by Jeanne Allan
“Yes.” This woman would make a point of knowing everyone else’s business. He seemed to remember her husband had made a killing in oil back in the fifties.
“Celebrating it late.” Her faded blue eyes appraised him. “Cheyenne’s too good for you, but don’t make the mistake of marrying a woman like your mother.”
Thomas couldn’t decide whether to be amused or offended. Was it Aspen’s high altitude and thin air that made people speak so frankly? “I have no intention of marrying anyone.”
“What about the hotels? The Steele legacy?”
“You answered that yourself. There’s already a new generation of Steeles. Davy.” He saw the doorman signal. “Cheyenne and my nephew have arrived. Let me help you to her car.” He might kick the old lady’s walker out from under her.
Cheyenne stood on the sidewalk laughing with a bell-man. Her jeans were too small, and Thomas would swear he saw underwear through the worn patches in back.
Davy wore faded jeans and a battered straw cowboy hat. “I’m a cowboy, Uncle Thomas. Cheyenne and me went shopping.”
“Where’d you shop? The city dump?”
“An old clothes place. Cheyenne said new jeans’ll rub your skin off when you’re riding a horse. C’mon, hurry up, let’s go.”
“Mind your manners, young man,” Thomas said and immediately heard the echoes of his maternal grandmother’s voice. The smile slid from Davy’s face.
Cheyenne gave him a dirty look. “Olivia, this rip-roaring cowpoke is Thomas’s nephew, Davy. I assume you’ve already had the privilege of meeting Thomas.”
Her tone of voice made it clear she didn’t consider meeting Thomas a privilege. Davy edged away from him. Wonderful. Thomas had set a new speed record in achieving unpopularity.
Olivia arranged matters to suit her. “Your help, Thomas,” she said, beckoning imperiously. “I’m sitting in front. I don’t subscribe to the notion that men belong there by virtue of their physical makeup. Davy, you may put my walker in back. Thank you.”
Thomas sat behind Cheyenne and watched her in the mirror, knowing his scrutiny irritated her Irritation ran both ways. He didn’t like being called selfish and disagreeable. “You don’t look like your sister. She’s a pretty hot number.”
She gave him a cool look in the mirror. “I wouldn’t know.”
“She has the right combination of sophistication and sex appeal. She said you’re older.”
“One year.”
“That’s all? Maybe it’s her hairdo. Sexy as hell.” He had to swallow a laugh as Cheyenne curled her lip. “The kind I see on the streets of New York.”
“In my day, men preferred long hair.”
“Really,” Thomas said politely. Old biddy. Did she really think Cheyenne Lassiter needed help?
“Thomas hates my hair. He doesn’t like bleached, frizzy hair.”
“I like your hair,” Davy said, “’cept when you hug me and it makes my nose itch. But it smells good,” he added quickly.
“Thank you, Davy. Just for that, I won’t tease you about being a tenderfoot.”
“What’s a tenderfoot?”
Thomas quit listening as Cheyenne launched into an explanation which led to a discussion of riding horses. The highway paralleled the Roaring Fork River, and he envied the fishermen in the river, unencumbered by a self-righteous female, a tiresome nephew and a rude old lady.
Cheyenne pointed out Mt. Sopris to Davy and Olivia and then they turned off the highway, heading away from the river, and up into the hills. Sunflowers and some kind of light purple wildflowers grew along the roadside beside the bushes. A bird with blue feathers flew from a tall weed stalk. Some cows stood drinking in the middle of a small creek.
A plume of dust approached from the other side of a hill. A rusty pickup crested the hill and sped toward them. The driver, a man about Thomas’s age, waved at Cheyenne. The saintly Worth?
Cheyenne turned in beneath a huge log arch with what looked like two touching circles burned into it. Beneath the arch, swinging on two short lengths of chain, hung an old, painted sign. Thomas scowled at the faded blue words.
“Welcome to Hope Valley,” Olivia read aloud. “That sign thrills me every time I pass under it and think about your great-great-grandmother arriving here.” Olivia turned toward the back seat. “Cheyenne’s ancestors have a great deal in common with your Steele ancestors. They had dreams and worked hard to make them come true.”
