The Heart of Hill Country

by Sherryl Woods

She was on a roll now and had no intention of pausing for any of his fast-talking rationalizations. She’d been stewing over that night for months now. It felt good to have another chance to throw in a few more digs at his lousy behavior.

  “Did you or did you not mean every low-down, spiteful, mean word you uttered that night?” she demanded.

  “No.”

  That single word, spoken with soft vehemence, slowed her down. She regarded him skeptically. “Oh, really?”

  Clint sighed. “OK, yes, at the time, I meant it.”

  “I rest my case.”

  “I didn’t know we were having a damned trial here,” he practically shouted.

  Two worried faces promptly appeared in the doorway. “It’s OK, Mom,” Angela said hurriedly. “You and Consuela don’t have to stand guard. Clint and I are just finishing a discussion we started several months ago.”

  Clint’s cheeks turned a dull red as he apparently realized that every word they’d spoken had been overheard, that more than likely their kiss had been witnessed by two very interested parties.

  Good, Angela thought. She was on her turf now. Let him suffer a little embarrassment and humiliation. Let him suffer the tortures of the damned, for that matter. In fact, she would have welcomed the arrival of her father just about now. She might even load his shotgun for him.

  Even though Angela thought she’d made her dismissal of their observers plain, her mother stepped into the room, followed by the housekeeper. Obviously nobody intended to listen to a word she said this morning.

  “Maybe we should all sit down and discuss this rationally,” her mother suggested, a worried gaze locked on Clint.

  “If you would like a New Year’s Eve wedding, niña, I could have everything ready,” Consuela offered eagerly. “It would be my joy.”

  Had everybody she knew turned deaf all of a sudden? Angela wondered irritably. “There is not going to be a wedding, not New Year’s Eve, not ever,” she said, her voice rising with each word. “Haven’t I made myself clear? Clint will be leaving, going back to Montana, and that’s final.”

  “I don’t think so,” Clint said quietly.

  Consuela beamed at him, then chided Angela, “Maybe you should listen to him, niña. He seems very sincere.”

  “Oh, yes,” Angela snapped. “He’s about as sincere as a snake in the grass.”

  “Has she always been this stubborn?” Clint inquired as if she were no longer in the room.

  Her mother smiled, clearly more than halfway ready to succumb to his charm, won over by his call for a wedding, even if it had come belatedly.

  “Wait until you meet the rest of the family,” she said. “She comes by it naturally. In fact, if you wouldn’t mind a word of advice—”

  That was it. That was the final straw. “Mother, I do not want you giving Clint Brady advice,” Angela practically shouted, hoping that sheer volume would succeed, when nothing else had.

  Her mother went on as if Angela had spoken in a whisper. “You might let her cool down a little, get used to the idea. I’m sure she’ll be in a more receptive frame of mind in a few days. You could stay with us. You’ll be able to meet the rest of the family. With the holidays coming, everyone will be here for a few days. And, of course, today is her birthday, so we’ll be pulling together a last-minute party just for us, to celebrate. You can’t miss that.”

  Clint Brady here, under the same roof? No way. Either her pragmatic mother was trying to make the best of an awful situation or she was getting back at Angela for running away from home in the first place.

  “I do not want him in this house!” Angela insisted.

  Despite the vehemence and shrill, escalating volume of her words, she had the distinct impression they were falling on deaf ears. Consuela leaped up and bustled off to ready the guest suite. Clint thanked her mother for the invitation and accepted without so much as a by-your-leave look in Angela’s direction. She might as well have been invisible, she thought, thoroughly disgruntled by the turn of events.

  Since no one seemed to give two hoots about what she thought, she hefted herself up off the sofa again and marched out of the room without a backward glance. If she hadn’t been thoroughly exhausted from running, if she’d had anyplace else on earth to go, she would have fled the ranch and Texas and the overwhelming presence of Clint Brady.

  Unfortunately, as she had all too recently discovered, there was apparently nowhere she could hide that he wouldn’t find her. If there was going to be a grueling standoff, it might as well be where she could sleep in her own bed.

  * * *

  Luke Adams had the look of a man on a mission. Standing beside his pickup with his single piece of luggage, Clint observed Luke warily as he approached, hands jammed in the pockets of his jeans, a scowl etched in his rugged features and fire blazing in his eyes. He guessed it was going to be a tricky conversation.

  They were about the same size and, despite the difference in their ages, probably equally fit. Ranching toughened a man at any age, and Luke had the look of a man who didn’t leave the hard tasks to others. They had that in common, Clint thought optimistically. That and Angela, though he doubted her father would view the latter as a subject on which there could be much agreement.

  “You’re Brady?” Luke asked, regarding him distrustfully.

  Clint offered his hand. Luke Adams ignored it. Clint guessed it was because he was scared to death if his hands came out of his pockets, one of them would land squarely in the middle of Clint’s face. Clint couldn’t blame him entirely for the reaction.

  “I know this looks bad,” he began.

  “Bad?” Luke snapped. “Son, I figure you’ve got about thirty seconds to do some very fast talking to keep me from ripping you apart.”

