The Princess of Coldwater Flats (23 page)

Days passed as slow as molasses with no solution in sight. Sammy Jo paced restlessly from one room of the house to another. Her mother’s picture mocked her, so she shoved it into a drawer. There was no one for her to trust; there never had been. Even her father had let her down.

Stepping outside, she was glad for the hot breeze that rustled the pines and aspens, bent the tall grasses and stirred the dry, red dirt. Brent would be here soon, and she would have to tell him to rip up that silly contract. She’d put him off and put him off, but she couldn’t anymore. What fun. She should have known better.

As the sun lowered, she waved at Carl as he came in from the fields, looking hot and tired. She was hot and tired, herself. What had ever possessed her to nearly make love to Cooper
again?

“How ya farin’?” Carl asked, patting his pockets for a nonexistent cigarette package.

“Not so hot,” Sammy Jo admitted. “You going home?”

“Yup. Tick-Tock’s about due, y’know.”

“I know.”

“Read about yer engagement. Congratulations.”

Carl peered at Sammy Jo through kind eyes, but Sammy Jo’s expression changed from interested to horrified. “Oh, God.”

“The
Corral
get it wrong?” he asked. “Had to go to town, so I picked up a copy hot off the presses.”

“Um…‌no…‌not really…‌but…” she gave up. Now, she really needed to talk to Brent before she said anything to anyone else. “The paper doesn’t come ‘til later.”

“Brent Rollins is a fine man.”

There was something missing in his tone, which Sammy Jo’s sensitive ears picked up on instantly. “He’s not a rancher,” she said, guessing.

“No, he’s not.” Carl smiled at Sammy Jo before walking back to the barn where he’d parked his beat-up rig. He waved his hat at her as he left, cowboy-style. She waved back and returned to the house.

The
Corral
was on her front porch, rubber-banded into a roll. Sammy Jo unsnapped the band and smoothed the paper out. Her engagement announcement was on the second page. Brief and to the point, it alluded to an early fall wedding and mentioned the couple’s long-standing relationship, harking back to the second grade at good old Harding Elementary. It also mentioned Gil Whalen and the Rollins family as long-time Coldwater Flats residents. Everything sounded hunky-dory. A match made in heaven.

She crumpled the whole thing up, twisted it into a rope, then walked into the living room and tossed it into the cold ashes of the fireplace. She couldn’t marry him for any reason.

And it isn’t because of Cooper Ryan,
she railed at her ever-vigilant conscience.

The drawer where she’d stashed her mother’s picture gaped open, the frame’s gilt edge stuck. Opening the drawer, Sammy Jo pulled out the photo and rearranged it on the table. Irene had run away from responsibility. She’d run away from Gil and her three-year-old daughter. Apparently there had been a man waiting for her. Rumors had circled for years. But it didn’t matter because Sammy Jo was nothing like Irene. No way. Gil had certainly told her enough times.

Marrying a man she didn’t love would be totally irresponsible.

But you would have the ranch. And the ranch is everything.

“Not everything,” Sammy Jo said aloud, remembering how she’d felt when Cooper Ryan had made love to her.

Everything,
that voice in her head argued.

The doorbell rang and Sammy Jo ran out of the living room as if ghosts were chasing her.

“Hello, there,” Brent greeted her, waving a hand full of daisies at her like a peace offering.

“Hi, Brent.” Sammy Jo opened the door and he stepped inside. She braced herself for a kiss on the cheek, but he must have sensed her mood because he simply walked into the living room and waited for her to follow.

“I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to list every reason from now until Sunday about why you can’t marry me.”

Sammy Jo perched on an ottoman, her hands clasped together. “It’s just not fair to either one of us.”

“Is what Gil did to you fair?”

“This isn’t about my father.”

“Yes, it is, Sammy Jo. He set this whole thing up so you’d have to get married or lose the ranch. It’s archaic and ridiculous, but there it is. I think we could make it work out between us. I really do. And so I’m willing to do whatever you want as long as you don’t postpone the wedding past September. I’m ready to get married and have children. And I want a strong woman to share all that with me. Don’t you want that, too?”