Thomas failed to see a common bond. Steeles didn’t dream. “I’d like to hear about them.”
Cheyenne gave him a mocking look in the mirror. “You wouldn’t, but I’m going to tell you. My great-great-grandmother left her family back east to come to Colorado by wagon. Years later she told my grandpa, her grandson, she knew they’d be killed by Indians or outlaws, or the weather, or an accident, but she came because she loved her husband. She said she took one look at the valley my great-great-grandfather had claimed, saw a bluebird, wild roses, and a deer drinking from the stream and, for the first time since leaving home, felt hopeful they could make it. Her husband laughed at her for wanting to name the ranch Hope Ranch, so she wrote Hope Valley on a broken board and nailed it to a tree, and we’ve called this Hope Valley ever since.”
He should have known she’d be the gooey, sentimental type.
A minute later Cheyenne braked in front of an old-fashioned, two-story white frame house.
A cowboy walked from a corral by the barn. Thomas deduced from the wide smile on Cheyenne’s face as she waved that this was Worth of the so-called gorgeous blue eyes. A cowboy hat shaded the upper half of the cowboy’s face, but doubtlessly his insolent swagger appealed to some women. Feeling at a disadvantage in the back seat of the car, Thomas stepped out.
The cowboy looked Cheyenne up and down. As if he owned her. “One of these days you’re going to bust right out of those skintight jeans.” His gaze took in Davy who’d jumped from the car, checked at the sight of Thomas, then moved on to Olivia in the car. “Olivia,” he said in a deep, pleasant voice. “Good to see you again.”
“Worth, you handsome devil. Come give me a hug.”
Thomas left them to their mutual admiration society while he retrieved Olivia’s walker from the back of the car. Davy, his face rapt with awe, stared up at the cowboy, then shifted his legs, imitating the easy stance of the man. Cheyenne locked her arm in the cowboy’s. They’d forgotten Thomas even existed.
Except for the cowboy who watched Thomas’s every move from the corners of his eyes.
Thomas carried Olivia’s walker to the passenger side.
“She won’t need that,” the cowboy said. He smiled down at Olivia. “And I don’t want any lip from you, Olivia. You’ll wear yourself out walking across the barnyard. Greeley dug Yancy’s wheelchair out of the barn and fixed it up good as new. Here she comes with it.”
Two women came from the house. The man had a damned harem.
A blond woman, the same height and shape as Cheyenne and Allie—another sister?—gave Cheyenne a squeeze as she joined them. “Olivia, I’m so glad you could come. You must be Davy.” She shook the boy’s hand before turning to Thomas. “Welcome to the Double Nickel, Mr. Steele. I hope I can call you Thomas. I’m Mary Lassiter, Cheyenne’s mother.”
Thomas hoped his jaw hadn’t dropped too obviously. He took the hand she extended. “You can’t be Cheyenne’s mother.” She didn’t look a day over thirty. Only close inspection revealed the network of lines fanning out from her eyes.
Mary Lassiter chucked. “Words to warm an old gal’s heart. Greeley, let Worth help Olivia and you come meet Thomas.” She drew the slight, shorter woman forward. “This is my youngest daughter, Greeley.”
Greeley Lassiter had Cheyenne’s mouth and cheekbones, but her face was thinner, and long brown hair hung straight down her back. Thomas would never have guessed she was sister to Cheyenne and Allie. Her cool smile and stiff greeting said she read his thoughts. She didn’t offer to shake hands, but he couldn’t help notici
ng her fingers ended in short-clipped nails. Scraped skin decorated several of her knuckles. Catching him looking, she slid her hands into her pockets and turned away.
“Greeley’s our resident mechanic,” her mother said proudly. “Worth hates machines. I’m convinced an evil genie switched parts of their DNA at birth.”
Thomas liked Mary Lassiter. He wondered how such a pleasant woman had given birth to three irksome daughters. “Thank you for having Davy and me. He could hardly sleep last night, he was so excited.”
“It’s our pleasure. Worth and I get sick of each other’s company.” She swiveled in response to a question from Greeley.
The cowboy must be her foreman. Thomas covertly studied the man rocking back on his heels, hands tucked in his back pockets, as he talked to the others. Not talked—pontificated. The women hung on his every word. His pose was as phony as he was.
