Cattleman's Pride Read online

  Libby and Curt didn't add their two cents' worth, but they exchanged quiet looks.

  The campaign was winding down for the primary, but all the polls gave Calhoun a huge lead over Merrill . Printed materials were ordered, along with buttons, pencils, bumper stickers and key chains. There was enough promotional matter to blanket the town and in the days that followed, Calhoun's supporters did exactly that in Jacobs County and the surrounding area in the state senatorial district that

  Merrill represented.

  Julie Merrill was acting as her father's campaign manager and she was coordinating efforts for promotion with a group of teenagers she'd hired. Some of them were delinquents and there was a rash of vandalisms pertaining to the destruction of Calhoun's campaign posters.

  Cash Grier, predictably, went after the culprits and rounded them up. He got one to talk and the newspapers revealed that Miss Merrill had paid the young man to destroy Calhoun's campaign literature. Julie denied it. But the vandalism stopped.

  Meanwhile, acting mayor Ben Brady was mounting a fervent defense for Senator Merrill on the drunk-driving charges and trying to make things hot for the two officers. He ordered them suspended and tried to get the city council to back him up.

  Cash got wind of it and phoned Simon Hart, the state's attorney general. Simon phoned the city attorney and they had a long talk. Soon afterward, the officers were notified that they could stay on the job until the hearing the following month.

  Meanwhile, the state crime lab revealed the results of its report to Blake Kemp. He walked up to Libby's desk while she was on the phone and waited impatiently for her to hang up.

  “They can't find any evidence of foul play, Libby,” he said at once.

  “And if there was any, they would?” she asked quickly.

  He nodded. “I'm almost certain of it. The crime lab verified our medical examiner's diagnosis of myocardial infarction. So Janet's off the hook for that one, at least.”

  Libby sat back with a long sigh and closed her eyes.

  “Thank God. I couldn't have lived with it if she'd poisoned Daddy and we never knew.”

  He nodded. “On the other hand, they hit pay dirt with Violet's father,” he added.

  She sat up straight. “Poison?”

  “Yes,” he said heavily. “I'm not going to phone her. I'm going over to Duke Wright's place to tell her in person.

  Then I'll take her home to talk to her mother. She'll need someone with her.”

  Yes, she would, and Libby was secretly relieved that Kemp was going to be the person. Violet would need a shoulder to cry on.

  “I'll phone Curt and tell him,” she said.

  “Libby, give me half an hour first,” he asked quietly. “I don't want him to tell Violet.”

  She wondered why, but she wasn't going to pry. “Okay.”

  He managed a brief smile. “Thanks.”

  “What about Janet?” she wondered miserably. “They still haven't found her.”

  “They will. Now all we need is a witness who can place her with Mr. Hardy the night of his death, and we can have her arrested and charged with murder,” he replied.

  “Chance would be a fine thing, Mr. Kemp,” she said heavily.

  “Don't give up hope,” he instructed. “She's not going to get away with your inheritance. I promise.”

  She managed a smile. “Thanks.”

  But she wasn't really convinced. She went home that afternoon feeling lost and alone. She'd told Curt the good news after Violet had gone home with Kemp. Curt had been as relieved as she had, but there was still the problem of probate. Everything was in Janet's name, as their father had instructed. Janet had the insurance money. Nobody could do anything with the estate until the will was probated and Janet had to sign the papers for that. It was a financial nightmare.

  There was a message on the answering machine when Libby got home. She pushed the Play button and her heart sank right to her ankles.

  “This is the loan officer at Jacobsville Savings and Loan,” came the pleasant voice. “We just wanted to remind you that your loan payment was due three days ago. Please call us if there's a problem.” The caller gave her name and position and her telephone number. The line went dead.

  Libby sat down beside the phone and just stared at it. Curt had told her already that they weren't going to be able to make the payment. Jordan had assured her that he wasn't going to loan her the money to pay it. There was nobody else they would feel comfortable asking. She put her face in her hands and let the tears fall. The financial establishment would repossess the ranch. It wouldn't matter where Janet was or what state the probate action was in. They I were going to lose their home.

