Wyoming Brave

“Oh, yes,” Delsey agreed, remembering. “That stalker.”

Merrie frowned. Well, perhaps Ren hadn’t felt comfortable telling Delsey the truth. It didn’t matter. Surely the FBI was hot on the trail of the contract killer by now.

“So I thought it would be better to order them from here,” Merrie added. “Do you have a pair of scissors?”

“Something better.” She grinned, went into the kitchen and came back with a knife in a leather pouch. “Ren gave it to me for my birthday. It’s made by the same people who made the skeet gun he uses in competition.”

“He shoots?”

She nodded. She bent to open the packages. “Not so much these days. Mostly he hunts elk or deer or partridge. Business is so complex here that he doesn’t get a lot of time off.”

“The men stay very busy.”

“That’s ranching, honey,” Delsey said. “There’s always something.”

“It was that way at our ranch, too,” Merrie confessed. “But we only had horses. No cattle. I don’t know much about them yet, but I’ll learn. YouTube is great!”

Delsey gave her a droll look. “Ren is better. Why don’t you ask him to take you around and show you how he manages cattle?”

She sighed. “He’d point me to the path that leads down to the stables and tell me to help myself,” she said with a wistful smile. “He doesn’t want me around. Randall must have known that, before he brought me here. I should have stayed in Comanche Wells.”

Delsey touched her hair gently. “No. You should be here, where you’re safe. Ren will come around. You’ll see. Now let’s get these things into the studio.”

* * *

THEY MOVED THE art supplies into the room that Merrie was using for a studio. “Did his mother really paint?” she asked.

Delsey nodded. “Yes. His father never remarried. He loved his ex-wife until the day he died.”

Merrie’s lips parted. “Ren didn’t say that his mother painted, did he?”

Delsey winced. “He never talks about her. Never calls her. She sends cards and letters—well, she used to—and he sends them right back, unopened. I don’t think he’s even seen her since he graduated from college and came here.” She shook her head. “It’s sad. His mother was a nice person, from what Randall says about her, and she grieves for Ren.”

Merrie didn’t know what to say. She drew in a long breath. “Our mother was like spring itself,” she commented, idly touching the unassembled easel in its box. “She loved us so much. She was always doing things with us, taking us places, loving us. After she died, life was a nightmare.”

Delsey didn’t pry, but she was openly curious. “What did she die of?”

Merrie bit her lower lip. “We think our father killed her. Please don’t tell him,” she said, nodding toward the door with a worried expression, indicating that she meant Ren. “Our father was violent. Paranoid. She died of a concussion, but one of our local doctors thought it was murder. He tried to do an autopsy, but he was suddenly called out of town, and Daddy paid somebody to do it while he was gone and classify it as an accidental death.”

“Why didn’t the doctor protest?”

“Because Daddy made threats to the people in charge.” She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. “You can’t imagine the fear he instilled in people. He had something on every single person who worked for him—even Mandy. Mandy had a brother who was in the mob up north. Daddy threatened to have her brother sent to prison. He knew people who could plant evidence. Everybody in Comanche Wells, where we live, was scared of him. Even people in Jacobsville were. He terrorized the whole community.”

“You had people in law enforcement...”

“Who had families,” Merrie said gently. “If you threaten someone’s child, it makes an impression. He was very good at intimidation.” She didn’t add that he was richer than just about anybody in that part of Texas.

“My goodness,” Delsey said worriedly. She studied the younger woman and read the lingering fear. “Well, he can’t hurt you anymore.”

“No.” Merrie let out a soft laugh. “We can finally leave towels on the floor. The rugs don’t have to be straight. The bed doesn’t have to be inspected to make sure it’s made right. We can have disorder, for the first time in our lives. I even have mismatched towels in my bathroom.” She grimaced. “He used the belt on me once for doing that.”

“Mr. Ren’s father used a belt on him, too, he said.”

“Not like mine did, I imagine, with the belt buckle. It was a heavy one, too, made of metal. I have...scars.” She swallowed and moved away. “That’s all in the past now. He can’t hurt us anymore.”

“I’m sorry. It must have been a very rough childhood.”

“Worse. We couldn’t go to parties or learn to dance or drive, we couldn’t go on dates. My goodness, I’m twenty-two years old and I’ve never even been kissed!”

