by Diana Palmer
Merrie hesitated. “Does he wear pajamas?” she asked, flushing.
“Ah. I see.” Delsey smiled gently. “He wears the bottoms,” she said. “Think you can get the medicine in him?”
“I got medicine in an outlaw horse once,” Merrie replied.
Delsey smiled gently. “Let me heat up some soup for him, and we’ll both take it up.”
“Great!” Merrie said.
Delsey kept her thoughts to herself. It was a relief, however, to notice that dashing Tubbs hadn’t made an impression on the young woman. The boss looked at Merrie in a way he hadn’t looked at a woman since that she-cat took him for the ride of his life. It was a start.
* * *
REN WAS IN BED with the covers pulled up to his waist, looking miserable, when Delsey and Merrie walked in.
“I just need rest,” he muttered, glaring at them. “Not mothering!”
“Nobody’s mothering you,” Merrie promised. “Where’s the medicine?”
He glared at her.
“In the medicine cabinet, I’ll bet,” Delsey told her.
“Traitor!” Ren shot at her.
Merrie walked into his bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. There were two prescriptions. One was an antibiotic, one was a powerful cough syrup.
She carried them both triumphantly back into the bedroom and started to open the antibiotic.
“Is that the cough syrup?” Delsey asked, reaching for it. She had a spoon in her hand. She read the directions, poured some into a spoon and pushed it toward Ren’s defiantly closed mouth.
“Open up, or I’ll roll you in a towel and shove it into you,” Merrie said forcefully.
The words, and the tone, caused him to burst out laughing. He opened his mouth, and Delsey spooned the cough syrup in.
“Very nice,” Merrie said. She held a pill in her hand. “This one, too,” she said.
He stared up at her. “You wouldn’t dare,” he said.
“Delsey, have you got a really big towel and two strong men...?”
“Hell.” He opened his mouth and glared at Merrie as she put the pill on his tongue.
He swallowed it down with some of the milk Delsey had brought him.
“Milk causes more mucus, you know,” Merrie commented.
“It’s all he’ll drink when he’s sick.” Delsey sighed as she put the tray with legs over him and set the soup and spoon and napkin on it.
“He needs to drink lots of water, to thin the secretions so he can cough up the mucus,” Merrie added.
“I’m right here,” Ren muttered. “I can hear both of you.”
They both stared at him.
He grimaced and picked up his soup spoon. “All right, you had your way. Now get out of here and let me eat my soup in peace.”
“It’s not soup. It’s oyster stew. Your favorite,” Delsey added with a warm smile.
He made a face at her, but then he smiled. “Okay. Thanks.”
“You get better. If you need anything, use the intercom,” Delsey added, indicating the unit on his bedside table.
“I won’t. But thanks.” He included Merrie in that. “Don’t think that threat about the towel made any difference,” he added firmly.
She grinned at him. “Liar,” she said mischievously.
He just chuckled.
* * *
THAT NIGHT, MERRIE went in to see Ren before she went to bed. She was still fully dressed. She didn’t want to be seen by a man in just pajamas and a robe, even if it was a modern world.
She knocked lightly and peered in the door. “Doing okay?” she asked.
He glared at her. “Close the door, from the outside,” he said icily.
“Yes, sir.” She closed it, wincing at his angry tone, and went down the hall to her own room.
He was so unpredictable. One day he was almost nice to her, the next he snapped her head off. She looked at herself in the mirror and realized the cause of his sudden irritation. Her cross was visible around her neck, outside the sweatshirt she was wearing.
She fingered it gently. Her mother had given it to her when she was a little girl. She’d changed the gold chain many times over the years, but the cross remained the same. It was something from her mother, her childhood, something priceless. Ren didn’t have to like it. But she wasn’t taking it off.
His coldness hurt her. She wondered why. He was just Randall’s brother. He wasn’t even nice most of the time. Ah, well, she thought, she wasn’t going to be here long anyway. No use wasting thoughts on a man who’d probably pay to see her breaded and deep-fried.
* * *
IT TOOK HIM two days to get up enough strength to leave his bed. He was a little unsteady on his feet when he came down to breakfast, but his bad attitude was back in full force.
He pulled out a chair and glared at the women. “I don’t need babying, in case you had that in mind. I feel fine.”
Merrie stared at him. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Delsey agreed.
He popped his napkin out and folded it in his lap on top of his immaculate jeans and chaps. The spurs on his boots made a jingling sound when he moved his feet under the table.
“Is that sausage?” he asked suddenly, pointing his fork at the platter next to the bacon and eggs.
“Yes. Merrie likes it.”
“I hate sausage,” he said curtly.
“I love it,” Merrie replied, just to irritate him. She gave him a long, steady look. “It just makes me feel good, thinking of pork being shoved through a sausage grinder.”
His eyebrows went up. It was the way she said it, eyeing him the whole time. “I would not fit in a sausage grinder,” he said abruptly.
She sighed. “Pity,” she said, with a blithe smile.
He choked back a laugh and reached for the coffeepot.
