Heiress (28 page)

Vaguely she was aware of Ben running toward her and shouting, "Abbie, what are you doing? Where are you going with that filly? Come back! Too young, she is!" Nothing he said registered. It was just more words, none of them having any effect on her overwhelming need to run as fast and as far as she could.

Somehow she opened the gate without even being aware of doing so. One minute it blocked her path and the next, the long pasture was before her. She urged her mount into a gallop, unconsciously whipping the reins across the marbled flank. The surprised filly leaped forward and stretched into a run.

Everything was a blur to Abbie: the startled horses scattering out of their way, the trees standing motionless, and the water running in the creek that fed into the Brazos River. She saw nothing beyond the pricked ears in front of her, felt nothing other than the wind whipping her long hair, and heard nothing beyond the pounding hoofbeats. Faster and faster they ran.

The filly stumbled, breaking stride and throwing Abbie forward. As she clutched at the sleek neck in an effort to regain her balance, Abbie felt the wetness, the slime of lather, and realized what she was doing. Pulling back on the reins, she managed to slow the winded and excited filly to a stop, then hurriedly slipped off her back, dragging the reins with her.

"Easy, girl. Easy, Breeze. It's all right now." Abbie tried to quiet the filly as she danced nervously away from her, dark nostrils flaring wide to show the red inside, gray sides heaving, black skin glistening wetly through the silver neck hairs.

Another set of hooves pounded the ground behind her. Abbie turned as Ben rode up on the old gelding they kept as a stable pony. He dismounted, stiff with anger, and strode over to her. "What you think you do, Abigail Lawson?" But his eyes were already focusing on the young Arabian horse. "You want to ruin this filly? Too young she is to be ridden so hard."

"I'm sorry, Ben." She watched anxiously as he ran a practiced hand down the filly's slim legs, all the while crooning softly in Polish. When he straightened, Abbie searched his stem expression. "Is Breeze all right?"

"Now you worry," he snorted in disgust. "Why you not worry before?"

"I'm sorry. I wasn't thinking."

"No, you think. You think only of yourself. Always when you get angry and hurt inside you make someone else suffer. To you it does not matter. It is only that you want to feel better. You do not deserve such a filly as this one."

"Maybe I don't." Her throat tightened. "But she's mine. She belongs to me." She wrapped her arms around the filly's quivering neck, unable to hold back the tears anymore. They streamed down her cheeks. "Breeze is all right, isn't she, Ben?" She turned to look at him.

"Yes." He relented slightly from his hard stand. "I felt nothing. It is lucky you weigh so little. The bones of a two-year-old have not finished their growing. This you know. We ride them little bits. We do not racing around the pasture go."

"I know."

"You will walk her to the barns. You will not ride her. And you will rub down her good."

He was lecturing her as if she were still fourteen years old and didn't know any better—as if she didn't know how to take care of a horse. But the flare of resentment quickly died as Abbie was forced to admit that her actions hadn't shown she did.

Dejectedly she gathered up the reins and turned to lead the filly back to the barns. Yet when she looked over the pasture at the horses she'd known since they were foals, the creek where she had played as a child, and the trees she'd climbed, she was overwhelmed by a terrible sense of loss. Soon she'd have to leave all this, she realized—leave everything she'd always known and taken for granted. To go where? To do what? It still didn't seem real.

"Why all the tears, tell me?" Ben asked.

"We have to sell out. Daddy owed too many people when he died. There isn't any money to pay the debts. It all has to be sold to pay the creditors. Everything has to go—including us."

"Is this true?" He frowned.

Abbie nodded. "Lane told us when he came. We're bankrupt. I knew there were problems, but I never thought. . . I never dreamed it was this bad." She looked at Ben, the old man who'd rode out all the previous storms with her and given her strength. "What's going to happen to us? What's going to happen to you? You've been the uncle I never had. What am I going to do without you?"

"Child." He gathered her into his arms. Abbie wanted to cry some more, but now she couldn't. This time he couldn't reassure her. It wasn't going to be all right. "Your poor momma," he said. "How frightening for her."

