Part of the Bargain

“Leave Cathy and Stace alone, Libby,” he warned with blunt savagery. “They’ve had a lot of problems lately, and if you do anything to make the situation worse, I’ll see that you regret it. Do I make myself clear?”

Libby would have done almost anything to escape his scrutiny just then, short of thrusting open the door of that small four-passenger Cessna and jumping out, but her choices were undeniably limited. Trembling just a little, she turned away and fixed her attention on the ground again.

Dear heaven, did Jess really think that she would interfere in Cathy’s marriage—or any other, for that matter? Cathy was her cousin—they’d been raised like sisters!

With a sigh, Libby faced the fact that there was every chance that Jess and a lot of other people would believe she had been involved with Stacey Barlowe. There had, after all, been that exchange of correspondence, and Stace had even visited her a few times, in the thick of her traumatic divorce, though in actuality he had been in the city on business.

“Libby?” prodded Jess sharply, when the silence grew too long to suit him.

“I’m not planning to vamp your brother!” she snapped. “Could we just drop this, please?”

To her relief and surprise, Jess turned his concentration on piloting the plane. His suntanned jaw worked with suppressed annoyance, but he didn’t speak again.

The timbered land below began to give way to occasional patches of prairie—cattle country. Soon they would be landing on the small airstrip serving the prosperous 150,000-acre Circle Bar B, owned by Jess’s father and overseen, for the most part, by Libby’s.

Libby had grown up on the Circle Bar B, just as Jess had, and her mother, like his, was buried there. Even though she couldn’t call the ranch home in the legal sense of the word, it was still home to her, and she had every right to go there—especially now, when she needed its beauty and peace and practical routines so desperately.

The airplane began to descend, jolting Libby out of her reflective state. Beside her, Jess guided the craft skillfully toward the paved landing strip stretched out before them.

The landing gear came down with a sharp snap, and Libby drew in her breath in preparation. The wheels of the plane screeched and grabbed as they made contact with the asphalt, and then the Cessna was rolling smoothly along the ground.

When it came to a full stop, Libby wrenched at her seat belt, anxious to put as much distance as possible between herself and Jess Barlowe. But his hand closed over her left wrist in a steel-hard grasp. “Remember, Lib—these people aren’t the sophisticated if-it-feels-good-do-it types you’re used to. No games.”

Games. Games? Hot color surged into Libby’s face and pounded there in rhythm with the furious beat of her heart. “Let go of me, you bastard!” she breathed.

If anything, Jess’s grip tightened. “I’ll be watching you,” he warned, and then he flung Libby’s wrist from his hand and turned away to push open the door on his side and leap nimbly to the ground.

Libby was still tugging impotently at the handle on her own door when her father strode over, climbed deftly onto the wing and opened it for her. She felt such a surge of love and relief at the sight of him that she cried out softly and flung herself into his arms, nearly sending both of them tumbling to the hard ground.

Ken Kincaid hadn’t changed in the years since Libby had seen him last—he was still the same handsome, rangy cowboy that she remembered so well, though his hair, while as thick as ever, was iron-gray now, and the limp he’d acquired in a long-ago rodeo accident was more pronounced.

Once they were clear of the plane, he held his daughter at arm’s length, laughed gruffly, and then pulled her close again. Over his shoulder she saw Jess drag her suitcases and portable drawing board out of the Cessna’s luggage compartment and fling them unceremoniously into the back of a mud-speckled truck.

Nothing if not perceptive, Ken Kincaid turned slightly, assessed Senator Cleave Barlowe’s second son, and grinned. There was mischief in his bright blue eyes when he faced Libby again. “Rough trip?”

Libby’s throat tightened unaccountably, and she wished she could explain how rough. She was still stung by Jess’s insulting opinion of her morality, but how could she tell her father that? “You know that it’s always rough going where Jess and I are concerned,” she said.

Her father’s brows lifted speculatively as Jess got behind the wheel of the truck and sped away without so much as a curt nod or a halfhearted so-long. “You two’d better watch out,” he mused. “If you ever stop butting heads, you might find out you like each other.”

“Now, that,” replied Libby with dispatch, “is a horrid thought if I’ve ever heard one. Tell me, Dad—how have you been?”

He draped one wiry arm over her shoulders and guided her in the direction of a late-model pickup truck. The door on the driver’s side was emblazoned with the words CIRCLE BAR B RANCH, and Yosemite Sam glared from both the mud flaps shielding the rear tires. “Never mind how I’ve been, dumplin’. How’ve you been?”

Libby felt some of the tension drain from her as her father opened the door on the passenger side of the truck and helped her inside. She longed to shed her expensive tailored linen suit for jeans and a T-shirt, and—oh, heaven—her sneakers would be a welcome change from the high heels she was wearing. “I’ll be okay,” she said in tones that were a bit too energetically cheerful.

