Part of the Bargain and Her Texas New Year's Wish
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Linda Lael Miller
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Chapter 1
The landing gear made an unsettling ka-thump sound as it snapped back into place under the small private airplane. Libby Kincaid swallowed her misgivings and tried not to look at the stony, impassive face of the pilot. If he didn’t say anything, she wouldn’t have to say anything either, and they might get through the short flight to the Circle Bar B ranch without engaging in one of their world-class shouting matches.
It was a pity, Libby thought, that at the ages of thirty-one and thirty-three, respectively, she and Jess still could not communicate on an adult level.
Pondering this, Libby looked down at the ground below and was dizzied by its passing as they swept over the small airport at Kalispell, Montana, and banked eastward, toward the Flathead River. Trees so green that they had a blue cast carpeted the majestic mountains rimming the valley.
Womanhood being what it is, Libby couldn’t resist watching Jess Barlowe surreptitiously out of the corner of her eye. He was like a lean, powerful mountain lion waiting to pounce, even though he kept his attention strictly on the controls and the thin air traffic sharing the big Montana sky that spring morning. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of mirrored sunglasses, but Libby knew that they would be dark with the animosity that had marked their relationship for years.
She looked away again, trying to concentrate on the river, which coursed beneath them like a dusty-jade ribbon woven into the fabric of a giant tapestry. Behind those mirrored glasses, Libby knew Jess’s eyes were the exact same shade of green as that untamed waterway below.
“So,” he said suddenly, gruffly, “New York wasn’t all the two-hour TV movies make it out to be.”
Libby sighed, closed her eyes in a bid for patience and then opened them again. She wasn’t going to miss one bit of that fabulous view—not when her heart had been hungering for it for several bittersweet years.
Besides, Jess had been to New York dozens of times on corporation business. Who did he think he was fooling?
“New York was all right,” she said, in the most inflammatory tone she could manage. Except that Jonathan died, chided a tiny, ruthless voice in her mind. Except for that nasty divorce from Aaron. “Nothing to write home about,” she added aloud, realizing her blunder too late.
“So your dad noticed,” drawled Jess in an undertone that would have been savage if it hadn’t been so carefully modulated. “Every day, when the mail came, he fell on it like it was manna from heaven. He never stopped hoping—I’ll give him that.”
“Dad knows I hate to write letters,” she retorted defensively. But Jess had made his mark, all the same—Libby felt real pain, picturing her father flipping eagerly through the mail and trying to hide his disappointment when there was nothing from his only daughter.
“Funny—that’s not what Stace tells me.”
Libby bridled at this remark, but she kept her composure. Jess was trying to trap her into making some foolish statement about his older brother, no doubt, one that he could twist out of shape and hold over her head. She raised her chin and choked back the indignant diatribe aching in her throat.
The mirrored sunglasses glinted in the sun as Jess turned to look at her. His powerful shoulders were taut beneath the blue cotton fabric of his workshirt, and his jawline was formidably hard.
“Leave Cathy and Stace alone, Libby,” he warned with blunt savagery. “They’ve had a lot of problems lately, and if you do anything to make the situation worse, I’ll see that you regret it. Do I make myself clear?”
Libby would have done almost anything to escape his scrutiny just then, short of thrusting open the door of that small four-passenger Cessna and jumping out, but her choices were undeniably limited. Trembling just a little, she turned away and fixed her attention on the ground again.
Dear heaven, did Jess really think that she would interfere in Cathy’s marriage—or any other, for that matter? Cathy was her cousin—they’d been raised like sisters!
With a sigh, Libby faced the fact that there was every chance that Jess and a lot of other people would believe she had been involved with Stacey Barlowe. There had, after all, been that exchange of correspondence, and Stace had even visited her a few times, in the thick of her traumatic divorce, though in actuality he had been in the city on business.
“Libby?” prodded Jess sharply, when the silence grew too long to suit him.
“I’m not planning to vamp your brother!” she snapped. “Could we just drop this, please?”
