The Rancher & Heart of Stone (26 page)

“He did this time. But there were extenuating circumstances. He was rather tipsy at the time.”

“He was drinking?”

“From what we hear,” Winnie agreed. She laughed. “My spotless big brother, drunk and beating up detectives.” She shook her head. “What is the world coming to?” She grinned at Keely. “Apparently he thinks a little more of you than he let on, I’d say.”

Keely was afraid to hope for much, especially after Boone had seen her wrecked shoulder. But his actions indicated more feeling for Keely than he’d expressed verbally. There was hope, she thought. He had scars, too. Perhaps he’d had worse experiences than she had, with people of the opposite sex who didn’t understand or care about his scars.

* * *

B
Y
THE
TIME
Boone came back to the hospital, Winnie and Clark had gone home for supper and to get a room ready for Keely when she was discharged. Coltrain had said she’d be ready to go the next day if she continued improving.

Keely didn’t want to go home with them if Boone only offered out of guilt. But she didn’t want to go to her home, either, with Ella’s death so fresh on her mind. Nobody had told her where Ella died, but Keely suspected that it was at the house.

She had an unexpected visitor while she was worrying her choices to death in her mind. Ella’s best friend, Carly, came in, dressed in black, red-eyed from crying.

“Did they tell you?” she asked gently, because she didn’t want to upset Keely.

“Yes,” Keely said huskily. “We were doing so well together...” Her voice broke.

Carly bent over the bed, and hugged her gently. “I’ve been out of town. There was a missed call on my cell phone, but when I tried to call Ella back, there was no answer. I got worried when I couldn’t get you, either, so I cut my trip short and came home.” She grimaced. “What a homecoming! Ella dead, and you in the hospital in serious condition. Are you going to be all right?”

“Yes,” Keely said. “But I understand that the snake died.”

It took a minute for Carly to get the dry humor. She smiled. “Poor snake.”

“I expect his relatives are all sad.” She dabbed at her eyes with the sheet. “I haven’t had time to make any arrangements about the funeral.”

“Do you want me to do that?” Carly asked solemnly. “Ella gave me a copy of her will and instructions for her funeral two years ago. I never really thought they’d be needed, but I humored her.”

“Could you call Lunsford’s and make the arrangements?” Keely asked gently. “She has a burial policy with them, which should cover everything. She paid it off a few years ago.”

“I’ll be glad to do that,” Carly replied. Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. “She was the only friend I had—the only real one.”

Keely reached out her good hand and squeezed Carly’s. “You were her only real friend,” she replied. “I’m glad she had you.”

Carly cried even harder. “I wish I could take back every mean thing I ever said to you, Keely,” she sobbed. “I didn’t really mean any of it. In the old days, I took care of you a lot when Ella couldn’t. I lost sight of that. But I’ll do anything to make it up to you now, if I can.”

“Look after Mama’s funeral arrangements,” Keely said, “and we’ll call it even.”

Carly dried her eyes. “When do you want to have it?” she asked worriedly. “You don’t look up to a funeral.”

She wasn’t. She hesitated. Boone came in the door, gave Carly a cold appraisal and moved to Keely’s bed.

“I’ve arranged for some additional manpower at the ranch,” he said without preamble. “What do you want to do about your mother?”

“Carly’s going to take care of that,” Keely said. “She knows where everything is, and she has copies of
Mama’s will and last wishes.”

Boone glanced at the older woman. “If there are any outstanding accounts, I’ll take care of them,” he said.

Carly nodded. Her eyes were as red as Keely’s. “Thanks.” She hesitated. “You know,” she said, staring meaningfully at Boone, “it might not be a bad idea to have her cremated, and the ashes buried in the family plot.”

Boone knew then that Carly had seen Ella and wanted to spare Keely the trauma of it. His eyes narrowed. “I think that’s a good idea. Keely?”

Keely wasn’t sure. She hesitated.

“A Viking funeral,” Boone said quietly. “Appropriate for a brave woman.”

Keely burst out crying again. “Yes,” she agreed, choking. “She was brave. Okay. That’s okay.”