  “I think I understand how furious you must be, but I swear to you that I am trying to get your daughter to marry me,” Clint said. “I’m trying to do right by her and the baby.”

  “Shouldn’t you have been thinking about that nine or ten months ago, before she wound up pregnant?”

  “Nine or ten months ago the only thing on my mind was trying to keep my ranch afloat,” Clint said honestly. “I figured I wouldn’t have a whole lot to offer a woman, if it went under and I lost the land. Then Angela hit me with the news that she was pregnant and I panicked. I know I was wrong. Hell, I knew it even while we were still shouting at each other, but before things could calm down, she split. I’ve been chasing after her ever since, trying to put things right.”

  He realized that despite his anger over the discovery of all her lies, that was what he still wanted. He shook his head ruefully. “That woman moves faster than any oil slick and she’s twice as slippery. Until now I’ve barely caught sight of her since the night she stormed out of my house.”

  Luke pinned him with a penetrating look. “Why’d you bother chasing her at all, if catching her was so much trouble?”

  It was the same question Angela had asked, but Clint wasn’t any more certain of the right answer now than he had been a few hours earlier.

  “Because I wanted to do the right thing by her. Your daughter’s a hell of a woman. And that baby, well, I may not have what you have here, but I am its daddy. I figure a child has a right to know the man responsible for bringing it into the world.”

  To his surprise something in Luke Adams’s expression softened. The harsh, down-turned lines around his mouth eased up just a fraction. It was not quite a smile, but Clint felt relieved nonetheless. The tension in the air lessened. The first step toward a grudging respect had been taken—or at least he hoped it had.

  “Even though she swears she wants no part of you, are you planning on sticking around?” Luke asked.

  “Until I can talk her into marrying me,” Clint vowed. He hadn’t thought much beyond that. His first goal had simply been to make everything nice and legal. He’d figured that would be tr
icky enough without worrying about what the next step might be. He wanted an honest claim on that baby, if the matter ever wound up in court. He kept that particular motive to himself. After what Angela had done to him, he figured he was entitled to one devious act. A gambler would call it hedging his bets. Luke Adams probably wouldn’t see it that way.

  As it was, his declaration drew a full-fledged smile from his prospective father-in-law. “It won’t be easy,” Luke informed him. “She seems to have made up her mind to do this her way.”

  “I can be very persuasive when I have to be,” Clint said with more confidence than was probably justified. Angela had shown some evidence of being able to resist his charms. That had been an unexpected turn of events. He’d thought that breezing in here and staking his claim was going to be easy. He wasn’t exactly disturbed to find he’d been wrong. He loved a good challenge as well as the next man. It kept life interesting, especially if a woman like Angela was involved.

  “We’ll work it out,” Clint promised.

  Luke seemed to find his self-assurance amusing. “Good luck,” he said. He started toward the house, then turned back, his expression sobering. “Just one more thing. I don’t know the details of what went on between the two of you in the past, but you hurt that girl of mine again and this time you’ll be answering to me. Do we understand each other?”

  The warning was as plain as a six-shooter pointed at the gut. Clint’s respect for Luke Adams tripled in that instant. Here was a man who fought for what was his, who fiercely protected those he cared about. He was exactly the kind of man—the kind of father—Clint intended to be.

  “Perfectly,” he said quietly. “We understand each other perfectly.”

  The only problem he foresaw was getting the message through to Angela.

  * * *

  “Mother, how could you invite that man to stay here?” Angela demanded as she paced her room in pure frustration. She was already feeling claustrophobic just thinking about his presence, and this house was five times the size of the one she and Clint had shared in Montana.

  “It seemed the sensible thing to do, dear,” her mother said blandly as she calmly folded the laundry Consuela had done earlier in the day. “You don’t want him roaming all over the countryside talking about this situation with everyone he happens to meet, do you?”

  “So this is some sort of bizarre protective custody to keep him from damaging my reputation?”

  “Exactly.”

  “I have news for you. My reputation is bound to suffer the minute anyone gets a good look at me.” She regarded her mother warily. “Or do you intend to lock me up here, too, until I do the right thing?”

  “Of course not. You’re perfectly free to come and go as you like, but I would say a little discretion is called for. You need to think long and hard about how you want to handle all of this. If you’re determined not to marry Clint, then you’ll have to decide what you’re going to tell people, starting with the family.”

  Angela sighed. “I am not ready to see the family yet.” She figured she might not be ready until her baby hit puberty.

  “Well, you’d better get ready in a hurry because everyone is coming here tomorrow for our annual pre-Christmas party,” her mother retorted, severely cutting into Angela’s preferred timetable. “Someone is going to have to explain what’s going on.”

  “I could hide in my room,” she said wistfully, but without much hope that her mother would agree to such a cowardly plan.

  “And what do you propose I say about Clint?” Her mother’s eyes twinkled. “Or were you planning on locking him in here with you?”

  “Mother!”

  “It is an interesting thought,” her mother said, then added slyly, “He is a very handsome man.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I imagine that’s how you got into this predicament to begin with.”

