Johanna Lindsey - A Man to Call My Own

Chad was a cattleman through and through. The logical choice for him would be to start his own ranch somewhere. But doing that would truly cut the ties with his father, and she didn't really think that was his intention. He was making a point in leaving home. He was giving Stuart time to figure out what that point was and to accept it.

Red was realistic though. Three months was long enough to get one's point across. Chad would be leaving soon, either for another state or to go home and settle things with his father. But he'd be leaving her in good hands, she hoped. He seemed to be putting a lot of effort into training her oldest hand, Lonny, to take over when he was gone. Another month or two and Lonny would make a fine foreman. She had no doubt of that. She just never knew from one day to the next whether Chad would stick around for those couple more needed months.

He probably would. She'd sprained her foot last week, and even though it was feeling better already, she hadn't let on that it was. Chad had been worried about her since the accident, and she was reasonably sure that a worried Chad would stick around.

AFTER DINNER THAT EVENING, Red joined Chad on her front porch to enjoy the setting sun for a while. It was a long, wide porch, but then it was a nice-sized house that stretched behind it. Red's husband hadn't stinted when building their home. Having both come from the East, they were used to fine accommodations.

A second story had been added to the house a few years after they'd arrived in Texas, to accommodate the children they were hopeful of having. Red couldn't say why they'd never been blessed in that regard. It wasn't for lack of trying. It just wasn't meant to be, she supposed.

The soft strains of a guitar drifted around the corner from the bunkhouse. Rufus was right handy with the instrument, and it had become almost a ritual that he'd play a few songs in the evening as the boys wound down from a hard day's work. Red always heard it from a distance. The one place she restricted herself from on the ranch was the bunkhouse.

Chad bunked down with the rest of the men, but being the son of the richest rancher in the area, no one thought it odd that Red insisted he dine with her in the main house. It was also usually just the two of them who occupied the porch each evening. They didn't always talk. The ranch was running so smoothly that, most evenings, anything that needed to be said got said over dinner, leaving the porch time just for quiet introspection.

Red was going to keep it that way tonight, except Chad's distant look, and the direction in which he was gazing, made her guess he was thinking of his father. She often thought of Stuart, too, but along different lines.

She was amazed that Stuart hadn't found out yet that Chad was staying on the Twisting Barb. Her hands had been warned never to mention Chad's name when they went into town, but with liquor flowing freely on those town visits, there was no guarantee that one of them wouldn't slip and mention it. And they did know that Stuart had hired some of the best trackers around to find Chad.

They had nothing to trace, though, because the storm that had brought him to her had washed away his trail. And no one suspected that he'd gone to roost so close to home, only a few miles away, especially not Stuart. But if Chad was getting homesick, she wouldn't try to stop him from patching things up with his father. The two had always been close, even if they didn't see eye to eye on a lot of things.

"Miss him?" she asked quietly.

"Hell no," he said in a grumbling tone that had her smiling to herself.

"So you're still not ready to go home?"

"What home?" Chad replied with some heavy sarcasm. "It was turned into a circus with Luella and her mama there. Pa arranged that match without even discussing it with me, and just moved them in until the wedding. I still can't believe he did that."

"She's a nice gal though," Red replied in Stuart's defense. "I met her a few years back at one of your pa's barbecues. Pretty, too, as I recall."

"She could be the best-looking thing this side of the Rio Grande, and I'd still run the other way."

"Because Stuart handpicked her for you?"

"That mainly," Chad allowed. "But if that girl has one whit of intelligence in her head, it's there because it got lost."

Red tried to hold back a chuckle, but couldn't manage it. "Guess I didn't talk to her long enough to figure that out," she replied.

"Count yourself fortunate."

Red said no more. She was grateful he wasn't hankering to go home, but sorry, too, because this rift with his father had to be tearing them both up. The truth was, she'd miss him. She might not have loved her husband, but at least he'd been good company, and since his passing, she'd been lonely.

