Where the Heart Leads (5 page)

He'd walked Beth out of class that day, and the next, and next. The fourth day, she'd actually waited for him when he was a few minutes late getting out of class. That weekend, he'd taken her out to the ranch. After dinner, while everyone was watching television, he'd drawn a pencil portrait of her.

That sketch hung over Delilah's bed now, like a guardian angel. He didn't want Delilah to ever forget who her mother was. Especially since she had just turned one when Beth was killed.

He picked up a blade of grass and twisted it between his fingers, remembering the happy times.

Within a month of meeting, Beth and he were a couple. They spent a lot of time in the backseat of his car, but held off on doing the deed because Beth had taken a church pledge to wait till she was married, an abstention which they more than made up for during their summerlong honeymoon in the C Bar M foreman's house.

Come fall, they'd packed their bags and set up housekeeping in Austin to attend University of Texas. Beth majored in vocal performance while he crammed a six-year architecture degree into five. When he graduated, Uncle Al hired him into his Dallas architecture firm.

A shaft of slanted sunlight played across the close-mowed lawn, and Rafe heard footsteps approaching. He slapped his Stetson on his head and stood up.

Better get outa here.
Didn't want to run into any of Bertie Fuller's cronies and set them to talking again—although he doubted they'd ever stopped. Damn, he wished there had been another house available for Moira.

He glanced around.

It was Travis. He must have driven up when the organ swelled on that last chorus.

Travis nodded toward the lavender blossoms in the grave vase. “Thought this was where I'd find you. You had a good woman, bro. I was almost as much in love with her as you were.”

Rafe gave his brother a searching look as they started walking toward their vehicles together.

“You've got a good woman yourself, Trav.” He'd never forget how Rocky had sat up with him the night after Beth was buried, when he finally had to acknowledge she was really dead. It must have been hard on Rocky—she'd known Beth since high school—but she'd plied him with hot tea and let him talk it out.

So what was Travis's problem?

“What's going on with you and Rocky?”

“I dunno. Maybe it's that we're hitting the four-year mark. Maybe it's that all she talks about is the ranch.”

“Rocky and her mother are the last of the blood Colbys. Part of the C Bar M is hers.”

Travis snorted out a laugh and paused beside his car. “Maybe half an acre. You've been overpaying them ever since Rocky's mother moved her kids to town after her old man met up with a rattler that was meaner than he was, but you know as well as I do that her great-granddaddy screwed up big time. Every time he gambled away a parcel of acreage, our great-granddaddy bought it up.” Travis gave his brother a knowing glance. “And while we're talking about women, what's going on with you and Moira Farrar? You were all over her while I was singing ‘Good Night, Irene' at Omar's on Friday night.”

Rafe shrugged and leaned against the side of the Mustang. “I like her.”

“Careful there, bro. You're treading on sacred Hollywood turf. Remember she was married to Colin Sanger, every woman's dream lover. Even Xandra and Fleurette are nuts about him, and that's saying a lot.”

“Yeah, I know.” He scuffed the soft ground with the toe of his boot. “I've invited Moira and her sister out to the ranch this afternoon. You gonna be there?”

“I'm off to Waco. Seward Gap has a gig at the Tenth Street Primitive Baptist Church fiftieth reunion.”

The music swelled again and Rafe looked back at the church. Carmen Atherton was really laying into the pipe organ today. Maybe she was thinking about Beth too. She and Beth had been best friends all through school. It had been a twosome at first—Beth and Carmen—then became a threesome when Rocky joined the crew. He frowned in thought. Odd—he never heard Rocky talk about Carmen anymore. Beth must have been the glue that bound the other two together.

Oh God, Beth had been the glue that held him together too.
She had a grace about her. It wasn't just that she was beautiful, but that she was kind and good and caring. Beth glowed with happiness. She was his delight.

He looked up at the clear, cloudless sky.

