Wyoming Heart

by Diana Palmer

  The older man had the grace to blush. He averted his eyes. He felt even sicker than he already was. He hated hearing those charges from his favorite son. Okay, he wasn’t supposed to have favorites, but Cort had been with him at the ranch long after his other sons had scattered to the four winds.

  “I was twenty-one and your mother was eighteen when we got married,” Vic said. “She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. A few weeks into the marriage, she got pregnant, and I felt trapped. She never looked at me the same way again. She loved having babies. All of you got the attention. I got nothing. I played around to get even with her, but she didn’t even notice, or care.” His face hardened. “So I found somebody who did. Or so I thought.” He sighed. “I couldn’t bear to see your mother when she was dying, because I felt it was my fault. I was never around when she needed me and I didn’t realize it until too late. I loved her. I didn’t realize that, either. I married your stepmother because I was grieving, not only for your mother, but for Cash. I let your stepmother’s lies cause me to throw him right out of my life, and he hated me. I couldn’t get him to come back.” His eyes closed. “Then your stepmother started running around on me. I got a taste of my own medicine.” He leaned back in the chair and his eyes were dead. “I’ve ruined my life, Cort,” he said quietly. “Ruined yours, too.” He met his son’s shocked eyes. “Ruined all my sons’ lives. Parker won’t even come home unless he has to. Cash is friendly, but we don’t have the relationship we could have had. Garon has a family and he’s never been interested in the ranch. So there’s just you and me. And your new stepmother, in Vermont. She caught me with one of her friends in a compromising situation. She said...” He hesitated, and his face tautened with pain. “She said I was the most worthless man she’d ever known and she was sorry she’d married me. She wants a divorce.” He smiled ruefully. “She doesn’t even want alimony. She just wants me gone.” He sipped coffee he didn’t even want. “I’ve been a fool. I don’t know what to do.”

  “Take your yacht out and practice for the America’s Cup trials,” Cort suggested sardonically. “In a few weeks, you’ll forget all about it. You always have.”

  His sad eyes met his son’s. “It only seems that way. But maybe you’re right.” He got up from the table. “I’m sorry I’ve caused you more trouble.”

  “I patched things up.” He cocked his head. “I’m getting married.”

  Vic stared at him. “To whom?”

  “A sweet, guileless little Wyoming rancher who loves to knit and read romance novels. She wants kids. So do I.”

  “Wants kids, huh?” he asked. His smile was cynical. “Is she poor?”

  Cort nodded.

  “Is she marrying you for your money?” Vic asked sarcastically.

  “She thinks I’m just a working cowboy who’s as financially challenged as she is,” Cort said surprisingly. “She likes to cook, too.”

  Vic sighed. “Just like your new stepmother. She was a newspaper reporter, but she’s a homebody now. She likes to grow things. Oh hell, I messed up, big-time! She’ll never speak to me again. I’m sorry for what I did to her, but she won’t let me tell her. She said I was only sorry I got caught, but it’s not true.”

  “Why did you cheat on her?” Cort asked.

  He made a face. “She’s thick with her family,” he said icily. “It got so I hardly had any time with her at all. I thought she wanted me for what I had.”

  Cort cocked his head. He was learning things about his father that he’d never known. Vic needed attention, lots of it. When he lost it, he started doing things to make his wives notice him.

  “What was your childhood like?” Cort asked abruptly.

  “Hell on earth,” came the curt reply. “My father was a drunk, who beat me every time I talked back to him. My mother was rich as sin and never wanted kids. She punished me because my father got her pregnant and she lost her perfect figure. She slept with anything in pants.”

  Cort was shocked to the back teeth. “You never told us anything about that.”

  Vic sighed. “I was never around to tell you anything,” he said solemnly. He looked up at his son. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I was a hell of a poor father.” He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll get on the yacht and go sailing. If your stepmother calls, tell her...tell her I’m sorry and she can have anything she wants in the divorce settlement.”

