Heartless Read online

  “You could send Grange to Germany and let him deal with them for you,” she murmured with a mischievous grin, naming his new livestock foreman. Grange had worked for the Ballenger feedlot, but Jason liked him and had hired him on at the ranch for a bigger salary. Grange had proved to be an asset. His military background had made him the perfect foreman. The former army major had no trouble throwing out orders.

  He made a face at her. “Grange negotiates like a military man. You know they won’t let men fly overseas with guns.”

  “Grange is big enough to intimidate those businessmen without guns.”

  He gave her a cool appraisal. He didn’t like it when she talked about Grange. He didn’t like Grange’s interest in her. Not that he made an issue of it. He just made sure Grange was otherwise occupied when Gracie visited the ranch. His black eyes slid over her slender body in the tight jeans and T-shirt. His hand on the steering wheel contracted violently. Gracie didn’t notice. She was smiling out the window at a group of children playing in the dirt yard of an old, ragged house beside the road.

  THE SALE BARN WAS FULL. Gracie walked behind Jason, pausing when he did to speak to cattlemen they knew along the way. The auctioneer spotted Jason the moment he walked in and they nodded at each other. She didn’t see the Jacobsville cattlemen, but there was a huge crowd. They might be on the other side of the arena. The only seats left were against a wall, but he didn’t mind that.

  He politely addressed a strange cattleman wearing a designer suit and highly polished new boots. The man looked him over with faint distaste, noting the working-cowboy gear, complete with spurred boots, batwing chaps and old chambray shirt.

  “Nice day for a sale,” Jason said cordially.

  The man smirked. “For those of us who can afford to buy something, sure it is. You work for a local ranch?” he added, giving Jason a demeaning look. “They sure must not pay very well.” He turned away again.

  Gracie noted the exchange and grinned up at Jason, but he didn’t return the smile. His black eyes were fiery. They sat down and waited for the noise to subside so that the auction could begin.

  She leaned up to Jason’s ear. “Who is he?” she whispered, indicating the man a row in front of them.

  He didn’t answer. Instead he gestured toward the auctioneer at the podium tapping the microphone.

  He welcomed the cattlemen, summarized the contents of the sale and began with a lot of purebred Black Angus calves. Jason leaned back, just watching, as bidding opened.

  Gracie loved going to these auctions with him. It was one of the more pleasant memories of her early teens, tagging along after him through sale barns and learning the cattle business. It had irritated him at first, and then amused him. Finally he understood that it wasn’t the business that attracted her, but the novelty of his company. She was standoffish, even cold, with boys her own age and men of any age, but she adored Jason and it showed. As the years passed, she acquired a nickname—Jason’s shadow. He didn’t seem to mind. Glory had never cared much for cattle, but Gracie had always been fascinated by them. Even now, he rarely asked anyone except Gracie along when he went to auctions or to look at new equipment or even just for a drive over his property. A loner most of the time, he was supremely comfortable with her.

  She studied her program and tapped his hand. He glanced where she was pointing at the program and nodded.

  It was the next lot, a consignment of purebred Santa Gertrudis open heifers. Jason kept replacement heifers, as any cattleman did, against necessary culls after breeding season. But these young females were exceptional. They were from a division of the King Ranch, with exquisite bloodlines. Jason wanted to improve his seed stock. This was a bargain at the price.

  The auctioneer named the consignment and opened bidding. The fancy rancher in front of them raised his hand to accept the price. There was an increase on the base price of ten dollars a head. Jason scratched his ear. The price jumped by twenty dollars a head.

  “I told you they knew I was coming,” the cattleman in the row ahead of them said smugly. “Didn’t I tell you prices would jump when I started the bidding?”

  Jason didn’t say a word. But his eyes were coldly amused. The cattleman ahead of him jumped the ante by ten dollars, Jason doubled that bid. The price went up a hundred, five hundred, a thousand, two thousand.

  “Who the hell’s bidding against me?” the cattleman in front muttered in a whisper to his companion, looking around. “Nobody here looks like they could afford to buy a cattle trailer, much less purebred Santa Gerts!”

  “Bid higher,” his companion suggested.

