Christmas On His Ranch: Maggie's Dad / Cattleman's Choice

Next time, he promised himself, he’d get his facts straight before he started attacking teachers. But he wasn’t sorry about what he’d said to Antonia. Let her stew on those charges. Maybe it would intimidate her enough that she wouldn’t deliberately hurt Maggie. He knew how she felt about Sally, he couldn’t help but know. Her resentments were painfully visible in her thin face.

He wondered why she’d come back to haunt him. He’d almost pushed her to the back of his mind over the years. Almost. He’d gone to see her father finally to get news of her, because the loneliness he felt was eating into him like acid. He’d wondered, for one insane moment, if there was any chance that they might recapture the magic they’d had together when she was eighteen.

But she’d quickly disabused him of any such fancies. Her attitude was cold and hard and uncaring. She seemed to have frozen over in the years she’d been away.

How could he blame her? All of Antonia’s misfortunes could be laid at his door, because he was distrustful of people, because he’d jumped to conclusions, because he hadn’t believed in Antonia’s basic innocence and decency. One impulsive decision had cost him everything he held dear. He wondered sometimes how he could have been so stupid.

Like today when he’d let Maggie stampede him into attacking Antonia for something she hadn’t done. It was just like old times. Sally’s daughter was already a master manipulator, at age nine. And it seemed that he was just as impulsive and dim as he’d ever been. He hadn’t really changed at all. He was just richer.

Meanwhile, there was Antonia’s reappearance and her disturbing thinness and paleness. She looked unwell. He wondered absently if she’d had some bout with disease. Perhaps that was why she’d come home, and not because of her father at all. But, wouldn’t a warm climate be the prescription for most illnesses that caused problems? Surely no doctor sent her into northern Wyoming in winter.

He had no answers for those questions, and it would do him well to stop asking them, he thought irritably. It was getting him nowhere. The past was dead. He had to let it go, before it destroyed his life all over again.

Chapter Five (#ub88dd233-2ec8-5cf7-915f-b52f0618cec1)

Antonia didn’t move for a long time after Powell left the classroom. She stared blindly at her clasped hands. Of course she knew that he didn’t want her. Had she been unconsciously hoping for something different? And even if she had, she realized, there was no future at all in that sort of thinking.

She got up, cleared her desk, picked up her things and went home. She didn’t have time to sit and groan, even silently. She had to use her time wisely. She had a decision to make.

While she cooked supper for her father and herself, she thought about everything she’d wanted to do that she’d never made time for. She hadn’t traveled, which had been a very early dream. She hadn’t been involved in church or community, she hadn’t planned past the next day except to make up lesson plans for her classes. She’d more or less drifted along, assuming that she had forever. And now the line was drawn and she was close to walking across it.

Her deepest regret was losing Powell. Looking back, she wondered what might have happened if she’d challenged Sally, if she’d dared Powell to prove that she’d been two-timing him with her mother’s old suitor. She’d only been eighteen, very much in love and trusting and full of dreams. It would have served her better to have been suspicious and hard-hearted, at least where Sally was concerned. She’d never believed that her best friend would stab her in the back. How silly of her not to realize that strongest friends make the best enemies; they always know where the weaknesses are hidden.

Antonia’s weakness had been her own certainty that Powell loved her as much as she loved him, that nothing could separate them. She hadn’t counted on Sally’s ability as an actress.

Powell had never said that he loved Antonia. How strange, she thought, that she hadn’t realized that until they’d gone their separate ways. Powell had been ardent, hungry for her, but never out of control. No wonder, she thought bitterly, since he’d obviously been sleeping with Sally the whole time. Why should he have been wild for any women when he was having one on the side?

He’d asked Antonia to marry him. Her parents had been respected in the community, something his own parents hadn’t been. He’d enjoyed being connected to Antonia’s parents and enjoying the overflow of their acceptance by local people in the church and community. He’d spent as much time with them as he had with Antonia. And when he talked about building up his little cattle ranch that he’d inherited from his father, it had been her own father who’d advised him and opened doors for him so that he could get loans, financing. On the strength of his father’s weakness for gambling, nobody would have loaned Powell the price of a theater ticket. But Antonia’s father was a different proposition; he was an honest man with no visible vices.

Antonia had harbored no suspicions that an ambitious man might take advantage of an untried girl in his quest for wealth. Now, from her vantage point of many years, she could look back and see the calculation that had led to Powell’s proposal of marriage. He hadn’t wanted Antonia with any deathless passion. He’d wanted her father’s influence. With it, he’d built a pitiful little fifty-acre ranch into a multimillion-dollar enterprise of purebred cattle and land. Perhaps breaking the engagement was all part of his master plan, too. Once he’d had what he wanted from the engagement, he could marry the woman he really loved—Sally.

It wouldn’t have surprised Antonia to discover that Sally had worked hand in glove with Powell to help him achieve his goals. The only odd thing was that he hadn’t been happy with Sally, from all accounts, or she with him.

