Counterfeit Cowgirl (Love and Laughter) (6 page)

“How long have you been in here?” Her voice sounded rather gritty, she noticed.

“Oh, I don’t know. Two, three hours maybe, huh, Nate?” He turned toward the kitchen.

His brother, just visible as he passed the door, blew on his coffee and snorted. His nose was still red from the cold.

“Damn!” Ty said. “You look chilled to the bone. Nate warmed up some soup. Want some?”

She blinked at him. Her eyelashes, she noticed suddenly, were frozen in clumps. “I hate you.”

He laughed. “But I’ll grow on you if you stay around long enough.”

“In that case I’ll be leaving in the morning.”

“But your car don’t start.”

“I’ll walk.”

He laughed again. “It don’t look like you’re gonna be walking far tomorrow. In fact, the way you look, I’ll be surprised if you get out of bed at all. Want some soup?”

She didn’t answer, but silently peeled off her sleet-covered coat and thought of various ways to dismember him.

“No?” he said. “It’s pretty good. How ‘bout some coffee?”

Removing the hooded, zip-up sweatshirt, she let it drop to the floor. It had a hole in the pocket and smelled distinctly of cow manure. Looking down, she saw that her socks had somehow gotten wet and were now stained a strange sort of parchment yellow. It seemed a sad commentary on the decline of her life.

“I’m going to take a bath.” She said the words more to herself than to him.

“Really? Need any help?” he asked, watching her cross the living room toward the stairs.

“Mr. Fox,” she said, turning to stare at him point-blank.

“Yes, Ms. Nelson?”

“I have something to tell you.”

“I wait with bated breath.”

“I have Mace in my purse. The first…” She glared at him, then glared at Nate who appeared in the doorway behind him. “The first
creature
who comes through that bathroom door is going to get a blast up his nose.”

“Oh.” Ty gave her an expression of mock fear that he almost managed to let overtake his grin. “But what if you fall asleep?”

“Then maybe I’ll be lucky and drown before I wake up here again,” she said, then marched up the stairs.

T
RUE, THE WATER PRESSURE
was still pathetic, but the warmth was heavenly. It seeped into Hannah’s very soul, easing her muscles, melting her aches.

Her hair floated around her shoulders and arms. She released a heavy sigh. She couldn’t go on like this. She was simply going to swallow her pride and beg Daddy for help. True, a Clifton Vandegard should never have to apologize to anyone. But she would even do that if Daddy would send her enough money to get home.

But where was Daddy? He’d said that he, too, had to disappear. That LA wasn’t safe for either of them anymore. Her throat contracted. She’d never meant to cause trouble for him, and if he were hurt…

She refused to allow herself to think any further along those lines. George Vandegard was still a powerful man. He could take care of himself. Always had. He had never needed her—except as his little showpiece—the product of the perfect union between European class and American drive. His little princess, rewarded when she was pretty, when she curtsied, when she smiled just so for the cameras. Or so it had seemed to a lonely, out-of-place child with no friends and no understanding that she should even long for some.

Now she wondered. For in the past couple of years, her father had aged, mellowed maybe. Sometimes she would find him watching her with a strange melancholy expression that,
if she had been raised differently, might have enabled her to ask him to share his thoughts, and to share her own with him.

But she hadn’t. She had grown up emotionally independent and environmentally disabled. She could accessorize like a supermodel, she could exchange dry witticisms with dukes and megastars, but she couldn’t microwave a meat loaf.

In short, she was unequipped for life.

It seemed strange now that she hadn’t realized that before. While she’d been learning what kind of hat looked pert yet sophisticated, her peers had been learning how to live.

She was good at nothing.

Weariness sloshed over her, but even so, she knew her thoughts were not quite the truth. She was good at something. She was a fine equestrienne. Colonel Shelby had said so enough times. She had good hands, a firm seat and balance extraordinary, he had said with the fervor of a zealot. But—if she was going to reach Olympic standards, she would have to learn to be selfless, to sacrifice. She would have to have heart.

And so she had quit, because if she wanted heart, Daddy could sure enough go buy her one. She didn’t need the aggravation. And she bad done just fine without Colonel Shelby and his nagging. Skiing trips, shopping and facials could more than fill her days. She had been perfectly content until that night in the parking lot.

