Nora

by Diana Palmer

  Bean nodded.

  “Well, in Texas, the name Culhane does the same thing with cattle.”

  Bean turned and stared at Cal with eyes that were suddenly frightened. Cal was leaning back, with his legs crossed. He glanced from Bean to Pike, who looked like a man who’d just tried to swallow a watermelon whole. Pike’s distress was so obvious that Cal almost felt sorry for him. He knew without a doubt that if Pike had had any idea of his identity, he’d never have attempted this.

  He didn’t want to turn around and look at Nora, which was just as well. Her expression had run the range from shock to dismay to raging fury. Brant grimaced at King as he indicated the woman whose hand he held tightly in his. He felt a little sorry for his oil-hunting son.

  “West Texas?” Bean exclaimed, with no thought of courtroom decorum. “Those Culhanes?” He whirled and walked back to Pike, packed up his valise and slammed it shut with a speaking glance at the skinny, beady-eyed man sitting beside him. “I withdraw from the case, Your Honor,” he told the judge respectfully. He picked up his case and glared at Pike. “You damned fool!” He walked out of the courtroom without a backward glance.

  “You are within your rights to appeal my decision, Mr. Pike,” the judge told the man curtly. “But I find against you, and I assure you that, considering the legality of these deeds, so will any other court of law. Mr. Dunn is quite correct in his assessment. This case is an unforgivable waste of the court’s time. Case dismissed!” His gavel sounded and he left the bench.

  Pike hovered around the defense table. “Mr. Culhane, I didn’t know,” he said hurriedly. “I never would have… That lawyer, he made me do it!” he said, inspired. “That’s right, it was his idea, he made me…!”

  Dunn turned those piercing blue eyes on him. “Mr. Bean has integrity,” he said. “And you are asking for a civil suit for public embarrassment and desecration of character if you persist.”

  Pike swallowed. He backed away. For a lawyer, that fellow was physically intimidating. “About the well, Mr. Barto… I mean, Mr. Culhane,” he continued doggedly.

  “You were paid a salary,” Cal said, rising from the chair. He looked more threatening than the lawyer had. “If you run, not walk, to the door, you may just make it out of town before I beat the living hell out of you!” He made a quick movement, and Pike took off like a scalded dog out the courtroom door.

  King chuckled as he got to his feet with the rest of his family. “So much for that.”

  Cal shook hands with Dunn. “You’re amazing. How did Mr. Brooks get the evidence so quickly?”

  Dunn smiled secretively. “He didn’t. I did. I know my way around the back streets even in a small town like this,” he said surprisingly. “I knew the documents had to be forged, so I went looking for the man best suited to do the forging at a price Pike could afford. I called in a favor and found him. It’s all in a day’s work.” He nodded toward the Culhanes. “You’ll have my bill in the mail. I’ll collect Brooks and we’ll be on the next train to New York.”

  “See what I told you?” Brant asked Cal, after he’d added his thanks to Cal’s and Dunn had left. He gave his son a fatherly pat on the back. “This case was a piece of cake to Dunn. He’s much more at home in criminal cases. I’ve seen him send witnesses to the nearest bar.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me at all,” Cal agreed. “But somehow, Dunn doesn’t look like a lawyer,” he added thoughtfully.

  “Well, he didn’t start out that way,” King said as he joined them, with Nora lagging behind. “He was a gun-fighter in Dodge. His mother begged him to go away and get an education before he was killed in the streets, and by some miracle, he listened. He went to New York, read law at Harvard and became a practicing attorney.” He chuckled at Cal’s expression. “He can still handle a Colt, you know. Shot a man in Denver just last year for pulling a gun on him in court.” He shook his head. “I’m not surprised that the judge recognized him. Most judges know him, even out here.”

  Cal whistled through pursed lips. “Well!” He turned to face his wife, reluctantly. She was staring at him with eyes that were demanding explanations and blood all at the same time.

  “Oh, Nora,” he said heavily. “At first I didn’t want to tell you, and then I didn’t know how to tell you.”

