The Rancher & Heart of Stone (17 page)

She needed another drink. She turned back down the hall toward her own room. She could plead her case with Keely tomorrow. There was plenty of time. The girl couldn’t leave. She had no place to go, and no money. As for getting a second job, how would Keely manage that when she worked all hours for that vet? She relaxed. Keely would stay. Ella was sure of it.

* * *

S
ATURDAY
MORNING
, C
LARK
came to pick her up to go riding with him at the ranch.

She’d done that several times with Winnie. But she’d never done it with Clark. Winnie and Boone were usually both home on the weekend, but Winnie’s red
VW Beetle was nowhere in sight when Clark drove up in front of the stables with Keely beside him.

He got out and opened the door for her with a flourish. Boone, who was saddling a horse of his own in the barn, stopped with the saddle in midair to glare at them.

“Oh, dear,” Keely muttered under her breath.

“He’s just a man,” Clark reminded her. “He can kill you, but he can’t eat you.”

“Are you sure?”

Boone had put the saddle back on the ground at the gate that kept his favorite gelding from leaving his stall. He stalked down the brick aisle toward Clark and Keely, who actually moved back a step as he approached with that measured, quick, dangerous tread.

He loomed over them, taller even than Clark, and looked intimidating. “I thought you were flying to Dallas today,” he told Clark.

Clark was intimidated by his older sibling and couldn’t hide it. He tried to look defiant, but he only looked guilty. “I’m going Monday,” he said, and it sounded like an apology. “I brought Keely. She’s going riding with me.”

Boone looked down at Keely, who was staring at her feet and mentally kicking herself for ever agreeing to Clark’s harebrained scheme.

“Is she, now?” Boone mused coldly. He glanced at Clark. “Fetch me a blanket for Tank from the tack room, will you? You can ask Billy to saddle two horses for you on the way.”

Clark brightened. His brother sounded almost friendly. “Sure!”

He grinned at Keely and moved quickly down the aisle of the barn toward the tack room, leaving Keely stranded with Boone, who looked oddly like a lion confronted by a thick, juicy steak.

“Tell Clark you don’t want to go riding, Keely,” he said slowly. “And ask him to take you home. Right now.”

First her mother, now Boone. She was so tired of people telling her what to do. She looked up at him with wide, dark green eyes. “Why do you care if I go riding with Clark?” she asked quietly. “I go riding with Winnie all the time.”

“There’s a difference.”

She felt threatened. Then she felt insulted. She met his dark, piercing stare with resignation. “It’s because my people aren’t rich or socially important, isn’t it?” she asked. “It’s because I’m poor.”

“And uneducated,” he added tauntingly.

Her face colored. “I have a diploma for the work I do,” she stammered.

“You’re a glorified groomer, Keely,” he said flatly. “You hold dogs and cats while the vet treats them.”

Her whole body tautened. “That isn’t true. I give anesthesia and shots...”

He held up a hand. “Spare me the minute details,” he said, sounding bored.

“We can’t all go to Harvard, you know,” she muttered.

“And some of us can’t even face community college,” he shot back. “You had a scholarship and you threw it away.”

She felt sick. “A scholarship that paid just for textbooks,” she corrected. “And only half of that. How in the world do you think I could afford to pay tuition and go to classes and hold down a full-time job, all at once?”

“You could give up the job.”

She laughed hollowly. “My mother would love that. Then she wouldn’t even have groceries.”

His dark eyes narrowed. “Do you pay rent?”

Her big, soft green eyes met his. “I do all the housework and all the cooking and cleaning and shopping. That’s my rent.”

“Who buys her liquor?” he asked with a cold smile. “And her see-through negligees?”

Keely’s face went scarlet. He was insinuating something. Her stare asked the question without words.

He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans, pulling the thick fabric taut over the hard, powerful muscles of his legs. “I dropped by your house to thank you, belatedly, for getting Bailey to the vet in time to save him,” he said curtly. “You weren’t home, but she was. She answered the door in a see-through negligee and invited me inside.”

The shame was overpowering. She averted her face.

“Embarrassed?” he scoffed. “Why? Like mother, like daughter. I’m sure you wear similar things for Bentley,” he added with honey-dripping sarcasm.

She couldn’t manage a reply. His opinion of her was painful. She’d loved him secretly for years, and he could treat her like this. He wouldn’t even give her the benefit of the doubt.

Her lack of response made him angry. Why it should also make him feel guilty was a question he couldn’t answer. “You keep away from Clark,” he said shortly. “I don’t want you going out with him. Do you hear me, Keely?”

