Texas Woman (8 page)

Because she and Luke were of a similar age, Sloan had figured out that her mother must have been pregnant with her at about the same time Luke’s mother had been pregnant with him. It appeared Rip had not been a faithful husband. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

She had never thought about it much, but in all these years she had never seen her father with a woman. Oh, she knew he must have sought out women for his needs, away from the plantation.

But suddenly she wondered why he had never married again—especially if once upon a time there had been another woman besides Amelia in his life.

Sloan nodded briefly to Luke. His eyes seemed to reach out to her, to ask her to take his side. She couldn’t afford to do that. She hardened her expression and turned away, afraid she would succumb to whatever it was about her half-brother that had caused her to befriend and confide in him. She paled at the thought that he might not keep her secret as he had promised.

“Sit down and join us,” Rip commanded.

Sloan headed for the other vacant chair across from her father. She met Luke’s eyes briefly as the two of them sat down and saw a measure of distress that surprised her. She leaned back in the rawhide chair and rested one ankle against the opposite knee, giving a casual appearance at odds with the tension rippling inside her.

Rip took a sip of brandy from the crystal snifter he had been rolling with uncharacteristic nervousness between his palms. “I’ve been telling Luke that I’d like him to think about staying on at Three Oaks for a while.”

“And what did he have to say to that?” Sloan asked.

“I said I’d think about it.”

Sloan realized that Luke wasn’t about to let her pretend he wasn’t there. Yet she directed her next comment to Rip alone. “Just what, exactly, did you have in mind for Luke to do here at Three Oaks?”

“Whatever needs doing. The harvest is backbreaking work for anyone, and you’ve had more than your share of problems this year.”

“I haven’t complained,” Sloan replied, carefully controlling her voice to keep out the irritation she felt.

Rip flashed a look at Sloan’s pale, bruised face and grimaced. “Of course you haven’t. That doesn’t mean you haven’t had problems.”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” she persisted.

“I don’t want to take Sloan’s place at Three Oaks,” Luke said. “I don’t have the experience—”

Rip cleared his throat, interrupting Luke’s speech. “What you don’t know, you’ll learn. I’ll teach you myself.”

“That’s a generous offer,” Luke said. “But when I came here this morning, it wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“What did you have in mind?” Sloan asked, her voice sharp with accusation.

Luke met Sloan’s stare without wavering. For an instant he let down his guard and she saw confusion and—? Bitterness? Hate?

Luke’s voice when he spoke was bare of the volatile emotions she had seen flash in his eyes. “I just wanted Rip to know he’s my father.”

Luke turned his gaze back on Rip, and for the first time since she had come into the room, Sloan was aware of a treacherous undercurrent between the two of them. Evidently, more words had passed between them than she had been told about.

Did Luke Summers have some hold over Rip that had forced her father into offering a part of Three Oaks to his bastard son? To Sloan’s knowledge, Rip had never been coerced into anything. What could the young Texas Ranger possibly have said that would have made her father want to keep him here at Three Oaks?

Then she became aware of something else.

They’re both in pain.

It was a startling thought, and an uncomfortable one. Sloan didn’t want to feel sorry for either Luke or Rip. Between them, they were turning her life upside-down.

She clenched her fists against the softness welling up inside that urged her to offer comfort. She had to stop behaving like some simpering female. She had to think about her future—about Three Oaks.

“If Luke says he doesn’t want anything to do with Three Oaks, then I think you ought to respect his wishes,” she said.

“Whether he wants it or not, half of Three Oaks is his,” Rip announced.

“I don’t want half of this place,” Luke replied evenly.

Sloan enjoyed a moment of relief before Rip said, “All right, then, three-quarters.”

Sloan gasped.

“I don’t want three-quarters, either,” Luke said in a steely voice.

Sloan held in the cry of despair that begged for release. Surely Rip could not, would not, offer more.

“All of it, dammit! I’ll make you my heir.”

“No!”

Sloan and Luke had shouted the word together as they bounded to their feet, but in desperation, Rip kept talking. “I would have offered it all in the first place if you’d just said that was what you wanted.”

“Wait!” Sloan cried.

