by Diana Palmer
“If a little kid can do it, you can do it,” Ted assured Jobe.
The other man lifted a blond eyebrow and a corner of his mouth in a full-scale grimace. “I don’t like machinery.”
“Just because the hay baler caught your jacket one time…!” Sandy began.
“It damned near caught my whole arm and jerked it off,” he snapped back at her.
“Well, a computer can’t jerk your arm off,” she promised him.
His eyes narrowed. “So they say,” he muttered. “But little kids can use one to build napalm.”
“I’ll be the first to agree that some chemical formulae shouldn’t be posted on the Internet where any child can access it,” Sandy agreed, “and that some sort of monitoring device should be available to parents.”
“Nice of you,” Jobe replied. “But my kids would be too busy to sit with their noses in a computer all afternoon. They’d be out working with livestock and learning how to track.”
“All day and all night?” Sandy asked sweetly. “And pray tell where are you going to get these mythical well-occupied children in the first place? As I recall, you’ve never found a woman who lived up to your high standards!”
“Certainly not you,” he agreed with a go-to-hell smile.
Sandy got up from her chair furiously, rocking a little on her feet.
“Whoa,” Ted said, stepping between them. “The idea is to feed herd records into the computer, not start World War III over it.” He looked from Jobe to Sandy. “I want you two to try and make peace. You have to work together on this thing. If you keep scoring points off each other, I’ll never get my system up and running.”
“I’d like to get him up and running!” Sandy flashed at Jobe.
Jobe looked haughty. “Don’t be vulgar,” he chided.
Sandy realized what she’d said and went as red as a radish.
Ted shook his head. “You two are going to be the death of me,” he said sadly. “And all I want to do is move into the twenty-first century with my cattle operation.”
“And your horses,” Sandy added.
Jobe looked hunted. “Computers are a curse.”
“Well, you’re cursed, then,” Ted answered, “because whether Sandy sets up the system or I have someone else set it up, you’re going to have to learn to use it.”
When Ted used that tone of voice, nobody argued. Jobe’s broad shoulders rose and fell in silent acceptance, but he glared at Sandy.
“She’s good at her job,” Ted said pointedly. “She can do this better than anyone else I know.”
“So let her do it. Foremen are thick on the ground.” He nodded toward Ted and turned on his heel.
“You’re not quitting!” Ted snapped.
Jobe glanced back over his shoulder. “Like hell I’m not.” He kept walking.
“You can’t find any place in Texas to work that doesn’t use a computer!”
“Then I’ll go to New Mexico or Arizona or Montana,” he returned.
“What’s the matter, Jobe, afraid you aren’t smart enough to learn it?” Sandy asked in the softest, sweetest tone.
He stopped dead. When he turned, his eyes glittered like coals of fire. “What did you say?” he asked softly.
She’d seen grown men back down when he looked like that. It was one of the reasons he was such a good foreman. He hardly ever had to use those big fists on anyone.
But she wasn’t backing down. Although she respected Jobe, she wasn’t afraid of him.
“I said, are you afraid you can’t do it?” she persisted.
He stuck his hands on his hips. “I could. I just don’t want to.”
She shrugged and turned away. “If you say so.”
“I could learn it!”
She shrugged again.
Jobe’s high cheekbones were overlaid by dusky color. His nostrils looked pinched. Ted had to smother a laugh, because nobody got under Jobe’s skin like Sandy. It often amazed him that two people with such violent feelings never noticed that there might be more to those emotions than just anger.
“All right, I’ll give it a shot,” Jobe said, but he was speaking to Ted. “And if I don’t like it, I’m not staying.”
“I’ll accept that,” Ted agreed. “But I think you’re going to find that it saves you quite a lot of time.”
Jobe stared at him. “And if it saves me all that time, what am I going to do with it?”
“Improve the breeding program,” Ted replied at once. “Go to seminars. I’ll send you to conferences to learn more about the newest theories in genetics. You can have more time to study, right down to finishing your degree in animal husbandry.”