He was shorter than Thomas by at least half an inch.
After some discussion, Cheyenne pushed Olivia in the wheelchair toward a corral where Allie waited with saddled horses and a couple of dogs. Davy skipped happily along conversing with Mary Lassiter. Greeley divided her attention between the pair with the wheelchair and Davy.
If the others had forgotten Thomas existed, the cowboy hadn’t. He stood in front of Cheyenne’s car watching the parade across the barnyard, but Thomas could feel, not exactly hostility, but more a withholding of judgment, emanating from the other man. His behavior reminded Thomas of two executives sizing one another up before deciding if they could conduct business together.
Thomas decided to take the bull by the horns. Mocking himself for thinking in a country cliché after only a few minutes in a barnyard, he stepped toward the cowboy and held out his hand. “Thomas Steele. We weren’t introduced in all the confusion.”
The cowboy shook his hand firmly. “Worth Lassiter. Glad you came along. Cheyenne thought you wouldn’t.”
“Cheyenne thinks a lot of things, most based on her version of life, rather than on reality,” Thomas said, conveniently ignoring he almost hadn’t come. The cowboy’s words belatedly hit him. “Lassiter? You’re related to the rest of them?”
“Yeah, lucky me. If Beau had to keep sticking me with his brats, the least he could have done was have boys.”
“You’re Cheyenne’s brother?”
“She didn’t tell you? That’s Cheyenne. Too busy setting the rest of the world straight to let people in on what’s going on.” Amusement tinged the sideways glance Lassiter gave Thomas. “We ought to feel sorry for you, but we’re just glad you’re her latest victim instead of one of us.”
“I got her number from the start. Don’t worry about me.”
“I’m not.” The amusement disappeared. “When a man has three sisters, it takes too much energy to worry about every passing stranger who comes sniffing around them.”
The drawling voice sounded pleasant enough, but Thomas knew a warning when he heard it. He was, in swift succession, astonished, appalled and annoyed. “I hired your sister to entertain my nephew. I have no other interest in her.”
Lassiter studied him for a long moment, then shrugged. “I should have considered the source. Allie reads animals like an open book, but she’s dyslexic when it comes to reading people.”
“Your sister told you I’m interested in Cheyenne?” Thomas asked incredulously. “I met Allie this morning for the first time and only for about six seconds.”
“You don’t have sisters, do you, Steele? It takes them a whole lot less than six seconds to make up their minds, and you can’t change their minds for love nor money. Cheyenne’s the worst of the bunch. Takes after Yancy when it comes to deciding right from wrong.”
“They’re right and everyone else is wrong?”
Lassiter laughed. “In a nutshell.”
Thomas strolled beside Lassiter toward the cluster of people and animals at the corral. “Who’s Yancy? Your brother?”
“No, you’ve met us all. Yancy Nichols was my grandfather. Mom’s dad. His grandfather, Jacob Nichols, started the Double Nickel back in the late 1800’s. Yancy was pretty rigid about what a person ought to do. Heaven help anyone who disagreed.”
“Such as your father?”
“Yancy didn’t waste his time on a lost cause.” He paused. “That’s the big difference between him and Cheyenne. She doesn’t know when to give up.”
“My own fishing boots,” Davy said reverently. “And a fishing vest. Gosh, Uncle Thomas, a fishing pole just like yours.”
“Not quite like mine. You don’t need a bamboo fly rod if you’re going to use marshmallows to catch fish.”
Leave it to a man to buy the most ridiculous gifts, Cheyenne thought. Davy would outgrow the waders by next summer. She had faxed Thomas a list of possible gifts commensurate with Davy’s age and had suggested he buy five or six of the items. Her gaze swept the mound of books and toys beside Davy and she mentally shook her head. Thomas had bought like a kid let loose in a candy store with a fistful of money
“Open another one,” Thomas urged Davy who was playing with his new fishing equipment, “or we’ll never get to eat.”
“He’s more excited than Davy,” Allie said in Cheyenne’s ear. “You’d think he’d never seen the kid open a present before.”
