Wyoming Heart

by Diana Palmer

  “He left you a letter,” he said. “Want me to run it over there?”

  “Would you mind?” she asked, her mind still in limbo. “I’m writing up our mission while it’s still fresh in my head.”

  “I want to hear about that,” he replied with a laugh.

  “You can hear about it over coffee. I’ll make a new pot!”

  * * *

  SHE READ THE letter while Bart sipped coffee. Cort had an emergency back home, he’d said. He was sorry he had to leave while she was out of town, but it involved a relative who was in big trouble and he couldn’t turn his back on the man. He’d be back in a couple of weeks, he promised.

  She put the letter down. Doubts crawled in. Was there really a relative in trouble, or was he just getting rid of an uncomfortable love affair that he didn’t want anymore?

  “He was torn up about it,” Bart said softly, which was the truth. Cort had raised the roof. It seemed that his father and stepmother had hit a bump and separated. Vic was at the ranch roaring drunk and scattering cowboys. Cort had to deal with him. He’d asked Bart to make sure Mina knew that it wasn’t from choice that he’d walked away.

  Her dark eyes sought his and there was devastation in them. “Was he really, or was he just looking for a way out?”

  He smiled. “He’s crazy about you—couldn’t you tell?” he teased. “I’ve never heard such language. He really didn’t want to go.”

  She relaxed a little. She smiled. “Okay.”

  “He wanted you to know that he’d be back as soon as he could arrange things back home.”

  She relaxed even more. “I feel better.”

  He cocked his head. “What were you up to with the guys this time?”

  “A rescue,” she replied. “We saved a young boy from a kidnapper. It wasn’t even planned—we just walked into it. I felt so good.”

  “Someday, you’re going to have to level with Cort about what you really do for a living,” he prompted. He didn’t add that his cousin was going to have to do some confessing of his own.

  She grimaced and sipped black coffee. “I know. I should have told him before now. I was living down to his image of me. It stung a little.”

  “I know. But your new book is climbing the charts. It’s already made the Publishers Weekly list and it’s on the New York Times list.”

  She nodded. “My agent called me early this morning to tell me that it was at number eight. She was over the moon. She says it will go higher.”

  “You bet it will. The reviews on Amazon are awesome.”

  She grinned. “It’s so exciting! I never dreamed I’d get so far!”

  “I did,” he chuckled. “You have the talent. Not to mention some real solid research associates,” he added. “I can’t wait to see how Cort’s going to react to that news.”

  “There may be fireworks,” she sighed. “I don’t lead a conventional life.”

  “You go to New York at the end of next week. That’s a lot of travel.”

  She shrugged. “I’m used to it. Nicaragua was fun.” Her dark eyes twinkled. “I love being part of the group, you know? It’s the most exciting thing I’ve ever done.” She laughed. “I’ve had requests from my team about how they want to be portrayed in this new chapter.”

  “Something along the lines of cosmetic changes?” he teased. “Some of them are pretty rough looking.”

  “But with hearts of pure gold,” she replied.

  “Speaking of gold, I’m going after a lot of new Angus yearlings. Want to come and look at them with me? You might want a few for your own herd.”

  “Will it take long?”

  “No. I’m going in the morning.”

  “Then I’ll come, but just for the morning. I’ve got a lot of work to do before I leave next Friday for New York. I’ve got several meetings.”

  “I’ll make sure we don’t stay long.”

  She gnawed her lower lip. “You wouldn’t lie to me, about Cort not wanting to go home?” she asked in a worried tone.

  His eyes were soft with affection. “Never about that,” he said. “He promised he’d be back in a couple of weeks. He always keeps his promises.” He didn’t add one more thing; that Cort had also said that he was going to tell Mina the truth when he came back. He had long-range plans for her. Bart was delighted. She’d had a hard life. It was time she had a little happiness.

  * * *

  THE NEXT FRIDAY morning before daylight, she boarded Jake McGuire’s private jet at the Catelow airport for the trip to New York City with her bags packed, yawning.

  “We have coffee with bagels and cream cheese,” he teased after they were airborne. “Hungry?”

  “I could eat a small horse. I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she added on a laugh. “I’m tired all the time.”

  “Still taking that quinine?” he asked with obvious concern.

  She nodded. “I wouldn’t dare miss a dose. One of our guys came down with malaria just as we got off the plane in Miami. I called Ry to check on him. He’s doing okay, just trying to get through the worst of it.”

  “Malaria is no fun,” he said. “I had a bout of it many years ago when I had to close a deal in Guatemala.”

  “I’ve never had it,” she said. “And I’m crossing my fingers that I never will!”

  The steward brought coffee and a platter of bagels on a silver tray, with a dish of cream cheese and a knife.

  Jake poured coffee into china cups and handed her one.

  “Thanks,” she said. “This is really kind of you.”

  He chuckled. “No problem at all. I told you, I have business in Manhattan, too.”

