To Claim a Wife

But when those incredible jewel-blue eyes, with their thick fringe of black feathery lashes, shifted and homed in on him, he suddenly saw the girl again. The child. The broken-hearted, angry, hungry-for-love child she’d been every day that he’d known her. Something moved in his heart, but he ruthlessly ignored it.

The moment she stepped off the elevator, Caitlin sensed Reno’s presence. Terror sent talons of actual pain through her, but before she lost her nerve—or showed a glimmer of weakness—she made herself look straight at him.

Five years had made Reno harder and more formidable than ever. She’d secretly loved him once, adored him. She’d hated his brother for his little cruelties and for the way her father had blatantly favored him. But she’d loved Reno Duvall. Loved him, fantasized about him, and cried into her pillow at night because he was just like her father: stern, remote, unattainable.

He was so big. His shoulders were so wide, his body leanly muscled and as hard as a work saddle. Beneath his overlong black hair, his rugged, weather-tanned features were handsome in the rough handsome way of Western men in their prime. But so hard. And unforgiving. Relentlessly unforgiving.

She recognized the harsh lights in his eyes and knew that he’d never changed his mind about her, that he’d never believed her innocence, never forgiven her. After all this time, he probably never would.

The hurt she felt wasn’t unexpected, but it threatened the poised facade she’d worked so hard for. Somehow, she dug deeper for the strength that heartache and banishment had forged in her.

She continued in Reno’s direction without faltering. She got within speaking distance, then asked, “Is he still alive?”

She knew the question sounded cold. She’d meant for it to. She would exchange no pleasantries with Reno Duvall. He’d slice her to bits verbally if she did.

Something flared in Reno’s eyes and they burned over her face. His voice was harsh.

“Said he’d see you when you got here.”

Reno eased aside and Caitlin walked past him. He turned and walked a half pace behind her as they entered the ICU.

The patient cubicles faced the nurses’ station in a semicircle. Caitlin looked through the glass walls into each one as they passed, until they came to the fourth. Reno made a brief gesture—she was aware of every move he made—and she stopped. Foreboding quaked through her as she stared past the glass.

At first she didn’t recognize the elderly man on the hospital bed. Jess Bodine’s hair had gone from iron gray to nearly white. An oxygen tube ran across his craggy face.

As Caitlin stepped into the cubicle, the blip of monitors made an impression and she took swift note of the array of machines that flanked the head of the bed. Though they’d walked in quietly, the old man heard and gave a restless move of his head before he opened his eyes.

Jess Bodine had been almost as tall as Reno, built as strongly and as hard. But the old man on the bed seemed smaller. He looked frail, his face deathly pale and more gaunt than lean. Even his brown eyes—when she got close enough to see—seemed faded.

The shock of discovering that her rugged, larger-than-life father was now a thin, broken-looking old man, sent a spear of anguish through her heart.

She was truly losing him. The reminder made a more painful impact on her than it had when she’d heard he was ill. Jess was so near death that it was clear to her that there was no time left to bridge the emotional chasm between them. She might never learn what it was about her that he’d found so unlovable.

Though Jess Bodine was pitifully wasted and weak, his eyes fixed on her and gleamed with recognition. A moment later, he spoke. The words of welcome and forgiveness she’d hungered to hear never came.

“You see she gets the blood test.”

The incredible demand was made of Reno. The shock wave of silence that followed made her ill. Her soft “Hello, Daddy,” was little more than a whisper.

Jess’s gaze flickered briefly, then dulled. “We’ll see whether you got the right to call me that.” The words were slow and labored, and finished on a rasp as he ran out of air and strength.

Caitlin was suddenly so light-headed that she reached for the side rail of the bed for support and gripped it. Oblivious to her reaction, Jess fumbled with the oxygen tube.

The charged silence in the small space, punctuated by the blip and whir of machines, lent an eerie unreality to the scene. He wanted a blood test. Caitlin’s mind was so stunned, so sluggish suddenly that the reason for her father’s indifference—an indifference that so many times had flared out hatefully toward her—began to make sense only by slow degrees.

After a few reviving breaths, Jess’s eyelids fluttered with relief, then fell shut. This time when he spoke, his words were slurred by weakness. “My blood inherits half the Broken B. Or Reno gets everything.”

The effort made Jess struggle for air those next moments. His ongoing difficulty set off a small alarm that brought his nurse. Reno took her arm to pull her out of the way, but Caitlin resisted when he started to lead her from the room.