The sky was still blood red when the rider came galloping toward the house at a breakneck speed. "Best step inside, Chad. Looks like the mail runner, and he'd recognize you if he got a good look."

Chad nodded and moved into the house. Red got up to greet the rider. "Evening, Will. Bit late for you to be delivering, ain't it?"

"Yes, ma'am. Dang horse threw a shoe, set me back a few hours today. But figured this might be important, so didn't want to wait till morning." He handed her the letter he'd gone out of his way to deliver, then tipped his hat. "Late for dinner. Have a good evening, now."

Red waved him off, then limped back into the house, stopping next to the nearest hall lamp to read the letter. Chad had retrieved his hat and was about to head to bed.

Her exclamation, "Son'bitch!" stopped him at the front door.

"What?"

"My brother's gone and died."

"I'm sorry. I didn't know you had a brother."

"Wish I never did, so don't be sorry. We never got along. In fact, it'd be pretty accurate to say we hated each other's guts. Which is why this letter doesn't make a lick of sense."

"That you'd be notified?"

"That he left his girls to me. What the hell did he expect me to do with children at my age?"

"Did he have a choice?"

She frowned. "I suppose not. Guess I am their only living relative now that Mortimer's gone. We had another sister, my twin actually, but she died long ago."

"No relatives on their mother's side?"

"No, she was the last of her line aside from her children." Red continued reading, then said, "Well, hell ... looks like I need to ask yet another favor of you, Chad."

He looked horrified for a moment. "Don't even think it. I'm not even married yet. I ain't raising no—"

"Hold on, now," she interrupted, and chuckled over his mistake. "I just need someone to meet the girls in Galveston and escort them here, not adopt them. Apparently, they started on the journey the same time this letter did, different routes, but the mail isn't always faster. They could have arrived already. I'd go, but I'm afraid this sprained foot of mine will hold me up too much."

"That's a long distance to travel, could take up to a week there and back."

"Yes, but at least a good portion of it can be covered by train, and most of the rest by stage. It's just the last leg of the way that you'd have to rough it. But I'll ask someone else. I keep forgetting that you're lying low."

"No, I'll go," Chad said, slapping his hat against his leg. "Pa's finding me at this late date won't matter much. I'll leave first thing in the morning."

AMANDA AND MARIAN WERE supposed to have waited in Galveston. It was the final destination of the nice couple that Albert Bridges had found to chaper-one them, and they were more than willing to keep the girls with them until Kathleen Dunn arrived to collect them. But Amanda wouldn't hear of it.

She had complained every step of the way so far. Even before they'd left home she'd complained about their rushed departure. But a ship had been leaving the day after the funeral, and Albert had strongly suggested they take it since another wouldn't be available for several weeks. Back on dry land, Amanda should have been somewhat appeased, but no, the crowded port where their ship had docked was her next target for verbal abuse.

Marian had managed to enjoy the sea voyage anyway. It was the first time she'd ever been on a ship, so she found everything about it interesting. The salty air, the damp bedding, the windy and sometimes slippery decks, trying to walk without bumping into things, to get her "sea legs" as one deckhand put it, was all new to her—and the very things that Amanda complained about the most.

It was a wonder that the captain hadn't tossed Amanda overboard. Marian had heard him mumble once to himself about doing just that. And Amanda did have a harrowing moment four days into the journey when she actually did end up dangling from the railing with the sea lapping up the side of the ship. She'd sworn someone had pushed her, which was ridiculous—although, just about everyone on board had probably thought about it more than once.

Amanda's behavior had been no more than what Marian expected. When her sister had said she hated to travel, she hadn't exaggerated. And when Amanda was miserable, she wanted everyone else to be miserable as well. Marian managed to avoid that state of mind, but then she'd learned long ago how to simply "not hear" her sister when she got especially annoying. Their escorts had picked up on that as well, and before the end of the voyage, they'd been nodding and mumbling appropriate phrases, but had simply stopped "listening" to Amanda.