“It’s just for a ride....”

“I don’t give a damn what it’s for!” he snapped, watching her body tense, her eyes grow frightened. That made him even angrier. He stepped toward her and was infuriated when she backed up. “Get out of Clark’s life. Today!” he told her in a goaded undertone.

She felt her knees go weak. He was intimidating. She couldn’t even force her eyes back up to his. She was so tired of being afraid of everybody; especially of Boone.

Before he could say anything else, Clark came up with a blanket. He was grinning. “Billy’s got the horses saddled. He’s bringing them right up!”

Boone glared down at Keely. “I think Keely wants to go home,” he said.

“You do?” Clark exclaimed, surprised.

Keely drew in a quick breath and stepped close to Clark. “I’d like to go riding,” she replied.

Clark glanced at Boone, whose eyes were black as jet. “What’s going on?” he asked his brother. He frowned. “Do you really mind if I just take Keely riding?”

Boone glared at Keely as if he’d like to roast her on a spit. He glared at his brother, too. His lips made a thin line. “Oh, hell!” Boone bit off. “Do what you damned well please!”

He turned and strode out of the barn, apparently oblivious to the blanket Clark was holding out and the saddle he’d left sitting at the stall gate. His long, quick strides were audible on the paved floor, echoing down the aisle.

Clark ground his teeth together as he watched Boone’s departure. “I hope he doesn’t run into any of his men on the way to wherever he’s going,” he said with visible misgivings.

“Why?” Keely asked, relieved that Boone hadn’t said anything more.

Suddenly there was a distant voice, a sharp curse and the sound of water being splashed.

“Oh, boy,” Clark said heavily.

Keely stared down the aisle. A tall, dripping wet cowboy came into the barn, sloshing water as he walked. He was wringing out his felt hat, muttering. He looked up and saw Keely and Clark and grimaced.

“What happened to you, Riley?” Clark exclaimed.

The cowboy glowered at him. “I just made a comment about how good you and Miss Keely looked together,” he said defensively. “Boone picked me up and tossed me into the watering trough!”

Clark exchanged a glance with Keely. She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing as the cowboy passed on down the aisle, muttering about his freshly laundered clothing having to go right back into the washing machine. He headed out the back door of the barn toward the bunkhouse beyond.

“Poor guy,” Keely said. She looked up. “Your brother has a very nasty temper.”

“Yes.” He drew in a breath. “Well, it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be,” he added, smiling. “Let’s go for a nice ride and pretend that my brother likes you and can’t wait to welcome you into our family!”

“Optimist,” Keely said and grinned.

* * *

B
OONE
WAS
GONE
when they came back from the lazy ride around the ranch, but Winnie was just putting her car into the garage. She drove a cute little red Volkswagen Beetle, her pride and joy because she was paying for it herself.

She came out of the garage frowning. She didn’t even notice Clark and Keely at first, not until she’d passed right by the barn.

“What’s wrong with you?” Clark called to her.

She stopped, glanced at them and looked blank. “What?”

“I said, what’s wrong with you?” Clark repeated as he and Keely joined his sister near the corral.

“Bad day at work?” Keely asked sympathetically.

Winnie was tight-mouthed. “I had a little upset with Kilraven,” she muttered.

Keely’s eyebrows arched. “What sort of upset?”

Winnie grimaced. “I didn’t mention the ten-thirty-two involved in a ten-sixteen physical,” she said, describing a possible weapon involved in a domestic dispute. “The caller said her husband was drunk, had beaten her up in front of the kids and was holding a pistol to her head. The phone went dead and I dispatched Kilraven. I’d just managed to get the caller back on the phone and I was listening to her while I gave him the information, and the caller was hysterical, so I got rattled and didn’t tell him about the gun. When he got to the address I gave him, he had a 45 caliber Colt automatic shoved into his face.”

Keely gasped. “Was he shot?”

“No thanks to me, he wasn’t,” Winnie said miserably. “I was also supposed to put out a ten-three, ten-thirty-three, calling for radio silence while he went into the house. I messed up everything. It was my first shift working all alone without my instructor, and I just blew it! My supervisor said I could have gotten someone killed, and she was right.” She burst into tears. “Kilraven called for backup and talked the man out of the gun, God knows how. After the man was in custody on the way to the detention center, Kilraven called me on his cell phone and said that if I ever sent him on a call again and left out vital details of the disturbance, he’d have me fired.”

Keely hugged her, muttering sympathetic things, while Clark patted her on the shoulder and said that it would all blow over.

