The Heart of Hill Country Read online

  “Where does that leave us?” she asked, suddenly exhausted by the tension of the past few hours.

  He leveled a look straight into her eyes, a look filled with questions and regrets. Then he sighed. “I wish to hell I knew, angel. I wish I knew.”

  * * *

  Clint left the kitchen feeling more hopeless than he ever had in his life. To her everlasting credit, his mother had raised a houseful of optimists. She had refused to blame his father for walking out on them. She had never said a harsh word about the man who had left her to cope with all those children and a mountain of debts. She had just taken his departure as one more challenge to make them all stronger.

  All of them had grown up believing that with just a little effort life could be better than it had been. He wouldn’t say his brothers and sisters were overachievers, but they were undaunted by a good challenge. They’d heard the old adage about turning life’s lemons into lemonade so often, none of them could drink the stuff.

  He’d been the same until today. He’d been fortunate enough to go a lifetime without being distrusted. Back home, folks knew the Bradys were honest, if poor. In Montana, he’d paid off every debt he owed, including the ranch. As of last month, it was his free and clear. If he gave his word, he kept it. No one had ever had cause to worry about the kind of man he was.

  Now these people who didn’t know him at all found his motives suspect. He supposed it was natural enough that they would worry about one of their own, that they would think first of protecting Angela, but the instinctive lack of trust in him cut just the same. Worse, he had no idea how to rectify it. Words weren’t the answer. And actions, the kind of actions that would deepen respect and engender real trust, took time, time he didn’t have.

  Sooner or later he would have to head back to Montana. He had a good foreman there looking after things now, but he couldn’t rely on Hardy Jenkins shouldering the burden of running the ranch forever.

  As he trudged up the stairs, it seemed he carried the weight of the world. Maybe he’d feel better with a good night’s sleep. Maybe in the morning he’d have the answers that eluded him tonight.

  He was halfway to his room—it was a damn suite, actually—when the man most on his mind exited a room down the hall. Harlan Adams smiled, his expression totally open and free of guile. Maybe he was already overcoming his suspicions, Clint thought hopefully.

  “You aren’t sneaking off to bed at this hour, are you?” Harlan asked.

  “I was considering it,” Clint admitted. “I’ve got some thinking to do.”

  “Not when there’s a poker game about to start downstairs in Luke’s office,” he insisted. “Son, that would be downright foolish. Nothing takes a man’s mind off his troubles better than a game of cards. You haven’t played poker until you’ve played with us. Before the night’s out, one of us is bound to bet the whole damn ranch.”

  “With my luck, I’d win it,” Clint muttered under his breath. That would really win the family over, he thought.

  “Never can tell, you might,” Harlan said, proving his hearing was as sharp as ever. He looped a powerful arm around Clint’s shoulders and propelled him back downstairs.

  “Almost lost my own spread to Janet once,” he confided. “That woman can play poker. She’s got a sneaky side to her nature. Jenny’s the same way. They even won over old Mule, God rest his soul.”

  “Mule?”

  Harlan grinned. “Cantankerous man, but the best danged card player in Los Pinos. Mule had vowed never to play cards with a woman, but those two changed his mind. He said the kind of gumption and daring they had with a lousy pair of deuces was downright scary.”

  “Will they be playing tonight?” Clint asked, trying to imagine the fierce competitiveness of husband against wife and daughter. From what he’d observed of Janet and Jenny, it ought to be amusing.

  “Hell, no,” Harlan declared fervently. “I can’t have the two of them showing me up in front of my own boys, can I? Besides if Jenny ever gets her hands on another share of White Pines, she’s threatened to put a Bloomingdales on it. I can’t have that, even if she does swear that without a few fancy department stores around she’ll move back east one day, just so she can spend a decent day shopping.”

  “And you believe her?”

  “Did once,” he claimed. “I’m not so sure anymore. Not since she’s discovered Nieman-Marcus. Of course, with Jenny you never know quite what to expect. She’s a lot like her mama that way, lively and unpredictable.”

