Luke's Promise

“I don’t give a holy hoot what Walt said!” She raked a hand through her short hair, striving for patience. “Father hired Walt, so he thinks the man is perfect. I don’t. Which is why Father sold Dandy—I wasn’t following the orders of his chosen trainer, so I had to be forced into line.” She remembered last night’s grimly polite scene with a shudder. “I don’t want another horse. I want Fine Dandy.”

“Oh, honey.” Her mother raised a tentative hand as if she might pat Maggie’s shoulder, but didn’t complete the gesture. “That’s not the way it happened. You were hurt, and your father worries about you. He wants you to have a horse you can depend on.”

She shook her head, incredulous. “You don’t really believe that. You can’t. This is hardly the first time I’ve taken a tumble since I climbed on a horse. Father isn’t— He doesn’t—” Fury boiled up, and the sharp tang of grief, too new and raw for words. “I messed up taking that drop jump. The fault was mine, not Dandy’s. I told Father that, but he wouldn’t listen. He never does.”

Maggie’s nose was running again. She sniffed as she turned to open her closet. She wanted her riding boots. What she would do with them when she no longer had a horse she wasn’t sure, but she refused to leave them behind. When she came out of the closet, boots dangling awkwardly from her left hand, her mother was gone. No surprise there. Sharon shied from confrontations the way a timid mare started at every scrap of litter tumbled by the wind.

Like mother, like daughter. Maggie grimaced and looked around for her purse.

It was gone, too.

Her first reaction was disbelief. It had to be here. She’d just jammed her address book in it. Yet the only possible reason for its disappearance was so absurd she put down her boots and hunted anyway.

Not that there were many places to look. Maggie carried her clutter with her in a satchel-size handbag, and kept her living space ruthlessly neat. She checked the closet, then crouched to look under the bed. And all the while her heart was hammering, hammering. Because she knew. Even though she looked, she knew she wouldn’t find her purse.

Her mother had taken it.

Maggie sat back on her heels, sniffing furiously. It was such a silly, useless betrayal. Did her mother really think she could keep Maggie from leaving this way? But when had Sharon Stewart been anything but ineffectual? Sweet and gentle…and weak. Especially when it came to standing up to her husband on her daughter’s behalf.

She needed her purse. It held her car keys, ID, credit cards, cash—all necessary, but all replaceable. More important were the things she couldn’t replace. A favorite necklace with a broken catch she’d been meaning to have fixed. The plastic keys her friends’ babies liked to play with and the Swiss army knife her brother had given her when she was eighteen. Photographs. Her high school ring, her address book and her favorite pen and…her journal.

Oh Lord. Her journal was in her purse.

The thought pushed Maggie to her feet. Not this time, she thought. This time she wasn’t letting her mother off the hook. Sharon could stand by her man all she wanted. This time Maggie wasn’t going to pretend it meant anything less than betraying her daughter.

She shrugged into the only coat that fit over her cast, the scruffy leather bomber jacket she’d bought in the men’s department years ago. Her mother hated it. Then she grabbed the strap on her wheeled suitcase and dragged it after her.

The broad, shallow stairs that swept from the second floor to the first would have done credit to Tara. Oil paintings in gilded frames kept pace with the broad, shallow steps, paintings hung on creamy walls that had never known the indignity of a fingerprint. Maggie paid no attention to them, or to the way her wrist throbbed as she and her suitcase thumped down those broad stairs. A fine, high tide of anger carried her along.

Halfway down, she heard her mother talking to someone in the foyer. All she could see of the visitor was a pair of cowboy boots.

It wouldn’t be a salesman. Salesmen, strangers and missionaries on bicycles never came to this house. Importunities were delivered here more graciously, and on a grander scale. A congressman might hint at the need for donations to his campaign after dinner. The wife of a CEO might let it be known over cocktails that she was raising funds for her favorite charity. It was a house for soft voices, afternoon teas and elegant parties where lives and hearts could be broken with quiet, deadly courtesy.

Maggie paused. No problem, she decided. For once, she was ready to ride the angry tide into unfamiliar territory. So what if there was a scene? A rude, crashing, public scene might be just what she needed.

She raised her voice as she started the suitcase moving again. “Don’t you think I’m a little too old to be grounded, Mom?”

“Margaret, please.” Sharon’s voice was strained. “We’ll discuss this later.”

