The Rancher's Bride

Autore

Stella Bagwell

Letto da

16,1K

Capitoli

Autore

Stella Bagwell

Letto da

16,1K

Capitoli

Harlequin

Chapter One

Rose Murdock reined the sorrel alongside the fence and stared in shocked dismay. Each of the six strands of barbed wire had been cut, then carefully twisted back together.

Quickly, she stepped down from the saddle and examined the ground on both sides of the fence. The soil was crusty and dry from a drastic lack of rain. Even so, Rose managed to pick up the faint marks of hoof tracks. Too many to count!

Leading the sorrel, called Pie, behind her, she followed the tracks down a long slope of land until she reached the river. The hoof prints stopped at the watering hole, then turned and headed back the way she’d come from the cut wire.

Someone had cut the fence to water their cattle on Bar M land! Who would have done such a thing, then fixed the fence neatly back in place? The cattle were obviously not on her land now. She’d ridden out this whole pasture today and not seen one stray.

Sighing, Rose pushed the gray cowboy hat off her head. Its stampede string caught at the front of her neck, preventing the hat from falling further than the middle of her back.

Sweat glistened on the soft features of her face. She mopped it away with the back of her denim sleeve, then carefully scanned the horizon to the east.

Across the barbed wire fence lay Harlan Hamilton’s ranch, the Flying H. From what she could read of the tracks, the cattle had come from that direction. But she couldn’t imagine the man doing such a thing without notifying her or her sisters first. Open range in New Mexico had come to an end a long time ago. No one with any courtesy or respect would drive their cattle onto another rancher’s land without asking permission first.

But then, she didn’t really know Harlan Hamilton. At least, not personally. She’d seen him maybe three separate times, the last being almost a year ago when he’d stopped by the ranch to visit her late father, Tomas.

The two of them had been friends and Tomas had spoken highly of Harlan. Yet Rose had never done more than say a polite hello to the man. Not because she had anything against the rancher next door. Saying hello was as far as she went with any man.

Well, it looked as though more than a simple greeting was going to have to be said to him now, she decided. And unfortunately it looked as though she’d been picked for the job.

Rose mounted Pie and turned him in a northerly direction. For three miles or more she rode along the fence line until she reached two rock pillars flanking a metal gate. At the top of one pillar, the words Flying H Ranch were etched in black iron.

The gate didn’t appear to be locked so she opened it, led her horse through, then carefully closed it behind her. Back on Pie, Rose rode steadily down the dirt road that cut through the desert hills east of Hondo. Knee-high sage and piñon pine grew on either side of her. Now and then a choya stood in bloom, though she didn’t see how the plants were managing to survive, much less bloom in this drought that had lasted more than two months now.

As the horse trotted on, Rose grew more nervous. She’d already been sweating from the afternoon heat, but in the past few minutes, her hands had become slick with perspiration and her mouth was as dry as the fine dust stirred by the horse’s hooves.

She didn’t relish exchanging words with Harlan Hamilton. She wasn’t good around men. Not like her sister Justine, who’d just married the local sheriff. Nor was she like her younger sister, Chloe, who wasn’t afraid to look a man in the eye and speak her mind.

But Justine wasn’t here to do her talking for her and Chloe was back at the ranch with hardly enough time in the day to work the horses and take care of the twins.

No, she couldn’t ask either of her sisters to do this for her, Rose thought with grim determination. Since her father had died and money had grown tight, the cattle had become her responsibility. It was her job to confront trespassers, whomever they might be.

More than two more miles passed before Rose spotted the house in the distance. Like her own home, it was structured in stucco and sat wedged between a row of ragged poplars and a stand of piñon pine..

As Rose rode closer, she could see the place was neither large nor elaborate. The house needed painting and, other than the scrubby trees casting a few spots of flimsy shade, there were no flowers or grass or fence to declare a dividing line between yard and pasture.

Pie didn’t have to be tethered to stay put. Rose left him a few yards away from the house and walked slowly toward the porch. Through the screen door she could hear the sound of a television playing.