Was she still in existence somewhere in the universe? Did she know what a joy her daughter was? That Delilah was four now and getting taller and prettier and smarter every day? Did she know how lonely he was? Did she know he had his eye on Moira Farrar? Little Moira Farrar, who was all grown up now and sexy as hell?

He looked at Beth's flowers, and a wave of guilt rolled through him. Three years ago, if he could have, he'd have walled himself into a monastery, alone with his memories of Beth, but Delilah had needed him, his family had needed him, the ranch had needed him.

And now he needed Moira Farrar.

Travis lifted himself off the side of the truck. “One more refrain, a final resounding chord, and everyone will be pouring out of the church. Time for both of us to get out of here.”

As Moira eased down the driveway, she looked up at the string of green-eyed bats and hunchbacked witches hanging from the eaves of their front porch. “You did a great job getting the Halloween decorations up, Astrid. And it was nice of Mrs. Fuller to lend us her ladder.”

“Yeah, she's cool—and I've got to remember to take the ladder back to her when we get home this afternoon. I'll take the pink leash and collar back too.” She glanced toward the backyard as Ivanhoe leaped against the chain-link fence and voiced his protest of their departure. “Poor baby. I hate leaving him all alone while we're at the ranch.”

“He'll survive.”

Moira drove up to intersection, caught a green light for once, and turned right.

Halfway up the highway, the car in front of her slowed down as it approached a break in the evergreen thicket, then turned into BUY-1-GET-5-FREE.

Moira did a double take.

In the dark of night, when Rafe had parked in the clearing to state his case, the scene had looked like a Maurice Sendak jungle, but in the bright afternoon sunlight, it looked more like a Norman Rockwell slice of Americana. A string of lights outlined the lot, two RVs and a Porta-Potty were parked under the trees in the back of the lot, and several customers were lined up at the sales counter. Apparently Bosque Bend celebrated Halloween with a big bang.

Astrid wove her hair into a long braid and tossed it over her shoulder.

“How much farther?

“Just a couple more miles. Watch for Colby Road on the left. It may be hard to spot.”

Actually, the road was clearly marked, and after another mile, Moira turned into the entrance to the C Bar M Ranch.

Every bit of moisture in her mouth dried up.

Calm down, Moira.
This is just a courtesy visit. Yes, a courtesy visit to your boss's home. Well, also to the home of a guy who'd propositioned her the first day they met. A guy who made her blood run hot and her mouth go dry whenever she thought of him, which was way too often.

She drove past the single-story house at the gate and continued up the narrow tarmac road bordered by barbed wire on either side. Beyond the fences, black cattle built like tanks lifted their heads as the car passed, as if to check them out.

The lane angled around a stand of tall trees, then broadened into a wide concrete circular driveway in front of a flat-roofed, two-story mansion.

The outside of the house was faced with a hard-surfaced material that had the look of sunbaked adobe, while large, dark windows and long, iron-railed balconies punctuated its smooth lines and rounded corners. Four wide steps led up to the covered porch that stretched the width of the house, and several outsized urns of purple caladiums sat on either side of the giant front door.

And Rafe, Mr. Cool, was sitting out front, waiting for them.

R
afe unfolded himself from the wicker lawn chair and waited for Moira and her sister to come up the walk.

Don't rush it, cowboy. She's got her sister with her. Pretend you've come out to sit out on the patio and enjoy the cool weather. Don't let on you've been wearing out your watch looking to see how many more minutes it would be till they arrived.

A wave of heat swept through him as he watched Moira come up the flagstone walk. She and her sister were both carrying broad-brimmed hats, but while Astrid was dressed in jeans and something that looked like an old hoodie, Moira had on a rose-colored, figure-hugging western-style shirt and jeans that were tight enough to show off her pert little bottom.

Rafe smiled. No Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles this time around.

God, he wanted her.
He hadn't been this fixated on a woman since…well, since Beth died. For the past three years, he'd been in some kind of sexual limbo, taking what was offered and moving on just as casually, but Moira—he'd like to keep her around for a while.

