LoversFeud (18 page)

Chapter Eleven

Back at the Bar C, Bye and Karen sat around one corner of the dining table, putting together the feud’s history they’d reconstructed so Karen could fax it to Slade’s psychologist. While Bye sorted out the notes they’d made, Karen entered information onto her laptop computer. Bye liked that division of labor, because his hands were too big for him to try typing on the tiny laptop screen.

“There you are, Bye. Hi, Karen.”

When Bye looked up at Deidre, he thought she looked awfully pale, but at least she was up now, nearly twenty-four hours after Doc Baines had put her out to calm her hysteria. “Hey, Funny Face. Come join us.”

She took a chair next to Karen and looked over at Bye. “How come you get to be in love and I don’t? I can’t believe Daddy thinks a whole lot more of anybody named Oakley—no offense, Karen—than he did of Travis.”

Bye shot Deidre a sharp glance. “You may think you were in love, but the only thing that cowhand loved about you was money. When he found out you wouldn’t be getting any as long as you were with him, he took off faster than that long-legged bird in the Roadrunner cartoons we used to watch on TV every Saturday.” It hurt Bye to shoot his sister down, but she had to accept the truth. Four had been right when he’d said Mom had sheltered her too much from all the ugliness in her world.

Deidre sniffed. “You probably won’t get anything, either, if you ignore the silly feud and marry Karen. Dad could always decide to give the Bar C to our
brother
.” She spat out the last word as though it were an obscenity.

“I doubt that, but maybe I don’t care. Maybe I’ll go for love, and to hell with the money.” Bye lifted Karen’s hand off the keyboard and brought it to his lips. “And maybe if we’re lucky the silly feud, as you call it, will soon be over.”

“Good luck, but I wouldn’t count on it. I still bet Slade Oakley will shoot you full of buckshot if you try to marry Karen, and I’d hate to lose my only real brother.” With that, Deidre slid her chair back and got up. “I’m out of here. I need a change of scenery, so I think I’ll go spend a week or so with Aunt Cathy down in Houston.”

“Is Mike flying you down there?”

“No.” She shifted from one foot to the other then continued. “I’m going to drive. It’ll give me time to think about what I want to do.”

A silent alarm went off in Bye’s head. “Does Four know?”

“Of course.” Deidre wouldn’t look him in the eye when she spoke, which raised Bye’s suspicion more. “Look, I’m leaving now.”

With that, Deidre practically ran out of the room. Karen shook her head. “You probably ought to go check on your sister. She was acting strange, and after yesterday…”

Strange was an understatement. Nobody in her right mind would take off and drive more than five hundred miles, mostly at night, on a whim. Then he remembered Deidre’s Miata wasn’t back here yet. What the fuck did she think she was going to drive? Bye dug his phone out of his pocket and speed-dialed Four’s cell. “It doesn’t make sense for her to take off this way. Dad?”

Before he finished explaining what Deidre intended, Four interrupted. “I’m out in the east pasture. I want you to make sure your sister doesn’t go anywhere. I don’t know anything about Deidre going to Houston, and I certainly didn’t give her permission to drive there. I’d like to know how she managed to ditch the maid Maria assigned to stick to her like glue.”

“I’ll try.”

“I’m on the way back to the house now,” Four said, and he cut off the connection.

When Bye and Karen hurried outside, all he saw was Karen’s car parked next to the garage. No sign of Deidre. Bye sprinted inside the huge garage. “All our cars are here. Where the hell is she?”

“Isn’t that the young man who brought the message to me at the Neon Lasso?” Karen gestured toward the young ranch hand as he raced up the drive toward them.

By the time he reached the garage, Manuel was panting from exertion. “She…
señorita
Deidre…she took the pickup I was using to bring bags of feed for the horses. I was in the barn, currying
señor
Vampire.”

“Which way did she go?”

“That way,
señor
Bye.” Manuel pointed east. “She just got in the truck and drove.”

“I can’t see the truck. I bet she turned off on the first farm road, and that goes straight to the highway.” If she’d turned there, she’d be off the Bar C before anybody could stop her. They’d play hell, forcing her back home again. “Deidre’s long gone, I’m afraid.”

Karen looked down the road and saw another pickup heading toward them at breakneck speed. “I think that may be your father.”