"Momma." She hadn't even considered what effect the news would have on her mother. Her own shock had been too great. In a vague way, she'd recognized that this meant she was her mother's only means of support now. She not only had to look after herself, but her mother, too. It wasn't fair, but whoever said life was fair? "River Bend, the horses, they're all to be sold. All except River Breeze. She belongs to me." She pulled away from Ben and turned to the filly.

"She will be a good mare on which to build a new broodmare herd."

"Don't, Ben." Abbie nearly choked on the lump in her throat. "This is no time for foolish dreams. Right now I've got to worry about finding a roof for our heads and food for our table. And Momma. I've got to worry about Momma, too."

Babs pressed her fingertips against the throbbing in her temple, then lowered her hand and pushed herself out of the chair. Instinctively she wanted to forget everything Lane had said, pretend the situation wasn't as bad as he had portrayed it. But she couldn't. Not this time. No one was going to make it all right for her—not Dean, not R.D. She had no one but Abbie.

As the front door opened, Babs turned toward the foyer, recognizing the familiar tread of Abbie's footsteps. But Abbie walked past the living room and started up the stairs.

"Abbie," Babs called after her and heard the hesitating footsteps and the sound of their return.

Then Abbie appeared in the archway, looking all windblown and tired, still wearing that troubled frown.

"I was worried about you. You were so upset when you left." She had seen her daughter angry before, but never so distraught. "I wanted to be sure you were all right."

"I guess I am." She shrugged vaguely. "I just had to get away by myself and sort things out." Her dark hair was all snarled and tangled, and Babs could see the tear streaks on her cheeks and the lost look in her eyes as Abbie wandered into the living room, looking around her as if she had to memorize every detail. She reminded Babs of a frightened little girl—her little girl. "I can't believe we have to sell River Bend. This is our home. If we sold the horses and all the land except for the little piece the house is on, why wouldn't that be enough?"

"Don't you remember, Lane explained about the large mortgage on the house?" Babs's heart went out to her daughter.

"There has to be a way we could assume it. This is our home." Behind all the anger, there was despair. Then Abbie sighed bitterly. "How could Daddy do this to us, Momma? I don't understand. Did he really hate us that much?"

Babs breathed in sharply. Never once in all these years had she suspected that Abbie felt she was unloved, too. How was it that she could have a daughter and know so little about her feelings? Babs wanted to reach out to her now and reassure her that it wasn't as bad as she thought, but she wasn't sure how.

"I believed Lane when he said that, had your father lived, he would have obtained the funds to pay all these debts. In his own way, he cared about us." She couldn't say "love." Any love Dean had felt for her died long ago. He had stayed out of duty, guilt, and probably pity. Babs had never wondered whether Dean actually loved Abbie. She'd simply assumed he did. If he hadn't, maybe she was to blame for that. He didn't love her, so maybe he couldn't love the child she had given him either. But it accomplished nothing to dwell on the past. Babs knew she must think of Abbie now.

"As for this house, you would have left it again someday, Abbie, when you found another man you loved and wanted to spend your life with. You would have married him and moved away. . . to a home of your own, just as you did with Christopher. It isn't as if you would have lived here all your life if this hadn't happened."

"But you would have. What about you, Momma? You love this house. The curtains, the wallpaper, the furnishings—you picked out everything. This is your home. How can you leave it?

"I don't mind, really." She said it to reassure Abbie, but almost the instant the words were out of her mouth, Babs realized they were true. "After R.D. died, all I ever knew here was loneliness. I don't think I want to live with the memory of that around me all the time."

"Momma, you can't mean that."

"I do." She was equally surprised by the discovery. "It's a drafty old house, impossible to heat in the winter and impossible to cool in the summer. It's always damp and miserable. The plumbing is bad and the windows are always warping shut." There was so much wrong with the house it was a wonder she'd never noticed it before.

"But. . . where will we go? What will we do?"

"I don't know." She forced a smile and fell back on the phrase that had always been her talisman. "Everything will work out for the best. It always does."

"I hope so." But Abbie couldn't be as confident. She didn't have her mother's optimistic attitude. A snap of the fingers wasn't magically going to produce a job or a place to live.

