“No.”She was in control again.“You were right when you said we shouldn’t get involved.It’s too risky...for both of us.”
The flame slowly faded in his blue eyes and he sighed.“Then I guess you’d better go in.For obvious reasons, I’m staying in the water a while longer.”
Her arms trembled as she hoisted herself out of the water.Without looking back, she retrieved her towel and hairpins, slipped into her sandals and left the patio.She’d done some difficult things in her life, and leaving Ry tonight ranked up there as one of the toughest choices she’d ever made.
ChapterEleven
Freddy didn’t show up at breakfast the next morning.If she was deliberately trying to avoid him, he probably deserved it after that stunt in the pool.He’d never before felt the pull of a sensual attraction that completely robbed him of reason.His need for Freddy was disorienting.
After breakfast he walked into her office, half hoping she’d be there, but she wasn’t.Last night, he’d been too excited about Lavette’s call to take much notice of the office, but now he cast his eyes around the cubicle, intrigued by the little space.The room looked like a converted storage closet.The battered oak desk and chair might have been commandeered from an elementary-school teacher.The same went for the gray metal file cabinet.A computer, a goosenecked lamp and a telephone sat on the desk, and the fax machine occupied the only other piece of furniture in the room, a low bookcase stuffed with ledgers.The room was windowless, which was probably just as well.A window would have taken up too much wall space.Everything in the room spoke of practicality, except for the rogues gallery on the walls.
The paneling was crammed with framed pictures, each of them a segment of ranch history.A recent color glossy of Leigh on Red Devil nudged against a grainy shot of the old frame ranch house, the surface of the photo cracked and one edge singed.Ry wondered if it had been hastily rescued during the fire Freddy had talked about.Beneath the ranch house picture, women wearing bobbed hair from the twenties posed by the fireplace, and beside that was a portrait of Freddy at about three years of age mounted on a barrel.A closer look showed that the barrel was suspended by ropes.Even at three, she was learning how to ride a bucking bronco.
Ry smiled.All decked out in boots, fringed shirt and hat, Freddy sat straight on the barrel, a wide grin on her face.Ry recognized that grin, the same one she’d given him as they’d raced side by side down the wash two days earlier.It was an expression of pure joy, and he’d felt it, too.Felt it and become frightened.That kind of joy shared with another human being made a person vulnerable to the worst hurt in the world.
He turned from the wall of pictures, walked behind the desk and put his briefcase on its uncluttered surface.Work was the best antidote he’d ever found to that kind of pain.Yet there on the desk, as if to mock him, was a calendar open to May 24, today’s date.
The anniversary of Linda’s death.
It always ambushed him like a cowardly street thug.Last week, he’d known it was coming, had even realized he’d be in Arizona when it hit.But calendar days didn’t seem so important on the ranch, and he’d lost track.That he’d forgotten seemed an act of disloyalty.
Linda would have been the first to criticize him for clinging to his grief.He thought it was the other way around.Grief clung to him like a leech, except when he lost himself in the intense world of commodities trading.And except when he was here.Perhaps that was the magic of this place.Maybe the ranch was the poultice that would draw the agony from him at last.
Well, he’d never know unless he finished putting the deal together.He looked for a wastebasket to rid himself of the piece of paper crumpled in his fist.Then he opened his fingers slowly and stared at the ball of paper.Carefully he pulled it back into shape and grimaced.Without realizing it, he’d torn the page from Freddy’s desk calendar.She’d scribbled a couple of things on it — “auto parts” on the first half and “Dexter” on the second.Ry wondered how he’d explain his unthinking vandalism.He’d have to come up with some logical reason.
Stuffing the calendar page into his pocket, he started to pull the chair up to the desk.That was when he first noticed the pillow on the seat.Not a seat cushion, something that might reasonably be on the chair, but a bed pillow, still in its pillowcase.
He wondered who had put it there, and if it was an act of compassion or a taunt.He picked it up and sniffed the case.Freddy’s scent, faintly floral, lingered.That devil-woman had taken a pillow from her bed and placed it on her desk chair, expecting him to find it and be reminded that he was a greenhorn who didn’t belong here!This was no act of compassion.This was an act of war.His first instinct was to toss the pillow across the room.But, sad to say, he could use the extra padding, although he wasn’t as sore today as he had been the day before.He plumped the pillow and settled into the chair.Then he picked up the telephone to begin his business day.
With his first call, he instructed his lawyer to draw up a partnership agreement.Then he spent the rest of the morning haggling with loan officers about interest rates.
Freddy didn’t reappear at lunch, either, so Ry used the office again that afternoon when the eager real estate agent arrived at the True Love with the offer typed and ready for Ry’s signature.The agent would send the papers to Joe in the overnight mail, and Joe would hand-deliver them to Chase Lavette before shipping them back to Tucson.
Once Ry had put everything in motion toward acquiring the ranch, he sat at the desk tapping the surface with his pen.He had a decision to make.His plane left the next afternoon, and technically he no longer needed to stay in Arizona.The real estate agent would forward the offer to Westridge.Assuming the company accepted it, the closing wouldn’t take place for at least two weeks, maybe longer, depending on how efficiently the paper shufflers did their jobs.
But Ry didn’t want to go back to New York.
Illogical though it seemed, he felt as if he needed to be physically on the True Love to guarantee the sale.His possessiveness grew with each hour he spent there, almost as if he’d planted a flag in the ground in the same way homesteaders had during the Oklahoma Land Rush.
Besides, now that his butt was healing, he was ready to get back on a horse and toughen himself up.He wanted some jeans and boots of his own to ride in, and he wanted to inspect the ranch in more detail, including the cattle.
And then there was Freddy.He had to figure out how to deal with her.He shouldn’t have kissed her again.So what if they were attracted to each other?She didn’t want a relationship any more than he did.Romantic involvement would be messy now and possibly disastrous in a couple of years, when the partnership sold the ranch.
Ry was already thinking of ways to soften the blow with better retirement plans for the older employees and financial backing for Freddy and Leigh if they wanted to purchase another ranch.But he wasn’t about to buy trouble by announcing those plans now.He just wanted an amiable working relationship with the foreman of his ranch, a relationship that would guarantee a smooth transition when the time came to bring in the developers.
Duane stuck his head in the office doorway, his chewing tobacco making a bulge in his lower lip.“Freddy’s not back yet?”
“I haven’t seen her.”
“Okeydoke.”Duane turned away.
“Want to leave her a message?”
Duane swung back, as if Ry had offered a brilliant solution.“I could do that.”His smile revealed tobacco-stained teeth.“Leigh asked me to report on Mikey, is all.Looks like he ain’t got no infection or nothin’.”
Ry tore a fresh sheet of paper from the legal pad he’d been using for his figures and began scribbling a note to Freddy.“That’s great news.”
“Leigh wanted me to tell Freddy she was goin’ over to Whitlock’s to practice team ropin’.”