She was climbing the steps when a girl of twelve or thirteen opened the door and stepped onto the concrete porch. Her straight blond hair was pulled back into a sloppy ponytail. Cutoff blue jeans covered part of her long, coltish legs; the rest of her thin adolescent figure was hidden beneath an oversize T-shirt. She looked at Rose as if visitors were an odd commodity on the Flying H.

“Hello,” Rose said. “Is Mr. Hamilton home?”

The girl gave a single nod of her head. “Daddy’s down at the barn.”

“Would it be all right if I walked down there to see him?”

The girl shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Rose turned to go, then a thought struck her and she looked back at the sullen teenager. “If your mother is in the house, she might be able to help me.”

“I don’t have a mother,” she said curtly, then went back into the house before Rose could make any sort of reply.

What a sad little girl, Rose thought. She hadn’t known that Harlan Hamilton had a child or that he was single. How long had he been without a wife and his daughter without a mother? she wondered.

As Rose approached the barn, she spotted the owner of the Flying H trying to coax a black yearling to follow a lead rope. The young horse was balking. Each time the man tugged on the rope, the animal stiffened its front legs and reared its head back.

Still unnoticed, Rose walked up to the wooden corral and stood quietly watching. Her neighbor was a big man. At least two inches past six feet, and she figured he weighed well over two hundred pounds. Faded jeans clung to his long strong legs and a gray chambray work shirt was stretched taut across his broad shoulders. He had a lean waist and large, menacing arms. Dark, almost black hair waved from beneath the straw cowboy hat on his head.

Normally Rose didn’t notice men in the physical sense. She had long ago lost her appetite for sex or romance, and what a man did or didn’t look like hardly mattered to her. But something about this man was urging her to take a closer look than usual.

The sight of a woman, a beautiful one at that, standing outside Harlan’s horsepen was more than a shock to his senses. Women didn’t visit the Flying H. As far as that went, hardly anyone ever came to see him or his daughter, Emily.

He dropped the yearling’s lead rope and slowly walked over to the fence where the woman stood. “Hello,” he said.

She extended her hand through the fence to him. “Hello, Mr. Hamilton. I’m Rose Murdock, your neighbor on the Bar M.”

Yes, Harlan remembered as his eyes skimmed over the long, chestnut braid lying against her right breast, her fair, faintly freckled skin and clear gray eyes. He’d been visiting Tomas one day and while they’d been looking over some of his racehorse stock, she’d approached the two of them to give her father a telephone message.

She’d barely spoken to Harlan that day, but he hadn’t felt slighted by her lukewarm greeting. He’d figured she’d taken him for a wrangler in need of work rather than a friend of her father’s. At the time, all three of the Murdock sisters had been single. But he’d read a few weeks ago where one of them had married Sheriff Pardee. An acquaintance of his had once made a joking remark that Harlan might enjoy a redhead cooking his meals and warming his bed. Harlan had ignored the suggestion. He didn’t want or need his bed warmed by a redheaded Murdock or any woman for that matter. One wife had been enough for him.

“So Miss Murdock, is this a social call or can I help you with something?”

The words “social call” brought a heated stain to Rose’s cheeks. “I don’t call on men socially. I’m here to talk to you about something I observed on the ranch awhile ago.”

Realizing he was still holding onto her hand, Harlan dropped it and motioned toward a piñon standing a few feet away. “Let’s get out of this sun,” he suggested, then stepped out of the corral and latched the gate behind him.

Her heart thudding with each step she took, Rose followed him to the flimsy shade. “I’m sorry to interrupt your work like this, Mr. Hamilton, but I—”

“There’s no need for you to call me Mr. Hamilton. My name is Harlan.”

Yes, she’d known his name was Harlan, but calling him by his first name was getting too personal for Rose’s taste. Still, she didn’t want to offend this man. He was her neighbor and he could make life hell for her and her sisters if he decided to be difficult.

Clearing her throat, she lifted her eyes to his face. Close up, she was immediately struck by the toughness of his features, his rough, leathery skin and hooded brown eyes. A shadow of unshaven beard darkened his chin and jaws, while sweat trickled from beneath his hatband and tracked down his temples.