“Wait for what?” Rip slammed down his brandy glass and grasped his cane. “Luke is my son. He’s entitled to Three Oaks.”

“You can’t do this!”

Rip met Sloan’s desperate look with defiant eyes. “Luke will inherit Three Oaks. Of course, you’ll always have a place here for as long as you live.”

Sloan’s heart pounded. Her throat constricted. She blinked to remove the film that kept her eyes from focusing. “
A place here
. . .” The words came out in a raspy whisper. She swallowed hard and tried again. “
A place here as long as I live?
”

“You’ll always have a home here,” Rip corrected. “I wouldn’t take that away from you.”

Sloan felt the fury building inside her. “And you think that’s enough? You think that will satisfy me?” She laughed, a harsh sound. “How little you know about me! I told you I’d have it all or I’d leave. And I meant it!” She headed for the door in a hurry.

With the aid of his cane, Rip struggled to his feet, needing to stop her, frustrated by his unresponsive body. “Hold it right there! We both know you have nowhere to go.”

Sloan whirled and gave her father the full brunt of her wrath. “The hell I don’t!”

“Who’ll take you in? Think, woman!”

“Cruz Guerrero,” Sloan snapped in brash challenge to his will. “Cruz will welcome me with open arms.”

Sloan had turned and taken two more steps when Rip said, “Maybe you won’t be quite so welcome at the Guerrero hacienda as you think.”

Sloan paused, halted by the cat’s cream in Rip’s voice. “Why is that?”

Rip took his time walking to his desk, riffling through papers until he found the one he wanted. He took a limping step or two toward Sloan and held the paper out in his hand.

Sloan stared at the parchment but made no move to take it. “What is that?”

“It’s an invitation to a party. It says that Don Cruz Almicar Guerrero requests the pleasure of your company at a
fandango
to introduce Señorita Refugia Adela María Tomasita Hidalgo of Madrid, Spain, to his friends and neighbors. It seems she’ll be living at the Guerrero hacienda.” Rip threw the paper back onto the desk.

“When were you planning to tell me about this invitation?” Sloan demanded.

“I only got it yesterday.”

Sloan’s blood froze at the implications of such an invitation coming after Cruz had given his ultimatum.

Rip continued, “I didn’t think you had time in the middle of the harvest to attend a party.”

“Well, that’s certainly not a problem any longer, is it?” She smiled in a way that revealed her teeth but didn’t in the least convey pleasantness. Meanwhile, her mind was racing to determine whether Cruz had changed his mind and decided to take the more respectable Spanish señorita as his bride.

But she had backed herself into a corner. She had no choice now except to seek him out.

It was Luke who broke the vibrating silence that had fallen on the room. “If anyone leaves Three Oaks, it should be me.”

Rip tore his eyes from Sloan’s white face to meet Luke’s troubled eyes. “You’re my son. You’ll stay here and take care of your birthright.”

“What about me?” Sloan whispered. “What about my birthright?”

A flicker of guilt crossed Rip’s face before his blunt features hardened. “There’s no reason why you can’t continue here as before. You’re an excellent overseer.”

Sloan’s incredulous laughter echoed off the high ceiling. It was the first time Rip had admitted she was doing a good job, but somehow this wasn’t the way she had expected to hear it. The grating, angry voice sounded nothing like her own. “When you come to your senses, you’ll find me at the Guerrero hacienda.”

She fled before Rip could say anything more.

Rip’s eyes glittered as he stared at the empty doorway. He turned to face his newfound son. “You have no choice except to stay now, Luke. With Sloan gone, I have no one else to oversee the harvest.”

“You can do it yourself.”

Rip gripped the cane that was keeping him on his feet. “I’m a cripple, son.”

Luke flinched at Rip’s offhanded claim of paternity. “You’re healthy as a bull.”

“A crippled bull,” Rip agreed. “I can’t carry the burden of Three Oaks alone. It’s likely to take some time for Sloan to come to terms with my decision . . . and with what she finds waiting for her at Dolorosa.” He rubbed his temple as though it pained him. “I need your help, son.”

Luke hissed in a breath of air and let it out. “I’ll stay, you manipulating son of a bitch. But only until Sloan makes up her mind whether or not she wants to remain with Cruz.”

