Matt Caldwell: Texas Tycoon

She nodded. “Sure.” But she was shaking, and both men could see it.

Ed glanced over her head at the taller, darker, leaner man who stood with his horse’s reins in his hand, staring at the girl.

“Uh, have you two introduced yourselves?” he asked awkwardly.

Matt was torn by conflicting emotions, the strongest of which was bridled fury at the woman’s panicky attitude. She acted as if he had plans to assault her, when he’d only been trying to help her up. He was angry and it cost him his temper. “The next time you bring a certifiable lunatic to my ranch, give me some advance warning,” the tall man sniped at Ed. He moved as curtly as he spoke, swinging abruptly into the saddle to glare down at them. “You’d better take her home,” he told Ed. “She’s a damned walking liability around animals.”

“But she rides very well, usually,” Ed protested. “Okay, then,” he added when the other man glowered at him. He forced a smile. “I’ll see you later.”

The tall man jerked his hat down over his eyes, wheeled the horse without another word and rode back up on the rise where he’d been sitting earlier.

“Whew!” Ed laughed, sweeping back his light brown hair uneasily. “I haven’t seen him in a mood like that for years. I can’t imagine what set him off. He’s usually the soul of courtesy, especially when someone’s hurt.”

Leslie brushed off her jeans and looked up at her friend morosely. “He rode right up to me,” she said unsteadily, “and leaned across me to talk with a hand on the saddle. I just…panicked. I’m sorry. I guess he’s some sort of foreman here. I hope you don’t get in trouble with your cousin because of it.”

“That was my cousin, Leslie,” he said heavily.

She stared at him vacantly. “That was Matt Caldwell?”

He nodded.

She let out a long breath. “Oh, boy. What a nice way to start a new job, by alienating the man at the head of the whole food chain.”

“He doesn’t know about you,” he began.

Her eyes flashed. “And you’re not to tell him,” she returned firmly. “I mean it! I will not have my past paraded out again. I came down here to get away from reporters and movie producers, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’ve had my hair cut, bought new clothes, gotten contact lenses. I’ve done everything I can think of so I won’t be recognized. I’m not going to have it all dragged up again. It’s been six years,” she added miserably. “Why can’t people just leave it alone?”

“The newsman was just following a lead,” he said gently. “One of the men who attacked you was arrested for drunk driving and someone connected the name to your mother’s case. His father is some high city official in Houston. It was inevitable that the press would dig up his son’s involvement in your mother’s case in an election year.”

“Yes, I know, and that’s what prompted the producer to think it would make a great TV movie of the week.” She ground her teeth together. “That’s just what we all need. And I thought it was all over. How silly of me,” she said in a defeated tone. “I wish I were rich and famous,” she added. “Then maybe I could buy myself some peace and privacy.” She glanced up where the tall man sat silently watching the herding below. “I made some stupid remarks to your cousin, too, not knowing who he really was. I guess he’ll be down in personnel first thing Monday to have me fired.”

“Over my dead body,” he said. “I may be only a lowly cousin, but I do own stock in the corporation. If he fires you, I’ll fight for you.”

“Would you really, for me?” she asked solemnly.

He ruffled her short blond hair. “You’re my pal,” he said. “I’ve had a pretty bad blow of my own. I don’t want to get serious about anybody ever again. But I like having you around.”

She smiled sadly. “I’m glad you can act that way about me. I can’t really bear to be…” She swallowed. “I don’t like men close to me, in any physical way. The therapist said I might be able to change that someday, with the right man. I don’t know. It’s been so long…”

“Don’t sit and worry,” he said. “Come on. I’ll take you back to town and buy you a nice vanilla ice-cream cone. How’s that?”

She smiled at him. “Thanks, Ed.”

He shrugged. “Just another example of my sterling character.” He glanced up toward the rise and away again. “He’s just not himself today,” he said. “Let’s go.”

