She hardly knew where to begin. Looking at this man, trying to think of him as Chase, was as disorienting as looking into a fun house mirror.
Her Chase had been handsome, with a slight, but well-muscled body and a face so pretty it was almost feminine. The day he sauntered into the café, his rosebud lips and china-blue eyes had turned every female head. He was a little girl’s childhood dream come to life, a fairy-tale prince with a charmingly cocked Stetson hat and sexy snakeskin boots.
This Chase wasn’t anything that simple. He was too ruggedly male, too intimidatingly real, to have stepped out of any kind of dream. He was a good six inches taller than her Chase, with double the shoulder span. His whole body seemed to have been carved from a much-harder material, and his energy radiated out, creating a force field that she imagined few could resist.
His face was full of fascinating contradictions. His square, don’t-mess-with-me jaw came to a sweetly dimpled chin. His bedroom-blue eyes were fringed in black lashes so long that when he shut them they brushed the prominent, knife-blade cheekbones below.
His upper lip came to a sharp bow. Not like her Chase’s lips. This mouth wouldn’t ever make a woman think of rosebuds, because she’d be too busy thinking of…other things.
“He was smaller,” she said, though she knew it was woefully inadequate. “Several inches shorter, and…more wiry all over. He had blond hair and blue eyes, but paler than yours. Less intense.”
“Was he my age?”
“He said he was thirty-one. He looked about that, I’d say. But again, I didn’t check his ID.”
“That could be a million guys in Texas alone, including me. Is there anything else that might help? Did he have an accent? Any scars? Tattoos? Injuries? Anything unique?”
She thought hard. It was strange, but her mental image of Chase—her Chase—had grown fuzzy, like someone seen through a fog. What had done that, she wondered? The discovery that he was not merely a garden-variety love-’em-and-leave-’em heartbreaker, but also a first-class fraud and a liar?
Or had he just been obscured by the sheer force of the real Chase?
“Well…he had a slight Texas accent, a nice voice, well-educated East Texas. But that could have been fake, too, I suppose.”
“What else?”
She shut her eyes and tried to summon up a clear image. “Nothing else, really. Nothing unique, anyhow.”
“There must have been something special about him.” Chase sounded impatient. “You met him only three months ago. Dr. Marchant says you’re almost three months pregnant. So I repeat. There must have been something special about him.”
“Chase.” Susannah left the window and came toward the bed. “I don’t think this is the time to—”
“It’s all right,” Josie said. She squared her shoulders and looked at Chase. “I don’t mind the question. It wasn’t that simple, Mr. Clayton. I didn’t fall for him because of the way he looked. It was the way he acted. It was the way he made me feel. He was nice to me. He was friendly and had a good sense of humor, and he knew how to have fun. He took me out to expensive dinners, and he listened to me when I talked. He rubbed my feet when they hurt after work, and he bought me things. Not flowers and perfumes, but things I needed. A teapot. A clock radio. New sheets.”
Susannah moved even closer, her hand outstretched. “Miss Whitford, you’re very tired. It’s been a terrible day—”
“No,” Josie broke in. She didn’t want pity. Especially not from this woman, who had everything Josie would never have—a healthy, golden life with the real Chase, the sexy rancher with gentle hands and a tender heart.
She hadn’t told them how the fake Chase had really seduced her—using the sweet, corny stories of a little boy who loved his home, his horse and his dog. The little boy who sold a baseball card to buy his mother chocolates, but ate them all before he made it home.
She had believed her heart—and her body—were safe in the hands of a man like that.
She tried to speak. To her horror, she realized she’d begun to choke up again.
“I’m sorry,” she said, clearing her throat. “I’m all right. I think being pregnant does a number on your hormones, that’s all. I’m not crying. At least not…not because of Chase.”
Chase gazed at her, unblinking. “I’m Chase.”
“Of course.” She wiped roughly under her eyes with the knuckles of her index fingers. “You know what I mean. I’m not crying because of him. I’m anxious about the future, and of course the baby. And I’m shocked to discover how completely I was conned. But I’m not heartbroken.”
