Carole Howey - Sheik's Glory

by Carole Howey

  Gideon was very still in her arms.

  "Now I know you're ticklish," she teased him, daring to ruffle his hair as she'd wanted to do since she'd first set eyes on him. "If you want me to keep it a secret, you'll have to behave yourself."

  Gideon rolled over onto his belly but still did not try to escape her closeness. Missy felt as if a butterfly had landed on the back of her hand. She didn't dare move, lest it be frightened into flight.

  "Oh, I know a few secrets myself," he told her with a knowing look, pulling up a handful of grass and showering it on her blouse.

  He was baiting her, and she was up to the game. She looked at him doubtfully.

  "What about?"

  He looked very pleased that he'd piqued her interest.

  "About Flynn," he remarked, eyeing her with disconcerting steadiness.

  If he saw the redness creep back into her cheeks from her heated blush, he made no comment. She pretended to busy herself brushing the grass from her shirtfront.

  "What kind of secrets might he have that I could possibly be interested in?" She hoped he couldn't hear her heart proclaiming the lie.

  He gave her a look far too wise for his tender years.

  "A big one," he assured her in a voice hushed with mystery. "About you."

  Chapter Fourteen

  "About me?"

  Missy was glad she was lying down, perfectly still, or she might have fallen. She tried to rid herself of a sudden fuzzy thickness in her throat but gave up after the second swallow.

  "Uh-huh." Gideon's nod was so sage that it bordered on comical. But Missy no longer felt like laughing.

  "What?" She could not curb her curiosity. "What did he say?"

  Gideon shrugged with a drop of his eyelids and picked a sprig of new sagebrush.

  "I thought you didn't care." He twirled the blue seedling between his thumb and forefinger.

  Previously Missy had thought that men learned, over a period of time and with tutelage and practice, how to goad women, but she decided right then that they must instead be born with the ability. At least this one seemed to be. And he was as yet but 12 years old. She spared a fleeting moment of pity for whatever woman might be in Gideon's future.

  "I don't care what he said about me," she made herself say, closing her eyes as if by so doing she might close the subject.

  "Suit yourself." She pictured Gideon's careless shrug.

  "I don't care," she repeated slowly, opening her eyes again to deliver a reproving look. "But I suppose I should know. After all, until I can figure out a way around it, he and I are partners. I'd be a fool if I didn't try to learn everything I could about the man, especially what he thinks of me."

  Gideon's grin let her know just how much her rationale fooled him. He rolled onto his back and played with the sagebrush as if it were a feather.

  "Oh, he thinks of you," he said in an expansive way. "He thinks of you plenty. I come right out and asked him last night after we'd talked, y'know, man to man for a spell what he thought of you."

  "And?" Missy was certain Gideon's pause was merely for effect. She had to admit, it did have an effect. A most unsettling one, at that.

  Gideon rolled the sage sprig between his flattened palms, and the clean scent of bruised sagebrush surrounded them.

  "What's this stuff called?" he asked.

  "Sagebrush," she answered automatically. She was used to Gideon's childlike habit of changing a subject without warning. She started to spell the word, as she did for him whenever he asked about such things. "S-a-g-e"

  "Say, I have an idea!" Gideon sat up fast as thought and crossed his knickered legs, a gleam in his dark eyes.

  "I'm half afraid to ask," Missy grumbled, not liking that mischievous gleam one bit. "But I suppose I'd better. What?"

  "You can teach me how to read!"

  She sat up and smoothed the folds of her habit in an effort to keep a rein on her patience. It was a struggle.

  "Gideon, that's why we have a school."

  His expression darkened at once, as if a thundercloud had passed before the sun.

  "So you want me to go to some dumb school and make a jackass of myself in front of a schoolteacher and a bunch of sodbuster brats?" His voice was cold, but Missy felt the hurt hidden therein. Before she stopped to think about it, she reached for his face, brushing a rebellious dark forelock from his eyes.

  "But Gideon, I have plenty of work already to keep me busy!" she argued gently.

  He was not mollified.

  "Flynn hired Lucy to cook, and you got him here now to do half the work you were doin' before." His dark brows met over his puck nose. "I'll learn fast. I promise. I ain't stupid. I bet I could learn before the summer's out. If you teach me. You and Flynn. You could both do it, you know."

  Gideon, Missy had learned, had all the energy of a restless stallion when it came to getting his way. She sensed herself capitulating to his earnest entreaty, but she didn't want to appear to give in too easily.

  "What about Flynn?" she countered, pressing the forefingers of her joined hands against her lips. "Have you already spoken to him about this?"

  "Didn't have to," Gideon answered with a look of superiority. "He told me last night that it'd be all right with him, right before he told me he was in love with you."

  "What?"

  Gideon laughed. "That was the secret I told you about!" he said. "Guess I forgot to tell you."

