by Diana Palmer
Cane pursed his sensual lips. “Bates, maybe?” He was thinking out loud. “He was the one who claimed to see Morie playing with the egg. Interesting, because Darby says she kept her door closed anytime she was in the bunkhouse, and she kept it locked.”
“Suspicious,” Mallory said flatly.
“A woman in a bunkhouse full of men would lock her door,” Cane shot back. “Especially one like Morie. Darby told me that she lived off campus when she was in college, because she refused to live in a coed dorm even if the whole world thought it was all right.”
His eyebrows arched. “She could have been lying.”
“Why do you think she lied in the first place?” Cane demanded. “Because Gelly said she did?”
“Let’s not bring Gelly into this,” Mallory said defensively. “I’m very fond of her.” He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. “She’s having all sorts of financial problems because her father made bad investments.” He shrugged. “Maybe I should marry her… .”
“I’m leaving the day she comes in the door,” Cane said harshly. “And Tank will go with me.”
“In a heartbeat,” Tank agreed. “We’ll take our share of the ranch profits with us,” he added in a cold tone. “You and Gelly try staying afloat financially with only a third of the land and cattle!”
“You wouldn’t do that,” Mallory returned, wounded.
“I’d do it in a heartbeat,” Tank assured him with flashing brown eyes.
“So would I,” Cane agreed. “I’m not living with Gelly.”
“What has she ever done to make you two so hostile?” Mallory exclaimed, exasperated.
Cane looked at Tank. “Blind as a bat.”
“And stubborn as a mule,” Tank agreed. “Can’t tell pyrite from gold.”
“Morie stole the egg,” Mallory roared. “She took it and hid it in her rucksack and was going to sell it!”
“Sure.” Cane took the fake egg in his hand and showed it to Tank. “And she replaced it with this one after we put it back in the cabinet,” he added with a droll look at his brother. “Of course, she was on her way home in a bus at the time. I guess it’s magic.”
Tank nodded. “And funny thing, the key reappeared in Mal’s coat pocket.”
“How convenient.”
“Gelly couldn’t have taken the egg,” Mallory said doggedly, answering a charge they hadn’t made verbally. “She hasn’t ever been alone in here!”
“We had a conference call from the state cattlemen’s association committee on grazing,” Cane reminded him. “All three of us went into the office to take it. Mavie was in the kitchen cooking dinner and Gelly was in here alone. As soon as we came back, she said she had an urgent matter to attend to in town.”
Mallory felt sick. “It couldn’t be her,” he protested, but it was a weak protest.
“If you believe her innocent, let’s prove it,” Cane said. “I know the best private detective in the business, Dane Lassiter from Houston. Let me have him do some investigating for us. If Gelly has nothing to hide, it will clear her.”
“And if not,” Tank put in, “it’s better to know now, especially if you’re bullheaded enough to try and marry her.”
“She loves me,” Mallory bit off. “She says she can’t live without me.” He averted his eyes. “She thinks I’m handsome.”
“Nobody thinks you’re handsome who isn’t lying,” Cane told him flatly. “Look in a mirror! But looks have nothing to do with character, and you’ve got plenty of that. Women don’t care about looks. They care about actions.”
Mallory glared at him.
“He’s right.” Tank clapped him on the back. “We love you. We won’t lie to you. But you might ask yourself why Gelly is. And why she keeps trying to get jobs for her friends and land for some stranger that she barely knows.”
Mallory was weakening. He’d been stubborn because he was guilt-ridden about the way he’d treated Morie. His brothers were right. Morie couldn’t have taken the egg. She left the ranch just minutes after it was found in her rucksack, and Mallory was certain that he’d held the real egg in his hands in the bunkhouse. He’d put it back in the display case himself, after Morie was gone. So the real one had to have been replaced after Morie’s departure…replaced with this cheap copy that would only have fooled someone from a distance. None of them had thought to look at it closely. There had been no reason to.