* * *
SHE WALKED OUTSIDE before he left, enjoying the previous night’s fall of new snow. It lay like a blanket over the hills and mountains in the distance. She wrapped her arms around herself, because it was below freezing and her coat was more decorative than functional.
“I thought I told you to go to town and buy a coat,” Ren muttered as he came outside, sliding his hat over his brow.
“There hasn’t been time,” she replied.
“I’ll have Delsey drive you in tomorrow,” he said. His eyes gave the old coat a speaking glance. “Don’t you own a decent winter coat?”
She flushed and lowered her eyes. “We had a very strict clothing allowance when Daddy was alive,” she said with stinging pride. “He thought coats were a waste of money. He only gave us enough money to buy jackets, but I found this coat on sale.”
“I’m surprised they weren’t giving it away for free,” he said haughtily.
She frowned at him. “Not everybody is rich, Mr. Colter,” she said shortly. “Most people in the world just do the best they can with what they have.”
He lifted an eyebrow and slid his eyes over what he could see of her trim figure. “How old are you?” he asked suddenly.
“Twenty-two,” she returned.
His eyes darkened. Too young, he was thinking. Years too young. Twenty-two to his thirty-six. She was striking. It wasn’t so much beauty, although she had that, as poise and grace. She moved like some graceful fawn, barely leaving traces of her footsteps when she walked.
“You’re just a kid,” he said quietly, thinking out loud.
“It’s the mileage,” she said suddenly.
He frowned. “What?”
“It’s the mileage. Some people are old at twenty and some are young at eighty. It’s the mileage.”
“I see.” He cocked his head and studied her openly. “You aren’t old enough to have much mileage, just the same.�
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She smiled. “I don’t let it show. It takes a lot fewer muscles to smile than it does to frown.”
He cocked his hat low over his brow. “Don’t expect to see many smiles around here in winter.”
“Not true,” she said pertly. “Delsey smiles all the time. So does Tubbs.”
At the mention of the younger man’s name, he froze over. “Tubbs is here to work, not to make calf’s eyes at you,” he said, his tone biting. “Don’t encourage him. He likes blondes.”
“I haven’t encouraged anybody,” she protested.
“See that you don’t.” His smile was colder than the snow around them. “After all, you’re Randall’s...friend, aren’t you?” he added, a note of contempt in his tone.
“Yes,” she said, not understanding. “Randall’s my friend.”
“You remember that.”
He turned and marched off toward the truck, where one of the men was waiting for him. “Tell Delsey I’ll be late,” he called over his shoulder. “We’re going quail hunting.”
He was gone before she could even answer.
“Well, he’s in some great shape to go out hunting,” Delsey said irritably as she puttered around the kitchen. “Hunkered down in a snowbank waiting to spook a covey of quail! He’ll catch his death!”
“He really doesn’t listen to reason.”
Delsey laughed. “No. He doesn’t.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THAT NIGHT, DELSEY had gone up to bed when Ren came in with a bag of partridges. He put them in the kitchen sink.
“Just leave them there,” he said when he noticed Merrie watching television in the living room. “Delsey can deal with them in the morning. Good night.”
“Good night,” she called after him.
Well, at least he was speaking to her, Merrie thought wistfully. She finished watching her program, then turned the television off.
She was about to switch the light off in the kitchen when she remembered the partridges in the sink. It would be a shame to leave them there all night and expect poor Delsey to dress them even before she could start breakfast the next morning.
She pulled up a trash can and went to work. It didn’t take long. She had them dressed and in baggies in the fridge. She dealt with the refuse, taking it outside to the garbage can, so the men could haul it off to the county landfill. They took a load most days.
She went to bed, feeling a sense of accomplishment. It was a rare feeling for a woman who’d hardly ever lived, except in the shadow of a tyrant.
* * *
SHE WENT DOWNSTAIRS to breakfast. Voices came up the staircase.
“I left them right there in the damned sink!” Ren growled. “I can’t think what became of them.”
“They’re in the fridge,” Merrie said.
He glared at her. “You don’t put dead birds...”
“Ren?” Delsey held up the Ziplock bags with the dressed partridges in them.
He frowned. His eyes snapped back to Merrie with a question in them.
“Mandy taught me how,” she said simply. “She’s our housekeeper, back home, although she’s more like a mother. She thought we needed to know how to do more than just cook. She even taught us how to dress chickens.”
Ren was fascinated. She didn’t seem the sort of woman who’d take to such a basic sort of occupation. She looked fragile, citified, as if she’d faint at the sight of blood. But Grandy’s wound hadn’t sent her swooning. She’d watched tapes of branding without flinching. Now, here she was field dressing game. He wasn’t sure he’d ever known a woman besides Delsey who could do that. He tried to picture Angie, in her Paris gowns, soiling her hands with bird feathers in a sink.
“If it bothers you that much, I can glue the feathers back on,” Merrie began outrageously.
He hid the smile the words engendered. “Full of surprises, aren’t you, Miss Grayling?”
“Just one or two, Mr. Colter.” She frowned. “Colter. There was a mountain man, Jim Bridger’s protégé, they said, named John Colter. I heard a song about him on an old album my mother had.”