Delsey was shocked. “But you’re Randall’s girlfriend...”

“No, I am not,” she said firmly. “I’m Randall’s friend, and that’s all.” She smiled. “You see, he’s one of those men who likes lots of women. He doesn’t love them, he just uses them, and when he’s bored, he goes and finds another one. Sari and I went to church. We were taught that women don’t play around before marriage. Actually, we were taught that men shouldn’t, either. That children came of love between two people, in marriage, and that children deserved two parents to raise them.” She gave Delsey a sheepish look. “That doesn’t get us far with modern people. So we keep to ourselves.”

“Child, there are a lot of people who still feel that way. It’s just that they’re shouted down and made to feel inferior because they have those beliefs. It’s a test, of a sort. If we believe in something, we shouldn’t have to defend those beliefs.” She laughed. “Isn’t it funny how some people say we need to respect the opinions and beliefs of other people, and then they go to town on us for being religious? They don’t respect the beliefs of anybody except themselves, and they don’t really believe in anything past having a good time and doing whatever they please. Rules are for fools.”

“I really like you,” Merrie said softly, and smiled. “You’re like our Mandy, back home. She’s been with us since we were very small. After Mama died, she sort of became our mother, if you know what I mean.”

“Sort of like me and Ren.” Delsey laughed. “I love Randall, too, but he isn’t around much. He does most of the marketing and showing for the Black Angus purebred seed bulls that our Skyhorn Ranch is famous for. He’s gone most of the year.”

“He’s good with people,” Merrie said. “I liked him the first time I saw him. But he wasn’t the sort of man I could ever get interested in. I’m no party girl.”

“Did he think you were?” she asked.

“I’m not sure. He flirted with me, but I don’t know how to flirt. I tried to go on a date one time, with a cowboy I knew. Daddy found out. He had the cowboy chased clean out of the state, threatened him with an old felony charge he’d been acquitted of.” She swallowed. The memory was harsh. “Then he knocked me down the stairs and...” She stopped. “I never tried to go out with anybody again.”

“Oh, child,” Delsey said softly. “I’m so sorry!”

“So I wasn’t really comfortable with the idea of going places with Randall. I didn’t tell him much, but I let him know that it was dangerous for me to date anybody, and that we were too different to be involved with each other. But I told him I’d love to be his friend.” She smiled. “That worked out much better. He’s very nice.”

Delsey, looking at her, could understand why Randall might have wanted to get involved with her. She was pretty and sweet and kind. But Randall could never settle for just one woman. He was too flighty. Ren, on the other hand, was certain that Merrie was like Randall’s other girlfriends who came here. Most of them came on to Ren. They were glittery women who had modern attitudes about sex. Delsey didn’t approve, but it wasn’t her place to say anything. If one of Randall’s women ended up in Ren’s bed, it didn’t concern her. They knew the score. She frowned. She hoped Ren wasn’t putting Merrie in that category. There could be consequences. He wasn’t around the woman enough to know her background, and Randall hadn’t been forthcoming about her. It was a recipe for disaster.

Well, that wasn’t a problem that needed solving today. Delsey continued to help Merrie put her canvases and paints and accessories away, including the fine brushes she used.

“What are you painting?” Delsey asked, looking pointedly at the sketchbook on the easel.

“Promise you won’t tell him?” Merrie asked worriedly.

“I promise.”

She pulled up the cloth she’d draped over an old canvas she’d found and displayed the contents. The painting was only a sketch right now. She’d found a leftover canvas in the room and used it to sketch her subject while she’d waited for her art supplies to arrive. Since she had neither paint nor drawing pencils, she’d used a soft lead #2 pencil to do the preliminary outline.

Even so, the image was so realistic it could have walked off the canvas. Delsey actually gasped.

“You said you painted a little,” Delsey exclaimed. “This isn’t... It’s magnificent!” she said, lost for the right words.

Merrie smiled. “Thanks. I’ve always loved to draw. Sari said that we might buy...” She almost said “an art supply store,” but she caught herself. She didn’t want to give away her monied background. It usually intimidated people. “That we might be able to exhibit my work at the local art store.”

“Art store, nothing,” Delsey scoffed. She looked at the sketch with soft eyes. “You captured that look on his face that I could never understand.”