Callaghan's Bride

“How about making another pot of coffee? I’ve got to help Cag with the books and I hate it. I’ll need a jolt of caffeine to get me through the night.”

“He’s going to come home and work through Christmas Eve, too?” she exclaimed.

“Cag always works, as you’ll find out. In a way it substitutes for all that he hasn’t got. He doesn’t think of it as work, though. He likes business.”

“To each his own,” she murmured.

“Amen.” He tweaked her curly red-gold hair. “Don’t spend the night in the kitchen. You can watch one of the new movies on pay-per-view in the living room, if you like. Rey’s going to visit one of his friends who’s in town for the holidays, and Cag and I won’t hear the television from the study.”

“Have the others gone?”

“Leo wouldn’t say where he was going, but Corrigan’s taken Dorie home for their own celebration.” He smiled. “I never thought I’d see my big brother happily married. It’s nice.”

“So are they.”

He hesitated at the door and glanced back at her. “Is Cag nice?”

She shifted. “I don’t know.”

A light flickered in his eyes and went out. She wasn’t all that young, but she was innocent. She didn’t realize that she’d classed him with the married brother. No woman who found him attractive was going to refer to him as “nice.” It killed his hopes, but it started him thinking in other directions. Cag was openly hostile to Tess, and she backed away whenever she saw him coming. It was unusual for Cag to be that antagonistic, especially to someone like Tess, who was sensitive and sweet.

Cag was locked tight inside himself. The defection of his fiancée had left Cag wounded and twice shy of women, even of little Tess who didn’t have a sophisticated repertoire to try on him. His bad humor had started just about the time she’d come into the house to work, and it hadn’t stopped. He had moods during the months that reminded him of when he went off to war and when his engagement had been broken. But they didn’t usually last more than a day. This one was lasting all too long. For Tess’s sake, he hoped it didn’t go on indefinitely.

Christmas Day was quiet. Not surprisingly, Cag worked through it, too, and the rest of the week that followed. Simon and Tira married, a delightful event.

Callaghan’s birthday was the one they didn’t celebrate. The brothers said that he hated parties, cakes and surprises, in that order. But Tess couldn’t believe that the big man wanted people to forget such a special occasion. So Saturday morning after breakfast, she baked a birthday cake, a chocolate one because she’d noticed him having a slice of one that Dorie had baked a few weeks ago. None of the Hart boys were keen on sweets, which they rarely ate. She’d heard from the former cook, Mrs. Culbertson, that it was probably because their own mother never baked. She’d left the boys with their father. It gave Tess something in common with them, because her mother had deserted her, too.

She iced the cake and put Happy Birthday on the top. She put on just one candle instead of thirty-eight. She left it on the table and went out to the mailbox, with the cat trailing behind her, to put a few letters that the brothers’ male secretary had left on the hall table in the morning mail.

She hadn’t thought any of the brothers would be in until the evening meal, because a sudden arctic wave had come south to promote an unseasonal freeze. All the hands were out checking on pregnant cows and examining water heaters in the cattle troughs to make sure they were working. Rey had said they probably wouldn’t stop for lunch.

But when she got back to the kitchen, her new leather coat tight around her body, she found Callaghan in the kitchen and the remains of her cake, her beautiful cake, on the floor below a huge chocolate spot on the kitchen wall.

He turned, outraged beyond all proportion, looking broader than usual in his shepherd’s coat. His black eyes glittered at her from under his wide-brimmed Stetson. “I don’t need reminding that I’m thirty-eight,” he said in a soft, dangerous tone. “And I don’t want a cake, or a party, or presents. I want nothing from you! Do you understand?”

The very softness of his voice was frightening. She noticed that, of all the brothers, he was the one who never yelled or shouted. But his eyes were even more intimidating than his cold tone.

“Sorry,” she said in a choked whisper.

“You can’t find a damned jar of apple butter for the biscuits, but you’ve got time to waste on things like…that!” he snapped, jerking his head toward the ruin of her cake lying shattered on the pale yellow linoleum.