  “I dread the media tour,” she confessed. “At least it’s not like being in front of an audience. There’s just me and the sound guy and the cameraman and the producer in the booth.” She laughed. “It’s so odd, not to be able to see the people who are interviewing me, except on camera.”

  “I can imagine. What was it like, in Nicaragua?” he asked.

  “Hot,” she returned, “especially in camo gear with a sidearm. But the guys have trained me very well. I’m not nearly the klutz I was in the first days they took me on missions.”

  He shook his head. “I still can’t get over the danger you put yourself in. They take it for granted, but you’ve already been shot once.”

  “Just a flesh wound,” she reminded him, and laughed. “I hardly felt it.”

  “You and your insistence on realism,” he sighed.

  “Next month I’m going out with a SWAT team in Dallas,” she told him. “One of Ry’s guys knows a guy who’s going to let me do a ride-along.”

  “You’re pushing your luck.”

  “It will be worth it,” she said, grinning at him. “That realism is why I’m selling so many books.”

  “I suppose so. But it’s still dangerous.”

  “Life is dangerous,” she replied. “You can get killed in all sorts of ways here in the States without putting yourself in danger.”

  “True enough,” he agreed. “More coffee?”

  * * *

  THE MEDIA TOUR turned out to be a lot of fun. They filmed it at the studios of one of the major television networks. The staff had coffee and an assortment of breads waiting for her. They discussed her latest foray into mercenary work, although she never called any of her group by name, for their own protection.

  She was still worried that Cort might see her on one of the broadcasts, but it was unlikely. He was in West Texas, and the only Texas interview she was doing was in Dallas. It lessened the discomfort. She wanted to tell him herself, and she’d have to do it pretty soon. If he was really planning a future with her, and Bart thought he was, she had to level with him about her true profession. She hoped he’d understand, and not object to her crawling through jungles with her research associates.

&
nbsp; On the other hand, if she turned up pregnant, that was going to complicate things. It would mean an end to the missions, at least for a while. She smiled to herself as she wondered if there was already a tiny life growing inside her. It was much too soon to tell.

  * * *

  JAKE TOOK HER to the Four Seasons for dinner late that afternoon, when she’d finished the media tour and made time to speak with her agent and her editor. The book sales were climbing, and her agent hammered out the details of the new contract with her. It looked good. There was going to be a considerable advance, which she’d already been told, and royalties would be sweet. She was sitting on top of the world, she told Jake, without mentioning Cort, or the possibility that she might be going to Texas with him in the near future, if she did turn out to be pregnant.

  She wondered where they’d live. There was usually a bunkhouse for single cowboys, but there might be a small house they could rent from his boss. It was too early to concern herself with that, really. She still had the worry about what to do about her own ranch if she left Catelow.

  She could put in a manager, perhaps Fender, her new full-time man. He seemed to be honest and trustworthy, and he was proving to be a competent worker. She allowed herself to dream of a future with Cort, of a baby in her arms and a happy marriage. Surely he wouldn’t mind her profession. After all, the only things she needed were a laptop and an internet connection to pursue her craft. She could tell him about the writing without dropping the truth of her research into his lap until he got used to the idea of her profession. Surely he wouldn’t mind.

  “You’re very quiet,” Jake remarked as they finished dessert.

  She laughed. “I’m working.” She flushed. “Sorry, I tend to work out details in my mind before I ever put them down in a word processing program. It saves rewrites.”

  He chuckled. “Ah, the life of a writer,” he teased. “You do love it, don’t you?”

  “It’s been my whole life, for a long time now.”

  “I noticed.”

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you’ve done for me, Jake,” she said, her dark eyes meeting his. “I can fly commercial, but I’m nervous of planes, even with the guys.”

  “What do they fly around in?” he wondered aloud.

  “This ancient DC-3,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s well maintained and it gets us where we’re going, but I’m constantly amazed that it can get off the ground.”

  “They need something newer,” he said.

  She sighed. “I mentioned that. And they said that gear was far more important. They can borrow air transport if they need it. Gear, that’s another thing.” She grinned. “They even had a special suit made for me. I brought it home, along with the .45 auto they gave me.” She whistled. “My hands aren’t really big enough for a weapon that size, but I’m getting better with it.”

  “A smaller caliber might be a better fit,” he ventured.

  “It might be, but I like what I’ve got.” She didn’t tell him the real reason. A .45 could knock down a vicious target, something a lesser caliber couldn’t do. If she and the group were in a really dangerous situation—like the last time, when she’d been shot—it could mean the difference between life and death.

  He cocked his head and smiled at the picture she made in her demure black cocktail dress, with her hair long and pretty around her shoulders.

  “You really are a dish,” he mused gently.

  She flushed. “Thanks.”

  He studied his coffee instead of her. “You and Cort Grier—is it getting serious?”

  She smiled and made a face at him. “Classified.”

  He burst out laughing. “Okay, I’ll stop fishing. But if he ever goes to the back of the line, you have to keep me in mind.”

  “You’re one of my best friends, you and Bart,” she said gently. “That will never change.”

