of stock my grandmother gave me. I thought I’d sell part of it. I’ll invest the money in the Tisdale land and combine it with ours. They could live there as long as they want. What do you think?”

  He studied her for a long minute. “How much is that stock worth?”

  “About a million.”

  “Dollars?”

  “Yes.” She wiped Lass’s face with a damp cloth and put her in the playpen. Picking up her cup, she took a drink, then turned to face Sam. “You look sort of funny,” she said. “Are you coming down with something?”

  He pushed himself to his feet. “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, his voice quiet and devoid of expression.

  “Tell you what?”

  “About the money. People thought you were a good catch before, now they’ll be sure I married you because of it.”

  “So what?” she said, not seeing the problem he evidently did. “We’ll know better.”

  “Do you?”

  She smiled across the table at him. “Of course. You’re way too smart to marry someone for money.”

  He walked across the room and out the door.

  She went after him. “It isn’t polite to walk out on someone in the midst of a quarrel,” she informed him. Not that she was angry, but he seemed troubled. “If we have a difference, it’s better to air the problem than let it fester.”

  “Later,” he said. “We’ll talk later.” He headed for the barn while she stared at his back.

  Sam leaned on the fence and watched the stallion. The big horse eyed him, its ears twitching back and forth. Slowly it crossed the paddock and came to him. It sniffed a time or two, then nuzzled his shirt, probably catching Molly’s scent on him.

  He moved back a step so the stallion wouldn’t nudge his sore shoulder while it searched for Molly.

  A million dollars. He hadn’t guessed. Stupid. The signs had been there. The sophistication of her parents. Her brother who had argued cases in front of the Supreme Court. Her grandmother who was off on a world tour or something like that. Molly’s education in a private girl’s academy. Her degrees from an Ivy League university. He should have known.

  A million dollars. He’d have to think about that. Would a woman like her really want to stay with a man like him? He couldn’t give her a mansion or a fancy car. He didn’t need to. She could buy all that for herself.

  He pressed a hand over his eyes, thinking of her cooking for him and the hands. She’d washed his clothes and lectured him on hanging up his damp towels. How long would she be content playing the rancher’s wife?

  Six months. He’d give her six months. Then she’d be tired of him and want to be free.

  For a moment, he considered trying to hold her with sex, with the child she thought she wanted. But he wouldn’t do that.

  The knowledge sat heavily on his shoulders as he went to check the calves in the barn. Tom and Sandy had finished the chores. Now they were restoring their possessions in the bunkhouse and discussing plans for the future.

  It wasn’t fair—to be handed a slice of paradise and have it jerked away before he’d gotten more than a taste. No matter. He’d have to do whatever was fair to Molly.

  Right now she had the idea she wanted to buy a ranch. He’d have to talk her out of that. Her money was safer where it was.

  He’d talk to his former in-laws and see what he could do for them. William might be arrested as an instigator of the rustling incidents that had happened recently. The ringleader had been the man he’d paid to start the rumors, according to the deputy.

  He gripped the railing and stared at the sky, the rancher part of him noting the clouds blowing before the wind. They’d have a storm that night.

  “Here, hold Lass,” Molly told him, stopping by the fence.

  He hadn’t heard her approach. His heart squeezed into a tight ball of longing. He recognized the symptom.

  Fool that he was, he’d fallen in love with his wife.

  He couldn’t say the words. If he told her now, she’d think it was because of the money, even though she said she didn’t. He knew how people’s minds worked. If a man’s own mother hadn’t believed him, why would anyone else?

  Lass patted his cheek and tried to hold on to his nose. “Da-da,” she said, giving him her biggest grin.

  He rubbed his cheek on her soft curls while Molly went into the stable. She called the stallion by banging a pail against a post. The stallion headed for the open door.

  Inside Sam could hear Molly talking to the horse, calling him pet names and laughing when he tried to nuzzle her. The stallion liked to snuffle along her neck. Sam thought the horse liked the scent of Molly’s soap.

  “Here I come, ready or not,” she called.

  Before he had time to think what this meant, Molly came out of the stable. She was riding the stallion.