“Later doesn’t work for me.” Her riding boots felt as if they weighed thirty pounds apiece, and her wrist had gone from throbbing to a hard, solid ache and her suitcase kept trying to topple over. She didn’t care. “I want my purse back. Now.”

“We have company.”

“Fine. Maybe he can tell me what you did with my purse. Or did you hide it before you answered the door?”

As her suitcase bumped along behind her, she saw more of the visitor—long legs encased in jeans that had faded to white in all those interesting places a man’s body shapes wear into denim.

Maggie’s heart did a quick, funny flip as something less distinct than memory, more painful than instinct kicked in. Her attention split between wrestling her suitcase down the stairs and the man who was revealed, step by bumpy step. She couldn’t see his face because he stood on the other side of her mother, but she saw enough—a strong thigh and slim hip covered in worn denim. Part of a chest, a shoulder and arm wearing red cotton. At least, the shirt had once been red. Now it was worn and soft, the color faded to a deep rose.

And she saw his hand. Long-fingered and incongruously elegant, that hand. It held a dark brown Stetson…and it was dusted by dark hair on the back, though she couldn’t see that from here. No more than she could see the thin white scar on the palm.

Memory supplied those details.

Maggie stopped dead. Her suitcase jerked on its strap, then toppled onto its side. She didn’t notice. The breath caught in her throat and tangled there with the quick pumping of her heart.

“I seem to have come at a bad time,” the visitor said, and stepped out from behind her mother.

It was a good thing she’d stopped moving. Otherwise she might have pitched forward physically when she fell into the bright dazzle of Luke’s smile.

Lucas West was a sight to bedazzle any woman. His hair was a warm brown that always looked a few weeks late for a trim, just shaggy enough to invite feminine fingers. His skin was tanned, roughened by wind and sun, and his body was lean, strong-shouldered, with a cowboy’s narrow hips and small, tight butt. The features on his narrow face were sculpture-perfect, right down to the most kissable mouth on either side of the Red River. But it was those eyes—those bright-as-sin, fallen angel eyes—that truly trapped a woman.

Oh, yes. Luke was appallingly good-looking. And he knew it.

Maggie scowled and bent to shove her suitcase upright and get her breathing started again. “Your timing’s not bad,” she said, straightening. “I was just about to leave, but I can’t go until my mother gives me back my purse. She’s trying to keep me from running away from home. What’s new with you?”

“Not much. I sold Hunter’s Child last week, and I expect I’ll have a sister-in-law or two soon. But you already know about that situation.” Smile lines traced friendly paths around eyes as wild as the bluebonnets that flooded hillsides in the spring. Deeper grooves cut his cheeks like parentheses, enclosing that sinful grin. “Jacob would have explained when he proposed to you.”

Sharon gasped. “Jacob West asked you to marry him? Margaret, you didn’t tell me. You know your father was hoping—and Jacob is a wonderful man, so clever.”

“So rich, you mean. I turned him down.”

“That’s what I heard.” Luke’s voice was mild, but some dark, unlikely emotion flashed through those bright eyes, gone too quickly to disturb the lazy grin. “That’s why I’m here. That…and Fine Dandy.”

“Dandy’s gone.” Grief pinched, too raw and private for words. She scowled at her mother, and the giddy zing of anger returned. “So is my purse.”

Sharon’s cheeks turned pink. “It’s hardly my fault if you misplace your things.”

Maggie thudded down the last two steps. “I didn’t misplace it. You did. On purpose. Where is it?”

“Since you insist on discussing this now…” Sharon’s lips tightened. “I locked it in the Cadillac.”

Maggie’s confidence stumbled. “I could break a window.”

Sharon didn’t bother to respond. They both knew she wouldn’t. Not on her father’s car.

“Maybe I can help.” Luke moved closer.

“Please don’t,” Sharon said. “This is a family matter.”

Maggie’s eyebrows lifted. “You know how to break into a car?”

“I probably could,” he admitted. “But I had a different sort of assistance in mind. I saw Fine Dandy listed when I was checking out some Web sites, looked into it and learned that your father had put him up for sale. So I bought him.”

Hurt bit, mixing with anger and the lingering punch of arousal. “Great. That’s wonderful. I’m very happy for you. Now get the heck out of—”

“Maggie!” her mother exclaimed, shocked.

“No, it’s okay.” Luke’s eyes didn’t leave her face. “I thought we might be able to work out a deal.”