  To Clint’s amusement, he actually sounded as if he considered it possible that one day Jenny would impulsively erect a huge store on his property just so she could shop. It also seemed as if it didn’t bother him all that much. Before Clint could analyze how a man could be so blasé about losing his land, they reached Luke’s office.

  “Look who I’ve roped into joining us,” Harlan announced as they entered.

  “Ah, another lamb to the slaughter,” Cody retorted. “Do you have any card sense at all?”

  “I’ve played a game or two,” Clint said.

  “Which probably means he won half of Montana playing poker,” Jordan assessed.

  “It was blackjack, actually,” Clint said, only partially in jest. He hadn’t won his land that night, but he’d won the down payment for it.

  “Does everybody have their deeds tucked away in a vault back home?” Luke inquired dryly as he poured Clint a shot of whiskey and set it in front of him.

  “Are you kidding? Kelly won’t even tell me where she has ours for safekeeping,” Jordan replied.

  “Melissa either,” Cody added.

  “Janet and I don’t have secrets,” Harlan boasted. “I know precisely where the deeds are.”

  “Sure you do,” Luke taunted. “In her office, locked in her vault.”

  “OK, OK, enough of this nonsense,” Harlan grumbled. “Who’s dealing?”

  “We’ll cut for it. High card deals,” Luke said, shuffling the deck one last time.

  Clint pulled a ten and figured that was the end of it. He waited for one of the others to come up with an ace or even a jack. Instead, the ten took it and Luke handed him the cards, along with a warning.

  “We take this seriously, son. No fancy games and nothing wild.”

  “Except our manners,” Cody said. “As the night wears on, we forget everything our mama taught us.”

  “We get drunk,” Harlan translated. “One of us tries to stay sober enough to haul the others up to bed.”

  “Who’s turn is it?” Cody asked.

  “Yours,” Luke and Jordan taunted, removing the tumbler of whiskey in front of him.

  “I think Clint ought to do it,” Cody protested.

  “And have him see us at our worst and remember it? No way,” Harlan said. “We might end up with our faces on the front page of the Dallas papers.”

  Clint stiffened at the suggestion that he’d resort to blackmail. It was only part of the rowdy teasing he was sure went on all the time with these men, but it cut a little too close to the accusations he’d all too recently been discussing with Angela. Thievery, blackmail, what would be next?

  He glanced across the table and saw that Harlan was observing him with a steady gaze. He thought there was a message in that gaze, but he was damned if he could read it.

  “Five-card draw,” he said quietly and dealt the cards.

  Luke won the first hand, which had the rest of them accusing Clint of stacking the deck to win over his prospective father-in-law. When Luke won the second hand as well, a hand dealt by Jordan, the men went silent.

  They played now with a fierce intensity, the same way they did everything else. They’d played for a couple of hours when the cards began falling Clint’s way. The chips stacked up in front of him. He had a nice bundle, when Harlan glanced at his watch and declared the evening over.

  “Tha
t’s it, boys. It’s after midnight and I’m getting too old for this nonsense.”

  “Janet got you on a limited budget?” Luke teased.

  “Nope, I just know when a man’s on a roll. If the rest of you can’t see it, then stay here and lose a few more dollars. I’m going up to my nice, warm bed and my nice, warm wife.”

  “Ah,” Luke said. “Now that’s a concept I can embrace.” He, too, stood up.

  “I guess that’s it, then,” Jordan said. “Congratulations, Clint. Nice playing. I think I hear Kelly calling me, too.”

  “Melissa’s been calling to me for the past hour, but you haven’t seen me dashing off to bed,” Cody protested. “Besides, you guys, what about poor Clint? He doesn’t have a wife upstairs.”

  “He can rectify that anytime he wants to,” Luke responded dryly.

  “I wonder about that,” Clint said sorrowfully. “Angela doesn’t seem inclined to make an honest man of me.”