  “Are you nuts?” the man grumbled. “I’m at my limit. I wish I could get in touch with my boss, but he’s not in his office. He won’t be happy that I let someone outbid me for these heifers. He was keen to have them.”

  The bid came again. The cattleman in front sat mute, fuming. Jason scratched his ear.

  The bid was called once, twice, three times, and the auctioneer banged his gavel and shouted “Sold!”

  He didn’t name the buyer, as Jason had already agreed before the sale began. He had Jason’s blank check and he knew where to send the consignment, and how. Jason and Gracie got up and walked out of the auction barn into the sunshine. The cattleman who’d been in front of them walked out, too, punching in numbers on his cell phone. He ran into Jason and bumped him.

  “Watch the hell where you’re walking, will you?” the man snapped at Jason and kept walking.

  Jason stared after the man with retribution in his dark gaze. But after a minute he stretched comfortably and glanced down at Gracie. “Hungry?”

  “I could eat a cow,” she murmured with twinkling eyes. “Even a Santa Gert!”

  “Barbarian,” he chuckled. “Come on.”

  He was driving one of his standard ranch pickup trucks. They were nice, but not top-of-the-line. He cut costs where he could. The grumbling cattleman and his companion climbed into a luxury car and roared off. It was a nice car. But it wasn’t in the same league as Jason’s big Jaguar.

  “I hope we don’t run into that fancy rancher who was in front of us,” she muttered. “He’s got a major attitude problem.”

  “He’ll get it fixed soon enough,” Jason said easily.

  “Nice of him to come over here and show us how real cattlemen dress for a sale,” Gracie remarked as she climbed up into the pickup and belted herself in. She gave him a speaking glance. “You’re disgracing us, dressing like that for a fancy auction!”

  “Speak for yourself,” he shot back as he put the truck in gear. “You’re not exactly the belle of the ball.”

  “I’m comfortable,” she said. “You said not to dress up.”

  His dark eyes cut around to hers and he gave her a look that made her feel warm all over. “You’d look good in a flour sack, honey,” he told her solemnly. “But I like the pigtails.”

  She laughed nervously, tugging at one. “They’re too young for me, I guess, but I couldn’t get my hair up this morning.”

  “I like it.”

  He pulled out onto the road and drove to a nearby steak restaurant that he favored, parking on the side. He and Gracie walked up onto the porch just as the luxury car pulled into the front parking lot.

  Jason gave her an amused grin. “Well, he does have good taste in food.”

  “I’ll bet somebody had to tell him it was a nice place to eat,” she shot back.

  The waitress showed them to a table about the time the cattleman and his companion got to the line.

  “Look what the cat dragged in,” Cy Parks drawled as Jason and Gracie were seated at a booth across from his table.

  “Look who’s talking, Parks,” Jason shot back.

  “How’s Lisa?” Gracie asked.

  Cy’s eyebrows levered up and down. “Pregnant,” he said with an ear-to-ear grin. “We’re over the moon.”

  “Wow,” Gracie said softly. “Congratulations.”

  “Our son needs a playmate,” he
explained. He looked up as J. D. Langley and Harley Fowler, who was Cy’s foreman, and Leo Hart came walking back to his table with full salad plates. He gave them a snarly look. “Salad! Good God, I never thought I’d see the day when ranchers would sit down to plates of rabbit food!”

  “We’re joining the green lobby,” Leo chuckled. “Hi, Jason. Gracie. Been to the sale?”

  “Yes,” Jason replied. “We didn’t see you there.”

  “We were on the other side of the barn,” J.D. muttered, glancing toward where the grumbly cattleman and his companion were just about to be seated. “Avoiding the plague in designer suits.”

  “Who is he?” Gracie asked.

  Harley Fowler grinned at her. “You ought to know.”

  “Me?” she exclaimed, fuddled. “I know him?”

  “Well, Mr. Pendleton ought to know him, anyway,” Harley added.

  Jason gave Harley a scowl. “Mr. Pendleton was my father.”

  Harley flushed a little. “Sorry.”

  “He’s not big on ceremony,” Gracie told the younger man, smiling. “We don’t play that sort of game.”

