“You want to come live with me at the ranch while we sort this all out, cowgirl?” Hazel offered.
“I told him I’d give him two weeks’ notice, and I’m going to do that one thing right if it kills me.” She sniffed again.
“He doesn’t deserve that,” the cattle baroness said in condemning tones.
“Maybe.” Kirsten brushed at her wet cheeks. “But it takes two to tango, and I jumped, Hazel. With my eyes wide-open I made the stupid decision to jump.”
Hazel McCallum met this news with a far-from-defeated sigh. “Don’t you worry, dear. Things have a way of working out. There’s still time.”
Kirsten laughed darkly. “Yes. There’s one more week. And if I’m lucky he won’t invite me to the wedding.”
Another day passed before Kirsten saw Seth.
He arrived like any other time, quietly, in his Jeep. She was sitting before the great-room fire on the couch where they’d made love. Before she could rise from her seat, the door opened and he was there, looking as handsome and devilish as he had ever looked.
“Ah, Miss Meadows. Fine. I’ll need you to alert Viola that we’re to prepare for fifty visitors for next Saturday.” It seemed to be work as usual for him as he shrugged out of his suit jacket and went to his desk to survey the faxes for the day.
Kirsten couldn’t believe the stab she felt in her heart at seeing him. The very idea of him marrying Nikki left her ill. As Hazel had foretold, she would have to endure the last moments with him, but seeing him now, knowing he was lost to her, suddenly seemed more than she might be able to take.
“How was your flight?” she inquired, her cool facade coming to her rescue.
He looked up from his desk.
Warily he replied, “The usual.”
“Congratulations.” She forced herself to meet his gaze. She would have her breakdown in private, but in front of him she would never reveal her devastation.
“You wish me well?” He seemed almost taken aback.
“If Nikki brings you every happiness, then I must.” She said nothing else. There was no more to say.
He studied her for a long time, his sea-ice eyes searching, probing. “Kirsten, I’ve decided to stay here in Mystery, to keep the ranch. Come hell or high water, I want to stay in Mystery.”
“If you’re hell-bent on staying in Mystery, then do what you must,” was all she offered.
She herself would not be staying in Mystery. Not with him around. She had roamed the world before when her father had been with the diplomatic corps. If she had to do it again to find her place, then she would drag her mother and Carrie along for the ride. Anything to get away from Seth and the pain in her heart.
She gathered up the book she’d been reading in front of the fire. Departing, she said, “I’m sure we’ll be busy the next few days, so if there’s nothing more, I’ll see you in the morning.” Numbly she made for the huge staircase to the side of the great room.
He stared after her, not speaking, his expression full of unnamed emotion.
“Kirsten.” His jaw bunched. “I—” His mouth jammed shut.
“Yes?” she asked, her breath shallow and anticipatory.
“I—I hope you sleep well.”
He roughly dismissed her with his cool glance.
Wounded anew, she simply nodded and went to her bedroom.
Only when she was alone did she release her despair, rubbed raw by the renewed hope of seeing him again. She wept silently, her only succor the fact that the clock was ticking, and soon she would see him no more.
“This is the strangest thing,” Mary said to Kirsten discreetly into the phone from New York. “Nikki Butler is burning up his lines of credit all over this town to get ready for this wedding, but it makes no sense why he wants to transport all that to that ranch to get married. Especially when she hated that place. Positively hated it. It’s all over town how she loathed that visit,” the executive secretary confessed.
Kirsten closed her eyes, not wanting to hear any more details.
Finally she offered, “Perhaps he’s the one who likes it here.”
“Precisely my point,” Mary said into the speaker. “If he’s so in love with her that he wants to marry her, why do it at a place she can’t stand? I’d have thought he’d sell the place, she hated it so much. At least, that’s what all the gossips have to say about it.”
“Men. Don’t try to understand them, Mary. They’ll drive you insane,” she attempted.
“But,” the secretary continued in her conspiratorial voice, “I have a theory. I think he’s been involved with someone up there. I think he wants to get married there just to prove a point.”
Point taken, Kirsten thought to herself bitterly.
Point so taken it had pierced her heart and ripped it out.
In a modulated voice Kirsten said, “Seth Morgan has the world at his fingertips. Why would a man like him bother to make a point to someone? Especially a point so extravagant?” And futile, she added silently.
“I don’t know why. All I know,” Mary went on, “is that I’ve worked for the man for over fifteen years. I know him as well as my son and husband. I was with him through the loss of his parents and through the building of his empire…and something’s gotten to him, I tell you. I wish I could say it was Nikki, but I just don’t see it. I don’t see it at all….”
“What do you need me to do?” Kirsten asked, desperate to change a subject that was getting all too close to her.
“Well,” Mary mused, “Nikki called, and she said the wedding gown designer will have to do the final fitting in Mystery….”
Kirsten didn’t hear a word Mary was telling her.
Like an automaton, she took notes and offered appropriate uh-huhs when necessary. Her mind, however, was miles away, kissing her lover midstream in the creek, seducing Seth on the couch, licking her heart wounds as she forced herself to emotionally prepare to leave him.
