by Diana Palmer
“He had an albino python, but when he married Tess, he gave it to a breeder. He visits Herman occasionally, but he wouldn’t ask Tess to live with it.”
“That’s nice.”
“Cag is a lot of things. Nice isn’t one of them.” He thought for a minute. “Well, maybe his wife likes him.”
“No wonder his best friend was a reptile.”
“You’re sounding a little winded,” he remarked. “That wheat straw in the corral wasn’t too much for you, was it? The wind was blowing pretty hard.”
She stared at him blankly. “Am I supposed to notice a connection between that and my being breathless?”
He lifted a shoulder. “Why don’t you use your medicine?”
She stilled. “What medicine?”
“Surely you know you’re asthmatic?”
She kept right on staring at him, her eyes turbulent, although he couldn’t see them. “I don’t—have asthma,” she said after a minute.
“No? You could have fooled me. You can’t walk ten steps without resting. At your age, that’s pretty unusual.”
Her jaw clenched and her pretty hands had a stranglehold on her purse as she stared out the window.
“No comment?” he persisted.
“Nothing to say,” she returned.
He would have pursued it, but they were already going down the main street in Jacobsville, barely a block from her hotel.
“My rental car,” she began.
“I’ll pick up Slim. He can drive it over here and ride back with me. Got the keys?”
She handed them to him warily. “I’m perfectly capable of driving. There’s nothing wrong with me!”
“I’d do it for anyone,” he said, acting puzzled. “You’ve had a long day. I thought you might be tired.”
“Oh.” She flushed a little as they reached the hotel and he pulled up in front of it. “I see. Well, thank you, then.”
He parked the truck, got out and went around to help her down from the high cab. She seemed to resent that, too.
He frowned down at her. “What put that chip on your shoulder?” he asked. “You’re overly sensitive about any sort of help.”
“I can get out of a truck by myself,” she said shortly.
He shrugged. “I do it for a great-uncle of mine,” he informed her. “He’s not old, but he has arthritis and appreciates a helping hand.”
She flushed. “You make me sound like a militant feminist!”
His pleasant tone had been deceptive. The eyes that met hers were ice-cold and completely unfriendly. “You’re about that unappealing, yes,” he said bluntly. “I like a woman who can command respect without acting like a shrew or talking down to men. You don’t like doors opened for you or concern for your health. Fine. I can assure you that I won’t forget again.” His jaw clenched. “My Anita was worth ten of you,” he added roughly. “She was spirited and independent, but she never had to prove she was a man in a dress.”
“Why didn’t you marry her, then?”
“She died,” he said, his eyes terrible to look into. He took a slow breath and turned away, weary of the whole thing. “She died,” he said again, almost to himself, as he went back toward the truck.
“Mr. Fenton…” she called hesitantly, aware that she’d hit a nerve and felt vaguely ashamed of herself.
He turned and glared at her over the hood of the truck. “I’ll phone the manager of the hotel in the morning and have him tell you where to meet me for the next stop on the tour. You can drive yourself from now on, Ms. Macho.”
He got into the truck, slammed the door, and took off in a cloud of dust.
She stared after him with conflicting emotions. It was important to stand on her own two feet, not to be babied or pitied. She’d gone overboard here, though, and she was sorry. He was grieving for his lost love. He must have cared very much. She wondered how the mysterious Anita had died, and why Mr. Fenton looked so tormented when he spoke of her.
She went into the hotel with slow steps, feeling every step she took, hating her weakness and her inability to do anything to correct it. She reached the desk and smiled forcibly as she asked for her key.
The clerk, a personable young woman, handed it to her with an indifferent smile and turned away, pointedly disinterested in the breathless, bedraggled guest before her.
Candy laughed to herself. It was such a contrast from Guy Fenton’s quiet concern. She hated having been so hateful to him, when he was only being compassionate. It was just that, over the years, she’d had so much pity and lurid curiosity, and so little love.
