by Diana Palmer
She’d always known that. Curious, that it should come as such a shock now. But, then, Jobe had always had the power to hurt her more than anyone else ever could. He made her feel small, inferior, worthless. And she wasn’t. She was as intelligent as any man on the place, and more intelligent than most; certainly more intelligent than him.
As for marriage, there were plenty of men in the world who’d be proud to have a wife who could engineer computer systems! Mentally she went back over her dates in the past year and grimaced. Well, there were plenty of men who’d have loved having an affair with her, she amended. She was a little short of marriage proposals.
That didn’t matter. She was going to be a career woman. The world was her oyster. She could fit in anywhere now, and she didn’t have to depend on any man to support her. She didn’t want children, anyway, although she loved Ted and Coreen’s little boy. Her eyes went dreamy as she thought about how cuddly he was.
Jobe wasn’t cuddly. He was the most irksome man she’d ever known, and it was just unfortunate that she had to work with him on her brother’s ranch.
If only Ted would fire him. There must be a dozen men who could do his job twice as well as he could do it. Men with college degrees, who knew genetics blindfolded, who could buy and sell livestock, improve breeding stock, and beat the hell out of any cowboy who got fresh with Ted’s baby sister…
She didn’t like remembering how protective Jobe had been about her when she was younger. Ted didn’t get the chance to watch her; Jobe did it for him. He always seemed to turn up when she went out on dates, even if he only had a soft drink at a café where she was eating, or a bag of popcorn at any theater she went to. He’d been around during one of the worst nights of her life, when one of her boyfriends drank heavily and started trying to force her into the backseat of his car.
Jobe had dragged the boy out by his belt and pummeled him royally, before calling the police and having him arrested. His shocked parents had to come and bail him out. The boy had gone to live with a grandmother out of state the next day and he never came back. His parents, nice people, looked shellshocked for weeks afterward when they saw Jobe.
The men had razzed him about his special care of Ted’s sister. They thought he was sweet on her. Sandy knew differently. He was just overbearing, obnoxious and determined to keep her from getting married to anybody locally. He’d even admitted it once. He wanted her out of town and out of his life. He wasn’t taking any chances that she might marry a local boy and set up housekeeping nearby.
Meanwhile, Jobe went through women like water through a sieve. He was pleasant, attentive, courteous, but no woman was ever able to get a commitment out of him. He was the original bachelor, as slippery as an eel when wedding rings became the topic of conversation. He was thirty-six now and still seemed to have no aspirations toward being a husband and father.
Sandy didn’t care. He could stay single forever as far as she was concerned. She hated him. Yes, she did! He was so cruel, so viciously cruel…
Tears were sliding down her cheeks when she got back to her room and closed the door quietly behind her. Why, oh, why had she to love such a man, and for so long, with no hope at all of anything except rejection?
CHAPTER TWO
Coreen Tarleton Regan opened the door quietly, having heard the muffled sobs from the hallway. She sat down on the bed beside her best friend and slowly gathered her in her arms.
“I hate him,” Sandy sniffed, savagely wiping away tears. “He’s an idiot!”
“Yes, I know,” Coreen said with a gentle smile. She pulled a tissue from the box beside the bed and handed it to Sandy. “Dry your eyes. Ted’s sent him to Victoria for the rest of the day, to pick up some herd records at the office there.”
“Good! I hope aliens kidnap him on the way back!”
“Now, now, think how we’d miss him around here.”
“I wouldn’t!”
Coreen’s blue eyes smiled. “Didn’t it ever occur to you that he might like you? All these little snips could be nothing more than a way to attract your attention.”
Sandy’s red-rimmed eyes glared at her. “No.”
“He used to be your shadow,” Coreen persisted. “Until you went away to college, at least.”
“My keeper, you mean,” she muttered. “Even then, he was making fun of me, putting me down.”
“You’re very intelligent. Maybe he felt threatened.”
