by Janet Dailey
Walking to her pile of clothes, she picked up her jeans, aware that Guy had risen to his feet. He came up behind her, his hands settling on the curve of her shoulders.
“I wish we had gotten lost. I don’t want this afternoon to end.”
Diana wanted to turn into his arms, be held close and be comforted, to ease the crazy, empty ache she felt inside, but that would be taking unfair advantage of a love she didn’t return and doubted that she ever would. She lowered her head, her fingers digging into the denim material.
“But you’re right,” Guy sighed and let his hands fall away. “We have to go back.”
“Yes,” she agreed tightly and began to dress.
There was little said during the short ride back to the ranch yard, both keeping silent for their own reasons. The presence of others at the stable kept everything casual as they unsaddled their horses. Diana escaped to the ranch house without having to listen to more ardent declarations from Guy.
After sharing a quiet dinner with the Major, Diana sat alone in the long living room-dining room combination. Her father had gone to his room, intending to read for a while, then have an early night. She felt restless and fidgety, half-expecting Guy to come to the house that evening, and she tried to think of what she could say to him.
Footsteps sounded on the gravel path leading to the front porch. Diana hurried to the screen door, seeking to keep Guy outside, where his voice or their conversation couldn’t be accidentally overheard by the Major.
Through the wire mesh, Diana saw the tall figure emerging from the night’s darkness, the lean physique reminiscent of Guy’s. Only it wasn’t Guy. It was Holt, and she stiffened as he walked up the porch steps.
“The Major has gone to bed,” she informed him before he could speak. “You’ll have to wait until morning to talk to him.”
The light shining from inside the house didn’t reach his face, but there was a deadly threat in his voice when he spoke. “I’m not here to see the Major. I came to see you.”
A little pulse hammered in her throat. “We’ll talk out here.” Diana opened the screen door and stepped onto the porch. “I don’t want the Major to be disturbed.”
“Fine,” Holt agreed.
Diana walked past him to the far end of the porch and leaned against the railing, aware that he followed, his gaze never leaving her. A gold moon was rising in the east, spotlighting the jagged peaks of the mountains. Night was beginning to lower the temperature, and the faint breeze was cool against her skin.
“What do you want?” Behind the bored impatience of her voice, Diana was wary.
“Stay away from my son.”
The coldly flat order sent a wave of crimson heat over her skin, but the betraying flood of embarrassment was hidden by the night’s shadows. She managed a falsely incredulous laugh.
“What a ridiculous thing to ask,” she declared, ignoring the fact that it hadn’t been a request. “Guy and I have known each other for years.”
“I had a feeling when you came back that it wouldn’t be long before you would be up to your old tricks, but it never occurred to me that your object would be my son.”
“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Diana had started out on a course where there was no turning back. She had to try to brazen it out, taking the chance that Guy had not hinted how he felt about her and possibly that she returned the feeling.
But that hope was brutally dashed by Holt’s response. “I am referring to your seduction number this afternoon.” At her wide-eyed look of alarm, his hard mouth curved into a thin smile. “Yes, I happened to pass by the irrigation pond on my way back to the ranch. I saw you and Guy. I hope you aren’t going to try to convince me that you nearly drowned and he was pumping the life back into you.”
Diana was first hot with shame, then cold with rage. “What’s the matter? Are you jealous because I considered your son more of a man than you?”
“Hardly.” He was contemptuous of her suggestion. “When I want sex, I find a woman, not a selfish bitch with hot pants.”
“Then what’s your problem?” she taunted him, trying not to reel from his hurting insults. “Or are you just upset because I stole your son’s virginity? Are you playing the outraged parent?”
“I’m not concerned with his lost virginity. It would have happened sooner or later. I’m here to make sure the whoring brat that took it stays away from him in the future.”
Her brittle control snapped. Her arcing hand slapped his face with all the force at her command. That last time she had done that, Holt had retaliated in kind, and Diana was now prepared to elude his striking hand.