When she got to her room, she locked the door and fell onto the bed in a collapsed heap, without even taking her shoes off. A minute later, she was sound asleep.
The shots woke her. She sat up in bed, her heart hammering at her throat. She had a hand over her chest and she was shaking. More shots, more…
She was out in the open. There were no trees. There was nothing to hide behind. She felt a blow in her chest and touched it with her hand. It came away red, wet with fresh blood. The pain came behind it, wrenching pain. She couldn’t breathe….
She threw herself down onto the ground and held her hands over her head. She saw blood. She saw blood everywhere! People were screaming. Children were screaming. A man in a clown suit went down with a horrible piercing scream. Beside her, she saw her father double over and fall, his eyes closed, closed, closed forever….
Suddenly her eyes opened and she was aware that she’d been sobbing out loud. She was lying on the cold floor, on the carpet, doubled up like a frightened child. She sucked in wind, trying desperately to get enough air in her lungs to breathe. She dragged herself into a sitting position. She was wet with sweat, shivering, terrified. All those years ago, she thought, and the nightmares continued. She shivered once more, convulsively, and dragged herself back onto the bed, to lie with open eyes and a throbbing chest.
The nightmare was an old companion, one she’d managed for a long time. There were, fortunately, not so many maniacs running loose that her injury was a common one. But it did appeal to a certain type of person, who wanted her to recount that horror, to relive it. She couldn’t bear the least reference to her breathlessness, because of bad memories about the media, hounding her and the other survivors just after the tragedy that had taken so many innocent lives that bright, sunny spring day ten years ago.
She put her face in her hands and wished she could squeeze her head hard enough to force the memory out of it forever. Her mother had withdrawn into a cold, self-contained shell just after her husband’s funeral. Forced to assume control of the family ranch or give it up, she became a businesswoman. She hated cattle, but she loved the money they earned for her. Candy was an afterthought, a reminder of her terrible loss. She’d loved her husband more than anything on the face of the earth. Somehow she blamed Candy for it. The distance between mother and daughter had become a gap as wide as an ocean, and there seemed no way to bridge it. Candy’s job was a lifesaver, because it got her out of Montana, away from the mother who barely tolerated her.
Mostly she liked her job as a cattle industry publicist. Unlike her mother, she did love cattle and everything connected with them. She’d have enjoyed living on the ranch, but Ida hated the very sight of her and made no attempt to conceal it. It was better for both of them that Candy never went home these days.
She pushed back her damp hair and tried to think about the next day’s adventure. They were going to see a rancher named Cy Parks, from all accounts the most unfriendly rancher in Jacobsville, a man with no tact, no tolerance for strangers and more money than he knew what to do with. She was used to difficult men, so this would be just another check on her clipboard. But she was genuinely sorry that she’d been so unfriendly to Guy Fenton, who was only concerned for her. She should tell him about her past and then perhaps they could go from there. He wasn’t a bad man. He had a sense of humor and a good brain. She wondered why he wasn’t using it. He didn’t seem the sort to tie
himself for life to managing a feedlot. Surely he could have struck out on his own, started his own business.
She laid her head back on the damp pillow with a grimace. Only a few more hours to daylight. She had sleeping pills, but she never took them. She hated the very thought of any sort of addiction. She didn’t smoke or drink, and she’d never been in love. That required too much trust.
A glance at the bedside clock assured her that she had four hours left to stare at the light patterns on the ceiling or try to sleep. She closed her eyes with a sigh.
Guy Fenton, true to his word, called the motel and left a message for Candy, giving her directions to the Parks ranch and assuring her that he’d be there when she arrived. She was dreading the meeting after the way she’d acted. He probably thought the worst of her after yesterday. She hoped she could undo the damage.
She drove up to the sprawling wood ranch house. The surroundings were well-kept, the white fences were painted, the corrals looked neat and clean, there was a huge barn out back with a fenced pasture on either side of it, and the paved driveway had obviously been landscaped, because there were flowering plants and shrubs and trees everywhere. Either Mr. Parks had inherited this place or he loved flowers. She wondered which.