To her relief and surprise, Jess turned his concentration on piloting the plane. His suntanned jaw worked with suppressed annoyance, but he didn’t speak again.
The timbered land below began to give way to occasional patches of prairie—cattle country. Soon they would be landing on the small airstrip serving the prosperous 150,000-acre Circle Bar B, owned by Jess’s father and overseen, for the most part, by Libby’s.
Libby had grown up on the Circle Bar B, just as Jess had, and her mother, like his, was buried there. Even though she couldn’t call the ranch home in the legal sense of the word, it was still home to her, and she had every right to go there—especially now, when she needed its beauty and peace and practical routines so desperately.
The airplane began to descend, jolting Libby out of her reflective state. Beside her, Jess guided the craft skillfully toward the paved landing strip stretched out before them.
The landing gear came down with a sharp snap, and Libby drew in her breath in preparation. The wheels of the plane screeched and grabbed as they made contact with the asphalt, and then the Cessna was rolling smoothly along the ground.
When it came to a full stop, Libby wrenched at her seat belt, anxious to put as much distance as possible between herself and Jess Barlowe. But his hand closed over her left wrist in a steel-hard grasp. “Remember, Lib—these people aren’t the sophisticated if-it-feels-good-do-it types you’re used to. No games.”
Games. Games? Hot color surged into Libby’s face and pounded there in rhythm with the furious beat of her heart. “Let go of me, you bastard!” she breathed.
If anything, Jess’s grip tightened. “I’ll be watching you,” he warned, and then he flung Libby’s wrist from his hand and turned away to push open the door on his side and leap nimbly to the ground.
Libby was still tugging impotently at the handle on her own door when her father strode over, climbed deftly onto the wing and opened it for her. She felt such a surge of love and relief at the sight of him that she cried out softly and flung herself into his arms, nearly sending both of them tumbling to the hard ground.
Ken Kincaid hadn’t changed in the years since Libby had seen him last—he was still the same handsome, rangy cowboy that she remembered so well, though his hair, while as thick as ever, was iron-gray now, and the limp he’d acquired in a long-ago rodeo accident was more pronounced.
Once they were clear of the plane, he held his daughter at arm’s length, laughed gruffly, and then pulled her close again. Over his shoulder she saw Jess drag her suitcases and portable drawing board out of the Cessna’s luggage compartment and fling them unceremoniously into the back of a mud-speckled truck.
Nothing if not perceptive, Ken Kincaid turned slightly, assessed Senator Cleave Barlowe’s second son, and grinned. There was mischief in his bright blue eyes when he faced Libby again. “Rough trip?”
Libby’s throat tightened unaccountably, and she wished she could explain how rough. She was still stung by Jess’s insulting opinion of her morality, but how could she tell her father that? “You know that it’s always rough going where Jess and I are concerned,” she said.
Her father’s brows lifted speculatively as Jess got behind the wheel of the truck and sped away without so much as a curt nod or a halfhearted so-long. “You two’d better watch out,” he mused. “If you ever stop butting heads, you might find out you like each other.”
“Now, that,” replied Libby with dispatch, “is a horrid thought if I’ve ever heard one. Tell me, Dad—how have you been?”
He draped one wiry arm over her shoulders and guided her in the direction of a late-model pickup truck. The door on the driver’s side was emblazoned with the words CIRCLE BAR B RANCH, and Yosemite Sam glared from both the mud flaps shielding the rear tires. “Never mind how I’ve been, dumplin’. How’ve you been?”
Libby felt some of the tension drain from her as her father opened the door on the passenger side of the truck and helped her inside. She longed to shed her expensive tailored linen suit for jeans and a T-shirt, and—oh, heaven—her sneakers would be a welcome change from the high heels she was wearing. “I’ll be okay,” she said in tones that were a bit too energetically cheerful.
Ken climbed behind the wheel and tossed one searching, worried look in his daughter’s direction. “Cathy’s waiting over at the house, to help you settle in and all that. I was hoping we could talk...”