  “I won’t be here,” Cort replied. He smiled. “I’m going back to Wyoming to get married.”

  Vic laughed softly. “Okay. I guess I’ll stay and meet your new wife before I head out to sea.”

  “Try to stay sober.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “And don’t fire anybody else,” Cort said firmly.

  Vic held up his hands. “I’m reformed.”

  “Sure you are,” Cort murmured, but he didn’t say it out loud.

  * * *

  MINA HAD CRIED herself to sleep the first night she was back home. But crying wasn’t going to help her situation, so she got up and threw herself into her work. Writing had always been her solace. When the world fell in on her, writing pulled her out of her misery. It was the one great joy of her life. Well, next to the baby growing in her belly. That was easily on a par with writing as the happiest thing she knew.

  She was working away when someone knocked at the front door. Impatient, and irritable at the interruption, she saved the chapter she was writing and went to the front door.

  She opened it, and there was Cort.

  He expected joy on that pretty face. He was smiling, his pale brown eyes alight with happiness as he studied her trim figure in jeans and a yellow sweater, with her beautiful blond-streaked brown hair soft around her shoulders.

  But she wasn’t happy to see him and made it clear without saying a word.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  “Fine. How are you?”

  She hadn’t opened the door an inch farther, and she wasn’t inviting him in. Her eyes were as cold as the traces of snow in the yard.

  He scowled. “Aren’t you glad to see me? I thought we were going to talk about the future. I’m sorry I had to leave so suddenly...”

  She cocked her head. “But you had a hot date in Manhattan,” she finished for him.

  He blinked. “What?”

  She smiled. It was a cold smile. “Gossip is that you’re marrying the starlet who’s working in that new television show about medieval times. You look really great in a dinner jacket, by the way. Very expensive.”

  He could feel the blood draining out of his face. “Bart told you,” he said roughly.

  “Bart didn’t tell me a thing. I saw your picture on the front page of a tabloid when I was in New York City. With Jake McGuire,” she added deliberately.

  It was too much to take in at once. “What the hell were you doing in Manhattan with McGuire?” he asked belligerently.

  He had no idea what she did for a living and she wasn’t sharing it. Not now. “I was having dinner at the Four Seasons,” she replied, and it was the truth. “The food is really great. Jake pampers me,” she added and sighed.

  His face hardened as he looked down at her. “I should have told you. I didn’t know how.”

  “A millionaire, playing at being a cowboy, and I fell for it. The tabloid was very informative,” she added, and meant it, because she’d bought a copy of it despite Jake trying to discourage her. “Apparently there are only a few movie stars you haven’t slept with.”

  He cursed under his breath. “Mina...” He spread his hands, desperate for words that would take that contemptuous look off her face. “Can I come in? I need to talk to you.”

  She bit her lower lip. She loved him. She was carrying his child. If she let him in the house, she was going to fall under that spell all over again and she couldn’t bear to.

  He saw that look on her face. Hope rose
in him. He smiled tenderly. “Don’t you think a man can change, if he wants to?”

  She was weighing the smile and the words against his known relationship with Ida, Catelow’s bad woman, and that starlet on the front page of the tabloid.

  He moved a step closer, so that she could feel the heat and power of his lean body. “Okay, it’s true. I’ve been a rounder. I’ve had women. You knew that already. But you didn’t know who I was, and you cared for me anyway. Cared a lot. Why can’t you believe that it works both ways?”

  She was wavering.

  “There hasn’t been anybody since the day I met you, when you stamped on my foot and dared me to have you arrested.” He smiled at her expression. “I never lie,” he added. “I wouldn’t try to fox you anyway. Bart says you’re pretty hard to fool.”

  “Usually,” she conceded.

  “You make great coffee,” he said. “We could have a cup and talk, couldn’t we? I promise to behave.”

  She drew in a breath, conflicted. She winced. “Well, I guess I could make coffee.”