He came out onto the porch with Guy to meet her, unsmiling and intimidating. She saw at once that none of her former experiences with difficult men had prepared her to deal with this tiger.
“Cy Parks, Candace Marshall,” Guy introduced them curtly. “Ms. Marshall is interviewing local ranchers for a publicity spread in a national magazine to promote new ideas in beef management.”
“Great idea,” Cy said, but the smile he gave her wasn’t pleasant. “The animal rights activists will use the platform for protests and the antimeat lobby will demand equal space for a rebuttal.”
Candy’s eyebrows lifted at the frontal attack. “We’re trying to promote new methods,” she replied. “Not start a food war.”
“It’s already started, or don’t you watch daytime television?” Cy drawled coldly.
She let out a slow breath. “Welll,” she drawled, “we could just lie down on the highway voluntarily and let the other side pave us over.”
The corner of his wide mouth jerked, but there was no friendly light in those cold green eyes, and his lean face was harder than the tanned leather it resembled. He was Guy’s height, but even slimmer, built like a rodeo cowboy with a cruel-looking mouth and big feet. He kept his left hand in his pocket, but with his right, he gestured toward the nearest pasture.
“If you want to see my new bull, he’s that way,” Cy said shortly. He came down the steps with a slow, lazy stride and led the way to the fenced area. “He’s already won competitions.”
Candy stared through the fence at the enormous animal. He was breathtaking, for a bull, with his shiny red coat and eye-catching conformation.
“Nothing to say?” Cy chided.
She shook her head. “I’m lost for words,” she replied simply. “He’s beautiful.”
Cy made a rough sound in his throat, but he didn’t take her up on the controversial description.
“I thought you might want to mention your, shall we say unorthodox, pest control methods,” Guy prompted.
Cy’s black eyebrows jerked under the wide brim of his hat. “I don’t like pesticides,” he said flatly. “They mess up the groundwater table. I use insects.”
“Insects?” Candy had heard of this method, and she began to quote a magazine article she’d read recently about the use of beneficial insects to control pest insects on agricultural land.
“That’s exactly where I found out about it,” he replied, impressed. “I thought it was worth a try, and couldn’t be worse than the stuff we were already using. I was pretty surprised with the results. Now I’m going organic on fertilizer, as well.” He nodded toward the heifers in a far pasture, safely removed from his bull. “Shame to waste all that by-product of my growing purebred herd,” he added tongue-in-cheek. “Especially considering what city folk spend to buy it in bags. I don’t even have to waste plastic.”
Candy laughed. Her voice was musical, light, and Guy found himself staring at her. He hadn’t heard her laugh, but here was the town’s most hostile citizen and he amused her.
Cy didn’t smile, but his green eyes did. “You should smile more,” he said.
She shrugged. “Everybody should.”
He bent his head toward her. “I saw your mother a few weeks ago at a convention. She’s turned to ice, hasn’t she?”
Her face was shocked. “Well, yes, I suppose…”
“Can’t blame her,” he said heavily. He searched Candy’s eyes. “But it wasn’t your fault.”
“Everybody says that,” she said shortly, all too aware of Guy’s intent scrutiny.
“You should listen,” he said shortly.
She nodded. “Now about that bull,” she said, changing the subject.
Once on his favorite theme, he was good for several minutes. For a taciturn man, he was eloquent on the subject of that bull and all his good breeding points. He expanded until Candy had all she needed and walked quietly beside him while he showed them around the rest of the compound.
She was ready to leave shortly before Guy. She shook hands with Cy Parks, nodded cautiously toward Guy, got in her rental car and drove back to her motel.
Guy wasn’t in such a big hurry. He paused by the fender of his pickup truck and turned toward Cy. “What happened to her?”
“Ask her,” he said with customary bluntness.
“I could get more by asking the car she’s riding in.”
