by Janet Dailey
“He spooked at a rabbit and I fell.”
“That precious stallion that you are so eager to save almost made her victim number two!” Holt snapped.
“Holt scared him away,” Diana added quickly when Guy paled at the announcement.
“Were you hurt?”
“It’s a little late to be concerned about that now, isn’t it? When you weren’t around to help,” Holt challenged.
“Not a scratch,” she assured Guy. “Just a few bruises from the fall.”
“Did it ever occur to you, Holt, that if you hadn’t gone after that stallion in the first place, there wouldn’t have been a chance of her getting hurt?” Guy angrily countered the challenge with one of his own.
“It occurred to me.” His hand gripped Diana’s elbow and propelled her toward the horse Guy held. The firmness of his control was transmitted through his touch. After giving her a leg up into the saddle, Holt took the reins from Guy, handed them to her, and walked to his own horse.
“I suppose you’re going after the stallion now,” Guy snapped.
Before answering, Holt mounted and rode over to the two of them, his eyes a wintry gray. “No, tomorrow. We’re going back to camp now.” He moved his horse out and they followed.
“Goddamn it, Holt! You don’t have to kill him!” Guy rode up level with him, twisting in the saddle to confront Holt.
“We’ve been over this, Guy.”
“You don’t have to kill him,” he repeated. “You can catch him. And if he can’t be tamed, then you can turn him loose, transport him miles away from here.”
“That doesn’t solve the problem. It only puts it on someone else’s doorstep.” Holt nudged his horse into a canter, bringing an abrupt end to the discussion.
Guy fell back to ride beside Diana. “Damn him!” He glowered at the ramrod-straight figure, riding so easily in the saddle.
“He’s convinced he’s doing the right thing. You can’t change his mind, Guy.”
“And you?” Fiery blue eyes were turned on her. “Are you convinced he’s right? You’ve gone over to his side, haven’t you?”
“Does there have to be sides?” Diana tried to dodge the question.
“You know damned well what I mean. Why did you help him? Why did you go after that stallion when he told you to? His hands were tied. He couldn’t do anything without us. Why didn’t you stay with me?” His barrage of angry accusations fell on her.
Diana tried to avoid a direct answer. “Does it matter?”
“Yes, it matters! And while you’re at it, you might try to explain why the two of you were so cozy before you saw me riding up. You were clinging to him like a leech!”
“I had just had the wits scared out of me not five minutes before,” she defended angrily. “Did you expect me to just shrug it off?”
“And that’s all it was?” He was derisively skeptical. “If you were so scared, why didn’t you run to me for comfort when I came? You know how much I care for you, how much I love you. But you just stayed glued to his side. Why?”
“You have no right to question me,” Diana warned.
Guy reached over and grabbed her reins, forcing her horse to stop. “I want to know what’s going on,” he demanded. “Here lately you’ve been leaping to his defense every time I mention his name, and you never give me a straight answer. I love you, and that gives me a right to know where you stand.”
“Let go of my horse,” she ordered and cast a glance at Holt, but so far he wasn’t aware they had fallen behind.
“Not until I find out. Are you with him, or with me?”
A surge of temper made Diana retort, “With him!” Guy’s possessive attitude had become more than she could take on top of all that had happened. “I love him!”
He recoiled as if she had slapped him, his complexion paling beneath his tan. “You’re lying!”
Diana immediately regretted her outburst. She knew how he felt. Why hadn’t she broken it to him more gently, with some of the compassion that had originally gotten her into this predicament with Guy? The anger faded from her face, intense sorrow darkening the blue of her eyes.
“I’m sorry, Guy. I truly never meant to hurt you.”
“You’re lying!” He denied her statement again, not heeding her abject apology. “You can’t be in love with him! My God, he’s my father! You can’t—” He seemed to choke on his own rage, tears welling in his eyes.
“Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think I wouldn’t change it if I could?” Diana heard her own voice trembling. “Falling in love with Holt wasn’t something I planned. It was the last thing I wanted.”