  She went out to the barn and ran the curry comb over Bailey, her father's horse. He was the last horse they had.

  The barn leaked. It was starting to rain and Libby felt raindrops falling on her shoulder through a rip in the tin roof from a small tornado that had torn through a month earlier. The straw on the floor of the barn needed changing, but the hay crop had drowned in the flooding. They'd have to buy some. Libby looked down at her worn jeans, at the small hand resting on them. The tiger eye ring her father had given her looked ominous in the darkened barn. She sighed and turned back to the horse.

  “Bailey, I don't know what we're going to do,” she told the old horse, who neighed as if he were answering her.

  The sound of a vehicle pulling up in the yard diverted her. She looked down the long aisle of the barn to see Jordan's pickup truck sitting at the entrance. Her heart skipped as he got out and came striding through the dirty straw, his cotton shirt speckled with raindrops that had escaped the wide brim of his white straw hat.

  “What do you want?” she asked, trying to ignore him to finish her grooming job on the horse.

  “My two new thoroughbreds are missing.”

  She turned, the curry comb suspended in her small hand. “And you think we took them?” she asked incredulously. “You honestly think we'd steal from you, even if we were starving?”

  He averted his face, as if the question had wounded him.

  “Please leave,” she said through her teeth.

  He rammed his hands into his pockets and moved a step closer, looking past her to Bailey. “That horse is useless for ranch work. He's all of twenty.”

  “He's my horse,” she replied. “I'm not getting rid of him, whatever happens.”

  She felt his lean, powerful body at her back. “Libby,” he began. “About that bank loan”

  “Curt and I are managing just fine, thanks,” she said without turning.

  His big, strong hands came down heavily on her shoulders, making her jump. “The bank president is a good friend of the Merrill’s.”

  She pulled away from him and looked up, her unspoken fears in her green eyes. “They can't do anything to us without

  Janet,” she told him. “She has legal power of attorney.”

  “Damn it, I know that!” he muttered. “But it's not going to stop the bank from foreclosing, don't you see? You can't make the loan payment!”

  “What business is that of yours?” she asked bitterly.

  He drew in a slow breath. “I can talk to the president of the Jacobsville Merchant Bank for you,” he said, He might be willing to work out something for the land. You and Curt can't work it, anyway, and you don't have the capital to invest in it. The best you could do is sell off your remaining cattle and give it up.”

  She couldn't even manage words. She had no options at all and he had to know it. She could almost hate him.

  “We can't sell anything,” she said harshly. “I told you, Janet has power of attorney. And she was named in Daddy's will as the sole holder of the property. We can't even sell a stick of furniture. We're going to have to watch the bank foreclose, Jordan, because Janet has our hands tied. We're going to lose everything Daddy worked for, all his life”

  Her lower lip trembled. She couldn't even finish the sentence.

  Jordan stepped f
orward and wrapped her up tight in his arms, holding her while she cried. “Damn, what a mess!”

  She beat a small fist against his massive chest. “Why?' she moaned. “Why?”

  His arms tightened. “I don't know, baby,” he whispered at her ear, his voice deep and soothing. “I wish I did.”

  She nuzzled closer, drowning in the pleasure of being close to him. It had been so long since he'd held her.

  His chest rose and fell heavily. “Kemp's detective hasn't tracked her down yet?”

  “Not yet. But she didn't kill Daddy. The autopsy showed that he died of a heart attack.”

  “That's something, I guess,” he murmured.

  “But Violet's daddy was poisoned,” she added quietly, her eyes open as they stared past Jordan's broad chest

  to- ward his truck parked at the front of the barn. “So they'll still get her for murder, if they can ever find her.”

  “Poor Violet,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  His hand smoothed her hair. It tangled in the wavy soft strands. “You smell of roses, Libby,” he murmured deeply, and the pressure of his arms changed in some subtle way. She could feel the sudden tautness of his lean body against her, the increasing warmth of his embrace. But he'd had taken Julie's side against her and she wasn't comfortable being in his arms anymore.

