All I Need Is You
Authors: Johanna Lindsey
| All I Need Is You |
| Straton Family [2] |
| Johanna Lindsey |
| HarperCollins (1997) |
Headstrong Casey Straton inherited her mother's beautiful eyes and her father's stubborn temperament. So when she is denied the responsibility of running her grandfather's ranch despite her unladylike prowess at roping, riding and shooting the high-spirited hellion storms away from her Texas home, determined to prove she can do much more than "woman's work."
Successful businessman Damian Rutledge III came West for vengeance. But though he possesses a powerful physique and unwavering courage, the handsome Eastern "dude" would have surely been lost in the wild west without the timely intervention of a half-pint bounty hunter called "Ed." There is more to this fearless gunslinger than first meets the eye, however. And when Damian discovers his rescuer is, in fact, a stunningly sensuous young lady named "Casey' in disguise, he realises dial there are going to be very serious complications on the rocky trail that is leading them both toward a dangerous, irrepressible...
All I Need Is You
For A.J.
His father’s pride, his mother’s joy,
and his grandparents’ delight.
Welcome to the family, kiddo
.
“I don’t give a damn if you are part owner…
When Casey stormed from the room, she didn’t head upstairs.
There was a fire up ahead, a campfire—at least, Damian…
I’m on my way to Texas to kill a man.
The smell of coffee woke Damian, but he didn’t stir…
Kid had hunkered down by the fire again and was…
Casey was probably as glad to see Coffeyville the next…
Just one hour further last night on the trail, and…
Damian stood there with his hands raised, incredulous that he…
Damian spent the next few days quite literally cooling his…
Casey spent the rest of that day castigating herself for…
It should have been an uneventful trip to Fort Worth,…
The next town along the route wasn’t really a town,…
Damian didn’t follow immediately after his young friend. If the…
Damian had seen nothing wrong with their sharing a bed.
“How dare you be a girl?”
Damian gave up trying to get any sleep that night.
Casey had thought Damian was joking about sleeping all day.
Having found a watering hole, Casey set up camp a…
An accident. That was what Damian had called the kiss…
On the way to the train station the next morning,…
Casey had been sleeping on one of the thickly upholstered…
Casey was in the habit of asking around, in each…
The Jersey Lilly, where Judge Roy Bean held court whether…
Even though she realized that it was only temporary, being…
At first, Damian found it quite amusing; Casey’s legendary composure…
The very first thing she noticed about Barnet’s Saloon was…
“Two brothers, both wanting to be mayors? Do you believe…
Casey wasn’t in top form the next morning. She’d stopped…
Expecting trouble, Casey didn’t get much sleep that first night…
The ambush occurred about an hour out of Sanderson the…
Damian couldn’t see behind the boulder that Casey had claimed…
Casey awoke to find herself belly-down over a saddle on…
It had been days since he’d seen Casey. Damian had…
It was the middle of the following afternoon by the…
It was a frustrating dilemma, whether to chase down Casey…
They’d marched her back over to the saloon, where with…
The little cabin must have been a regular hideout, because…
It was becoming dark real fast, too fast. Jethro had…
A bright, nearly full moon allowed them a quick ride…
By the time they dropped Jed off at the undertaker…
There was an overnight stop in the next town, as…
Courtney was on the west range of the ranch when…
Casey paused on the hill overlooking the Bar M Ranch…
Later, in her spacious bedroom, a room still in the…
Damian was having a real hard time traveling with Jack…
It was a mansion by any standards, the K.C. ranch…
I’m beginning to think I never should have told you…
Casey found her father sitting on his horse outside the…
Damian should have gotten on the next train heading north.
Damian was about halfway to Chicago when he decided to…
Casey and her mother took over the separate bed compartment…
Casey couldn’t believe her rotten luck. To go from that…
Two days later, Casey arrived halfway through the dinner Damian…
They all gathered just before sunrise the next morning, while…
Casey was already packing by the time Damian arrived at…
Casey had taken the time to find out a few…
Good comes with the bad and vice versa. Damian tried…
Texas, 1892
“
I
don’t give a damn if you are part owner of that ranch, you’re not going to run it!”
“That’s not fair and you know it! You’d let Tyler run it if he was here.”
“Tyler’s a full-grown man now. You’re just seventeen, Casey.”
“I don’t believe you said that. He’s full-grown at one year older’n me, when women my age have husbands and three kids already? But that’s not grown up enough for you? Or is it just because I’m a woman? And if you say it is, I swear I’ll never speak to you again.”
“A welcoming thought at the moment.”
Neither of them meant it, but you couldn’t tell that by looking at them. Courtney Straton watched her husband and only daughter glaring at each other and sighed long and loud, hoping to get their attention. It didn’t work. The argument had escalated from heated words to shouting, and when Chandos and Casey argued,
subtlety didn’t work. She doubted they even recalled that she was there.
This was an old argument. However, it had never been this heated before. Ever since Fletcher Straton had died last year, the ultimate fate of the Bar M Ranch was in question. The ranch would have belonged to Chandos, but Fletcher, knowing his son, had put a provision in his will that if Chandos refused the inheritance, the ranch would then go in equal shares to his three grandchildren. Which was exactly what had happened.
Chandos didn’t need the ranch. He had done well for himself. The incentive had been there, to prove to his father that he could match him, and he’d done that well enough. He might not own quite as many acres, but he had just as many head of cattle, and his house was nearly twice as large as Fletcher’s, which made it almost a mansion.
Combined, the Bar M and K.C. ranches formed one of the biggest spreads in Texas. Because they were owned by father and son, most folks had always considered them combined. It was only the father and the son who didn’t, and now only Chandos who still insisted on keeping them separate.
