Rancher Wants a Wife (9 page)

Jack was about to join in the conversation about Sundial’s wine-making history when he noticed a man on horseback entering the front gate, flying like a fireball out of hell. He didn’t bother riding to the hitching post, but was galloping straight at them, sending dirt flying.

Finley stood up in alarm to stare at the oncoming rider.

Cassandra and Elise turned to watch, too.

“What is it?” Jack hollered when the rider got closer.

The man was one of Finley’s ranch hands. Jack had noticed the long-haired fellow earlier, while examining the calf.

Finley stepped forward. “What is it, Hank?”

The man shot off his horse. “There’s trouble, sir! On Dr. McColton’s ranch!” He gulped down a breath of air. “I was on my way into town to the feed and supply store, sir, when I heard. Someone’s hurt on your ranch, Dr. McColton. You better go quick.”

“Who’s hurt?” Jack asked, stricken with concern.

“I don’t know, sir. I got only half the story from a barrel salesman I passed on the road. He said someone just dropped dead on the McColton ranch.”

Chapter Nine

T
he buggy flew around the corner on two wheels as Jack gripped the reins, in full control of the horse, but obviously desperate to get home. The wind whipped through Cassandra’s hair, snatching at her skirts and making conversation impossible. Her heart beat madly, her mouth was dry and she was thunderstruck by the terrible news that someone might be dead. She prayed that the message had somehow gotten jumbled and it wasn’t true.

But as they approached the top of their laneway and she saw the cluster of horses and people milling about the house, her stomach gave out.

Their horse wheeled in under the familiar trees, where the foreman, Russell Crawford, dashed out to greet them, his black mustache bristling in the wind.

“Jack!”

“Who is it?”

“Dunleigh.”

“Oh, Lord.” Jack jumped from the buggy and Cassandra bounded after him. “I heard you sent for a doctor. Is he here yet?”

“No, but I see him coming up the laneway now.” Crawford pointed, and sure enough, the doctor’s black horse and buggy were hightailing it toward them.

A gauntlet of men on the flagstone path leading to the big ranch house parted as Jack strode forward, Cassandra following.

Inside, people were gathering in the parlor. Half a dozen ranch hands encircled the long sofa where Mr. Dunleigh was lying, still as a statue with his eyes closed. His wife was kneeling on the floor beside him, alternating between sobbing and murmuring his name.

“Yule, please. Yule, wake up, it’s too soon for you to go....”

Jack removed his Stetson and knelt beside her on the floor.

His gentle approach and embrace of the weeping woman touched Cassandra. She prayed Mr. Dunleigh would awaken.

“Sheila, the doctor’s almost here.” Jack tried to reassure her. He placed his hand on her husband’s chest and tried to rouse him, but to no avail.

“He’d had his morning tea,” Mrs. Dunleigh explained, rocking back and forth in anguish. Cassandra scooted in beside her for support. “We were on our private terrace and he was watching out for the delivery boy. There was a knock on the door, and he went to open it. It was Adam, with the paper. And Yule dropped. He just dropped. Halfway back to me with the
Sundial Daily News
. Just like that.”

“Too sudden,” Jack murmured in sympathy.

Dr. Clarkson rushed in with his medical bag, his long white hair flowing over his black suit. He did a quick examination, then turned and shook his head at the others waiting hopefully.

“His heart gave out,” the doctor announced to everyone, then looked at Jack, who was now standing and supporting Mrs. Dunleigh. “I was treating him for angina. Sheila and I both knew he was ailin’, but I didn’t figure it would come this quick.”

At this point, Mrs. Dunleigh keeled over in a faint. Jack and Cassandra dived forward and caught her before she could slide to the floor.

Embracing her on either side, they talked to her until she came to, then led her into the kitchen and sat her gently at the table. Pulling up chairs on either side, they tried to console her.

“We came to this country together,” she said with a rattling sigh. “He was seventeen, I was fifteen. I’ve never known a life without him.”

Cassandra’s sorrow for the woman’s loss added to her own raw heartache for the recent loss of her sister and father. Mrs. Dunleigh searched for her handkerchief to mop up her stream of tears. It was too much sorrow. Too much pain.

“Yule was a good man,” Jack told her. “I admired him for how much he went through, and how much he adored you.”

