Darling Enemy

“Thank goodness,” Mary sighed. “Shall we go? I could use a cup of coffee. King, I suppose you’ll drive?”

“When was the last time I let you drive me anywhere?” he mused, leading the way to the car.

“Let me think.” His parent frowned. “You were six and I had to take you to the dentist when you got into it with little Sammy Blain...”

Teddi hid a smile. She linked her arm with Jenna’s and brought up the rear. It was nice to be part of a family, even for a little while.

Chapter Three

Teddi’s room overlooked the Rockies. It was done in blue and white, with lacy eyelet curtains at the windows and a canopied bed. This was where she always slept when she came to Gray Stag—her own little corner of the old château.

She wondered who had occupied the matching room in the original home in Burgundy. One of King’s ancestors had copied the design of his wife’s family home to keep that grieving lady from getting attacks of homesickness when they’d settled in Calgary. The original château dated to the eighteenth century. This one was barely a hundred years old, but it had a charm all its own.

She opened the window and breathed the flower-scented air. Everything seemed so much cleaner in Canada, so much bigger. Despite King’s hostility, it was nice to be here again. Mary and Jenna more than made up for King.

Her eyes went to the soft bed. King. She remembered a night she’d spent at Gray Stag when she was seventeen, during summer vacation.

She’d been fairly terrified of King back then, nervous and uncertain when he came near with his cruel taunts. She’d never understood his dislike—she’d done nothing to him to provoke it.

But that night there was a thunderstorm, violent as only mountain thunderstorms can be. Teddi’s parents had gone down in a commercial airliner on a night like this, and in her young mind she still connected disaster with violent storms. She was crying, soft little whimpers that shouldn’t have been audible above the raging thunder.

But King had suddenly opened the door and come in, still fully dressed from helping work cattle in the flash flooding. His shirt was damp, carelessly unbuttoned to reveal a mat of hair and bronzed muscle that had drawn Teddi’s eyes like a magnet.

He eased down onto the bed and took the frightened, weeping girl into his big arms. He murmured soft, comforting words that she didn’t understand while he cradled her against his warm, damp body, his heart beating heavily under the cheek that lay on his broad chest. He held her until the tears and the thunder passed, and then he laid her back down on the pillows with a strangely tender smile.

“Okay, now?” he asked softly.

“Yes, thank you,” she replied uneasily.

He stood there, looking down at her with strange dark eyes while she stared back, her eyes fixed on the sight he made, his shirt unbuttoned to the waist...it was the first time she’d been alone with a man in her bedroom at that hour of the night, and her fear must have shown. Because he suddenly turned away with a muffled curse and was gone. After that night, he was even colder, and she worked even harder at avoiding him. Something had happened while they stared at each other so intensely. She still wasn’t sure what it had been, but she remembered vividly the sensations she felt when his eyes had dropped to the uncovered bodice of her gown and traced deliberately every soft line of her young breasts under the half-transparent material. The memory was like a drawn sword between them, along with all King’s imagined grievances against her.

There was a sharp knock at the door and Jenna peeked her head around it. “Come down and have something to eat,” she said. “Mother’s carving up a ham.”

“Isn’t Miss Peake here anymore?” Teddi asked as she joined her friend, remembering warmly Miss Peake’s little kindnesses over the years.

“Our saintly housekeeper is visiting her sister for a few days.” Jenna grinned. “She’d just die if she was here to see the size of the slices mother’s getting off that ham. Mother eats like a bird, you know. Poor King!”

Teddi smiled involuntarily. “There’s a lot of him to feed,” she agreed.

“He gets even,” Jenna assured her. “When mother’s back is turned, he’ll go in the kitchen and make himself a sandwich or two. He doesn’t starve.”

“Miss Peake was forever carrying him trays of food when he worked in the study,” Teddi recalled, remembering how she’d strained for glimpses of him through that door at night.

“And he was forever complaining that there wasn’t enough of it,” Jenna added. “My brother has a tremendous appetite. For food, at least. Mother wants to see him married so badly, but he hardly ever takes anyone out. You’d think he doesn’t know what to do with a woman, the way he avoids them.”

Oh, Jenna, if you only knew, Teddi thought silently, as she remembered her own voice pleading for the touch of King’s poised, taunting mouth. He knew far too much about women for a monk. Even Teddi, as inexperienced as she was, realized that.

But she didn’t try to tell Jenna. It might lead to some embarrassing questions.

Teddi felt her pulse jump as they started into the spacious dining room, but if she’d hoped to find King there, she was doomed to disappointment. Only Mary was at the table, with cups of steaming coffee already poured and three places set.

