Men to Trust: Boss Man / The Last Good Man in Texas / Lonetree Ranchers: Brant

Violet watched him drive away before she opened the door of the post office and went outside. It was starting to rain. She’d get wet, but she didn’t care. The odd, tender encounter made her head spin with pleasure. It would be a kind thought to brighten her lonely life.

There was a lot of talk around town about Janet Collins. She’d gone missing and Libby and Curt were the subject of a lot of gossip. Jordan Powell had been seen with Libby, but nobody took that seriously. He was also seen with old Senator Merrill’s daughter, Julie, doing the social rounds. Violet wondered if Libby felt the rejection as much as Violet felt it over Kemp. Her co-worker had a flaming crush on Jordan in recent weeks, but it seemed the feeling wasn’t reciprocated.

Violet’s mother seemed to be weakening as the days passed. It was hard for Violet to work and not worry about her. She’d started going back to the gym on her way home from work three days a week, but it was only for a half hour at a time. She’d splurged on a cell phone and she kept it with her all the time now, just in case there was ever an emergency when she wasn’t home. Her mother had a hot button on the new phone at home, too, so that she could push it and speed-dial Violet.

She had her long hair trimmed and frosted, and she actually asked a local boutique owner for tips on how to make the most of her full figure. She learned that lower cut blouses helped to diminish a full bosom. She also learned that a longer jacket flattered wide hips, and that straight lines made her look taller. She experimented with hairstyles until she found one that flattered her full face, and with makeup until she learned how to use it so that it looked natural. She was changing, growing, maturing, slimming. But all of it was a means to an end, as much as she hated to admit it. She wanted Blake Kemp to miss her, want her, ache for her when he looked at her. It was a hopeless dream, but she couldn’t let go of it.

Kemp, meanwhile, spent far too much time at his home thinking about ways and means to get Violet to come back.

He stretched out on his burgundy leather couch to watch the weather channel with his two female Siamese cats, Mee and Yow, curled against his chest. Mee, a big seal-point, rarely cuddled with him. Yow, a blue-point, was in his lap the minute he sat down. He felt a kinship with the cats, who had become his family. They sat with him while he watched television at night. They curled up on the big oak desk when he worked there at his computer. Late at night, they climbed under the covers on either side of him and purred him to sleep.

The Harts thought his cat mania was a little overdone. But, then, they weren’t really cat people, except for Cag and Tess. Their cats were mostly strays. Mee and Yow, on the other hand, were purebred. Blake had brought both of them home with him together from a pet store, where they’d been in cages behind glass for weeks, the last products of a cattery that had gone bankrupt. He’d felt sorry for them. More than likely, he told himself, they’d set him up. Cats were masters of the subtle suggestion. It was amazing how a fat, healthy cat could present itself as an emaciated, starving orphan. They were still playing mind tricks on him after four years of co-existence. It still worked, too.

He thought about Violet and her mother, and remembered that the elderly Mrs. Hardy was allergic to fur. Violet loved animals. She kept little figurines of cats on her desk. He’d never asked her to his home, but he was certain that she’d love his cats. He imagined she’d have Duke Wright bringing calves right up to the porch for her to pet.

His eyes flashed at the thought of Violet getting involved with the other man. Wright was bitter over the divorce and the custody suit his wife had brought against him. He blamed Kemp for it, but Kemp was only doing what any other attorney would have done in his place. If the soon-to-be ex-Mrs. Wright was as happy as she seemed in that high-powered property law job she held in New York City, she wasn’t likely to ever come home. She loved the little boy as much as Duke did, and she felt it was better not to have him dangling between two parents. Kemp didn’t agree. A child had two parents. It would only lead to grief to deny access to either of them.

He shook his head. What a pity that people had children before they thought about the consequences. They never improved a bad marriage. Kemp’s clientele shot that truth home every time he handled a divorce case. The children were always the ones who suffered most.

Beka Wright had never admitted it, and Kemp never pried, but local gossip had it that Duke had deliberately hidden her birth control pills at a critical time, hoping that a baby would cure her of ambition. It hadn’t. He was an overbearing sort of man, who expected a woman to do exactly what he told her to do. His father had been the same, a domineering autocrat whose poor wife had walked in a cold rain with pneumonia while he was out of town one January weekend in a last, fatal attempt to escape him. Death had spared her further abuse. Duke had grown up with that same autocratic attitude and assumed that it was the way a normal man dealt with his wife. He was learning to his cost that marriage meant compromise.

Blake looked around at his house with its Western motifs, burgundy leather mingling with dark oak and cherry wood furniture. The carpet and the curtains were earth tones. He enjoyed a quiet atmosphere after the turmoil of his working life. But he wondered what a woman would do with the décor.

