by Day Leclaire
She shot to her feet to give herself some breathing room. Her hand tightened around her glass and she tossed back her whiskey in a single, disjointed movement before returning his look with a hard one of her own. “That can’t happen again.”
“How are you going to stop it?” he asked, genuinely curious.
“Distance would be a good start.”
Her frankness made him smile. He stood as well, throwing a question over his shoulder as he returned his glass to the sideboard. “Is it any better now that I’m across the room?”
“Yes.” She thrust a hand through her hair. “No.”
“I agree.”
She regarded him warily. “So what do we do now?”
A knock sounded at the door and Claire’s voice boomed through the heavy wood. “Dinner’s on. Shake a leg in there.”
Joc crossed the room until they stood toe to toe. Somehow she managed to stand there without giving away the wash of emotions cascading through her. But she couldn’t hide the truth from herself, no matter how hard she tried. She wanted him to touch her again, wanted it with a passion that almost had her quivering.
“I suggest we eat,” he said in reply to a question she’d already forgotten. “What happens after that is up to you.”
“Nothing is going to happen,” she stated without hesitation. “Nothing other than you climbing into your fancy car and returning to Dallas.”
“Then neither of us has anything to worry about.” He inclined his head toward the door. “Shall we go?”
She hesitated, anxious to recover some of the ground she’d lost and remind them both of why she’d agreed to dine with him. “You promised that I’d have your full and undivided attention. That you’d give me a fair shot at changing your mind about buying my ranch.”
“I gave you my word and I’ll keep it.”
She’d have to be satisfied with that. Together they crossed to the dining room. With every step Rosalyn ran through her game plan. She was a cards-on-the-table type of woman, and she didn’t intend to change that with Arnaud. So she’d be blunt with him about why she refused to sell out. But she’d also attempt to unearth any weakness he might possess and exploit it. After all, she wasn’t a total fool, not when it came to the safety and security of her ranch. So far, the only weakness she’d discovered involved her and a bed. And as much as that appealed, she’d be an idiot to use it. With her luck he’d walk away with everything she held most dear. No, she needed to spend the next hour or two getting a better handle on him and how she might win this war that had erupted between them.
“Nice,” he complimented as they entered the dining room.
Despite his comment, she couldn’t help but see her home through his eyes and the sight left her flinching. This was a man accustomed to the best life had to offer, a man worth billions. How plain and countrified her home must appear to him, with its simple wood table decorated with her grandmother’s best linen and her great-grandmother’s rose-patterned china. Rosalyn had even had the unmitigated nerve to think her meal of pot roast and home-grown vegetables would appeal to a palate fine-tuned to five-star gourmet cuisine.
“It’s not fancy.”
He must have caught the defensive edge in her voice, and he turned to face her. “Are you apologizing for your lifestyle? Because if you don’t like it, I can fix that for you.”
It was precisely what she’d been doing and the knowledge hit hard. Her hands balled into fists. She had nothing to apologize for. Absolutely nothing. “No, thanks. I like what I have.”
He offered the smile that never failed to sink into her bones and slip through her veins like quicksilver. “I thought I had you for a minute there.”
“Not a chance.”
They took a seat at the dining room table, she at the head, he on her right. She left him to eat his first course in peace—the salad she’d been preparing when he’d arrived. Most of the vegetables were ones growing just outside the kitchen door, where similar household crops had been tended and cultivated by the women of the house for as long as the homestead had stood.
It wasn’t until they’d finished their main course that he turned their conversation to business. “Shall we negotiate our differences or would you rather table it for the evening?” he asked.
“Since this is my only opportunity to change your mind, I think we’ll negotiate.” She shoved her plate to one side. “Let’s start with something easy. Why do you want my ranch?”
“It sits at the heart of land I own,” he answered promptly.
“Land you purchased within the last year.”
“It only became available this past year.” He lifted an eyebrow. “Does it matter when I purchased the property?”
She shook her head. “No. What matters is that you’ve wasted your time and money since there’s no chance of acquiring my ranch.”
To her frustration, he simply shrugged. “Time will tell.”
Claire appeared with their dessert and Rosalyn stewed over his calm certainty that she’d ever consider selling her home. Unable to stand it another minute, she said, “Explain it to me, Arnaud. Why are you buying up this particular section of Texas? What could you possibly want with it when you could have any other place in the world for the asking?” Her hair drifted into her face again, and she swept it behind one ear, aware that he followed the movement with far too much interest. “Is it the history attached to my place? Is that it? Are you after roots? A heritage? What?”
She asked the exact wrong series of questions. His expression closed over into a sterner mask than she’d ever seen before. “Why would I want those?”
“Don’t play ignorant with me.” She fought to contain her anger with only limited success. “You know what I’m asking. For you, this land is a possession. You want, therefore you take. For me, it’s something far more personal.” She leaned forward, her voice ripe with passion. “It’s a part of me. A part of my heritage. A part of who I am and where I come from.”