Jobe looked tempted. He thought about it. Finally, he nodded. “When do you want to start?”
“As soon as she’s back on her feet again,” Ted informed him, nodding toward Sandy. “She’s had a bad time with the flu. I want her completely recovered before she takes on a project this size.”
“I’m okay,” she protested, and then ruined the whole thing by coughing.
“So I see,” Jobe muttered. “You shouldn’t have got out of bed so soon. Are you crazy!”
“Don’t you call me names!” she snapped right back, and coughed again. “I can take care of myself.”
“Sure,” he nodded, “look what a great job you’ve done. If Ted hadn’t come up to Victoria after you, you’d be dead of pneumonia, all alone in that apartment.”
She really would have enjoyed disputing that theory, but she didn’t have a leg to stand on. She blew her nose and tucked the handkerchief back into the pocket of her jacket.
“We’ll shoot for next week,” she promised. “That will give me a little time to work out hardware and programs. I’ll probably have to do some engineering on the programs to make them work the way you want them to. But that’s just a little thing, no problem.”
“You go back to bed,” Ted told her. “I’ve got some things to talk over with Jobe.”
“Okay,” she agreed. She felt weaker than ever, but she shot the foreman a smug look on her way out.
He glared at her. His hand clenched at his side. “For two cents,” he began under his breath.
She went up the staircase, and Ted drew Jobe into his study and closed the sliding doors.
“Stop baiting her,” he told the younger man.
“Tell her to stop baiting me,” Jobe returned hotly. “Good God, she lays in wait for me! Snide little remarks, sarcasm…do you think I’d take that from any man on the place?”
“You two have always rubbed each other the wrong way,” Ted said pointedly. “Want something to drink?”
“I don’t drink,” Jobe reminded him.
“Lemonade or iced tea?” Ted continued.
Jobe chuckled. “Sorry. My mind wasn’t working. Lemonade.”
Ted took the pitcher out of his small icebox and filled two glasses. It was a hot day even for August, the air-conditioning notwithstanding.
The younger man sighed heavily and sipped lemonade, his pale eyes narrow as he stared out the window at the fenced pastures beyond.
“I don’t mind so much that she knows computers inside out,” Jobe murmured. “It’s just that she can’t resist rubbing it in. Hell, I know I’m not machinery-minded. But I know animal husbandry and genetics backward and forward!”
Ted knew hurt pride when he saw it. He wondered if Sandy even realized how thin Jobe’s skin was. Probably not. She did her best not to notice the ranch foreman.
“Of course you do,” Ted commiserated. “And she’s not really rubbing it in. She loves her work. She’s a little overenthusiastic about it, maybe.”
Jobe turned, running an impatient hand through his thick hair. “She’s a high-powered engineer with delusions of grandeur,” he muttered. “Jacobsville was never big enough to suit her. She wanted bright lights and suave company.”
“Don’t most young people?” Ted asked.
Jobe’s broad shoulders rose and fell. “I never did when I was young. I
was happy with ranch life. There was all the time in the world, good people around me, the local bar if I needed cheering up, and plenty of friends when I needed them.” He glanced at Ted curiously. “Didn’t those things ever matter to Sandy?”
“They mattered,” the older man replied. “But she had a good brain and she wanted to use it. She’s made a career for herself in a field that wasn’t over-populated with women in the first place.”
“Oh, yes,” Jobe said harshly, “it was important to show people that a woman could do anything a man could.”
“If it was, it was your fault,” Ted said critically, and held up a hand when the other man started to speak. “You know it,” he continued unabashed. “From the time she was a teenager, you were always lording it over her, making fun of her when she tried to help the mechanic work on machinery, taunting her when she couldn’t lift bales of hay as easily as the men could. You gave her a hell of an inferiority complex. Sandy grew up with just one thought in mind, to prove to you that she could do something better than you could. And she has.”
Jobe made an angry gesture. “She spent all those years complaining about how small Jacobsville was. She didn’t want to spend her life in a hick town, she wanted sophistication. She said often enough that she didn’t want to end up wearing cotton dresses married to a cowboy.”