Cheyenne gave her sister a startled look. “I don’t think he has,” she said slowly. It was obvious, now she thought about it. Certainly nothing else she knew about Thomas explained his behavior. When Davy had started opening gifts, Thomas had stood across the room watching. Soon he’d moved to sit on the sofa near Davy. Now he sat on the floor beside his nephew. It was obvious Thomas could hardly keep from tearing into the packages himself.
Davy looked inside the last box, an enormous one, and his eyes grew large. “A train.”
“I used to want one like this.” Thomas started pulling parts from the box. “It goes around in circles and has a great whistle. And these lights flash red or green, and this arm goes up. It’s a train signal. We have to put these tracks together, and then couple these cars...”
Cheyenne fled to the kitchen with her mother and sisters.
When she returned with plates for the cake, Worth and Thomas lay on their stomachs on the floor playing with the train. “Where’s Davy?”
“Bathroom,” Thomas mumbled. “I think this connects here, and then this one here.”
Cheyenne went after napkins. When she came back, Davy was still gone and Worth was asking Thomas how long he’d be in Aspen.
“Less than two weeks. You have the caboose over there?”
“Here. To be honest, Steele, I’ll be glad when you leave. Cheyenne cares too much about things. She gets hurt.”
Cheyenne stopped short. Of all times for Worth to go into his big brother act. Embarrassed, she backed quietly away. The conversation followed her into the hall.
“She’s a big girl,” Thomas said. “Where does this sign go?”
“She’s a Lassiter. Lassiters worry about Lassiters.”
“Look, Lassiter, family loyalty is one thing, but I’m sick and tired of you Lassiters targeting me as the bad guy. How many times do I have to tell you? I’m not interested in Cheyenne. I don’t even like her.”
Cheyenne hung up the house phone in the lobby. Davy had answered the phone. She hadn’t talked to Thomas. And didn’t want to. Not after overhearing his words to Worth yesterday. Thomas Steele couldn’t possibly dislike her more than she disliked him. At least she didn’t shout it to the whole world. If there were any justice in this world, Denver Mint would have dusted Thomas Steele’s arrogant backside. Unfortunately, Thomas had easily handled the large, well-muscled bay gelding.
“Disappointed?”
He must have been hiding behind one of the metal columns, waiting to spring out at her. Disappointed that he’d refused to ride the Silver Queen gondola up the mountain today with her and Davy? “No. Where’s Davy? He said he was ready.”
“I disagreed with his version of ready. Last night I gav
e him a list of things he needed to do to get ready, and he thought he could slide past a few Don’t frown at me. He’s old enough to be responsible for himself. I want to talk to you.” He took her arm and guided her across the lobby. Sunlight coming through the atrium’s stained-glass dome splashed rose and green on white marble squares. “You hoped I’d fall off the horse.”
“I wouldn’t be in business long if I didn’t do all I could to ensure my client’s safety.”
“You neglected to ask if I could ride.”
“A couple of turns around the pasture isn’t riding.” What did he want to talk about that he couldn’t have said yesterday on the way back to the hotel? A sinking feeling told her this little talk had to do with Worth’s warning.
Thomas unlocked the door to The Green Room and waited for Cheyenne to precede him into the lounge, then closed and locked the door behind them. “Davy had the time of his life. He’ll talk about that pony—what was his name? Slots?—and his birthday cake and the party and the ranch for months.”
“Talk to whom? The housekeeping staff at the hotel?”
“Your brother said you inherited narrow-minded self-righteousness from your grandfather.”
“I’m not self-righteous, and he didn’t say that.”
“That’s what he meant. He also warned me off you.”
Cheyenne sat on the old-fashioned upholstered piano stool and lifted up the piano keyboard cover. “I can’t imagine why he’d do that.” She ran her fingers lightly up a scale.
Thomas leaned an elbow on the pale mossy-green grand piano. “I wondered myself. He said Allie told him.” His hand came down over hers. His other hand captured her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “Why does Allie think there’s something between you and me?”
“I have no idea. I insisted there wasn’t.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t like you or your attitude.”
“I meant, why did you find it necessary to insist?”
“Olivia saw that stupid kiss in the lobby and told Allie. If Worth warned you off, it’s your fault”