This sent Mrs. Dunleigh into more tears.

“Please know you’ll never want for anything. I’ll make sure you’re taken care of, Sheila.”

“He would be appreciative, Jack,” she whispered. “And so am I.”

Cassandra patted the woman’s shoulder. “Would you like me to send for your daughter and family?”

“Please, would you?”

Cassandra took over tending to Mrs. Dunleigh, which allowed Jack to slip back into the parlor to take care of the arrangements there. It was easier on Cassandra to have something to do rather than stand by helplessly. She sent a message with two men to fetch the family from town. She conversed with Dr. Clarkson about talking to Mrs. Dunleigh and assessing whether she needed any medical care herself. Then she started a huge pot of beef and potato stew to feed everyone.

Mrs. Dunleigh seemed out of sorts that someone else was doing the cooking when it was her duty, so Cassandra carefully allowed the woman to help in any way that might be comforting to her.

Cassandra had witnessed many folks in tragedy during the Great Fire to know that different people responded to grief in different ways. Some retreated completely, some were not themselves, and some were more vocal and finicky than usual.

Mrs. Dunleigh called out instructions on where to find things in the kitchen, reminded Cassandra to chop the onions extra fine, estimated the number of potatoes that might need to be peeled, and even at one point got up to stir the frying meat so it wouldn’t stick to the bottom of the pan.

Cassandra thanked her for her lovely advice and deferred to the older woman on any matter she saw fit to discuss or criticize, no matter how trivial.

Sheila was hurting, and Cassandra understood she needed time to absorb the awful news of the death of her husband.

Others were gathering in the kitchen. The bunkhouse cook came in to help, and started getting plates to the table. He got Mrs. Dunleigh talking about how she and Yule first came to Napa Valley, and how they’d landed the job on Jack’s ranch.

Stable hands gave humorous accounts of how bad a rider Mr. Dunleigh had been and how he couldn’t handle a horse, which made Mrs. Dunleigh laugh and add stories of her own. Neighboring women poured in, as well as other housekeepers from adjoining ranches, each bringing a dish of something or another they’d hurriedly prepared.

Everyone wanted to envelope Sheila Dunleigh in the love they felt for her, and the evening turned out to be a comforting wake.

By the time the meal was simmering and filling up the kitchen with steam and fine aromas, there had to be over a hundred people in the house, all making their way to Mrs. Dunleigh’s side to pay their respects.

Cassandra was leaning against a pillar in the kitchen, absorbing it all, when Jack came up beside her and put an arm around her shoulders. She sighed deeply in response, for it made her feel as though she belonged here.

Then the family arrived. Mrs. Dunleigh’s grandchildren, Julia and Ronald, raced in and squeezed their way to her side, giving her a big hug and sitting in her lap.

Mrs. Dunleigh’s daughter, tall and thin like her mother, was sobbing, and could barely speak to Jack and Cassandra. Her husband, a bulky man in a rumpled suit, spoke on her behalf after he’d arranged for the undertaker to remove his father-in-law’s body to the funeral parlor in town.

“We’d like to thank you so much for helpin’ with the funeral arrangements, Jack. The undertaker and minister say they can do the burial tomorrow morning at nine.”

“We’ll be there,” said Jack.

“And thank you kindly, ma’am,” he said to Cassandra, “for all you’ve done in lookin’ out for our ma.”

“It’s been my pleasure.”

“We’ll be takin’ her back with us tonight.”

“Please let her know that if she’d like to continue working here or living here,” said Jack, “she may. I don’t want her to feel unwelcome.”

“Much obliged. We’ll see how she makes out in the next few days, and what she’d like to do. She’s got a home with us, if she’d like to stay permanently.”

Jack and Cassandra said their goodbyes to Mrs. Dunleigh and the family, then to the others as they left slowly in groups.

Some of the remaining few helped Cassandra scrub the kitchen, the living room, and sweep the floors after the huge volume of neighbors had come and gone. Not once did anyone mention Cassandra’s marred face, and hours had gone by without her being conscious of it.

When the last ranch hand said good-night and left, it was close to midnight. Cassandra could barely keep her eyes open, yet she knew she couldn’t fall asleep yet.

Jack turned to her, looming and powerful, and she could feel the burn of his dark eyes on her face.