  She turned to Brant with the shreds of her dignity. “Thank you for coming to his aid,” she said. “At least he will have an oil well to keep him company for the rest of his life.”

  “Now, now,” Brant said gently. “I know it’s a shock, but he had his reasons. It was my fault, really. I wanted him to help your uncle get that ranch back on its feet, but he wouldn’t take advice from any of us. Cal was the only way left to keep him from losing it all over again.” He shrugged. “I hate to see a good rancher go down. His is one of several ranches we own, but I had a soft spot for him. So blame me, not Cal, for the deception.”

  Nora’s eyes were pained. “He let me think he was a working cowboy,” she said. “He took me to a cabin that would be too spartan for a convict. I lost my baby because of it…!”

  She turned, weeping, and ran out of the building.

  “Go after her!” King said harshly.

  Cal did, without further urging. He’d never felt quite so terrible in his life. The day of reckoning had come at last, and he didn’t know how to justify what he’d done. He couldn’t. She was right about the cost of his deception. It didn’t matter whose fault it was, he was the man she was going to blame.

  He found her packing. It wasn’t even surprising. He took off his hat and sat down heavily in an armchair to watch her with dull, lifeless eyes.

  She glanced toward him. Her eyes were red, like her face. She turned back to her chore, and slammed clothes into the trunk with no thought of the wrinkles she was creating in them. They had moved into the hotel in town. All her things were here now.

  “Do you have no excuse for me?” she demanded breathlessly. “No justification, no glib explanation for concealing your identity so completely from me over the months we have spent together?”

  “I have no defense whatsoever,” he agreed heavily. “At first I hid it because Chester was not to know that I was there on my family’s business. Then, when you seemed so arrogant about my lack of social status, I kept up the deception in a halfhearted effort to make you accept me as I was.” He stared at his dusty boot. “When I accomplished that, I was too ashamed to tell you the truth. You would not have lost the baby if I had not played the fool.”

  She paused to look at him. He looked shattered, and her soft heart overcame her burst of bad temper. “Forgive me. I should not have said so terrible a thing to you. It was the shock of learning that my husband is not who I thought he was. I was a terrible snob, was I not, Cal?” she added sadly. “Perhaps I needed a lesson in humility. And it was the fever as much as the work that cost us our child. I don’t blame you. It was God’s will. I know it in my heart as much as you do.”

  He averted his face. “Perhaps. That doesn’t assuage my guilt. I did want to tell you the truth, Nora. It’s just that I knew that you would leave me if I did, and I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

  She turned back to him, her eyes wide, astonished at the expression on his face. “Leave you!” she exclaimed.

  His breath caught with exquisite joy. She looked shocked. “You’re not leaving me?” he exclaimed. “But you’re packing!”

  “Of course I’m packing,” she muttered as she stuffed one last suit into the case.

  “Why?”

  She looked at him as if he were hopelessly backward. “How can I travel without my clothes? I am going to meet your mother, after all.”

  He smiled. “You are?”

  “It no longer matters if you’re ashamed of me,” she said angrily. “I wish to know where you live and everything else there is to know about you.”

  He was out of his chair in a flash. He had her off the ground in his arms and he was kissing her. She clung, moaning softly, as he sat back down in
the chair and turned her in to his chest.

  “Of course I’m not ashamed of you! I never was. I lied to save my pride.” He buried his face in her neck. “I wanted you to love me as I was, regardless of what you thought me.”

  “And I did. You are a silly man,” she said against his devouring mouth, “if you think I would leave you now. I love you far too much, and my monthly is over a week late, and I lost my breakfast this morning! Why, Cal!” she exclaimed.

  He averted his face, but not before she had seen the faint glitter in his eyes that denoted a shockingly sudden lack of control.

  “Oh, my darling,” she whispered tenderly, pressing close. She turned his face to hers and kissed his wet eyes with lips that were breathlessly tender.

  “It’s my fault. It was too soon,” he began, fearful for her health.