“Let me call Dane,” Cane coaxed. “If you’re right about Gelly, I’ll apologize.”
“So will I,” Tank agreed.
Mallory drew in a long breath. “Okay,” he said after a minute. His expression was grim. “Call him.”
THE ESTATE WAS BRILLIANT with color and decoration, especially the huge stone patio where tables were going to be set up the following week for King’s gala production show. Ranchers were coming from all over the world to look at his prize cattle, which would be offered for sale at auction.
“Dad really does things on a big scale,” Morie mused as she and her mother went over the final plans with a staff of professionals who would complete the finishing touches and employ caterers for the occasion. It was much too large an endeavor for any one person, although Shelby kept a tight rein on the operation and dictated what she wanted done.
“Yes, he does,” Shelby said with a smile. “He’s very proud of his purebred herd.”
“So am I,” Morie replied. “Now that I know how a ranch operates from the ground up, I have even more admiration for the care Dad takes of his cattle and his men.”
“My daughter, the cowgirl,” Shelly chuckled.
“I enjoyed it. Most of it,” she replied and lowered her eyes.
Shelby turned back to the woman who was carrying out the party plans. “You were able to get Desperado to play for us, weren’t you?”
Tenny Welsh laughed. “Yes, I was,” she said, “although the group is semiretired now. They all have kids and touring isn’t conducive to raising a family, they say. But they’ll do it for you,” she told Shelby. “Heather Everett is best friends with the lead singer. She convinced them.”
“God bless her,” Shelby said fervently. “She’s such a sweetie.”
“So is her daughter, Odalie,” Tenny replied with a sigh. “Have you ever heard her sing? She has the voice of an angel!”
“Where did you hear her?” Morie asked, curious.
“She goes to our church and is a soloist in the choir,” the other woman replied with a smile. “It’s such a joy to hear her.”
“She’s had an offer from the Met, by the way,” Shelby told Morie. “She’s deliberating whether or not to go.”
“It would be a shame to waste a talent like that,” the caterer replied dreamily. “Oh, I’d love to have such a voice!”
Morie didn’t reply. She was thinking of her brother, Cort, who had such a hopeless passion for the shy blonde, who apparently hated him. Nobody knew why. Well, perhaps Cort did, but he was very tight-lipped about his private life.
“So here’s the final menu.” Shelby interrupted her thoughts as she handed the printed list to the caterer. “And please make certain that we have a variety of canapés to suit every taste, and plenty of fruit.”
“I always do,” Tenny reminded her with a smile. This wasn’t the first time she’d catered big social parties for the Brannts. “I know your tastes very well, Shelby.”
Shelby laughed. “It will be a gala occasion. We have a famous soccer star, four A-list actors and actresses, the CEO of a giant computer/ software corporation, two government agents, a few assorted mercenaries and the former vice president.”
“Vice president?” Morie asked, surprised.
“He’s a friend of your father’s,” she replied. “Of course, so are the mercenaries,” she added amusedly. “He likes black sheep.”
“Well, they are interesting people,” Tenny added. Her face changed. “Especially that man, Grange, who works for the Pendletons. The stories I’ve heard about him!”
“Yes,
he was a former major in the Green Berets,” Shelby confided. “And there was a rumor that he actually led a group of mercs down into Mexico to rescue Gracie Pendleton when she was kidnapped by that deposed South American dictator, Emilio Machado.”
“I’ve heard about him,” Morie said. She frowned. “Wasn’t something said about a connection between Machado and our Rick Marquez, who works as a homicide detective with San Antonio P.D.?” she added.
“Yes,” Tenny replied in a soft tone. “Some document has surfaced that connects him with Marquez’s mother.”
“Barbara, who owns the café in Jacobsville,” Morie commented. “She has wonderful food. I’ve eaten there when I visited a girlfriend… .”
“No,” Tenny interrupted gently. “Not his foster mother. His real mother.”
Both women looked at her without speaking.
“Now isn’t that interesting,” Shelby said.