“Why not? Are you saying that what you felt for him wasn’t really love?”
She hesitated. That first week, she had thought it might be. But maybe it had just been…hope.
Hope that she could still be lighthearted and happy, in spite of working so hard and worrying every minute about money.
Hope that, on any given day, something special just might walk through that café door and single her out. Her. Sickly little Josie Whitford.
Now she had new hope. Hope that she could stay healthy enough to have a healthy baby. Hope that she could be a good mother. Hope that she could face her future, whatever it was, with courage.
And honesty.
She took a deep breath. She might as well begin today.
“No,” she said, in spite of how she knew it would sound. “It definitely wasn’t love.”
“WHAT A MESS.” Susannah Everly tossed her front door keys onto the end table and dropped her purse on the floor. Shutting her eyes, she leaned back against the foyer wall. “What a big, bad, super-sized Texas mess.”
“Yeah, I heard.”
Susannah’s eyes flew open. She hadn’t realized that Nicole was within earshot. She’d sent her little sister home with the Parkers hours ago, with instructions to clean her room and do her homework. Judging from how Nikki’s room had looked this morning, that should have taken her a couple of weeks.
Where was she? Susannah scanned the foyer, which was large and beautiful, the prettiest foyer of any ranch in the county. Her mother had decorated this foyer right before she died. Susannah had been fifteen at the time—Nikki a toddler. Susannah had been allowed to pick out the paneling, and she’d chosen a honey pine that she still loved just as much today.
Of course, she loved every inch of Everly Ranch, which had been in her family for six generations. Every hole in the knotty pine floor, every beam and timber and pane of glass. Every leaf on every peach tree in the thousand-acre orchard.
Finally, Susannah spotted Nikki lying at the foot of the staircase, her brown hair fanned out on the floor, just a shade redder than the wood. Her feet were cocked up on the third tread, the cordless phone resting on her stomach. It was her favorite position for a long chat with…
Probably with Eli. The new ranch boy over at the Double C had been spending a lot of time over here, in spite of Susannah’s objections that he was too old for Nikki. It was the new hot spot between Susannah and her sister. Just mention the name Eli Breslin, and things got ugly in a hurry.
Right now she ignored the sight of the phone. She wasn’t up to swimming in that swamp tonight.
“Yeah,” Nikki repeated, a little louder. “I heard.”
Susannah straightened. “You heard what?”
Nicole gave her an oh-brother look.
“Heard about your super-sized mess.” She kicked her bare feet and began using her toes to play with the banister. She knew that irritated Susannah, who actually cared how hard the servants worked.
Nikki had also changed into her tightest cutoff shorts, also guaranteed to annoy. The cream-lace dress she’d worn to the party was probably on a heap in her closet, right above a mildewing swimsuit or stinky sneakers.
“Yep,” Nikki continued when she didn’t get a rise out of Susannah on the first try. “A real mess. Everybody’s talking about it.”
“Everybody? That’s probably a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think? I
’ll bet there are Bedouins in the Sahara who haven’t a clue.”
Susannah leaned toward the mirror over the end table and pretended to check her lipstick, although she’d chewed it off hours ago, back in Chase’s guest room. “And speaking of messes, if I went upstairs right now and looked in your room, what would I find?”
She could see, even in the mirror, the glower that passed across Nikki’s face. She bit back a sigh. Teenagers were so…melodramatic. And the last thing she needed today was more melodrama.
Nikki swung her feet around and sat up, balancing the phone on one knee. “You’re unbelievable, you know that? Your engagement is falling apart, you’re the laughing stock of the whole county, and all you can worry about is my room?”
“Don’t be absurd. My engagement is not falling apart.”
“Oh, yeah? That’s not what I hear.” Nikki climbed to her feet. Her face was bright and feverish, as if she’d worked herself into a real state.
Susannah turned around, more disturbed than she wanted to let on. “What do you hear?”