“He’s intelligent enough,” Sandy replied with a muffled cough. “He just doesn’t like women who are smart. I heard what he just said to Ted downstairs. He said that all he wanted was a bunch of kids who didn’t know one end of a computer from the other.” Her eyes flashed. “As if I’d want kids with a man like that!”
Coreen just patted her shoulder, trying not to look as helpless as she felt. She wondered if Sandy knew how transparent her feelings for Jobe really were. Probably not, or she’d be horribly embarrassed. Sandy thought of herself as impervious to Jobe. Actually it was pretty much the reverse. Coreen, herself a veteran of turbulent relationships, knew exactly how her best friend felt.
“You feel lousy, don’t you?” Coreen asked gently. “Why don’t you try to sleep for a little while?”
“That might be a good idea.” She forced a smile. “You’re the best friend I ever had, you know.”
“You’re the best friend I ever had,” Coreen replied warmly. “Don’t you worry, if worse comes to worst, I’ll help you push Jobe into a shark-infested ocean somewhere and I’ll swear I don’t have a clue where he is.”
Sandy grinned through her tears. “Now that’s real friendship.”
Coreen nodded. “Exactly what I thought!”
* * *
But if Sandy had hoped that a day’s absence would improve her situation, she was badly mistaken. Jobe came back from Victoria in a foul temper and avoided Sandy for the rest of the week. That suited her, because it gave her time to get a little better before she began the arduous job of teaching Jobe how to use a computer.
He presented himself in Ted’s office the following Monday looking like a man facing imminent execution.
Sandy, in slacks and a tube top, had her hair in a bun and was cool and comfortable, at least on the surface. Jobe was wearing jeans and boots and a long-sleeved red-checked shirt. He looked the image of a rodeo cowboy. Sandy knew for a fact that he could ride anything on the place, from a bull to Ted’s meanest stallion.
It amused her a little that he always buttoned his shirts to the top button. He was a modest man. She’d never seen him stripped to the waist or the least bit rumpled. Even his blond hair was neatly combed. He was one of the cleanest cowboys she’d ever known. Maybe that was an effort to make up for his nasty temper, she thought privately.
“All right,” he said curtly. “Let’s get to it.”
“Sit down,” Sandy invited, putting him in a chair in front of the computer.
He glared at it. “This is going to be a disaster,” he muttered. “I’m not mechanical.”
“Even you can’t tear up this computer. It’s almost foolproof.”
“Where’s the switch?” he asked, frowning at the console.
“This entire complex plugs into a surge spike. You push the red button, here, on the strip,” she demonstrated, “and everything comes on, including the printer.”
He watched the screen. “There’s nothing there,” he said pointedly.
“Give it a minute.”
They waited and the menu came up.
“See?” she said, smiling. “Now take a look at the options. What you want is here.” She moved the cursor with the mouse to a particular box and clicked on it. A screen opened up with all Ted’s herd records on it.
“Where did that come from?” he asked.
“I typed it in while you were away last week. This is only a partial listing. You’ll have to do the rest when you have time. Now this is how you select options and make changes.”
It was slow going. He’d never ev
en played computer games before. It was like teaching a child, and every bit as aggravating. He hated every minute of it, and made his dislike apparent.
“It’s a waste of time,” he said shortly when they’d gone through the preliminaries six times. “I keep all these records in my head. I can tell you everything there is to tell about any particular breeding cow on the place, and every bull to boot.”
“I know that,” she replied calmly. Jobe’s memory was legendary. “But what if you get sick or have to go away? Who knows it then?”
He shrugged. “Nobody.” He glanced at her. “Is Ted planning on firing me?” he asked cannily. “Is that why he wants all this on a computer?”
She grinned. “He’s waited a long time, hasn’t he? You were working here before I went away to college.”
“So I was.” He didn’t like being reminded. It showed. He looked back at the computer screen. “Now that we’ve made changes, how do we keep them there?”