Mee curled her claws into his arm. He winced, and moved them. She was sound asleep, but when she felt his hand on her, she snuggled closer and started purring.

He laughed softly. No, he wasn’t the marrying sort. He was a gourmet cook. He did his own laundry and housework. He could sew on a button or make a bed. Like most other ex-special forces officers, he was independent and self-sufficient. A veteran of the first war with Iraq, he mustered out with the rank of captain. He’d been in the Army reserves after he graduated from law school and started practicing in Jacobsville, and his unit had been called up. He and Cag Hart had served in the same mechanized division. Few people knew that, because he and Cag didn’t talk much about the missions they’d shared. It forged bonds that noncombatants could not understand.

He reached for the remote control and changed the channel. He paused on the weather channel to see when the rain was going to stop, and then went on to the History channel, where he spent most of his free time in the evenings. He often thought that if he ever came across a woman who enjoyed military history, he might be coaxed into rejoining the social scene.

But then he remembered the woman he’d lost, and the ache started all over again. He turned up the volume and leaned back, his mind shifting to the recounting of Alexander the Great’s final successful campaign against the Persian king Darius in 331 B.C. at Gaugemela.

Violet was late getting home the following Friday. She’d stopped by the gym and then remembered that there was no milk in the house. She’d gone by the grocery store as well. When she pulled up into the driveway of the small, rickety rental house, she found her mother sitting on the ground beside the small flower garden at the porch steps. Mrs. Hardy wasn’t moving.

Panicking, Violet jumped out of her car without bothering to close the door, and ran toward her parent.

“Mama!” she screamed.

Her mother jerked, just faintly. Her blue eyes were startled as she turned her head and looked at her daughter. She was breathing heavily. But she laughed. “Darling, it’s all right!” she said at once. “I just got winded, that’s all! I’m all right!”

Violet knelt beside her. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. Her face was white. She was shaking.

“Oh, baby.” Mrs. Hardy winced as she reached out and cuddled Violet close, whispering soft endearments. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wanted to weed my flower bed and put out those little seedlings I’d grown in the kitchen window. I just worked a little too hard, that’s all. See? I’m fine.”

Violet pulled back, terrified. Her mother was all she had in the world. She loved her so much. How would she go on living if she lost her mother? That fear was written all over her.

Mrs. Hardy winced when she saw it. She hugged Violet close. “Violet,” she said sadly, “one day you’ll have to let me go. You know that.”

“I’m not ready yet,” Violet sobbed.

Mrs. Hardy sighed. She kissed Violet’s dark hair. “I know,” she murmured, her eyes faraway as they looked toward the horizon. “Neither am I.”

Later, as they sat over bowls of hot soup and fresh corn bread, Mrs. Hardy studied her daughter with concern.

“Violet, are you sure you’re happy working at Duke Wright’s place?” she asked.

“Of course I am,” Violet said stolidly.

“I think Mr. Kemp would like it if you went back to work with him.”

Violet stared at her with her spoonful of soup in midair. “Why would you say that, Mama?”

“Mabel, who works at your office, stopped by to see me at lunch. She says Mr. Kemp is so moody they can hardly work with him anymore. She said she thinks he misses you.”

Violet’s heart jumped. “That wasn’t how he sounded when I ran into him in the post office the other day,” she said. “But he was acting…oddly.”

The older woman smiled over her soup spoon. “Often men don’t know what they want until they lose it.”

“Bring on the day.” Violet laughed softly.

“So, dear, back to my first question. Do you like your new job?”

She nodded. “It’s challenging. I don’t have to deal with sad, angry, miserable people whose lives are in pieces. You know, I didn’t realize until I changed jobs how depressing it is to work in a law office. You see such tragedies.”

“I suppose cattle are a lot different.”

“There’s just so much to learn,” Violet agreed. “It’s so complex. There are so many factors that produce good beef. I thought it was only a matter of putting bulls and heifers in the same pasture and letting nature do its work.”

“It isn’t?” her mother asked, curious.

Violet grinned. “Want to know how it works?”

“Yes, indeed.”

So Violet spent the next half hour walking her mother, hy-pothetically speaking, through the steps involved in creating designer beef.

“Well!” the elderly woman exclaimed. “It isn’t simple at all.”

“No, it isn’t. The records are so complicated…”

The sudden ringing of the telephone interrupted Violet. She frowned. “It’s probably another telemarketer,” she muttered. “I wish we could afford one of those new answering machines and caller ID.”

“One day a millionaire will walk in the front door carrying a glass slipper and an engagement ring,” Mrs. Hardy ventured with a mischievous glance.

Violet laughed as she got up and went to answer the phone. “Hardy residence,” she said in her light, friendly tone.

“Violet?”

It was Kemp! She had to catch her breath before she could even answer him. “Yes, sir?” she stammered.