“Really appreciate y'all comin' out this afternoon,” he said, trying to inject a light tone into his voice as he escorted his guests toward the house. “Mom just phoned that she and Delilah are runnin' a little late, so I thought we could go inside and visit a little before the tour.”

He pushed open the center-balanced revolving door, and Moira looked up at the two-story skylight in the middle of the hexagonal foyer, then turned around slowly to see the rooms and the ascending staircase radiating out from it.

He tensed, waiting for her reaction.

God, he wanted her to like his house. He wanted her to like
him
.

“This is beautiful, Rafe! I expected a ranch house like in the movies, maybe one story and spread out, or maybe a King Ranch–style Victorian, but this is so beautiful.”

Relief flooded through him.

“Actually, the original
was
a Victorian. Great-granddaddy Gilbert built it in the late 1800s, but termites took it down when I was in college. Dad hired one of my mother's brothers—Uncle Al's an architect—to build us a bug-proof house, and since I was pretty far into my degree by then, he took me under his wing, and we worked on the design together.”

He moved up a step into the family room and swept his arm around, indicating the thick Navajo-style rug in front of the tall brick fireplace, plush furniture, grandfather clock, and old Baldwin upright. “My mother did the room. She used what we could salvage from the old house, then added some new couches and chairs.”

An interior decorator friend of his had taken care of the rest of the house. She'd had taken care of him too for a while, until she realized Delilah would always come first.

Moira wandered over to examine the yard-wide arrangement of photographs on the near side of the fireplace while Astrid looked out of the floor-to-ceiling window wall. He moved as close behind Moira as he could without violating her space.

“Mom put that together. It's a collage of the three of us kids—TexAnn, Travis, and me. Mom did the one on the other side of the fireplace too. Used pictures of Schulers and McAllisters back as far as she could find them. The Schulers are musical and artistic. The McAllisters are hardheaded wheeler-dealers.”

Shit!
Why the hell did he say that? Was he warning Moira that he could be a hard-assed son of a bitch? Why? Was he considering a long-term relationship?

He touched Beth's ring, his forever ring, to remind himself of his commitment.

Moira stepped back to take in the total composition. “This is so original. How did your mother get the idea? Most people would have stuffed the pictures away in a shoebox.”

“Probably from a 4-H bulletin.”

Astrid gave him a questioning look. “4-H? Isn't that when kids raise pigs and stuff?”

“Pigs, goats, cows—all sort of animals, but it has other programs too. Art, sewing, music—that sort of thing. We were homeschooled until we reached high school, so Mom signed us up with 4-H so we could meet other kids. Of course, with us being in 4-H, she had to teach some of the cl—”

A car door slammed out front, and Astrid waved a hand at him. “If your mother drives a maroon Mercedes hatchback, she's here.”

Delilah's high-pitched voice cut through the adult murmur at the door. “Daddy—Daddy—Daddy—Daddy—Daddy! I saw a car outside! Is the pretty lady here?”

Moira moved forward as Rafe, holding Delilah on his hip, stepped up into the family room, followed by a tall, trim woman in a stylish dark print dress. Her smile was easy, her hair was auburn, and her eyes sparkled like diamonds. No need to ask who she was.

Delilah wiggled out of her father's embrace and hurled herself at Moira, who barely had time to brace against what felt like a launched cannonball.

“Pretty lady! You
did
come to see me! Just like Daddy promised!”

Moira lifted Delilah in her arms, and her heart melted. If she ever had a daughter, she'd want her to be just like Delilah.

“And my sister is here too,” she said, turning to Astrid so Delilah could meet her.

Astrid reached out to touch the white collar of Delilah's navy-and-red plaid skater dress. “I like your outfit. Very stylish.”

“I chose the 'terial and Nana made it for me. Nana's teaching me to sew. She can do anything.”

