Wyoming True Read online

  He just laughed. ‘With Ida in her present condition, I don’t think we’ll present much of a scandal.”

  She grinned. “I should think not. I’ll pass that along, by the way. Mrs. Merridan’s had her share of problems. I’ll see if I can help solve at least one of them.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I like her. She’s nice.”

  “Yes,” he sighed. “She is.”

  * * *

  AFTER MAUDE LEFT, Jake retired to his study to look over the newest computer records on his purebred herd. His mind wasn’t really on it, however. It was on his houseguest. He didn’t trust her, not just yet, but was drawn to her in ways he didn’t want to be drawn. She was an unknown quantity. He was trying to get over Mina. This was a bad time to ricochet to another woman. Especially one who was as fragile as Ida seemed to be.

  * * *

  HE PHONED THE man he’d sent over to Ida’s place to monitor her remaining horses.

  “Hey, Bob,” he said pleasantly. “How’s it going?”

  “Fine, boss,” came the reply. “I rigged up some sensors in the stable and put surveillance cameras around the place, like you told me to. Sheriff’s investigator came by a few minutes ago with the same question you just asked. I told him you’d taken Mrs. Merridan over to your place.”

  Jake muffled a satisfied laugh. “She’s asleep. She loves that cat. Vet says it will be all right with time and care.”

  “Takes a mean person to hurt a cat that way. Or especially horses,” he added angrily.

  “Yes, it does. Which is why you’re over there and she’s over here. Still packing that shotgun?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Bob replied. “I’ve got birdshot for warnings and double-aught buckshot for serious intruders.”

  Jake chuckled. “Nasty stuff, birdshot.”

  “Try rock salt,” Bob replied in a drawl. “I was cow-tipping at a neighbor’s in my late teens and caught a load to my backside. Hurt almost as much as my dad’s belt when he found out from the rancher what I’d been doing. And on top of that, Mom had to pick the salt out of my hide.”

  “Ah, childhood,” Jake replied on a laugh. “Such sweet memories.”

  “Those weren’t sweet, boss,” came the amused reply.

  “Never ceases to amaze me, people talking about how wonderful childhood was,” Jake sighed. “Mine wasn’t that great, either.”

  “Nobody’s was,” Bob returned. “I think it’s all fantasy myself, something to make your own kids think they should behave better, so they can have a similar childhood.”

  “You lucky devil. You’ve got three.”

  “Lucy and I love every one of them, too,” Bob said. “Why don’t you get married and have some of your own? You’re not getting any younger.”

  “I am so,” Jake said with mock haughtiness. “I’m taking courses in how to live forever, but I won’t share them if you harp on my age.”

  Bob chuckled.

  “Keep your eyes open. If there’s any trouble, call the sheriff first and then me, okay?”

  “Will do.”

  * * *

  HE PUT THE phone down. Did Ida’s ex-husband know that his troublemaker had run for the hills? Was he discouraged by the advent of lawmen after the cat was hurt? Or was he just biding his time, waiting to add something more traumatic to the mix than hurting Ida’s horses and her cat? It was worrying.

  While he sat at his desk, thinking about it, he heard movement in the hall. He went out to see what it was.

  Ida stopped in her tracks. “Did I disturb you? Sorry. I wanted to see if there was any coffee. Your housekeeper said she’d leave a pot heating in the kitchen. I must have dozed off.”

  “You needed the rest, I imagine,” he said, smiling. “I’d like a cup myself. Come on.”

  He led the way into the kitchen, noting that she was walking a little better. She was wearing jeans with a long-sleeved blue sweater that almost matched the color of her eyes. Her feet were in slippers. “Pain easing up?” he asked.

  She nodded. “It fluctuates,” she said. “I have post-traumatic arthritis in my hip from the injuries. They did a partial hip replacement, and they had to wire my femur back in place and almost rebuild it. Hence the rod and pins.” She sighed. “I’m lucky it wasn’t worse.”

  “You said you had damaged vertebrae, as well,” he recalled.