  “Are you asking for our advice?” Harlan asked eagerly, clearly ready to sit down again if called upon for some wisdom about the battle of the sexes.

  Clint laughed at the four men who were poised to stay and help him out with courting Angela. “Thanks, anyway,” he said. “I have the feeling you all would just get me in more trouble than I’m in already.”

  “You’re probably right,” Cody said. “Not a one of us can claim our courtships were smooth sailing.”

  “And none of us learned a darned thing from our mistakes,” Jordan added. “You go with your own instincts, Clint. You’re the one she’s in love with. Even I can see the way she looks at you and Kelly claims I’m clueless on emotional issues. You must have been doing something right up there in Montana.”

  After they’d gone, as Clint made his way upstairs, he tried to remember exactly what he’d done to impress Hattie Jones. About the only thing he recalled with any certainty was seducing her on the night they’d met. It wasn’t a tactic he could try with the woman eight and a half months pregnant.

  Or was it? He paused at the top of the steps and stared at the closed door opposite his own. Was Angela lying in bed wide awake, tormented by thoughts of lovemaking the way he’d been night after night? What would she do if he slipped quietly into her room and settled himself into bed beside her, if only to hold her close until morning? How long would it take her to wake the household? He envisioned a whole line of very shaky guns aimed in his direction. Drunk as they all were when they’d parted, at least one of them was still bound to hit him if they accidentally fired.

  Even with that image sharply defined in his head, he reached for the doorknob and quietly turned it. He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him, then waited, his heart thundering in his chest, to see if his movements had disturbed her.

  “You might’s well come all the way in,” she said as if she’d been wide awake and expecting him. “What’s the matter? Did you lose your way back to your own room?”

  His eyes adjusted to the room’s darkness and his gaze sought out the bed. Though the covers were tangled, there was no sign of Angela in it. Besides, even through his alcohol-induced haze, he grasped the fact that the bed was on his left and her voice had come from somewhere on his right.

  “Angel?”

  “Yes,” she said, her amusement plain. “I’m over here, by the window.”

  He saw her then, seated in a rocking chair beside the huge bay window. A faint trail of moonlight shimmered over her. She had brushed her hair out of its usual careless knot so that it fell in glorious waves to her shoulders. Against the creaminess of her skin and the stark white of her nightgown, her hair shimmered like a cascade of garnets, dark red and mysterious and sensual. Quite simply, she took his breath away.

  “You truly do look like an angel,” he whispered, awestruck as always by her beauty.

  “And you look like a man who’s spent the evening in a saloon,” she retorted dryly. “You’re weaving a bit, cowboy. Sit down before you fall down. Did you have a good time with the Adams card sharks?”

  “I did, indeed. I won.”

  He thought her eyes widened a bit in surprise at that.

  “Really?”

  He pulled his winnings from his pockets and allowed the bills to flutter into her lap. There was a satisfying heap of them when he was done.

  “My, my,” she said, fingering a fifty. “Must have been pretty high stakes.”

  “High enough,” he agreed. “But nobody bet their ranch.”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  He regarded her sadly. “Not that again, angel. I don’t want your money. I don’t want your land. How many times do I have to say it before you believe me?”

  She regarded him speculatively. “What do you want, then?”

  “You,” he said without hesitation. “Just you.”

  Moonlight caught the sheen of tears in her eyes. The sight of them distressed him. “Are you crying?” he asked, kneeling in front of her. He brushed the dampness from her face. “Don’t cry, darlin’. Please don’t cry.”

  “It’s OK. I just wish...” Her voice trailed off.

  “You wish what?”

  She reached toward him and her fingers sifted through his hair, then came to rest on his cheek. “I just wish you meant it.”

  “I do mean it,” he insisted. “From the night we met, I’ve wanted you. There’s never been another woman like you. You make me...”

  “Crazy?” she supplied.