But the target of his lightning-quick hands wasn’t her face. She ducked futilely as he seized her shoulders and yanked her hard against his chest. The air left her lungs in a stunned breath. A constricting band of steel circled her waist while rough fingers twined around a handful of hair to jerk her head back.
Before Diana could utter a sound, her lips were being ground against her teeth by the driving force of his. The hard, punishing pressure was demeaning, ravaging her mouth the way a man would take his pleasure from a whore. There was a buzzing in her ears, humiliation racing through her veins. Only the rough hand at the back of her head kept her neck from snapping under the force of his kiss.
Her hands strained against his chest, but the effort to gain breathing space arched her hips more fully against him, molding her lower body to the hard, male contour of his. He was sapping her strength, her heart hammering like a mad thing while his beat steadily beneath her hands.
As swiftly as her lips had been seized, they were released. His hands moved to her waist, holding her firmly, as if he expected her to bolt. She lifted her head to glare at him. Mirrored in his silver eyes was her own angrily resentful expression and nothing more. Diana pressed the back of her hand to her throbbing mouth, wanting to scrub away all memory of his derogatory kiss.
“What’s the matter?” His lip curled in a derisive smile. “Didn’t you like that? Didn’t you want me to kiss you?”
“No!” she hissed, disgust for him flashing in the violent blue of her eyes.
“Liar!” Any trace of amusement, contemptuous or otherwise, vanished from his face. His hand closed around her wrist, capable of snapping it at the slightest provocation. Holt jerked it so her hand was in front of her face. “If you hadn’t wanted it, you could have used your claws.”
Diana went hot with the memory of his instructions about warding off unwanted advances. She tried to twist free of his talon-hard grip and accidentally brushed her hip against him. The searing contact with the hard male shape of him ended her struggle.
Pressing close, Diana taunted him. “And you wanted me, didn’t you?”
Holt pushed her away, rejecting her suggestion as he physically rejected her person. “I’m warning you to stay away from Guy. I won’t have him mixed up with the likes of you.”
“That isn’t for you to decide,” she retorted, determined to defy him to her last breath.
“He’s not in your league. I am not going to let you amuse yourself with my son. Stay away from him.”
He pivoted on his heel and walked from the porch, disappearing into the night. Hatred welled in her throat, a bitter and vile thing. It choked Diana into silence, leaving the last word to him.
Chapter VI
Shouting voices from outside filtered into her bedroom. Diana moaned and glanced at the clock on her dresser. It was barely six A.M. She rolled onto her side, trying to shut out the sounds of activity.
“Doesn’t anybody know it’s Sunday morning?” she grumbled.
It had been midnight by the time she and the Major had gotten home. Some friends of her father had given a party the night before to celebrate their twenty-fifth anniversary. Diana hadn’t wanted to go, had no desire to see whatever old friends who might attend, but the Major had been insistent. He had decided she was isolating herself and needed to get out. When he threatened to attend the party without
her, Diana had given in, concerned that he would overdo it if she wasn’t there to keep an eye on him.
In the end, it had turned out to be a good thing. It provided her with an ironclad excuse to turn Guy down when he asked her to go into town with him. Not that she was obeying Holt’s order of three nights ago to stay away from him, because she wasn’t. She simply didn’t want to become emotionally involved with Guy, nor did she want to hurt him. It meant walking a fine line. So far she had succeeded, but Diana was aware her success was mostly due to the subtle intervention by Holt and the enormous workload he had put on Guy to keep him busy from dawn until dusk, leaving Guy little free time to pursue Diana.
A sense of urgency seemed to be in the voices coming through her window, echoed by the slamming of the screen door. Finally, curiosity overcame Diana’s irritation. Throwing back the covers, she brushed the tousled black hair from her face and walked to the window.
