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  Delsey nodded. “Yes. His father never remarried. He loved his ex-wife until the day he died.”

  Merrie’s lips parted. “Ren didn’t say that his mother painted, did he?”

  Delsey winced. “He never talks about her. Never calls her. She sends cards and letters—well, she used to—and he sends them right back, unopened. I don’t think he’s even seen her since he graduated from college and came here.” She shook her head. “It’s sad. His mother was a nice person, from what Randall says about her, and she grieves for Ren.”

  Merrie didn’t know what to say. She drew in a long breath. “Our mother was like spring itself,” she commented, idly touching the unassembled easel in its box. “She loved us so much. She was always doing things with us, taking us places, loving us. After she died, life was a nightmare.”

  Delsey didn’t pry, but she was openly curious. “What did she die of?”

  Merrie bit her lower lip. “We think our father killed her. Please don’t tell him,” she said, nodding toward the door with a worried expression, indicating that she meant Ren. “Our father was violent. Paranoid. She died of a concussion, but one of our local doctors thought it was murder. He tried to do an autopsy, but he was suddenly called out of town, and Daddy paid somebody to do it while he was gone and classify it as an accidental death.”

  “Why didn’t the doctor protest?”

  “Because Daddy made threats to the people in charge.” She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. “You can’t imagine the fear he instilled in people. He had something on every single person who worked for him—even Mandy. Mandy had a brother who was in the mob up north. Daddy threatened to have her brother sent to prison. He knew people who could plant evidence. Everybody in Comanche Wells, where we live, was scared of him. Even people in Jacobsville were. He terrorized the whole community.”

  “You had people in law enforcement...”

  “Who had families,” Merrie said gently. “If you threaten someone’s child, it makes an impression. He was very good at intimidation.” She didn’t add that he was richer than just about anybody in that part of Texas.

  “My goodness,” Delsey said worriedly. She studied the younger woman and read the lingering fear. “Well, he can’t hurt you anymore.”

  “No.” Merrie let out a soft laugh. “We can finally leave towels on the floor. The rugs don’t have to be straight. The bed doesn’t have to be inspected to make sure it’s made right. We can have disorder, for the first time in our lives. I even have mismatched towels in my bathroom.” She grimaced. “He used the belt on me once for doing that.”

  “Mr. Ren’s father used a belt on him, too, he said.”

  “Not like mine did, I imagine, with the belt buckle. It was a heavy one, too, made of metal. I have...scars.” She swallowed and moved away. “That’s all in the past now. He can’t hurt us anymore.”

  “I’m sorry. It must have been a very rough childhood.”

  “Worse. We couldn’t go to parties or learn to dance or drive, we couldn’t go on dates. My goodness, I’m twenty-two years old and I’ve never even been kissed!”

  Delsey was shocked. “But you’re Randall’s girlfriend...”

  “No, I am not,” she said firmly. “I’m Randall’s friend, and that’s all.” She smiled. “You see, he’s one of those men who likes lots of women. He doesn’t love them, he just uses them, and when he’s bored, he goes and finds another one. Sari and I went to church. We were taught that women don’t play around before marriage. Actually, we were taught that men shouldn’t, either. That children came of love between two people, in marriage, and that children deserved two parents to raise them.” She gave Delsey a sheepish look. “That doesn’t get us far with modern people. So we keep to ourselves.”

  “Child, there are a lot of people who still feel that way. It’s just that they’re shouted down and made to feel inferior because they have those beliefs. It’s a test, of a sort. If we believe in something, we shouldn’t have to defend those beliefs.” She laughed. “Isn’t it funny how some people say we need to respect the opinions and beliefs of other people, and then they go to town on us for being religious? They don’t respect the beliefs of anybody except themselves, and they don’t really believe in anything past having a good time and doing whatever they please. Rules are for fools.”

  “I really like you,” Merrie said softly, and smiled. “You’re like our Mandy, back home. She’s been with us since we were very small. After Mama died, she sort of became our mother, if you know what I mean.”