Matt Caldwell watched his visitors bounce away on their respective horses with a resentment and fury he hadn’t experienced in years. The little blond icicle had made him feel like a lecher. As if she could have appealed to him, a man who had movie stars chasing after him! He let out a rough sigh and pulled a much-used cigar from his pocket and stuck it in his teeth. He didn’t light it. He was trying to give up the bad habit, but it was slow going. This cigar had been just recently the target of his secretary’s newest weapon in her campaign to save him from nicotine. The end was still damp, in fact, despite the fact that he’d only arrived here from his office in town about an hour ago. He took it out of his mouth with a sigh, eyed it sadly and put it away. He’d threatened to fire her and she’d threatened to quit. She was a nice woman, married with two cute little kids. He couldn’t let her leave him. Better the cigar than good help, he decided.

He let his eyes turn again toward the couple growing smaller in the distance. What an odd girlfriend Ed had latched onto this time. Of course, she’d let Ed touch her. She’d flinched away from Matt as if he was contagious. The more he thought about it, the madder he got. He turned his horse toward the bawling cattle in the distance. Working might take the edge off his temper.

Ed took Leslie to her small apartment at a local boardinghouse and left her at the front door with an apology.

“You don’t think he’ll fire me?” she asked in a plaintive tone.

He shook his head. “No,” he assured her. “I’ve already told you that I won’t let him. Now stop worrying. Okay?”

She managed a smile. “Thanks again, Ed.”

He shrugged. “No problem. See you Monday.”

She watched him get into his sports car and roar away before she went inside to her lonely room at the top corner of the house, facing the street. She’d made an enemy today, without meaning to. She hoped it wasn’t going to adversely affect her life. There was no going back now.

Monday morning, Leslie was at her desk five minutes early in an attempt to make a good impression. She liked Connie and Jackie, the other two women who shared administrative duties for the vice president of marketing and research. Leslie’s job was more routine. She kept up with the various shipments of cattle from one location to another, and maintained the herd records. It was exacting, but she had a head for figures and she enjoyed it.

Her immediate boss was Ed, so it was really a peachy job. They had an entire building in downtown Jacobsville, a beautiful old Victorian mansion, which Matt had painstakingly renovated to use as his corporation’s headquarters. There were two floors of offices, and a canteen for coffee breaks where the kitchen and dining room once had been.

Matt wasn’t in his office much of the time. He did a lot of traveling, because aside from his business interests, he sat on boards of directors of other businesses and even on the board of trustees of at least one college. He had business meetings in all sorts of places. Once he’d even gone to South America to see about investing in a growing cattle market there, but he’d come home angry and disillusioned when he saw the slash and burn method of pasture creation that had already killed a substantial portion of rain forest. He wanted no part of that, so he turned to Australia instead and bought another huge ranching tract in the Northern Territory there.

Ed told her about these fascinating exploits, and Leslie listened with her eyes wide. It was a world she’d never known. She and her mother, at the best of times, had been poor before the tragedy that separated them. Now, even with Leslie’s job and the good salary she made, it still meant budgeting to the bone so that she could afford even a taxi to work and pay rent on the small apartment where she lived. There wasn’t much left over for travel. She envied Matt being able to get on a plane—his own private jet, in fact—and go anywhere in the world he liked. It was a glimpse inside a world she’d never know.

“I guess he goes out a lot,” she murmured once when Ed had told her that his cousin was away in New York for a cattlemen’s banquet.

“With women?” Ed chuckled. “He beats them off with a stick. Matt’s one of the most hunted bachelors in south Texas, but he never seems to get serious about any one woman. They’re just accessories to him, pretty things to take on the town. You know,” he added with a faint smile, “I don’t think he really likes women very much. He was kind to a couple of local girls who needed a shoulder to cry on, but that was as far as it went, and they weren’t the sort of women to chase him. He’s like this because he had a rough time as a child.”

“How?” she asked.

“His mother gave him away when he was six.”

Her intake of breath was audible. “Why?”

“She had a new boyfriend who didn’t like kids,” he said bluntly. “He wouldn’t take Matt, so she gave him to my dad. He was raised with me. That’s why we’re so close.”

“What about his father?” she asked.

“We…don’t talk about his father.”

“Ed!”

He grimaced. “This can’t go any further,” he said.

“Okay.”

“We don’t think his mother knew who his father was,” he confided. “There were so many men in her life around that time.”

“But her husband…”

“What husband?” he asked.

She averted her eyes. “Sorry. I assumed that she was married.”