But she was safe now.

Her mind felt fuzzy. Daddy had hired a new chef. Perhaps she’d have crepes for breakfast. Sleep settled in like a cloud of cotton, cushioning her body, soothing her nerves.

Time passed softly until the sound of a door opening nibbled at her consciousness. A noise followed that sounded strangely like tiny hooves on linoleum.

“You wouldn’t Mace a movie star, would you?”

Hannah awoke with a start, and grabbed for the shower curtain. There was a scraping sound, and suddenly the whole thing, rod and all, splattered into the tub.

She shrieked, shocked as cool water splashed onto her face.

“Hannah!” Ty said, thumping the door wide and torpedoing into the bathroom. “Are you…” he began, but suddenly his words came to an end. His lips turned up into a satyrlike smile, and he laughed.

Reality hit Hannah like ice water. She wasn’t with Daddy. She wouldn’t have crepes for breakfast, and she was still in hell. Glaring past the edge of the downed shower curtain that draped her body, Hannah raised an arm at him.

“Out!”

He only laughed harder, bending over now to guffaw his glee.

“Out!”
she shrieked.

He reached for the vanity, his hand shaky from his laughter, and drew a towel to his eyes. “If Howard had been half so entertaining, I’d a begged him to stay.”

She wasn’t going to hire a hit man. She was going to do the job herself. And she was going to enjoy it.

“I’m…I’m sorry,” he said, apparently trying to control his jocularity. “But I just…” Laughter again. “Your movie star…”

She would kill him slowly—smother him with the shower curtain, rather like the guy that had fallen into the swimming pool in the first
Lethal Weapon.

Tyrel motioned behind him, and Hannah saw now that the little, knock-kneed calf stood in the doorway, looking bewildered. “Daniel Day-Lewis is hungry. I brought you up a bottle,” Ty said, righting the nippled thing that dripped milk onto the narrow vanity. Apparently he’d tossed it there when she’d screamed.

She allowed sanity to creep in. She couldn’t kill him now. She’d have to get dressed first.

“I’ll feed him downstairs,” she said, gathering the shreds of her dignity.

He stood in silence for a moment, watching her with a crooked grin. She slicked her hair back and defiantly held his gaze. She must look a sight, no makeup, dressed in a crusty shower curtain and deflating soap bubbles.

“I can feed him for you,” he said. “You look tired.”

She straightened. “I’m sorry my appearance isn’t up to your lofty standards,” she said. “I’ll feed the calf.”

“I don’t mind,” he countered.

For a moment silence lay gently between them, but then she remembered herself. “It’s not going to be that easy to back out of our agreement,” she said. “That calf is going to live, and he’s going to live because of me.” She jabbed a thumb toward her chest. Water splashed into her eye. She ignored it for the sake of dignity—a slippery thing lately. “You’ll be paying me a thousand dollars and I’ll be leaving this backwater toilet on the first plane.”

He snorted and bending, lifted Daniel easily into his arms. “Okay. If that’s the way you want it.” He turned, then stopped in the doorway. “Oh, breakfast is at six. I like my eggs over easy.”

O
VER EASY
! Nothing was easy. Not on this piece of godforsaken tundra.

Hannah groaned as she slid her feet over the edge of the bed and onto the floor. The
cold
floor. The cold, uncarpeted floor.

She didn’t have an alarm clock. She’d always regarded them as barbaric, and had insisted on having Maria awaken her with fresh-squeezed orange juice on those rare occasions when she’d had to rise before noon.

But now, despite everything, she had awakened on her own every couple of hours during the night. She didn’t know why. Perhaps she was worried about Daniel, whom she’d fed twice since her bath. Or perhaps it was simply because, no matter what, no matter if the sky fell and the sea turned to chocolate mousse, she was not going to let that half-brained, black-haired Neanderthal man beat her.

He liked his eggs over easy! She would cook them to golden perfection, then dump them over easy on his head!

The image of Tyrel Fox with an egg flopped over one odd flat ear, propelled her out of her nightgown and into jeans
and a short pink, button-down cardigan. She’d bought it on a Christmas trip to London. Derik had said it made her look like a million dollars.