Ted’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he stared at the other man. He looked away. “Kids don’t realize what’s important until they become adults. I think you might find that Sandy’s attitude toward Jacobsville has changed. She’s crazy about our little boy, you know. She sits and plays with him all the time.”
“He’s not her kid,” he said pointedly. “She can leave anytime the pressure gets too much. How would it be if he was her own kid, and she couldn’t run away from him?”
“Ask her.”
Jobe laughed coldly. “Who, me? If I ever marry, it’s going to be some sweet small-town girl who doesn’t give a damn about making a name for herself in a man’s world. I want a mother for my children, not a computer expert.”
Neither of them knew that Sandy had forgotten her glass of lemonade and had come back, silently, to get it. She’d paused just outside the door and that was when she’d heard Jobe’s words.
Her face colored frantically. She turned and went silently, slowly, back up the staircase, feeling kicked in the stomach. Well, she’d always known that in Jobe’s mind, the thought of her and marriage didn’t follow each other. He wasn’t in the market for a computer expert, and she wasn’t going to settle for a male chauvinist who wanted a biddable little wife who’d stay pregnant half her life having his children.
She’d always known that. Curious, that it should come as such a shock now. But, then, Jobe had always had the power to hurt her more than anyone else ever could. He made her feel small, inferior, worthless. And she wasn’t. She was as intelligent as any man on the place, and more intelligent than most; certainly more intelligent than him.
As for marriage, there were plenty of men in the world who’d be proud to have a wife who could engineer computer systems! Mentally she went back over her dates in the past year and grimaced. Well, there were plenty of men who’d have loved having an affair with her, she amended. She was a little short of marriage proposals.
That didn’t matter. She was going to be a career woman. The world was her oyster. She could fit in anywhere now, and she didn’t have to depend on any man to support her. She didn’t want children, anyway, although she loved Ted and Coreen’s little boy. Her eyes went dreamy as she thought about how cuddly he was.
Jobe wasn’t cuddly. He was the most irksome man she’d ever known, and it was just unfortunate that she had to work with him on her brother’s ranch.
If only Ted would fire him. There must be a dozen men who could do his job twice as well as he could do it. Men with college degrees, who knew genetics blindfolded, who could buy and sell livestock, improve breeding stock, and beat the hell out of any cowboy who got fresh with Ted’s baby sister…
She didn’t like remembering how protective Jobe had been about her when she was younger. Ted didn’t get the chance to watch her; Jobe did it for him. He always seemed to turn up when she went out on dates, even if he only had a soft drink at a café where she was eating, or a bag of popcorn at any theater she went to. He’d been around during one of the worst nights of her life, when one of her boyfriends drank heavily and started trying to force her into the back seat of his car.
Jobe had dragged the boy out by his belt and pummeled him royally, before calling the police and having him arrested. His shocked parents had to come and bail him out. The boy had gone to live with a grandmother out of state the next day and he never came back. His parents, nice people, looked shellshocked for weeks afterward when they saw Jobe.
The men had razzed him about his special care of Ted’s sister. They thought he was sweet on her. Sandy knew differently. He was just overbearing, obnoxious and determined to keep her from getting married to anybody locally. He’d even admitted it once. He wanted her out of town and out of his life. He wasn’t taking any chances that she might marry a local boy and set up housekeeping nearby.
Meanwhile, Jobe went through women like water through a sieve. He was pleasant, attentive, courteous, but no woman was ever able to get a commitment out of him. He was the original bachelor, as slippery as an eel when wedding rings became the topic of conversation. He was thirty-six now and still seemed to have no aspirations toward being a husband and father.
Sandy didn’t care. He could stay single forever as far as she was concerned. She hated him. Yes, she did! He was so cruel, so viciously cruel…
Tears were sliding down her cheeks when she got back to her room and closed the door quietly behind her. Why, oh, why had she to love such a man, and for so long, with no hope at all of anything except rejection?