  “Mother!”

  “Sweetie, he’s gorgeous. You’re carrying his child. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out you were sleeping together.”

  “I do not want to discuss this with you,” she said, flushing with embarrassment.

  “OK,” her mother said cheerfully. “But I saw something in your eyes when you looked at him that reminded me of another woman.”

  “Who?” she asked, curious despite the instinct that told her to drop the subject of her very primal and unmistakable reaction to Clint Brady.

  “Me. It was exactly the way I used to look when I caught a glimpse of Luke. I could no more help it than I could control the setting of the sun. It was plain as day to anybody who saw me. Jordan and Cody saw it. Luke saw it. Even your natural father was aware of it. I was the only one so deep in denial that I didn’t recognize what was happening.”

  “My father knew about you and Luke?” Angela had always wondered about that, but it wasn’t something her mother had ever discussed.

  “Erik knew how we felt. He also knew we’d never acted on it and that we wouldn’t. After he’d had his accident, when he knew he wasn’t going to survive, he gave me his blessing. He was an incredible, generous man.” She brushed away the tears dampening her cheeks, then smiled. “He would have loved you so much. And he would have been very proud of the gesture you made by studying education the way he always wanted to.”

  Neither of them mentioned her failure to follow through and actually go into teaching. “It seems so strange to me to think that Luke isn’t my natural father,” Angela said instead. “I’ve always known it, of course, but on some intellectual level. It never really registered in my heart.”

  “Because he’s been there literally from the beginning. He adores you.”

  “Were he and my father very much alike?”

  “Not at all. Your father was the quietest and gentlest of the brothers. He was never suited for ranching, but Harlan bullied him into trying. I’m not sure he’s ever entirely forgiven himself for that. If he’d allowed your father to follow his own dream, Erik would never have been on that tractor the day he died.”

  She patted Angela’s hand. “Enough sad memories for now. You have difficult decisions to make. I have only one word of advice for you.”

  “Only one?”

  “OK, three. Follow your heart.”

  Angela knew the advice was well meant. She knew it was sound. The only trouble was that the last time she had followed her heart, she had gone and fallen in love with a man who didn’t believe in happily ever after.

  She knew, too, that even though Clint was trying to bulldoze her into marrying him now, he no more believed in love than he had on the night she’d walked out of his house. It reminded her of some sort of deathbed conversion to religion. Say whatever it took.

  She didn’t trust the turnaround. She knew better. If anything, Clint’s view of love and marriage was probably more jaded now than ever before. He knew that their whole relationship had been built on one huge, gigantic lie. She knew something else, as well, and it terrified her. Clint Brady wasn’t the kind of man who’d forgive that kind of betrayal easily. If he was proposing, there was a reason for it, and it for darn sure wasn’t love.

  5

  In retrospect, her birthday dinner had been an extremely civilized affair, Angela concluded as she helped Consuela carry the last of the dishes into the kitchen. Clint had even sounded sincere when he’d joined in wishing her a happy birthday.

  She smiled grimly. It might have taken him aback if he’d known what she’d wished before she’d tried to blow out the candles on the cake Consuela had baked. Not that it mattered a hoot now. One candle had remained stubbornly lit, so apparently even the gods were in on the conspiracy to keep Clint around.

  At any rate, her father and Clint had gotten along better than anyone could have anticipated. They’d spent most of the meal comparing notes on ranching. No blows had been struck. No harsh words had bee
n exchanged.

  Every time Angela had been tempted to interrupt or to snap out a sarcastic retort, a warning look from her mother had silenced her. In the end, she’d left the table so frustrated, she’d been ready to spit.

  “Your young man—” Consuela began as they entered the kitchen.

  “He is not my young man,” Angela retorted automatically, hoping to end that particular notion right now.

  The housekeeper ignored her. Persistence was as ingrained in Consuela’s personality as her smile. She’d had years of dealing with Luke and the other Adams brothers to practice.

  “He will make a very good father,” she said. Her defiant expression dared Angela to argue with her about that.

  “You don’t even know him. How can you be certain of a thing like that?”

  “Because he treats you well.”

  “Excuse me? He all but threw me out of his house when I told him I was pregnant.”

  “No, niña,” Consuela corrected gently. “I think you ran because you got insulted that he did not react as you wished. That is your way. You run from things rather than facing them, just as you ran from your home years ago.”

  The hard-truth assessment was a little too accurate, and Consuela did have the proof of Angela’s rebellious departure from Texas on her side.

  “Whatever,” Angela said dismissively. “The point is, a few months ago he didn’t even want this baby.” Even as she said the words, she rubbed her belly soothingly as if to apologize to the baby for its father’s reaction.

  “There are many things men do not know they want until we show them,” Consuela said. “Lucas could not admit he wanted your mother and you until he almost lost you both. Perhaps it was the same with your Clint.”

  “My Clint is just the kind of man who wants what he can’t have. I guarantee you that if I said yes to this crazy wedding nonsense, he would take off before the ceremony.”

  “Care to test that theory, angel?” a taunting voice inquired from the doorway.