She showed him how to save the file and then how to pull it back out again.
He sighed. “Well, I guess I’ll get used to it eventually.”
“Sure you will,” she assured him. “It’s not hard. Even little kids do it. They grow up with computers now.”
“One day,” he murmured, “the power will all go off, and nobody will know how to do math or write. Civilization will vanish in a heartbeat, and all because people trusted machines to do the work.”
She hesitated. “Well, maybe not right away,” she said.
He looked up at her with narrow gray eyes. “How am I supposed to supervise the daily operation of this place, and the ranch in Victoria, and input all these damned records at the same time?”
Sandy pursed her lips and whistled. “I wonder if Ted thought about that?” she mused. She studied his lean face. “Do you really need to sleep and eat?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, I guess Ted is going to have to hire somebody with computer experience to put the records in files.”
“I guess he is.”
“We’ll advertise…”
“No need,” Jobe said, getting to his feet. “Missy Harvey just graduated from the technical school with a diploma in computer programming. She needs a job and she’s fun to have around.”
“Ted will have to decide about that,” Sandy said stiffly, because she knew that Jobe had been dating Missy on and off for a few weeks.
“I’ll speak to him,” Jobe said, and walked out.
Sandy stared after him with confusing emotions. She didn’t want Missy here, in this house. But what sort of protest would she be able to make without sounding like a jealous shrew? As if she’d be jealous of Jobe! Ha!
All the same, when Jobe mentioned it to Ted at supper that night, Coreen shot a quick look at Sandy.
“We wouldn’t need her permanently,” Jobe emphasized. “But I can’t handle what I have to do every day and spend several weeks typing in herd records one letter at a time, too.”
Ted was frowning thoughtfully. “I didn’t consider that,” he said after a minute. He glanced in Sandy’s direction. “I don’t suppose you’d like to do it?”
She grimaced. “I’ve already taken all my sick days for the year, Ted,” she confessed. “I have to go back to work or I could lose my job.”
“God forbid,” Jobe murmured nastily.
She shot a vicious look his way. “I love my job as much as you love yours,” she replied. “Stop baiting me.”
He slammed his fork down on the table, gray eyes blazing. “You’re the one who does the baiting, honey.”
“Don’t call me honey! It’s demeaning!”
Jobe stood up, bristling with anger. “To you, just being a woman is demeaning,” he said icily, ignoring Ted’s glare. “You don’t have a clue, do you? You dress like a man, work like a man, think like a man. Hell, you even act like a man. You always have to know more, do more, than any man on the place!”
She stood up, too, shaking with fury. “Not any man,” she said, correcting him. “You! I have to be better than you!”
“Sandy,” Ted said warningly.
“Oh, why try to protect him?” she demanded, throwing down her napkin. “He started it, making hurtful remarks and downgrading me when I was barely sixteen. To hear him tell it, I couldn’t do anything!” She lowered her voice. “Well, I’m twenty-six now, and I can do a hell of a lot of things that he can’t. And if you want to know, it feels really good to get to talk down to Jobe Almighty Dodd for a change!”
Jobe’s high cheekbones had gone a ruddy color as he glared at Sandy. “That’ll be the day, when you can talk down to me, lady,” he returned.
“It isn’t hard to do, when you can’t tell the difference between the enter key and the delete key on a computer!” she said with a haughty smile.
He didn’t have a comeback. He gave her a look that could fry bread, turned on his heel and left the room without another word.
Sandy, still shaking, stared after him with a sick, empty feeling.
“That,” Ted remarked, “was the worst mistake you’ve ever made. You don’t ridicule a man like Jobe.”
“Why not?” she raged, near tears. “He ridicules me all the time!”
“Sit down.”
She sat, defeated, deflated, tired to the bone.
Ted leaned forward on his elbows and glanced at his wife, who seemed to understand what he was feeling—as usual.
“Sandy, Jobe’s mother was a scientist,” he said quietly.
