by Diana Palmer
“That’s a hard lesson.”
He nodded. “But it’s one we all have to learn.” He frowned slightly. “Just how old are you—twenty or so?”
She looked taken aback. “I’m twenty-one. I’ll be twenty-two in March.”
Now he looked taken aback. “You don’t seem that old.”
She chuckled. “Is that a compliment or an insult?”
He cocked an amused eyebrow. “I suppose you’ll see it as the latter.”
She wiped an imaginary spot on the counter with a cloth. “Callaghan’s the oldest, isn’t he?”
“Simon,” he corrected. “Cag’s going to be thirty-eight on Saturday.”
She averted her eyes, as if she didn’t want him to see whatever was in them. “He took a long time to get engaged.”
“Herman doesn’t exactly make for lasting relationships,” he told her with a grin.
She understood that. Tess always had Cag put a cover over the albino python’s tank before she cleaned his room. That had been the first of many strikes against her. She had a mortal terror of snakes from childhood, having been almost bitten by rattlesnakes several times before her father realized she couldn’t see three feet in front of her. Glasses had followed, but the minute she was old enough to protest, she insisted on getting contact lenses.
“Love me, love my enormous terrifying snake, hmm?” she commented. “Well, at least he found someone who was willing to, at first.”
“She didn’t like Herman, either,” he replied. “She told Cag that she wasn’t sharing him with a snake. When they got married, he was going to give him to a man who breeds albinos.”
“I see.” It was telling that Cag would give in to a woman. She’d never seen him give in to anyone in the months she and her father had been at the ranch.
“He gives with both hands,” he said quietly. “If he didn’t come across as a holy terror, he wouldn’t have a shirt left. Nobody sees him as the soft touch he really is.”
“He’s the last man in the world I’d think of as a giver.”
“You don’t know him,” Leo said.
“No, of course I don’t,” she returned.
“He’s another generation from you,” he mused, watching her color. “Now, I’m young and handsome and rich and I know how to show a girl a good time without making an issue of it.”
Her eyebrows rose. “You’re modest, too!”
He grinned. “You bet I am! It’s my middle name.” He leaned against the counter, looking rakish. He was really the handsomest of the brothers, tall and big with blond-streaked brown hair and dark eyes. He didn’t date a lot, but there were always hopeful women hanging around. Tess thought privately that he was probably something of a rake. But she was out of the running. Or so she thought. It came as a shock when he added, “So how about dinner and a movie Friday night?”
She didn’t accept at once. She looked worried. “Look, I’m the hired help,” she said. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable.”
Both eyebrows went up in an arch. “Are we despots?”
She smiled. “Of course not. I just don’t think it’s a good idea, that’s all.”
“You have your own quarters over the garage,” he said pointedly. “You aren’t living under the roof with us in sin, and nobody’s going to talk if you go out with one of us.”
“I know.”
“But you still don’t want to go.”
She smiled worriedly. “You’re very nice.”
He looked perplexed. “I am?”
“Yes.”
He took a slow breath and smiled wistfully. “Well, I’m glad you think so.” Accepting defeat, he moved away from the counter. “Dinner was excellent, by the way. You’re a terrific cook.”
“Thanks. I enjoy it.”
“How about making another pot of coffee? I’ve got to help Cag with the books and I hate it. I’ll need a jolt of caffeine to get me through the night.”
“He’s going to come home and work through Christmas Eve, too?” she exclaimed.
“Cag always works, as you’ll find out. In a way it substitutes for all that he hasn’t got. He doesn’t think of it as work, though. He likes business.”
“To each his own,” she murmured.
“Amen.” He tweaked her curly red-gold hair. “Don’t spend the night in the kitchen. You can watch one of the new movies on pay-per-view in the living room, if you like. Rey’s going to visit one of his friends who’s in town for the holidays, and Cag and I won’t hear the television from the study.”
“Have the others gone?”