“Well, Harlan,” she finally managed to say, “what I’m here about is the fence running between our properties. It’s been cut, and cattle have been herded from your pasture onto my pasture. Do you know anything about this?”

He remained silent for a long time and Rose eventually felt herself begin to wilt beneath his gaze. She could feel his eyes on her face, her lips, her bosom. Rose had never considered herself attractive to men and to have one look at her as blatantly as this was something she wasn’t quite ready to deal with.

“I suppose I should have said something to you or your family before I cut the fence. But I didn’t have any idea you’d be riding horseback that far away from your ranch.”

Rose stared at him with wide eyes. “I have to ride fence just like you do, Mr. Hamilton. And for you to take it for granted that a certain part of our boundary fence would be ignored is, well—it’s insulting.”

“I told you to call me Harlan,” he said with a sudden flare of his nostrils. “And as for the fence, I might remind you that your father and I were equal partners building it.”

Rose hadn’t any idea the man had contributed toward the fence. She’d thought the Bar M had shouldered all the labor and expense. Embarrassed by her ignorance, Rose glanced away from him. “I wasn’t aware of that. But I was concerned when I found the cut wires. There wasn’t any way of my knowing you’d done it.”

He grimaced. “Believe me, Miss Murdock, I didn’t get any enjoyment in tearing down the fence. But I hardly had any choice in the matter. I’m in bad need of water over here, and before your father died, he gave me permission to use the river on your land.”

Surprised by his admission, she said, “Surely the river runs through your property, too.”

“Only parts of it. The pasture where I cut the wire has nothing but a pond and it dried up two weeks ago.”

“I know it’s been dry but—”

“Dry! It’s been hell for the past two months! There’s plenty of people around here who are hurting for water. We just aren’t as blessed as you Murdocks.”

Blessed! He didn’t know the half of it, Rose thought a little angrily. Their father had died and left them a pile of debts, then they’d discovered that the twin babies abandoned on their front porch were really their half brother and sister. Their father apparently had had an affair with a woman in Las Cruces while their invalid mother had lain dying. And to make matters worse, he’d been sending his mistress an exorbitant amount of money every month. Tomas Murdock’s lack of morals and common sense had left Rose, her sisters and aunt in dire straits. No, this man didn’t know the half of it!

“We aren’t exactly overflowing with water ourselves, Mr.—Harlan. The river is very low.”

“At least there’s water in it.”

“Yes. It’s still running,” she had to agree.

“Then I think the least you and your sisters can do is share.”

Her brows shot upward. “Share?”

He frowned. “I don’t know why you find that so incredible. I mean, it’s been a year and I haven’t seen a cent from you people. I realize Tomas passed on, but that doesn’t mean his debts can be ignored.”

“Debts?”

In the back of her mind, Rose knew she was beginning to sound like a parrot, but she couldn’t help it. This man was tossing remarks at her that she couldn’t begin to understand.

Harlan recognized genuine confusion when he saw it. This woman with her smooth, creamy skin and shiny chestnut hair knew nothing of what he was talking about.

“I’m…” he paused as he glanced over his shoulder at the yearling trotting around the dusty corral. “If you’ll pardon me a minute, I’ll let the yearling loose and we’ll go up to the house and talk.”

Rose had already been in this man’s company far longer than she’d wanted or expected to be.

“Can’t you say whatever it is you have to say now? I came over here on horseback, and it’s going to take me awhile to get back home as it is.”

Surprise lifted his dark brows. “You rode over here?”

“Why, yes,” she said. “Is something wrong? Have your horses been quarantined for sleeping sickness or something?”

He shook his head. “No. There’s no problem like that,” he assured her but didn’t go on to explain that she looked far too fragile and feminine to have ridden several miles in this searing heat. “And you don’t have to worry about riding back home,” he told her. “I can haul you and your horse to the Bar M.”

She unconsciously straightened her shoulders. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Well, we’ll see,” he said, then went to tend to the yearling.

Once he was finished, the two of them walked the short distance to the house. At the back, they crossed a groundlevel porch, then entered a door which took them directly into a small kitchen.

