A restlessness like she’d never known pushed her and allowed no ease. Even the article in the paper on James’s arrest didn’t soothe her. Nor did the personal visit from Walter and Becky two days later, both looking subdued and chagrined, Becky a little pale and red-eyed.
“We went back over the audit and discovered that most of the money was transferred to the dummy account that week you were out with the flu,” Becky had told her. “Oh, Carly, can you ever forgive us?”
Carly had no trouble forgiving them, because regardless of her own recent lectures, she still felt that if she’d told the truth, the matter could have been cleared up immedi- ately.
And if that had happened, she wouldn’t have ended up out of work and desperate, volunteering her time at the clinic. She would never have met Tyler and Amanda.
In that respect, she ought to thank Becky and Walter for accusing her!
“We have a lot to make up to you, Carly,” Walter had said softly. “We’d like you to come back to work for us.”
Carly smiled sadly at the memory. She hadn’t even been tempted by his offer. She had absolutely no desire for the job she’d once loved, or for any job in San Francisco, for that matter.
She knew now what she wanted to do. She wanted to go back to Tyler.
Yet, still, she hesitated. For what, she didn’t know. For a means to make up for the way she’d left him? He must think she had no faith in his ability to fight the Tomlinsons. She had as much as come out and said so with her decla- ration that the only way to beat them was for her to leave. As though she and she alone had the power to control the outcome of the custody suit.
“Oh, God, I’ve done it again,” she wailed as the thought dawned. Would she never learn?
She wasn’t a damned bit smarter or more mature than Amanda, who somehow, Carly knew, blamed herself for her mother’s death. Carly couldn’t claim her own thought processes were any more logical.
Why did she think that all responsibility rested on her shoulders? Was she that much of an egotist, to believe she was responsible for everything? Oh, she knew the Tomlin- sons hadn’t trusted her ability to help Amanda, but they could simply have tried to talk to Tyler about it reasonably. Their antagonism was their doing, not hers.
At the age of nine, Carly had been convinced her love of ice cream had killed her father. Now here she was again, thirty years old, still thinking that the universe and every- thing in it revolved around her.
She could try to reason with the Tomlinsons. If that didn’t work, if they wouldn’t back off, she’d get Dr. San- ders to help prove what a wonderful father Tyler was, how much better off Amanda was on the ranch with him.
Still, there was one little voice in the back of her mind that kept her from packing her bags and racing north to Wyoming. What if he doesn’t want me anymore?
It could be true. She hadn’t heard a single word from him in the two months she’d been gone.
“I won’t doubt him until I have reason,” she told herself firmly. His stubborn pride wouldn’t let him call if he wanted to. She’d been emphatic about not having anything more to do with him. What man would come back for more after that?
The item that pushed her in the direction she wanted to go came in the form of a soft-spoken message on her an- swering machine. When she came back from the market, the light was flashing.
Carly put away the milk and lettuce, then played back the message.
“Oh. I guess you’re not home.”
Carly teared instantly and grabbed for the machine and the precious sound of Amanda’s voice.
“I just called to say I miss you.” A sob broke up the next few words, “…love you…Chicago…here…come…” Beep.
Carly’s heart raced. What had Amanda meant about Chi- cago? Hands shaking, she fumbled in her purse for Tyler’s phone number. To hell with pride and uncertainties. She had to know what was happening! As she grappled with her address book, the machine beeped again.
“It’s me.”
At the deep timbre of Tyler’s voice on the tape, Carly’s knees went out from under her. She ended up on the floor in front of her desk.
“No need to call back.”
Pain knifed through her chest at his harsh tone.
“I, uh, overheard Amanda leaving you a message, and thought I’d better—” Beep.
Carly squeezed her eyes shut and rocked back and forth, praying for another message.
Beep. “If you’re there, pick up the damned phone, Carly. I hate these stupid machines. A man can’t get five words out before he gets cut off. What I was trying to tell you—” Beep.
No matter how much it hurt, even his anger sounded good to her.