Before Luke could leave, Rip reached out a hand and caught his sleeve. “Wait . . .”

“What for? I think everything’s been said.”

“Your mother . . . will you tell her . . . I’m sorry?”

Luke sneered. “Little good that will do her now. She’s dead.”

Rip’s face blanched. “I loved your mother, Luke . . . but she wouldn’t marry me without her father’s approval . . . and he refused to give it.”

“You deserted her when she needed you most.”

“I never knew she was pregnant!”

“When her family turned away from her, my mother sold her body to support me.”

“Why didn’t she just ask me for help?” Rip asked in an agonized voice.

“You had already married another woman.”

Rip released Luke’s sleeve to rub his temple again.

“My mother died a penniless, diseased whore. But you have a son, Rip. You have a goddamn son!”

Luke was gone from the room before Rip had a chance to reply.

O
F ALL THE GREAT MISTAKES
S
LOAN HAD MADE
in her lifetime—loving Antonio, giving up her son, the bargain with Cruz—this was among the worst. She should never have left Three Oaks. After all, possession was nine-tenths of the law.

She had walked out with her pride intact, but she had given up everything she had worked for all her life. If she had stayed at Three Oaks, she would have been in a much better position to defend her claim.

She had no excuse for her flight except that she had been too shocked, too angry, too bruised in heart and soul to behave with her typical rationality. Her hindsight was clear as a spring-fed pool, but in a frontier as merciless as Texas, a body seldom got a second chance.

The hell of it was, she was sitting on her horse in the middle of the Atascosito Road without the vaguest idea which direction she should take. She had told Rip she would be at the Guerrero hacienda, yet she really didn’t want to go there. Rancho Dolorosa held too many reminders of the painful past.

But she didn’t have many alternatives. She could never impose on her sister Bay. Her relationship with her middle sister, which had only become something more than tolerance in the past year or so as they had each matured, was too fragile to handle the stress of such close quarters. Besides, the two-room adobe ranch house Bay shared with Long Quiet and their son, Whipp, was too small to house a guest.

She knew Cricket would welcome her with open arms at Lion’s Dare, and it was tempting to accept her youngest sister’s hospitality. Cricket’s sense of humor would no doubt provide a ready salve for her battered feelings.

But Sloan could not bear the thought of admitting to Cricket how badly she had botched things. Running to her youngest sister for sympathy would make her feel like a whipped dog slinking home with its tail between its legs. She would never get over the humiliation of it.

She knew it was lunacy to let mere pride stand in the way of help, but there it was, and she found it an insurmountable barrier.

It was a waste of time to consider seeking work as an overseer for someone else’s plantation. Rip was right. No Texan would hire a woman to fill such a role.

There was no other acceptable choice. She would have to go to the Guerrero hacienda.

She told herself it was only a temporary measure while she figured out how to convince Rip he had been a harebrained idiot to disinherit her. All she needed was a place to stay for a while.

Despite her reluctance to confront the ghosts of the past, and her reluctance to spend time near her son, she rode steadily all day and on into the dark toward the one sanctuary that promised solace.

Sloan groaned in dismay when she reached the fortress-like walls that surrounded the Guerrero hacienda and discovered a celebration in progress. She hadn’t paid much attention to the parchment Rip had thrust at her, but she had apparently arrived in the middle of the
fandango
.

Gay lanterns strung across the central courtyard reflected off the water sparkling in the tile fountain. Ladies in elaborate satin dresses dotted the courtyard like a colorful flock of birds, but their amiable chatter grated on her ears like the raucous cawing of jays and crows. The aroma of beef roasting over a fire reminded her she hadn’t eaten since noon.

She searched for someone she recognized who would allow her access to the hacienda so she wouldn’t have to be seen dressed as she was, in her travel-worn planter’s garb. Her body went rigid as her eyes lit on the tall, raven-haired Spaniard who wanted her for his wife.

Cruz wore a waist-length sapphire-blue jacket that strained over muscular shoulders and snug black velvet pants that hugged him like a second skin, emphasizing his flat belly, his maleness, and the length of his legs. His ruffled white shirt was the only hint of softness to break the hard, proud lines of his body.