“Ted, no,” Coreen tried to head him off.
He held up a hand. “She needs to know.” He looked back to his sister’s fixed expression. “Jobe’s mother worked in nuclear research. His father was a cowboy, like he is, who knew the weather and animals and not much more. His mother had several degrees and spent his young life making his father feel stupid and inadequate. She did it so well that he shot himself when Jobe was ten.”
Sandy thought she might faint. She picked up her glass of iced tea and pressed it to her cheek. “Oh, my God,” she whispered.
“It didn’t even seem to bother her,” Ted recalled coldly. “Not even when Jobe packed his bag and went to live at the juvenile hall.”
“I thought you had to be arrested and sent there,” Sandy ventured.
“Bingo,” Ted said, smiling humorlessly. “He stole a horse and even though the owner wouldn’t press charges, he was arrested and arraigned. His mother didn’t want him—not intelligent enough to stay with her, she said—so the state provided for him until he was old enough to get a job and go to work. He’s been here ever since.” His face was colder than his sister had ever seen it. “Pity you didn’t ask me why I wanted you to teach him to use a computer. The herd records could have waited, but Jobe was losing ground with the men because most of them are more computer literate than he is.”
Sandy put her face in her hands. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“Tell him, not me,” Ted said relentlessly.
“She didn’t know, Ted,” Coreen interjected. She got up and put her arms around Sandy. “I don’t suppose either of us thought you needed to know,” she told the other woman.
Sandy brushed away tears. “He isn’t stupid,” she said angrily. “His mother must have realized that!”
“She didn’t want him in the first place,” Ted said sadly. “She was one of those straitlaced people who put appearances before everything, and she’d had a major fling with a cowboy and got herself pregnant. She married him only to please her parents and friends, and made him pay for it every day he lived.”
“Where is she now?” Sandy asked.
“Nobody knows. Jobe never speaks of her.” He shook his head. “It’s a good thing you don’t like him, I suppose, in the circumstances. Because he’ll never forgive what you said today.”
Sandy felt sicker. She averted her eyes. Coreen handed her a handkerchief and patted her back awkwardly, giving Ted a helpless look over Sandy’s bent head.
“You’ll h
ire Missy, I guess?” Sandy asked without looking up.
“Yes,” Ted said flatly. “She’s the kind of woman who builds a man up. She’ll repair the damage you did, and then some. She’s a gentle soul.”
“I wouldn’t have said that Jobe needed a gentle woman,” Sandy said through her teeth.
Ted cocked his head and stared at her. “How would you know what he needs?” he asked. “You’ve never cared a hoot what he did.”
“I suppose not.” She shifted in the chair and uncrossed her legs. “Missy doesn’t like me.”
“I’m not surprised,” Ted replied. “She thinks Jobe’s sweet on you.”
Sandy’s heart leaped. “Do you?”
Ted laughed. “You’re better off not knowing what he says when you aren’t around. You’ve damaged his pride, but no woman can touch his heart. They say his mother buried it alive.”
Sandy put down the handkerchief Coreen had given her, slumping a little. “I didn’t mean to put it like that. He’s always attacking me. I just had enough, that’s all.”
“Oh, I’m not protecting him,” Ted remarked. “Jobe can take care of himself. But hitting below the belt is pretty low.”
“I won’t do it again.”
“You won’t get the chance,” her brother predicted. “I don’t imagine he’ll let you within clawing distance a second time.” He gave her a curious look. “As for Missy, I think you can handle anything she can dish out, can’t you?”
She smiled back at him. “I guess so. I’m your sister, after all.”
* * *
Ted’s remark about Jobe’s attitude toward his sister turned out to be a pretty accurate prediction. Jobe never mentioned what Sandy had said to him, but his manner changed overnight. He treated her the same way he treated Ted, with courtesy and respect, but nothing more. Even the old antagonism was gone. Apparently, he’d decided to be indifferent.