  His heart lifted. She wasn’t sending him away. He felt young again.

  She opened the door and let him in.

  * * *

  “YOU REALLY DO make good coffee,” he said after they were drinking it at her small kitchen table. He made a face. “Even if it’s decaf.”

  “Thanks.” She couldn’t tell him why she was drinking decaf. It might not be good for the baby to continue her strong caffeine habit. Amazing, that she felt shy with him, when they’d been intimate.

  He saw that. It made him feel warm inside. The only dark cloud was her friendship with McGuire. He didn’t like her keeping company with him, but he had no way to stop it. Unless, of course, he married her.

  “Where do you really live?” she asked.

  “At Latigo,” he replied.

  Her breath caught. Jake had mentioned that Cort owned a big ranch, but she hadn’t known it would be that one. She’d heard of the huge Santa Gertrudis stud. Most ranchers had. “That’s the biggest ranch in West Texas,” she said.

  He nodded. “I owned it jointly with my brothers and my father, but I bought them all out. I’m running it myself now. Well, my father’s been helping me since his wife left him last week,” he muttered.

  “Why did she leave him?”

  “He was cheating on her.” He laughed hollowly. “He cheated on my mother when she was dying. He’s cheated on all his female companions. It’s the only way of life he knows.”

  She felt her face go numb. They always said, look at the father and that’s the son in twenty years.

  He could see the indecision in her face. “Our stepmother cheated on him, so he threw her out. It’s the only time he really got it back. Until last week, anyway.” He smiled sadly. “His new wife is an upright, moral woman. I liked her.”

  “Doesn’t he love her?”

  “Honey, I don’t think he really knows what love is,” he said softly. “Maybe he loved our mother, at first, but that wore off when she had the first baby and stopped giving all her affection to him.” He studied his coffee cup. “Apparently, when he feels he isn’t the center of attention, he does every bad thing he can think of to get noticed. He fired my foreman. I had a hell of a time persuading him to come back. And Dad’s still at the ranch. I can’t really leave him alone there for long, or I’ll be replacing everybody. He’s climbed into the bottle to drown his sorrows, and he’s a hell of a pain when he drinks.”

  “And I thought I had problems with my little herd,” she mused. She sipped coffee and peered at him over the rim. “So you have to go home soon, I guess,” she added, and tried not to sound as sad as she felt.

  He searched her dark eyes. It was like coming home. “I hoped you might go with me,” he said after a minute. His heart raced. It was the first time he’d really tried to commit himself to a long-term relationship and he was uneasy. It didn’t show.

  “And stay until you get tired of me, like all the others?” she asked on a long sigh.

  “Try to remember that tabloids run on gossip. The more lurid the story, the more people buy it. The real culprit was the starlet. Her series is ending and she needs publicity so that she can get another job.” His smile was pure cynicism. “I never even slept with her, Mina,” he added, his voice deep and very quiet. “She was just somebody pretty to take around town while I was there.” He lowered his eyes. “I never thought you’d find out about it.”

  “Would you have told me?” she asked, with some of his same cynicism.

  He drew in a long breath. “Probably,” he conceded. “But not until you were more sure of me than you are right now. You don’t know whether to believe me or not, do you?”

  “Look, I live in a small town. I’ve been here all my life. The only thing I’ve really learned about men in all that time is that you can’t trust them. Maybe I trust Bart, but that’s a different sort of relationship.”

  “It is. Bart’s just a friend. But you love me,” he said bluntly, watching her color.

  She really wanted to deny it. She couldn’t.

  “You’d like Latigo,” he said hesitantly. “It’s big and sprawling. We’re surrounded by thousands of acres of land. But if you want city life, El Paso’s not that far away. Hell, nowhere is that far away. We own a jet and two light aircraft.”

  She was weakening. He sounded as if he really wanted her there. But he wasn’t talking about marriage. That worried her.

  He slid his fingers over hers. “Okay. What’s that sad face about?”