“Not quite, honey, but I try.” Mrs. McAllister held out her arms to take Delilah, whose four-year-old weight Moira wasn't used to hefting, and set her on the floor, then smiled at her son's visitors.

“I'm Enid McAllister, Rafe's mother. Welcome to Bosque Bend, Moira. We're so glad you're here. And, Astrid, are you a thespian like your sister?”

Astrid's eyes widened in alarm, and she held up her hands in protest. “No way! I'm better off in the audience.”

Mrs. McAllister laughed. “I'm with you, Astrid. We'll have to reserve seats for
Gift of the Magi
next to each other.”

Rafe wrapped an arm around his mother's shoulders. “Mom, I'm gonna give Moira and Astrid a tour of the ranch. You want to come along? I could saddle up Lady for you. Got the blankets and the pads all laid out, and the horses are brushed up and ready for action.”

“Thanks, honey, but I'm scheduled to teach some ladies at Floravista how to chain stitch in about thirty minutes. I would like to visit with Lady for a minute, though. Y'all go ahead and start walking. I'll catch up. It'll just take me a minute to change Delilah into jeans.”

Rafe escorted his guests through the house, then down the back steps to the tarmac road. The well-stocked library and large gleaming kitchen had been impressive, Moira thought, but the covered flagstone patio and pool went above and beyond. This was the kind of house Johnny Blue had grown up in.

Tires whooshed on the tarmac, and an open-topped Jeep turned the corner of the house, jerking to a stop in front of them. The door opened, and a smiling woman with corkscrew curls the color of butterscotch taffy leaped out.

She laughed, a joyous, bell-like sound, and her hand, tipped by gold-painted fingernails brushed a jiggling curl back from her face.

Her voice had a childlike sweetness. “Sorry, Rafe, I didn't realize you had company. I'm heading to H-E-B and wondered if you needed me to pick up anything for you while I'm there.”

“I think I'm okay for now.” Rafe gave her an easy grin and put his arm around her shoulder. “Y'all, this is Rocky, my favorite sister-in-law.”

Moira was entranced. Travis's wife looked as slim and fit as a Hollywood stuntwoman, and she had a camera-friendly face too—china blue eyes, rosebud lips, and a pointed chin. Any wardrobe mistress worth her salt would have considered that Mexican-style embroidered blouse, the fawn-colored pants, and those high-heeled riding boots to be the perfect costume for a heroine out of the Old West. All Rafe's visitor needed was a guitar in one hand and a six-shooter in the other.

“Rocky, meet Moira Farrar and her sister, Astrid Birdsong. Moira's signed on as our new theater guild director.”

His arm stayed around his sister-in-law as he walked her over to meet Moira and Astrid. It was a signal, Moira realized, a message that Rocky was under his protection. But why did he think Rocky needed protecting? Because Travis was flirting with the pianist?

“Moira Farrar?” The blue eyes widened. “
The
Moira Farrar? Ma and I used to watch
The Clancy Family
all the time when I was a kid.”

Moira smiled graciously, as she'd been taught to do when dealing with fans. “I'm glad you enjoyed it.” What else could she say? Rocky didn't know that
The Clancy Family
was just another day on the job to her. Gramp didn't force her to work, but she was always aware of how much the household depended on her.

The kitchen door opened, and Moira watched as Mrs. McAllister, holding Delilah by the hand, paused for the briefest of moments before putting a welcoming smile on her face and coming down the steps to greet her daughter-in-law. “How nice to see you, Rocky.”

Rocky turned around, and Rafe dropped his arm.

“Enid! Love your dress! Another exclusive from Paris?”

Mrs. McAllister laughed lightly. “Don't lay it on too thick, Rocky. You know I make all my own clothes.”

Moira looked from one woman to the other. What was that all about?

Cut it out, Moira, you're making something out of nothing. This isn't a suspense thriller with a motive behind every action.
Mrs. McAllister paused because she didn't realize Rocky had come on the scene, and Rocky's reference to her mother-in-law's dress was simply an over-the-top compliment.