Libby reached out and patted her father’s work-worn hand, resting now on the gearshift knob. “We can talk tonight. Anyway, we’ve got lots of time.”
Ken started the truck’s powerful engine, but his wise blue eyes had not strayed from his daughter’s face. “You’ll stay here awhile, then?” he asked hopefully.
Libby nodded, but she suddenly found that she had to look away. “As long as you’ll let me, Dad.”
The truck was moving now, jolting and rattling over the rough ranch roads with a pleasantly familiar vigor. “I expected you before this,” he said. “Lib...”
She turned an imploring look on him. “Later, Dad—okay? Could we please talk about the heavy stuff later?”
Ken swept off his old cowboy hat and ran a practiced arm across his forehead. “Later it is, dumplin’.” Graciously he changed the subject. “Been reading your comic strip in the funny papers, and it seems like every kid in town’s wearing one of those T-shirts you designed.”
Libby smiled; her career as a syndicated cartoonist was certainly safe conversational ground. And it had all started right here, on this ranch, when she’d sent away the coupon printed on a matchbook and begun taking art lessons by mail. After that, she’d won a scholarship to a prestigious college, graduated, and made her mark, not in portraits or commercial design, as some of her friends had, but in cartooning. Her character, Liberated Lizzie, a cave-girl with modern ideas, had created something of a sensation and was now featured not only in the Sunday newspapers but also on T-shirts, greeting cards, coffee mugs and calendars. There was a deal pending with a poster company, and Libby’s bank balance was fat with the advance payment for a projected book.
She would have to work hard to fulfill her obligations—there was the weekly cartoon strip to do, of course, and the panels for the book had to be sketched in. She hoped that between these tasks and the endless allure of the Circle Bar B, she might be able to turn her thoughts from Jonathan and the mess she’d made of her personal life.
“Career-wise, I’m doing fine,” Libby said aloud, as much to herself as to her father. “I don’t suppose I could use the sunporch for a studio?”
Ken laughed. “Cathy’s been working for a month to get it ready, and I had some of the boys put in a skylight. All you’ve got to do is set up your gear.”
Impulsively Libby leaned over and kissed her father’s beard-stubbled cheek. “I love you!”
“Good,” he retorted. “A husband you can dump—a daddy you’re pretty well stuck with.”
The word “husband” jarred Libby a little, bringing an unwelcome image of Aaron into her mind as it did, and she didn’t speak again until the house came into sight.
Originally the main ranch house, the structure set aside for the general foreman was an enormous, drafty place with plenty of Victorian scrollwork, gabled windows and porches. It overlooked a sizable spring-fed pond and boasted its own sheltering copse of evergreens and cottonwood trees.
The truck lurched a little as Ken brought it to a stop in the gravel driveway, and through the windshield Libby could see glimmering patches of the silver-blue sparkle that was the pond. She longed to hurry there now, kick off her shoes on the grassy bank and ruin her stockings wading in the cold, clear water.
But her father was getting out of the truck, and Cathy Barlowe, Libby’s cousin and cherished friend, was dashing down the driveway, her pretty face alight with greeting.
Libby laughed and stood waiting beside the pickup truck, her arms out wide.
After an energetic hug had been exchanged, Cathy drew back in Libby’s arms and lifted a graceful hand to sign the words: “I’ve missed you so much!”
“And I’ve missed you,” Libby signed back, though she spoke the words aloud, too.
Cathy’s green eyes sparkled. “You haven’t forgotten how to sign!” she enthused, bringing both hands into play now. She had been deaf since childhood, but she communicated so skillfully that Libby often forgot that they weren’t conversing verbally. “Have you been practicing?”
She had. Signing had been a game for her and Jonathan to play during the long, difficult hours she’d spent at his hospital bedside. Libby nodded and tears of love and pride gathered in her dark blue eyes as she surveyed her cousin—physically, she and Cathy bore no resemblance to each other at all.