  “Sort of like me and Ren.” Delsey laughed. “I love Randall, too, but he isn’t around much. He does most of the marketing and showing for the Black Angus purebred seed bulls that our Skyhorn Ranch is famous for. He’s gone most of the year.”

  “He’s good with people,” Merrie said. “I liked him the first time I saw him. But he wasn’t the sort of man I could ever get interested in. I’m no party girl.”

  “Did he think you were?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure. He flirted with me, but I don’t know how to flirt. I tried to go on a date one time, with a cowboy I knew. Daddy found out. He had the cowboy chased clean out of the state, threatened him with an old felony charge he’d been acquitted of.” She swallowed. The memory was harsh. “Then he knocked me down the stairs and...” She stopped. “I never tried to go out with anybody again.”

  “Oh, child,” Delsey said softly. “I’m so sorry!”

  “So I wasn’t really comfortable with the idea of going places with Randall. I didn’t tell him much, but I let him know that it was dangerous for me to date anybody, and that we were too different to be involved with each other. But I told him I’d love to be his friend.” She smiled. “That worked out much better. He’s very nice.”

  Delsey, looking at her, could understand why Randall might have wanted to get involved with her. She was pretty and sweet and kind. But Randall could never settle for just one woman. He was too flighty. Ren, on the other hand, was certain that Merrie was like Randall’s other girlfriends who came here. Most of them came on to Ren. They were glittery women who had modern attitudes about sex. Delsey didn’t approve, but it wasn’t her place to say anything. If one of Randall’s women ended up in Ren’s bed, it didn’t concern her. They knew the score. She frowned. She hoped Ren wasn’t putting Merrie in that category. There could be consequences. He wasn’t around the woman enough to know her background, and Randall hadn’t been forthcoming about her. It was a recipe for disaster.

  Well, that wasn’t a problem that needed solving today. Delsey continued to help Merrie put her canvases and paints and accessories away, including the fine brushes she used.

  “What are you painting?” Delsey asked, looking pointedly at the sketchbook on the easel.

  “Promise you won’t tell him?” Merrie asked worriedly.

  “I promise.”

  She pulled up the cloth she’d draped over an old canvas she’d found and displayed the contents. The painting was only a sketch right now. She’d found a leftover canvas in the room and used it to sketch her subject while she’d waited for her art supplies to arrive. Since she had neither paint nor drawing pencils, she’d used a soft lead #2 pencil to do the preliminary outline.

  Even so, the image was so realistic it could have walked off the canvas. Delsey actually gasped.

  “You said you painted a little,” Delsey exclaimed. “This isn’t... It’s magnificent!” she said, lost for the right words.

  Merrie smiled. “Thanks. I’ve always loved to draw. Sari said that we might buy...” She almost said “an art supply store,” but she caught herself. She didn’t want to give away her monied background. It usually intimidated people. “That we might be able to exhibit my work at the local art store.”

  “Art store, nothing,” Delsey scoffed. She looked at the sketch with soft eyes. “You
captured that look on his face that I could never understand.”

  “It’s sorrow,” Merrie said quietly. “He’s alone, inside himself. He can’t get out, or let anyone else in. He’s strong, and tender, and brimming over with love. But he doesn’t really trust women. Or like them very much.” She turned to Delsey, who seemed surprised at her perception of Ren. “How did he get mixed up with that woman you told me about?”

  Delsey bit her lower lip. “Angie? She was one of Randall’s girls. He brought her here to visit. She knew that Ren had more money than Randall inherited from his father, so she went after Ren. She was always wrapped around him, playing up to him. He’s a lonely man, for the most part, and she was aggressive physically. If you want my opinion, she made him so hungry that he got engaged to her in desperation. Then he found her with two of his business associates at a party. Apparently the three of them were romantically involved. Ren took the ring off her finger and flushed it down the toilet, with her watching.”