Beep. “I’m getting pissed, here. The Tomlinsons have dropped their suit. That’s what Amanda was. trying to tell you. We went to visit them, and she, well, she told them if she had to live with them, she’d run away. They decided to back off. You left for nothing, Carly,” he said, his voice softening. “You should have stayed.” Beep.
With tears streaking down her face, Carly fell back on the floor. Laughter, just a little unsteady at first, then gain- ing strength, sounded odd in her apartment. She didn’t re- member the last time she’d laughed. She let it come, feeling its healing power strengthen her.
You should have stayed.
“I’ll show you should have stayed, Tyler Barnett Let’s just hope you don’t live to regret those words.”
Within a matter of days, Carly moved mountains. She sublet her apartment again, bought the heaviest, most du- rable overcoat she could find, plus a tall pair of rubber, fur- lined boots, and a gorgeous new Navajo rug to replace the worn one beside Tyler’s bed. She packed everything she thought she would want into the wide back seat of her shiny new pickup, and made one other important purchase before leaving town.
On her way to Wyoming she made a stop in Salt Lake City, and midafternoon on the fourth day after receiving Amanda’s and. Tyler’s messages, she eased the pickup to a stop behind the main house of the Bar B Ranch near Big Piney in Sublette County, Wyoming.
Eagerly she feasted on the sight of the ranch. The drive- way was more rutted than it had been. They must have had some rain.
Not rain, but snow, she realized. Small clumps of it still clung tenaciously at the bases of scrub and sagebrush out on the plains and hills. Along the creek, the willows stood stark and bare.
Suddenly Tyler appeared on the driveway, looking heart- stoppingly wonderful to her starved gaze.
At the sound of tires crunching on the driveway, Tyler had stepped from the stallion bam into the raw November wind. The long, fancy crew cab pulling the brand-new, fully enclosed, gooseneck horse trailer drew a low whistle from his lips. The rig was exactly what he’d been coveting for over a year.
Hell, he’d just have to save some more. Next year, he’d have his rig, by damn.
Sunlight glared off the windshield, making it impossible to see inside the pickup. Wondering who the visitor was, he tugged on his hat and headed closer.
The driver’s door opened.
Still twenty feet away, Tyler froze in his tracks. Certain he was hallucinating, that this was just another one of those hundreds of daydreams he’d been having lately, he blinked to clear his vision. But she didn’t vanish. He whispered her name, hardly able to believe she was really there.
Carly.
With her hands tucked into the pockets of a fur-lined parka and her long, jean-clad legs disappearing into tall, practical boots, Carly stepped around the front of the pickup and stopped a good ten feet from him. “Am I too late?”
Her soft voice sent rivers of fire racing through his veins. He swallowed once, twice. “Too late for what?”
She locked her gaze on his. “For you. For us.”
Tyler tilted his head back and squeezed his eyes shut, afraid to believe, praying this was real.
“Tyler?”
He opened his eyes, but his vision suddenly blurred. He blinked. “Do you. mean it?”
> “Yes.”
“For how long?”
“Forever, if you’ll have me.”
His knees turned to water. If he didn’t get control of his emotions, he’d be fawning at her feet in seconds. He cleared his throat and forced himself to look away from her eyes. His gaze lit on the rig she’d driven. “What’s all that?”
Challenge lit her eyes as she raised her chin and pulled her hands from her pockets to plant them on those hips of hers that drove him wild. “That,” she said with a nod, “is my dowry.”
Tyler choked back a sudden bark of laughter. God, look at her. She was getting mad. He’d never loved a woman so much in his life as he did right then. “Dowry, huh?”
“Every girl ought to have one, don’t you think?”
A loud thud came from inside the trailer. “What’ve you got in there, a bull moose?”
“Don’t be insulting.” Fire and laughter mixed in her eyes. “That’s a present for you. But only if you marry me.”
His heart skipped at least one beat before kicking into double time. So she wanted to tease, did she? Well, two. could play that game. He folded his arms across his chest. “I don’t know. I’d have to see this gift before I made up my mind.”
