That Man Matthews

She pushed past him. He watched her walk through the artificial jungle of the lobby, cutting a precise, angry swath that could have rivaled anything Sherman had planned for Georgia. She didn’t look back. He didn’t expect her to. The role he’d played for her benefit had been Oscar caliber.

He found himself staring in the direction she’d gone long after he’d lost sight of her. Staring…and wondering why success didn’t have a better feel to it. He’d accomplished what he’d set out to do. He’d made her despise him. That final look from her had been sharp enough to slice steel, and maybe that was part of what was bothering him. The fact that Joan Paxton thought he was a first-class son of a—

Ah, hell, where was all this silly regret coming from? So what if some high-brow diplomat’s brat hated his guts? Hadn’t he learned a long time ago how to separate his ego from the core of every dispute? People didn’t have to like him. They just had to give in.

He rubbed a hand across his jaw, his mind fleecy. After today, he’d be glad to head back to Luna D’Oro. If there was any place on earth he understood the how and why of himself, it was at the ranch, surrounded by the people who meant the most to him.

After adding enough cash to the table to cover the drinks—including a generous tip for the uncomplaining waitress—Cody stopped by the front desk. The clerk handed him a pink message slip. It was from Pa, urging him to call the ranch. Cody’s gut belly flopped at the word emergency underlined twice in red pen. By the time he put a call through on the lobby courtesy phone, chaos was already sliding through his system, spreading tentacles of ice-cold, sweaty fear up his spine.

Merlita picked up the phone, letting loose a string of rapid Spanish when she realized it was him. Cody cut in, and in weeping fits and starts, the housekeeper explained the situation at home as his heart leaped to his throat.

Sarah had been taken to the hospital.

THE STEAM OF HER ANGER carried Joan right through the front door of the efficiency apartment she’d recently rented. She banged the door shut, then wished she was the temper-tantrum type so she could take pleasure in banging it shut again.

She was furious and frustrated and…disappointed.

William Cody Matthews had been a disaster. An ill-mannered, backwoods baboon who hadn’t deserved the courtesy of a meeting. She was tempted to call his father and chastise the man for playing such a cruel joke; it would have felt wonderful to channel some of the outrage she felt right now. But she knew a better way to manage that.

Peeling off her jacket and shoes, she plopped down at the tiny kitchen table. Shoving aside a snowdrift of mail, she ripped a piece of paper from her notebook and carefully smoothed it out in front of her.

She felt calmer already.

All her life she’d used the same method to handle anger, disappointment and confusion. List making was her personal mantra, the worry beads she fingered to deal with any problem. As an only child growing up in a household where her father was seldom home and her mother was more interested in her social calendar than raising a daughter, Joan had found lists to be the perfect sounding board. Goals. Fears. Fantasies. Once written down, they became tangible. And once tangible, they became manageable.

A smile curved her lips as she remembered a few of the more important ones: Reasons Why Father Really Can’t Come Home for Christmas, full of a ten-year-old’s unreasonable self-pity. The Pros and Cons of Attending College in Europe, revealing an appalling desire to escape her parents. Why I Will Make an Excellent Teacher, a list that had given her the courage to admit she could never follow in her father’s footsteps.

Oh, there had been plenty of harsh words exchanged in the Paxton household that day. But despite the stale rhetoric and hollow bribes and clever arguments from her father, despite the emotional extravagance that quickly became cruelty and bitterness from her mother, Joan had been adamant—thanks to the list curled in her hand in the pocket of her jeans.

Maybe there were better ways to deal with stress and emotion than making lists, but she’d yet to find one that worked as efficiently for her.

Her recent problem with Headmaster Mueller had never made it to paper. The idea of seeing any of that in bold print had been too humiliating. And her breakup with Todd—that had happened too fast. She was firmly convinced that both those horrid situations had turned ugly simply because she hadn’t taken the time to deal with them in black and white, to weigh her options and make sensible decisions. The result was the emotional turmoil she was still trying to sort through.

Well, she wouldn’t let William Cody Matthews occupy any more of her valuable time. Relegated to a list, he would become insignificant. Forgotten. And she knew just the list she wanted, too.

Across the top of the paper she wrote in big, block letters, What Makes Cody Matthews So Obnoxious. She smiled at the harsh directness of the words and wondered if she’d need a second sheet.

Ten minutes later she had a sizable compilation of sins. Feeling in control once more, Joan scanned the words she’d written, her frustrations released on paper.

Overbearing arrogance

Ego the size of the planet

Poor taste in clothes—especially belt buckles!

Beautiful bedroom eyes

Lascivious nat—

Her eyes bumped back up. Wait a minute. Beautiful bedroom eyes? Where had that come from? Those eyes didn’t belong on her list.

