“He’s not that big.”
“You don’t want a really big horse to hunt,” she replied. “You’d hit your head on too many branches.”
The blue eyes turned momentarily to her face. “I thought you had a job. How do you find the time to hunt?”
“I don’t work weekends. And I have vacations.”
They rode for perhaps ten more minutes in silence and then came to what was clearly a pasture. Jay turned his horse and began to ride along the fence, and Caroline moved abreast of him. “The sky is so blue,” she said, looking up. “It reminds me a little of Ireland.”
“I thought it rained all the time in Ireland.”
“Not all the time. And when the sun comes out the sky is cobalt—-just as it is here.”
“Was your father the ambassador to Ireland?” he asked. He sounded perfectly pleasant but Caroline felt her hackles rise. “No. But I’ve hunted in Ireland.” There was a pause and then she said, she didn’t know why, “In fact, I was once engaged to an Irishman.”
“Oh?” He frowned at a piece of broken fence, pulled up, and got off his horse. Caroline watched as he took a wirecutter from his pocket and proceeded to repair the break. When he was in the saddle again and moving forward, he said, “But you didn’t marry him.”
“No.”
“Why not?” The words were spoken sharply, and she looked at him in surprise.
“I fell in love with the hunting and sort of transferred the feeling to Gerald,” she confessed honestly. “Fortunately, I discovered my mistake before it was too late.”
“And how did Gerald feel?”
She shrugged and looked between her horse’s ears. Gerald had been very upset when she broke their engagement, actually. She still felt guilty about it. “He survived,” she said lightly and turned to encounter a pair of derisive blue eyes.
“Sure,” he said. “And what do you care, anyway?”
“I cared enough not to saddle him with a wife who didn’t love him,” she retorted sharply. “A lot of girls wouldn’t have been so considerate.”
“I gather Gerald was a prize.” He sounded very cynical.
She put up her chin. “He was the Earl of Clontarf. And rather rich. And very very nice.” She gave him a look loaded with meaning.
His too handsome face was filled with mockery. “Unlike present company?”
“Unlike present company,” she agreed cordially.
“An earl. And rich. And very very nice.” He looked at her speculatively. “What was wrong with him? Did he suffer from Oscar Wilde’s problem?”
“Oh!” Her cheeks flamed with color. “No, he did not! Don’t be disgusting.”
“I have such a plebeian mentality.” The sarcasm was out in the open now.
“You do, unfortunately.” Caroline’s lovely mouth curled in disdain. “I can’t imagine where you got it from. Your parents are first-class.”
“One
of my parents,” he corrected her ruthlessly. “The other one was a bitch.” And he put his horse into a gallop, leaving her to follow more slowly, trying to contain her temper.
He had
dismounted and was unpacking the lunch before she caught up to him. Without a word she got off her own horse and walked to the edge of the field to stare at the few cattle she could see grazing in the distance.
“Aren’t you hungry?” he asked behind her back, and she went to sit down on one side of the checkered tablecloth he had spread out. She accepted a sandwich from him and, still not speaking, took a bite. The early-afternoon sun was warm on her back; she had taken off her sweater an hour ago. Jay, she noticed, had rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, exposing tanned, muscular forearms. He chewed slowly, squinting up at the sun.
Caroline pushed her long hair back behind her ears and reached for an apple at the same time Jay did. It was the first physical contact between them, and she felt as if a charge of electricity had shot all through her body. She stared for a moment at his hand as it lay on top of hers, and then he removed it and stood up.
“You can have the apple if you like,” she said, her voice a shade huskier than usual. Her hand still felt the touch of his.
“No thanks.” He turned his back on her and went over to the horses. She stayed where she was and bit into the apple. The juice felt good in her suddenly dry throat. The air between them was thick with tension. Caroline finished her apple and began to pack up the remains of the lunch. He turned to watch her but made no move to help.
“If you want to put this in your saddlebag, we can get moving,” she said.
“All right. We still have quite a few gates to check.” Despite his level voice she could see him controlling his breathing. He took the repacked lunch from her, carefully avoiding any physical contact, and put it in his saddlebag. Then he remounted. “Coming?” he asked expressionlessly.