Dirty dishes were piled in the sink and the remnants of where a meal had been cooked still littered the stove, but the oval Formica table standing in the middle of the room had been cleared and wiped.

Harlan motioned for Rose to take a seat. “We have iced tea or soft drinks if you’d like,” he offered.

As Rose pulled out a chair, she immediately started to decline the drink, then suddenly thought better of it. She’d been out in the heat for several hours and had only stopped to drink from her thermos a couple of times. Keeling over with heatstroke was the last thing she wanted to do in front of this man.

“Iced tea would be nice,” she told him.

He fixed two glasses of the drink, gave one to Rose, then placed the other one at the end of the table to her left.

“I’ll be right back,” he said.

Feeling more than awkward, she watched him leave the room. The television was still playing somewhere in another part of the house. Rose supposed Harlan’s daughter was watching it and as her gaze wandered around the untidy kitchen, she couldn’t help but think the girl was like the yearling he’d been working with earlier. She probably balked at doing anything except what she wanted.

Rose had taken several sips of the cold, sweetened tea when Harlan returned with a folded white paper in his hand.

After taking a seat, he handed her the document. “Before we talk anymore about the water, I think you need to see this.”

Rose’s heart was suddenly pattering out of control, but whether it was reacting to Harlan’s closeness or the dread of what she was about to read, she wasn’t sure.

Praying her hands would remain steady, she unfolded the legal-size document and quickly scanned the typewritten paragraphs. By the time she reached the end of the page every last drop of blood had drained from her face. A sick feeling roiled in her stomach.

“This is—unbelievable!” she said in a voice hardly above a whisper.

“Believe me, Miss Murdock, it’s legal and binding.”

Rose lifted her eyes to his. “I’m not doubting its authenticity,” she quickly assured him. “I’m talking about my father—”

Biting down on her lip, she looked away from him. How could Tomas have done such a thing to his family, she wondered sickly. First that woman—his mistress, whom they still hadn’t been able to track down! For all they knew she might turn up any day and demand more money, or even worse, her babies back. Now this!

Forcing her gaze back to him, she said, “I must tell you Mr.—Harlan, my sisters and I knew nothing of this. We’re, well, actually we’re finding that our father kept a good many things from us while he was alive. But this is—I can’t imagine what he was thinking!”

Harlan could see she was clearly wounded by the knowledge that her father had borrowed money from him and used the Bar M as collateral. Hell, if his old man had done such a thing to him, he’d be more than wounded, Harlan thought. He’d be wanting to draw blood.

“Did he tell you why he wanted the money?” Rose asked. “Why did he come to you rather than go to the bank?”

The pain in her gray eyes bothered Harlan. He looked away from her as his forefinger unconsciously slid up and down the side of the cold, sweaty glass.

“He didn’t say exactly what he wanted the money for and I didn’t ask. Tomas was my friend. When I first moved onto this place, he helped me while others didn’t bother to offer. Your father didn’t have to tell me why he needed the money. I was just glad to be able to help him out. As to why he came to me rather than the bank, well—” Harlan shrugged and forced himself to look at Tomas’s daughter. “I got the impression he didn’t want to have to do any explaining and that maybe he had already borrowed to the hilt.”

It didn’t surprise Rose that this man was so intuitive. There was something about his strong presence that told her he’d done, seen and lived a lot in his thirty-some years. He was no man’s fool.

Rose’s fingers tightened on the promissory note in her hands. “Daddy was—we used his life insurance to pay off his debts. At least, the ones we were aware of. Are you— calling us in on this?”

Harlan glanced at her sharply. She seemed to expect the very worst from him. Was she always so negative? Or was she only reacting that way to him?

“Why, no. I’m not calling you in on the loan.”

She felt sick with relief. “That’s hard to believe.”

Her eyes were full of moisture. She blinked them several times as she looked at the paper in her hands. Harlan suddenly felt like a bastard, although he didn’t know why. When he’d loaned Tomas Murdock money, he’d done it to help the older man, not jeopardize his ranch or his family.

“I’m not a loan shark.”