Derik was an Englishman, with an Englishman’s dry wit and fashionably narrow build. She’d thought herself in love with him. Her first love really, and had decided with a virgin’s determination to make him her first lover.

Their kisses had been hot and impassioned. Or so she thought. Too hot. Hot enough to scare her. She had apologetically called a halt. The following morning he’d told his cronies that she’d had to quit before her shell of ice melted off. They didn’t call her the ice witch for nothing. Somehow that cliché had sounded even worse with an English accent.

She’d returned home a wiser woman, she told herself now.

Hurrying to the ancient chest of drawers near the window, she grabbed the brush she’d left there and dragged it through her hair. Then, in a brave moment, she glanced in the mirror before rearing back in horror. Two nights in North Dakota and she looked like this! She’d better keep an eye on the sky or a house would be sure to fall on her. All that would be sticking out was her ruby-colored slippers.

But she didn’t care what Tyrel Fox thought of her looks, she reminded herself. All she had to do was get the work done.

She scowled at herself again, brushed her hair back, and bound it with a ribbon.

Maybe she should add a little foundation. A dab of lipstick? A few strokes of mascara.

No! Not for him. Not for the Barbarian Brothers, she determined, and raising her chin, stomped down the stairs to the kitchen.

It was still relatively clean. She found a pan without undue difficulty, switched on the burner with comparative ease, and broke a couple of eggs into a bowl.

Before long she had breakfast cooking. It was still dark outside and the house was quiet. Never in all her twenty-four
years had she been up at this hour, or if she had, she’d come at it from the other end.

It was then that she heard the noise. She frowned, glanced into the living room, and saw that Daniel was still asleep beneath his parka.

The sound came again, a scraping, mewling noise. Going to the door, she peeked through the window.

A scrawny cat stared up at her. One ear was half the length of the other, and he held one paw carefully out of the snow. He was the color of swirled marmalade and had an attitude like Sean Connery, well aged but alluring.

Hannah opened the door. “Come on in,” she said. “Breakfast is cooking.”

The cat entered with wary slowness, watching her the whole while. She noticed now that his tail was truncated barely five inches above his back.

“Cold?”

The cat didn’t answer.

“Hungry,” she corrected herself, then scowled. What to feed a stray cat in the wee hours of the morning? When she was small, she’d always wanted a cat. But her mother thought them dirty.

This was a cat—kind of, and certainly not too dirty for this place.

“I know just the thing,” she said, and smiling, hurried to the kitchen to take the colostrum from the refrigerator.

In a few minutes, Hannah had set a bowl on the kitchen floor, but the cat only looked furtive.

From the living room, she heard Daniel stumble to his feet, so, taking the bowl with her, she went to greet him and set the colostrum there for the cat to eat when he got up the nerve.

“Just a few minutes, Daniel,” she said, and pattered back into the kitchen to heat more milk.

She was soon holding a bottle to his mouth.

Daniel, stood, arched back, tail lifted as he lowered his charming head and sucked the bottle dry.

“Good boy,” Hannah crooned.

Just then the door opened. Ty stepped in. Hannah lifted her gaze, ready to share her success. It was then that all hell broke loose.

Pans clattered. Nate shrieked, a cat yowled, and suddenly the smell of singed fur permeated the house.

Hannah flew into the kitchen only to find a frenzied cat scrambling over the refrigerator and onto the curtain, from which he launched himself, claws spread, over Nate’s sprawled body and away.

Ty crossed the living room slowly, his boots squeaking on the floor until finally he leaned his weight against the doorjamb.

“Tell me, Ms. Nelson…”

She turned slowly toward him, fully aware of Nate on the floor, the eggs on Nate, and the pan on the eggs.

“Yes, Mr. Fox?” she said, raising her chin and forcing herself to meet his eyes.

For a moment his gaze skimmed her—the pink cable knit cardigan with the tiny pearl buttons down the front, her hips, her legs, her stocking feet. But then he fastened his attention on her eyes. “Did you come here simply to make my life difficult, or is that just a side benefit?”

She pursed her lips. “As a matter of fact, Mr. Fox, that’s my sole purpose in life.”

“Really? I’m so flattered.”

“As you should be.”

“Where’d you find the cat?”

“He found me.”

“Your usual type?”