“I’ll get it prepared,” she said to Mary when they were finished.
“Hey, are you all right?” Mary asked, innocently inquisitive. “Your mom’s still doing okay? I’ve been dying to come up there. I can’t wait to meet all of you at the wedding.”
Kirsten gave a choked little laugh. As if she would put herself through that ceremony.
“Mom is doing spectacularly.”
“Good.” Mary sighed. “You know, I’ve gotten quite fond of you, Kirsten. Seth has told me how much you’ve done for your mom. You deserve the best.”
“Thank you.”
Kirsten didn’t think now was the time to spring it on Mary that she would be leaving in less than a week. Besides, the wedding would speak for itself. Her absence would be noticed by some, certainly Hazel. If Mary put two and two together, she would realize why Kirsten didn’t attend the wedding, and there would be no need to explain further.
“Oh, and by the way, Nikki will be calling you,” Mary advised. “And she’s been Catherine the Great ever since that diamond went on her hand, so beware.”
Mary said goodbye.
Kirsten hung up.
Suddenly in her heart of hearts she realized the whole charade was a losing game. There was no way she was going to advise Nikki on her wedding gown. Enough pain was enough, and she was no masochist. Her promise to stay the extra week was null and void, given the latest maelstrom being thrust upon her.
She went to find Seth and tell him the truth—that she would be leaving right then.
But the damnedest thing was, she couldn’t find Seth anywhere.
He wasn’t out riding Noir, and he hadn’t summoned the plane. Without friends in town, he never took the Jeep, but the vehicle was missing just the same, and even Viola said he’d made no mention of needing anything in town.
Frustrated, despairing and trapped, Kirsten did something she never did. She went to the wine cellar, retrieved the most celebrated bottle of champagne there and popped it open in the great room on their couch.
“Do you love her?” H
azel’s question shot out as if she was a detective grilling a suspect.
Seth sat in the McCallum parlor, upright on the century-old mail-order settee, looking more uncomfortable and belligerent in Hazel’s presence than he’d ever been.
“You said I needed to settle down. I’m doing that. Is love in your sales contract, too?” he parried.
“I’m looking out for your best interests here, cowboy, so don’t cross me. You can’t marry this twit Nikki Butler. She’s all wrong for you. You’ll be miserable.”
“The tabloids say it’s the match of New York.”
“Well, here in Mystery we have a different standard of matchmaking, and you and Nikki Butler won’t make the grade—let me inform you of that right now,” Hazel retorted.
“Why not?” he taunted, his jaw set, his long muscular form dwarfing the settee.
“Because you love Kirsten, and dadgummit, I’ve never been wrong about these things.” Hazel stared at him like an angry badger. “She’s your match, son, and if you don’t mind my words, you’ll pay by losing her forever.”
His eyes went subzero. “I am not about to admit an indiscretion with an employee, Hazel.”
Hazel snorted. “All this employee-boss political correctness is nothing but cow pie in this case. I don’t believe it, and the sooner you admit to loving her, the sooner you can grab happiness with both hands.”
Seth seemed to ponder her words long and hard.
Finally he said, “I’ll admit Kirsten is unlike any woman I’ve ever known.”
Hazel seemed to sense the chink in his armor.
Craftily she said, “I’ll make you a deal, son. Look me in the eye like an honorable Montanan, and tell me you don’t love Kirsten Meadows. If you can do that, the ranch is yours, and your marriage is yours to do with what you want.”
She studied him with her notorious stare. “But if you can’t do that right now, I give you only this advice, son—grab her. Grab her so tight, you’ll never let her go.”
He lowered his head to his hands. “Hazel, you’re killing me, you know that.”
“Just a few words and you’re free, Seth. Free to do whatever you want. Free to ruin your life if you so desire. So what is it?”
He groaned. “Kirsten is like no other.” His head snapped up. His expression hardened with hidden frustration. “But because of that, I don’t understand her. And so I’ve never been sure how to go about…well, I’ve never figured out how to approach—” He snuffed his last words, clearly censoring any confession.
A soft, slow, knowing smile lit on Hazel’s mouth. With her gaze probing, she said, “Sometimes you just gotta wrangle ’em. You get me, son?”
He met the cattle baroness’s eyes. By his expression, it seemed that want fought with logic.
At last he confessed, “What if I wrangle her, and she just says no? Then what?”
Solemnly Hazel nodded her encouragement along with her no-nonsense advice. “If you love her, son, and she won’t have you, then you take it like a McCallum. You leave her be, but don’t go running in the opposite direction. That model isn’t for you, Seth. Don’t fool yourself.”
Seth rubbed his eyes, his only concession to Hazel’s words.
“I’m used to getting what I want, Hazel,” he finally stated.
“Take it like a McCallum, son. State your case, bide your time and you just might be lucky enough to get what you want.”
He leaned his head back against the overly carved laminated rosewood. Several minutes ticked by as he ruminated over his choices, so many of which were beyond his control. Finally, in a fit of pique, he said, “You know what, Hazel. I think I can handle Wall Street over Mystery.”
Hazel chuckled. “Greenhorn,” was all she offered.
