Rough Wrangler, Tender Kisses

by Jill Gregory

  “Fired.” Beneath an increasingly overcast Wyoming sky, Wade Barclay gave a crack of laughter. He flicked the reins and the horses picked up their pace to a fast trot, kicking up showers of dust as their hooves flew over the trail. They left the little town of Hope behind and headed west across a vast treeless plain.

  Caitlin twisted upon the seat to glare at him when he continued chuckling.

  “How nice that you find this amusing. I do hope you’re still laughing when you begin searching for another job, hat in hand, hungry, desperate—”

  “You’re a real charmer, aren’t you, princess?”

  “Stop calling me that. It’s Miss Summers to you. I’m your employer,” she retorted, grabbing the wagon seat suddenly as they jolted over a rut in the trail. “Or at least I am for the next little while—how long until we reach the ranch?”

  “’Bout two hours.” The way he said it made her realize that he felt this was going to be the longest two hours of his life. Caitlin felt exactly the same way. She could scarcely wait to reach the ranch and be rid of this man forever.

  “When we arrive you will immediately gather whatever personal belongings you possess and you will vacate my property. I’m sure that someone else will be there to attend to the horses and the . . . the supplies and . . . everything.”

  “Quite the boss lady, aren’t you?”

  “Not for long. Only until I can sell the ranch to the highest bidder.”

  “Don’t count on that.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  His next words chilled her. “No one is selling this ranch.”

  “You have nothing to say about it.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong.”

  Caitlin couldn’t bear it any longer. If there was a reason why she couldn’t sell the ranch, and Wade Barclay knew what it was, he was going to tell her here and now. She would burst if she waited until they reached the ranch. All she could picture in her mind was Becky’s face the last time she’d seen her—sweet and pale, and so very worried.

  And her voice—quavering so softly that damp gray afternoon when Caitlin had gone to the Davenport Academy to hug her and say good-bye.

  “But you will come back and take me away from this place, won’t you, Caity? I hate it here—everyone is whispering about me. About P-Papa. Even the teachers have been horrid.”

  “I’ll come get you as soon as I possibly can. Don’t pay any attention to the whispers. Just hold your head up high and pretend you don’t hear.” That’s what Caitlin had done, too. She knew from experience that it wasn’t easy.

  “I’ll try.” Becky had clung to her hand, giving it little pitiful squeezes. “Everything is going to be all right, isn’t it, Caity?”

  She’d kissed Becky’s cheek and promised her that everything would indeed be all right. And she would make it all right—no matter what.

  “Stop the horses right now.” Caitlin glared at Wade Barclay’s grim profile. “You keep giving me hints and warnings and being horridly mysterious without giving me any information. I refuse to put up with it a moment longer. We’re not going farther until you give me some answers. Do you hear me?” Her voice rose as he continued on as if she hadn’t spoken. “Answers!” she shouted. “This is too important—I can’t wait hours. Stop the wagon right this minute or I’ll—I’ll jump out!”

  The glance he threw her was skeptical, but her flushed cheeks and quickened breaths must have convinced him of her genuine agitation because to her surprise, he actually obeyed her command. The horses drew up. The grassy trail stretched before them, and beyond rose a series of rolling sage-colored hills. Three deer darted past some brush to her left and bolted away, and the sky darkened to an even more ominous shade of green as she turned on the wagon seat to face him.

  “It’s about time you started listening to me—”

  “I’m not doing this for you.” He cut her off. “I’m doing it for Reese.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  His eyes flicked over her. “He wouldn’t want you getting yourself all upset.”

  At the thought of how wrong he was, a sharp pain twisted through her, but she wouldn’t let Wade Barclay see it—not a glimpse. She smoothed her skirt. Shrugged.

  “I highly doubt that.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “My father was too selfish and self-centered to give a damn about me when he was alive, so I can’t see that he would care much now that he’s . . . Oh!”

  He seized her so suddenly that Caitlin gasped as his strong fingers clamped around her arm.

