The Tycoon's Tots

Chloe shrugged as she once again eyed him with open curiosity. “You’re obviously not from around here. I thought you might be in real estate.”

The wind was playing with her shoulder length hair, whipping a few strands across her face. She had pale golden skin, he noticed, with one freckle a fraction above the edge of her upper lip.

He forced himself to drop her hand, but his eyes refused to leave her face. Incredibly, she was the sexiest woman he’d ever seen. “I’m an oilman from Houston, Texas,” he told her.

She smiled at that and Wyatt felt something inside him jerk as though he’d been stung by an arrow.

“A Texas oilman,” she repeated with faint amusement. “What are you doing out here in New Mexico? Looking to buy or lease the mineral rights in this area? I wasn’t aware this part of the state had petroleum resources. ‘Course, I know there’s the big Conoco field over by Eunice and there’s oil down at Lordsburg, but you’re talking at least a couple of hundred miles from here. And that’s all desert land. You’re in the mountains now.”

So Wyatt had noticed. One minute he’d been in the desert, then before he’d realized it the terrain had changed, and he’d been winding through forested mountains and lush green valley floor. The change in landscape had surprised him almost as much as the sight of Chloe Murdock. “I’m not here looking for oil. It’s something more personal.”

Her eyes narrowed at his evasiveness. “Personal? Dear God, I hope you’re not going to tell me it has something to do with my father Tomas,” she said without preamble.

“It does. In a way,” he said and was struck by how much he wanted to avoid the issue that had brought him to this ranch and this woman. It would have been pleasant to simply talk to her a few more minutes.

“Look, Mr. Sanders, my father has been dead for several months. I’m not trying to make excuses, but whatever he owes you, we didn’t know about it. We’ve been trying to pay off his debts, but for right now, all I can say is you’ll just have to stand in line and wait your turn.”

The memory of Belinda’s coffin being lowered into the ground suddenly flashed through Wyatt’s mind. “What your father owes me could never be repaid.”

“I beg your pardon?”

His gray eyes clashed with the spark of her green ones. “You heard what I said. Your father took something from me that can’t be compensated.”

Chloe was fast losing her patience with this man. He’d obviously come here for money. Why didn’t he just spit it out and be done with all this dallying around?

“I’ve always heard Texans go at things at a slower pace, but do you think for this one time you could speed things along and get to the point? I have lots of work waiting on me and the morning is already half gone.”

His jaw clenched. “Your father can’t give my sister back to me,” he said tightly.

Chloe drew in a sharp little breath. “Who are you?”

He took a step closer. “I told you who I was.”

Her full lips twisted at his response. “An oilman from Houston. So what connection do you have with me or this ranch?”

Her voice, which up until a moment ago had been warm and lilting, was now sharp-edged and demanding. “My sister was Belinda Waller and your father killed her,” he said flatly.

The first spill Chloe had taken on the galloping track had knocked the wind from her lungs and scrambled her senses. For several minutes she’d been unable to tell if the ground was really the sky or visa versa. Hearing Belinda Waller had a brother left her feeling as though she’d just taken another walloping fall.

“My father didn’t kill anybody,” she finally managed to say. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got work to do.”

Turning, she left him standing on the muddy hillside. She knew he would follow her. He hadn’t come all this way to let things go at that. But Chloe was too shaken, too stunned to simply stand stock-still while the man bored holes in her with those cold gray eyes.

“I’m not going to be put off, Ms. Murdock. We have things to talk about.”

She glanced over her shoulder to see he’d joined her in the long, dim stable. For a moment all Chloe could think was that he looked like an alien standing there on the wood shavings in his crisply ironed cotton and softly worn leather. He wasn’t from this world, so why had he come here?

With a flip of her wrist, she jerked the baseball cap from her head and shook her hair back from her face. “Then talk. Who’s stopping you?”

His teeth ground together as he watched her slap the cap back on her head, then toss a shovel into a wheelbarrow and push it into an empty stall.

“I’d think you’d have the courtesy to go up to the house and give me your undivided attention.”

Chloe didn’t bother to look at him. Instead, she scooped up a shovelful of dirty wood shavings and horse manure. “I don’t have time to go through social niceties with you. And even if I did, I wouldn’t.”