Chapter 2
Coreen Tarleton Regan opened the door quietly, having heard the muffled sobs from the hallway. She sat down on the bed beside her best friend and slowly gathered her in her arms.
“I hate him,” Sandy sniffed, savagely wiping away tears. “He’s an idiot!”
“Yes, I know,” Coreen said with a gentle smile. She pulled a tissue from the box beside the bed and handed it to Sandy. “Dry your eyes. Ted’s sent him to Victoria for the rest of the day, to pick up some herd records at the office there.”
“Good! I hope aliens kidnap him on the way back!”
“Now, now, think how we’d miss him around here.”
“I wouldn’t!”
Coreen’s blue eyes smiled. “Didn’t it ever occur to you that he might like you? All these little snips could be nothing more than a way to attract your attention.”
Sandy’s red-rimmed eyes glared at her. “No.”
“He used to be your shadow,” Coreen persisted. “Until you went away to college, at least.”
“My keeper, you mean,” she muttered. “Even then, he was making fun of me, putting me down.”
“You’re very intelligent. Maybe he felt threatened.”
“He’s intelligent enough,” Sandy replied with a muffled cough. “He just doesn’t like women who are smart. I heard what he just said to Ted downstairs. He said that all he wanted was a bunch of kids who didn’t know one end of a computer from the other.” Her eyes flashed. “As if I’d want kids with a man like that!”
Coreen just patted her shoulder, trying not to look as helpless as she felt. She wondered if Sandy knew how transparent her feelings for Jobe really were. Probably not, or she’d be horribly embarrassed. Sandy thought of herself as impervious to Jobe. Actually it was pretty much the reverse. Coreen, herself a veteran of turbulent relationships, knew exactly how her best friend felt.
“You feel lousy, don’t you?” Coreen asked gently. “Why don’t you try to sleep for a little while?”
“That might be a good idea.” She forced a smile. “You’re the best friend I ever had, you know.”
“You’re the b
est friend I ever had,” Coreen replied warmly. “Don’t you worry, if worse comes to worse, I’ll help you push Jobe into a shark-infested ocean somewhere and I’ll swear I don’t have a clue where he is.”
Sandy grinned through her tears. “Now that’s real friendship.”
Coreen nodded. “Exactly what I thought!”
But if Sandy had hoped that a day’s absence would improve her situation, she was badly mistaken. Jobe came back from Victoria in a foul temper and avoided Sandy for the rest of the week. That suited her, because it gave her time to get a little better before she began the arduous job of teaching Jobe how to use a computer.
He presented himself in Ted’s office the following Monday looking like a man facing imminent execution.
Sandy, in slacks and a tube top, had her hair in a bun and was cool and comfortable, at least on the surface. Jobe was wearing jeans and boots and a long-sleeved red-checked shirt. He looked the image of a rodeo cowboy. Sandy knew for a fact that he could ride anything on the place, from a bull to Ted’s meanest stallion.
It amused her a little that he always buttoned his shirts to the top button. He was a modest man. She’d never seen him stripped to the waist or the least bit rumpled. Even his blond hair was neatly combed. He was one of the cleanest cowboys she’d ever known. Maybe that was an effort to make up for his nasty temper, she thought privately.
“All right,” he said curtly. “Let’s get to it.”
“Sit down,” Sandy invited, putting him in a chair in front of the computer.
He glared at it. “This is going to be a disaster,” he muttered. “I’m not mechanical.”
“Even you can’t tear up this computer. It’s almost foolproof.”
“Where’s the switch?” he asked, frowning at the console.
“This entire complex plugs into a surge spike. You push the red button, here, on the strip,” she demonstrated, “and everything comes on, including the printer.”
He watched the screen. “There’s nothing there,” he said pointedly.
“Give it a minute.”
They waited and the menu came up.
“See?” she said, smiling. “Now take a look at the options. What you want is here.” She moved the cursor with the mouse to a particular box and clicked on it. A screen opened up with all Ted’s herd records on it.