She looked up at him from the ground and felt her stomach muscles knot. God, she thought. I don’t need this. “Yes.” Her voice was as studiously expressionless as his. “I’m ready. Let’s go.” And she swung up into the saddle.
* * * *
Caroline had come close to marrying two men in her life; had in fact been engaged to both of them. The first was Clifford Van Leuven, a law student at the University of Virginia, where Caroline had gotten her undergraduate degree. She had been a junior when she met Cliff, and in her senior year they got engaged and moved in together. He was graduating from law school at the same time she would finish college, and they planned an autumn wedding.
Both Nancy and Ambassador Carruthers had been broad-minded about Caroline’s living arrangements. They liked Cliff, who came from an old and moneyed family.
Caroline had broken their engagement a week before her graduation. It upset everyone: Cliff, his parents, her parents, and not least of all herself. She liked Cliff very much. He was a first-class person, and she knew it. She knew that any girl who landed him could count herself lucky. And he loved her; she knew that as well. She had told herself that her liking was bound to turn into something stronger, that once she went to bed with him the spark that had never quite lit for her would take fire.
It hadn’t. And as time went by she realized that it never would. It just wasn’t there for her, and reluctantly she had come to the conclusion that she would have to break the engagement off.
Deep inside her cool, sophisticated exterior, Caroline was waiting for her prince, for the man who would sweep her off her feet and turn her world upside down. A year ago she had thought she had found him in Gerald FitzMaurice, Earl of Clontarf. She had been on vacation in Ireland staying with some friends of her father’s, and she met him at a hunt meet. She was dazzled by his charm, his aristocratic elegance, his house, his horses, his title, and the fact that he had clearly fallen for her. When he asked her to marry him she said yes, taken up by visions of being Lady Clontarf and enjoying a life of hunting in the beautiful Irish countryside.
But Gerald, the man, failed to sweep her off her feet. As a lover he proved to be skillful, tender, and passionate, but for some reason Caroline felt something lacking. She was furious with herself. What more could she possibly want out of life? she kept asking herself. Half the girls in the British Isles would give their eyeteeth to marry Gerald.
But in the end she had broken their engagement, again upsetting both their families and hurting him deeply. Her father had been extremely annoyed with her. “What on earth’s the matter with you, Caroline?” he had demanded. “If you’re not going to go through with the marriage, will you for God’s sake refrain from getting engaged? Nancy even had invitations printed up this time.”
“I’m sorry, Daddy,” was all she could say. “I thought I loved him, but I don’t. I’m sorry.”
“What kind of man are you waiting for, anyway?” her father had snapped in irritation. “If Cliff and Clontarf aren’t good enough? A prince?”
She rode alongside her stepbrother through the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming and looked at him through her lashes. He wasn’t remotely like a prince. He was a tough, arrogant man who had made it perfectly clear that he didn’t like her. But the mere touch of his hand on hers had been more erotic than the intimate caresses of her two fiancés. She knew, with all her feminine instincts, that this was the man who could sweep her off her feet. But she liked him as little as he liked her. She bit her lip and stared resolutely ahead. He spelled danger, she thought, and the best defense would be to keep as far away from him as she possibly could. She would go back to Washington.
“And how come you aren’t married?” she asked, her voice cool and husky. “I should think you’d want an army of sons to come after you here.”
The look he gave her was cold and unsmiling. “I’m thinking about it,” he said.
“Oh? In the abstract or the particular?”
“The particular.” His thick hair had fallen forward over his forehead, and he raised a hand and impatiently pushed it back. “She’s not rich,” he said dryly, “but she’s very pretty. And very very nice.”
“Unlike present company,” said Caroline.
He turned his head to look at her, and for some absurd reason Caroline’s spirits lifted. She grinned, and after a minute the corner of his own mouth twitched in response.
“Think it over carefully,” she advised. “I learned the hard way not to let someone rush you into an engagement. I did it twice.”
“Twice?”
He began to laugh.
“It wasn’t funny,” she said wryly. “I upset a whole lot of people.”
“You impressed me as a lady who knew her own mind.” He raised an eyebrow. “Evidently I was wrong.”