He gave her a hard, unwavering look. “That’s a lie handed down through generations of Oakleys. You are not the land. You live on it for a brief period in the grand scheme of things. A hundred years from now, two hundred, what happens here tonight won’t matter. No one will even remember it. We will have come and gone. Only the land will remain.” He paused long enough for that to sink in before summing it up with characteristic succinctness. “It’s dirt, Red. Nothing more than acres of dirt.”
“You can’t honestly believe that?”
“I promised I’d tell you the truth and I am.” He opened a door she suspected he kept shut tight in the normal course of things. “I assume you know I’m illegitimate, so I suppose it’s only natural you’d think I want your ranch because of the history behind it, or the roots or heritage it represents.”
She allowed her doubt to show. “Are you sure that’s not it?”
“Not even a little. How long has your family owned this land? A hundred years? Two hundred? If I wanted roots and heritage I could have gone to Europe and married into lineages far more impressive than what anyone in the States can claim. It wouldn’t have been difficult. When I was visiting my sister in Verdonia, there were plenty of opportunities. Family that stretched back close to a millennium. Estates that could have given me a title and roots and prestige, if that’s what I wanted.” He spoke with a stunning disdain, his comment edged with a bitter chill. “I don’t.”
“You must recognize that it’s important to others,” she argued. “You bought your own family’s homestead. I heard you discussing it with MacKenzie. Keeping the Hollister land intact must have some meaning for you to have purchased it and now refuse to sell.”
“I haven’t stepped foot on that land, and I never will.”
Shock held her silent for a long moment. “You don’t want it for yourself, but you also won’t allow the Hollisters to buy it back?”
“I have my reasons.” Something in his eyes warned that she’d opened a door that should have remained loc
ked. “I recognize that some people allow the ownership of property to define who they are. But it’s an illusion. You’re the last of the Oakley line, Red. When you marry and have children, they won’t be Oakleys. They won’t bear the Oakley name. And what if you sold the ranch…or lost it? Does living on Oakley land define who you are? Are you no longer that person when you leave it?”
She swept the question aside. “It’s my land,” she retorted. “You can’t force me to give that up or to sell it if I don’t want to.”
“True. But at some point I’ll hit on something you want more than your land, just like Meredith Hollister. And that’s when you’ll sell.”
“I won’t.” She made the words as adamant and uncompromising as possible. “It was shortsighted of you to buy the surrounding property without knowing for certain whether or not I’d sell. That’s just plain bad business—a first in the career of the great Joc Arnaud.”
He surprised her by inclining his head in acknowledgment. “The land around yours suddenly became available and I had to act fast. I was told you were not only willing to sell, but eager, or I wouldn’t have gone through with the deal.”
Understanding dawned. “Those two employees of yours, the two who’ve been after me this past year…They lied to you?” She shook her head. “That was brave of them.”
She shivered at the darkness that settled over his expression and turned his eyes to black agates. “More stupid than brave. And my former employees won’t be troubling you anymore. I’ve taken over the job of persuading you to sell, personally.”
Heaven help her. “Just out of curiosity, if I did sell Longhorn to you, what would you put here in place of my ranch?”
He hesitated, refreshing their wineglasses, before responding. “This isn’t for public consumption, yet, but it’s only fair you know. I’m building a complex for the various Arnaud corporations and business interests.”
She stared in dismay. “What sort of complex?”
“A huge one,” he admitted. “In addition to the actual office buildings, there will also be day-care centers, spas, medical facilities, gyms, a sports complex, cafeterias. Even a movie theater or two. I also plan to build apartments and condos for employees who want to live within walking distance of their job.”
Stunned, she grabbed her wineglass and took a long sip of the rich, floral-scented pinot noir. It sounded like he intended to build a miniature city. She’d read about computer companies and Internet corporations doing something similar, and been impressed by the breadth and scope of their endeavor. But those were built at a safe distance, not in her own backyard. Hell, not on her backyard. A slight tremor betrayed her alarm and she carefully returned her wineglass to the table.
“That’s quite an undertaking.” And must have been under consideration for years, she realized in dismay. If so, she’d have an impossible time changing his mind. “No wonder you need your own corner of Texas.”
“And why I’ll do anything to get it.” He leaned back in his chair, his expression relaxing into a smile that never failed to distract her. “Now that you know what I plan to do and how committed I am to purchasing your property, you’re in a unique position. Not many can claim that when it comes to negotiating with me. Name your price. Any price you want, Red, and I’ll pay it.”
“You still don’t get it, do you?” She gestured toward his plate. “Are you finished eating?” At his nod, she shoved back from the table. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”
She escaped the table and promptly caught her boot heel in the loose hallway runner just outside the dining room. If Joc hadn’t caught her at the last second, she’d have taken a nasty fall down the stone steps leading to the sunken living room.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
They were touching again, something she’d sworn wouldn’t happen. She felt the tension vibrating through him, a mirror image of her own. “I keep meaning to have one of the boys tack that down,” she replied in a breathless voice. “But I keep forgetting.”
“I suggest you move it up on your priority list. Next time I might not be here to catch you.”