  "We got sidetracked by sagebrush," Missy managed despite the hollow rushing in her ears. "Gideon, are you are you quite sure that's what he said?"

  She found his youthful, careless shrug maddening.

  "Ain't likely I'd forget somethin' like that," he remarked in an offhand way. "He said he'd take me fishin' sometime, too, if you'd let him. I like him, Miss. I like him a lot. I think you could do worse than to marry up with him."

  The absurdity of the conversation she was carrying on with the boy struck her, and she laughed nervously.

  "Gideon, you have quite the imagination," she declared, shaking her head. "I can't picture this conversation you had with Flynn, about learning to read, about going fishing, and about his being in love with me. Are you certain you didn't dream all of this up?"

  Gideon got to his feet and planted his hands at his waist. His square chin stuck out like a warning.

  "You don't believe me?"

  "Oh, I believe you think he said these things," she hastened to assure him. "I can even see why you'd find them agreeable, except for the part about his being in love with me. That I don't understand at all."

  "Why?" he demanded, his features fixed in a scowl. "Don't you think he could love you? Don't you want him to love you? Sure looks to me like you do!"

  No, yes, and yes. Part of her wanted to answer Gideon with the same childish simplicity he'd exhibited to her. In reality, her feelings were very simple. It was everything else tangled up with them that made them so complex. Things she could not even hope to make Gideon, young as he was, understand. Things she knew she did not fully understand, herself.

  She stood up and brushed her skirt free of the dirt and debris of the pasture. "Well?"

  "Flynn is a man with a purpose, Gideon," she said simply. "I don't know what that purpose is yet, but I do know that settling down on a ranch or a horse farm isn't a part of it."

  "Oh." Gideon sounded wise. "You're afraid, then."

  She could not prevent herself from delivering him a sharp look.

  "There are precious few things I'm afraid of, my boy. And Flynn Muldaur isn't one of them."

  "Okay." Gideon got to his feet, too, but he didn't seem to mind the bits of Dakota that still clung to his clothes. "That's fine. So you'll both teach me how to read and write, then?"

  Missy gave up trying to follow Gideon's broken line of thought.

  "I'll talk it over with him." She surrendered with a bow of her head.

  "Well, come on, then!" Gideon took her hand and pulled her forward. "He's back at the house."

  Missy stopp
ed short. "At the house!" she echoed, confused. "But he wasn't there when I" At least she hadn't thought he was. Where could he have been?

  "He came out to the barn early this morning when I was cleaning out Glory's stall," Gideon informed her, pulling her again until her legs cooperated. "He talked to me some about this reading stuff, and well, we talked about a lot of things." Gideon seemed to want to be evasive this time, but Missy did not pursue it. There'd be plenty of time to learn everything she wanted to know later, after she was able to catch her breath. She wondered, following Gideon's distressingly energetic lead, if she might accomplish that by Christmas.

  Gideon used the walk back to the ranch house to think up another fib or two to tell Flynn. He hadn't been quite honest with Missy about his conversation with the man the night before, but he guessed he wasn't too far off the mark. Flynn hadn't exactly confessed to being in love with Missy, but neither had he denied it when asked. Love was a complicated and private business, Muldaur had said with a jaundiced look in his eye, and not one that men discussed in detail with folks they hardly knew. It was a gamble that Missy wouldn't call Flynn on it, but Gideon had learned how to gamble on people in Louisville and found out that he was pretty good at it.

  Gideon surprised himself by liking Flynn more and more, in spite of the fact that Flynn had figured out his trick with the molasses and the stomachache. Flynn, he decided, was a sight smarter than a lot of people he'd dealt with in the past, and he'd have to be pretty clever about whatever he tried with him in the future. Missy was smart, too, he knew, but Missy, unlike Flynn and Gideon, trusted people too much. That was her weakness, if he cared to profit by it.

  People in general, he'd learned quickly, believed in things they wanted to believe. That was why they were so easy to scam. He didn't particularly like the notion of scamming Missy as she'd been real good to him, but he told himself what he was doing was harmless. Nobody would be hurt by it if it worked, and if it didn't, well, there was always that Bill Boland fellow who had come tearing into town yesterday with Flynn hot on his heels. Because sure as hell, Missy needed a husband.

  And he, Gideon, needed a father.

  The house was quiet but filled with the mouthwatering smell of baking bread when Missy pushed open the back door to let them both inside. The kitchen was empty. Lucy was outside in the garden; she'd waved to them as she hoed. Lucy was all right, too, Gideon allowed. Hell, everybody at the C-Bar-C was fine. They

  treated him like a person instead of a bother, and they talked to him like he was somebody instead of just a hungry bunch of rags. This was the first real home he'd ever known, and he knew he'd lie, cheat, or steal to keep it if he had to. He just hoped he wouldn't have to.

