Fight For Love

She wondered how close to the Rio Grande the ranch actually was. Tip hadn’t said, although he had said that the ranch had survived in the early years because it had its own water supply that didn’t dry out, even in the longest drought.

Suddenly she felt the plane start to drop. At her side, Cherry said reassuringly, ‘Don’t worry, it won’t be long now.’

As she glanced out of the window, Natasha had a confused impression of rows of oil derricks, and flat, sandy earth, illuminated by the huge floodlights on top of the derricks.

‘Those are Uncle Pete’s oil wells,’ Rosalie told her matter-of-factly.

‘They used to be,’ Cherry corrected her. ‘Gramps said that most of ‘em belong to Uncle Sam now.’

Natasha hid a small smile as she heard Rosalie saying curiously, ‘But we don’t have an Uncle Sam …’

‘No! Gramps meant the government—silly!’

The plane banked drunkenly, and ahead of them Natasha could see the long, brightly lit airstrip. And then they were going down, bumping gently on the tarmac, slowing to a halt.

Cherry and Rosalie busied themselves unfastening their seat-belts and collecting their things as matter-of-factly as though they might have got off the tube. But to these children flying was a part of their lives.

Natasha followed them as they moved towards the exit. Jay Travers came to join them, his Stetson still rammed down on his head. Did he always wear it? she wondered. He had struck her as being too cynical and too worldly to constantly parody the cowboy image. She glanced again at his worn jeans and dusty boots. There had been other men wearing Stetsons at the airport, but they had all been dressed in executive suits, or immaculate western outfits …

‘I’m a working rancher, Miss Ames,’ she heard him saying behind her as he reached out to open the door. ‘I’m sorry if my clothes aren’t what you’re used to, but out here time is money …’

‘And I wasn’t worth the time and effort it would have taken you to get changed,’ Natasha said sardonically, holding back any further comment when she saw how intently the girls were listening to them.

Jay, it seemed, had no inhibitions.

‘Gramps was right about one thing,’ he agreed. ‘You sure are quick on the uptake …’

The way he said it, it wasn’t a compliment, and Natasha felt an angry flush sear her skin as she followed the two girls down on to the airstrip.

It was surprisingly cold, and then she remembered that this land came pretty close to desert conditions, and that the temperature would drop dramatically at night.

As the girls raced over to the waiting vehicle, Natasha hesitated. Her cases were still in the plane, and she suspected it would be unwise to rely on Jay’s chivalry to bring them for her. As she paused, a chilly breeze raised goose-bumps on her exposed arms.

‘You’d better go get in the truck. Didn’t Gramps tell you anything about conditions out here? Or were you so eager to come and claim your dues that you forgot?’

Her brief softening toward him, born of his sudden appreciation of her shivers, died as she listened to his sarcastic words.

‘My luggage is still on board the plane,’ she told him, ignoring his taunt.

‘I’ll see to that. Go join the girls.’

Much as she longed to ignore his command, she knew it would be foolish to simply stand around and shiver, while she waited for him to bring her cases.

The vehicle he had described as ‘the truck’ was huge. It was a truck, in that there was an open section at the back, but as Cherry opened the door for her she gasped to see the luxurious interior, with its front and rear bench seats and sophisticated bank of equipment.

‘Some truck,’ she muttered under her breath, causing the girls to giggle.

‘Uncle Jay uses it when he’s driving around the ranch,’ Cherry explained. ‘It has full radio contact with the ranch so that he can keep a check on what’s going on, and these seats make up into a bed in case he has to stay out overnight. It’s real neat, isn’t it?’

Natasha had to agree that it was, although her slightly puritan Cheshire soul protested a little at its opulent luxury. Her father had driven round his farm in a battered old Land Rover, with the hardest bench seats in the world and an antiquated form of heating that constantly belched out putrid and polluted air. It had been practically held together with pieces of string and odd bits of wire! In Cheshire, farmers were a thrifty, frugal lot who did not believe in expending money on new equipment while the old was still in working order.

Luckily the back seat was wide enough for her to be able to wedge herself alongside the girls. There was no way she was going to sit next to Jay and listen to more of his acerbic comments.