  “Poor Ren.”

  “She even spread lies about Ren online. We know a man who works for local rancher Mallory Kirk—Red Davis. Red’s a wonder. He can hack anything. The FBI tried to hire him, but he likes cattle better than people, so he refused. He did some work for Mallory’s brother, when his girlfriend was targeted by her vicious stepfather with obscene Photoshopped pictures online. He got rid of every trace. He did the same for Ren. Angie was arrested and prosecuted for what she did to him. She got off with probation, but she never put a word out about him again. Still, it’s made him bitter. That was months ago. He’s still brooding about it.”

  “I noticed.”

  “He’s not generally a mean person. I’m sorry that he’s been so hard on you. If you’d met under different circumstances, he might have reacted differently.”

  “In other words, if Randall hadn’t brought me here.”

  “Exactly. You’re the first woman Randall has brought here since Angie. That probably helped set him off.”

  Merrie sighed. Just her luck, to be attracted to a man who had a false impression of her because of Randall. She was only just realizing why Ren resented her presence here.

  “I probably should go back home,” she said, thinking out loud.

  “He’s not mad at you,” Delsey countered. “Besides, aren’t you trying to get away from that man who’s stalking you?”

  Merrie turned, frowning. She was putting these people in danger just by being in the house with them. Delsey was so like Mandy back home; sweet and kind and loving. “There are things you don’t know about me,” she began.

  The sound of the phone ringing downstairs interrupted them.

  “Oh, goodness, I’ll have to get that. I told Ren we should have phones upstairs and he said it was a waste of money,” she muttered on the way downstairs. “It isn’t his poor old legs that get worn out running up and down stairs to answer phones!”

  Merrie chuckled to herself. She looked at the sketch of Ren on the canvas. It captured the very essence of the man himself. It was, she decided, going to be the best painting she’d ever done.

  * * *

  SHE WORKED ON IT tirelessly for a week, reworking it until she had it just the way she wanted it. When it was finished, she turned it to face the wall, just in case he walked in, and started painting one of Hurricane.

  She was late to supper one night, and Ren was inflexible about house rules again, so she didn’t get to eat. She had a sandwich in the small cooler in her room that Delsey had provided. She washed it down with a bottle of spring water, also from Delsey. She hoped Ren wouldn’t discover her stash of food. He probably wouldn’t approve. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t become accustomed to rigid rules of behavior back home. She’d just hoped it wouldn’t be like that someplace else. Maybe everybody was like her father and Ren, wanting things just so and refusing to change.

  She tiptoed back down to her art studio after she finished the sandwich, wearing her nightgown and a thick white cotton robe that covered every inch of her except for her bare feet. She’d forgotten to pack slippers.

  The door to the studio was ajar. She opened it, and there was Ren, gaping at the portrait of Hurricane that she’d just finished.

  He heard her come in and turned. He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved red flannel shirt with a black checkerboard pattern. His feet were in socks, not boots. His hair was mussed, as if he’d brushed it back in irritation.

  “You did this?” he asked, amazement in his whole look.

  “Well...yes,” she confessed, flushing. She hoped he hadn’t looked at the other canvas. She glanced at it, relieved to see that it was still turned to the wall.

  “You said you could draw a little,” he persisted.

  She shrugged. “Just a little.”

  “This is gallery-quality art,” he said, trying to formulate thoughts. He’d been shocked when he saw what his houseguest could do with paint and canvas. He’d never known anyone who could paint like this. And he’d rarely seen a painting done with more skill or insight. The horse on the canvas had faint scars on its head and neck and back. The eyes, though, were what made it. If a horse had a soul, this one did. The look in its eyes made him feel odd. It was the look of a human who’d been badly beaten, not an animal.

  “Thanks,” she said belatedly.

  “Have you done anything else?” He was looking at the portrait turned to the wall.

  “That one’s just started. It’s not ready to be seen,” she protested weakly.