“Cag wouldn’t say where he was going, but Corrigan’s taken Dorie home for their own celebration.” He smiled. “I never thought I’d see my big brother happily married. It’s nice.”
“So are they.”
He hesitated at the door and glanced back at her. “Is Cag nice?”
She shifted. “I don’t know.”
A light flickered in his eyes and went out. She wasn’t all that young, but she was innocent. She didn’t realize that she’d classed him with the married brother. No woman who found him attractive was going to refer to him as “nice.” It killed his hopes, but it started him thinking in other directions. Cag was openly hostile to Tess, and she backed away whenever she saw him coming. It was unusual for Cag to be that antagonistic, especially to someone like Tess, who was sensitive and sweet.
Cag was locked tight inside himself. The defection of his fiancée had left Cag wounded and twice shy of women, even of little Tess who didn’t have a sophisticated repertoire to try on him. His bad humor had started just about the time she’d come into the house to work, and it hadn’t stopped. He had moods during the months that reminded him of when he went off to war and when his engagement had been broken. But they didn’t usually last more than a day. This one was lasting all too long. For Tess’s sake, he hoped it didn’t go on indefinitely.
Christmas Day was quiet. Not surprisingly, Cag worked through it, too, and the rest of the week that followed. Simon and Tira married, a delightful event.
Callaghan’s birthday was the one they didn’t celebrate. The brothers said that he hated parties, cakes and surprises, in that order. But Tess couldn’t believe that the big man wanted people to forget such a special occasion. So Saturday morning after breakfast, she baked a birthday cake, a chocolate one because she’d noticed him having a slice of one that Dorie had baked a few weeks ago. None of the Hart boys were keen on sweets, which they rarely ate. She’d heard from the former cook, Mrs. Culbertson, that it was probably because their own mother never baked. She’d left the boys with their father. It gave Tess something in common with them, because her mother had deserted her, too.
She iced the cake and put Happy Birthday on the top. She put on just one candle instead of thirty-eight. She left it on the table and went out to the mailbox, with the cat trailing behind her, to put a few letters that the brothers’ male secretary had left on the hall table in the morning mail.
She hadn’t thought any of the brothers would be in until the evening meal, because a sudden arctic wave had come south to promote an unseasonal freeze. All the hands were out checking on pregnant cows and examining water heaters in the cattle troughs to make sure they were working. Rey had said they probably wouldn’t stop for lunch.
But when she got back to the kitchen, her new leather coat tight around her body, she found Callaghan in the kitchen and the remains of her cake, her beautiful cake, on the floor below a huge chocolate spot on the kitchen wall.
He turned, outraged beyond all proportion, looking broader than usual in his shepherd’s coat. His black eyes glittered at her from under his wide-brimmed Stetson. “I don’t need reminding that I’m thirty-eight,” he said in a soft, dangerous tone. “And I don’t want a cake, or a party, or presents. I want nothing from you! Do you understand?”
The very softness of his voice was frightening. She noticed that, of all the brothers, he was the one who never yelled or shouted. But his eyes were even
more intimidating than his cold tone.
“Sorry,” she said in a choked whisper.
“You can’t find a damned jar of apple butter for the biscuits, but you’ve got time to waste on things like…that!” he snapped, jerking his head toward the ruin of her cake lying shattered on the pale yellow linoleum.
She bit her lower lip and stood just looking at him, her blue eyes huge in her white face, where freckles stood out like flecks of butter in churned milk.
“What the hell possessed you? Didn’t they tell you I hate birthdays, damn it?”
His voice cut her like a whip. His eyes alone were enough to make her knees wobble, burning into her like black flames. She swallowed. Her mouth was so dry she wondered why her tongue didn’t stick to the roof of it. “Sorry,” she said again.
Her lack of response made him wild. He glared at her as if he hated her.
He took a step toward her, a violent, quick movement, and she backed up at once, getting behind the chopping block near the wall.
Her whole posture was one of fear. He stopped in his tracks and stared at her, scowling.