Cathy was petite, her eyes wide, mischievous emeralds, her hair a glistening profusion of copper and chestnut and gold that reached almost to her waist. Libby was of medium height, and her silver-blond hair fell just short of her shoulders.
“I’ll be back later,” Ken said quietly, signing the words as he spoke so that Cathy could understand, too. “You two have plenty to say to each other, it looks like.”
Cathy nodded and smiled, but there was something sad trembling behind the joy in her green eyes, something that made Libby want to scurry back to the truck and beg to be driven back to the airstrip. From there she could fly to Kalispell and catch a connecting flight to Denver and then New York...
Good Lord—surely Jess hadn’t been so heartless as to share his ridiculous suspicions with Cathy!
The interior of the house was cool and airy, and Libby followed along behind Cathy, her thoughts and feelings in an incomprehensible tangle. She was glad to be home, no doubt about it. She’d yearned for the quiet sanity of this place almost from the moment of leaving it.
On the other hand, she wasn’t certain that she’d been wise to come back. Jess obviously intended to make her feel less than welcome, and although she had certainly never been intimately involved with Stacey Barlowe, Cathy’s husband, sometimes her feelings toward him weren’t all that clearly defined.
Unlike his younger brother, Stace was a warm, outgoing person, and through the shattering events of the past year and a half, he had been a tender and steadfast friend. Adrift in waters of confusion and grief, Libby had told Stacey things that she had never breathed to another living soul, and it was true that, as Jess had so bitterly pointed out, she had written to the man when she couldn’t bring herself to contact her own father.
But she wasn’t in love with Stace, Libby told herself firmly. She had always looked up to him, that was all—like an older brother. Maybe she’d become a little too dependent on him in the bargain, but that didn’t mean she cared for him in a romantic way, did it?
She sighed, and Cathy turned to look at her pensively, almost as though she had heard the sound. That was impossible, of course, but Cathy was as perceptive as anyone Libby had ever known, and she often felt sounds.
“Glad to be home?” the deaf woman inquired, gesturing gently.
Libby didn’t miss the tremor in her cousin’s hands, but she forced a weary smile to her face and nodded in answer to the question.
Suddenly Cathy’s eyes were sparkling again, and she caught Libby’s hand in her own and tugged her through an archway and into the glassed-in sunporch that overlooked the pond.
Libby drew in a swift, delighted breath. There was indeed a skylight in the roof—a big one. A drawing table had been set up in the best light the room offered, along with a lamp for night work, and there were flowering plants hanging from the exposed beams in the ceiling. The old wicker furniture that had been stored in the attic for as long as Libby could remember had been painted a dazzling white and bedecked with gay floral-print cushions. Small rugs in complementary shades of pink and green had been scattered about randomly, and there was even a shelving unit built into the wall behind the art table.
“Wow!” cried Libby, overwhelmed, her arms spread out wide in a gesture of wonder. “Cathy, you missed your calling! You should have been an interior decorator.”
Though Libby hadn’t signed the words, her cousin had read them from her lips. Cathy’s green eyes shifted quickly from Libby’s face, and she lowered her head. “Instead of what?” she motioned sadly. “Instead of Stacey’s wife?”
Libby felt as though she’d been slapped, but she recovered quickly enough to catch one hand under Cathy’s chin and force her head up. “Exactly what do you mean by that?” she demanded, and she was never certain afterward whether she had signed the words, shouted them, or simply thought them.
Cathy shrugged in a miserable attempt at nonchalance, and one tear slid down her cheek. “He went to see you in New York,” she challenged, her hands moving quickly now, almost angrily. “You wrote to him.”
“Cathy, it wasn’t what you think—”
“Wasn’t it?”
Libby was furious and wounded, and she stomped one foot in frustration. “Of course it wasn’t! Do you really think I would do a thing like that? Do you think Stacey would? He loves you!” And so does Jess, she lamented in silence, without knowing why that should matter.
Stubbornly Cathy averted her eyes again and shoved her hands into the pockets of her lightweight cotton jacket—a sure signal that as far as she was concerned, the conversation was over.