Ken climbed behind the wheel and tossed one searching, worried look in his daughter’s direction. “Cathy’s waiting over at the house, to help you settle in and all that. I was hoping we could talk….”

Libby reached out and patted her father’s work-worn hand, resting now on the gearshift knob. “We can talk tonight. Anyway, we’ve got lots of time.”

Ken started the truck’s powerful engine, but his wise blue eyes had not strayed from his daughter’s face. “You’ll stay here awhile, then?” he asked hopefully.

Libby nodded, but she suddenly found that she had to look away. “As long as you’ll let me, Dad.”

The truck was moving now, jolting and rattling over the rough ranch roads with a pleasantly familiar vigor. “I expected you before this,” he said. “Lib…”

She turned an imploring look on him. “Later, Dad—okay? Could we please talk about the heavy stuff later?”

Ken swept off his old cowboy hat and ran a practiced arm across his forehead. “Later it is, dumplin’.” Graciously he changed the subject. “Been reading your comic strip in the funny papers, and it seems like every kid in town’s wearing one of those T-shirts you designed.”

Libby smiled; her career as a syndicated cartoonist was certainly safe conversational ground. And it had all started right here, on this ranch, when she’d sent away the coupon printed on a matchbook and begun taking art lessons by mail. After that, she’d won a scholarship to a prestigious college, graduated, and made her mark, not in portraits or commercial design, as some of her friends had, but in cartooning. Her character, Liberated Lizzie, a cave-girl with modern ideas, had created something of a sensation and was now featured not only in the Sunday newspapers but also on T-shirts, greeting cards, coffee mugs and calendars. There was a deal pending with a poster company, and Libby’s bank balance was fat with the advance payment for a projected book.

She would have to work hard to fulfill her obligations—there was the weekly cartoon strip to do, of course, and the panels for the book had to be sketched in. She hoped that between these tasks and the endless allure of the Circle Bar B, she might be able to turn her thoughts from Jonathan and the mess she’d made of her personal life.

“Career-wise, I’m doing fine,” Libby said aloud, as much to herself as to her father. “I don’t suppose I could use the sunporch for a studio?”

Ken laughed. “Cathy’s been working for a month to get it ready, and I had some of the boys put in a skylight. All you’ve got to do is set up your gear.”

Impulsively Libby leaned over and kissed her father’s beard-stubbled cheek. “I love you!”

“Good,” he retorted. “A husband you can dump—a daddy you’re pretty well stuck with.”

The word “husband” jarred Libby a little, bringing an unwelcome image of Aaron into her mind as it did, and she didn’t speak again until the house came into sight.

Originally the main ranch house, the structure set aside for the general foreman was an enormous, drafty place with plenty of Victorian scrollwork, gabled windows and porches. It overlooked a sizable spring-fed pond and boasted its own sheltering copse of evergreens and cottonwood trees.

The truck lurched a little as Ken brought it to a stop in the gravel driveway, and through the windshield Libby could see glimmering patches of the silver-blue sparkle that was the pond. She longed to hurry there now, kick off her shoes on the grassy bank and ruin her stockings wading in the cold, clear water.

But her father was getting out of the truck, and Cathy Barlow, Libby’s cousin and cherished friend, was dashing down the driveway, her pretty face alight with greeting.

Libby laughed and stood waiting beside the pickup truck, her arms out wide.

After an energetic hug had been exchanged, Cathy drew back in Libby’s arms and lifted a graceful hand to sign the words: “I’ve missed you so much!”

“And I’ve missed you,” Libby signed back, though she spoke the words aloud, too.

Cathy’s green eyes sparkled. “You haven’t forgotten how to sign!” she enthused, bringing both hands into play now. She had been deaf since childhood, but she communicated so skillfully that Libby often forgot that they weren’t conversing verbally. “Have you been practicing?”

She had. Signing had been a game for her and Jonathan to play during the long, difficult hours she’d spent at his hospital bedside. Libby nodded and tears of love and pride gathered in her dark blue eyes as she surveyed her cousin—physically, she and Cathy bore no resemblance to each other at all.

Cathy was petite, her eyes wide, mischievous emeralds, her hair a glistening profusion of copper and chestnut and gold that reached almost to her waist. Libby was of medium height, and her silver-blond hair fell just short of her shoulders.

“I’ll be back later,” Ken said quietly, signing the words as he spoke so that Cathy could understand, too. “You two have plenty to say to each other, it looks like.”

Cathy nodded and smiled, but there was something sad trembling behind the joy in her green eyes, something that made Libby want to scurry back to the truck and beg to be driven back to the airstrip. From there she could fly to Kalispell and catch a connecting flight to Denver and then New York….

Good Lord—surely Jess hadn’t been so heartless as to share his ridiculous suspicions with Cathy!

The interior of the house was cool and airy, and Libby followed along behind Cathy, her thoughts and feelings in an incomprehensible tangle. She was glad to be home, no doubt about it. She’d yearned for the quiet sanity of this place almost from the moment of leaving it.