“I don’t believe you.” He shook his head, gritting his teeth as waves of pain flashed across his face. “It can’t be true. You have always hated him. Not even the Major ...” Guy stared at her. “The Major,” he repeated. “That’s it, isn’t it? You’re saying this because it’s what the Major wants. He’s always treated Holt like a son. Now he wants you to make it legal, is that it?”
“No,” she denied. “What the Major wants has nothing to do with the way I feel. Not this time.”
“You’re lying!” The truth was too painful, and Guy rejected it.
“For your sake, I wish I were.”
He glared at her for another minute, then let go of her horse and yanked his away. Digging his spurs into its sides, he sent it racing across the valley, angling away from the direction Holt was taking. Holt reined in to wait for Diana.
“Where is Guy going?” he asked when she caught up with him.
“I . . .” Diana hesitated, not certain how much she wanted to tell him. “I think he wanted to be by himself for a while.” She felt his penetrating look, but Holt didn’t question her about Guy’s reasons for wanting solitude.
Back at camp, dusk was purpling into night and Guy still hadn’t rejoined them. Holt sat by the fire, seemingly unconcerned by his son’s absence, yet Diana saw his gaze seeking the source of every sound coming from the night’s shadows. Don straightened and stared into the darkness.
“Maybe we should go look for him,” he suggested. “He could be hurt.”
“We wouldn’t stand much of a chance trying to find him in the dark.” Holt didn’t move from his supposedly relaxed position. “He has his rifle. If he’s in trouble, he can signal us. He probably wandered farther from camp after that stallion than he realized. He’s probably camped somewhere for the night. He’s old enough to take care of himself. If there’s no sign of him by morning, we’ll look for him.”
“S’pose you’re right,” Don agreed and sighed. “Distances can be pretty deceiving out here. He probably didn’t give himself enough time to get back to camp before the sun went down.”
“Either way, there isn’t anything we can do about it tonight. We might as well get some sleep.”
“Right.” Don walked to his bedroll.
Like Holt, Diana was sitting on her bedroll, but she made no move to lie down beneath the blanket. She couldn’t sleep. And she wasn’t going to make any pretense of trying. Instead, Diana rose and added more wood to the fire, standing close to the flames. The radiating heat seemed incapable of warming the chill of apprehension shivering through her.
“Cold?” Holt was beside her, draping her blanket around her shoulders.
“Scared,” Diana whispered.
His hands remained on her shoulders, rubbing them gently. Across the fire, Don was rolled in the blanket, his back turned discreetly toward them. Diana relaxed under Holt’s soothing caress, swaying back against his chest. Unaccountably, she shivered and his hands tightened on her flesh.
“Let’s sit down.” The pressure of his grip both helped and forced her to the ground beside the fire. Using a saddle as a backrest, Holt gathered her blanket-bundled figure into his arms to rest against his shoulder in the crook of one arm, a comfortable and familiar position. “It was a frightening experience this afternoon.”
Diana tipped her head slightly on his arm to look up at h
im. “Were you scared?”
There was a disturbing darkness to his eyes as the muscle in his jaw constricted tautly, then relaxed. “You know I was,” was his low and simple answer.
Diana didn’t pursue that leading statement to its logical conclusion. She couldn’t; not yet. She quieted the leaping of her heart and looked away from the compelling male features into the darkening sky.
“Where do you suppose he is?”
Holt didn’t have to ask who. “He’s out there somewhere. He’s all right. Sulking, no doubt.”
“Sulking?” Diana thought that a peculiar word choice.
“Yes, sulking.” His hand smoothed the hair on top of her head. “Whenever you didn’t do what Guy wanted, he used to sulk for hours—in his room, or the hayloft, somewhere private. Whenever he got over his anger, he’d come out. And he was angry today because you helped me try to get the stallion.”