  “Not another word against him.” Wade spoke in a low, angry tone. “You’d better not bad-mouth Reese to me or to anyone else.”

  “How dare you threaten me.” Her rich green eyes were wide with alarm, but her voice was steady, if a little breathless. “Take your hands off me this instant!”

  Wade stared into those flashing, fiery eyes and felt a heated tension shoot through him. Damn, did she have to be so beautiful on the outside when she was such a nasty little witch on the inside? If he didn’t know what he did about her—if he hadn’t seen and heard himself just how cold and callous she was—and how irritatingly bossy—he might have been ambushed by that beautiful face.

  As he glared at her, fighting the fury inside him, he suddenly noticed that her lower lip was trembling. Dark pink and full, it quivered and he couldn’t seem to stop staring at it.

  She had a luscious mouth, and a body that would tempt any man but a blind preacher—yet she was nothing but a she-devil, he reminded himself.

  Reese’s she-devil.

  And he’d promised Reese that he’d take care of her.

  “Take your hands off me!” the she-devil screeched again, and this time, he did as she asked.

  In fact, he pushed her away.

  “I think we’d both better settle down,” he said.

  Caitlin took a deep breath. “It’s very important to me that I understand something right now. Is there some reason why I cannot sell Cloud Ranch?”

  “You won’t be selling Cloud Ranch.” His answer was as firm and purposeful as the set expression upon his face.

  “That’s ridiculous.” But fear clutched at her. “I have every right. The letter from my father’s attorney says plainly that I inherited the ranch including the land, the house, the cattle, and all buildings and property—”

  “Do you want me to finish answering your question or do you want to listen to yourself babble on about something you don’t know squat about?”

  She flinched at his harsh tone. The anger rose in her again—anger and the beginnings of real unease. She had to be able to sell the ranch. She needed the money it would bring so that she and Becky could get away, so that they could manage until she could find a job and get them settled in a decent place to live . . .

  “You’re making no sense,” she told the foreman, her voice low and shaking with the apprehension tearing through her. “But go on. I’m listening.”

  “Abner McCain, Reese’s lawyer, was supposed to meet us at the ranch today. He had some business in Laramie and thought he’d be back, but I got a telegram right before the stage pulled in. He can’t make it until tomorrow, so it looks like you’re going to have to hear this from me.”

  “Hear what?”

  A rumble of thunder shook the air. The clouds seemed to grow even darker, heavier, lower in that great sky. Wade frowned at them, then shot a glance over at Reese’s daughter, weighing his options. She’d explode like a lit fire-cracker when he told her. Probably yell. And cry—despite that nonsense she’d spouted about never crying. And then she’d yell some more.

  She deserves this shock, he thought grimly. She has it coming.

  Yet great as the temptation was, he couldn’t bring himself to tell her now, here, in the middle of nowhere, with a storm bearing down on them. That didn’t seem right.

  She’d want to be alone after she heard, have a chance to calm down and sort things out in private. And if they
headed home fast, maybe they could beat the storm.

  “The terms of your father’s will are complicated. Too complicated to explain right now. You’ll want to look the will over yourself. Not that it will change anything,” he said evenly.

  “But you—”

  “Look, there’s some real bad weather moving in fast.” Wade took up the reins again. “You’ll get drenched if we don’t make tracks. Reckon you wouldn’t like that much. Besides,” he added as the horses pranced restlessly, “you’ll probably need a good strong shot of whiskey once I tell you exactly what that will says. Trust me.”

  “I don’t drink whiskey and I don’t trust you and I want to hear the terms right now.”

  “Too bad.” Wade sent the horses into a trot, then quickly took them to a gallop as a gust of wind lashed down from the mountains and shook the thick grass and the limbs of all the trees.

  Long wisps of gold hair whipped free of Caitlin’s chignon and swirled across her cheeks. She felt a splash of rain. Just what she needed. To get soaked on top of everything else. On top of finding out there were complications in the will.