“You’re gonna pay for this, buster,” she muttered just loud enough for him to hear.
“Promises, promises.”
“You can count on it.” She spun on her heel and marched to the back of the trailer. “You might want to turn me down now, because you’re not going to be able to in a minute.”
“This, I gotta see.” He followed and waited while she opened the back of the trailer.
With a dramatic flourish and a sharp gleam in her eye that promised reprisal, she motioned toward… Damnation.
“Resist that, cowboy.”
With his hands braced on each side of the open trailer door, Tyler stared inside at the back end of a buckskin mare, his eyes bulging. “Is that…no. I can’t…Maggie?”
At the sound of her name, the mare twitched her ears and nickered softly.
“Magnificent Cutter,” Carly offered from just behind his shoulder. “Signed, sealed, delivered and registered to one Tyler Barnett. According to her former owner, she’s in top form, ready, willing and able to take on the competition at the National Cutting Horse Association Futurity in Fort Worth next month. He’s already paid her entry fee.”
Tyler rubbed a hand across his mouth to keep from laughing out loud. He cocked one eye at Carly. “I don’t know. I have to marry you to get her?”
“Tyler,” she said, her voice low and threatening.
He turned back to look into the trailer. “But then, I sup- pose she is too tempting for a man to resist. You sure do know the way to a man’s heart, honey.”
“Tyler,” came Carly’s low growl again.
Suddenly Tyler lost all desire to tease. Looking at the horse without seeing it, he gripped the sides of the door tighter and spoke to Carly in a choked voice. “I love you.”
Her reply was quiet but firm, without hesitation, tinged with relief, threaded with emotion. “I love you, too.”
“Then come here.” He whirled and pulled her into his arms. Her lips were cold from the harsh wind. They tasted like heaven and tears. “Don’t cry, baby, please don’t cry.”
“I have to, or burst”. She kissed him again with trem- bling lips. “I missed you so much.”
“I thought I was dying without you. Don’t ever leave me again.”
“No, never. Never.”
“Let’s go inside,” he whispered roughly against her ear.
“The horse. We have to…”
“Damn,” he said with a groan and a laugh. “A woman has to tell me to take care of a horse. I knew I was losing my mind. This is proof. We’ll get Maggie situated, then go to the house.” He nuzzled, his lips against the hair at Car- ly’s temple. “I want you naked beneath me, around me. I want to bury myself in you and never leave.”
She shuddered against him. “Damn you. Take care of my horse.”
He pulled back and grinned at her. “Your horse?”
“We’re not married yet, buster.”
More than an hour later, Tyler and Carly lay in his big brass bed letting their heated flesh cool while the winter sun streaked a pattern across the new Navajo rug on the floor beside them.
Tom and Smitty were probably still down in the mares’ bam oohing and ahhing over Magnificent Cutter and grin- ning like idiots, knowing full well what Tyler, and Carly were doing in the house. With any luck at all, Arthur, Willis and Neal wouldn’t return from checking the cattle for a while yet.
“I love you,” Tyler said softly in her ear.
The words spread through Carly like warm honey, golden and sweet. With his warm, wonderful weight press- ing her into the mattress, she signed. “And I love you.”
“I know. Say it again.”
“I love you.” She grinned and narrowed her eyes while running her fingers down his spine. “Are you sure you’re not marrying me just for my mare?”
“Honey,” he said with a chuckle, “when I think of you, believe me, horseflesh is the farthest thing from my mind.” He nuzzled behind her ear and set her skin on fire before pulling back to look at her. “The pickup, the trailer, the horse. What did you do, spend every dime you had?”
“Not on your life. Most of it, but I’ve still got a tidy little chunk left”. She narrowed her gaze at him. “And you’re not getting one penny of it back, so just forget it. I’ve learned to be greedy.”
“Good,” he said with a grin. “So what are you going to do with all that money?”
“Take you and Amanda—Arthur, too, if he behaves himself—to Disneyland the first chance we can get away. After that, I don’t know. I’m feeling incredibly lucky these days. Maybe I’ll dabble in the stock market. Invest in ice cream.”