She'd have to go out and look for them. . . and, at the same time, keep the farm going, get the horses in sale condition, and prepare for the auction. Everything had to be in tiptop shape if they hoped to get good prices.

Chapter 16

Silence assailed her when Rachel entered the steakhouse. Pausing, she glanced at the sea of white tablecloths and empty chairs in the dining area. A faint murmur of voices came from the adjacent lounge. Rachel glanced hesitantly at the doorway to the bar.

She knew she was early for her dinner date with Lane, but she hadn't been sure how long it would take her to find the restaurant. With Houston's lack of any zoning laws, she'd already discovered that restaurants, or any type of business, could be located in the middle of some small residential area.

Even though she hadn't noticed Lane's car parked outside, Rachel decided to check in the lounge to see if he was there. As she moved toward it, she nearly walked right into a man coming out. His hands came up to catch hold of her arms and stop her.

"Sorry, miss. I'm afraid I wasn't looking where I was going."

"No, it was my fault," she insisted, her pulse racing at the near collision.

Embarrassed, she stepped back, freeing herself from his hands and darting a quick look at the man dressed in black denim jeans and a loose-fitting white shirt open at the throat and gathered at the shoulder seams. A low-crowned cowboy hat sat on the back of his curly brown hair, hair the rusty color of cinnamon. Young and brashly good-looking, he stepped aside with a little flourish, his glance skimming the jade-green jersey wrap dress she wore. Self-consciously Rachel walked by him into the nearly darkened lounge, avoiding contact with the interested gleam in his hazel eyes.

Two men stood at the bar and one sat at a back table. All three looked up when Rachel entered the room. None of them was Lane. Feeling their speculative stares, Rachel abandoned any thought of waiting in the lounge until Lane arrived. Never particularly adept at turning aside unwelcome advances, she hurriedly retreated to the foyer.

The man in the cowboy hat walked out of one of the swinging doors that led to the restaurant's kitchen. Again Rachel felt his interest centering on her when he noticed her standing at the entrance to the dining room. Guessing that he must work there, she gathered her courage as he approached.

"Excuse me, but. . . would it be all right if I sat down at one of the tables?"

All in one sweeping glance, he took in her, the empty restaurant, and the entrance to the lounge. "The restaurant part won't open for another ten minutes yet. I don't think the boss would mind if you sat down."

"Thank you." She smiled politely, not quite meeting his eyes as she started to walk past him.

"Could I bring you anything to drink? A cold beer? A glass of wine?" he asked.

Rachel hesitated, but since he'd offered, she decided it couldn't be an imposition. "A glass of white wine, please."

"Coming right up." He sauntered off toward the lounge.

She watched him a moment, the way he was dressed making her wonder if he was the bartender. She hadn't noticed one behind the bar—not that she was interested in what he did for a living. It meant nothing to her one way or the other. She entered the dining room and chose an empty table by the wall.

She had barely sat when the man in the cowboy hat reappeared. She glanced at the wineglass in his hand and unfastened the clasp on her shoulder purse to search out her wallet, using it as a distraction to avoid his gaze. "How much do I owe you?"

"It's on the house."

"I can't let you do that."

"It's the boss's way of apologizing for the fact that he couldn't seat you right away. He likes to keep his customers happy." He offered her the glass, holding it by the stem. There wasn't any way she could take it from him without touching his hand. She reached for the glass, her fingers barely brushing his, but even that brief contact made her feel awkward and ill at ease.

"Thank him for me, please. But this wasn't really necessary. I'm the one who came early, before the restaurant opened." She clasped the wineglass tightly in both hands and stared at the pale, nearly colorless liquid.

"I think he wanted to make sure you stayed." He continued to stand there, watching while she sipped nervously at the wine, anxious for him to leave. "My name's Ross Tibbs, by the way."

"How do you do, Mr. Tibbs."

"No, that isn't the way it's supposed to work. You see, I tell you my name, then you tell me yours. Let's try it again." He smiled, and two very attractive dimples appeared in his smooth cheeks. "My name's Ross Tibbs."