  “Very well, Mr. Barclay, when we reach the ranch, first you’ll tell me the terms and then I’ll fire you,” she informed him. Suddenly she gasped as the team surged forward and the wagon jolted hard and fast over the rough trail.

  He was trying to beat the storm, she realized, not trying to frighten her, but she couldn’t help the alarm that rushed through her as the wagon tore across the vast open plains, and the cool, damp wind pelted her face. She jolted in the seat and wished she had her hat—even more tendrils of hair blew loose of their pins as the horses raced for home.

  She stiffened her back and said nothing, refusing to cry out, to let Wade Barclay see how uncomfortable, alarmed, and miserable she was—not only at the breakneck pace they were traveling but at the complications looming before her.

  Wasn’t her life complicated enough? She should have known her father would have made it even more so. Even in death, he was a source of hurt and doubt.

  She was only three when her mother, Lydia, fled the tiny cabin deep in Wyoming Territory, taking Caitlin with her to find a better life. Reese Summers cared for nothing but his precious ranch, her mother told her later. He was set on building Cloud Ranch into the biggest, most profitable cattle ranch in the territory, no matter that his wife and child were stranded in the midst of vast, lonely mountainous country, no matter that Lydia was dreadfully unhappy, that the winters were savagely cold, brutal, and spent in isolation deep within Silver Valley. Reese refused to give up his dream, to budge from that wild outpost of land wedged in the shadow of the Laramie Mountains. So her mother left him, fleeing east, where she met and married Gillis Tamarlane, the dashing scion of a railroad magnate. Gillis not only arranged for Lydia’s divorce, but also promised to raise Caitlin as his own.

  And Caitlin never saw Reese Summers again—not since the day that Lydia packed her up shortly after Reese set out on a cattle drive. Her mother simply took the wagon into town, used the money Reese had left her for supplies, and boarded the stagecoach headed to St. Louis. And never looked back.

  Caitlin looked back though—or tried to, but throughout the years, her memory of those early days in Wyoming blurred and faded. She could remember very little about her real father. Her impression was of a large man with a very deep voice and—cigars. She remembered the strong aroma of his cigars. But not much more.

  There wasn’t even a photograph of him . . .

  Not that she didn’t ask for one. She wrote to Reese for the first time when she was eight, asking if he would send her a photograph, asking if he would write to her, asking if she might come to Cloud Ranch sometime and ride a pony.

  There was no reply.

  She tried again a few years later—and again that brought no response.

  Not once did he even acknowledge her letters.

  She didn’t even know that Cloud Ranch indeed became the most prosperous ranch in the territory until Reese’s letter arrived, the letter where he told her he was dying— and requesting that she come to see him.

  The letter arrived the very same day the news reached her that Lydia and Gillis had perished at sea.

  The day her entire life changed forever.

  Her mother and Gillis Tamarlane were charming, good-natured, fascinating, and elusive parents. What with the hectic social whirl they delighted in, they didn’t have much time to spare, certainly not enough to spend at home with either Caitlin or her young half sister, Becky. Growing up, she and Becky never wanted for anything that money could buy—they had the finest of homes, and a plenitude of clothes, toys, schools, nursemaids, cooks— and there were parties and outings galore. But their parents’ time and attention were noticeably absent. Lydia and Gillis never seemed to have more than a few moments to spend with their daughters, for there was always a ball or an opera or a house party to attend, always a friend to visit or a trip to take.

  As a matter of fact, they were enjoying an extended house party at the Earl of Wyslet’s estate in Suffolk before their fatal voyage back across the Atlantic.

  A voyage that changed Caitlin’s life in every possible way.

  For despite the fact that they were forever gallivanting from one party or event to another, that they were often too busy to pay attention to the everyday lives of their daughters, and that they packed them off to fine boarding schools the moment they were of age, the loss of those two beautiful and dashing parents struck both Caitlin and Becky deeply.