“What?”
“There’s this wonderful little creamery down in Bren- ham, Texas, that makes the best ice cream. Or that chain of ice cream and dairy stores headquartered in Oklahoma. Then there’s Swenson’s. Baskin-Robbins. Ben and Jerry’s. Yeah. I could—”
Tyler cut her off with a laughing kiss. “I don’t care if you get fat off ice cream. Physically or financially. You do whatever you want. How does next weekend sound?”
“For Disneyland?”
“For a wedding date.”
Before she could answer, they heard the back door slam shut.
Carly flinched. Judging by the heavy sound of the foot- steps clomping up the stairs a few seconds later, it had to be Arthur. She tried to jump up, but Tyler held her down. “Oh, no, you don’t, woman. I told you I’m not letting you go.”
“We can’t let him catch us—”
“Tyler?” A heavy fist pounded on the bedroom door.
“Too late,” Tyler told her with a grin.
Carly moaned in acute embarrassment. And no little amount of dread. What would Arthur think of her coming back? What would he think of finding them in bed to- gether?
“Tyler, you in there?”
“Go away, Dad. I’m busy.”
“Humph. You alone in there?”
Tyler laughed. “Trust me, Dad. I haven’t been this kind of busy when I was alone since I was fourteen years old.”
Carly gasped and choked on a giggle.
“If you’ve got the driver of that fancy crew cab dually in there with you, I damn sure hope it ain’t some bow- legged cowboy.”
“Nope, I checked,” Tyler called back.
“Get decent. I’m comin’ in.” The doorknob rattled.
With a shriek, Carly dived beneath the covers and buried her head.
The door flew open. “If you’ve got that Baker woman in here, I’ve got a question for her.”
Tyler lifted the edge of the covers and peered beneath. “Are you that Baker woman? He says he has a question for you.”
“Come on out from under there,” Arthur demanded gruffly. “Hell, if I’m not embarrassed, you shou
ldn’t be.”
Outraged despite her embarrassment, Carly poked her head from beneath the covers. “If we’re going to live under the same roof,” she said to Arthur through clenched teeth, “you and I are going to have us a little talk. What do you want?”
Leaning casually against the door frame as though find- ing his son in bed with a woman in the middle of the afternoon was as common as beer in summer, Arthur re- moved a toothpick from his shirt pocket and stuck it be- tween his teeth. He glanced from Tyler to Carly, then set- tled on Tyler. “Guess you ought to try and get a refund on that plane ticket.”
“Dad,” Tyler cautioned.
Carly peered at Tyler. “Plane ticket? Have I interrupted your travel plans”?
“Not likely,” Arthur said. “Just saved him a trip, is all.”
“What’s he talking about?”
Tyler gave her a half smile. “I was coming after you next week. I couldn’t stand it anymore.”
“Oh, Tyler.” Carly leaned toward him, her lips reaching for his, when at the last minute, she remembered Arthur. She drew back and glared at the older man.
Arthur pulled the toothpick from his mouth and pointed it at her. “I asked you once what your intentions toward my son were, and you never answered. Under the circum- stances,” he said, his narrowed gaze raking the disheveled bedcovers, “I’m asking again.”
From the corner of her eye she saw Tyler’s incredulous look.
“My intentions are strictly honorable,” she told Arthur. By marrying Tyler, his family would become hers, and that included Arthur. But she’d be damned if she’d let him push her around anymore. “I asked him to marry me. I hope you don’t have a problem with that”.
The older man poked his tongue along the inside of his jaw and shifted his lazy gaze to his son. “You accepted?”
Tyler grinned. “I had to. She wouldn’t give me the horse unless I did.”
Beneath the covers, Carly pinched him on the thigh. Hard.
Tyler yelped.
Arthur squinted at the pair of them, then gave Tyler a sharp nod. “Smart move. Better hang on to her. She’s the best thing that’s happened around here lately. And the woman ain’t bad, either,” he added with a wink.
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