Boone leaned over and gathered her as close as he could, kissing the tears away. “It passes,” he said softly. “Everything passes. You’ll be able to remember her with happiness one day.”

“Yes, you will,” Carly seconded. She went on the other side of the bed, and bent and kissed Keely’s disheveled hair. “I’ll go and get things started. The hospital and the funeral home may need your approval before they can proceed. I’ll have them call you here.”

“Do that,” Boone said quietly. “But I don’t think there will be a problem. You stuck by Ella when nobody else would go near her.”

Carly took that for a compliment and smiled. “Thanks.”

“If you can find that snake,” Keely told Boone, trying to lighten the somber mood, “we can arrange the same sort of funeral for him. Of course, if he didn’t die from biting me, we’ll have to kill him first.”

Boone managed a chuckle. “I’m glad to see that you’re better.”

She smiled weakly, grimacing as she moved her arm.

“Coltrain says she can go home tomorrow, so we’ll have her with us,” Boone told Carly. He pulled out his wallet, got out a business card and handed it to her. “If you need help with the arrangements, let me know.”

“Okay. If we cremate her, we can schedule a memorial service when this is all over,” Carly told him. She glanced at Keely worriedly. “You’re not going to be able to manage a funeral in the condition you’re in right now.”

“I have to agree,” Keely said. She caught her breath. “Oh, my gosh! My job! I didn’t even call Dr. Rydel! He’s going to fire me!”

“I phoned him,” Boone said at once. “He’s got a temp filling in for you. He and the staff send their best wishes. They sent you a big fruit basket. It just came, so the nurses gave it to me, but I took it out to the car. I’m taking it home. You can have it tomorrow.”

“Thanks,” she told him. “I was afraid of losing my job. I was too sick to call and tell them what was going on.”

“Oh, everybody in Comanche Wells and Jacobsville knows everything that’s going on already,” Carly said. She glanced amusedly at Boone. “And I mean everything.”

Boone’s eyes actually twinkled, but Keely didn’t see it.

Carly said her goodbyes and left Boone alone with Keely. He stuck his hands in his slacks’ pockets and stood over her, his eyes soft and quiet.

“You look a little better,” he commented.

“I wish I felt it. I’m still sick to my stomach and my arm throbs,” she said huskily. She looked up at him. “I hate snakes.”

“They don’t like people sitting on them,” he pointed out.

“I didn’t. He was just all of a sudden there. I didn’t even look at him sideways. He just rattled his head off and struck at me.”

“Nervous.”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Rattlesnakes are nervous. They rattle to try to scare people into going away.”

It had never occurred to her that a snake could be nervous. She said so.

He sighed. “Anyway, we got him.”

“You got him? You did?” She was excited.

“The boys found him about twenty feet from where you were sitting when he bit you.”

“What did they do with him?”

He pursed his lips. “Do you like cowboy hats?”

“I guess so. I don’t wear them much, except when I go riding.”

“You’ll wear this one. It’s just your size and it’s got a nice new rattlesnake hatband. Or it will have, when the skin’s tanned out.”

“You didn’t!”

“I did.” He grinned down at her. “We’ll go riding, when you’re better.”

“We will?”

One eye narrowed. “You go riding with Clark and Winnie all the time. You can go riding with me now,” he said with faint belligerence.

“Okay,” she said, fascinated. It almost sounded as if he were jealous of them. That was ridiculous, of course.

“I had a television put in your room. You can watch movies on pay-per-view. We’ve got satellite, too, so you can watch programs from all over the world.” His eyes twinkled. “Then, there’s the national news, with the presidential race on every channel, every hour, every day.”

She sighed. “I haven’t watched the national news for weeks. I can’t stand the monotony. The only news they report is on the presidential election and every detail of the private lives of celebrities.”

“The Spanish channel has the real news,” he pointed out. “If you want to know what’s going on in the world, that’s where to find out.”

She smiled. “I can’t speak Spanish.”

“I’ll teach you,” he said quietly, and his eyes were insinuating that he had in mind teaching her other things, as well.