  Sam went utterly still. Fear beat its way to his throat and lodged there. “Molly, be careful,” he said softly, trying not to show his worry.

  “It’s okay. I’ve been riding him for a week. I wanted to surprise you.”

  “You have,” he told her, “in more ways than one.”

  “Can we keep him? Perhaps for a stud?”

  “He’s your horse. You can do whatever you want with him.”

  “Oh, Sam, really? He’s mine?”

  He nodded, then swallowed hard. She looked as if he’d given her the moon. Would she be as thrilled with his love?

  She’d said she loved him, but sex could make a person think that. It was so good between them… The heat began to pump through him. He tried to turn the thoughts off.

  “Watch,” she called. She rode the mustang around the paddock in a circle, then she had him back up. “That’s all I’ve taught him so far. I haven’t taken him outside yet. I was afraid he’d head for the hills.” She grinned.

  “Ma-ma,” Lass said and waved at Molly. “Ma-ma.”

  Molly glanced at him, then away. The mustang was acting up, prancing and shying at imaginary enemies. She had her hands full trying to rein him in.

  “He needs a good run,” Sam called to her. “Do you want to take him out in the pasture?”

  She nodded.

  He went around and opened the gate, then stood behind it while she coaxed the mustang outside. The stallion was suspicious of this sudden freedom.

  Molly clicked at him and urged him forward. He broke into a canter, then swung into a loping run. Molly stretched out over his neck, her hair blowing wildly. Sam heard her laughter as they bounded away.

  Going to the porch, he sat on the steps with Lass and watched the horse and rider. Molly was everything he wanted in a woman—an enthusiastic lover, a sympathetic companion, a loving mother, an accomplished rider, teacher, citizen. And friend.

  How long before she tired of ranch life?

  Molly brushed the tangle of hair back from her temples. The ride had been exhilarating. The mustang was calm, his excess energy spent. He looked around with a keen eye, interested in everything on the ranch. An intelligent animal.

  She smiled with pride when she rode back into the paddock and waved at Sam. Lass was crawling on the porch, inspecting everything she came across. He hadn’t said anything when the baby had called her Mama.

  Wanting to be with them, she hurriedly dismounted and put the
gear away, then brushed the stallion until he was dry. She left him with a bucket of feed in his stall.

  After washing up at the utility sink in the stable, she and the cats joined the other two on the porch. Porsche jumped to the railing and settled into a ball of contentment. Persnickety rubbed against Lass and purred loudly when Lass grabbed a handful of fur.

  Molly settled beside Sam with a happy sigh. “That was fun, but I might not be able to climb out of bed tomorrow. It’s been years since I’ve ridden like that.”

  “You’re good. You must have had a horse when you were a kid.” There was a question in his voice.

  She shook her head. “Summer camps.”

  “Oh, of course.” His tone was sardonic.

  “We need to talk, I think,” she said. “Why does it bother you that I have money?”

  “It doesn’t.”

  She searched his eyes, wondering at the darkness of his mood. “I can’t figure you out. You should be happy that the rustling has been solved and our men cleared, yet something is eating at you. If it’s not the money, then what is it?”

  “It’s nothing.” He gave her a half smile filled with irony. “Just a little quandary of my own.”

  He wasn’t going to tell her. Disappointment bit into her. She’d thought they were growing close. She was obviously mistaken. Well, she’d been wrong before.

  She studied her silent husband with quick glances at his face. He grimaced when he reached over to collect Lass, who was peering at a mesquite branch hanging over the railing.

  “Poor darling,” she murmured, remembering his injuries.

  He was tired and out of sorts and probably aching all over. Neither of them had had a great deal of sleep last night.

  She ran her fingers up and down his back. “Why don’t you take a nap?” she suggested. “Lass will want one after she has her bottle, so the house should be quiet.”

  “That sounds good.” He didn’t look at her or take notice of her caresses.

  Remembering how he’d embraced her during the shower, she tried to figure out his change in mood. Surely money couldn’t make that much difference to him. It wasn’t as if she’d lied. She’d listed all her assets in the prenuptial agreement.