  She tried to pull away, but he wouldn't let her.

  “Don't fight me,” he said gruffly. “You know you don't want to.”

  “I don't?”

  He lifted his head and looked down into her misty and wet green eyes. His voice was deep with feeling. “You haven't stopped wanting me.”

  “I want hot chocolate, too, Jordan, but it still gives me migraine, so I don't drink it,” she said emphatically.

  His dark eyebrows lifted. “That's cute. You think you convinced me?”

  “Sure,” she lied.

  He laughed mirthlessly, letting his dark eyes fall to her lips. “Let's see.”

  He bent, drawing his lips slowly, tenderly, across her mouth in a teasing impression of a kiss. He was lazy and

  gentle and after a few seconds of imitating a plank of wood, her traitorous body betrayed her.

  She relaxed into the heat of his body with a shaky little sigh and found herself enveloped in his arms. He kissed her again, hungrily this time, without the tenderness of that first brief exchange.

  She moaned and tried to protest the sudden crush of his lean hand at the base of her spine, rubbing her body against him. But he didn't give her enough breath or strength to protest and the next thing she knew, she was on her back in a stall of fresh hay and his body was completely covering hers.

  “No, Jordan,” she protested weakly.

  “Yes,” he groaned. His long leg slid lazily against hers, lad between them, while his big, warm hands smoothed blatantly over her ribcage, his thumbs sliding boldly right over her breasts. “Don't think,” he whispered against her parted lips. “Just give in. I won't hurt you.”

  “I know that,” she whispered. “But”

  He nibbled on her lower lip. His thumbs edged out gently and found her nipples. They moved lazily, back and forth, coaxing the tips into hard little nubs. She shivered with unexpected pleasure.

  He lifted his head and looked into her eyes while he did it again. If she was used to this sort of love play, it certainly didn't show. She was pliable, yielded, absolutely fascinated with what he was doing to her body. She liked it.

  That was al he needed to know. His leg became insistent between hers, coaxing them to move apart, to admit the slow, exquisite imprint of his hips between her long legs. It was like that day in the alley beyond her office, when she hadn't cared if all of Jacobsville walked by while he was pressing her aching body against the brick wall. She was drowning in pleasure.

  Surely, she thought blindly, it couldn't be wrong to give in to something so sweet! His hands on her body were producing undreamed of sensations. He was giving her pleasure in hot, sweeping waves. He touched her and she ached for more. He kissed her and she lifted against him to find his mouth and coax it into ardor. One of her legs curled helplessly around his powerful thigh and she moaned when he accepted the silent invitation and moved into near intimacy with her.

  He was aroused. He was powerful. She felt the hard thrust of him against her body and she wanted to rip off her clothes and invite his hands, his eyes, his body, into complete surrender with her. She wanted to feel the ecstasy she knew he could give her. He was skilled, masterful. He knew what she needed, what she wanted. He could give her pleasure beyond bearing, she knew it.

  His lean hands moved under her blouse, searching for closeness, unfastening buttons, invading lace. She felt his fingers brush tenderly, lovingly, over her bare breasts in an intimacy she'd never shared with anyone.

  Her dreams of him had been this explicit, but she'd never thought she would live them in such urgent passion. As he touched her, she arched to help him, moved to encourage him. Her mouth opened wide under his. She felt his tongue suddenly thrust into it with violent need.

  She moaned loudly, her fingertips gripping the hard muscle of his upper arms as he thrust her blouse and bra up to her throat and bent at once to put his mouth on her breasts.

  The warm, moist contact was shattering. She stiffened with the shock of pleasure it produced. He tasted her in a hot, feverish silence, broken only by his urgent breathing and the rough sigh of her own voice in his ear.

  “Yes,” he groaned, opening his mouth. “Yes, Libby. Here. Right here. You and me. I can give you more pleasure than damned Harley ever dreamed of giving you!”

  Harley. Harley. She felt her body growing cold. “Harley?” she whispered.