With slow, jerky movements, Rose refolded the paper and lay it on the table a few inches from Harlan Hamilton’s tough, tanned fingers. “That’s obvious. The payment has been overdue for some time now and you haven’t notified or billed us. Why?”

Harlan wasn’t really sure why. It wasn’t as if he was set for money. Since the drought had hit, he could use the thousands he’d lent Tomas. Even in the cooler season of the year, the Flying H needed water wells drilled. But he’d been loathe to collect the debt.

“I knew Tomas had died. And I figured you and your sisters had plenty on your minds as it was.”

Rose never had had a high opinion of men, and over the past few months since she’d learned of her daddy’s infidelities, she’d lost even more respect for the male gender. To think that this man had considered her and her family’s grief before himself was hard for Rose to digest.

“I must tell you…at the present, there’s no way we could find the money to pay you back. Even if we sold the last head of cattle we had, we couldn’t come up with what our father borrowed from you.”

She was telling the truth. Harlan could see that plainly. He could also see that Rose Murdock was not a frivolous woman. She was plainspoken and no-nonsense. What surprised him about her admission was that the Bar M could be that drained of funds.

Harlan had lived here for seven years. His neighbors to the west owned the largest ranch in the county, perhaps one of the largest in the whole state of New Mexico. They raised good cattle and even better horses. They had plenty of rich grazing land along the Hondo river and several skilled cowboys to take care of it all. But what she’d just said about repaying the loan and the fact that she’d been line riding herself told Harlan things had changed drastically on the Bar M.

The whole idea was hard for Harlan to absorb, but not nearly as hard, he figured, as it was for Rose Murdock. “I’m not worried about you paying me back right now.”

Nerves clenched her stomach like a vice. “You should be.”

“I need water more than I need money.”

He took off his battered straw hat and ran a hand through his hair. It was the color of sable and just as shiny. Worn a bit longer than the current fashion, the dark strands fell haphazardly across his forehead and curled around his ears and neck. The front of his shirt was soiled and a large patch of sweat had soaked through the gray material in the middle of his chest. Rose thought he looked a bit like she’d imagined the cowhands did who worked this land when it was still a wild, dangerous territory. Rough, tough and just a little reckless.

“I can’t understand you,” she said. “You have the power right there—” she pointed at the piece of paper “—to take the Bar M. It could legally be yours now if you wanted to push the issue.”

He frowned at her. “I don’t want to take your home away from you.”

Suddenly it was all too much for Rose. Pressing the heel of her hand against her forehead, she closed her eyes and let out a long, weary sigh.

“I came over here,” she said, “to ask you about a simple cut in the fence. Instead, I learn that the Bar M owes you several thousand dollars!” Opening her eyes, she turned her gaze to his face. “You could have at least warned us about this!”

She sounded both accusing and defeated. Harlan wanted to comfort her somehow but realized there wasn’t much he could do. He couldn’t tell her to simply forget the loan, that he would dissolve her father’s debt. The money had been a big part of Harlan’s savings. He’d worked, scrimped and sacrificed for years to obtain that much money. He couldn’t afford to give it away, no matter how bad he felt for this woman.

Draining half his tea, he ran his hand through his hair again, then got to his feet and moved to the other side of the room. He’d never had a woman in his kitchen before. His wife had died before he and Emily had moved to New Mexico. The sight of Rose Murdock sitting at the table with her hat hanging against her back, her light red hair curling wildly about her face and her small breasts jutting against her denim shirt was more than a little distracting for him.

“I’m sure this was the last thing you expected or wanted to hear,” he said, moving over to the sink filled with dirty dishes. “And I wish like hell your father had never borrowed the money in the first place.”

“But he did,” Rose said quietly. She looked over at him as he turned on the tap and squirted soap over the mound of plates and glasses. “How soon will you need a payment?”

“It isn’t necessary to discuss the money part of it now. I’d rather talk about water.”

This man literally had the Bar M in his hands if he wanted it, yet he chose not to move in for the kill. Rose couldn’t believe he was being so bighearted. What was he doing, waiting like a hawk for his prey to weaken?

“How can we help you?”

His back turned to Rose, he said, “You can open up part of your land to me.”