In desperation, Libby reached out and caught her cousin’s shoulders in her hands, only to be swiftly rebuffed by an eloquent shrug. She watched, stricken to silence, as Cathy turned and hurried out of the sunporch-turned-studio and into the kitchen beyond. Just a moment later the back door slammed with a finality that made Libby ache through and through.
She ducked her head and bit her lower lip to keep the tears back. That, too, was something she had learned during Jonathan’s final confinement in a children’s hospital.
Just then, Jess Barlowe filled the studio doorway. Libby was aware of him in all her strained senses.
He set down her suitcases and drawing board with an unsympathetic thump. “I see you’re spreading joy and good cheer as usual,” he drawled in acid tones. “What, pray tell, was that all about?”
Libby was infuriated, and she glared at him, her hands resting on her trim rounded hips. “As if you didn’t know, you heartless bastard! How could you be so mean...so thoughtless...”
The fiery green eyes raked Libby’s travel-rumpled form with scorn. Ignoring her aborted question, he offered one of his own. “Did you think your affair with my brother was a secret, princess?”
Libby was fairly choking on her rage and her pain. “What affair, dammit?” she shouted. “We didn’t have an affair!”
“That isn’t what Stacey says,” replied Jess with impervious savagery.
Libby felt the high color that had been pounding in her face seep away. “What?”
“Stace is wildly in love with you, to hear him tell it. You need him and he needs you, and to hell with minor stumbling blocks like his wife!”
Libby’s knees weakened and she groped blindly for the stool at her art table and then sank onto it. “My God...”
Jess’s jawline was tight with brutal annoyance. “Spare me the theatrics, princess—I know why you came back here. Dammit, don’t you have a soul?”
Libby’s throat worked painfully, but her mind simply refused to form words for her to utter.
Jess crossed the room like a mountain panther, terrifying in his grace and prowess, and caught both her wrists in a furious, inescapable grasp. With his other hand he captured Libby’s chin.
“Listen to me, you predatory little witch, and listen well,” he hissed, his jade eyes hard, his flesh pale beneath his deep rancher’s tan. “Cathy is good and decent and she loves my brother, though I can’t for the life of me think why she condescends to do so. And I’ll be damned if I’ll stand by and watch you and Stacey turn her inside out! Do you understand me?”
Tears of helpless fury and outraged honor burned like fire in Libby’s eyes, but she could neither speak nor move. She could only stare into the frightening face looming only inches from her own. It was a devil’s face.
When Jess’s tightening grasp on her chin made it clear that he would have an answer of some sort, no matter what, Libby managed a small, frantic nod.
Apparently satisfied, Jess released her with such suddenness that she nearly lost her balance and slipped off the stool.
Then he whirled away from her, his broad back taut, one powerful hand running through his obsidian hair in a typical gesture of frustration. “Damn you for ever coming back here,” he said in a voice no less vicious for its softness.
“No problem,” Libby said with great effort. “I’ll leave.”
Jess turned toward her again, this time with an ominous leisure, and his eyes scalded Libby’s face, the hollow of her throat, the firm roundness of her high breasts. “It’s too late,” he said.
Still dazed, Libby sank back against the edge of the drawing table, sighed and covered her eyes with one hand. “Okay,” she began with hard-won, shaky reason, “why is that?”
Jess had stalked to the windows; his back was a barrier between them again, and he was looking out at the pond. Libby longed to sprout claws and tear him to quivering shreds.
“Stacey has the bit in his teeth,” he said at length, his voice low, speculative. “Wherever you went, he’d follow.”
Since Libby didn’t believe that Stacey had declared himself to be in love with her, she didn’t believe that there was any danger of his following her away from the Circle Bar B, either. “You’re crazy,” she said.
Jess faced her quickly, some scathing retort brewing in his eyes, but whatever he had meant to say was lost as Ken strode into the room and demanded, “What the hell’s going on in here? I just found Cathy running up the road in tears!”