  “Bosh! I’m as strong as a horse, and I want this baby so much. I shall be fine.” She kissed him again, coaxing until he kissed her back and some of the tension left his body. “Stop worrying, can’t you? It was not anyone’s fault that I became pregnant, it is an occasion for joy! I love you!” she whispered. “I love you, I love you….”

  He stopped the words hungrily with his mouth, overcome by joy and fear and, finally, unbearable pleasure. For a long time, she couldn’t manage to get any more words out.

  A loud knock on the door finally broke them apart. Cal took a minute to get his breath before he stood up slowly, still holding Nora possessively in his arms, and went to answer it.

  “Open the door,” he whispered, brushing her mouth with his.

  “Put me down.”

  He shook his head, smiling.

  Laughing delightedly, she reached down and turned the doorknob. He moved back to let his brother open it.

  King’s eyebrows shot up. He looked from one of them to the other. “I thought you might need some help convincing her not to leave,” he remarked. He grinned. “Stupid idea, really. You and I think alike.”

  “What a handy thing to know,” Nora mused. “I shall have to speak to your wife and we can correspond when one of you becomes hopelessly stubborn.”

  King’s eyes widened.

  Cal shook his head. “You may know me, but you do not know her,” he said. “I fear that we have stormy seas ahead of us.”

  “Indeed.”

  “Please go away,” Nora said politely. “My husband is groveling. I quite enjoy watching him grovel, and I am selfish enough to want to prolong it. When he has groveled to my complete satisfaction, I should love to come downstairs so that all of us can have a meal to celebrate our victory and discuss our forthcoming journey to…” she looked from King’s amused face to a beaming Cal. “Where are we going, dear?”

  “El Paso,” he said.

  “El Paso? The desert!”

  He glowered at her. “I told you, the desert is beautiful when you get to know it.”

  “Yes, it is,” King agreed. He pulled his hat back over his eyes and stuck his hands in his pockets. “I’ll, uh, tell Dad you’ll be along. Meanwhile, I think the three of us will wander down to your drilling site with your foreman and take a look at the operation. If you think we have time,” he added, tongue in cheek.

  Cal could be just as deadpan as his brother when he wished. He nodded solemnly. “We’ll wait for you in the restaurant, if you’re not back,” he said. King nodded.

  “Mr. Culhane,” Nora called worriedly when he started to leave.

  He turned. “King,” he corrected with a smile.

  “His real name is Jeremiah Pearson Culhane,” Cal offered. “But only Amelia gets to call him that. I heard she usually does it when he’s made her mad. She throws things, so don’t ever get between them when they fight.”

  King looked indignant. “I’ll do you an equal favor one day.”

  “I expect you will,” Cal said irrepressibly.

  “King, then,” Nora continued. “Do you think Pike will really leave, that he won’t try to blow up the well or set it ablaze or anything?”

  “Mr. Pike has boarded the train for Kansas City,” King informed her pleasantly. “In fact, he boarded it just minutes ago with several escorts, one of whom was wearing a badge. It seems that Mr. Pike has a case pending against him in Texas that he neglected to mention. Something involving an assault charge in a dispute over a silver mine along the border. The sheriff kindly agreed to look the other way as long as Pike removed himself from Texas immediately.”

  “Why, how fortuitous!” Nora exclaimed. “And this charge simply walked up and presented itself?”

  “Not exactly. Mr. Dunn cabled a gentleman he knows. Only minutes later, the sheriff received the wire about Pike.” He pursed his lips. “Oddly, Pike seemed to know nothing of the incident in question.”

  “Oh, my goodness!” Nora burst out.

  “Mr. Dunn makes a particularly bad enemy,” King replied, turning. “I’ll, uh, see you both for dinner in the hotel restaurant.”

  Cal lowered her so that she could close the door and lock it. She looked up at him curiously.

  “Your family has some of the oddest sorts of acquaintances….”

  “Wait until you meet your in-laws,” Cal said, his hands going to the buttons on her suit. “I have a brother-in-law who was a Texas Ranger. He is now a deputy sheriff in El Paso. Amelia’s sister-in-law is the daughter of one of the most notorious bandits ever to come out of Mexico. I could go on,” he added with a grin. “One of our wranglers used to rob banks….”