She wondered why she hadn’t considered that angle all those years ago. Probably the heartbreak of her circumstances had blinded her to any deeper motives. Now it seemed futile and unreal. Powell was ancient history. She had to let go of the past. Somehow, she had to forgive and forget. It would be a pity to carry the hatred and resentment to her grave.

Grave. She stared into the pan that contained the stir-fry she was making for supper. She’d never thought about where she wanted to rest for eternity. She had insurance, still in effect, although it wasn’t much. And she’d always thought that she’d rest beside her mother in the small Methodist church cemetery. Now she had to get those details finalized, just in case the treatment wasn’t successful—if she decided to have it—and without her father knowing. He wasn’t going to be told until the last possible minute.

She finished preparing supper and called her father to the table, careful to talk about mundane things and pretend to be happy at being home again.

But he wasn’t fooled. His keen eyes probed her face. “Something’s upset you. What is it?”

She grimaced. “Maggie Long,” she said, sidestepping the real issue.

“I see. Just like her father when he was a kid, I hear,” he added. “Little hellion, isn’t she?”

“Only to me,” Antonia mused. “She liked Mrs. Donalds.”

“No wonder,” he replied, finishing his coffee. “Mrs. Donalds was one of Sally’s younger cousins. So Maggie was related to her. She petted the kid, gave her special favors, did everything but give her answers to tests. She was teacher’s pet. First time any teacher treated her that way, so I guess it went to her head.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s a small town, girl,” he reminded her with a chuckle. “I know everything.” He stared at her levelly. “Even that Powell came to see you at school this afternoon. Gave you hell about the kid, didn’t he?”

She shifted in her chair. “I won’t give her special favors,” she muttered. “I don’t care if he does get me fired.”

“He’ll have a hard time doing that,” her father said easily. “I have friends on the school board, too.”

“Perhaps they could switch the girl to another class,” she wondered aloud.

“It would cause gossip,” Ben Hayes said. “There’s been enough of that already. You just stick to your guns and don’t give in. She’ll come around eventually.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” she said heavily. She ran a hand over her blond hair. “I’m tired,” she added with a wan smile. “Do you mind if I go to bed early?”

“Of course not.” He looked worried. “I thought you went to see the doctor. Didn’t he give you something to perk you up?”

“He said I need vitamins,” she lied glibly. “I bought some, but they haven’t had time to take effect. I need to eat more, too, he said.”

He was still scowling. “Well, if you don’t start getting better soon, you’d better go back and let him do some tests. It isn’t natural for a woman your age to be so tired all the time.”

Her heart skipped. Of course it wasn’t, but she didn’t want him to suspect that she was so ill.

“I’ll do that,” she assured him. She got up and collected the plates. “I’ll just do these few dishes and then I’ll leave you to your television.”

“Oh, I hate that stuff,” he said. “I’d much rather read in the evenings. I only keep the thing on for the noise.”

She laughed. “I do the same thing in Tucson,” she confessed. “It’s company, anyway.”

“Yes, but I’d much rather have you here,” he confessed. “I’m glad you came home, Antonia. It’s not so lonely now.”

She had a twinge of conscience at the pleasure he betrayed. He’d lost her mother and now he was going to lose her. How would he cope, with no relatives left in the world? Her mother had been an only child, and her father’s one sister had died of cancer years ago. Antonia bit her lip. He was in danger of losing his only child, and she was too cowardly to tell him.

He patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t you do too much in here. Get an early night. Leave those if you want, and I’ll wash them later.”

“I don’t mind,” she protested, grinning. “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

“Don’t wake me up when you leave,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m sleeping late.”

“Lucky devil,” she called back.

He only laughed, leaving her to the dishes.

She finished them and went to bed. But she didn’t sleep. She lay awake, seeing Maggie Long’s surly expression and hating eyes, and Powell’s unwelcoming scrutiny. They’d both love to see her back in Arizona, and it looked as if they were going to do their combined best to make her life hell if she stayed here. She’d be walking on eggshells for the rest of the school year with Maggie, and if she failed the child for not doing her homework, Powell would be standing in her classroom every day to complain.

She rolled over with a sigh. Things had been so uncomplicated when she was eighteen, she thought wistfully. She’d been in love and looking forward to marriage and children. Her eyes closed on a wave of pain. Maggie would have been her child, her daughter. She’d have had blond hair and gray eyes, perhaps, like Antonia. And if she’d been Antonia’s child, she’d have been loved and wanted and cared for. She wouldn’t have a surly expression and eyes that hated.

Powell had said something about Maggie…what was it? That Maggie had paid a higher price than any of them. What had he meant? Surely he cared for the child. He certainly fought hard enough when he felt she was attacked.

Well, it wasn’t her problem, she decided finally. And she wasn’t going to let it turn into her problem. She still hadn’t decided what to do about her other problem.