  “The hell we don’t,” Jason said, and his eyes kindled as the visiting cattleman came toward them. His big body tensed.

  “Jason,” Gracie warned softly. She didn’t fancy a brawl in here, and Jason had a low boiling point. That designer rancher had already made him mad.

  “If it isn’t the Jacobsville lobby,” the visitor said with a sarcastic smile. “The cattle-petting cattlemen, in person.”

  Jason leaned back in the booth, stretching out his long legs. “Nothing wrong with treating cattle decently,” he said deliberately.

  The man gave him a faintly contemptuous look. “Excuse me, but I don’t remember asking for your opinion. You may work cattle, son, but I’m sure you don’t own any. Now why don’t you mind your own business and let cattlemen talk cattle?”

  Black eyes bored into his face with an expression under them that would have made an impression on a man less thick-skinned.

  “You didn’t get that lot of Santa Gertrudis heifers you came after, did you?” Cy Parks mused.

  The man made a face. “Rub it in. I know you were the high bidder.”

  “Nope. It wasn’t me. I was there for the lot of Santa Gert calves. I got those.” Cy’s green eyes narrowed. “Your boss sent you there to get those heifers, I hear.”

  The man’s lip pulled up. “Sent me there with half the amount I needed to bid for them,” he said angrily. “And told me not to go higher. Hell of a boss. I’ll bet he wouldn’t know a heifer from a bull, sitting up there in his office telling real cattlemen how to buy cattle!”

  Cy studied him coldly. “That attitude won’t get you far in the Pendleton organization.”

  “Not my fault if the boss doesn’t know how to bid for cattle. I’ll have to educate him.”

  There was a collective intake of breath at the table. Beside it, Jason’s brow quirked. He was beginning to enjoy himself.

  “Do you know who trumped my bid for those heifers?” the man asked curiously.

  Everybody at Cy Parks’s table pointed to Jason Pendleton. Gracie did, too.

  The visiting cattleman turned to the man he’d been putting down for most of the day. Jason took off his Stetson and cold black eyes bored into the man’s shocked face.

  “You bought those heifers? With what?” the arrogant rancher exclaimed. He glanced at Gracie. “You don’t look like a man who could afford a sick calf, and your girlfriend there sure hasn’t got money. So who do you work for?”

  Jason didn’t like the crack about Gracie. His amusement morphed into pure dislike. “I could ask you the same question,” he said icily.

  “I work for the Pendleton organization,” the man said.

  Jason glowered at him. “Not anymore.”

  “And who do you think you are, to tell me that?” the man demanded.

  Jason’s black eyes glittered at him. “Jason Pendleton.”

  The fancy rancher stared at the ragged cowboy with patent disbelief. But then, in his mind, he recalled the painting in the Pendleton Corporation CEO’s office downtown, over the fireplace. The man in the portrait was a match for the man glaring at him from the booth. “You’re Mr…. Mr. Pendleton?” he stammered, flushing purple. “I didn’t recognize you!”

  Jason was toying with his coffee cup. His eyes held the other man’s. “Pity,” he murmured.

  The other rancher seemed to lose his dignity and his arrogant attitude all at once.

  “I didn’t know…” he stammered.

  “Obviously,” Jason replied curtly. “I wanted to see how you operated before I turned you loose as my representative. Good thing. You like to put people down, don’t you? Well, you won’t be doing it on my payroll. Collect your last paycheck at the office. Do I need to say the words?”

  The rancher’s jaw set. “You can’t do this to me! Hell, nobody fires a man for losing a bid…!” he began belligerently.

  Jason stood up. He was a head taller than the man and he looked dangerous. The ranchers at the nearby table tensed.

  “I said,” Jason began in a slow, menacing tone, “collect your last paycheck.” His big hands began to curve into fists at his side.

  The rancher’s companion noticed that and grabbed his friend’s arm, almost dragging him away. He knew things about Jason Pendleton’s temper that the other rancher obviously didn’t.

