Texas Trouble

But then Sean glanced toward Nora, and for a minute she thought she saw something else hiding behind the hostility. Something like…hope.

Hope that she believed in him.

In spite of the other sins, the tempers, the sneaking out, the running away and whatever had caused all that mud and blood, he wanted her to trust that he hadn’t done anything as terrible as destroy a living creature.

“Harry’s right,” she said, praying it was true. “I know you didn’t kill anything.” She ignored the intake of breath from Evelyn, who clearly thought she was, once again, being too soft.

Refusing to meet her sister-in-law’s outraged gaze, Nora watched as Milly and the boys climbed the winding staircase, Sean dragging his dirty hand along the iron railing. When they rounded the first curve, she called up the voice mail.

“Nora,” an elegant baritone said smoothly, “this is Logan Cathcart. My manager just said your son was at the sanctuary. He was— He’d been—” A short silence. “It’s nothing serious, but…I think we should talk.”

She shook her head, frustrated, and clicked the button. “He didn’t leave any details,” she said, for Evelyn’s benefit.

She began scrolling through the handset’s electronic address book. “I’d better call him and see what really happened. His message said it wasn’t serious, but of course he might be trying not to upset me. He’s a very nice man, actually.”

She had just found the Two Wings’s main number when she sensed Evelyn’s gaze boring into the top of her head. She glanced up. Her sister-in-law’s expression was even more unpleasant than Nora had imagined. It tried unsuccessfully to disguise her real anger as amusement.

“I know you want to come with us, Evvie,” Nora said, trying to smile. “But I honestly think we’d do better alone. Sean’s pride is one of his problems, and if you see him—”

“Oh, I know you would rather go alone. That doesn’t surprise me. I was just surprised that… You have his number on speed dial?”

“What?” Nora looked at the handset, confused. “Whose?”

“His.” Evelyn jerked her head toward the phone, as if there were someone in it. “Logan Cathcart’s.”

Nora’s hands stilled on the keypad. She was so shocked, she couldn’t think of a single response. Evelyn’s face…her tone…

What could she possibly be hinting at?

But then Nora realized her silence sounded guilty. It even felt guilty, which was ridiculous. She had nothing to be guilty about. She hadn’t spoken to Logan Cathcart, except to say hello if they passed in town, since Harrison’s funeral six months ago.

She’d hardly exchanged ten words with him even then. Or for several months before Harrison’s death, for that matter. Occasionally, in the middle of the night, Nora might wrestle with a guilty conscience about the handsome New Englander who had shocked Texas society by turning good cattle acres into a bird sanctuary, but Evelyn couldn’t possibly know that.

Could she?

“Of course I have the Two Wings’s number programmed. Why wouldn’t I? They’re our closest neighbors.”

Evelyn’s smile was cold. “And he is, as you say, such a very nice man. The kind of man you’d like to see…alone.”

Nora set down the phone carefully on the end table beside Harrison’s favorite leather couch. She faced Evelyn squarely, and waited for her to explain.

Clearly in no hurry to do so, Evelyn stared back, folding her arms neatly in front of her chest. Though she was almost sixty now, her skin leathered by years of too much sun, she was still a handsome woman. She wore her salt-and-pepper hair cut short and straight around her ears, accenting her black, bright eyes. Her body had been kept young by constant motion.

If she’d ever given a human being the same warmth she bestowed on her Jack Russell terriers, she might have been quite beautiful. In the ten years Nora had known her, though, she hadn’t seen that happen.

“I’m not sure what you’re trying to imply, Evelyn.”

“Of course you are.”

Nora hesitated, feeling as if she’d been caught on a dangerous square of an invisible chessboard. She knew that Evelyn didn’t like her. For so many reasons—many of them completely justified.

From the outset, Evelyn had been suspicious of a young nobody’s motives in marrying a very rich man twice her age. When it was clear she couldn’t prevent the marriage, Evelyn had tried to train Nora to deserve the name Archer, but in spite of her best efforts Nora’s social skills were slack, her ranching inferior.

She didn’t keep the correct distance with the servants, she couldn’t manage the appropriate intimacy with the horses and she never made friends easily with Harrison’s business pals.

And, of course, there was the matter of Bull’s Eye, the ten-thousand-acre horse and cattle ranch that had been the Archer home for generations.

Harrison had left Bull’s Eye to Nora, who didn’t appreciate it, involve herself in it or deserve it. Evelyn had been seething about it ever since the will was read.

Over the six months since Harrison’s death, the relationship had gone from marginal to messy. Somehow, they’d found a sliver of common ground in their mutual love for Sean and Harry, and Nora had tried to build on that.

Obviously it wasn’t working today.

“Isn’t that right, Nora?” Evelyn’s piercing gaze hadn’t flickered once. “You’re secretly glad to have an excuse to call Mr. Cathcart, aren’t you?”

Nora took a breath and squared her shoulders. “Evelyn, please. I don’t need anything else to worry about right now. If you have something to say, say it.”

“I did. I said that you have an interest in Logan Cathcart. And I’ll say more. I’ll say that you’ve been interested in him since long before your husband died.”

“That’s ridiculous. Where on earth did you get such an absurd idea?”

“From my brother.”

Nora felt her head recoil slightly, as if she’d been slapped. “That can’t be true,” she said. “Harrison would never have said…”

But she couldn’t finish the sentence. Harrison could have said exactly that. He had said it once, to Nora.

Evelyn saw Nora’s dismay, and she blinked slowly, a movement that was pained and triumphant at the same time.

“Yes, that’s right. He told me. He was my brother, and he confided in me. Did you think he wouldn’t? Did you think he’d suffer in silence?”

Nora shook her head. “It’s just that…I hoped he would have realized how wrong he was.”

“Wrong?”

“Yes. Not that I owe this explanation to you, Evvie, but he was wrong.” Nora’s throat felt dry. She was telling the truth, but she knew it sounded like a lie. That made her angry, almost as angry as Evelyn’s constant criticism and her heavy-handed interference in the boys’ lives did.

“Harrison did once suspect that I might be attracted to Logan. But I assured him it wasn’t true, and he believed me. There has never been anything between Logan Cathcart and me.”

She clicked Talk, and the dial tone hummed. She had a choice between two pre-programmed buttons, the Two Wings manager’s office, and Logan Cathcart’s home number. As her finger punched the home number defiantly, she looked up at her sister-in-law.

“And that’s the last time I’ll ever discuss this with you, Evelyn, because frankly it’s none of your business.”

The phone began to ring. She looked toward the fireplace, signaling the end of the argument.

But she should have known she wouldn’t get the last word.

“My brother has always been my business,” Evelyn said quietly, her voice a deadly monotone. “And so are my brother’s sons.”