Hard Luck Ranch (7 page)
Damn him. Damn them both.
Jason hadn’t thought to help Isabel pack either, and had left it to her and whatever help she could rustle up. There had been a lot of possessions to move, mostly the recent and expensive accumulations from Jason’s side of the apartment, consisting of a state-of-the-art stereo system and brand new television set. They’d cost a big chunk of his last bonus from work, yet the people she’d asked to assist her with the task of emptying out the apartment hadn’t seemed impressed. The magazines she’d thrown into the recycling bin behind the building were mostly his business journals. The books on his side of the bookcase were all about money and power. She’d seen her helpers grimacing as they’d pulled them down from the shelves. Between them, the two men who were helping to move her out of her apartment had enough wealth to buy and sell any of the partners at Jason’s investment firm, but they’d never cared about the influence and clout Jason craved most of all.
Isabel had folded away the T-shirts he’d left in the drawers after taking only the newest designer versions and the jeans he rarely wore anymore since his promotion twelve weeks ago. They reminded her of the Jason she’d fallen in love with, a Jason whose dreams were still to be fulfilled. Now that he was realising them, he was a different man. Not cold, exactly, but distant. His affections were kept for material things now. Even the woman, she’d heard, was—
No, she wouldn’t think about the other woman.
She thought instead of the man she’d loved—ever since that first day they’d met on the campus of their shared college, their dreams still written large on their faces. They’d dated and had quickly become serious, spending most of their time together in Jason’s bachelor pad that he’d shared with three other roommates, and later in Isabel’s more private apartment. The bed her helpers had already dismantled used to be her and Jason’s favourite discussion board. They’d spent so much of their time together in bed that it had almost been a default location. It was something he’d later thrown back at her.
“All you think about is sex!” He’d told her. “It’s unnatural—particularly in a woman.”
Isabel admitted that she did love sex—who didn’t?—and that Jason’s sex drive just hadn’t been up to scratch lately. In the beginning, he’d wanted her two or three times a night, but by the end it was down to once a week if she was lucky. Of course, by that time, he’d had to divide his attentions between two women.
The thought of his infidelity had made Isabel’s tongue reckless.
“Maybe it’s you who’s unnatural,” she’d shot back. “You and your prim little virgin.”
“Oh, Amy’s far from virginal,” he’d boasted, “but that was due to me. I didn’t have to get this one second-hand from a couple of rowdy cowboys.”
For a second, Isabel had seen red. To have her deepest secrets, secrets she’d shared with complete trust and devotion, used to degrade her… That was too much to take.
“At least those cowboys didn’t have limp dicks half the time!”
She’d never forget the look on Jason’s blandly handsome face—or the mingled self-disgust and creeping dark humour she’d felt at his reaction.
Poor Jason. He’d blamed his recent declining sexual appetite on his high-stress job and Isabel had lovingly agreed it was that and nothing else. Back when they’d been in love, she’d never have dreamt of suggesting that her sexual appetite was simply larger than his. He would have taken that as an insult.
Pulling the door closed, Isabel walked down the short flight of stairs to the ground floor and shoved the key under the super’s door.
Stepping into the sharp sunlight outside, she blinked rapidly and fumbled for her sunglasses. She glanced at them before she put them on, involuntarily remembering that they were part of a matching pair. Jason still had the other set. Those, at least, he’d remembered to take with him when he’d packed his overnight bag and exited her life for good. He might as well have packed her heart up and taken that with him, too.
She glanced up one last time at the building behind her, tall and impressive in the bright sunlight. That was it—the apartment she’d come to with big hopes and tremulous laughter. She was leaving in defeat, and near tears. Her experiment with city life was done.
An oversized black pickup was parked in front of the building. All of her worldly possessions were piled into the back and the two men she’d vowed four years ago never to lean on again were sitting in the front seat, wearing identical frowns.
As she approached the truck, the dark-haired man in the passenger seat jumped out and opened the back door for her, where a second set of seats was squeezed in. He towered over her, even with the inch of extra height her sandals gave her small frame.
“Such manners,” Isabel marvelled as she slid inside the vehicle.
Dex was blushing as he slammed the door behind her and took up his seat again, next to his brother.
Dexter Armstrong was attractive, with his rough-hewn features and quick smile—nowhere in evidence today—but it was his older brother, sitting tall beside him, who took women’s breath away.
From her spot in the middle of the bench-like back seat, Isabel could only catch a glimpse of Cary’s silver-grey gaze. His face and expression were hidden by his black Stetson.
The drive to Riding was nearly two hours long and there would be no rest stops. It would feel even longer unless she could think of something to say above the mournful country twang of the radio.
The pickup eased through the city traffic, passing dozens of its own kind. But there was a difference between this truck and the carefully washed and preserved versions they passed—this was a working vehicle, more accustomed to driving the worn paths of the Double-A Ranch than making its way across hot asphalt.
“How’s everyone back home?” Isabel asked, feeling the last word drop like a weight from her tongue. “Mary Jo? The McIntyre twins? Do they fight as much as they used to?”
Silence. In the background, Kenny Chesney sang about tequila.
The truck cleared the highway and made the turn-off out of the city and onto the long lonely roads of their shared childhood.
With a sidelong look at his brother, Dex finally answered her, many minutes later.