“Yeah, it is.” As soon as the pickup screeched to a halt, Four leaped out. “Where the hell is Deidre?”

“Gone. She stole one of the pickups right from under Manuel’s nose. I think she must have turned off onto the first farm road, because you’d have seen her if she’d kept going straight.” Four looked frantic, which was how Bye felt.

He turned to the frightened ranch hand. “Manuel, did you leave the keys in the truck?”

“No,
señor
. That truck does not have a key.”

“What the hell do you mean?” Bye asked, his expression grim.

Four put a hand on Bye’s shoulder. “It means your sister took a twenty-year-old piece of rusted metal that’s practically falling apart. Mike jury-rigged a sort of starter for it when the ignition died last month. As soon as the new pickups I ordered finally arrive, I’m sending that relic straight to the junkyard. Manuel, how did you happen to be using that truck?”

“All the other trucks were in use,
patron
. That one, she is better than the ones I drove back home.”

Bye supposed that was the truth, but he hated the idea of his seriously disturbed sister out driving God knew where in a piece of junk only an impoverished Mexican laborer would consider fit to drive. “It’s okay, Manuel. Take the
patron
’s pickup to the garage. He won’t need it again today.”

On the walk back to the house, Bye took Karen’s hand. He needed her, more than he’d have thought possible three short months ago. The warmth that she brought him made this whole tragic situation a little more bearable. “Thank you for being here for me,” he said as they followed Four into the house.

* * * * *

Near midnight, when it seemed they’d exhausted every reasonable means of finding Deidre, Bye laid a hand on Four’s shoulder. “I’m calling Jack.”

“He wouldn’t help us find Deidre even if she was right there in his apartment. She isn’t—or at least that pickup isn’t there. Or anywhere else in Caden, for that matter.” Four sighed. “I cut off his mother and him the other day, with a few hundred thousand bucks to salve my conscience. I’m afraid to say I didn’t do it easy. Neither of them is about to do anything for me now.”

“Four, Jack gave us some papers that have helped us find out what kept the feud going.” Karen didn’t mention the reason Jack had given for looking up the records, for which Bye was grateful. “I believe he’d help us find Deidre if he could.”

Four rubbed at his temple. “You’re soft, lady, like Bye’s mama was. That’s good. Caden men need some softness in their lives.”

Karen blushed. “Why don’t we all go to bed? We’ve done all we can to locate Deidre tonight. She has credit cards she can use if that truck should die. For all we know she may be holed up in a nice motel along the interstate, watching the late movie on TV. Whether she is or not, there’s nothing more we can do to find her now.”

“Karen’s right, Dad. You’ve got an APB out on the truck. We must have called every emergency room in Texas and she’s not in any of them. The best firm of private investigators in the state has operatives working 24/7 to locate her. They already have some leads on where she’s used the credit cards you gave her.

“I’m calling Jack, just in case Deidre got in contact with him. Like it or not, she seems transfixed on punishing him for being her half brother, not her boyfriend.” Bye stood and stretched his sore muscles then moved over to stand behind Karen’s chair.

Four slumped as though the weight of this latest trouble was too much for him to carry. “All right. Go ahead.”

While his father watched, Bye called Jack. When Jack didn’t answer, he left a message. “He’s not answering now, but I’m sure he’ll keep an eye and ear out for Deidre.”

Four looked up at Bye, regret in his expression. “I’ve made a hell of a mess and I know it. I’ll go to my grave thankful Mae never knew about Marianne or Jack, but I owe my children an apology for thirty years of deception—especially Deidre. How the hell was I to know she’d fall for my illegitimate son, or that my mistress suddenly would decide to go public with a relationship that spent more than thirty years under wraps? It’s over now, for good. I’ll never forgive her for what she did to you and Deidre.” It worried Bye when his father steepled his fingers and rested his chin on them.

Bye had never seen Four like this before. Until tonight he’d never thought of his father as old, or as anything less than omnipotent. Now Deidre’s second disappearance in as many days had him racked with guilt, grasping for even the smallest piece of hope that someday his little girl would be all right. “We’ll find her, Dad. Maybe, when we do, we ought to let her find her own way for a while. It didn’t do us much good to drag her back here after she took off with Travis Rodgers.”

