True Heart

Sometime later, she’d learned the rest—that his mother had left his father two months after Tripp’s accident. Had run off with her sons’ pediatrician in Durango. They’d moved to New Orleans and she’d never looked back.

And Tripp’s father had never recovered, never looked for another woman. Only for comfort in the bottle.

Kaley bit her lip as she frowned in thought. And somehow, someway, she’d gotten half a notion that Tripp blamed himself for his family’s dissolution. Though that was crazy. How could an eight-year-old be to blame?

But I bet I know one thing—where his mom meant to go while she stashed her son at the matinee. If anyone should be blaming herself for what had happened…

Yet, maybe she had shouldered the blame. Maybe in the end, Mrs. McGraw hadn’t so much run to her lover as fled from her guilt, emblazoned on her small son’s cheek for all the world to see. Every time she’d looked at his poor little face, it must have stabbed her to the heart.

WHEN THEY REACHED the Ribbon River Dude Ranch, Kaley stayed in her car while Tripp and Dana unbuckled the children from their seats. A tall, dark man walked out the back door of the Victorian farmhouse onto the wide deck, called a question, then came down the steps at a bound.

Standing with his big hands on Dana’s shoulders, he listened to her for a moment, then swept her and their baby into a fierce embrace. Tripp stood by, examining the stars for the first minute of that hug. Then he shrugged and carried Petra, still babbling and waving her chubby hands, to the screen door, where he passed her to the gangly, teenage boy who’d made an appearance. Returning, Tripp patted Dana’s shoulder in passing, said something with a grin to the man who still held her and came on to Kaley’s car.

“Reckon Rafe’ll forgive her the coyote,” he said, straight-faced, as he dropped into his seat next to Kaley.

So Dana was one of the lucky ones, Kaley mused as she drove the long gravel road out to the highway. She felt more than a passing twinge of envy. Not once in the past eight years had she been hugged like that.

And before Richard? Her eyes flicked to her companion. That had been different. That had been all about sex. They’d been young and greedy and couldn’t get enough of each other. But their romance had been nothing to build a life on, nothing to last.

Or it would have lasted.

TRIPP DIDN’T SPEAK till they could see the lights of Trueheart twinkling in the distance. “Can I buy you a burger at Mo’s? I’m ’bout ready to gnaw my boots.”

The last time she’d eaten at Mo’s Truckstop had been with Tripp, nine years ago, on her spring break from college. Lingering over coffee, hands clasped across the table, they’d planned their modest wedding, which was scheduled for June. By then Tripp would be done with spring roundup, and she’d have completed her freshman year at Oberlin.

Marriage had seemed so easy and right as they’d sat there. So…so attainable. All they had to do was hang on for three more lonely months, then happiness was theirs. Kaley cleared her throat and managed to find a level voice. “Mo’s sounds good.”

INSIDE THE TRUCK STOP, Tripp chose the same booth they’d always taken—their booth, Kaley had thought of it, way back when. Afraid to meet his eyes and find the memories lurking there, she ducked her head over the dog-eared menu.

“Steakburger with fries?” Tripp asked quietly. What she—both of them—had always ordered.

But she was a different person now, a believer in easy and right no longer. Life wasn’t that simple. “Something lighter, I think. Maybe a grilled breast of chicken if Mo—” But no, Mo was still holding the high-cholesterol line. Nothing on his menu but cow or deep-fried.

“Go back to the city,” Tripp jeered, halfway between teasing and something sharper. “You’ll find a yuppie sandwich on every corner.”

Wish on. “I’m here to stay, Tripp.” She looked him straight in the eye, and ordered a steakburger when the waitress came.

They called a tacit truce over Mo’s meltingly tender strip steaks, sticking to small, safe topics while they ate. Kaley explained that Whitey had refused to consult a doctor, so she’d gone to Durango for crutches.

She wanted to know how Tripp had made it down from the high country so soon. She hadn’t expected to see him back for a day or so yet, but she learned that he’d ridden only halfway. He’d trailered his packhorses up and back through Suntop land, a shortcut Rafe Montana permitted his closest neighbors.

She asked after Tripp’s brother, and learned that Mac was working for a rodeo stock contractor out of Laramie, serving as a pickup man in the bronc events, also doing his own share of bull riding.

Riding those horned freight trains—now that sounded like Mac McGraw, macho from his boot heels to his eyebrows. He was devil-may-care, where his big brother was the steady one. The caring one, she’d once thought.

Tripp asked how she’d liked teaching high-school English, so she tossed off a few war stories—the laughable times and the ones where you wanted to tear out your hair in frustration. The kids were the very best of the bargain. All the hurdles the bureaucrats placed between you and actual teaching—that was the worst of it.