  Missy didn't particularly want to face Flynn Muldaur having learned what she had in the pasture, especially not under the too-watchful eye of Gideon. But she was neither a coward nor a quitter. And she was damned if she'd go walking on eggs about her own house for anybody, especially Flynn Muldaur. Even if what Gideon said about Muldaur's being in love with her were true.

  Especially if it were true.

  She thought about calling out to Flynn, but something held her back. It was not any wish that she appear in a more ladylike light to him, she knew. He'd seen her worst already yesterday and in Louisville; she doubted she could make him think any worse of her.

  Particularly if what Gideon said was true.

  Flynn is in love with you.

  Oh, Gideon was a foolish, fanciful child, prone to imaginative untruths, she scolded herself. But nevertheless there was a part of her that wanted so very much to believe him this time. Maybe she would see something about Flynn that would tell her for certain whether Gideon's words were fact or fanciful invention.

  She feared she would.

  There was a room off the parlor where Missy kept her accounts and the ranch records. The place was a cluttered little hole, but she used it often enough that she kept the door open when she had no company to entertain. Flynn wasn't in the parlor, but she immediately became suspicious when she noticed the door to her small office was closed. With sickening dread, she ran to the door and opened it.

  Flynn was inside, seated at her desk, an open ledger

  book before him. He looked up at once, his features darkening.

  ''Don't you believe in knocking?" he demanded, making no effort to camouflage his activity.

  "This is my house; I'll enter a room wherever and whenever I want!" she retorted, feeling her face fill with hot rage. "How dare you come in here and snoop about my business! These accounts are"

  "my business, too," he interrupted her with infuriating equanimity. "We're partners, remember? I have every right to know what financial footing the ranch is on. And you can bet I'll be sure and remember your philosophy about closed doors."

  "You might at least have asked me to see them!" she flared back at him, ignoring his sarcasm. "Instead of sneaking behind my back!"

  Flynn stood up but did not close the ledger before him. He fixed his blue-eyed gaze on her in a way that made her tremble.

  "You're right," he conceded with a nod, curling his lower lip. "I should have asked. Then we could have had this argument before instead of after. Gideon, what the heck are you doing here? Why aren't you in school?"

  Missy recalled Gideon in the pasture, employing a similar technique to change the subject. She wondered who was the teacher and who was the student.

  "Leave the child out of this," she said, keeping her voice low, although it was a great temptation to shout and throw things at him. "We'll discuss him presently. In the meantime"

  "I ain't a child," Gideon grumbled.

  "Go wait outside, Gideon."

  "But what about"

  Missy whirled on him.

  "Go into the garden with Lucy, Gideon." She pronounced each word slowly and leveled him with a look that made him take two steps backward and swallow hard. "I must speak with Flynn alone. And if I find that you've disobeyed me and listened at the door . . ." She did not finish her remark but allowed her voice to trail off with as ominous a tone as she could muster. She was gratified to see him flee the room at a dead run.

  "Don't think I've ever seen him listen so well."

  Flynn's wry remark recalled her attention. She turned to him again with another hot remark, but his hands were up in conciliation.

  "You're right, Missy, and I apologize," he told her, without a hint of mockery in his look or voice. In fact, to her astonishment he actually appeared contrite. "But the truth is, I came into the parlor, noticed this room, saw that the door was open, and"

  He stopped and averted his gaze.

  "Damn it," he swore under his breath. "I can't do this anymore."

  "Do what?" At his baffling words, she forgot her anger.

  He glanced at her, but seemed to find the effort painful and looked away again.

  "It's hot in here," he muttered, taking her by the arm. "Let's go into the parlor. I'll tell you. Everything."

  Too stunned to protest, Missy followed his direction. He led her to a chair and she sat down without a word. Flynn remained standing, his splayed hands settled at his hips. He paced. He's in love with you, Gideon had said. Looking at him, though, she knew that his were not the words or actions of a man in love.

  They were the actions of a man in a great deal of trouble.

  She sat very still, waiting. Watching.

  "Missy, I need five thousand dollars."

  Missy said nothing. She sensed they were among the truest words Flynn Muldaur had ever spoken to her, and she cherished them for exactly that. She drew in and released several slow, even breaths.

  "What for?" She was amazed by the tranquility in her address.

  "I can't tell you that." He looked away from her.

  "I thought you said you would tell me everything."

  "Well, I meant everything I could," he answered testily, looking at the far wall.

  She stood up.

  "We're partners, according to t
hat piece of paper you have," she reminded him saltily. "And until you trust me enough to tell me everything"

  "Damn it, Missy, I can't!" He spun on her with real distress on his features. "You see, it's not just about me. If it was, I'd be happy to tell you everything just to have it all out. My God, it's been like some yoke about my neck for just about half my life. But there’s someone else involved. Someone who would be hurt a great deal, probably even destroyed, if the truth ever came out. And I love that person too much to allow that to happen."