Winnie blew her nose and wiped her eyes. “I’m going to put in my resignation at the police station and at 911 dispatch and come home,” she sobbed. “I’m a menace! Kilraven said I was taking up jobs that some other woman needed desperately, anyway. He said rich women who got bored should find some other way to entertain themselves!”

“That’s harsh,” Clark muttered. “I’ll have a talk with him.”

Winnie looked up at her sweet brother through tear-filled eyes. “Are you kidding? Kilraven makes Boone look civilized!”

“Well, we could ask Boone to speak to him,” Clark compromised.

Just as Winnie was starting to answer him, a Jacobsville police car came flying up the long driveway and skidded to a halt in front of the barn. A tall, black-haired, powerful-looking policeman got out and stalked toward them.

“Uh-oh,” Winnie whispered, going pale.

“Who is that?” Clark asked.

Winnie took a breath. “Kilraven,” she said heavily.

CHAPTER FOUR

W
INNIE
LOOKED
LIKE
a professional mourner. Her long, wavy blond hair was ruffled by the wind and her dark eyes were red from crying.

“It’s all right,” she said, trying to deflect trouble as Kilraven came to a stop, towering over her. “You didn’t need to come all the way out here to tell me I’m fired. I’m going to put in my resignation first thing tomorrow morning.”

He propped his hand on his holstered gun and stared down at her with glittering silver eyes. “Who asked you to quit?”

“You said I should,” she accused, and dabbed at new tears. “You said I needed to leave law enforcement to people who were qualified to work in it.”

The tall man grimaced. The tears were real. He’d been browbeaten into coming out here by his boss, Jacobsville Police Chief Cash Grier, protesting all the way because he thought Winnie was putting on an act for sympathy. But this was no act. His rage dissolved like tears on hot pavement.

“I could have gotten you killed,” Winnie told him, red-eyed, and started crying all over again. “That man held a pistol to your head!”

Kilraven’s perfect teeth clenched. “It wasn’t loaded.”

Winnie stared at him through a mist. “What?”

“It wasn’t loaded,” Kilraven repeated. “He was too drunk to realize the clip was missing.”

“Wouldn’t there still be one bullet chambered?” Winnie asked.

Kilraven shrugged. “Didn’t matter.”

Winnie frowned. “It didn’t matter? Why?”

He drew in a long breath. “He couldn’t remember how to get the safety off.”

Winnie was just looking at him now, not saying anything.

“But it could have ended in tragedy,” Kilraven continued quietly. “I mean, if he’d managed to actually fire the damned thing...” He left the rest unsaid.

Winnie blew her nose and wiped her eyes again. “I know.”

“They stuck you in that dispatch job with no real training,” he muttered. “Any big city 911 staff goes through a training program. Well, Jacobs County has one, too,” he conceded. “But the director thought you were just playing around, that you weren’t really serious about working in the 911 center since you worked full-time for us in the police department. So he just stuck you in as an assistant to one of the regulars and let you get on with it. He thought you’d fold after a few days, that you only took the job because you were bored with being at home, and that you thought working for the police and emergency dispatch was entertainment. I had a long talk with the director before I came here.”

“You did?” Winnie was fascinated. She hesitated. “You didn’t...hit him or anything?”

“I do not hit people,” the tall officer replied haughtily.

“That’s not what Harley Fowler says,” Keely murmured under her breath.

Kilraven glared at her. “That guy pulled a knife on me and threatened to cut off my...well, never mind what he threatened, he was lunging at me with it. It was hit him or shoot him.”

“How many pins did they have to put in his jaw?” Keely wondered aloud.

“It was better than having to have a bullet dug out,” Kilraven protested. “And I should know. I’ve had three bullets dug out, over the years, along with various bits of shrapnel, and I’m wearing two steel pins, as well. The pins hurt less.”

Winnie was studying him curiously.

“I’m not telling you where they are,” Kilraven said. “And shame on you for what you’re thinking!”

Winnie flushed. “You don’t know!”

“The hell I don’t,” he huffed. “My great-grandfather was a full-fledged shaman who could read minds.”

“That’s not what Harley Fowler says he was,” Keely interrupted.

He gave her an exasperated glance. “What does Harley Fowler know about me? I’ve never even met the man!”

“He doesn’t know you, but he plays poker with Garon Grier, who works with Jon Blackhawk, who’s your half brother,” Keely explained.

“Damn the FBI!” Kilraven cursed.

“Harley doesn’t belong to the FBI,” Winnie pointed out.

“Garon and my brother do,” Kilraven said. “And they can stop telling people lies about me and my family.”