“The McIntyre girls got themselves married. Becky to the Willsons’ eldest and Bonny to a city man she at in college. She went to live with him up in Dallas. The wedding was two years ago, at least.”
“You’re kidding!” Isabel had to force the note of cheerfulness into her voice. That last comment stung, as it was no doubt meant to. “Both of them, huh? And they were my age.”
“Some women aren’t against marriage,” Cary commented from the driver’s seat.
He hadn’t said anything to her yet that morning, and his voice, just as deep as Dex’s, but slightly more raspy, sent shivers down her spine. It was a voice made for lovemaking.
“Who said I was against marriage?” Isabel demanded, annoyed by the fact that her words quivered.
“Why else would you be shacked up with that city man for the last year?” was the cool reply.
“Eight months,” she corrected. “And don’t call it shacking up. Everyone does it nowadays.”
A glimmer of silver flashed at her in the rear-view mirror. “Maybe in the city they do, but not in Riding.”
“Not in Riding,” Isabel mimicked savagely, feeling once again like a little girl lashing out at the grown-ups and knowing that both men in the front of the truck would see her as exactly that.
Who cared? She’d spent most of her childhood hearing about what they didn’t do in Riding—anything fun, really—and she was heartily tired of it. The question was, what did they do in Riding, besides work, drive around in pickups listening to country music, and breed more of their own?
Speaking of which, why hadn’t these men made any progress on the last score? The Armstrong brothers had always been the most eligible bachelors in town, yet after four years there was still nary a gold band on either of their left hands. Becky McIntyre may have landed Jeff Willson, but she had always had an eye for Cary. As if she’d stood a chance. No woman in Riding had—except for Yvonne. And Yvonne wasn’t someone you talked about at the Double-A, at least not in Cary’s hearing.
“Time you thought about settling down,” Cary told her, as if she hadn’t spoken. “There aren’t any old maids in our family.”
It didn’t seem to occur to him that all of the last few generations of Armstrongs were males, eliminating the possibility of old maids completely.
“I’m not a member of your family,” Isabel said stonily. “Remember? I’m a Morgan, not an Armstrong.”
“Your mother was an Armstrong.”
“Only because she married your father! Big mistake.”
“Was it?” Cary’s voice was suddenly soft. It was a dangerous sound.
Dex shifted uncomfortably in his seat. Isabel saw him give his older brother a light tap on his arm. “Let it go,” he whispered.
“Let what go?” Cary asked, his voice still quiet. His silvery-grey eyes sought out Isabel’s big brown ones in the mirror. “Maybe she needs reminding of the fact that we’re down here bailing her ass out of trouble, just like our dad bailed out her ma.”
“My mom didn’t need bailing out,” Isabel protested from the back seat.
“Sure. Single mother, alone by herself in the big bad city of Houston. She later told our dad that she was just a few weeks away from being homeless. Dad offered her a job on the ranch and the rest, as they say, is history.”
She’d known it was the truth from the moment the words left his mouth. Cary didn’t lie. That was one of the many mantras around the ranch.
But knowing it was the truth didn’t take the sting out of it.
“So marrying my mother was an act of charity from your father?”
“I didn’t say that. He loved her all right.”
“Everyone did,” Dex added.
Thinking about her mother, who was lying under the stone monument next to Carter Armstrong senior, made Isabel blink again behind her sunglasses. This time, she didn’t even have the sun as an excuse.
It was her mother’s death that had precipitated her leaving Riding. After a long battle with cancer, a battle Isabel had seen her through, to the detriment of her college acceptance and future prospects, her mother had succumbed to the disease on the eve of Isabel’s twentieth birthday. The day after the funeral, she’d telephoned the college to cancel the deferment she’d requested more than two years earlier and told them that she’d see them for the winter semester. The day after that, she’d packed up her possessions and left at daybreak.
Cary and Dex had come after her, of course, ready to cajole, bribe and finally browbeat her into returning home. She’d told them that she didn’t have a home anymore. And for four more years, that had been the truth. No matter where she’d lived, it had not been a home. Until Jason had moved into her apartment and made it one.
Dex, eyeing her in the mirror he’d pulled down from his visor, smiled tenderly. “Go ahead and cry, darlin’. We’d understand.”
But his brother’s snort of derision kept her clear-eyed. Crying over a man! How that would make Cary howl with mocking laughter. No Armstrong man would ever cry over a woman.
But, Isabel told herself for the thousandth time, I’m not an Armstrong—I’m a Morgan! And Morgans cried aplenty.
“I’ll pass,” she said, earning a grin from Dex and the slightest nod of approval from Cary.
God, she’d forgotten how easy it was to live her life under their thumbs, to be ecstatic when she earned their respect and crushed when they disapproved of her behaviour. It was a pattern as old as the hills they were passing. Somehow, she would have to break it. Someday she would have to stand on her own two legs again. Someday soon.
About the Author
Nan Comargue is a thirtysomething romance and erotic romance writer who has been reading romance novels all her life. She prefers sexy confident heroes who win over slightly introverted heroines (read: nerdish types) but she writes about everything from angel-warriors to cowboy ménage.
Email:
[email protected]
Nan loves to hear from readers. You can find her contact information, website and author biography at
http://www.totallybound.com
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Also by Nan Comargue
All Together Now: Country Hearts
At Your Service: A Lady for Two
Totally Bound Publishing