  He lifted his head and looked down at her breasts with grinding urgency. “He's had you.”

  “He has not!” she exclaimed, shocked.

  He scowled, in limbo, caught between his insane need to possess her and his jealousy of the other man.

  She took advantage of his indecision by jerking out of his arms and pulling her blouse down as she dragged her-self out of the stall. She groped for fastenings while she flushed with embarrassment at what she'd just let him do to her.

  She looked devastated. Her hair was full of straw, like her clothes. Her green eyes were wild, her face flushed, her mouth swollen.

  He got to his feet, still in the grip of passion, and started toward her. His hat was off. His hair was wild, from her searching fingers, and his shirt was half-open over hair-matted muscle.

  “Come back here,” he said huskily, moving forward.

  “No!” she said firmly, shivering. “I'm not standing in for Julie Merrill!”

  The words stopped him in his tracks. He hesitated, his brows meeting over turbulent dark eyes.

  “Remember Julie? Your girlfriend?” she persisted shakily. Throwing his lover in his face was a way to cover her hurt for the insinuation he'd made about her and Harley. “What in the world would she think if she could see you now?”

  He straightened, but with an effort. His body was raging. He wanted Libby. He'd never wanted anyone, anything, as much as he wanted her.

  “Julie has nothing to do with this,” he ground out. “I want you!”

  “For how long, Jordan?” she asked bitingly. “Ten minutes? Thirty?”

  He blinked. His mind wasn't working.

  “I am nobody's one-night stand,” she flashed at him. “Not even yours!”

  He took a deep breath, then another one. He stared at her blankly while he tried to stop thinking about how sweet it was to feel her body under his hands.

  “I want you to leave, now,” she repeated, folding her arms over her loose bra. She could feel the swollen con-tours of her breasts and remembered with pure shame how it felt to have him touching and kissing them.

  “That isn't what you wanted five minutes ago,” he reminded her flatly.

  She closed her eyes. “I'm grass-green and stupid,” she said curtly. “It wouldn't be the first time an exper
ienced man seduced an innocent girl.”

  “Don't make stupid jokes,” he said icily. “You're no innocent.”

  “You believe what you like about me, Jordan, it doesn't matter anymore,” she interrupted him. “I've got work to do. Why don't you go home?”

  He glared at her, frustrated desire riding him hard. He cursed himself for ruining everything by bringing up

  Harley Fowler. “You're a hard woman, Libby,” he said. “Harder than I ever realized.”

  “Goodbye, Jordan,” she said, and she turned away to pick up the curry comb she'd dropped.

  He gave her a furious glare and stormed out of the barn to his truck. Bailey jumped as Jordan slammed the door and left skid marks getting out of the driveway. She relaxed then, grateful that she'd managed to save herself from that masterful seduction. She'd had a close call. She had to make sure that Jordan never got so close to her again. She couldn't trust him. Not now.

  Chapter Eight

  Janet was still in hiding before the primary election and probate hadn't begun. But plenty had changed in Jacobsville. Libby and Curt had been forced to move out of the farmhouse where they'd grown up, because the bank had foreclosed. They hadn't said a word to Jordan about it. Curt moved into the bunkhouse at the Wright ranch where he worked. Libby moved into a boardinghouse where two other Jacobsville career women lived. Bailey would have had to be boarded and Libby didn't have the money. But she worked out a deal with a dude ranch nearby. Bailey would be used for trail rides for people who were nervous of horses and Libby would help on the weekends. It wasn't the ideal solution, but it was the only one she had. It was a wrench to give up Bailey, even though it wasn't going to be forever.

  Jordan and Julie Merrill were apparently engaged. Or so Julie was saying, and she was wearing a huge diamond on her ring finger. Her father was using every dirty trick in the book to gain his party's candidacy.

  Julie Merrill was vehemently outspoken about some unnamed dirty tactics being used against her father in the primary election campaign, and she went on television to make accusations against Calhoun Ballenger.

  The next morning, Blake Kemp had her served as the defendant in a defamation lawsuit.