“Jon
is
your family,” Winnie replied. “And Harley didn’t tell lies, he said your great-grandfather got mad at a local sheriff and smeared him with fresh meat and shoved him headfirst into a wolf den.”

“Well, the wolf den was empty at the time,” Kilraven defended his ancestor.

“Yes, but your great-grandfather didn’t know that.” Keely laughed.

Kilraven made a face at her. “You didn’t get that from Harley Fowler, you got it from Bentley Rydel.”

Keely blushed.

Kilraven threw up his hands. “You take your dog to a vet and expect him to stick to medicine, instead of which he pumps you for personal information and then tells the whole community!”

“You don’t get to join the family unless we know everything about you,” Clark pointed out.

Kilraven scowled. “What family?” he asked suspiciously, and glanced at Winnie, who blushed as warmly as Keely had.

“The Jacobsville family,” Clark returned. “We’re not a town. We’re a big extended family.”

“You don’t live in Jacobsville, you live in Comanche Wells,” Kilraven retorted.

“It’s an extension of Jacobsville, and you’re avoiding the issue,” Clark said with a grin.

Kilraven’s wide, sexy mouth pulled up into a faint snarl. “I’m leaving. I don’t want to be part of a family.”

“With that attitude, I wouldn’t worry about it,” Winnie said under her breath.

He paused to look down at her. “Your director will talk to you in the morning about some more training. He’s going to do it personally. I don’t want you fired. Neither do any of the other law enforcement and rescue personnel. You’ve got a real knack for the job.”

Kilraven turned on his heel and stalked off back to his patrol car. He got in under the wheel, coaxed the engine into a roar and shot out of the driveway without a glance, a wave or anything else.

“Well, he’s sort of nice,” Clark had to admit.

“He’s sort of scary, too,” Keely said, watching Winnie.

Winnie was smiling through her tears. “Maybe I’m not a lost cause, after all.”

Keely hugged her. “Definitely not a lost cause,” she laughed.

“Well, I guess I’ll go inside and find something to eat...” She stopped, her gaze moving from Clark to Keely. “What are you two doing together?”

“Driving Boone mad,” Clark said, and he grinned.

“Would you like to explain how?” his sister asked.

“I invited Keely over to ride horses with me, and Boone was in the barn when we drove up together.”

“So that’s why,” Winnie began thoughtfully.

“Why, what?” Keely wanted to know.

“Why my brother was sitting on the shoulder of the road in his car with a Texas Department of Public Safety car flashing its lights behind him, with a trooper sitting inside running wants and warrants.”

“How do you know what he was doing?” Keely asked.

“Because I run tags all the time at work for the troopers and the local police,” she replied.

“What was Boone doing?” Clark asked hesitantly.

Winnie chuckled. “Teaching the trooper new words, from the look of it. I didn’t dare stop to ask.”

“Oh, dear,” Keely said, glancing at Clark.

“Stop that,” Clark said firmly. “It’s none of Boone’s business if I want to ask you over here to go riding with me.”

“It shouldn’t be,” Winnie told her brother. “But he’ll make it his business. He thinks Keely’s too young to go out with men. Any men.”

Clark’s eyes popped. “She’s almost twenty years old!”

“Well, of course she is,” Winnie said gently. “But not to Boone. To him, she’s still in pigtails trying to teach her dog how to fetch newspapers.”

“Don’t dig that up,” Keely moaned.

“That was when your folks rented that place down the road while your house was being remodeled. You’d have been about eleven. That dog was very good at fetching newspapers,” Winnie replied. “It was just that it was easier for him to bring you Boone’s paper from our front porch than it was to fetch yours out of the paper box at the end of your driveway.”

“Boone yelled at me,” Keely recalled with a shudder.

“Boone yells at everybody,” Winnie reminded her.

“Almost everybody,” Clark qualified.

Keely’s eyebrows arched. “Almost?”

“It didn’t work when he yelled at Bentley Rydel, did it?” He chuckled. “Winnie told me,” he added when Keely looked puzzled.

“Bentley isn’t afraid of anybody,” Keely agreed, smiling. “He’s been good to me.”

“I’d think he had a crush on you, except for his age,” Clark said. “He’s even older than Boone.”

“I guess he is, at that,” Keely said.

“Want some lunch?” Winnie asked them after a moment of silence. “We’ll have to get it ourselves, because our Mrs. Johnston is off today, but I can make a salad and Keely can make real bread.”

“I’d love homemade bread.” Clark sighed. “The lunchroom ladies used to make it at school when I was a kid.”