“Are you thinking about teaching in Trueheart?” he asked after he’d ordered coffee and she’d wistfully passed.

She stifled a stinging retort, remembering how he’d protested when she went away to college in Ohio, where Oberlin College had offered her a full scholarship. How hard she’d had to work to persuade him that this was a good thing, the smart thing, her getting her B.A. and certification to teach. Because once she was certified, he could run his ranch and she could help him, but if beef prices kept dropping, she’d be able to teach in Trueheart or Cortez or Durango and carry them over the rough spots.

All the same, Tripp had hated her running off to the city. Had said she’d never be satisfied with ranching life after that. Yet now here he was asking, as if he’d thought up the idea himself!

“I’ve considered it,” she said slowly, swallowing her resentment. Teaching had been part of her plan when she’d thought that Jim was still in the picture. Her baby would be born in April. Then, assuming that her daughter was healthy, that the antibiotic hadn’t…harmed her, by the following September the baby would be old enough to do without her mother for eight hours a day, if an outside job proved to be necessary. Kaley didn’t like it, knew she’d hate leaving her baby, but it was no more than most single mothers had to do.

Tripp leaned forward, hands flat on the table. “That’s what you should do, Kaley, if you want to stay in Colorado. Take a teaching job here—or even better in Durango. Or Boulder. It’d be more like what you’re used to, a real city.”

Kaley shook her head. She was done with cities. When she’d settled for a shallow life in the city with a shallow man was when her life had taken its wrong turn. Besides, her plan didn’t work anymore now that Jim had flown away. She couldn’t both manage her ranch and teach.

“You should do that,” Tripp insisted, his callused fingertips whitening on the tabletop. “I’m offering the appraised value on your land. It’s fair—Jim hired the appraiser himself. You should take your half of the money and buy a nice little house in Durango or Denver or—”

“Or maybe Miami,” she cut in. “Or how about Spain? Would that be far enough for you?” As his eyebrows drew together, she shook her head. “Get used to it, Tripp. I’m not selling.” So much for truces!

“You’re not selling. Yeah, that’s big talk,” he snapped. “But the question is, can you keep? You understand I can call your loan anytime after shipping day? That it’s all due—the forty thou plus interest, all in one balloon payment?”

If Tripp insisted on full payback, there was no way she could keep the ranch—she was as good as sunk. Bad enough to be at anyone’s mercy, but to be at this man’s? How much mercy had he shown her the last time? “Jim walked right into that one, didn’t he?” she said bitterly. “He’s always too impatient to read the fine print.”

Tripp’s face darkened; his scar went pale. “You’re saying I tricked your brother? Pulled a fast one?”

Whoa, girl! Her temper had grabbed the bit and run right away with her. But this wasn’t the cynical city, where slick moves were a given. This was Trueheart, where the Code of the West still held. Where a man would fight for his honor and his good name, sometimes to the death. She drew a breath, sighed it out, and shook her head slowly. No, her brother had been a fool, but he’d needed no help in that, or received any. “No, Tripp, I’m…not saying that. Don’t believe it.”

When still he waited with narrowed eyes, she added reluctantly, “Sorry. I’m sorry…I know you’re just looking out for yourself. But then, so am I. I want to keep the ranch in my family.” Below the edge of the table, she touched her stomach for luck. “Is that so hard to understand?”

“Wanting’s one thing, Kaley,” Tripp said bleakly. “Everyone wants. But doing?” He stood up from the table. “That’s another.”

CHAPTER SIX

THEY DROVE halfway back to his truck before either of them ventured to speak again. At last Tripp cleared his throat and said huskily, “Look, I know this isn’t easy, but you need to face it. There’s no way you can make a go of this. I reckon you’ve forgotten, how hard ranching is.”

“I ranched for almost eighteen years till I went off to college,” she reminded him.

“You worked with a father, a brother and a younger Whitey to help you. Now it’s you and a lame old man. You won’t last out the winter.”

“I will!” she insisted, staring down the tunnel of her headlights. “I know it won’t be easy, but I will.” She had no place else on earth to go. No place she wanted to be.

“Kaley, you’ll quit.”

Her hands clenched till they ached on the wheel. “You’re calling me a quitter?”

“Aren’t you?” he taunted. “Who walked out on who back there in Phoenix?”

She had half a mind to pull over and order him out. Let him hoof it the rest of the way to his truck.

“Why did you leave him?” Tripp probed her silence. “Or did you?”

She shot him a seething glance. He’d maneuvered her as neatly as a cutting horse splits a calf out of the herd. Left her nothing but two bad choices. She could let him brand her a quitter, a woman who’d walked out on her marriage—or she could admit that, yes, once again, she’d failed to hold her man’s love. “It’s none of your business, you know.”

“Yeah?” His harsh laughter goaded her. “Sounds like he left you!”