“Yes, partly,” she admitted and levered onto an elbow to look at him squarely, her blue eyes rounded and troubled. “Holt, I was with Guy only one time. I know you think there were others, but there was only that once.”
“No, don’t, Diana.” A frown of irritation darkened his face. “Leave that in the past, where it belongs.”
“No, I’d rather try to make you understand than have you imagining.” She rushed on before he could stop her. “When I came back here, there were all those ugly stories about my divorce. I thought I had escaped all that, but I hadn’t. And it felt like everyone was looking at me as if . . . Then there was Guy, always being so kind and considerate, adoring and gentle in his sensitive way. I remembered the way I had treated him, used him to get at you. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant memory. But here he was telling me that I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever known. I needed that. I was starving for it. I tried to pay for what I took from him. Afterward, when he told me he loved me and started talking about getting married, I . . . realized I had made things worse and I didn’t love him, but he kept insisting I would. He just wouldn’t believe me today, either.”
“Is that what you argued about?”
Diana didn’t immediately answer, shifting to lie back in the crook of his arm. His fingers plucked at the folds of the blanket.
“I. . . told him I was in love with you.”
Everything seemed to become very still. “Are you?”
“Yes.” Her voice was remarkably steady.
“And Guy didn’t believe you?”
“No. He accused me of lying, of pretending to care for you to please the Major. But that isn’t true, Holt. For the first time in my life, I don’t care what the Major wants or what would make him happy. I just know I love you.” Diana hesitated. “I know you only want me sexually and I—”
His fingers twisted cruelly into her hair, forcing her around. “I want you sexually and every other damned way,” Holt muttered, his gray eyes racing over her startled face. “God knows I’ve tried to hate you. I even tried to pretend the lust I felt was a way to get revenge for all you’d done. But it isn’t simply lust or sex. I love you, Diana.”
She gave a little cry of breathless joy before his mouth crushed hers into silence. Their cup of life overflowed with the fullness of their love for each other. Wondrous contentment flooded through Diana when the kiss ended and his hand remained to gently and adoringly trace her features.
“I want us to be married, Diana,” he told her huskily. “When we get back, we’ll get the Major’s blessing and have a quiet little ceremony.”
“Yes.” She kissed the work-roughened skin of his hand.
“There will be talk, you know that,” Holt warned her. “Some damned nosy busybody is going to say I married you to get my hands on the Major’s ranch. They’ll say I married you for your money.”
“It’s true, isn’t it?” she teased, then sighed languidly. “I don’t care what they say. I don’t care what anybody says.” And she immediately knew that wasn’t true. Diana shivered. “What are we going to do about Guy?”
A grimness settled over his features. “There isn’t much we can do. Whatever happens is going to be up to him.”
“Holt, don’t go after the stallion tomorrow. We have the mares. Let the stallion go.”
“You know I can’t.” She heard the impatience in his voice. “If it isn’t tomorrow, it will be next week.”
“You don’t have to destroy him,” she argued. “For Guy’s sake, couldn’t you . . . catch him, take him to some other part of the country, and turn him loose to run free?”
“It wouldn’t solve—”
“I know it wouldn’t solve the problem,” Diana interrupted. “But don’t you see? It would be a gesture. Guy would have to realize that you spared the stallion’s life because it was what he wanted. It wouldn’t make up for . . . everything, but it would mean something. It isn’t too much to ask, is it?”
“No.” Holt took a deep breath and let it out slowly, his voice grim. “No, it isn’t too much to ask.”
“You’ll do it?”
“Yes, I’ll do it.” He nodded.
“Thank you.” Diana pressed a kiss into the palm of his hand, her fingers curling tightly around his.
“I just hope to hell Guy thanks me for it,” he muttered.
“He will.” But she wasn’t nearly as confident as she sounded. Any gratitude Guy might experience would never compensate for the damage their love would do to him. They both knew it.