  “Two, in my lower spine. They repaired those.” She laughed softly. “Of course, I have issues in my back, too.” She shook her head. “All my own fault, I guess. I should have known that Bailey was too good to be true. But I was so stupid about men.”

  “You didn’t go out with anyone while you were in college?” he asked idly as he poured the warming coffee into two mugs.

  “I was married,” she said with a quizzical glance.

  He turned, grimacing. “Sorry. Wasn’t thinking.”

  She smiled. “It’s okay. My reputation follows me around. It was really a stupid idea, but I was so desperate to keep men at bay when I came back here. I didn’t go out with anybody except girlfriends when I was at MIT. They thought I was nuts.” She drank coffee and sighed. “I guess I’m out of touch with the modern world. I was sheltered all my life, then I married a man who sheltered me just as much. Then there was Bailey.” She made a face.

  “We all make mistakes,” he pointed out.

  “Some of us make more than others,” she returned. “I was afraid I’d meet somebody else and go nuts over him and end up like I’d already done, twice. I have no sense about men, apparently.” She didn’t add the journalist she’d avoided, because he’d attracted her, too, before he died overseas. He might have been a good choice, but she didn’t trust her own judgment anymore.

  “You have to take into account that you were naive,” he said. “Being street-smart takes time and hard experiences.”

  She cocked her head and studied him with vivid dark blue eyes. “Are you street-smart?”

  “About women? Yes.” He sighed. “I got rich all too quickly. When my mother died,” he said, “I was left with a fortune.”

  “It didn’t go to your father...?” She stopped dead, grinding her teeth. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to say that.”

  But he wasn’t offended. He looked at his coffee cup. “He was in prison by then.”

  She hadn’t moved. She just sat there, staring at him.

  “He was like your ex-husband, only he didn’t get out for good behavior. He took a shiv and tried to kill a fellow inmate. He died instead.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said gently.

  He sipped coffee, burning his lip to stop the pain of memory. “We didn’t mourn him. My mother had a little over two years of peace and serenity before she died, at least. Her father had died soon after she married my father. It wasn’t until my father was arrested and convicted that her mother died, leaving her the only heir to the family fortune. So she became an heiress. Up until then, we were poor. Grandmother would have helped, but my father refused any offer of it. He hated my mother’s wealth. The money was on her side of the family, not his, obviously. When she died, I inherited the works.” He smiled sadly. “I’d rather have had her.”

  She drew in a long breath. “I loved my mother like that,” she replied. “But my father was just as special to me.” She smiled. “I loved him very much.” She sipped coffee and stared at him. She wanted to ask why his father had gone to jail, but she didn’t want to pry.

  Nevertheless, he saw the question in her eyes. The pain he felt pulled his face taut, kindled anger in his eyes. “My father was beating one of our horses with a hammer,” he said through tight lips. “I had an older brother, Dan. I’d tried to stop my father and been knocked down for my pains. Dan was furious. He loved me, but he also loved the horse our father was trying to kill. Dan went after Dad and got hit in the head with the hammer. He died on the spot.”

&
nbsp; “Oh, Jake,” she said, wincing. “I’m so sorry!”

  “So we had two family traumas at once. I had to testify. Not that I minded,” he added curtly. “It was an absolute pleasure when the prosecuting attorney brought out the many 911 calls my mother had made to the local police because of my father’s brutality to both her and her sons. But I lost my brother. That was the purest hell I ever knew, until my mother died not quite three years later.”

  She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him, with soft, sad eyes.

  “You’d know how that feels,” he added, forcing a smile. “You’ve lost both your parents, as well.”

  She nodded.

  “So I got rich overnight and I was already traumatized from losing my mother, not to mention what had come before it. I went wild. I bought a small jet, purchased a couple of mining companies, invested in growth stocks with an eye to the long haul, not short-term profits, and I got even richer.” He laughed. “Women, some women,” he qualified, “go nuts over rich men. I guess I found my share of them. Beautiful, cultured, talented—brains the size of a pea,” he added with a grin. “But you know what? After a while, they—”

  “All look alike,” she finished for him. “That’s what Cort said. He got tired of being wanted for what he had, not what he was.”