  “Angel, angel,” he protested, “where’s your sense of romance?”

  “Sleeping,” she said briskly. “That’s what we ought to be doing, too. Everyone will be heading out at the crack of dawn. And tomorrow we start all over again at White Pines.”

  Clint stilled. He hadn’t considered the possibility that everyone might go off somewhere for Christmas. Where would that leave him? Was he expected to head on home? Maybe linger back here alone? Or were they automatically assuming he’d be coming along?

  He wondered if he could convince Angela to stay right here with him. They could have their own private holiday celebration, maybe even sort out where they were going without all the well-meaning interference. He was about to suggest just that when he realized that she was describing the last Christmas she’d spent with the whole family.

  “It was just like today, only better. There were tons of presents, because everybody has always gone overboard. Consuela and her cousin Maritza, who works for Grandpa Harlan, fixed enough food to last for a month. Grandpa waited to put up his tree until we all got there, so we could decorate it together. We sang carols while we did it, then we all traipsed off to midnight services.” She sighed. “It was wonderful. Year after year we had the exact same tradition.”

  “And you’ve missed it, haven’t you?”

  “More than anything else we do,” she admitted. Her gaze caught his. “Will you come with us? Will you share it with me this year?”

  The invitation pleased him more than he cared to admit. “If that’s what you want.”

  “It is.”

  “Someday soon, though, you and I are going to have to sit down and talk, all by ourselves, without any interruptions or distractions. The baby’s going to be here any day now and we have to get things settled.”

  “No,” she said sharply.

  He stared at her. “What do you mean, no?”

  “I will not make any sort of a decision about anything just because we have a deadline staring us in the face. Whatever happens between us, whatever conclusions we reach about the future will be made when the time is right and not a minute before that.”

  Clint stared at her in frustration. “Dammit, I want this baby to be born with my name.”

  “That’s what I wanted seven months ago, and you were in no big hurry to accommodate me.”

  He stood up and began to pace. “So this is payba
ck? You’re going to punish the baby, make the kid start life without his father’s name, just because you want to get even with me? How can you be so cruel and heartless?”

  “Of course that’s not what I want,” she snapped. “But I will not marry you just so the baby can have your name. I’ll put your name on the birth certificate. You’ll have your claim to paternity, but any relationship between you and me is going to have to be based on something else, something just between the two of us.” Her flashing eyes clashed with his. “Is that clear enough?” she demanded.

  “Oh, it’s crystal clear,” he muttered as he headed for the door. He paused to take one last shot. “Since you have Janet covering all your legal angles, maybe it’s about time I found an attorney of my own.”

  He heard her sharply indrawn breath across the room. Good, he’d struck a nerve.

  “Clint, no,” she protested, sounding panicked by his impulsive threat.

  He refused to back down. Meeting her gaze evenly, he said, “Good night, angel. Sweet dreams.”

  He closed the door softly behind him, even though he would have preferred to slam it shut. That would have awakened the whole household, though, and he was in no mood to explain the latest argument he and Angela had had.

  It seemed lately as if every time they tried to talk, it disintegrated into some sort of name-calling argument. Hadn’t he concluded not more than a half hour earlier that it was time for actions, not word? There was no time like the present to get started, with his ire roused and his inhibitions weakened by whiskey.

  He threw open the door and crossed the room in three angry strides. She had risen from the rocking chair and stood halfway between it and the bed, her gaze startled. Without a word, he pulled her into his arms and delivered a kiss meant to take her breath away.

  She gave a soft yelp of surprise, then a soft sigh of pleasure as he peppered kisses across her face. He found the hem of her gown and lifted it, his fingers sliding over silky flesh that had filled out into lush, provocative curves.

  When he reached her belly, he slowed and the nature of his touch changed to one of awe. Her skin was stretched taut, and beneath the surface, he felt the stirring of his child. His mood altered in a heartbeat. All of the anger dissolved. Lust gave way to something tender.