Holt’s arms tightened around her. For the time being, Diana let herself dwell only on the fact that he returned her love. Morning and its problems would come soon enough. But at least they could face them together. She let her head rest on the pillow of his shoulder and closed her eyes.
The campfire began to flicker and die. There was only the glowing red embers in the night when a sound, a muffled footstep, awakened her. She started to open her eyes as even that dim light was blocked by something tall and dark. The arm around her waist tightened in warning, although the steady rhythm of Holt’s breathing hadn’t altered a fraction. He, too, had heard the sound and was cautioning her not to move.
Guy was standing there, staring at them. The air seemed to crackle with tension. Anger, hatred, jealousy—all seethed in the invisible undercurrents. He seemed to tower above them for an eternity. Diana wondered if he could hear the frightened drumming of her heart.
“You’re back.” Holt’s low voice seemed to vibrate through the charged air.
“Yes.” It was a savage hiss.
“Diana’s asleep.”
“So I see.” The sarcasm in Guy’s voice made Diana wince.
“You’d better get some sleep yourself,” Holt suggested, so very calm. “We’re going to catch the stallion in the morning. That isn’t very far off.” He put just the slightest emphasis on the word “catch.”
For a long minute, there was no response. Then Guy moved away to his empty bedroll. A shooting star flamed across the sky. In the grasses, a horse stomped and blew a soft, rolling snort. Diana lay for a long time, listening to all the comfortable night sounds, dreading morning, because she knew it hadn’t ended.
Chapter XXII
“You found your way back in the dark, I see,” Don commented as Guy joined them for coffee. “You must have cat eyes.”
Guy grunted a noncommittal answer and filled his tin mug from the speckled pot. A sullen grimness seemed permanently etched into his features. Studiously he avoided looking at either Diana or Holt, showing them with his brooding silence that nothing had been forgiven.
The sun had crested over the eastern horizon, a yellow ball that was brilliant but not yet blinding. Diana flipped the hotcake on the griddle, wondering if anyone besides Don had the appetite to eat this breakfast she was cooking.
One of the mares staked in the thick grass of the canyon floor whinnied softly. “Have you grained the horses this morning?” Holt addressed the question to Don.
“Not the mares. I grained the horses we would be riding before you saddled them.”
“Leave your rifle with Diana,” he told Don. “Since she’s staying behind to take care of the mares, she might need it.”
“Will do,” Don agreed and started to rise.
“You can get it after you eat.” Diana handed him a plate with a stack of steaming hotcakes in the center. She started pouring more batter on the griddle. “How many cakes do you want, Guy?”
The upward sweep of her gaze was caught by the icy and angry blue of his eyes. With a violent flick of his wrist, he dumped the remainder of his coffee into the fire, the sizzling hiss matching his temper.
“You can take your cakes and shove—”
“Guy! That’s enough!” The low command from Holt spun Guy around.
“And as for you, you—” Guy couldn’t seem to find words vile enough to describe Holt.
Another mare whinnied. The sound was followed by the milling of hooves and a second, throatier neigh. “My God!” Diana hear Don exclaim and turned to see the white stallion floating down the rear slope of the canyon toward the meadow where the mares were tethered.
“He’s come to get the mares back!” he declared. Before the last word was out, the stallion had reached the first mare and tried to drive it back the way he’d come. The rope held her, stretched taut with the horse’s attempts to obey the steed that had become her master. “With those teeth, he could bite the rope in two with a single snap of his jaws.”
“He isn’t a trick horse, so he doesn’t know that.” Holt started for the picket line where the saddled horses waited. The geldings were resting, aware of the intruding stallion in the canyon, their own impotence forgotten.
“Hey, Guy, give me your rifle.” Don motioned toward the Winchester next to Guy’s bedroll. “I’ve got a clear shot from right here.”
Diana’s glance ran swiftly to Holt, who hesitated, then on to Guy. Don’s statement had broken his enthrallment with the sight of the stallion. His hardened, yet very expressive features seemed to be waiting for Holt’s reaction.