She stared at him. “Yes, I guess I do.”

“Is there any reason you can’t marry me? I mean, are you carrying on some secret love affair with someone else?” He grinned.

Sammy Jo looked down at her clenched hands, afraid of what he might read in her face. “What if I was, Brent?”

“It doesn’t matter, because you’re not. What matters is our future, and the future of the Triple R. Without my help, you’ll lose this place, and I know how much it means to you. It’s your family.” Sammy Jo shot him a surprised look, amazed by his insight. “But it doesn’t have to be your only family.”

“I’ve made some mistakes. Recently. And I just can’t pretend they haven’t happened.” Her throat was dust. She swallowed hard. “I was involved with another man.”

“You weren’t.” He almost laughed, but something on her face registered and he stared at her in shock. Sammy Jo smiled crookedly. Even Brent couldn’t believe that Sammy Jo Whalen had actually fallen for some guy.

He sat blinking for long moments, processing this new, disturbing information. “Well,” he said. Then again, “Well.”

“So you may not want me now,” Sammy Jo finished, deciding to put the matter in his hands and let him be the one to end this farce of an engagement.

To her disbelief, he said, “I want you, Sammy Jo.”

I want you.
His echo of Cooper’s words made her mentally squirm.

“Tomorrow we’ll go to Valley Federal and get everything straight with Matt about the Triple R.”

“Brent, I can’t marry you!”

“What else are you going to do?” he asked, and for once Sammy Jo was completely speechless.

It could’ve been the same day that Sammy Jo first walked in to Valley Federal and encountered Cooper Ryan. Matt sat at his desk, smiling with forced patience at her while Sammy Jo glowered back at him. Only, Cooper wasn’t standing by the window this time. Instead, Brent was in the room, seated beside her, holding her hand while Matt and he discussed the fate of the Triple R.

Sammy Jo’s ironic comments about Valley Federal’s lack of faith in her had so irked Matt that he was all but ignoring her now. It was Brent he spoke to. Brent in command.

Which, in turn, irked the hell out of Sammy Jo.

What was she doing here, anyway? She had no intention of marrying someone she didn’t love. Some silly, never-say-die part of herself had hoped this interview would proceed differently. Rather than fight Brent on the marriage issue, she thought she might be able to convince him and Matt Durning that the Triple R was hers and there was no reason to take it away from her.

Desperate hopes of a desperate woman.

Instead, Brent was practically picking out the colors for the wedding. She was leaning toward black and gray.

“…‌no need to foreclose,” Matt was saying now, reaching across his desk to clasp Brent’s hand. Brent was forced to release Sammy Jo’s palm to do the honors. Surreptitiously, she wiped the hand on her jeans. Half an hour warmed by Brent’s nervous palm had turned it into a sweat-fest.

“Glad you came to your senses, Sammy Jo,” Matt added, extending his good humor and hand to include her.

She smiled tightly. Valley Federal’s walls were closing in on her and she couldn’t breathe. “Could I have a glass of water?” she asked in order to keep from screaming.

“Certainly. Glenda!” Matt called his secretary over. Glenda shot Sammy Jo a concerned look, which didn’t bode well for Sammy Jo’s appearance. Did she look as wrung-out as she felt?

As Glenda hurried away to get the water, Brent and Matt talked business. Brent reached over to touch her hand, but Sammy Jo’s arms were now folded protectively around her waist. Several times he threw her a worried glance, as if wondering why she’d barricaded herself inside an ice fortress.

“Here, honey,” Glenda said, putting the paper cup in Sammy Jo’s hands. “Carl says you’ve been working yourself to the bone.”

“He’s the one who’s been working.” Sammy Jo swallowed.

“I’ll be paying him first thing,” Brent spoke up.

“Oh, I never worried about that.” Glenda waved him away. “I knew Sammy Jo was always good for it. Just mighta taken a little time, that’s all, but friends help friends, now don’t they?”