Her hands gripped the edge of the block and she looked young and hunted. She bit her lower lip, waiting for the rest of the explosion that she knew was coming. She’d only wanted to do something nice for him. Maybe she’d also wanted to make friends. It had been a horrible mistake. It was blatantly obvious that he didn’t want her for a friend.
“Hey, Cag, could you—” Rey stopped dead in his tracks as he opened the kitchen door and took in the scene with a glance. Tess, white-faced, all but shivering and not from the cold. Cag, with his big hands curled into fists at his sides, his black eyes blazing. The cake, shattered against a wall.
Cag seemed to jerk as if his brother’s appearance had jolted him out of the frozen rage that had held him captive.
“Here, now,” Rey said, talking quietly, because he knew his brother in these flash-fire tempers. “Don’t do this. Cag, look at her. Come on, look at her, Cag.”
He seemed to come to his senses when he caught the bright glimmer of unshed tears in those blue, blue eyes. She was shaking, visibly frightened.
He let out a breath and his fists unclenched. Tess was swallowing, as if to keep her fear hidden, and her hands were pushed deep into the pockets of her coat. She was shaking and she could barely get a breath of air.
“We have to get those culls ready to ship.” Rey was still speaking softly. “Cag, are you coming? We can’t find the manifest and the trucks are here for the cattle.”
“The manifest.” Cag took a long breath. “It’s in the second drawer of the desk, in the folder. I forgot to put it back in the file. Go ahead. I’ll be right with you.”
Rey didn’t budge. Couldn’t Cag see that the girl was terrified of him?
He eased around his brother and went to the chopping block, getting between the two of them.
“You need to get out of that coat. It’s hot in here!” Rey said, forcing a laugh that he didn’t feel. “Come on, pilgrim, shed the coat.”
He untied it and she let him remove it, her eyes going to his chest and resting there, as if she’d found refuge.
Cag hesitated, but only for an instant. He said something filthy in elegant Spanish, turned on his heel and went out, slamming the door behind him.
Tess slumped, a convulsive shudder leaving her sick. She wiped unobtrusively at her eyes.
“Thanks for saving me,” she said huskily.
“He’s funny about birthdays,” he said quietly. “I don’t guess we made it clear enough for you, but at least he didn’t throw the cake at you,” he added with a grin. “Old Charlie Greer used to bake for us before we found Mrs. Culbertson, whom you replaced. Charlie made a cake for Cag’s birthday and ended up wearing it.”
“Why?” she asked curiously.
“Nobody knows. Except maybe Simon,” he amended. “They were older than the rest of us. I guess it goes back a long way. We don’t talk about it, but I’m sure you’ve heard some of the gossip about our mother.”
She nodded jerkily.
“Simon and Corrigan got past the bad memories and made good marriages. Cag…” He shook his head. “He was like this even when he got engaged. And we all thought that it was more a physical infatuation than a need to marry. She was, if you’ll pardon the expression, the world’s best tease. A totally warped woman. Thank God she had enough rope to hang herself before he ended up with her around his neck like an albatross.”
She was still getting her breath back. She took the coat that Rey was holding. “I’ll put it up. Thanks.”
“He’ll apologize eventually,” he said slowly.
“It won’t help.” She smoothed over the surface of the leather coat. She looked up, anger beginning to replace fear and hurt. “I’m leaving. I’m sorry, but I can’t stay here and worry about any other little quirks like that. He’s scary.”
He looked shocked. “He wouldn’t have hit you,” he said softly, grimacing when he saw quick tears film her eyes. “Tess, he’d never! He has rages. None of us really understand them, because he won’t talk about what’s happened to him, ever. But he’s not a maniac.”
“No, of course not. He just doesn’t like me.”
Rey wished he could dispute that. It was true, Cag was overtly antagonistic toward her, for reasons that none of the brothers understood.
“I hope you can find someone to replace me,” she said with shaky pride. “Because I’m going as soon as I get packed.”