  Her hands lifted to guide his to the next button while her eyes gleamed with excitement. “You can tell me later,” she whispered. “Right now I have expectations of something far more exciting than tall tales.”

  TALL TALES INDEED, he thought several hours later, sitting with her in the restaurant while she charmed his father and brothers and they discussed going to El Paso a day or so later. First Cal had put Mick in charge of the well and told him, and the other men, about the share he was giving them in the venture. They were ecstatic, and Cal knew that he had no more worries about the safety of his operation. He had also been contacted by the Rockefeller representative, with whom he was to meet the next morning.

  “Cal has been telling me lies,” she mentioned suddenly. “About bank robbers and desperadoes and Texas Rangers, all in your family.”

  The men looked at one another, and Brant smiled warmly. “Well, Nora, I guess you’ll just have to come out to West Texas with us and see for yourself what’s true and what’s not.”

  “Why, that is exactly what I had in mind,” she replied with a smile.

  Chapter Twenty

  THE TRIP TO EL PASO WAS long, but Nora hadn’t a single complaint. She’d never been so happy, upset stomach and all, and Cal was beaming at the prospect of fatherhood.

  Amelia and Enid were waiting for them at the depot, and after the introductions and the ride to the ranch, Nora found herself firm friends with the women long before the men came back in from their wanderings around the ranch to eat the evening meal.

  “You’ll meet Maria tomorrow,” Enid assured her. “She and Quinn have been in Mexico, where their daughter was baptized by a priest in the village where she used to live. We wanted to go, but we felt it would be an intrusion. They keep to themselves. Maria isn’t really Mexican, but she was raised to be, and she’s still a little shy with us because her adoptive father was an outlaw.” She grinned. “She’s coming around, day by day.”

  Nora had learned that Cal’s tall tales weren’t so tall. It was fascinating meeting so many people whose real lives were more interesting than her dime novels. She’d learned things about her husband and his childhood that still made her feel faint. It was a miracle, in fact, that he’d lived to reach his present age! Nora felt like the tenderfoot he’d once called her, but as she learned more about the ranch and his people, the more secure she felt.

  She liked these people. Enid did her own cooking and cleaning, although she had plenty of help from the cowboys’ wives on offer. The ranch was hu
ge, much bigger and more efficient than her uncle’s, and it took no time at all to see, from the contents of the house and the way Enid and Amelia dressed, that money was no rare commodity here. The warm reception she was given made her feel right at home, and the last of her doubts vanished.

  She adored Amelia’s baby boy. She spent long hours holding him and dreaming of the birth of her own child. Her one sorrow was that her father and mother would probably never see it. They had not tried to contact her again, nor had she appealed a third time to them. It was just as well, she thought, that she and Cal would be living away from Uncle Chester and Aunt Helen. It was unavoidable that Helen would correspond with her only sister, Nora’s mother. The wound would never heal if it was constantly reopened.

  Cal noticed her preoccupation and asked her about it that evening when they were alone in their room. She confessed reluctantly that she was still sad about the rift between her parents and herself.

  “Your people will come around,” he promised her. He grinned. “Meanwhile, I expect your uncle and aunt are on the verge of paying them a visit to do a little chafing.”

  She asked what he meant, but he waved her away with a laugh and refused to talk about it.

  A letter came for her two weeks later, from her aunt Helen. “We have been east to see your mother and father,” she wrote. “They are much changed, Nora, and I think you will find them chastened and eager for you to visit. Do think about it.” There was a postscript to the effect that no apologies would be expected, either. “And Chester said to tell your husband that he said nothing to your father about who your husband was.”

  That tickled Nora, who had sweet dreams imagining a meeting between her husband and her parents now, with Cal’s revealed social status. “Imagine Aunt Helen going to visit Mother,” Nora mused curiously. “Why, after her last trip to Virginia, she told me that she would never have the nerve to go back. They were, uh, rather haughty toward her and Uncle Chester,” she added sheepishly.

  “That will no longer be the case, of course,” Cal returned.