“Let’s get some air.” He took her hand and led her out to the terrace. Her insides quivered at his unexpected touch.

* * *

Cassandra was still quivering when she and Jack stood outside. He dropped his hand from hers and she wished he hadn’t. The lulling breeze swirled between them, stirring the heat of the day as the moon shone down. Sounds of the night echoed through the air—the call of owls, the hum of beetles, the stirring of horses in the stables, and the still, deep silence of the vineyards in the valley below.

At last, when she couldn’t handle the rapid beating of her heart any longer, she peered up at Jack.

He’d changed into a white shirt, from the darker one he’d worn earlier, and she’d changed clothes, too, when she’d washed up after dinner. She was absorbed by the handsome sight of him as he stood beneath the glittering yellow ball in the dark sky, looking up at the stars spinning around them, so like the young man he’d been in his quiet rapture of the world.

She respected what he’d done tonight for the Dunleighs. He’d shown such devotion to his housekeeper, such compassion for the fallen man.

“Was tonight very difficult for you?” Jack turned his soulful eyes upon her face.

The undercurrent was so sharp between them, her breath caught in her lungs.

“For me?” she asked, startled by his question.

“It couldn’t have been easy, after all the injury and trauma you witnessed firsthand in Chicago.”

She peered down at the flat stones of the terrace floor. She’d tried to distract herself from the visions that kept popping into her mind all night. Hundred-year-old homes leaping with flames. People running out of their houses screaming and crying, their clothing on fire. Children missing. She was told later that no one had been able to locate Mary. That their father had finally realized she was still trapped in the blazing kitchen, and he’d raced in to save her. Cassandra had gone in after him, apparently, but was the only one pulled out. She’d lost her memory of that awful event, and the two days that followed.

Jack stepped closer and put his warm fingers beneath her chin. He tugged gently so that she’d look up at him. Their eyes met, but he let his fingers remain.

“Tonight was difficult,” she confessed. “I kept thinking about Mary’s last moments and how frightened she must’ve been.”

A multitude of feelings flickered in his eyes. “Your father being there with her...was it comforting in some way? I mean for you to know that they perished together?”

“It was,” she said softly. She’d never admitted it to anyone. She was ashamed that she felt that way, for if she could’ve spared either one of them, she would’ve given her own life.

“You were the one left all alone.”

She dropped her eyes to the terrace stones again, for she didn’t wish to cry in front of him.

He gave her a moment to recover. Another owl hooted, and the tears in her eyes retreated. Cassandra lifted her head to watch the swaying palms in the glow of the moon.

“It’s pretty here. It makes me feel peaceful. Yet other times, being surrounded by the horses and the rush of the workers...it’s all so exciting sometimes, isn’t it, Jack?”

For some reason, he didn’t respond, just studied her with a dozen emotions rippling across his face. He reached out and put his warm hands on her arms. Then he pulled her close till their hips touched, tilted her head and kissed her.

Jack McColton finally kissed her like he should’ve kissed her days ago.

Her pulse raced, her stomach fluttered and her heart made such a commotion inside her chest she was sure he must hear it.

He pulled her closer and they pressed together, she so small and soft and he so strong and firm and demanding.

She had an urge to connect with him in the most meaningful way imaginable, to feel united, and to glory in the fact that they were both very much alive in a world that was so often fragile and harsh.

Perhaps he felt the same.

His kiss got deeper and harder. His lips trailed across her cheek, down her jaw, making her skin prick with gooseflesh as he continued in a hot path down her throat.

His arm encircled her waist, his fingers digging into the waistband of her skirt, inching lower to grasp one of her buttocks and pull her toward him, their hips melding against each other in an urgent, natural need.

She felt the swell of him pressed against the thin cloth of her skirts, felt the tightening of her nipples and the soft heat of her own arousal. She flattened her palms against his rock-hard chest and felt the beating madness that lay beneath.

“Cassandra,” he whispered in her ear, and to her it felt as though he was saying a prayer. “Cassandra...”

She moaned at his touch, the clever movements of his fingers unwinding her hair.

When he pulled out the hem of her blouse, she knew his intent.

Here? Right here?

“No one can see us,” he murmured against her cheek, as if reading her mind, then lifted her in his strong arms and swept her down to the soft dewy grass.