“Tess, not like this. Give it a few days.”
“No.” She went to hang up her coat. She’d had enough of Callaghan Hart. She wouldn’t ever get over what he’d said, the way he’d looked at her. He’d frightened her badly and she wasn’t going to work for a man who could go berserk over a cake.
Chapter Two
Rey went out to the corral where the culls—the non-producing second-year heifers and cows—were being held, along with the young steers fattened and ready for market. Both groups were ready to be loaded into trucks and taken away to their various buyers. A few more steers than usual had been sold because drought had limited the size of the summer corn and hay crop. Buying feed for the winter was not cost-productive. Not even an operation the size of the Harts’ could afford deadweight in these hard economic times.
Cag was staring at the milling cattle absently, his heavy brows drawn down in thought, his whole posture stiff and unapproachable.
Rey came up beside him, half a head shorter, lither and more rawboned than the bigger man.
“Well, she’s packing,” he said bluntly.
Cag’s eyes glanced off his brother’s and went back to the corral. His jaw clenched. “I hate birthdays! I know she was told.”
“Sure she was, but she didn’t realize that breaking the rule was going to be life-threatening.”
“Hell!” Cag exploded, turning with black-eyed fury. “I never raised a hand to her! I wouldn’t, no matter how mad I got.”
“Would you need to?” his brother asked solemnly. “Damn it, Cag, she was shaking like a leaf. She’s just a kid, and it’s been a rough few months for her. She hasn’t even got over losing her dad yet.”
“Lay it on,” Cag said under his breath, moving restlessly.
“Where’s she going to go?” he persisted. “She hasn’t seen her mother since she was sixteen years old. She has no family, no friends. Even cooking jobs aren’t that thick on the ground this time of year, not in Jacobsville.”
Cag took off his hat and wiped his forehead on his sleeve before he replaced it. He’d been helping run the steers down the chute into the loading corral and he was sweating, despite the cold. He didn’t say a word.
Leo came up with a rope in his hand, watching his brothers curiously.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Rey muttered, thoroughly disgusted. “Tess made him a birthday cake and he destroyed it. She’s packing.”
Leo let out a rough sigh and turned
his eyes toward the house. “I can’t say I blame her. I got her into trouble at the Christmas party by spiking the holiday punch, and now this. I guess she thinks we’re all lunatics and she’s better off without us.”
“No doubt.” Rey shrugged. “Well, let’s get the cattle loaded.”
“You aren’t going to try to stop her?” Leo asked.
“What would be the point?” Rey asked solemnly. His face hardened. “If you’d seen her, you wouldn’t want to stop her.” He glared at Cag. “Nice work, pal. I hope she can pack with her hands shaking that badly!”
Rey stormed off toward the truck. Leo gave his older brother a speaking glance and followed.
Cag, feeling two inches high and sick with himself, turned reluctantly and went back toward the house.
Tess had her suitcases neatly loaded. She closed the big one, making one last sweep around the bedroom that had been hers for the past few weeks. It was a wrench to leave, but she couldn’t handle scenes like that. She’d settle for harder work in more peaceful surroundings. At least, Cag wouldn’t be around to make her life hell.
She picked up her father’s world champion gold belt buckle and smoothed her fingers over it. She took it everywhere with her, like a lucky talisman to ward off evil. It hadn’t worked today, but it usually did. She put it gently into the small suitcase and carefully closed the lid, snapping the latches shut.
A sound behind her caught her attention and she turned around, going white in the face when she saw who had opened the door.
She moved around the bed and behind the wing chair that stood near the window, her eyes wide and unblinking.
He was bareheaded. He didn’t speak. His black eyes slid over her pale features and he took a long, deep breath.
“You don’t have anywhere to go,” he began.
It wasn’t the best of opening gambits. Her chin went up. “I’ll sleep at a Salvation Army shelter,” she said coldly. “Dad and I spent a lot of nights there when we were on the road and he didn’t win any events.”