  No wonder that in the aftermath of grief and confusion there was no time or strength or will left to ponder the wishes of Reese Summers, a man who had ignored Caitlin completely over the past eighteen years. Particularly since the next blow to fall sent her reeling: the shock of discovering the mountain of debts Gillis Tamarlane had left behind—debts that, once settled, rendered Caitlin and Becky virtually penniless—and turned them into objects of pity and scorn, whispers and silence from those whom they’d once counted as friends.

  A spatter of rain shook Caitlin from her reverie and she realized that the horses were now crossing a hillier, steeper terrain—plunging up a zigzagging trail, flying past a narrow red ravine on a path that left her breathless. Drizzling rain fell sporadically but gathered strength as another crack of thunder boomed, even louder and nearer than the first.

  “Bet right about now you’re wishing you had that hat of yours,” Wade Barclay remarked over the rush of the wind.

  Caitlin didn’t deign to answer.

  They entered a long valley where the tall grass blew in the wind, where distant pine-covered mountains cut the sky and a waterfall tumbled down from high black rocks in a splash of silver. A valley where cattle huddled in bunches upon the wide grassland, and upon ledges, rocky slopes, along ravines—even more were visible in the distance, in the flower-bright foothills, as far as the eye could see.

  Caitlin caught sight of antelope darting across a hilltop. Vivid wildflowers bloomed—Indian paintbrush, buttercup, forget-me-nots, their colors brilliant against the ominous purpling of the sky. The horses sprang forward, the rain rushed down, and jackrabbits scurried through the brush in search of their burrows.

  “Is it much farther?” she gasped at last, shivering, rain streaming like tears down her cheeks, her gown plastered to her body.

  “Not much. The house is set back behind that big ridge up there.”

  “So we’re nearing my father’s land.”

  “We’ve been on your father’s land for miles,” he retorted. “All of this is Cloud Ranch.”

  Shock ran through her.

  “All . . . of this?” She waved her hand, vaguely encompassing the long valley, the rangeland dotted with cattle, the hills and ridges they’d been traversing, even the distant waterfall far to the west.

  “Every blade of grass, every rock and hill, every steer and calf—those canyons way across the valley, the buttes back of the stream, all the prairie as far as the eye can see—a
nd beyond. Cloud Ranch.”

  Stunned, she hugged her arms around herself, swaying as the wagon rolled along at its relentless pace. All of this? Something in the wild, desperately beautiful land struck a cord in her—it was beautiful, in an awe-inspiring way. It was big country, huge, and they hadn’t passed another human being or dwelling of any kind since leaving Hope.

  On a clear day with the sun shining it would be magnificent. Today it was almost terrifying. Should lightning strike . . .

  It did, at that very moment.

  Caitlin bit out a scream as the fiery slash of gold exploded across the sky.

  “Easy. We’re all right.” She saw the cool glance Wade Barclay threw her and bit down on her lip to contain herself. Not that she cared what he thought of her—he would be off her property in a very short time anyway and she’d never have to see him again—but she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of thinking her a frightened ninny, of laughing at her . . .

  She had a quick sudden flash of others who had laughed at her—particularly Mavis Drew and Annabella Pratt, laughing behind their hands after they learned that Philadelphia’s most sought-after belle was poor, penniless, and adrift—that she’d lost everything, including her fiancé Alec Ballantree. They’d laughed when she’d found there was no place for her in the world she once had dominated like a radiant sun among lesser stars.

  Oh, how they’d laughed.

  Her throat tightened. Her lovely mouth set with resolve. She didn’t care what she had to do, what obstacles she had to overcome—no one would ever laugh at her or Becky again.

  Another lightning bolt blazed across the sky, illuminating the mountains, their craggy, pine-covered peaks, the slopes of yellow and blue flowers dappled with pink, but this time Caitlin swallowed the scream, swallowed her fear.

  “Almost there!” He had to shout over the roar of the wind as suddenly gusts of rain began to slant down in streaming torrents and Caitlin hugged her arms around herself and yearned to see shelter . . . any kind of shelter.

  Then they were at the peak of the great ridge and galloping wildly across level land, a rich green meadow high with grass, studded with cattle.