She flushed a little. Her life had been a closed, painful book, her future a dream that she never thought would be realized. Now, here was this dishy man with whom she’d been in love for years, looking at her with acquisitive eyes and smiling at her. It felt as if her heart might burst from joy.

He smiled. “Mrs. Johnston has an assistant cook, Melinda. She’s from Guatemala. She’s teaching us Mayan. You can learn, too.”

“Mayan?” She caught her breath. “Their culture had astronomy and the concept of zero and raised beds for planting and irrigation while Europeans were knocking each other over the head with rocks.”

“I know.” He chuckled. “You spend your time off at the library reading books about them. Or so I hear from the head librarian.”

She flushed. It flattered her that he’d learned things about her. “I’d love to go and see some of the Mayan ruins,” she said. “I’d love to go to Peru and see the Inca ruins, too.”

“So would I,” he told her. “Maybe we can both go, one day.”

For her, that was a pipe dream. She’d never save enough to pay for a plane ticket even to south Texas for a vacation. Her smile was wistful.

He saw that. “What else do you like?”

She smiled. “Ancient history.”

“The Caesars, the philosophers, the politicians...?”

“Don’t mention politicians!”

“What sort of history?” He chuckled. “And which historians do you read?”

“Tacitus. Thucydides. Strabo. Arrian. Plutarch. Those ones.”

“Deep authors for a young mind,” he commented.

“You listen here, I may be young, but I have an old mind,” she told him. “I was pretty much on my own when my father took me out to west Texas to live in an animal park, and I was really on my own when I came back here, because Mama was drunk so much.” Mama. The thought sobered her, made her aware of her recent tragedy. “I can’t believe my own father would kill her,” she said. “He was a little out of the bounds of law sometimes, but he never hurt anybody.”

“He sold drugs,” Boone reminded her. “That does hurt people.”

“Yes, but you know what I mean,” she replied. “He isn’t a killer.”

“Baby, all people are killers, given the right incentive,” he said. “Anybody can kill.”

She sighed. “I suppose so,” she said sadly.

He bent and kissed her, gently, on her mouth. “I’m going to get a cup of decent coffee. What can I bring you?”

“A nice juicy steak with hash browns?” she asked hopefully.

“No chance I could get that past the nurses’ station, unless they were all wearing nose plugs. Try again,” he invited.

“I guess I’ll wait for supper here,” she said with resignation.

“When you’re well again, I’ll fly you up to Fort Worth and take you to this little steak place I know,” he said.

Her heart jumped up into her throat. “You mean it?”

He drew in a long breath. “I had to date Misty to feed information to Hayes, and I gave him hell twice a day about it. I was over her years ago. But I had to put on an act, to keep her from getting suspicious.” His eyes darkened. “Hayes has a lot to answer for. She’s vindictive. She set you up, and I was too angry to think straight when I saw those photographs.”

Keely recalled that Misty had promised to get even with her. She’d done a good job of it. “She’ll get her just deserts one day,” Keely replied.

“We all do,” he said philosophically. He glanced at his watch. “I have to make a few phone calls and get something to eat, then I’ll be back.”

Her eyes lit up. “Okay.”

He smiled slowly. Disheveled, her hair uncombed, her face devoid of any makeup, she was beautiful to him. So easily, she could have been dead. He’d never have been able to live with that, knowing he caused her death.

He bent and kissed her again with breathless tenderness. “I’ll be back soon,” he whispered.

She smiled. “Okay. I’ll wait.”

He chuckled as he walked out.

Ten minutes later the phone rang. She answered it, thinking it must be Carly or Winnie or Clark.

“Keely, is that you?”

It was her father’s voice.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Y
OU
KILLED
MY
mother!” Keely choked, overwhelmed with rage at just the sound of his voice. “How could you!”

“It wasn’t me. I swear it wasn’t!” he replied, and he sounded frightened. “Keely, I’ve never killed a person in my life. You have to believe me.”