All the activity seemed to be centered somewhere near the stables, beyond her view. Diana glimpsed the Major striding in that direction, the hurried air about him being that of a man reacting to an alarm.
Something was wrong. With a frown, Diana slipped into her cotton robe and slid her bare feet into a pair of sturdy slippers. She was buttoning the last button on her robe as she half-ran and half-walked out of the house.
There was movement everywhere about the stables, yet the commotion seemed to be revolving around the stud pens. Diana hurried in that direction, her nerves stretching thin as the apprehension mounted. Was one of the stallions sick? Had someone been hurt?
Between the solid planks of the corral, Diana saw the Major standing inside with Holt and two others. The gate stood open and she hurried through it.
“What’s wrong? What happened?” The questions were barely out when Diana saw the answer. The bay stallion lay on the ground, inert in death. “My God! Shetan!” She took an instinctive step toward the body.
The one step closer permitted her to see the chunks that had been gouged out of the once sleek hide of his chest and neck. The ground around the mound of horseflesh was stained with blood, the juglar vein torn. Her stomach churned in a sickening rush of nausea that sent her reeling away from the sight. Diana stumbled to the Major’s side and felt a comforting arm circle her shoulders. She buried her face into his chest, trying to shut out the mental image of the battered stallion.
One of the hands called out, “The vet’s on his way, Holt!” And Diana’s dazed mind wondered why. The stallion was already dead.
“It’s incredible,” the Major said, his chest heaving in a sigh. “How badly hurt is Fath?”
The name pierced her consciousness. Path was the chestnut stallion the Major had purchased several years ago as an eventual replacement for the aging bay stud.
“It’s hard to say,” Holt answered. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”
“How on earth did it happen?” the Major mused aloud.
Diana lifted her head from his shoulder, realizing that somehow the two stallions had gotten together. She had heard stories of stallion fights, but she had never witnessed the result of their destructive prowess.
“I swear I latched the gates last night.” There was a sickly pallor to Guy’s face as he defensively answered the Major’s question.
“I wasn’t suggesting you didn’t,” her father responded.
“Both gates were securely latched this morning,” Holt inserted.
Diana glanced around the corral, avoiding the spot where the dead stallion lay. The earth was churned up in evidence of pawing hooves, the scene of the fight. One section of the fence had a splintered top rail, the thick board hanging to one side.
“ ‘Pears to me,” Rube joined them, “that the chestnut kept circlin’ his pen until he found a weak rail. There’s hoof marks on the boards where he’d reared up and tried out some rails. When he found the right one, he pounded at it ’til he knocked it loose, then came over here an’ did the same thing to get inside the bay’s pen. ‘Pears to me that’s the only way it could ’ave happened.”
“The flaw in that, Rube,” Holt said dryly, “is why did Fath jump back out of the pen after he had killed Shetan, and why didn’t he return to his own corral? Considering that crippling wound to his right foreleg, I find it hard to believe he could have jumped out of the corral after the fight.”
“It is puzzlin’,” Rube shook his head and spat out a stream of tobacco juice.
“Didn’t anyone hear the fight?” Diana questioned. “Couldn’t they have stopped it?”
“It happened last night,” Holt said, as if that explained it. “Evidently sometime before midnight, since that seems to be about the time everyone began coming back to the ranch.”
The Major frowned. “I thought I understood that Guy was staying at the ranch last night to keep an eye on things while the rest of you went into town.”
Holt didn’t answer, but cast a piercing look at Guy, who shifted. “I got drunk, sir,” Guy mumbled. “I think I passed out around nine or ten. I’m sorry, sir.”
“I am disappointed in you, Guy.”
Diana knew the effectiveness of those few words of reprimand from the Major and how heavily they weighed. She felt a measure of responsibility, too, for what had happened. She guessed that Guy’s drinking had been in some way connected with her and the fact she had refused his invitation last night.
“It’s done and it can’t be undone,” Holt stated. “Where did you put the mare?”