  “That’s me, too,” he confided. “I’m tired of being a wallet with legs. I’m thirty-seven,” he added quietly. “I’ve got everything. Except somebody to come home to. I thought Mina might fill that spot in my life.” He grimaced. “But the Texas cattle baron beat me out.”

  “She loves him,” Ida said gently. “It’s not like you lost a competition. She fell in love.”

  “Were you ever in love?”

  “I thought I was,” she said after a few seconds. “But what I felt for Charles was gratitude, and what I felt for Bailey, at first, was just physical and mental infatuation.” She looked up at him. “I don’t know what love is. And I don’t want to know. Not ever again.”

  His face was quiet and sad. “Neither do I.”

  “Two lost souls, drowning our sorrow in coffee,” she mused, and her blue eyes twinkled. “What a pair we make!”

  He chuckled. “Both of us alone and rich as pirates and nobody to talk to at midnight when the walls start closing in.”

  She nodded sadly. “I know just how that feels. Walls. Nightmares.” She closed her eyes. “I used to think it would get better, that I’d get over it.” She sighed. “You never get over trauma like that.”

  His eyes had a faraway look. “That’s how I felt, when I came home from the army. I thought, I’m a grown man, I’m tough, I’ll cope.” One side of his chiseled mouth turned down. “I haven’t coped. I’ve just gotten older.” He looked around him. “All this,” he said, indicating the wealth of antiques around him, “hundreds of thousands of acres of land on two continents, purebred cattle, more money than I could spend in two lifetimes. And I’m all alone in the dark.”

  “So am I,” she said, her face stark with pain and bad memories.

  He cocked his head and stared at her. “I don’t want to fall in love again. Neither do you. Both of us are rich and alone. But we get along pretty well.”

  “We do,” she said, sipping more coffee.

  He took a deep breath. He’d had an insane thought. He didn’t even know where it came from, but it felt right. “How would you feel about getting married?” he asked abruptly.

  She blinked. She stared at him. “You mean, marrying somebody one day...”

  “I mean, marrying me.”

  At first she thought it was a bad joke, except he wasn’t smiling, and his silver eyes were flashing with feeling of some sort, narrow and piercing on her face.

  Her lips parted on a shaky breath. She just stared at him, and her face tautened as she recalled how she’d been drawn to Bailey and what had come after.

  “A marriage of friends, Ida,” he said quietly. “Just that. We can explore the world together, in between raising cattle and looking after horses. I’ve had more than enough of women who want me for my bank account. You’ve had more than enough of men, period.”

  “Yes, but you’re a man,” she pointed out.

  “God, I hope so,” he said, and then laughed.

  She laughed, too, but her blue eyes were somber seconds later. “It’s just that, well, the physical thing...”

  “We can leave the physical thing out of it,” he interrupted. “I haven’t felt much interest in sex since I lost Mina, not that we were ever even close to being intimate. She didn’t feel that way about me. What I’m proposing is a platonic sort of marriage. Later on, if we both agree, we might consider altering the terms of the agreement. But for the time being, you’ll have a separate bedroom and I won’t make any sort of demands on you.”

  “That would be fine for me,” she confessed. “I’m afraid of men, that way. But you...?”

  “I’m feeling my age,” he said heavily.

  “Thirty-seven isn’t old, Jake,” she said softly.

  He smiled. “You’re good for my ego.” He sighed. “Some men get raunchy as they get older. It’s not that way with me. I like good food and good company to share it with.”

  “Well, when you put it like that,” she said. She studied his lean face. He was very handsome. There were so many advantages to what he was proposing, the most notable being that she wouldn’t have to worry about being hunted by other men, ever again. Jake would protect her. And if he was willing to forgo adventures in the bedroom, then that was an added bonus. She was uncertain that she’d ever be able to get over what Bailey had done to her.