“You threatened her for money—”

“I had to! Listen, if I don’t pay them, they’ll...well, they’d already threatened to kill your mother, now they say they’ll get you, too,” he said nervously. “It’s the Fuentes gang! I got mixed up with them because of Jock,” he said bitterly. “He’s been working for Fuentes for years. He even went to prison for him, just after you came to live with me. He said they paid better than any of the other distributors, and that he’d get me in because he had a cousin in the organization. But there was trouble right upfront because Jock double-crossed one of the bosses and pocketed some drug money. Then he hid out and left me holding the bag. They’re after me, now.” There was a sigh. “Your mother was right about Jock. She said he’d destroy me if I stuck with him, and he has. He keeps calling me, making threats toward you if you don’t come up with enough money to help him to get out of town before the drug lords kill him. I don’t know what to do!”

She had to clamp down hard on her feelings. He was rationalizing his behavior, but she remembered that he’d stood by while the mountain lion dragged her away to what would have been her death.

“You go to Sheriff Carson,” she told him. “Tell him what you’ve told me, and help him find Jock. That’s what you have to do.”

“Hell, Carson will lock me up and throw away the key!” he muttered. “I gave his brother the coke that killed him. No, I’m not going to the law.”

“What else can you do?” she asked.

“Get enough money to pay Jock, so he’ll get off my back. The Fuentes organization want Jock. They want to kill him, but they don’t know where he is. They thought Ella did and they...” He was going to say they tortured her, but he couldn’t make himself say that to his daughter, whom he’d failed in so many ways already. “Well, they killed her. Now, the only hope I have is to raise enough money to help Jock get out of the country before they catch up with him. He swore if I didn’t, he’d tell them I was the one who double-crossed them. He’d give them back what he took and blame it on me!”

“If you give him money,” she said in a weary tone, “he’ll only want more.”

“There’s a chance he won’t. He just wants to get out of the country before they do to him what they did to those drug agents they killed. He won’t say so, but I think he’s afraid of Fuentes’s new partner. The partner is called Machado and he hates Jock. He’ll kill him before Fuentes does if he gets the chance, and Jock knows it.”

“Let him,” Keely said coldly.

“Jock was the only friend I had, Keely,” he said heavily. “He stood by me when everybody else jumped ship.”

Just as Carly had stood by Ella. But that had been because Carly genuinely loved Keely’s mother. Jock had stood by Brent Welsh because he knew Ella had money, Keely thought, and he could use Brent to get some of it. But she didn’t say that. He wouldn’t have listened anyway.

“I don’t have any money,” Keely told him. “I work as a veterinarian technician and I make minimum wage. Mama—” Her voice broke. She composed herself. “Mama had some money in a savings account, but it’s in her name and it’s tied up in probate. I won’t be able to get it for weeks.” She didn’t know if that was true, but it sounded convincing.

He cursed sharply. “There must be something you can sell!”

“She already sold it all,” she said bitterly.

He muttered again, incoherent. “Then those friends of yours, the Sinclairs—they’ve got money. Ask them for it!”

“I won’t.”

“Your life is on the line, Keely!” he raged. “It’s not a game! Jock’s already said that he’s got nothing to lose. He’ll kill you if you don’t help us.”

She felt very old. Her mother was dead, she’d almost died herself. Boone knew her darkest secret and would surely not want her anymore, even if he was compassionate and understanding about her injury. He was scarred himself. But Keely saw no future for herself.

“I don’t care,” she said passively. “Let Jock do his worst. He might be doing me a favor,” she said with black humor. “God knows, I’m never going to have a husband or a family, the way I look.”

“I’m...sorry,” he said slowly. “I’m very sorry, for what happened. I was so shocked that I couldn’t even do anything. I feel bad about that. And I didn’t think about how the scars might affect your life.”

“Pity,” she said, and felt hatred seethe through her. “Until that moment, I thought you cared about me.”

“I do care, in my way,” he said. “My parents were ice-cold with each other and with me. They never went out of their way to do one charitable thing for anyone else. I learned that you take care of number one.”

“So did Mama,” she replied. “Neither of you was fit to raise a child.”

