by Janet Dailey
“Meaning I am?” she retorted.
“Meaning you are,” he stated. His gaze suddenly ran over her, piercing and probing. “What did this man do to you? The one who hurt you so badly?”
Everything inside her seemed to freeze up at his question. Her blood turned to icicles. Kit withdrew behind a frigid and impenetrable mask, all emotion — even anger — frozen up inside. She permitted herself to feel nothing.
Her reaction only intensified Reese’s curiosity. “What did he do to make you turn against your own sexuality? To make you lock up all your warm, passionate emotions inside and throw away the key so that the next man who comes along has to pick the lock?”
“No one asked you to come here.” Deliberately Kit ignored his questions. “Why couldn’t you just be satisfied with receiving the considerable profits from the ranch? It was good enough for all your other predecessors. Why isn’t it good enough for you?”
He gave her a long, considering look filled with a cynical kind of arrogance. “You’d like me to leave, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“To leave and never come back,” Reese went further.
“To leave and never come back,” Kit repeated, the fervor of her wish evident despite the coldness of her tone. “And you will. Someday you will. Then everything will go back to being the way it was before you came.”
“Will it?” His lip curled.
“You aren’t needed here and you aren’t wanted here.” She tossed her head back, regal and proud. “So why don’t you leave?”
“You’ve had your say. Now I’ll have mine,” he said smoothly. “I’ll leave when I’m damned good and ready and not a minute before — if I leave at all.”
Turning, Reese picked up the trailing reins of the buckskin and prepared to mount. Kit stared at him, hating him with all her might and knowing he disturbed her physically the way she had prayed no man ever would.
“How can you stay where you aren’t wanted?” she demanded.
“You forget —” Reese swung into the saddle and stared down at her “— I own this land. I don’t have to be wanted to stay here.” His gaze flicked to her shimmering chestnut hair. “Don’t forget your hat. The sun is strong today.”
Pivoting stiffly, Kit swept the hair atop her head and reached for the hat discarded on the ground. She slapped it against her thigh to knock the dust off it, then worked it over the hair piled on her head, tucking the stray hairs under the crown. The bay had wandered a few feet away. Kit caught up his reins and mounted.
“Shall I lead the way back to the ranch?” Reese questioned tauntingly. “I’d like to prove to you that I’m not lost.”
“You own this place. You don’t have to ask my permission,” she responded bitterly.
He eyed her for a pulsing second, his expression hard and grim. Then he turned the buckskin in the direction of the distant ranch yard and took the lead.
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Chapter Six
FRANK JARVIS STOOD RIGIDLY before Kit, his slightly paunchy figure unmoving, a pinched whiteness about his sunburned face and a resentful glitter in his eyes despite his silence.
“When I tell you to do something I expect it to be done!” Kit continued her lashing barrage that had begun some minutes ago. “I didn’t tell you to do it tomorrow or the day after. I told you I wanted it done this afternoon. Now why isn’t it? What possible excuse could you have?”
“Kyle’s horse had thrown a shoe,” Frank began defensively. Among his other talents, which included cooking, he was also a farrier. “The sorrel had already worn his down to a nub and your bay, Reno, had one loose. And I figured that since we were done with the hayin’ for a while, we wouldn’t be needin’ the mower right away.”
“It isn’t for you to decide when we need the mower!” Kit retorted. “I told you I wanted it repaired today and that is exactly what I meant!”
She knew she was being unreasonable. Even when the words came out of her mouth she knew she was being unfair. But once started, Kit couldn’t seem to stop. Some horrible demon kept driving her on.
And it wasn’t easy for Frank to keep taking her abuse. In the first place, like Lew, he was old enough to be her father. And he’d put his years in at the Flying Eagle, enough so that the fact that he was conscientious about his work couldn’t be questioned. Worst of all, he was being dressed down by a female. For an old-fashioned type of man like Frank Jarvis, that was hard to swallow.
“It seemed to me like the horses were more important,” he defended.
“We have two different ideas about what is important,” Kit retaliated. “And mine is the only one that counts!”
“If you don’t like the way I do things —”
“I don’t like the way you do things!” Kit could have bitten off her tongue for that.
“Careful there, Kitty.” A third voice joined them in the interior shadows of the barn. “If you go to firin’ the cook —” it was Lew standing just inside the door “— you just might find the rest of us walkin’ out.”
All the fight seemed to go out of her like the air from a deflating balloon. She turned away from both of them, hiding the sudden wave of vulnerability.
“Fix the mower tomorrow, Frank,” Kit asked with a tired and beaten sound to her voice.
There was a long moment of hesitation. “I will,” he promised finally.
Without moving she listened to his stilted footsteps as he walked through the scattering of hay on the barn floor and his murmured exchange with Lew at the door. It slid open, then closed. Alone, Kit leaned wearily against the rough boards of an interior barn wall.
What was the matter with her, she wondered. It had been impossible for anyone to live with her this past week, including herself. She had been like this ever since that devastating encounter with Reese when he had kissed her so thoroughly, then accused her of being afraid to be a woman.