Delilah wrapped her arms around her father's leg. “Can Auntie Rocky go riding with us? Can she, Daddy? Can she?”

Rafe didn't hesitate. “Of course, she can, sweetheart. Auntie Rocky's always welcome.”

He'd take advantage of any opportunity he could get to be supportive of Rocky. Travis may not be sleeping with Micaela now, but everyone in town knew it wouldn't be long. Rafe had always liked Micaela and been surprised when Travis dumped her to marry Rocky, but once Trav had done the till-death-do-we-part, that was the end of the story as far as he was concerned.

Rocky laughed, “If that's an invitation, I'm accepting.”

“Then let's hightail it down to the barn. I'm puttin' Moira on Star and Astrid on Dakota, so you have your choice of Lady, Blackie, or Bella—Mom's not goin' with us.”

Rocky's coming along was to his advantage. It meant they'd ride two by two instead of three across. He'd partner up with Moira, of course.

“Gotta tell you, though, Bella's in a nasty mood today. Up to her old tricks. Tried to nip me this mornin' when I brought her in from the pasture.” He snorted to himself, knowing his warning was in vain. As if Rocky would let anything stop her from riding her favorite horse.

His mother consulted her watch and gave him the look. “Rafe, I can't stretch this any longer than ten minutes.”

He lifted Delilah to his shoulders and clutched her legs to hold her in place. “Then let's get a-goin', folks!”

Mom led the parade, with Rocky and Astrid not far behind. He and Moira brought up the rear, which was exactly the way he wanted it.

With his hands otherwise occupied, there was no way he could even reach out to Moira, but he got a buzz on just from being near her. If they were alone, he'd have chanced backing her up against one of those cedar elms lining the road. Instead, he was walking along with his daughter on his shoulders and his tongue stuck to the top of his mouth.

Talk, you idiot. Say something, anything, so she knows your vocal chords are still working.

“Uh, how does the C Bar M compare to Southfork?”
God, that was a dumb thing to say. Apples and oranges.
The C Bar M's six thousand acres dwarfed Southfork's two hundred, but the Southfork mansion overshot the C Bar M's ranch house by almost two thousand square feet.

Moira laughed. “I don't know. The interiors of
Dallas
were all on soundstages by the time my character visited, so I never saw anything but backdrops.”

The barn came into view as they rounded the last stand of trees. What would Moira think of it? She'd liked the house, but Uncle Al had designed most of it. The barn, on the other hand, was entirely his baby, a gift of love to his father.

He lifted Delilah to the ground as he waited for Moira's reaction.

She stopped in her tracks and inhaled as if she had come up from a deep dive, then turned to him. “This is a—a barn? It looks more like a palace!”

“That's what my dad called it—a horse palace. The stalls, tack room, and hay storage are on the ground floor, the bailer and mowers in one wing, with ranch vehicles, flatbed and horse trailers in the other. And there's an office suite upstairs.
Ranch and Range
ran a feature on it, and I got some nice commissions off of it too, which helped a lot when Delilah came along.”

“You designed it?”

“Every square inch of it.”

“It's…it's…I can't find the words…”

She didn't have to find the words. The expression on her face and the wonder in her voice were enough to satisfy him.

He stopped at the barn door to breathe in the aroma of sweet hay, then walked in and looked around to see where everyone was. Mom stood by Lady's stall, feeding her a carrot she'd swiped from the tack room refrigerator, and Astrid was hanging back and watching as Rocky fought Bella to get a bridle on her.

Rocky won, of course—she always did. God, she knew horses. And cows. In fact, she could outride, outrope, and outshoot any man on the place, including him. So what the fuck was Travis's problem? Micaela burned up the piano keys, and she could sing the daylights out of any music ever written, but Rocky, who'd grown up with a hard-ass father on a hard-luck spread, was the ideal ranch wife.