But separate didn’t mean allowing his daughter to run the ranch. He was quick to temper, and Casey wasn’t helping matters by turning stubborn on this particular subject no matter how serious she was about it.
They were much alike, these two. Unlike her two fair-haired brothers, Tyler at eighteen and Dillon, who was only fourteen, Casey took after
Chandos in temperament and in looks. She got her hair from him, black as pitch. She got her height from him, making her, at five feet nine inches, about the tallest girl in the county.
The only thing Casey had inherited from Courtney was her remarkable eyes. On Casey, they were like softly glowing amber jewels. And for all that she professed to be a woman and
was
one by the standards of the West, where young women married at such young ages, she was late in filling out. Tall, lean, and lanky like her father, though without his muscles.
Yet she was a very pretty girl, if she would be still long enough for one to notice. Trouble was, Casey was never still. Standing, sitting, she was always in motion of one sort or another, pacing, or talking with her hands, or walking with long, masculine strides.
But if you caught her in a quiet moment, you’d notice how large her eyes were, how flawlessly smooth her skin was under her tan, how her nose was shaped rather pertly. Her brows were a bit too thick, her chin a bit too stubborn—like her father’s—but added to her finely chiseled cheekbones, these features weren’t so noticeable. What was disconcerting, though, was that she had the same uncanny ability as Chandos to hide her emotions when she chose to, completely, so that you had no idea whatsoever what she was thinking or feeling.
This wasn’t one of those times. But Casey had another of Chandos’s traits—strategizing. When one tactic didn’t work, she usually resorted to another.
Shouting hadn’t worked, so she switched to a
calmer tone. “But the Bar M needs someone in command.”
“Sawtooth is doing well enough.”
“Sawtooth is sixty-seven years old. He was retired and living peacefully on his little spread when Grandpa died. He agreed to take over the reins only until you could find someone else. But you haven’t found anyone willing to take on those responsibilities without demanding half the profits, and you refuse to manage the place yourself.”
“I have enough headaches here. I don’t have time to divide myself—”
“But I do, and I
can
do it. You know I can. The Bar M is one-third mine. I have every right—”
“You’re not even eighteen yet, Casey—”
“What’s eighteen got to do with anything, I’d like to know? And besides, I will be in a few months—”
“Which is when you should be thinking about getting married and starting your own family. You can’t do that if you’re saddled with running the Bar M.”
“Marriage!” the girl snorted. “I’m only talking about a couple years, Daddy, just until Tyler finishes college. There isn’t anything I don’t know about running a ranch. You saw to that. You taught me all I know about ranching, all I know about surviving on the trail—”
“Biggest mistake I ever made,” Chandos mumbled.
“No, it wasn’t.” Courtney spoke up finally. “You wanted her to be able to handle any situation if we weren’t around to handle it for her.”
“Exactly,” Chandos said. “
If
we weren’t around.”
“I want to do this, and you haven’t given one good reason why I shouldn’t.”
“Then you haven’t been listening, little girl,” Chandos said, frowning. “You’re too young, you’re a female that the forty-some wranglers on the Bar M are
not
going to want to take orders from, and you’ve reached the time in your life when you should be looking for a husband. You won’t be finding one with your nose buried in ranch accounts and coming in off the range each day sweat-soaked and filthy.”
Casey was red-faced by then, most likely from anger, though it was hard to tell. “Marriage again!” she all but sneered. “There hasn’t been a man around these parts in the last two years worth my taking notice of. Or do you want me to marry just anyone? If that’s the case, I can think of a dozen men who are eligible. I’ll go rope me one tomorrow, if that’s what it’ll take to—”
“Don’t be impertinent.”
“I’m being absolutely serious,” Casey insisted. “You’d let a husband of mine run the Bar M, wouldn’t you? You’d find that perfectly acceptable. Well, I’ll have a candidate for you no later than—”
“You’ll do no such thing. You will
not
marry just to get your hands on those account ledgers—”
“I’ve had my hands on those account books for months now, Daddy. Sawtooth is half blind, if you didn’t realize it. Trying to tally the ledgers
gives him a powerful headache that actually makes him physically ill.”
It was Chandos who was red-faced now, and there was no doubt in his case that it was from anger. “Why wasn’t I told about this?”
“Maybe because every time Sawtooth rides over here to see you, you’re out on the range somewhere. And maybe because you won’t step foot on the Bar M to find out why he came over in the first place. And maybe because you don’t really care about the Bar M. You’d just as soon see it fall to ruin now that Grandpa’s gone, just to spite his memory.”
“Casey!” This from Courtney in an appalled tone.
But Casey had already blanched. She’d gone too far and knew it. And before her father could blast her for doing so, she ran from the room.
Courtney started to assure Chandos that Casey had just let her emotions run away with her, that she hadn’t really meant what she’d said; but, tight-lipped, he marched out of the room right behind Casey. Only not to follow her. He headed off toward the back of the house, a more direct route to the stable, while she’d run toward the front.
Which was entirely too bad. Chandos shouldn’t have let the argument end like that, with Casey riddled with guilt now, but still determined to change her father’s mind. He should have been more explicit with his reasons. He should have pointed out that he didn’t want to see Casey get hurt when she failed, which she was bound to do.
The cowboys on the Bar M might accept her
for a while, because they knew her as Fletcher’s granddaughter, but inevitably there would be new men, and those who didn’t know her and hadn’t known Fletcher would start dissension soon enough. It might be different if she were an older woman, a widow or the like, but she wasn’t. Most men simply wouldn’t take orders from a woman, much less one they considered a young girl.
But Chandos hadn’t mentioned any of that, at least not clearly enough. Courtney would have to talk to her herself, though she would give her a day or two to calm down first. Casey was unpredictable when her emotions were riled.