True Love Ranch. Elizabeth Harbison
glow of that summer romance had worn off eventually, and when he’d met a town girl named Maura Kinney, who was available and willing, he hadn’t bothered to resist.
When Maura had told him she was pregnant, he’d done the right thing and married her. Why not? Maybe he was still thinking of Darcy, but Darcy had married some high rider in the East and was, presumably, going to live happily ever after with him.
He took a deep breath and then let it out, trying to relax his tense shoulders and neck. He still remembered the long months of wishing Darcy would come back, but not daring to ask Ken about her. He should have asked anyway, he realized now. But the boy he’d been was so cowed by the powerful R. Kenneth Beckett that he hadn’t dared let anyone know the depth of his feelings for the great man’s granddaughter. Hell, he’d been lucky to be able to hold on to his job. In those days, it wasn’t so easy to find good work that paid a fair wage; he couldn’t risk it.
Instead, he’d hidden his feelings. After all, he was young and he knew it. He thought surely his crush on Darcy would fade. It did, to an extent, when he wrote to her and didn’t get an answer. He even wrote a second time, just in case the first letter had been lost. Then a third time. Then he gave up. And he’d gone to so much trouble to get the address from Kenneth’s book without the old man knowing it, too.
Joe sighed, remembering. Eventually he’d started a life with another woman and his unborn child. He’d never truly been in love with Maura, but she’d been his friend. When she’d died after a short illness a couple of years ago, it had been a blow. Together they’d worked to build a life. When she died he’d had to start all over again.
He fastened his eyes on the route ahead. The old Watson place, a broken ruin of a house, was up there on the right. Almost home. The T.L. Ranch. He did this drive every day, but today, with the lawyer’s meeting pending, it felt completely different—different because when he arrived at the ranch he’d get out of the car and be face to face again with Darcy Beckett.
He’d been waiting for this day for a long time. Rosanna Kinney, his late wife’s sister, had been hounding him for the past eight months to get on out to her Oklahoma ranch and take over as foreman.
He would have refused flat out except that Rosanna had paid a large balance of Maura’s hospital bills, and now Joe felt indebted to her. If Maura had told him about the loan before it was too late—heck, if she’d told him about the necessity of getting the loan—he would have done something else, anything else, to get the money.
But Maura hadn’t told him, and so he didn’t find out until after the funeral.
Rosanna proposed that he pay back the twenty-thousand dollars in sweat equity. Besides, she pointed out, Ricky and Joe needed a home, not just a place to live and work. Joe said he’d come after his ailing employer no longer needed him. Well, Kenneth Beckett no longer needed Joe or anyone else.
Now Joe had a five-year plan to work off his debt to his sister-in-law and save enough to start his own ranch in Wyoming. He’d already picked the spot. It was great land and underdeveloped. It would come cheap. With what he had saved now, and what he’d accumulate in the next five years in Oklahoma, he would be set.
He’d even been feeling optimistic about it lately. It figured that Darcy would show up now, just to throw him off.
But it was temporary. He was leaving for Oklahoma; it was part of The Plan. Until recently that plan had been unappealing to him, but now it was starting to seem like a really good idea. After today’s meeting, Joe would have no more excuses for remaining in Holt.
He glanced back at Darcy. Suddenly it seemed that the sooner he got out, the better it would be for him. Falling for Darcy Beckett again was one mistake this foolish cowboy couldn’t afford to make again.
Chapter Two
Darcy rounded a corner, still following the pickup and thinking about the old days. She could see Joe in her mind’s eye, a little younger, a little thinner and a bit more baby-faced...but as devastatingly handsome as he was today. She never dreamed he’d still be working at the ranch. For years she’d felt guilty about the fact that he’d probably been fired; now it turned out that he never had been.
But her grandfather had been so angry! Once he’d learned of their secret trysts, he’d sent Darcy straight home, even though it was only the beginning of August. She’d assumed Joe had been sent on his way, too, especially when her letters had gone unanswered.
Now that she thought about it, though, it figured that he hadn’t been. R. Kenneth Beckett’s world was a man’s world. Always had been. She could see it now: Joe had been given a warning and a wink.
She turned into the driveway, and the ranch spread out before her. Her heart soared. Acres and acres of sharply angled hills, dotted with horses of all sizes and colors, cradled the beloved house in a valley.
It didn’t look much like a ranch, apart from the horses on the hill. It never had. The ranch had been built by a Swiss settler centuries before, and to Darcy the old European styling had always seemed like the setting for a fairy tale.
The house was large, with pointed gables and shady eaves. Thick vines climbed the wall and snaked across the front, netting the building’s facade like a spider web. The windows were beveled lead glass with diagonals of iron bar slashing it into diamonds. The window sills, however, were scaly with peeling paint. Closer inspection revealed two of the windows on the far corner of the house were broken, and Darcy could clearly see boards behind several others.
When had that happened? Grandfather had always taken great pride in his home. There had never been a chip of paint missing, much less scales of it peeling off.
Darcy swallowed a lump in her throat. If she’d known he was ill, if she’d known that the house had practically fallen to ruin, would she have tried one more time? Yes, a melancholy voice inside her said, of course I would have. Another question followed quickly: Would he have responded with more warmth if he’d known their time for reconciliation was drawing to a close?
Apparently not. After all, he had known he was ill, and yet he had neither contacted her nor had anyone else do so.
Bullheaded to the bitter end.
She tightened her hands on the steering wheel. It was more comfortable to be angry with him than to miss him. There was no point in mulling over the past.
Darcy parked the car next to the pickup truck and got out warily, watching Joe Tyler from the corner of her eye.
Joe raised his eyebrow. “You ready?” He gestured toward the house.
Darcy straightened and kept walking. “Yes, I am.”
“You don’t look ready. You look like you’ve been crying. Are you okay?”
“Yes, of course I’m okay.” She sniffed and hated herself for the giveaway. “It’s just hay fever. I always have hay fever when I come here.” She walked quickly toward the front door.
He followed.
Darcy hesitated at the door. She had always just walked right in, but that had been a very long time ago. She wasn’t at all sure whom she’d find in the house now or what they would expect of her.
She pushed the doorbell and waited, trying to ignore the fact that Joe Tyler was standing close behind her. Right—as if anyone could ignore such a presence. For one thing, he smelled fantastic. She could detect a hint of sweet laundry detergent or fabric softener mingling with the crisp masculine scent of aftershave. It was a combination that tempted her to lean back into him, as if collapsing into a freshly made bed.
Heat pulsated from him right through the gauzy batiste of her pantsuit. His proximity felt uncomfortably... what was the word? Intimate flew to mind. The heat that passed from him to her felt intimate.
This foolish line of thinking was getting her nowhere. A long time ago she and Joe had shared a predictable teenage curiosity about each other. Nothing more, she insisted silently. It was a lifetime ago, and Darcy had