  “You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” he asked after a minute.

  She nodded. “If you think you could live with me, like that,” she said. “Separate bedrooms, I mean,” she added and flushed, averting her eyes.

  “I can,” he replied and meant it.

  She drew in a long breath. “I feel very safe with you,” she said gently. “I know that’s probably not what a man likes to hear...”

  He smiled. “It makes me feel good inside, that you think of me that way.”

  “You’re a kind, gentle man,” she said unexpectedly. “I’d be honored to marry you.”

  Sudden heat ran through him like molten lava. He felt his heart go up like a rocket, felt the blood rushing through his veins like a flood. He couldn’t explain it or understand it, but hearing her say the words made him feel invincible. Strong.

  “I’d be honored to have you accept, Ida,” he replied.

  She flushed, too, and then she laughed softly. “I suppose it’s not an everyday sort of marriage.”

  “Nobody’s business but our own, either,” he pointed out.

  She nodded.

  “So,” he said on a sigh and smiled, “what sort of ring would you like?”

  * * *

  IT WAS TWO days before the snow stopped and the roads were clear. Jake took her by the vet’s office to see Butler, who was improving nicely, and then on into Catelow to the jewelry store.

  Old Brian Pirkle had owned Catelow Jewelry Company for fifty years, and he was still around, although his son, Bill, waited on Jake and Ida. Brian’s eyebrows went up, as silvery as his hair, when they walked to the counter that displayed wedding sets.

  “You’re not getting married, Jake?” Brian exclaimed.

  Jake chuckled. “I wasn’t. But I am now.” He looked down at Ida, who flushed prettily.

  “Well, congratulations!”

  “Thanks,” they chorused.

  “What sort of ring would you like?” Jake asked Ida.

  She was hesitant. Charles had bought her a diamond. Bailey had let her buy herself an emerald set.

  She looked up at Jake. “You should decide, too,” she said. “I’d like them to match. You’ll wear one, too?” she added hesitantly.


  “Oh, yes,” he said, when he hadn’t planned any such thing. He got lost briefly in her wide blue eyes.

  “Then what sort of stones do you like?” she persisted.

  He smiled gently. “My grandmother loved rubies. I have hers in the safe-deposit box. Among them is a small, very simple yellow-gold ring with a faceted ruby in a Tiffany setting that her grandfather left her. Legend says that it belonged to a royal member of Isabella’s Spanish court in the fifteenth century. If you’d like to wear it as an engagement ring, we can get a band here to match it. Pigeon’s blood rubies,” he added, which were the most expensive.

  “We should have an eighteen-karat yellow-gold band with rubies in that back section, Bill,” the old man told his son.

  “Yes, sir, we do. Here it is.” He pulled the ring out and laid it on a cloth on the counter. It was an ivy pattern dotted with inlaid, faceted pigeon’s blood rubies, the sort of ring that would become an heirloom.

  Ida caught her breath as she picked it up. “It’s the most beautiful ring I’ve ever seen,” she said in a hushed tone.

  “Here. Let’s see.” Jake picked up the ring and her left hand. He slid it gently onto her third finger, where it fit as if it had been measured for her. He looked down into her soft blue eyes and felt another unexpected jolt like a burst of electricity.

  “Do you want it?” he asked her.

  “Oh, yes, please.” She searched his eyes. “You have to have one, too.”

  “There’s a matching men’s band, a little less ornate,” Bill told them and pulled out a wider gold band with inlaid rubies just in the center. It wasn’t fancy, and it was definitely a man’s ring. “We have a designer who works with us. He’s in New York, but he sends us mailings of his latest work. I wasn’t sure why I bought these,” he added, chuckling. “Honestly, most people just want traditional wedding sets with diamonds.”

  “I like something a little out of the ordinary,” Jake said, smiling.

  “Me, too,” Ida agreed. Her eyes were on the ring. “It’s beautiful,” she repeated.