“Ask your daughter!” Jess bit out. “Thanks to her, Cathy has just gotten started shedding tears!”
Libby could bear no more; she was like a wild creature goaded to madness, and she flung herself bodily at Jess Barlowe, just as she had in her childhood, fists flying. She would have attacked him gladly if her father hadn’t caught hold of her around the waist and forcibly restrained her.
Jess raked her with one last contemptuous look and moved calmly in the direction of the door. “You ought to tame that little spitfire, Ken,” he commented in passing. “One of these days she’s going to hurt somebody.”
Libby trembled in her father’s hold, stung by his double meaning, and gave one senseless shriek of fury. This brought a mocking chuckle from a disappearing Jess and caused Ken to turn her firmly to face him.
“Good Lord, Libby, what’s the matter with you?”
Libby drew a deep, steadying breath and tried to quiet the raging ten-year-old within her, the child that Jess had always been able to infuriate. “I hate Jess Barlowe,” she said flatly. “I hate him.”
“Why?” Ken broke in, and he didn’t look angry anymore. Just honestly puzzled.
“If you knew what he’s been saying about me—”
“If it’s the same as what Stacey’s been mouthing off about, I reckon I do.”
Libby stepped back, stunned. “What?”
Ken Kincaid sighed, and suddenly all his fifty-two years showed clearly in his face. “Stacey and Cathy have been having trouble the last year or so. Now he’s telling everybody who’ll listen that it’s over between him and Cathy and he wants you.”
“I don’t believe it! I—”
“I wanted to warn you, Lib, but you’d been through so much, between losing the boy and then falling out with your husband after that. I thought you needed to be home, but I knew you wouldn’t come near the place if you had any idea what was going on.”
Libby’s chin trembled, and she searched her father’s honest, weathered face anxiously. “I... I haven’t been fooling around with C-Cathy’s husband, Dad.”
He smiled gently. “I know that, Lib—knew it all along. Just never mind Jess and all the rest of them—if you don’t run away, this thing’ll blow over.”
Libby swallowed, thinking of Cathy and the pain she had to be feeling. The betrayal. “I can’t stay here if Cathy is going to be hurt.”
Ken touched her cheek with a work-worn finger. “Cathy doesn’t really believe the rumors, Libby—think about it. Why would she work so hard to fix a studio up for you if she did? Why would she be waiting here to see you again?”
“But she was crying just now, Dad! And she as much as accused me of carrying on with her husband!”
“She’s been hurt by what’s been said, and Stacey’s been acting like a spoiled kid. Honey, Cathy’s just testing the waters, trying to find out where you stand. You can’t leave her now, because except for Stace, there’s nobody she needs more.”
Despite the fact that all her instincts warned her to put the Circle Bar B behind her as soon as humanly possible, Libby saw the sense in her father’s words. As incredible as it seemed, Cathy would need her—if for nothing else than to lay those wretched rumors to rest once and for all.
“These things Stacey’s been saying—surely he didn’t unload them on Cathy?”
Ken sighed. “I don’t think he’d be that low, Libby. But you know how it is with Cathy, how she always knows the score.”
Libby shook her head distractedly. “Somebody told her, Dad—and I think I know who it was.”
There was disbelief in Ken’s discerning blue eyes, and in his voice, too. “Jess? Now, wait a minute...”
Jess.
Libby couldn’t remember a time when she had gotten along well with him, but she’d been sure that he cared deeply for Cathy. Hadn’t he been the one to insist that Stace and Libby learn signing, as he had, so that everyone could talk to the frightened, confused little girl who couldn’t hear? Hadn’t he gifted Cathy with cherished bullfrogs and clumsily made valentines and even taken her to the high-school prom?
How could Jess, of all people, be the one to hurt Cathy, when he knew as well as anyone how badly she’d been hurt by her disability and the rejection of her own parents? How?
Libby had no answer for any of these questions. She knew only that she had separate scores to settle with both the Barlowe brothers.
And settle them she would.
