Wild Horses

She surprised Mickey by giving her a brisk kiss on the cheek. Then she vanished into the kitchen. It was an hour before the supper rush would begin, and Mickey was the lone customer. She nursed her coffee and tried to read, but the words danced senselessly before her eyes.

She finished her coffee and knew she couldn’t put off returning to the Circle T forever. Reluctantly she drove home. Just as she pulled into the carport, Leon Vanek appeared. He stood at the carport’s edge, shifting his weight, clenching and unclenching his big hands.

His expression was far from happy. She wondered uneasily what he wanted. She got out of the car and faced him. “Yes, Leon? Did you want to see me about something?”

He stared at the gravel in the drive, pulling his hat down farther over his face. “Mr. and Mrs. Trent are in Denver. Because that child is sick.”

I know that all too well, Mickey thought. “Yes. We’re all concerned.”

Leon said, “You should have notified me. I’m the foreman here. You should tell me these things. I heard it from Werner. Him a common hand, and he knew before I did.”

Mickey knew Leon was a proud man and that his pride had been hurt. But she resented his accusatory tone. “I’m sorry. I just had a lot on my mind. We all did.”

Leon didn’t look placated. “I saw a man come today after they left. Come to the house.”

Mickey stared at him in puzzlement. “Yes? It’s the man Carolyn was expecting. He’s come about the lease land.”

Leon frowned. “Well, she isn’t here. And neither’s Mr. Trent.”

“Right now their place is with Beverly and Sonny.”

“You didn’t have time to tell me Mrs. Trent’s gone. That puts a lot of responsibility on my shoulders. But you had time to take him in and make him feel right at home.”

“That’s part of my responsibility,” she shot back. “It’s what Carolyn would want.”

“That man isn’t staying, is he?” Leon scowled and kicked the gravel.

“Carolyn invited him to stay. She couldn’t know this would happen.”

Leon raised his face, which was red with displeasure. “I saw him. He doesn’t look respectable. He looks like one of those hippies.”

Mickey almost smiled at the quaintness of the word “hippies,” but Leon’s disapproval seemed real. When she didn’t answer, he frowned harder. “It’s not fitting, a man like that to stay alone in the house with you. If you want me to ask him to leave, I will.”

“I’m not alone with him. Bridget’s with us. And if I wanted him to go, I’m capable of telling him myself.”

He looked more aggravated than before. “I’m concerned about your reputation. It doesn’t look good. Bridget or no. That’s all I got to say.”

“Thank you,” she said coolly, “but I can watch out for my own reputation. Good day, Leon.”

She started toward the house, but he put his hand on her wrist. It was a possessive move, and her resentment flared more hotly. He said, “I’ll watch out for you. If he bothers you, you let me know. I’ll take care of him.”

She snatched her hand away. “I said good day.” She turned her back on him and walked away in anger.

MICKEY FACED fresh exasperation when she found Bridget covering the dining room table with a white linen cloth. “Bridget, I want us to eat in the kitchen tonight. Didn’t I tell you?”

“No, you did not,” Bridget said righteously. “And this is what Carolyn would want. I aim to do it to the way she’d have it done herself. She’d snatch me bald, giving him supper in the kitchen.”

Mickey rolled her eyes. “He doesn’t exactly seemed the type for formal dining. The way he dresses, he’d probably be more comfortable on the back porch, eating beans out of a can.”

“Humph.” Bridget put her hand on her hip. “You sound high-and-mighty all of a sudden. It’s not like you, Mick. He’s a very nice young man. He has a nice way about him. Not up-pity at all. And he’s handsome, to boot. Lord, like a movie star. But he acts like he doesn’t even know it.”

Mickey gazed at her suspiciously. “Have you been talking to him?”

“I fed him—which you forgot to do. We chatted a wee bit. It seemed the polite thing to do, that’s all.”

Bridget would not hear another word about eating in the kitchen.

So Mickey, as Carolyn had intended, sat across the dining room table from Adam Duran, but she sat alone with him.

The good silver and china were set on the best linen. There were flowers—and candlelight. Carolyn was a great lover of flowers and candlelight.

From the kitchen came the succulent scents of Bridget’s sauerbraten and dumplings. One of Carolyn’s favorite albums played softly on the sound system, The Ballad of the Irish Horse.

Bridget had succeeded all too well; the atmosphere was pleasant, touched with elegance, even intimacy. Drat, thought Mickey, who didn’t want to think of intimacy with this disturbing man. Drat and double drat and triple drat.

She hadn’t dressed for supper. Neither had Adam. She wore the same denim slacks and high-necked white blouse. He wore the same washed-out jeans and faded work shirt.

He and she both bent, without speaking, over their salads. The music swelled, faded, then built again. The candlelight gleamed on the gold streaks in Adam’s hair. It flashed from their silver forks and the crystal glasses.

On the way home, Mickey had mentally listed enough neutral subjects to get through the ordeal of supper. She would save her more pointed questions for dessert, when he might be warmed enough by wine and good food to be candid.

She trotted out her first innocuous remark. “I hope you got to enjoy the wildflowers on your drive here. It’s a particularly nice spring.”

He was supposed to say, Yes, the drive was nice, the weather was nice, and the flowers were nice. Then she’d ask, Is it spring in the Caribbean, too? What’s the weather like there? Is it already hot?

But he instantly booby-trapped her plans. “I hear you had a fall that wasn’t so fine last year. That some developer caused a helluva flash flood. Mrs. Trent was in a lawsuit against him. She and the other ranchers.”

Mickey almost choked on her lettuce. She stole a quick sip of water. “Oh,” she said, flustered. “That. Thank God it wasn’t worse than it was.”

“Which wasn’t worse? The flood? Or the lawsuit?” Shadows played on the planes of his face, but even in the muted light she thought she saw a glint of challenge in his eyes.

“Neither. The flood didn’t do any major damage, here at least.”

“Really? I heard it wiped out a housing development.”

He said it calmly, but his words hit a nerve, rousing her wariness.

“A would-be development,” she corrected. “There were only five houses. None was finished. The developer put up this stupid dam—”

“—and the dam didn’t hold,” he finished for her. “So the developer pulled out. His name was Fabian, wasn’t it?”

He was right, and two suspicions struck Mickey at once. He and Bridget must have had more than a wee chat. Bridget seemed taken with Adam. Had he charmed her into spilling out information the whole time Mickey was away?

But the more ominous one was the same fear that had haunted Caro when Fabian started buying up local land.

Mickey threw discretion to the wind. She said, “You seem to know a lot. Fabian wanted all the land he could get. Enoch Randolph had plenty of it. Did Fabian offer to buy it?”

Adam tilted his wineglass so the candlelight reflected in its red depths and studied it. “Oh, yeah,” he said. “He offered.”