“Tell me about it.” He laughed hollowly. “Once you came, our lives changed forever. She was too unstable emotionally to cope with a baby.” He sounded bitter. “You spent a lot of time with Carly.”

A light flashed in her mind as she recalled Carly’s face. It was far more familiar to her than Ella’s. No wonder the other woman had been so protective of her.

“But that’s all in the past, and I’ve got bigger problems now. You have to try to get me some money. Jock says he won’t wait much longer.”

“Tell him to come see me. I can borrow a shotgun,” she mused.

“It’s not funny!”

“If you were in my position, it might be.”

“Ask your friends if they’ll help out. Even two thousand might be enough,” her father persisted. “Take this number down, Keely. You can reach me here.”

She grabbed a pencil and pad from inside the drawer by her bed. “Okay.”

He gave her the number. “Do your best, honey,” he pleaded. “You lived against all the odds. I don’t want you to die over a handful of money.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” she said heavily, and hung up. It wasn’t until then she realized that she was shaking.

* * *

W
HEN
B
OONE
CAME
back, he found Keely quiet and preoccupied, staring into space.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, because he knew at once that something was. He could feel it.

She frowned. “How do you know something is?”

He moved to the bed and dropped down lazily into the armchair by her bed. “I read minds. Come on. Tell me.”

She sank back into the pillows wearily. “My father called. Jock’s running from the drug lords and he wants money to get out of the country. He told my father that if I don’t get it up for him somehow, he’ll kill me. The drug dealers will probably send him back to wherever he came from in a shoe box.”

He took off his hat and dropped it on the floor by his chair. He ran a big, lean hand through his black hair. “I’ll turn Bailey loose on him, and when he gets through, Jock will fit in the shoe box. Or parts of him will.”

“Is Bailey all right?” she asked.

He smiled. “Doing great, thanks to you.” His smile faded. “I still can’t believe I listened to that self-centered little cheater when you told me what was wrong with Bailey. I wish I could go back and live those few minutes over.”

“It turned out all right.”

He nodded. “Only because you had the guts to do what you knew was right. You’ve got grit, Keely.”

“I’m just stubborn,” she replied. “What am I going to do? I don’t have anything I could sell that would bring enough money to buy Jock a plane ticket.”

“We’ll talk to Hayes,” he told her. “He’ll know what to do.”

* * *

A
ND
H
AYES
DID
.
They arranged for a sum of money that Boone would give her father to lure him into a trap. Keely had already given Hayes the number where her father could be reached when she got the money.

“You’re not going,” she told Boone when he and Hayes were discussing who was going to take the money to Jock.

“Excuse me?” Boone asked haughtily.

She flushed, but she wouldn’t backtrack. “You’re not going. Everybody around me is either dead or in danger, and you’re not going to join my mother at the local funeral home. Let him do it.” She pointed at Hayes. “He knows how to deal with criminals. He’s good at it.”

“Thanks,” Hayes mused.

“I was with a Special Forces unit in the Middle East,” Boone reminded Keely. “I came home.”

She looked to Hayes for assistance.

He grimaced. “Okay, I’ll work out the details once you get the money together. With any luck, we can nab both men.”

“I’ll call you,” Boone promised.

When Hayes left, Boone watched Keely with faint amusement. “You’re afraid I’ll get hurt.”

She shifted on her pillows. “My mother is dead because my father wanted money. I don’t want to lose you...I mean, I don’t want Clark and Winnie to have to lose you.”

He pursed his lips. “I could have wrung your neck when I saw those photos,” he said conversationally. “I could have wrung Clark’s, too.”

“I know you don’t want him around me because I’m in another social class...”

“Stop that,” he muttered. “I didn’t want him around you because you’re mine, Keely,” he said curtly.

Warmth shot through her body like fire. Surely she was hearing things. Her expression said so.

“We’ll have to do something about that self-image.” He chuckled. “I don’t know why you ever thought I didn’t want you. Even Clark realized I was jealous as hell.”