Thirteen
Kirsten was in her room packing when the knock came at her door. The champagne bottle was more than half-empty and the last of her cosmetics had been tucked into her rollaway bag.
“Well, it’s you,” she announced, flinging the door wide-open to let Seth in.
“You act as if you were expecting me.” He didn’t move from the hallway. Casually he leaned on the sinuous pine baluster behind him and surveyed her.
“I wasn’t ’specting you, but since you’re here, c’mon in. I want to get a few things straight.” Her eyes read him, and she swore he smiled. It only made her madder.
“What’s on your mind?” he baited, still not entering her room.
She hugged the doorway. “What’s on my mind? Let me give you a piece of my mind,” she offered, her expression damning. “I, Mr. Morgan, am not the kind of woman who makes jewelry, okay?”
He looked appropriately confused. “What are you talking about?’ he asked innocently—too innocently, by her mark.
“I said,” she repeated, narrowing her eyes, her broken heart buried deep for the moment, “I’m not the kind of woman who makes jewelry, and I don’t tolerate mistresses. We, Mr. Morgan, if we had ever married, would never have a mistress, I can assure you.”
He took a step forward.
She held up her hand to say she wasn’t finished.
“Now,” she pronounced. “I’m quitting. So goodbye and good luck. I’m outta here. Have a good life with Nikki, and I hope you live long enough to regret it.” She went to close the door.
He put his hand on the doorjamb.
She stared up at him.
This time he was only inches away.
“You want to talk about this, Miss Meadows?” he grunted, his eyes amused.
Disconcerted, she shook her head. “What’s to talk about? I said I’d stay two weeks, and I can’t. So what? Deal with it. Mary can handle all your plans. You don’t need me. And if it’s the pay you’re worried about, hey, don’t bother. I’ve got bigger things on the horizon. I don’t need your measly paycheck, anyway.”
“You sound almost bitter, Miss Meadows.”
She snorted. “What gives you that idea?”
“I’d think a disenchanted employee might be a little defiant, but you sound as if there was more here. As if perhaps we were lovers and not just in a business relationship.”
The unshed tears froze in her eyes.
Quietly she said, “We were lovers. I know that, at least on my end.”
He uncurled his fingers from the doorjamb and entered the room.
“We are lovers, Kirsten.”
Her mind tried to parry his meaning. “If you’re so delusional as to think we’ll continue our relationship after you’re married, you need a long rest at a mental institution.”
If she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn he bit back a smile.
“Marriage doesn’t have to exclude sex, Kirsten. I hear you can have both. It’s not impossible.”
“Spoken just like your father,” she accused, her eyebrow rising.
“Touché,” he conceded.
Smugly she continued, “Thank you very much for the mistress position, Mr. Morgan, but I’ll have to decline your offer.”
“Kirsten—” He tried to grab her.
She stepped away from him. The ice ball that was her heart was beginning to melt every second he was near, and she wanted him gone. She didn’t want to lose control until she was out of the house and well on her way to her mother’s.
“Why did you quit, anyway?” he asked, still keeping his respectful distance. “Come on, confess. It wasn’t really the reason you gave, was it? When I hired you, you told me you needed this job. Then you bought your mother a house and couldn’t see her going back to work until she was better—all that a fib, Miss Meadows?”
“Certainly not,” she defended.
His eyes narrowed. “It looks like it, because just when things get busy over here, you decide you’d rather fling it all to the wind and work at the Mystery Diner.”
Impassioned with fury, she almost struck him. “My mother worked her tail off for Carrie and me there. And she does deserve a rest, and I’m going to give her one.”
“Then s
tay. No one can pay you as well as I can.” His gaze was riveted to hers.
She violently turned away from him. “Look, my mom may have had to waitress at the Mystery Diner, and I may have to do that, too, to keep things together. But you know what?” The tears began to melt. One slipped by, no matter how hard she tried to hold it back, and she cursed herself for it.
Damning him, she spat, “There isn’t a person in Mystery who doesn’t love my mom. Every customer was treated well, no matter how worn-out my mother was. And I guess that kind of stuff doesn’t buy you jets and ranches, but I’d rather be loved at the Mystery Diner than live here without it.”
Finished, she zipped her suitcase, picked up her half-empty bottle of champagne and stood waiting for him to move from the door so she could leave.
He didn’t budge.
She lifted the champagne bottle. “Sorry about this, but I thought a celebration was in order now that I’m leaving. Just deduct it from my last paycheck.”
He shrugged.
She waited.
And waited.
And waited.
Finally she dropped her suitcase on the floor with a thud.
Crossing her arms over her chest, she faced him. “Is there something more, Mr. Morgan? You look as if something’s on your mind.”
“Something is on my mind, Kirsten.”
“And what is it?”
“Nikki,” he answered, his face revealing nothing.
Angry and depressed, Kirsten had had enough. She picked up her suitcase, planning to barge right through him if necessary.
But his arms went around her and stopped her.
“Kirsten, don’t leave,” he whispered, a strange emotion in his eyes.
She looked at him, at his handsome face she’d grown to love, and the wound in her heart broke open. She began to weep, and quickly the tears flowed like the champagne growing flat in the bottle.
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