  He cocked his head. “Sketches, then?”

  She hesitated. Then she moved to the cabinet where her sketch pads and extra canvases were stored. She pulled out the biggest sketchbook and reluctantly handed it to him.

  He sat down in one of the room’s padded chairs and started looking. The subjects entranced him. There was Delsey, immortalized with a pencil, showing the inner beauty in a way he’d never actually seen before. There were his men, old and young alike, captured on the paper. There was his prize bull, Colter’s Pride 6443, in his shiny black glory, so lifelike that he could have walked off the page.

  All the sketches told a story. He saw pride, grief, pain, resignation, amusement and sorrow in her subjects, saw their past and present in the eyes that were so very expressive.

  “My God,” he said finally, and it was in a reverent, soft tone. He looked up. “This is why you keep missing meals,” he guessed.

  She shrugged. “I get lost in my work,” she said. “A line is out of place, or there isn’t enough shadow, or I’ve got one eye that doesn’t really match the other. So I draw and erase and change until I get it right.” She smiled sadly. “Sari used to say that I’d be carried off by a tornado one day with my brush in my hand, staring at a canvas.” She laughed. “She’s probably right. I lose track of time when I’m working.”

  He cocked his head. Her night attire was strange. He remembered the nightmare she’d had, remembered how he’d felt as he looked at her. She was Randall’s girl. Randall had made that clear in a couple of phone calls during the time she’d been here. This one isn’t like Angie, he’d teased, so hands off. Merrie’s mine.

  Merrie. He wanted to call her Meredith, since it suited her more than that juvenile version of her name that his brother used. Randall had told him her full name. His eyes slid over the thick cotton bathrobe that covered her from her neck down to her bare ankles. He smiled at her bare feet.

  “It’s too cold in the house to go walking around without shoes,” he chided. “You’ll catch cold, like I did.”

  She moved her toes restlessly. “I’m not cold.”

  “You don’t have any slippers,” he translated.

  “I’ll go shopping online.”

  “I told you, I have an account in town at a local store. Delsey will drive you there. Get a coat. And some slippers.” He pursed his lips. “Buy
an evening gown, too. Something pretty. With shoes and an evening bag to match. And whatever you need to go under it.” His eyes narrowed with curiosity about what she looked like under that thick robe.

  She pulled the robe tighter. “Why an evening gown?”

  “There’s a party. I don’t want to go, but if I don’t, there’ll be more gossip. Angie’s going to be there,” he added coldly.

  Angie, Merrie recalled from conversations with Delsey, was the woman who’d cheated on him. “A party?”

  “Yes.” He stared at her with suddenly cold eyes. “You can dance, can’t you?”

  “No,” she said wistfully.

  His eyes widened. “You can’t dance?” he exclaimed.

  She flushed. “Daddy wouldn’t let us go on dates,” she said. “I’ve watched people doing it on TV, and Sari and I danced a cha-cha together just once...” Her voice trailed away, and she winced.

  He moved forward in his chair. “Just once?”

  “Daddy caught us. He believed dancing was wrong...” She swallowed. “No, I don’t dance.”

  “I can teach you.”

  She looked up into his soft, black eyes and felt herself melting inside. “You can?”

  He nodded. His eyes slid down her body. “Why do you wear a housecoat that covers you up like an elderly woman?”

  “I’ve never been around men when I was dressed for bed,” she replied. She shifted uncomfortably. “When I had the nightmare, that was the first time anybody except Sari or Mandy ever saw me in bed.”

  He was eyeing her closely. She was good, he thought. She played the innocent with a real flair. But she was Randall’s girl, and Randall didn’t date girls who didn’t put out. So she was just like Angie, only even better at acting the part.

  “I should go on up,” Merrie said, not liking the way he looked at her.

  He tore his gaze away from her and looked back at the portrait on the easel. “I meant what I said about your talent,” he said quietly. “You should be exhibiting.”