Cy shrugged. “I don’t guess it’s any real secret. About nine or ten years ago, her dad took her to a fast-food joint for lunch. You know, Dad and his little girl, sharing a meal and talking to each other. As it happened, that particular day the manager had fired an employee for drinking on the job. The guy was using drugs, too, but the manager didn’t know that. So, there’s everybody in the fast-food joint, talking and waiting for orders, including Candy and her dad, when this guy they fired comes in with an AK-47 assault rifle and starts shooting.”
Guy caught his breath audibly. “Was she hit?”
Cy nodded solemnly. “In the chest. Destroyed one of her lungs and she almost died. They removed the lung. Her dad wasn’t so lucky. He took a round in the face. Died instantly. They say that her mother never stopped blaming her for it. It was her idea to go there for lunch, you see.”
“And the mother assumed that if she hadn’t wanted to go, Candy’s father would still be alive.”
“Exactly.” He stared toward the small dust cloud Candy’s car was making in the distance. “She’s real touchy on the subject, they say. The media hounded her and her mother right after the shooting. Even now, some enterprising reporter turns up her name and wants to do an update. Her mother sued one of them for trespassing on her ranch and won. She doesn’t get bothered much. I imagine Candy does.” He shook his head. “I hear that she and her mother barely speak these days. Apparently she’s decided that if Mama doesn’t want her around, she’ll cooperate.”
“What’s her mother like?”
Cy pursed his lips. “The sort you can’t imagine ever getting married. Most men walk wide around her. She’s a sausage grinder. No inhibitions about speaking her mind, and that mind is sharp as a knife blade. Nothing like Candy, there,” he added thoughtfully. “She’s all bluff. Underneath, she’s marshmallow.”
Guy scowled. “How do you know that?”
“I recognize a fellow sufferer,” he said, and took his left hand out of his pocket.
Guy’s eyebrows jerked, just a little, when he saw it. It wasn’t disfigured, but it had very obviously been badly burned. The skin was slick and tight over it.
“Didn’t anyone tell you that my Wyoming ranch burned to the ground?” he asked the younger man. “I don’t suppose they added that I was in it at the time, with my wife and son?”
Guy felt sick to his stomac
h. It was painfully obvious that the other two members of the Parks family hadn’t survived.
Cy looked at his hand, his jaw taut and his face hard. He put it back in the pocket and looked at Guy with dead eyes. “It took three neighbors to drag me back out of the house. They sat on me until the firemen got inside. It was already too late. I’d gotten home late because of bad weather. There was a thunderstorm while I was finishing up some urgent paperwork in the office on one side of the house. The fire started in the other, where they were both asleep. Later, they said a lightning strike caused the fire.” He stared into space with terrible eyes. “My boy was five years…” He stopped, turned away, breathed until his voice was steady again. “I left Wyoming. Couldn’t bear the memories. I thought I’d start again, here. Money was no problem, I’ve always had that. But time doesn’t heal, damn it!”
Guy felt the man’s pain and understood it. “I was flying my fiancée around the county one afternoon,” he said evenly. “I thought I’d impress her with a barrel roll…but I stalled out. The plane went down into some trees and hung there by a thread with the passenger side facedown to the ground. I came to my senses and saw Anita there, hanging onto the seat with her feet dangling.” His eyes grew cold. “It must have been a good forty feet to the ground. She was crying, pleading with me not to let her fall. I reached down to catch her, and she let go with one hand to grab mine. She lost her hold.” His eyes closed. “I wake up in the night, seeing her face, contorted with fear, hear her voice crying out to me.” His eyes opened and he drew in a breath. “I know what hell is. I’ve lived in it for three years. You don’t get over it.”
Cy winced. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I, for you. But it doesn’t help, does it?” he asked on cold laughter. He removed his hat, ran a hand through his hair and put it back on again. “Well, I’ll go chase up the publicity lady and carry on.”
“Sure.”
He lifted a hand and got into the truck. There was really nothing more to be said. But commiseration did ease the sting of things. Just a little.