“You hated me,” she exclaimed. “You ignored me when you came to bring Bailey to Dr. Rydel!”

“Camouflage,” he replied. “I didn’t know about your shoulder, then,” he added, in a subdued tone. “All I could think about was my own defects. I’d already had evidence of how a woman would react to them. You’re so young, Keely. I thought you were too young to cope.”

“I’m older than I look,” she replied.

“We both are.” His dark eyes grew intent on her face. “I don’t care about the obstacles anymore. We’ll improvise.”

She was tingling at the way he looked at her, but she was a little apprehensive. It was a modern world, in the circles Boone frequented. But Keely was living in the past. “I’ve never been...I’ve never had...I don’t know how...” She gave up, exasperated.

“I know all that,” he said gently. “We’ll go slow. I won’t rush you.”

“Yes, but it won’t matter,” she said earnestly. “Don’t you see? I was raised religiously, despite the bad role models my parents were. I don’t believe people should sleep together if they aren’t married.”

“Funny,” he returned with a smile, “that’s exactly the way I feel, too.”

She seemed to stop breathing. Her eyes were held by his. She felt funny. “It is?” she parroted.

“It is. So we’ll get to know each other a lot better, then we’ll make long-term decisions. Okay?”

She smiled. Her heart was soaring in her chest. “Okay.”

He chuckled deep in his throat. It was the first time he’d felt happy since the ordeal began.

* * *

H
E
GOT
THE
money out of his bank, in cash, and phoned Hayes, who had Keely call her father and set up a time and place for the money to change hands.

“You got it!” her father exclaimed. “Keely, you’re a wonder! This will save my life!”

“I thought it was going to save mine,” she replied suspiciously.

“Of course, yours!” he said quickly. “I meant it will save us both! Where do you want me to meet you?”

“Dad, I’m still in the hospital,” she pointed out.

“Oh! That’s right. I guess I could meet you in the hospital, then,” he said.

She repeated what he said, so that Boone and Hayes could hear him. Hayes nodded enthusiastically.

“Yes, that would be fine,” Keely said. “When do you want to come?”

“Ten minutes,” he said, and hung up.

She put the receiver back down. “He’s on his way here,” she said. Her tone was bitter. “He said it would save his life. He wasn’t ever concerned about mine.”

“I’m sorry, Keely,” Hayes told her. “But he never was concerned about the welfare of other people. If he had been, he’d never have sent Bobby that totally pure cocaine, knowing it would kill him.”

Keely sighed. “I had hoped that—” She broke off, flushed. “Well, it would have been nice if he’d cared a little about me. But if he had, he’d have dived into that mountain-lion pit without thinking about the consequences when that little boy’s life was at stake.”

“Which you did,” Boone replied.

She nodded. “I didn’t think at all. I just reacted. Dad got sued by the parents because of it, but they called me to the stand and described the wounds I sustained trying to save the little boy. The family was shamefaced and asked their lawyer to withdraw the case. The little boy wasn’t even frightened, and he didn’t have a mark on him. But the judge wasn’t so forgiving. He said that Dad should have had better fencing in place, and he named a figure for Dad to pay the family. But by then, Dad spent all his money on his pretty gold digger and had to borrow on the game park to pay off the little boy’s family, and to take care of his legal fees. He lost everything. I guess he thinks I owe him for that.”

“It seems to me that he owes you,” Boone said coldly.

“Same here,” Hayes agreed. He got to his feet. “I’d better get some backup over here. I’ll talk to the security guard, too.” He glanced at Boone. “You staying?”

“You bet I am,” Boone replied doggedly. “I’m not leaving her in here alone in case her father gets past you.”

Hayes smiled. “I don’t think he will, but better safe than sorry. Want a gun?”

Boone chuckled. “I never needed one. I still don’t.”

“Okay. Sing out if you need help. Thanks, Keely,” he told her.

She nodded.

Hayes left and she stared curiously at Boone. “Why don’t you need a gun?” she asked him.

“I had the highest score in my unit in hand-to-hand combat,” he said simply. “I could even disarm my men when they came at me with weapons.”