“You may be right. Go on, call Jack if you believe he’ll help us find her. I’m going to bed hoping for a decent night’s rest. It will be hard without Mae.” Four sighed then managed a sad smile. “Whether you believe it or not, Bye, I loved her. I envy you two, being able to sleep in each other’s arms.”

* * * * *

“Well, can we?” When he stopped in front of the guest room door Bye bent, brushed Karen’s hair back and whispered against her ear. “Will you come share my bed?”

She wanted to. God how she wanted to be with him tonight. Not so much for sex. They were both too worried about his sister—and his father, who for the first time since she’d met him seemed all too human. Not like the
patron
as his ranch hands saw him as, or like the hard, uncaring patriarch Bye had first described to her. “I don’t know.”

“Four gave us his blessing, don’t you think?”

She couldn’t deny that. Bye’s father had made it crystal clear that he knew they were lovers and didn’t mind. “I think so.”

“Well?”

Tilting her head back, she looked up into his eyes. “Yes. Take me to your room.”

They walked by the staircase again and down the hall past a doorway Bye mentioned went to Deidre’s room. “Are there only the two rooms on this end of the hall?” She’d noticed at least six doors off the other corridor where the guest rooms were.

“We have four bedrooms down here but only two doors that open onto the hall. The children’s wing was built as two suites, one for sons and the other for daughters. It’s kind of a waste, really, since it doesn’t seem as though Caden men have ever produced big families. Go on in.” He opened the door and stepped back for her to go inside.

“Oh. This is gorgeous.” A cream leather sectional sofa, two navy-blue recliners and a huge, free-form cocktail table were centered on an Oriental rug in tones of cream, burgundy and blue. Karen noticed a large flat-screen TV against the inside wall and French doors that apparently led to a balcony like the one outside her guest room window. Bookcases lined the other two walls, with doors centered between them that she assumed must lead to the two bedrooms Bye had mentioned.

“When I was little, this was my playroom. Now the playroom’s in here.” He shot her a sexy grin as he opened one of the doors to reveal a room much like the one where they’d settled her except that it featured a heavy oak bed and highboy dresser with the same masculine-looking color scheme that dominated the playroom. Through an open door, she spied a walk-in closet and a marble-tiled bathroom beyond it.

Karen couldn’t help contrasting Bye’s luxurious quarters with her room at home that overlooked a noisy pumpjack, and the old-fashioned bathroom two doors away, down a narrow hallway. “Mmm, this is nice.”

“I’m glad you like it. Come here.” He held out his arms, and when she walked into them, he closed them around her. “It’s been a long, long day. I’m sorry Deidre had to distract us from piecing together the feud for your pop’s psychologist. We’ll get back on it in the morning. Right now let’s go to bed.”

His hands felt so good on her back, moving up and down, helping her tense muscles to relax. “We had to help Four. I was afraid he might work himself up into a stroke or heart attack over your sister.”

“Yeah. He’s used to being the boss, and when something comes up that he can’t control, he tends to lose it. One thing I figured out in the last few days, though, is that at least with us kids, it’s not just a matter of controlling us. I’d always thought he pigeonholed Deidre and me on the same level in his mind with his prize livestock and the hired help he depends on to keep the Bar C running. Now I realize the old man actually cares about us as people, not just as two more of his possessions.”

“That was pretty obvious to me when he came with you to the Rocking O, prepared to defend you with his rifle if necessary. He definitely wouldn’t have welcomed me into his house if he didn’t care about you, because he didn’t know me and doesn’t think well of my father. Apparently Four just has a hard time sharing his feelings.” For a moment Karen let herself wonder if her pop would demonstrate any care for her if he ever sobered up. Not wanting to go there, she slipped out of Bye’s arms and started to undress.

“I didn’t let you grab a nightie, did I?” he asked when he noticed her shivering underneath an air conditioner vent.

It registered with her that Bye must keep his bedroom unusually cool. He obviously realized that because he opened a drawer of the dresser and pulled out what looked like a brand-new pair of pajamas. “No you didn’t, but I didn’t think I’d need one. I thought you’d keep me warm.” She took the navy-blue silk pajama top he handed her and slipped it over her shoulders. “This helps. Thanks.”