“And don’t you dare repeat it,” Tenny replied. “I heard it from someone I know and trust and I’m not supposed to tell. But you can keep a secret.” She smiled as she met Shelby’s eyes. “As I well know.”
“Yes.” Shelby didn’t comment further, leaving her daughter to wonder about the strange remark.
DARYL CAME OVER TO TALK to King about a new seed bull that his father wanted to add to the breeding program, but he stopped by long enough to speak with Morie privately.
“You said you wanted rubies,” he reminded her.
She flushed, because she hadn’t really taken the engagement thing seriously. He had, apparently. “Daryl…”
“If you don’t like the design, we can change it,” he assured her. He opened the jeweler’s box. “I had it made up like this, because I know how much you love roses.”
She caught her breath when she saw the rings. They were the most unique and beautiful settings she’d ever seen in her life. They looked like living blood in their exquisite eighteen-karat-gold settings. The engagement ring was a rose, its petals outlined in gold and set in glittering pigeon’s blood rubies, the largest of which made the center. The engagement ring was studded with rubies and made to interlock with the wedding band.
“Here.” Daryl pulled them out of the box and took her hand. He hesitated with a grin. “Want to try them on? No sales pressure. They come with a demented fiancé, but you can dump him anytime you like if you find someone more deserving.”
She looked into his black eyes with real pleasure. He’d taken her to movies and taught her to tango, he’d ridden with her over the acres and acres of her father’s huge ranch. He’d been a friend and even a confidant. She’d told him, although not her parents, the whole truth of her sojourn on the Rancho Real and found him a sympathetic and caring listener. He was also as quiet as a clam. He’d never divulged her secrets to her parents.
She could do worse.
He laughed, because she’d said it out loud. “Yes, you could,” he assured her. “I even still have most of my own teeth!”
“Most of them?” she asked with a curious frown.
His black eyes twinkled. “Your brother knocked one of them out when we were in college together. I can’t even remember what we fought over. But he said that since he couldn’t beat me in a fair fight, we’d be better off as friends, and we have been, all these years.”
“Yes, well, my brother has an attitude problem from time to time,” she conceded. He was hot-tempered, the way Shelby had said their father once was, and he tended to be impulsive to a fault. But he was a good person. Like Daryl.
She shrugged. “Might as well try them on, since you went to so much trouble having them designed for me,” she teased and held out her hand.
They were a perfect fit. They complemented her beautiful hands with their faint olive tan, and the settings glittered in the light with a thousand reflections. The cut was exquisite.
“I love them,” she confessed.
He smiled. “Good! So. When are we getting married?”
She stared at him in panic. Mallory was still out there somewhere, even if he hated her and considered her a thief. She should hate him, but she couldn’t. She loved him. The thing was, if he’d had second thoughts about her, he’d have been in touch by now. He’d have phoned, written, something, anything. But there had been only silence from him. He still thought she was a thief. It tormented her.
“He won’t change his mind, Morena,” he said gently, using her real name. “Men like that are never wrong, in their own opinion. You’re clinging to dreams. It’s better, always better, to deal in reality.”
“You’re right, of course,” she said in a subdued tone. “It’s just…”
He bent and kissed her forehead. “An engagement isn’t a marriage. Just say yes. We’ll announce it at the production sale and make your father and my father very happy so they’ll shut up trying to pressure us into getting married.” He lifted his head. “And if things do somehow work out for you and your suspicious rancher, I’ll take back the rings and go shopping elsewhere,” he offered firmly. “You have nothing to lose, really.”
She drew in a soft breath. He made sense. She didn’t really agree, but she was certain that the future would be dark enough if she went through it alone. In some ways Daryl was perfect for her, and her father would be ecstatic. It might be enough to stop him from digging into her recent past and steamrolling over the Kirks in revenge if he found out why Mallory had fired her. That alone was reason enough to say yes. Daryl was right about one other thing—an engagement wasn’t a marriage. She could break it anytime she liked, with no hard feelings.