  She looked up at him. “It would cause a scandal...”

  His eyebrows arched. “How so?”

  “I’m not worldly,” she began, flushing. “People around here are mostly conservative, and I’m still trying to live down my mother’s reputation.”

  “Oh.” His eyes twinkled. “I see. You think I’m asking you to come to Texas and live in sin with me,” he teased.

  She went red. She jerked her hand away from his. “You stop that!”

  He chuckled, but his eyes were soft with affection. “Actually, I want to make amends, for what happened in Lander,” he added quietly. “I rushed my fences. I feel guilty about that. You should have had the gown, the minister, the whole works. But there’s still time.” He pulled a box out of his pocket and pushed it toward her.

  It was a jeweler’s box. She looked at him with curious interest.

  “Open it,” he prodded.

  She flipped open the lid and caught her breath. It was a canary diamond, a huge one, at least two carats, in a yellow gold setting. Beside it was a wedding band, also studded with canary diamonds.

  “I thought it needed to be something that told a story,” he began slowly. “You glow. You’re like sunlight. It had to be canary diamonds.”

  “This is a wedding set,” she said, her voice soft with wonder.

  He nodded. “It comes with a jaded rancher and a lot of cattle.” He shrugged. “But there’s a lot of emotion behind it.”

  Her brown eyes glowed with the love she felt for him.

  “I’m having a nervous breakdown over here,” he pointed out. “I’ve never proposed marriage in my life. Would you consider putting me out of my misery?”

  She laughed softly, got up and sat down in his lap. “Okay.”

  She kissed him with aching tenderness, and his arms closed around her, mirroring the emotions she was feeling.

  He lifted his head, and his own pale brown eyes were soft and quiet with growing possession. “Is that a yes?” he teased.

  She laughed. “It’s a yes.”

  He held her close and kissed her with growing hunger. “Torment!” he accused.

  She smiled under his devouring mouth. “I am not a...a...oh dear!” She pulled out of his arms and ran for the bathroom. She hadn’t even had breakfast, so apparently last night’s ch
eese and crackers were making a return appearance.

  He was right beside her. “Should I call a doctor? Are you okay?” he asked, with real concern.

  She swallowed down the nausea and rested her head on her arm. “I’m okay,” she said huskily. A few seconds later, she felt confident enough to flush the toilet and get up to wash her face. He stood behind her, still worried and unable to hide it.

  “Mina, what’s wrong?” he persisted.

  She turned and looked up at him. “Your baby doesn’t like cheese and crackers, apparently,” she said in a breathless tone.

  “My...” The blood drained out of his face and then rushed back. There was utter glee in the glitter of his pale brown eyes. “You’re pregnant?”

  “The doctor I saw thinks so... Cort!”

  He had her up in his arms, swinging her around, as he exhibited the most incredible joy he’d ever felt in his life. “Pregnant! And the first time!” He set her gently on her feet, his face jubilant.

  “Well, at least I don’t need to ask if you’re pleased,” she said softly, and love sparkled in her brown eyes.

  “Oh, pleased doesn’t come close to expressing it. I want to tell the world...oh God, we’re not married!” he burst out.

  “Now, Cort...” she began.

  But he was already on the phone giving orders. An hour later, she was being hustled aboard the Latigo jet, which had just landed at the Catelow airport. The fixed base operator was talking animatedly with the pilot, who was doing the walk around before he filed a flight plan.

  “Nick flies us,” he told her as they strapped into their seats in the luxurious jet, which was even more elaborate than Jake McGuire’s. “He was a combat pilot, but he didn’t want to give up flying, so we got him. He’s good.”

  “But where are we going?” she persisted.

  “Las Vegas,” he said. “We get married. Then we go home and plan a big, splashy society wedding. You can meet my brothers and their wives. Well, except for Parker. He’s not married.” He frowned. “If my dad doesn’t sober up first, we’ll hide him in the closet until after the wedding.”