Courting the Enemy

“And how much is all of this going to cost? An arm and a leg, I imagine.”

His tone dulled her enthusiasm. “Not so much. We can manage it.”

He gestured toward the stack of bills. “We can’t pay the electric bill. The feed and grain bill is two months overdue—and you want to go to a bunch of fool parties? And where exactly would we stay now that your parents have moved? You planning on driving a hundred miles each way every single day? Motels are expensive.”

“We need this,” she insisted stubbornly. “I’ll find us a place to stay.”

“We need to hang on to every single dollar we can get our hands on, or this time next year we’re going to be worrying about a place to live.”

It was a familiar refrain, and it was Caleb’s greatest fear. Karen knew that and she didn’t take it lightly. It wasn’t just a matter of holding on to the ranch he loved, the ranch that had been in his family for three generations. It wasn’t even a matter of pride. It was a matter of keeping the ranch out of the hands of the man he considered his family’s worst enemy.

Grady Blackhawk had been after the Hanson ranch for years, the entire time Karen had been with Caleb. She couldn’t recall a week that there hadn’t been some communication from him, some sense that he was circling like a vulture waiting for the ranch to collapse under Caleb’s ineptitude. She didn’t fully understand Grady’s motivation, because Caleb had flatly refused to discuss it. He’d just painted him as the devil incarnate and warned Karen time and again against him.

“Caleb, we’re not going to lose the ranch,” she said, clinging to her patience by a thread. “Not to Grady Blackhawk, not to anyone.”

“I wish to hell I were as sure of that as you are. You want to go to your reunion, go, but leave me out of it. I have more important things to do with my time—like keeping a roof over our heads.”

With that he had stormed out of the house, and she hadn’t seen him again until morning.

She let the subject of the reunion drop, and a few days later, looking sheepish, Caleb apologized and handed her a check to pay for all of the events.

“You’re right. We need this. We’ll see all of your friends, maybe dance a little,” he said, giving her a tired but suggestive wink that reminded her that they had fallen in love on a dance floor.

Karen pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Thank you. It’s going to be wonderful. You’ll see.”

Instead, making up for time lost at the reunion turned out to be more than Caleb’s heart could take. Only days after it was over, he collapsed.

She should have seen it coming, Karen berated herself en route to the hospital, should have known that no man could survive under so much self-imposed pressure.

Maybe if she hadn’t been caught up with all of the Calamity Janes, she would have. Instead, though, she had stolen every spare minute to spend time with her best friends, time away from the ranch she could ill afford.

But with Emma working as a hotshot attorney in Denver at the time, Lauren lighting up the silver screen in Hollywood, with Gina running her exclusive Italian restaurant in Manhattan, and even Cassie living a few hundred miles away, Karen was determined to take advantage of every single second they were home. Seeing them rejuvenated her.

She was in Denver with Cassie, awaiting the results of her mother’s breast cancer surgery, when the call came that Caleb was being taken to the hospital. A million and one thoughts raced through her mind on the flight to Laramie. Nothing her friends did or said could distract or reassure her. Guilt crowded in.

She had pressed Caleb to attend the reunion. She had left him alone to keep up with all of the ranch chores even after the events ended. It was little wonder that he had broken under the stress, and it was her fault. All of it. She would live with that forever.

But he would be all right, she told herself over and over. And she would make it up to him, work twice as hard from now on.

At the hospital, the doctor greeted her, his expression grim. “It was too late, Mrs. Hanson. There was nothing we could do.”

Karen stared at him, not understanding, not wanting to believe what he seemed to be saying. “Too late?” she whispered as the Calamity Janes moved in close to offer support. “He’s…” She couldn’t even say the word.

Neither could the doctor, it seemed. He nodded, his tone conveying what his words merely hinted. “Yes. I’m sorry. The heart attack was massive.”

Sorry, she thought wildly. There was plenty of regret to go around. She was sorry, too. She would spend a lifetime being sorry.

But being sorry wouldn’t bring Caleb back. It wouldn’t save the ranch from Grady Blackhawk. It was up to her to do that.

And she would, too, no matter what it took, no matter what sacrifices she had to make. After all, her husband had paid for that damnable ranch with his life.

Chapter One

The kitchen table was littered with travel brochures, all provided by Karen’s well-meaning best friends. She sat at the table with her cup of tea and a homemade cranberry scone baked just that morning and dropped off by Gina, and studied the pictures without touching them. She was almost afraid to pick up the brochures, afraid to admit just how tempted she was to toss aside all of her responsibilities and run away.

The Calamity Janes had known just how to get to her, selecting all the places she had talked about back in high school. London, of course. Always her first choice since so much of her favorite literature had been written there. And Italy because of the art in Florence, because of the history in Rome and the canals of Venice. Paris for the sidewalk bistros on shady streets and for the Louvre and Notre Dame. They had thrown in a cruise through the Greek isles and a relaxing resort in Hawaii for good measure.