She bit her lower lip and stood just looking at him, her blue eyes huge in her white face, where freckles stood out like flecks of butter in churned milk.

“What the hell possessed you? Didn’t they tell you I hate birthdays, damn it?”

His voice cut her like a whip. His eyes alone were enough to make her knees wobble, burning into her like black flames. She swallowed. Her mouth was so dry she wondered why her tongue didn’t stick to the roof of it. “Sorry,” she said again.

Her lack of response made him wild. He glared at her as if he hated her.

He took a step toward her, a violent, quick movement, and she backed up at once, getting behind the chopping block near the wall.

Her whole posture was one of fear. He stopped in his tracks and stared at her, scowling.

Her hands gripped the edge of the block and she looked young and hunted. She bit her lower lip, waiting for the rest of the explosion that she knew was coming. She’d only wanted to do something nice for him. Maybe she’d also wanted to make friends. It had been a horrible mistake. It was blatantly obvious that he didn’t want her for a friend.

“Hey, Cag, could you—” Rey stopped dead in his tracks as he opened the kitchen door and took in the scene with a glance. Tess, white-faced, all but shivering and not from the cold. Cag, with his big hands curled into fists at his side, his black eyes blazing. The cake, shattered against a wall.

Cag seemed to jerk as if his brother’s appearance had jolted him out of the frozen rage that had held him captive.

“Here, now,” Rey said, talking quietly, because he knew his brother in these flash-fire tempers. “Don’t do this. Cag, look at her. Come on, look at her, Cag.”

He seemed to come to his senses when he caught the bright glimmer of unshed tears in those blue, blue eyes. She was shaking, visibly frightened.

He let out a breath and his fists unclenched. Tess was swallowing, as if to keep her fear hidden, and her hands were pushed deep into the pockets of her coat. She was shaking and she could barely get a breath of air.

“We have to get those culls ready to ship.” Rey was still speaking softly. “Cag, are you coming? We can’t find the manifest and the trucks are here for the cattle.”

“The manifest.” Cag took a long breath. “It’s in the second drawer of the desk, in the folder. I forgot to put it back in the file. Go ahead. I’ll be right with you.”

Rey didn’t budge. Couldn’t Cag see that the girl was terrified of him?

He eased around his brother and went to the chopping block, getting between the two of them.

“You need to get out of that coat. It’s hot in here!” Rey said, forcing a laugh that he didn’t feel. “Come on, pilgrim, shed the coat.”

He untied it and she let him remove it, her eyes going to his chest and resting there, as if she’d found refuge.

Cag hesitated, but only for an instant. He said something filthy in elegant Spanish, turned on his heel and went out, slamming the door behind him.

Tess slumped, a convulsive shudder leaving her sick. She wiped unobtrusively at her eyes.

“Thanks for saving me,” she said huskily.

“He’s funny about birthdays,” he said quietly. “I don’t guess we made it clear enough for you, but at least he didn’t throw the cake at you,” he added with a grin. “Old Charlie Greer used to bake for us before we found Mrs. Culbertson, whom you replaced. Charlie made a cake for Cag’s birthday and ended up wearing it.”

“Why?” she asked curiously.

“Nobody knows. Except maybe Simon,” he amended. “They were older than the rest of us. I guess it goes back a long way. We don’t talk about it, but I’m sure you’ve heard some of the gossip about our mother.”

She nodded jerkily.

“Simon and Corrigan got past the bad memories and made good marriages. Cag…” He shook his head. “He was like this even when he got engaged. And we all thought that it was more a physical infatuation than a need to marry. She was, if you’ll pardon the expression, the world’s best tease. A totally warped woman. Thank God she had enough rope to hang herself before he ended up with her around his neck like an albatross.”

She was still getting her breath back. She took the coat that Rey was holding. “I’ll put it up. Thanks.”

“He’ll apologize eventually,” he said slowly.

“It won’t help.” She smoothed over the surface of the leather coat. She looked up, anger beginning to replace fear and hurt. “I’m leaving. I’m sorry, but I can’t stay here and worry about any other little quirks like that. He’s scary.”