She touched the rings. “Pity to waste them.”
“Just what I was thinking,” he agreed.
Her dark eyes twinkled. “Okay. We can be engaged. But it’s like a trial engagement,” she added firmly. “Just that.”
He touched her nose with the tip of his forefinger. “Just that. I promise.”
Her father was over the moon when they gave him the news. “Thank God you finally saw sense,” he told her. He shook Daryl’s hand. “Welcome to the family. You can be married very soon.”
“We’re not rushing it,” Daryl said, when he noted her discomfort. “We’re going to take our time and get to know each other.”
King’s dark eyes narrowed. “Is that necessary? Why?”
“Now, Dad,” Morie said gently. “Don’t push.”
“It’s because of that damned Wyoming rancher who fired you, isn’t it?” her father demanded suddenly. “The lowlife son of Satan is going to find himself on the wrong side of a defamation-of-character lawsuit just as soon as I find out who framed you! And his isn’t the only head that’s going to roll when I do!”
CHAPTER TEN
MORIE FELT HER HEART turn over at the anger and threat in her father’s deep voice. “How did you…?” she exclaimed, horrified that he was going to try to ruin the Kirks. They were in a precarious financial situation. He could do it.
“I didn’t buy that story that you came home voluntarily. I know you,” he returned curtly. “You were devastated by whatever happened. I had a friend in Houston do some digging. My, my, what I found out,” he added softly, although his eyes were glittering.
She went closer to him. “Words,” she said quietly. “It was all just words. I was set up…you know that. Mallory Kirk has a jealous girlfriend. She thought I was getting too close to him so she found a way to get me fired.”
“You should have made him prosecute you,” King returned hotly. “I’d have had that blonde wannabe tied up in knots on the witness stand.”
Witness stand. Jury. Her eyes narrowed. “You talked to Uncle Danny. He sold me out!”
He looked uncomfortable. “Danny didn’t say anything. He just made some odd comments and I got suspicious about why you suddenly left a job you told him you loved.”
“So you hired a private detective,” she said with resignation. “Listen, Dad, it doesn’t matter. I’m going to marry Daryl. Nobody knows me in Wyoming. Who cares what gossip goes
around about why I left the ranch up there?”
“I care,” he said flatly. “You’re my child. You were accused of a crime. And now there’s another crime that they may try to blame you for.”
“Excuse me?” she asked, and her stomach flipped.
“A priceless jeweled egg was stolen from the house, and replaced with a cheap copy that went unnoticed until a few days ago,” King said icily. “If they thought you stole it in the first place, they may come after you and have you prosecuted now that it’s gone missing for real.”
She felt sick. “I saw Mallory Kirk going back toward the house with it, just after he told me to leave.”
“Yes, well, somebody took it soon afterward.”
“I’d already left Wyoming,” she protested.
“They could say you took it with you,” he returned. “They could say you let Kirk find it in your rucksack because you had the real one hidden. It was an unsettling confrontation. He could say that he didn’t notice it was a copy because of the emotional upset.”
She sat down on the arm of the sofa, her expression tense and worried.
“I’m not about to let my daughter be labeled a thief,” he said icily. “Your name is going to be cleared, and I don’t care who else gets hurt. People who steal should be caught, Morena. You should have made them call the law and prosecute you.”
“That’s what Joe Bascomb did,” she said bitterly. “And he was convicted of a murder, when he was innocent.”
“Was he?” King asked, with narrowed yes. “Danny thinks there may be more to that story than you’re aware of. He’s the one who called in private detectives in the first place, to check out your friend Bascomb because you asked him for help, to get the man an attorney. In the process, they learned about the theft of the jeweled egg.”
She felt even more terrible. Surely it couldn’t get any worse. Could it?
She took a long breath. “Okay, you’re right. But can it wait until after the production sale?” she asked gently. “Let’s not spoil it with a lot of legal challenges. Mom’s worked so hard.”