  Gracie tugged at Jason’s hand gently. He looked at her and calmed a little as he sat back down again. But he was openly glaring at the man’s retreating back. The fancy rancher’s companion was talking feverishly and nodding toward Jason Pendleton. The rancher glanced back toward the Jacobsville cattlemen and grimaced. But he wasn’t going to a table—he was actually leaving the restaurant.

  “Who is he?” she asked.

  “He is, rather he was,” Jason replied with magnificent disdain, “the man I hired recently to go to sales for me. Barker. The one I told you about, who was throwing his weight around. Good thing I checked him out. He’d have cost us business, with that attitude. I don’t like men who judge people on appearances. Wealth is no measure of character.”

  “So that’s why you were bidding so high against him.”

  Jason nodded. “I had to push him to see how he’d react. The auctioneer knew what I was doing, so I won’t have to pay the higher price. I worked out a fair deal before the auction.”

  Gracie pursed her lips and whistled through them. “Oh, boy.”

  “I’ll bet that’s not what Barker’s saying right now,” Harley Fowler said gleefully. “And that’s what you get for taking people at face value. Nothing wrong with wearing comfortable clothes.” He gave Jason a grin and turned his attention to Gracie. “I don’t guess you go out with ranch managers, Miss Gracie, but if you did, I’d love to take you over to Shea’s and show you how nicely I can waltz…”

  He stopped because Jason was now glaring at him, and with eyes even colder than he’d shown to the pompous cattleman.

  “Uh, sorry, I’d better finish my lunch and get back to work,” Harley said with a sheepish grin, averting his attention to his plate.

  Gracie was gaping at Jason, only diverted by the arrival of the waitress with their own salads and drinks.

  “What was that about?” she asked hesitantly when they were back in the truck.

  “Barker?” he asked absently.

  “No. Harley.”

  His jaw tautened. “Harley’s a boy.”

  She was disconcerted. “He’s a nice boy,” she protested.

  He didn’t say a word.

  She shifted in her seat, frowning. Jason was very strange lately. She didn’t understand why there was so much anger smoldering inside him. He was probably still angry with that Barker man, she decided, and left him to his thoughts.

  Jason was unusually uncommunicative during the ride home, keeping the radio between them while he drove. His attitude toward Harley puzzled her. It wasn’t like him to
snap at underlings, especially cowboys, and he’d already made it obvious that he disliked men who put poor people down. He didn’t know Harley well, but he’d seemed to like the younger man. Or at least, he had until today. It was almost as if he were jealous of Harley’s interest in Gracie. That was silly, of course. He was affectionate toward her, but there was nothing out of the ordinary in his demeanor. It was just wishful thinking. She grimaced, thinking about how she might react if Jason ever really pursued her as a lover would. Love was one thing. Sex…well, that was terrifying. She wasn’t sure she could function in that respect. Not even with Jason, and he’d been the only man in her life and her heart for years.

  2

  TWO DAYS LATER, GRACIE WAS back in her flower beds. This time she’d pruned back some aggressive wandering vines that had exploded with growth after the passage of Hurricane Fay when it made landfall. The rains had been torrential. Now everything was overgrown because of the bountiful rain. After months of drought, it was wonderful to see green things again.

  It was Friday and she was hosting an important party for Jason this evening. It was business. He hated parties, but he was wheeling and dealing again, hoping to add a new and imaginative software company from California to his roster of acquisitions. The two owners were in their twenties and crazy about soccer, so Jason had invited members of the Brazilian and American soccer teams to this gathering. It was like him to know the deepest desires of his prey and cater to them, when he wanted something.

  She wondered absently if he was single-minded and determined like that with women he wanted. It hurt to think about that.

  She didn’t dare think of Jason in any sexual way. It would only lead to heartache. Her mother had warned her about it, and she herself had seen the result from the time she was very little. Her father could only achieve satisfaction by hurting his wife, savaging her. The blood on her nightclothes testified again and again to the brutality of ardent men. Gracie’s entire childhood had been a nightmare of fear for her mother, and for herself. As a child, she’d prayed that her mother wouldn’t die, leaving her at her father’s mercy. God alone knew what the man might do to Gracie, although he’d never molested her. It was his temper she feared, especially when he drank. He drank a lot. He was violent when he drank.