Matt frowned at his secretary, as if she’d said something objectionable. Brent got to his feet, inviting Sammy Jo to do the same. She stood up quickly. Nothing she wanted more than to shake the dust of Valley Federal off her boots.

“This isn’t going to work, you know,” Sammy Jo said as she walked with Brent to his red sports car convertible.

“You just want everything your own way.”

Sammy Jo almost laughed. He was so right. Why did it feel like nothing was going her way, and that it was never going to go her way again?

Brent opened her door with a flourish. Sammy Jo felt as if she were sleepwalking. Dimly she heard the birds twitter and then click-click-click of winged grasshoppers as they flew across the sunbaked asphalt path that circled the bank into the straw dry grasses of a neighboring field.

Brent climbed behind the wheel. “Sammy Jo, there’s something we haven’t talked about, and I think it’s time we did.” Sammy Jo waited as he cautiously negotiated the potholes in the road. “We never discussed our wedding night. Now, you know they’re calling you the last virgin over twenty-five in the county.” He laughed shortly. “Maybe we should talk about that.”

Sammy Jo was momentarily speechless. “Who are
they?
” she finally sputtered.

“Oh, you know, people…”

“Look, Brent. I wanted things to be different, but they’re not. I can’t marry you, even if it means losing the Triple R.”

“You will lose it. That Cooper Ryan fellow will buy the ranch as soon as it’s in foreclosure. He wants it, you know.”

“Funny. He expects you to try to sell it out from under me when it’s in
your
control.”

Brent was affronted. “Is that what’s holding you back?”

“No. I just can’t marry someone I don’t love.”

“Is it this other man? The guy you told me about?”

“No!” Sammy Jo shrieked above the wind streaming past the windshield. “And Brent, for the record, I’m not a virgin, so you don’t have to talk to me about sex.”

Stupefaction filled Brent’s face. Sammy Jo felt a moment of satisfaction. Clearly, that one had come out of left field. His expression was priceless. Just priceless.

“Really?”

“Really. As if it’s anybody’s business but mine.” Sammy Jo slid him a sideways glance. “Does it make a difference?”

What a question, clearly it did. Brent was out-and-out shocked by her confession, and that made Sammy Jo mad all over again.

“No, of course not,” he murmured, flustered. “I just assumed, from what everyone said…‌.”

“If you mean what Tommy Weatherwood and the like say about me and everyone else in town, I’m surprised they thought I was a virgin at all. They’d be more likely to claim I was another notch on their belts. Oh, no, wait.” Sammy Jo lifted a hand in understanding. “I get it. If I didn’t have sex with them, I couldn’t possibly have had sex with anyone else, right?”

“Now, Sammy Jo…”

“Don’t patronize me, Brent.”

“Well, I hope you were smart about it, that’s all.” He sniffed, nose in the air.

“As a matter fact, I wasn’t smart about it at all,” she disagreed querulously. “I was downright stupid. In fact, I think I could win a medal for the Stupidest Person of the Year contest.”

“You don’t have to yell.”

“Don’t I?” Sammy Jo shouted.

“Well, who was he? Assuming there was just the one incident?”

Her jaw tightened. “Stop the car, Brent. Stop it right now because I’m getting out!”

He ignored her and the convertible sped out of town to the twin driveways for Serenity and the Triple R. Sammy Jo had one hand on the door handle. It took every ounce of willpower she possessed not to throw herself out at thirty miles an hour.

He didn’t even spare a glance for the burned oak. “We’ll talk later,” he told her as she slammed the car door on her way out.

“The hell we will,” she snapped, storming into the house, nearly apoplectic with fury. What gave him the right to treat her like that? Good grief, how many ways did she have to say, “I can’t marry you!” before he believed her?

No man owned her, and no man ever would. By God, if it cost her everything she owned, she would never sacrifice herself for some self-serving, arrogant, patronizing male.

Slamming out of the house, Trigger at her heels barking like she’d lost her head completely, Sammy Jo ran for the barn, needing something,
anything
, to get her mind off her troubles.