It took twenty minutes to drive back to the homestead, along one of the straightest bitumen roads Natasha had ever seen, and at a speed that had her clutching the sides of her seat as she tried to control her start of terror.

‘It’s all right, Uncle Jay isn’t going to hit anything,’ Cherry assured her kindly, calling out, to Natasha’s chagrin, ‘Can’t you slow down some? Natasha is scared …’

‘We used to be scared, too, when our folks were first killed, but Gramps said that the only way to get over falling off a horse was to climb right back on again.’

Yes, she could just hear him saying it too, Natasha thought wryly.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll let you hold my hand. That will make you feel a lot better … Uncle Jay always lets me hold his when I’m scared …’

So the man was human, after all. It came as something of a shock, and she couldn’t resist sneaking a glance at his rigid profile.

In the darkness of the truck she could just about make it out. While she was studying him he turned his head abruptly, as though sensing her scrutiny, and immediately she was aware of his leashed tension and resentment. Surely the fact that she had befriended his grandfather and had been left some small token in remembrance of that friendship could not be responsible for this almost savage sense of hostility she sensed in him?

Uncertainly, like someone probing an aching tooth, she examined her own feelings. It was unheard of for her to react so strongly to a man on such a short acquaintance … What had happened to her notorious coldness, so much bemoaned by other men? What had happened to the cool hauteur behind which she habitually hid her real feelings?

‘We’re almost there now.’ Cherry’s excited comment distracted her and she followed the little girl’s pointing finger. ‘Look, those are the breeding pens and the cattle sheds,’ she announced importantly. ‘Uncle Jay is trying to develop a new strain of Brahmin cattle, that will give leaner meat. He …’

‘I’m sure Miss Ames isn’t interested in any of that, Cherry.’ Jay’s ice-cold voice cut across the little girl’s excited chatter, and Natasha felt her resentment of him harden into something deeper.

If he wasn’t concerned with her feelings, surely he might have considered those of his niece? Or was he like his grandfather … did female members of the human race have no importance at all in his scheme of things?

It was cool, prim Rosalie who put the final seal on what Natasha felt was already promising to become a disastrous decision by saying virtuously, ‘Gramps used to say that Uncle Jay would have been better off breeding sons than wasting his time trying to breed a new type of cattle …’

‘That’s enough!’

Instant silence consumed the interior of the truck. Natasha found she was wishing herself a thousand miles away from Texas, and most especially from the man driving this vehicle. She had come out here with such high hopes, such a feeling of adventure, and within a few short hours he had managed to destroy all of that and replace it with …

With what? Hostility? Fear? Compassion for his two poor nieces—and any other woman unfortunate enough to come within his sphere … Resentment against Tip for putting her in such a position in the first place, and other alien emotions she couldn’t even begin to understand.

There had been that frisson of sensation when he had touched her, for instance. That momentary need to know what he would look like with his mouth softened by passion, his eyes hot instead of cold. That terrifying second when she had looked at him and read bitter loneliness in his eyes and almost ached to reach out and smooth it away …

She was imagining things, she told herself. She was suffering from jet-lag. People did the strangest things under its influence. Yes … yes, that was it. She heaved a faint sigh of relief as the truck suddenly stopped. She had been so deeply engrossed in her worrying thoughts that she hadn’t realised that they had pulled up in front of what must be the main entrance to the house.

As she stared at it, she caught her breath on a sudden surge of pleasure. It had been built in the Spanish style, which she recognised from trips to Andalucia: long and low, with white walls and a veranda, around which was entwined what she very much suspected must be bougainvillaea.

Another veranda ran round the second storey, with shuttered windows obviously opening out on to it.

‘Come on, Miss Ames, we’re here!’ Cherry tugged on her arm. Natasha shook herself free on her sudden and instinctive sense of homecoming and followed the girls outside.

‘Go on into the house. Dolores, our housekeeper, has prepared a room for you, Miss Ames.’

‘Uncle Jay …’

The twins’ protest was ignored as he swung down from the truck and strode away from them.