  He sipped coffee. “Okay,” he said finally. “But I’ll never give up hope.”

  * * *

  HE WALKED HER back to her hotel. Even this late at night, the streets were full of people.

  “I love Manhattan,” she said with a sigh. “It has to be the most beautiful big city in the world.”

  “I’ve always thought so,” he agreed.

  “The lights are...are...” She stopped dead, her eyes on a battery of tabloids in machines near the hotel. She was staring at the cover of one with shock.

  Because there, in lurid color, was the man who’d seduced her so tenderly, who’d said he wanted a child with her, who’d stolen her heart.

  Cort Grier was on the cover of the tabloid. The headline was shattering. “Texas millionaire and Hollywood starlet discuss wedded bliss.”

  She looked up at Jake with sheer horror. She was almost shaking from the revelation.

  He ground his teeth together.

  “You knew,” she exclaimed.

  He bit his lower lip.

  “You knew,” she repeated, stopping under a streetlight as people filed by on their way to theaters or late dinners.

  He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I knew. We sit on some of the same committees. I’ve known Cort for years.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, as tears rolled silently down her cheeks.

  “I couldn’t. It was like playing dirty pool, to sell out a rival that way,” he added quietly. “I mentioned it to Bart. He said his cousin was sick of being hunted by women for what he had. He just wanted to be an ordinary cowboy for a while.”

  “He’s a playboy,” she said, almost choking on the words.

  “Well, yes, I guess he is,” he told her with obvious reluctance. “His name has been linked with movie stars and debutantes and, once, with a princess. He’s worth millions. He owns a big ranch in West Texas. He runs purebred Santa Gertrudis cattle and his family is heavily into real estate and oil.”

  She wanted to sit down, but there was nothing she could do but put one foot in front of the other and go toward her hotel.

  “I am truly sorry,” Jake said as he fell into step beside her.

  “So am I.”

  * * *

  SHE CRIED HERSELF to sleep. The next morning, she got up and started to make coffee in her hotel room when a sudden uprush of nausea sent her rushing into the bathroom, where it felt like she lost two days’ meals.

  Great, she thought as she flushed the commode and washed her pale face. What a wonderful time to discover that she was probably pregnant, when the man she’d planned a future with turned out to be a two-timing snake!

  She looked in the mirror. “You are a terrible judge of character,” she told her image. “And just what are you going to do now?”

  It was a good question. A termination, while it might be a solution for most women, was impossible for her. She couldn’t bear the thought of giving up the tiny life inside her, even if she never saw its father again. Amazing, how hungry she was for a baby, even under the circumstances.

  She told Jake she needed one more day to finalize some negotiations and later that morning, she went to a medical facility and had a blood test done. She was almost certainly pregnant, although they told her that sometimes it could be a false positive. Her symptoms, however, pretty much clinched the diagnosis. She walked out onto the sidewalk with her head in the clouds, enveloped in dreams.

  She didn’t tell Jake, for fear that he might share the news before she was ready. She still had to deal with Cort, and she wasn’t certain how to do it. So she flew back to Catelow with Jake, her face as solemn as if she’d lost a member of her family to the grim reaper, even as the joy of her pregnancy welled up inside her.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CORT WAS FURIOUS. His father, drunk and disorderly, had fired one of the ranch’s top hands in a drunken stupor. Cort had to find the man and offer him more benefits to come back. He hadn’t wanted to leave
Catelow in the first place. He should have had two more blissful weeks getting to know Mina. He wanted to marry her, whether or not she was pregnant. He’d never been so crazy about a woman in his life. And here he was, instead, babysitting a man who should have been plenty old enough to take care of himself!

  “What the hell is your problem?” he asked his father, exasperated, as they sat down to dinner, served by their longtime cook.

  “She kicked me out,” Vic said, his voice still slurred. “I need another drink...”

  “Over my dead body,” Cort shot back. “Why did she kick you out?”

  “I was just flir...flirting with one of her friends.”

  Cort’s pale brown eyes narrowed. “Just flirting?”

  The older man flushed. “I can’t manage with just one woman,” he said belligerently. “I’ve always slept around. I even told her, when we married.”

  “I know,” Cort said coldly. “You slept around on Mom, when she was dying.”

  Vic had the grace to blush. He averted his eyes. “You don’t understand.”

  Cort laughed coldly. “I understand, all right. You were a hell of a loss as a father. I guess you’re even worse as a husband.”

  Vic gaped at him. “What?”

  “Oh, come on,” Cort said irritably. “You were never around when we needed you, especially after you split up with the stepmother from hell. Old Larry and our housekeeper took care of us when we had problems at school. They patched up the cuts and spoke to the principal when we got in trouble. They made Thanksgiving and Christmas for us while you were off philandering. God, if I turn out to be a father like you, I’ll shoot myself!”

  Vic stiffened. “I never wanted kids,” he confessed.

  “Then you should have learned about birth control!” Cort returned. “And shame on you for even admitting that!”