Oilmen, even the ones like himself who worked in plush offices and drove Mercedeses, were used to blunt, rough talk interspersed with a wide range of four-letter words. It went with the business. But that was from his male counterparts. The women he encountered were always full of sugar and ready to give him all the attention he wanted. He couldn’t believe Chloe Murdock was dismissing him as though he were no better than the stuff she was tossing into the wheelbarrow.

“I didn’t come here to fight with you,” he said, trying his best to hold onto his temper.

“After what your sister did to my family, I can’t believe you had the gall to come here at all.”

Wyatt didn’t know what had come over him. Any other time, he would have taken hold of her shoulder and physically made her turn and face him. Instead, he found himself staring, fascinated by her rounded behind as she bent over the shovel, the fluid movements of her body as she pitched another scoopful.

“Flinging accusations at each other isn’t going to get us anywhere,” he said.

“I can’t say I want to get anywhere with you,” she said with a strained grunt as she forced the shovel point down through the packed shavings.

“You’re not making this any easier for either of us.”

Anger surged through Chloe, but she tried to take it out on the shovel instead of him. “Believe me, Mr. Sanders, nothing has been easy since my father died. And as for anyone killing anybody, I’d say your sister was the major contributor to the heart attack that killed Tomas. She was blackmailing him, you know. Milking him of his money, and his self-respect. What kind of woman would do that?”

“I think—”

Before he could say more, Chloe flung the shovel to the ground and whirled on him. Her eyes were shooting sparks as hot as her auburn hair. “Tell me, Mr. Sanders, what sort of woman would leave two little helpless babies on a porch and never look back? She didn’t care if they lived or died, so don’t come here whining about the loss of your sister. You’ll not get sympathy from me or anyone else on this ranch!”

Since he’d learned of Belinda’s death, Wyatt had been full of outrage and pain. He hadn’t stopped to think the Murdock family might be feeling as injured as he.

“I’m not looking for sympathy. Especially from you. I’ll be the first to admit that Belinda had her problems. I didn’t know about the twins or anything. Not until—” he paused and drew in a heavy breath “—it was already too late. But whatever her faults, she didn’t deserve to die in a mental hospital for criminals!”

Chloe could see real grief on Wyatt Sanders’s face and it touched her in spite of who he was and all that Belinda had done to her family. “I didn’t want your sister to die. None of my family wanted any such thing to happen.”

“Maybe not. But your father was the reason she was in trouble with the law in the first place.”

Chloe’s jaw dropped. The man was obviously as crazy as his sister had been. “How could you possibly think such a thing? Your sister was a dangerous, unstable woman. I’m sorry if that pains you, but that’s the way it was.”

Tight-lipped, he said, “My sister would never have been prompted to do the things she did if your father hadn’t seduced her and ruined her life.”

Chloe had always been cursed with a quick temper. Growing up, she’d often been punished for her angry outbursts. Ladies don’t fight, her mother had gently scolded Chloe when she’d come home one afternoon from grammar school with a fat lip. It hadn’t made any difference to Lola when Chloe’d tried to explain she’d punched the playground bully in the face because he’d been calling her best friend ugly names.

According to Lola, little girls didn’t lose their tempers and they certainly didn’t resort to physical violence. It was a lesson from her mother that Chloe always remembered, but had never fully learned. She was too much like her father, she supposed. She couldn’t sit idly on her hands when an innocent person was being wronged.

Stepping from the stall, Chloe walked to within a step of Wyatt Sanders and looked him square in the eye. “I don’t know who did the seducing, my father or your sister. And I hardly imagine that you could know, either. But I do know your sister had no business becoming involved with a married man twice her age.”

There was some truth to what Chloe Murdock was saying, but Wyatt knew there were always two sides to every story. And he couldn’t believe Belinda had decided to walk down the wrong path all by herself.

“And your father had no business getting a woman half his age pregnant!”

“You’re damn right he didn’t,” Chloe hotly agreed. “My mother was an invalid at the time he was sleeping around with your sister! His behavior was lower than a snake’s belly, but that doesn’t change things. We could stand here all day flinging accusations at each other, but it wouldn’t bring my father or your sister back.”