Guy looked at him blankly. “What mare?”
“Cassie, the four-year-old mare that was here to be bred to Shetan for her first foal,” he answered impatiently.
“She wasn’t here when I found them. I forgot she was supposed to be. I didn’t even look for her,” admitted Guy, a stricken expression taking over his features.
With a muffled curse, Holt turned and walked to the section of the corral with the broken rail. Diana’s gaze followed, searching the desert pasture that extended beyond the stud pens. All she saw were the rusty-red coats of grazing Hereford cattle. The Major’s prize-winning bay mare wasn’t in sight.
“Look at this,” Holt called over his shoulder. Diana, together with her father, Guy, and Rube, walked to the fence where Holt stood. In his hand, he held some short white strands. “I found them caught on the wood,” he said.
“Horse hairs,” Rube identified. “Probably left there when the stallion jumped the fence.”
“Yes, but white hairs?” Holt questioned. “One stallion was a bay, so was the mare, and the other stallion was a chestnut. So where did the white hairs come from?”
“The chestnut has white markings,” the Major pointed out.
“Or maybe one of them white-faces came up and rubbed their head against the rail,” Rube suggested.
“Yes,” Holt agreed, but in a tone that wasn’t satisfied with either explanation. “Guy, go take a look at the tracks on the other side of the fence,” he ordered. “See if you can pick up the mare’s. She was wearing shoes.”
Guy vaulted over the fence, anxious to make amends for last night. Holt didn’t wait to see how successful his son was. Instead, he walked over to where the dead stallion lay and crouched down beside the mangled form with a composure that irritated Diana. She had to look away as he calmly began inspecting the death-stiffened body.
Several minutes later, Holt straightened and came back to the group, his expression grim as he met the Major’s look. “More white hairs,” he announced.
“Where?” the Major asked,
“There were a few clinging to the bay’s forelegs and around his muzzle,”
“What are you gettin’ at?” Rube frowned. “You ain’t sayin’—”
At that moment, Guy came running back to the corral. “I found the mare’s tracks!” he called, puffing slightly when he reached the fence, a faintly triumphant light in his eyes. “She’s headed straight for the mountains, but there’s another set of tracks along with hers. I got the impression she was being driven,
”
“Aw, come on, Holt. You ain’t thinkin’ what I think you’re thinkin’, are ya?” Rube declared.
“You don’t believe she was stolen, do you?” Diana glanced at Holt.
He ignored her question to ask Guy, “The second set of tracks—was the horse wearing shoes?”
“No, and it had a peculiar stride.”
“To answer your question”—Holt turned to Diana—“I think the mare was stolen, but not by anybody on horseback.”
“You’re sayin’ some wild stallion came down an’ took that mare.” Rube shook his head. “You’re even thinkin’ that wild stallion is the one that fought with ours. In the first place, no goddamned pint-sized wild stallion could do the damage you’re claimin’ this one did. And in the second place, there ain’t no goddamned white stallion in these parts. You and me rode all over lookin’ for that mare a couple of days ago. We didn’t see no white horse, an’ a white horse would stand out like an eyesore.”
“The stallion could be an offspring of some ranch stock gone wild, which would give him some size. And he wouldn’t necessarily have to be white. He could be a pinto with a lot of white to him,” Holt reasoned.
“But if it is a wild horse, why would it come here?” Diana frowned. “The wild stallions have never bothered with our mares before.”
“That doesn’t eliminate the possibility,” the Major responded to her question. “This stallion might be too young or too old to win any wild mares from other herd stallions. The evidence seems to point to Holt’s conclusion.”
“It might also explain the disappearance of the other mare,” Holt added.
“We’ll have to contact the Bureau,” the Major stated.
“Why involve the BLM?” Holt asked in smiling challenge. “We don’t know for a fact that a wild horse has anything to do with our missing mares. There is no reason for the government to search for our strays.”