“I hear that woman in the accident today was Chase’s secret lover. I hear she was trying to commit suicide because Chase was planning to marry you.”
Susannah’s stomach tightened. “Is that what Eli Breslin told you?”
Nikki scowled. “He’s not the only one saying it. You should have seen the Parkers, when they drove me home. They kept looking at each other in this totally shocked way. And then they’d look at me like, poor little kid, she doesn’t even know what’s going on.”
“I think you’re imagining things, Nikki. The woman in the crash today is just an old friend of Chase’s. She was coming to see him, but she’s a diabetic, and she had gone into insulin shock. That’s why she lost control of her car.”
This was the story she and Chase had agreed on, after they’d left Josie Whitford, pale-faced and frightened, lying in the guest room. As much truth as possible, they’d decided. Not a word of the impostor Chase. It was quite possible, judging from his intimate knowledge of Chase’s history, that he was someone from around here, and they didn’t want to tip him off. Of course, there still was a possibility that the “fake” Chase had been fabricated by Josie Whitford to advance some agenda they didn’t yet understand. Susannah felt sorry for the young woman, but she wasn’t buying her story wholesale. She still had some serious reservations.
Apparently Nikki did, too. She’d scrunched up her nose and mouth. “A diabetic old friend?” She snorted. “Do you expect me to believe that?”
All in all, it was a pretty good story. Still, she might have liked to try it out for the first time on a less cynical audience.
Nikki had scrunched up her nose and mouth. She looked very young when she did that, though of course she’d have died if anyone pointed that out.
She snorted. “A diabetic old friend? Do you expect me to believe that?”
“I don’t care what you believe.” Susannah shrugged. “If you prefer to invent lurid fantasies, that’s your choice. All I ask is that you not bore me with them. I’ve got to make some calls for the Burn Center tonight, and I’m tired.”
With a curse, Nikki tossed the phone toward its regular table, but she missed. The plastic went clattering to the floor.
“God, you really don’t give a damn about him, do you? I know you told me it was just a business deal really, whatever that means. Personally, I think it’s disgusting. You shouldn’t marry a man you don’t have one single feeling for.”
Susannah drew her brows together. “Nikki, that’s out of line. You know I care deeply about Chase.”
“Care deeply?” Nikki snorted. “I care deeply about my iPod. That’s not how you describe the man you’re going to marry. Eli says you just want the Clayton money. He’s right, isn’t he? You wouldn’t care if Chase had a hundred secret lovers, would you?”
Her tone was poisonous, even more insulting than usual. Susannah felt the blood drain from her face. Nikki had always been a handful, even as a toddler. She’d seemed older than her years, more precocious and demanding than such a little girl should be. Certainly more than Susannah, who had been forced into surrogate “motherhood,” much too early, knew how to control.
Susannah had always suspected that, behind Nikki’s brash facade, lay a painful insecurity. It made sense. Whether it was fair or not. Nikki probably felt abandoned by their parents, who had died together in a car crash so long ago she hadn’t had a chance to know them. So yeah, Susannah understood. She even ached for her stormy little sister, who didn’t have the memories Susannah had to sustain her.
She just hadn’t known what to do about it.
Maybe, she thought, looking at Nikki now, she had made a mistake, not fully explaining why she and Chase had agreed to a marriage of convenience. She couldn’t just gloss things over anymore, the way she’d done when Nikki was a child. Maybe, at sixteen going on forty, Nikki was old enough to handle all the facts.
“Sit down,” Susannah said.
Nikki looked wary. “Why? I don’t want to hear another lecture about Eli.”
Susannah moved wearily to the staircase, with its beautiful scrolled banister. She lowered herself onto the nearest tread.
“Not Eli, Nik. I want to explain about Chase. And I’m too tired to stand up while I do it.”
Nikki hesitated, but her curiosity overcame her defiance. She plopped down next to Susannah with a heavy sigh. “Okay. Go ahead. Tell me how wrong I am.”