Once the images would have stirred her imagination, the prospect of actually being able to choose one would have filled her with excitement, but today all she felt was sadness. Finally, after all these years, she could make her dream come true, but only because her husband was dead, only if she turned her back on everything that had mattered to him…to them.

Caleb was dead. The words still had the power to shock her, even now, six months after his funeral. How could a man not yet forty be dead? He had always appeared so healthy, so strong. Though he’d been ten years older, she had been drawn to him from the moment they met because of his vitality, his zest for living. Who would have guessed that his heart was weak…a heart that had been capable of such love, such tenderness?

Tears welled up, spilled down her cheeks, splattered on the glossy brochures for places she had put off seeing to marry the man of her dreams.

Not a day went by that Karen didn’t blame the ranch for killing him. That and her stubborn determination to take time off for her high school reunion. Six months hadn’t changed her mind about where the blame lay.

Nor had it dulled her grief. Her friends were worried about her, which explained the arrival this morning of all the brochures. They had remembered how she had once talked of leaving Wyoming behind, of becoming a flight attendant or a travel agent or a cruise director, anything that would allow her to see the world. They were using all of those old dreams in an effort to tempt her into taking a break.

A break, she thought derisively. Her so-called break for that reunion was the reason Caleb was dead. Running a ranch didn’t allow for breaks, not a ranch the size of hers anyway. It was a full-time, never-ending, backbreaking job, with often pitiful rewards.

Once she and Caleb had envisioned taking trips together, traveling to all the exciting, faraway places she had dreamed about before she’d met him and fallen in love. He had understood her dreams even if he hadn’t shared them. This ranch had been his only obsession.

There had been other dreams, of course, ones they had shared. They had dreamed of filling the house with children, but they’d put it off. Just until finances took a turn for the better, he’d promised her.

Now there would be no children, she thought bitterly. No vacations to exotic locales. Not with Caleb, anyway. They’d never gone farther away from home than Cheyenne, where they’d spent their three-day honeymoon.

The Calamity Janes had obviously anticipated her protests that there was no money for a frivolous vacation, no time to indulge a fantasy. Her friends had prepaid a trip to anywhere in the world she wanted to go. It was Lauren’s extravagant gift, most likely, Karen surmised. Lauren’s and Emma’s. Of Karen’s high school classmates, the actress and lawyer were the only ones with any cash to spare right now.

Cassie had recently married a successful technology whiz, but their road was still rocky as Cole struggled to accept the fact that Cassie had kept his son a secret from him for years. Cassie wouldn’t ask Cole for money, though Karen didn’t doubt he would have offered if he’d known about the plan. Cole had been a rock since Caleb’s death, pitching in to handle a hundred little details, things she would never have thought of. He’d wanted to do more, offered to send over extra help, but she had turned him down. Taking on the burden of running the ranch was her penance.

As for Gina, she had been in some sort of financial scrape with her New York restaurant that she flatly refused to discuss, but it was serious enough to have driven her out of New York and back to Winding River to stay. She spent her days in a frenzy of baking and her nights working in the local Italian restaurant where she’d first developed the desire to become a chef. There had been a handsome man hovering around ever since the reunion, but Gina steadfastly refused to introduce him or to explain his presence.

Karen loved them all for their support and their generosity. Her friends’ hearts were in the right place, but she couldn’t see how she could go to Cheyenne for a day trip right now, much less on some dream vacation. The work on the ranch hadn’t died with her husband. Hank and Dooley were pitching in to take up the slack, but they were beginning to get nervous about how they’d be paid or whether the ranch would even survive. They were right to worry, too. Karen didn’t have any answers for them. She knew, though, that Dooley, who’d worked with the Hansons for three decades, had persuaded the younger, more impulsive Hank to give her time to figure things out.

It was January now. She could tell them to find other work and manage for a while, but when spring came, she would have to have help once more. Better to scrape by and re-hire these two, whose loyalty she was sure of, than risk finding no one she could trust come April.

She groaned even as the thought crossed her mind. She was beginning to think like Caleb, seeing betrayal and enemies around every corner. He had been totally paranoid about Grady Blackhawk’s designs on their ranch. It was true that Grady wanted it. He’d made no secret of the fact, especially since Caleb’s death, but it was unlikely that he’d try to get it by planting a spy on her payroll.

Apparently she needed this break more than she wanted to admit. She finally dared to reach for the brochure on London and studied the photos of Buckingham Palace, the Old Vic, Harrods, the cathedrals.

She tried to imagine what London would be like in winter, with snow dusting the streets. Currier and Ives–style images from her favorite authors came to mind. It would be magical. It would be everything she’d ever dreamed of.

It was impossible.

She sighed heavily and reluctantly put the brochure down again, just as someone knocked at the kitchen door.

When she opened it, her heart thumped unsteadily at the sight of Grady Blackhawk. He’d been at the funeral, too. And he’d called a half-dozen times in the weeks and months since. She’d tried her best to ignore him, but he’d clearly lost patience. Now here he was on her doorstep.

“Mrs. Hanson,” he said with a polite nod and a finger touched to the rim of his black Stetson.