Somewhere beyond her shock it registered that Reno’s touch was electrifying. When he tried a second time to lead her from the cubicle, she pulled away and retreated, her back to the glass wall as she watched the nurse examine her father.

The small crisis passed, and the monitors settled into an audible rhythm. The nurse turned toward them.

“He’ll probably sleep now. It’d be better if you came back in a couple hours.” She gave them both a faint smile, then waited for them to leave the cubicle ahead of her. Caitlin hesitated, then turned to make a swift exit. Reno followed at a more relaxed pace.

Once outside the ICU, she stalked to the elevators, escape the only clear thought in her mind. Her eyes were stinging with hurt, but the hot acid of old anger was boiling up like lava. Suddenly she was a child again, cast back into the abyss of her father’s bewildering malevolence.

Her first stab at the elevator button missed. Frustrated, she jabbed at it again, then snatched her hand back when the button lit up.

“The lab’s downstairs.”

Reno’s voice behind her made her jump.

Her low “Leave me alone,” was instant It was all she could do to contain her rising pain and fury.

The elevator bell sounded, but the door seemed to take forever to open. When it did, she had to move aside and wait for the passengers to step off. She heard Reno enter the elevator after she did. They both turned to face the front of the car as the doors closed.

“The will says that your refusal to submit to a blood test to determine paternity will disqualify you from inheriting.”

She heard Reno’s grim tone and felt a fresh nick of pain. She covered her reaction with sarcasm.

“If the rightful heir loses out, Reno Duvall will be boss of the Broken B.” She turned her head and glanced up at his unyielding profile. Her barb made no visible impression on him, and she was suddenly hot with resentment.

This was the man who—along with his spiteful brother and mother—had so easily won her father’s love and regard. They’d been strangers when Jess had met them on a trip to San Antonio, strangers who’d meant more to Jess Bodine from day one than his own daughter had ever meant to him.

The Duvalls had gotten everything else that had rightfully belonged to her. She wouldn’t let the last one get the Broken B, even if it was Reno. She’d have something of Jess’s—and she’d glory in the fact that he’d go to his grave knowing he’d failed to deprive her of this last thing.

And yet, even when the blood test proved she was Jess’s daughter, he’d fixed it so she’d receive only half the ranch. Half! He hadn’t mentioned the oil holdings or the several businesses he’d acquired over the years.

Emotions that were suddenly as volatile to contain as they were to identify, rose to an overwhelming pitch.

My blood inherits half the Broken B... Or Reno gets everything.

And what if the paternity test proved that Jess Bodine wasn’t her biological father? Her furious vow to keep a Duvall from getting everything faltered.

Depression sent a chill over her. She looked away from Reno and stared at the closed doors in front of her.

Her memories of her mother were hazy. She remembered a beautiful, loving, dark-haired woman, but Elaina Chandler Bodine’s face had blurred over the years. Caitlin recalled the funeral and how she’d later discovered that Jess had ordered all her mother’s things taken away, and every picture of her in the house removed. Caitlin had been crushed when Jess had scolded her for her tears and her questions.

As an eight-year-old, she’d been grief-stricken and terrified by her mother’s sudden death, but her father’s refusal to comfort her or to allow his dead wife’s name to be mentioned in his presence had deepened her trauma.

Though she could no longer clearly picture her mother’s face, she remembered with aching clarity those days and weeks and months that had followed her death. She remembered the terror and monotony of stomachaches and nightmares, and her terrible loneliness when she’d wandered the house like a tiny ghost, searching for the love and comfort of her mother’s presence.

That was when she’d become especially close to her cousin, Madison. Madison had also lost her mother, though in a different way. Caitlin’s mother had been taken from her by death; Maddie’s mother had tired of her responsibilities and had dumped her on their grandmother, who’d lived nearby in town. Though Caitlin had always thought Maddie’s loss was worse than her own because it was a personal rejection, at least Maddie’s mother was alive somewhere, so she could have hope.

Their grandmother, Clara Chandler, had been almost as stern and unloving with Madison as Caitlin’s father had been with her. The two young cousins had sought the solace and comfort of family from each other, and together they’d survived childhood. The same age, they’d formed a deep bond and, at times, they’d been as inseparable as twins.

Until Beau Duvall was killed, and Maddie—who’d been madly infatuated with him—believed as everyone else had, that Caitlin was responsible for his death.