What was she trying to prove? That she wasn’t a woman? That she didn’t have the ordinary passionate yearnings every other woman did? But she didn’t! Kit screamed inside. She had killed them — all of them! She didn’t want a man, not any man, and never Reese Talbot.
Dragging her hat from her head, Kit let her hair tumble free, hoping it would ease the pressure pounding in her head. The hand holding the hat hung limply at her side. She turned to rest her back and both shoulders against the barn wall, lifting her gaze to the hay loft overhead. A stab of pain twisted her insides and Kit screwed her mouth up to hold back the accompanying sob, succeeding in keeping it to a sniffle.
A sound came from near the door. Someone was in the barn. Immediately Kit straightened, brushing, a hand across her face as if donning a mask. When her gaze probed the shadows she saw Lew standing there.
“I … I thought you had gone.” Her voice faltered for only a second before gaining its steadiness.
“You lit into Kyle not more’n twenty minutes ago. Now Frank. I figured it was my turn next,” he said, criticizing her behavior.
She lowered her head briefly. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me lately.” It was the closest Kit could come to an apology.
“I don’t know, either, but I sure hope it don’t last, ’cause you got all the rest of us snarlin’ at each other. This is gettin’ to be a downright unfriendly place,” he declared in all seriousness.
Kit knew Lew very well. None of this was the reason he had stayed behind when Frank had left. “What do you want, Lew?”
“It’s not me that wants anything. It’s the boss —” tactfully, he corrected that “— the baron. He wants to see you.”
The mention of Reese brought every sense to full alertness; Kit was wary as a deer at the first crack of a twig under a hunter’s foot. Tension crackled about her.
“Did he say why?” she questioned.
“Nope, and I didn’t ask. It’s been gettin’ to where I don’t mind nobody’s business but my own around here.”
Her fingers tightened on her hat, crumpli
ng the brim. “Tell him I’m busy,” Kit snapped, turning away.
“Won’t do any good,” Lew answered placidly. “He said for you to come as soon as you’re free.”
There was no way to avoid it. “All right,” she agreed in fatal acceptance. “If he asks, tell him I’ll be there shortly.”
After the barn door had slid shut on Lew, Kit took a few extra minutes to compose herself. Her shell had become brittle and she needed to strengthen it. There was no thought of disregarding the edict. Kit wanted to admit neither to herself nor to Reese just how much he could disturb her.
Nothing in her swinging stride nor her erect carriage betrayed that she was going to the meeting with any feeling of trepidation. Outwardly she looked completely calm and composed, on a routine errand. Inwardly Kit was filled with questions that all centered around one focal point — why, did he want to see her?
Since Reese had taken up residence in the Big House, Kit didn’t come and go as she pleased through its halls. A fly buzzed angrily as she rapped on the screen door and waited. Almost instantly Mrs. Kent bustled into view behind the fine wire mesh.
“Oh, hello, Miss Bonner — Kitty.” The housekeeper always stumbled over her name, inevitably using both formal and informal.
Kit was accustomed to this nervousness from people who had heard about her, and overlooked it. “Mr. Talbot wants to see me.”
“Yes, he told me.” She pushed the screen door open. “Come in. He’s in the library.”
Not that room! All her sensibilities protested, but there was nothing she could do about it. Stiffening her spine, Kit entered the house. The thick walls made the house slightly cooler and Kit had to suppress a shiver at the change.
The library door was closed and Kit paused before it as the housekeeper continued on. Her palm felt clammy as she lifted her hand to knock on the door. Immediately muffled permission to enter was given from the other side.
When Kit opened the door her gaze was unavoidably drawn to the portrait over the mantelpiece, in a direct line to the door. As always, the handsomely arrogant face had the ability to fan the flames of her hatred. It was only natural that some of it was transferred to Reese when she turned to find him seated behind the desk, appearing very much to be the lord of the manor with his aquiline features and his own brand of aggressive male arrogance.
“Lew said you wanted to see me.” Kit attempted to bank the fires behind a veil of cool indifference, but the hardness of his expression made them seethe all the hotter.
“Have a seat.” He nodded toward the straight-backed chair in front of his desk;
“No, thank you.” At least this way she could enjoy the rarity of looking down at him instead of always lifting her gaze.
Kit was aware of the change in his attitude toward her. Where once Reese had looked on her with mocking cynicism, there was now a callousness. She could see it in that faintly raised eyebrow above a piercing stare. There was something forbidding in the leanly hollowed cheeks and the austere line of his mouth.
“What did you want to see me about?” She wanted to get it over with and get out.
“Don’t worry. It’s strictly business.” Amused contempt glittered briefly in his eyes.
“It never for a minute occurred to me that it might be related to anything other than the ranch,” Kit replied.
The hat was still in her hand. Kit wished now that she had taken the time to put it on and secure her hair under its crown rather than leave it loose to tangle around her shoulders. She hadn’t done it in an attempt to call attention to her sex.
“I’ve made a decision about the ranch,” he announced, “and I thought you would be interested to know.”
“What is it?” Kit refused to sound overly interested.
“I won’t be selling it.”
“Wherever your ancestors have gone to in their reward, I’m sure they’ll be glad to know it’s staying in the family,” was her faintly biting response.