Her mouth curved into a reluctant smile. “Actually…that’s the whole idea. I’m trying to get rid of you, remember?”
Pulling free of his grasp, she led the way outside to where her Jeep stood parked beneath an overhang attached to the barn. She made a beeline for it. He followed, climbing into the passenger seat while she hopped behind the wheel and cranked over the ignition.
The engine started with a roar and she wrestled the gearshift into reverse. It was a cantankerous old vehicle, but she had a fondness for it because it was the first car she’d ever driven. It could also access almost every part of Longhorn Ranch. She eased off the clutch and the Jeep bucked with all the affront of a saddle-shy bronco. Then it stalled, quivering beneath the fading sunlight. Refiring the engine, she fishtailed through the mud from the previous night’s deluge before the wheels found purchase. The instant they did, she punched the gas.
She took the rut-filled path deeper into Oakley land, between pastures filled with cattle, one of them showcasing the longhorn for which the ranch had been named. She guided the Jeep toward the old homestead, to where it had all begun, in the hopes that seeing it would provide a more eloquent explanation of what this land meant to her, and succeed where mere words had failed. She downshifted as she tackled the final rise leading to the heart of her property. The storm had turned the dirt road into a sea of mud and she fought to keep the vehicle from bogging down. The path curved sharply and she hit the muddy bend in a flat-out skid.
The Jeep let out a gasp of relief at having made the steep grade and died not far from an ancient single-room cabin. Rosalyn sat silently for a moment, allowing Joc to look his fill. “It’s the original Oakley homestead. My ancestors constructed it from riverrock.”
He shook his head. “Can you imagine starting your life in this wilderness, with only those four walls protecting you from the elements?” He glanced at her, allowing his admiration to show. “Brave people.”
“That’s what I come from, Joc. People who carved a home from nothing. Who faced not only the elements, but dealt with all the war and strife the past couple hundred years have thrown at them.”
The fading sun painted the stones in deceptively gentle shades of pink and mauve, and even managed to make the picket fence delineating the weed-choked yard appear whimsical rather than ramshackle. She exited the Jeep and circled the cabin. Joc followed silently as she led him to a small cemetery not far from the original homestead.
Close to two hundred years of Oakleys were tucked beneath the protective embrace of a towering stand of cottonwoods. He took his time wandering among the gravestones. The most poignant were the ones he approached last, the recent ones. Five sites were huddled close together. Four of them—Rosalyn’s grandfather, her parents and a five-year-old brother—had died a full decade ago, all on the same day. The other, her grandmother, just a year ago.
“The anniversaries,” he murmured somberly. “These are the anniversaries you toast with a glass of whiskey.”
“Yes.”
“What happened to them?”
She crouched beside the gravesites, clearing them of the few weeds that had cropped up since her last visit a few days before. “Small-plane crash my senior year in high school.”
“And you?” She couldn’t detect a single scrap of emotion in the question, and yet she could feel it. It crashed outward from him in waves of concern, a concern that took her by surprise. “Were you onboard?”
“No. I was sick that day. Nanna stayed home with me. Otherwise…” She shrugged. “We wouldn’t be in our current predicament. The ranch would have been sold long ago.”
“God, Red. I’m so sorry. And I thought my formative years were bad.”
She rocked back on her heels and gazed up at him. “You need to understand something, Joc. When my family died, I lost a huge part of myself. All I had left to fill that hole
was this ranch and my grandmother. I quickly realized that I could give up or carry on.”
“You carried on.”
She nodded and swept a hand in a wide arc. “All this you see around me? It’s my legacy. My responsibility. It’s as much a part of me as my blood and bones. It’s part of my flesh. Part of who and what I am. I promised my grandmother on her deathbed that I’d do everything within my power to protect that legacy, and I will.” She stood, rubbing the bits of grass and dirt from her hands. “You want my land, Joc. Well, I’m part and parcel of this land. You can’t separate me from it or pull my roots loose any more than you can break the connection that joins me to every single soul in this cemetery. I won’t sell, and that’s final.”
The sun hovered on the horizon, a burning ball of red, throwing its dying rays outward in a final blazing explosion. Joc stood within its burning embrace, sculpted in harsh contours of light and shadow, the embodiment of his Native American ancestry. A determined expression settled over his face, one that left her shivering.
“I guess there’s nothing left to discuss,” he limited himself to saying.
“Then you’ll leave me alone?”
He simply stared at her for a long, silent moment. “You’re asking too much. I won’t leave you alone. I can’t.”
“How can you think I’ll ever sell? How can you believe for even one minute—”
“I’m not talking about your ranch. It’s you I can’t leave alone.”
He came for her then, eating up the ground in a half dozen long strides. The instant he reached her, he caught her in his arms. “Don’t fight me. Not on this front.” And then he consumed her.
She’d always found a first kiss to be tentative. A slow sampling, oftentimes awkward, as lips fought to discover the right angle and pressure. But with Joc that awkwardness didn’t exist. His kiss was everything she’d anticipated and then some. Their lips mated with an ease and certainty that should have taken dozens of kisses to achieve.