“You’re not wrong.” Susannah leaned back on her elbows, too tired to care what happened to her expensive party dress. “Chase and I aren’t in love, not the way you mean. We’re very good friends—the best. We always have been, ever since we were kids. You know what a super guy he is.”
Nikki shrugged noncommittally, which made Susannah smile. Nikki adored Chase, and everyone knew it. He was the only person on earth she confided in.
“Anyhow, the bottom line is that, because of some weird rules that Grandfather put in his will, I have to get married in order to have any real control of the ranch. And I need control. We’re having money problems. You knew that, right?”
“Of course. How could anyone not know, the way you always go on about it? What I don’t know is how come. The ranch is huge. And our peaches are like the best anywhere. I don’t know anybody who buys anything else.”
Susannah thought of all the planning, fretting, investing and pure backbreaking work that went into creating those lush peaches everyone wanted in their pretty cut-glass dessert bowls. But she’d always spared Nikki the details, trying to allow her to grow up carefree, without the worries and obligations that had weighed Susannah down too soon.
Maybe that had been a mistake, too. Maybe a little responsibility would have been good for her.
Well, better late than never.
“It’s a combination of a lot of things, Nik. We’ve had frost two years running. That hurt us a lot. And some of the acres on the west ridge are just about used up. They’ll have to lie dormant for a few years before they can be replanted. Worst of all, though, is that one of our best buyers is in deep financial trouble. They just might go bankrupt.”
“So? Can’t you find another buyer?”
“Believe me, I’m trying. But it’s not that easy. There’s a lot of competition. The thing is, we’ve crunched the numbers every way we can think of, and the only answer is to sell some of the land.”
Nikki’s mouth hung open. “Sell Everly?”
Susannah put her hand on Nikki’s arm. “Not the whole ranch, honey. Everly has always belonged to the Everlys, and it always will. Just a couple of hundred acres, not enough to miss really. But enough to put us back in the black.”
Nikki rubbed the pad of her thumb over the glossy pink polish on her index finger. Susannah knew that habit. It meant Nikki was thinking hard.
She hoped she wasn’t overloading her with too much scary information. There was a mighty fine line between character-building and spirit-crushing.
; “I guess I still don’t understand what this has to do with marrying Chase,” Nikki muttered, staring down at her finger. “Grandfather left you the ranch, right? Can’t you do whatever you want?”
“Not unless I’m married, and even then my husband gets to make the decisions. You know how Grandfather was. You know how he felt about women.”
Nikki looked up with a half smile. “Totally chauvinist? Totally caveman?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
Susannah sighed, remembering the fights, the rip-roaring yell-fests as she tried to keep an ornery ninety-year-old man from running the ranch into the ground. Arlington H. Everly had a true Texas-sized ego. No one told him what to do. But take advice from a woman? “Not unless my wits get up and go prancing in the pepper patch,” he’d vowed.
Tragically, toward the end, it had come to that.
“Does Chase know all this stuff?” Nikki’s upturned face looked pale, and, although Susannah might be imagining this, she looked a tiny bit older already.
“Yeah. He knows. He’s doing me a favor. You can see that I couldn’t risk marrying just anyone. They’d get control of the ranch, and…”
She couldn’t even finish the thought.
“Anyhow, I trust Chase. After we’ve been married a year, he can sell the acres we need to unload. Grandfather didn’t stipulate how long the marriage had to last beyond that first year. So then we’ll end it, and we’ll go back to being friends.”
She looked down at Nikki, and to her surprise realized that the girl’s eyes were glistening in the light from the overhead chandelier.
Susannah felt her heart squeeze. Damn it. She really had screwed up. Nikki must actually have hoped that the “marriage of convenience” might turn into more than that.
She must actually have hoped Chase might become her big brother for real.
“Oh, honey, I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you about all this sooner—”
“Don’t be,” Nikki said roughly. She stood, yanked on the hem of her short-shorts, stretching them out just enough to cover the lacy white underwear. “I don’t care what you do.”
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