“I knew you would be overjoyed at the news.”
“Is that all you wanted?”
“No, there’s more,” Reese assured her, leaning back in his chair with every indication that he was going to enjoy telling her. “I won’t be leaving for a while, maybe not for a long while.”
“That’s your decision.” Kit shrugged as if it didn’t matter to her.
“Yes, that’s my decision.” He paused for a second. “When I first arrived —”
“If this is going to be a long speech I’d rather not hear it,” she interrupted.
Aware of the portrait observing this scene from its canvas mat, Kit felt the tension mounting, her nerves snapping one by one under the building pressure. Soon they would all break.
“When I first arrived here —” Reese continued as if she hadn’t spoken at all, and Kit tossed her hat on the corner of his desk and jammed her fingers into the back pockets of her Levi’s “— I didn’t interfere with the running of the ranch,” he completed his sentence. “I sat back and observed what was going on. That first day when I questioned your authority to give orders to the men, you assured me that you received them from your grandfather and acted as a go-between with the men. I had no cause to doubt you.”
There was a series of warning clicks in her brain. Kit knew what was coming and braced herself. There was nothing she could do except try to parry it when it came.
“Since then I’ve had an opportunity to see for myself that your grandfather’s management of the ranch is haphazard at best. He has become nothing more than a figurehead. You have been the driving force on this ranch.”
It wasn’t lost on Kit that he had used the past tense, but she kept it from showing. Maintaining her air of indifference, she returned his steady look.
“Why are you telling me this? If you aren’t pleased with the way Nate is running things, you should speak to him.”
“I chose to speak to you first,” Reese said at his autocratic best, “because I think you know your grandfather’s period of usefulness on this ranch is over.”
“So he’s through, is that it?” Kit challenged. “You’re firing him and you expect me to back you up.”
“I expect you to admit the truth of what I’m saying.”
“You’ve given no thought at all to the years — the lifetime he has spent taking care of this ranch. You have no appreciation at all for his honesty,” Kit attacked him. “He could have robbed this place blind and been justified. Is this the thanks he gets? You come along and decide he is no longer useful. He’s just an old man so you want to boot him out.”
His mouth thinned impatiently at her accusations. “I was thinking in terms of retirement with an adequate pension.”
“How typical” She scoffed at him with her laughter. “Pension off the old family retainer with no thought at all about what he’s going to do with his empty days. Just put the old horse out to pasture. You don’t care whether or not he misses the harness. Is that the way you are going to repay his loyalty?”
“What about his pride?” Reese flared. “Would Nate want me to keep him on out of pity?”
“No! Never pity! Never from you!” Kit heard herself shouting and turned abruptly away from the desk, straining to control her temper.
“Then that settles it.” He, too, made an effort at control.
“Now that you’ve dispensed with Nate, what about me?” She walked to the fireplace hearth, trying to avoid looking at the eyes of the man in the portrait, and intensely aware of those boring into her back.
“Since I am staying and your grandfather is leaving, I can’t believe that you will want to remain,” he said finally.
“That’s what it all comes down to, isn’t it?” Kit declared. “The reason you are getting rid of Nate is to get rid of me.”
“I think we both knew it would come to this,” Reese stated. “We have known since the first time we met. The incident last week simply clinched it.”
Kit started to smile. Her back was to him so Reese couldn’t see her ex
pression. “How soon are you expecting us to leave?”
“There’s no rush. Whenever it proves convenient.”
“How magnanimous of you.” The smile was spreading, the satisfaction she would soon have searing through her veins.
“You won’t have to worry. I’ll make sure the pension is more than adequate.”
Kit turned to face him, a feline purr to her voice when she spoke. “And what if I told you we can be off your property in five minutes, Talbot?”
A guarded look entered his expression. “Is that what you are telling me?”
“All it takes is the time to walk out of this house and to my own.” She could see by the brief flicker of surprise that he hadn’t known. She tipped her head back to emit a throaty, triumphant laugh. “You are so anxious to be rid of me. The truth is that you never can.”
His jaw tightened. “I know you are going to enjoy explaining that remark.”
“It’s very simple.” The laughter faded from her voice as bitterness took over. “You should have checked more closely into exactly what it is that you do own. The house where I live and the two acres it sits on don’t belong to you.”
Reese was no longer relaxed in his chair. He was leaning forward, his hands on the desk as if any second he would pounce over the top of it and tear her apart.
“It belongs to you and Nate,” he concluded.
“Yes. You see, the baron, your predecessor —” Kit waved a contemptuous hand toward the portrait “— has already made some provisions for our future.”
“How thoughtful of him.”
“Yes, wasn’t it?” She nearly choked on that, the galling pain inside almost more than she could bear. “So you can see how futile your efforts are to be rid of us. You can retire Nate and dispense with me, but you can’t get us out of your sight.”
“That’s why you were so unconcerned about having to leave if I sold the ranch.” The harsh glitter of his eyes never left her face.
“That’s right. No matter what you do, we’ll still be here — in the house just down the hill. You’ll see us every day,” Kit taunted. “So your grand plan to eliminate us from your life is all for nothing. It can’t be done.”