Annoyed, she rose and filled the teakettle with water. Waiting for the whistle, she leaned against the doorjamb and stared at the list on the table. What unconscious imp had caused her to make mention of that man Matthews’s eyes? She wasn’t even sure what bedroom eyes looked like, for heaven’s sake! She regarded the sheet of paper from afar, as though it was a confessional priest who had suddenly betrayed her confidence.

All right, so he had great eyes. She’d give him that. She was probably just missing Todd. And though she had no more than a street artist’s impression of Cody Matthews—all surface and no insight—she was convinced his looks couldn’t make up for that unbearable personality. Number four on the list was a slip of the pen—a harmless notation caused by inattention.

The teakettle whistled, and she jumped. With a cup of hot Earl Grey in hand, she shoved the list into the stack of personal papers she’d brought from Todd’s apartment. She was not willing to give Matthews any more thought. Better to lump him into that worthless brotherhood of men like Todd who didn’t know the first thing about how a woman’s mind worked.

She spent the rest of the evening going through a box of mementos she and Todd had collected in their years together, throwing out most of them. By the time she crawled into bed, she felt physically and mentally drained, sure that her sleep would be deep and soundless.

But in the end, her subconscious mind turned traitorous.

Later that night, when sleep slowed Joan’s brain to a crawl, her usual dreams of Todd faded into the recesses of her mind like phantoms. Instead, into a space where dreams hung like midnight stars, there paraded a herd of silver longhorns. They thundered across vistas of tall prairie grass that rippled slowly in golden waves.

Full of raw, earthy power.

Dangerous.

And chased by a black-haired cowboy whose eyes reflected the brilliant blue of a cloudless sky.

CHAPTER THREE

A WEEK LATER, Joan created a new and unexpected list—The Pros and Cons of Finding a New Teaching Position and/or Relocating.

She wasn’t certain what had prompted her to make it. Maybe it was frustration over Headmaster Mueller’s continued sly and silent observation of her. Maybe it was the impasse she’d reached with a sulky, unreasonable Todd, who’d withdrawn every cent from their joint savings account and refused to consider that some of the money belonged to her. Or maybe it was just the fact that the school term was nearly over. Around this time of year she was always overtaken by a slightly sad feeling of finality, the realization that her children were moving on, away from her protective influence.

Regardless of the reason, in the span of one evening she made the decision not to return to the academy in the fall. The next day she tendered her resignation before she could change her mind. Mueller seemed surprised and annoyed by it, and even Todd made an appearance at her classroom door, demanding an explanation that she refused to give.

Anxious not to lose the momentum of such life-altering actions, she took a fellow teacher’s advice and sent an application and letters of recommendation to a small private school in Oregon. It seemed a daring change, so much so that Joan couldn’t sleep for two nights after she’d mailed the letter.

By the weekend she was feeling disheartened. Every summer she had worked a temporary job. It helped financially and kept her busy during the months until school started again. Since moving out of Todd’s place had been expensive, extra money in the bank would be especially helpful if she had to relocate. But the classifieds in Friday’s paper indicated pitifully few summer jobs available, and by Saturday afternoon, a dozen job applications had yielded nothing promising.

Her job search over for the day, Joan went up the stairs of her apartment building slowly, her feet aching, her hair beginning to tumble down her neck. She retrieved her mail from the box, sighing over a couple of bills. If she couldn’t find temporary employment, how long before her mailbox was stuffed with demands printed in increasingly irate colors? How long before even her tiny efficiency became unaffordable? Her head filled with gloomy thoughts, she fumbled to insert the key into her front door.

The lock was stubborn, as usual, the notches bent out of alignment by some previous tenant. She wiggled and shook the key, but the lock held tight. Shoving strands of hair out of her eyes, she tried to remove the key, but it refused to budge.

Today’s failure coupled with this new irritation curdled Joan’s frustration into anger. She glared at her key ring, dangling impotently from the lock. Nothing seemed to be going right lately. Not even a dime-store lock would cooperate.

Rattling the knob, she gave the door a hard kick that only succeeded in squashing the toe of her high-heeled shoe. “Open up, damn you. What do you think you’re guarding? Fort Knox?”

The words bounced off the empty corridor walls. An open display of anger wasn’t her style. She tilted her head back, concentrating on calming her breathing.

Stalactites of peeling paint hung from the ceiling, held in place by a network of cobwebs. Farther down the corridor one of the hall lights wasn’t working. She hated this place. Moving so quickly out of the home she’d made with Todd had been a mistake, a sacrifice of common sense for the sake of foolish pride.

“If you break it off in there, I’m pretty sure you’ll have to call a locksmith. And on the weekend, it’s likely to cost a small fortune.”

She jumped at the sound of the male voice behind her. The folded newspaper and handful of mail slid from her grasp to land in a haphazard mound at her feet.

She turned to see William Cody Matthews seated on the steps that rose to the next floor. With daylight sliding toward extinction, shadows lay heavy in the corridor. His features were cast in an odd half-light, and partially hidden by the newel post, he looked like a prisoner behind bars.