“Yes. He discovered fumeroles and hot springs on the Shoshone River near Cody, as the story goes,” Ren related as they sat down to breakfast. “They nicknamed it Colter’s Hell, although most people thought he was spinning a tall tale until they actually saw it.”
“I’ve never been there,” Merrie said.
“Yellowstone National Park is near there. It’s beautiful,” Delsey remarked. “Pass the strawberry preserves, there’s a dear.”
Merrie handed them to her. “It’s a place I’d love to see. Yellowstone, and the Little Big Horn Battlefield, and the museum.”
“More history,” Ren remarked.
Merrie smiled softly. “I live on YouTube. I’ve been on tours of all those places, but I’d love to see them in person one day. Especially the battlefield. Mama said that one of our relatives actually was in the fight.”
“In the cavalry?” he asked.
She cleared her throat. “Not exactly.”
He paused in the act of lifting the spoon from his coffee cup and stared at her.
“My great-great-great-grandfather was a full-blooded Oglala Lakota.”
His eyebrows arched as he studied her closely.
“I know, I don’t look it. But my mother’s father had black hair and eyes and very dark skin. It was from her father’s side that we got our blood.”
Ren pursed his lips and chuckled. “One of my ancestors was Northern Cheyenne.”
“They fought the Lakota,” she mused.
“Tooth and nail. Well, usually, except at the Little Bighorn, when they joined together to fight Custer and his men.”
She ate a spoonful of Delsey’s delicious scrambled eggs. “How’s Hurricane?” she asked.
He gave her a cold glance. It still rankled that she’d been able to do something with a horse that he couldn’t. “Healing,” was all he said.
She just nodded. He made his antagonism for her so obvious. It was uncomfortable.
He finished breakfast, threw down the last swallow of his coffee and got to his feet.
“Wear a muffler,” Delsey said without looking up.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he bit off.
“Wear a muffler,” she repeated. “You’re still not well.”
He muttered something about overprotective mother hens. But he got a scarf and wrapped it around his neck before he put on his coat and hat.
Delsey got up and fetched a big thermos. “Hot coffee. It’ll keep your insides warm.”
“My insides are already warm.” He grimaced, bent and kissed her wrinkled cheek. “Thanks,” he said gruffly.
Merrie didn’t lift her eyes until he was out the door and gone. She sipped coffee with a wistful glance at Delsey. “I set him off just by being in the house.” She sighed. “He really dislikes me.”
“It wouldn’t matter who you were, child,” Delsey said with a smile. “That she-cat razed his pride, made him a laughingstock on social forums online.” She shook her head. “She was vindictive. None of what she said about him was true, but it was almost impossible to counter it.”
“Yes, it is.” She wondered what the woman had said about Ren. He was proud. It must have hurt his feelings very badly to be ridiculed in a way he couldn’t fight.
There was the sound of a big truck out front, followed by a door slamming and a knock at the door.
Delsey went to answer it, and she stared blankly at the parcel service driver. “You sure that’s for here?” she asked him with a grin.
“If there’s a Miss Grayling here, it is,” he replied, putting a stack of boxes just inside the front door. A flutter of snowflakes entered with them.
“It’s my art suppl
ies!” Merrie enthused. “Oh, thank you!”
“That’s all art supplies?” Delsey asked, shaking her head. “What’d you do, order live models?”
The parcel driver chuckled, waved and left.
“It’s an easel and some canvases and a lot of paints,” Merrie replied. “I was afraid to ask Sari to send my supplies out here from Texas. I didn’t want anybody to trace them.”
“Oh, yes,” Delsey agreed, remembering. “That stalker.”
Merrie frowned. Well, perhaps Ren hadn’t felt comfortable telling Delsey the truth. It didn’t matter. Surely the FBI was hot on the trail of the contract killer by now.
“So I thought it would be better to order them from here,” Merrie added. “Do you have a pair of scissors?”
“Something better.” She grinned, went into the kitchen and came back with a knife in a leather pouch. “Ren gave it to me for my birthday. It’s made by the same people who made the skeet gun he uses in competition.”
“He shoots?”
She nodded. She bent to open the packages. “Not so much these days. Mostly he hunts elk or deer or partridge. Business is so complex here that he doesn’t get a lot of time off.”
“The men stay very busy.”
“That’s ranching, honey,” Delsey said. “There’s always something.”
“It was that way at our ranch, too,” Merrie confessed. “But we only had horses. No cattle. I don’t know much about them yet, but I’ll learn. YouTube is great!”
Delsey gave her a droll look. “Ren is better. Why don’t you ask him to take you around and show you how he manages cattle?”
She sighed. “He’d point me to the path that leads down to the stables and tell me to help myself,” she said with a wistful smile. “He doesn’t want me around. Randall must have known that, before he brought me here. I should have stayed in Comanche Wells.”
Delsey touched her hair gently. “No. You should be here, where you’re safe. Ren will come around. You’ll see. Now let’s get these things into the studio.”
* * *
THEY MOVED THE art supplies into the room that Merrie was using for a studio. “Did his mother really paint?” she asked.