“Would you mind?” Winnie asked her best friend.

Keely smiled. “Not at all. I love to cook.”

It would also give her an excuse not to have to go home for a while. Her mother would be getting up pretty soon, hungover as usual and driving Keely nuts. With a little luck, maybe Carly would come over and take Ella out partying, since it was Saturday. It would give Keely a lovely quiet night at home alone if she didn’t get called out; something she rarely experienced.

* * *

T
HE
THREE
OF
them worked in a companionable silence while they whipped together a light lunch. Keely took a little of the dough she was using for rolls and added real butter, pecans, cinnamon and sugar and made cinnamon buns for dessert.

Winnie’s pasta salad had time to chill while the dough sat rising. Within an hour, Keely had fresh bread on the table and cinnamon buns cooking in the oven while they ate their way through pasta and fresh fruit.

In the middle of the impromptu feast, Boone walked in. He stopped in the doorway, his nostrils flaring.

“I smell fresh bread,” he remarked, scowling. “Where the hell did you get fresh bread? Is there a bakery in town that I don’t know about?”

“Keely made it,” Clark mumbled, working his way through a third yeast roll liberally spread with butter. “Mmmm!” he added, closing his eyes and groaning at the delicious taste.

“Did you get a ticket?” Winnie asked, trying to divert him from the penetrating glance he was aiming at Keely, who squirmed in her chair.

“Ticket for what?” Boone asked, digging in the china cabinet for a plate.

“Speeding,” she replied.

He put his plate on the table and fetched silverware and a napkin. He poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot and sat down with the other three. Keely’s heart was already doing overtime, and she had to work at acting normal while Boone was so close.

“I got a warning,” he said tautly.

“My friend Nora is the county deputy clerk of court,” she reminded him. “If you get a speeding ticket, it will go through her office and she’ll tell me.”

His mouth twitched. “I got a small ticket.”

“There’s only one size,” she said.

He ignored her. He reached for a roll, buttered it and took a bite. He wore the same expression that was dominating Clark’s face. Fresh rolls were a treat. Their cook, Mrs. Johnston, couldn’t make bread, although she was a great cook otherwise.

“There’s some salad left,” Winnie commented, pushing the bowl toward him.

“Where did you learn to make rolls?” he asked Keely, and seemed really interested in her answer.

“When I lived with my father, he ran a big game park. One of his temporary workers had been in the military and traveled all over the world,” she recalled. “He was a gourmet chef. He taught me to make bread and French pastries when I was twelve years old.”

“What sort of animals did your father have?” Boone persisted.

“The usual ones,” she said, without meeting his eyes. “Giraffe, lions, monkeys and one elephant.”

“African lions?”

She nodded. “And one mountain lion,” she added. No one noticed that her fingers, holding her fork, went white.

“They have mean tempers,” Boone said. “One of my ranch hands had to track one down and kill it when he worked over in Arizona some years ago. It was bringing down cattle. He said it killed one of his tracking dogs before he could get a clear shot at it.”

“They tend to be vicious, like most wild animals,” she agreed. “They’re not malicious, you know. They’re just wild animals. They do what they do.”

“What was your job at a wild game park?” Boone murmured.

“I fed the animals and watered them and made sure the gates were locked at night so they couldn’t get out,” she said.

He finished his roll and followed it with sips of black coffee. “Not a smart job for a twelve-year-old kid,” he remarked.

“It was just Dad and me,” she said, “except for old Barney, and he was crippled. He’d hunted a lion who became a man-killer in Africa and it fought back. He lost an arm and a foot to it.”

“Did he keep the pelt when he killed it?” Boone asked.

She smiled faintly. “He made a rug out of it and slept on it every night. When he left us, he was still carrying it around.”

“The rolls were good,” Boone said unexpectedly.

“Thanks,” Keely replied shyly.

“You could get a job cooking,” he pointed out.

She frowned. “Why would I want to give up working for Bentley?”

His pleasant expression went into eclipse. “God knows.”

Winnie gave her brother a piercing look. He ignored it. He studied her face and frowned. “You’ve been crying,” he said abruptly. “Why?”

She paled. She didn’t want to talk about it.

“Why?” he persisted.

She knew it was useless to try to hide it from him. Someone would tell him, anyway.

“I almost got Kilraven killed,” she confessed, putting down her fork.

“How?”

“I got rattled and forgot to warn him that the man involved in a domestic dispute was armed,” she said quietly. “Luckily for Kilraven, the clip was missing and the man couldn’t figure out how to get the safety off.”