“There you are.” She smiled as the two girls joined her. “Isn’t it a delightfully lazy day? I hope you’re hungry, I’ve put on ham and bread and a nice salad for us.”

Teddi had to muffle a giggle. There were enough pieces of bread for one sandwich apiece, and hardly enough ham to go around. And the nice salad would provide each of them with about two tablespoons. From her earliest acquaintance with Jenna, Teddi had been amused by Mary’s eating habits. The fragile little woman had an appetite to match her stature, much to the chagrin of the rest of the family, and there was a good deal of moaning out of Mary’s earshot. None of them would ever have said anything to hurt her feelings, but they couldn’t resist a little good-natured joking among themselves.

“Don’t tell me King’s gone again?” Jenna asked as she and Teddi sat down, one on either side of Mary.

“Yes,” Mary sighed. “To see about some kind of audit on that corporation of his in Montana. The board of directors retained an auditing firm from New York to do it.”

Teddi didn’t like to hear auditors mentioned. Some of her most unpleasant memories were due to one of her aunt’s lovers, who was a very well-paid member of an illustrious New York firm.

“Is he going to be gone long?” Jenna wondered.

Mary shrugged. “A day or so, he said. But it’s just the beginning. He may have to bring the dreadful man here as well—you know, to check the rest of the books.” She caught the look on Jenna’s face and laughed. “Yes, I know, this is Canada, but King reinvests some of the profits from the Montana operation into the livestock operation here, and...” She shook her head. “It’s all very confusing. Ask King to explain it to you someday, I have no head for business management.”

“Blakely does,” Jenna murmured with a wry glance at her mother. “I could ask him.”

Mary smiled at her. “I like Blakely very much. If you need an ally, my darling, you have one in me.”

“Thanks, Mom,” the young blonde said with a beaming smile. “It will take two of us to get around King.”

“Get around King?” Mary paused with her fork in midair and stared at her daughter. “Now, Jenna...”

“Everything will be all right, I promise,” came the smug reply. “Let’s hurry and eat, Teddi, I want to introduce you to Blakely. You’ll adore him!”

* * *

Blakely would have been adorable only to a girl who was in love with him, but he was personable and seemed to know his business. Teddi had to smother a grin at the worshipful look in Jenna’s normally sensible eyes as they followed the thin, dark-eyed man around the property while the two young women were briefed on its operation. Blakely had red hair, so bright that it seemed coppery in the sun, and Teddi couldn’t help but wonder what kind of children Jenna and the livestock foreman would have—blond ones or redheads. It wasn’t going to be an easy thing if they were serious about each other. Jenna would never make King believe that it was she Blakely was interested in, not the millions she stood to inherit.

King. If only she could stop thinking about him! In view of his contempt for her, she should have detested him in return. But she didn’t. She couldn’t stop her eyes from following him whenever he was near. She felt an attraction toward him that nothing ever daunted, and she was helpless to prevent it.

She shook herself out of her troubled thoughts as Blakely mumbled something about the growth of the livestock farm.

“Originally,” he informed the girls, “farms in western Canada were laid out in 65-hectare parcels. And most of the farms are scattered within a 320-kilometer strip along Canada’s southern border. But these days only about 5 percent of the work force is employed in agriculture,” he added sadly. “Although productivity is increasing among those who remain, and mechanization has aided us quite a lot. Did you know,” he continued, blossoming as he elaborated on his favorite subject, “that the average output of one farm worker today provides food for over fifty people?”

“I’d give that man a raise,” Teddi murmured.

Blakely stared at her until the words penetrated, then he threw back his head and laughed, delighted at the little joke.

“Forgive me,” he told her, “I do tend to get carried away about farming. I love it, you see. Not just the land, or working it and working with cattle on it; but the history and heritage behind it all. This was once part of the Northwest Territories,” he said, sweeping his arms around to indicate the lush green valley in its summer splendor, with the tall, sharp peaks of the Rockies in the distance. “Alberta and Saskatchewan were organized out of it in 1905, but French fur traders were here long before then settling the wilderness. It’s an exciting history, the settling of this territory, one I never tire of reading about. Or,” he added sheepishly, “talking about.”

“I like to talk about my part of the world, too,” Teddi told him, “and I like learning about yours just as much. Please don’t apologize. Think of it as cultural exchange,” she added impishly.

“Thank you, Teddi,” he replied with a smile.

“And now that we’ve got that settled,” Jenna added, linking arms with the tall man, “let’s see the rest of it.”

Teddi followed along behind them, her eyes sweeping over the well-kept barn and stables, the white fences that kept the animals in, the huge fields of grain growing to feed the animals through the winter. It was an imposing sight. No wonder King loved it so. The scenery alone was lovely.