“Evidently.” She frowned in bewilderment. “It was very distressing,” she confessed. “My father was absolutely furious with me.” The breeze blew her long blond hair back from her face, and she looked up at him out of wide, grave eyes. The bone structure of her face was flawless, her tanned skin the color of pale honey.
All the humor left his face. “Some women are like that,” he said flatly.
Her eyes narrowed. “Like what?”
“Fickle,” he replied coldly.
“You’re such an expert on women?” she asked sarcastically.
“On that kind I am. I lived with one for ten years, remember. I saw the kind of havoc they can wreak. My father’s never really recovered from it.” His face was set, his eyes a hard, metallic blue. “I’m sorry for your fiancés, but they can count themselves lucky to have escaped the net.”
“You are a narrow-minded, ignorant, arrogant boor.” Her voice was precise as she listed the unflattering adjectives. “And I pity any girl fool enough to marry you.”
They stared at each other in mutual dislike. “Why the hell did you accept my father’s invitation to stay here?” he asked disagreeably. “I thought you were supposed to have a job.”
“I didn’t accept, my father accepted for me.” Temper was making her eyes look very green. “And I’m on an unpaid leave from my job.”
“You’re obviously not very reliable there, either.”
Her back was ramrod-straight, and her horse, sensing her tension, began to fidget. “I work on special projects. I’m between jobs at present.”
“Of course,” he said with lethal courtesy. “You would need time to get away on all those vacations—Ireland, Wyoming ... do you ski in Switzerland in the winter?”
As a matter of fact, she did. “Shut up,” she said between clenched teeth.
“Why don’t you just go home, Caroline? You can probably even fit in a little shopping in New York before you go back to work.”
Half an hour ago she had had every intention of leaving Wyoming. But now she put her chin up and stared at him stonily. “I wouldn’t dream of hurting your father’s feelings,” she said.
His hands must have tightened on the reins, for his own horse began to sidle. He swore under his breath. “I couldn’t agree more,” she said icily. They finished their ride in inimical silence.
* * * *
Hank Rogers rode into the barn corral as Caroline and Jay were unsaddling their horses. He had a small boy in the saddle in front of him, and he gave Caroline a courteous nod before he said, “Mary Anne’s here, Jay. Your dad brought her back from Sheridan a while ago.”
“Oh?” Jay looked surprised. “I didn’t know she was coming out.”
“I think your dad thought she’d be company for Miss Carruthers.”
“I see.” Jay’s face suddenly broke into a smile. “Hi there, Gary,” he said to the child. “How’s the fella?”
“Fine,” the little boy replied with a grin. “I’m helping my dad.”
“I can see that. I sure wish I had a fine helper like you.”
“You can borrow him anytime,” the foreman said dryly, and Jay laughed.
“Is the lady helping you?” Gary asked.
Jay’s smile faded. “This is Miss Carruthers, Gary. She’s visiting my dad for a while.”
Caroline ignored her stepbrother and, stepping forward, held out her hand. “Hi, Gary,” she said. “You can call me Caroline.”
The little boy shook hands. “You have pretty hair,” he said earnestly.
“Thank you, sweetheart.” She smiled. “And you have some pretty sharp boots there.”
The little boy swelled with pride, and Hank Rogers chuckled. “He just got them for his birthday.”
“Jay
gave them to me,” said the child and bestowed a dazzling smile on her stepbrother.
“They look good, Gar,” Jay said.
“Well, we’re on our way to the farm,” said Hank. “I just wanted to let you know about Mary Anne.”
Jay stepped back. “Thanks, Hank.” He watched the man ride out of the corral and then turned back to his own horse.
“What an adorable child,” Caroline said. “How old is he?”
“Four. He’s Hank’s youngest.”
“Do they live here on the ranch?” she asked curiously.
“Yes. They have the house at the other end of the valley.”
“How do the children get to school? It’s so remote here.”
“Madeleine drives them to meet the school bus out at 14. From there it’s about forty miles to school.”
“That’s a long day for small children,” she said.
He shrugged. “I did it. It’s not bad.” They had finished with the horses, and now he said, “You’d better come along and meet Mary Anne.”
“Is she the particular you were talking about?” Caroline asked as they were walking toward the house.