No one can resist a book by

Diane Palmer

“Nobody does it better.”

—Bestselling author Linda Howard

“Sensual and suspenseful.”

—Booklist on Lawless

“Diana Palmer is a mesmerising storyteller who captures the essence of what a romance should be.”

—Affaire de Coeur

“The dialogue is charming, the characters likeable and the sex sizzling.”

—Publishers Weekly on Once in Paris

Available in July 2009
from Mills & Boon® Cherish

Heart of Stone

by Diana Palmer

The Rancher’s Surprise Marriage

by Susan Crosby

Hannah’s Baby

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

Her Texas Lawman

by Stella Bagwell

The Prince’s Royal Dilemma

by Brenda Harlen

The Baby Plan

by Kate Little

DIANA PALMER

has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humour. With over forty million copies of her books in print, Diana Palmer is one of North America’s most beloved authors and considered one of the top ten romance authors in the US. Diana’s hobbies include gardening, archaeology, anthropology, iguanas, astronomy and music. She has been married to James Kyle for over twenty-five years, and they have one son.

Heart of Stone
DIANA PALMER

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my sister, Dannis Spaeth Cole,

and my niece, Maggie, in Cuthbert, Georgia,

and to my other niece, Amanda Hofstetter,

in Portland, Oregon. Love you all.

Chapter One

Keely Welsh felt his presence before she looked up and saw him. It had been that way from the day she met Boone Sinclair, her best friend’s eldest brother. The man wasn’t movie-star handsome or gregarious. He was a recluse, a loner who hardly ever smiled, who intimidated people simply by walking into a room. For some unknown reason, Keely always knew when he was around, even if she didn’t see him.

He was tall and slender, but he had powerful legs and big hands and feet. There were rumors about him that grew more exaggerated with the telling. He’d been in Special Forces overseas five years earlier. He’d saved his unit from certain destruction. He’d won medals. He’d had lunch with the president at the White House. He’d taken a cruise with a world-famous author. He’d almost married a European princess. And on and on and on.

Nobody knew the truth. Well, maybe Winona and Clark Sinclair did. Winnie and Clark and Boone were closer than brothers and sisters usually were. But Winnie didn’t talk about her brother’s private life, not even to Keely.

There hadn’t been a day since she was thirteen when Keely hadn’t loved Boone Sinclair. She watched him from a distance, her green eyes soft and covetous. Her hands would shake when she happened on him unexpectedly. They were shaking now. He was standing at the counter, signing in. He had an appointment for his dog’s routine shots. He made one every year. He loved the old tan-and-black German shepherd, whose name was Bailey. People said it was the only thing on earth that he did love. Maybe he was fond of his siblings, but it didn’t show. His affection for Bailey did.

One of the other vet techs came out with a pad and called in Bailey, with a grin at Boone. It wasn’t returned. He led the old dog into one of the examination rooms. He walked right past Keely. He never looked at her. He didn’t speak to her. As far as he was concerned, she was invisible.

She sighed as the door closed behind him and his dog. It was that way anyplace in town that he saw her. In fact, it was like that at his huge ranch near Comanche Wells, west of Jacobsville, Texas. He never told Winnie that she couldn’t have Keely over for lunch or an occasional horseback ride. But he ignored her, just the same.

“It’s funny, you know,” Winnie had remarked one day when they were out riding. “I mean, Boone never makes any comment about you, but he does make a point of pretending he doesn’t see you. I wonder why.” She looked at Keely then, with her dark eyes mischievous in their frame of blond hair. “You wouldn’t know, I guess?”

Keely only smiled. “I haven’t got a clue,” she said. It was the truth.

“It’s only you, too,” her friend continued thoughtfully. “He’s very polite to our brother Clark’s occasional date—even to that waitress that Clark brought home one night for dinner, and you know what a snob Boone can be. But he pretends you don’t exist.”

“I may remind him of somebody he doesn’t like,” Keely replied.

“There was that girl he was engaged to,” Winnie said out of the blue.

Keely’s heart jumped. “Yes, I remember when he was engaged,” she replied. It had been when she was fourteen, almost fifteen years old, just before he came back from overseas. Keely’s young heart had been broken.

“It was just before you came back here to live with your mom,” Winnie continued as if she’d read Keely’s mind. “In fact, it was just about the time she started drinking so much more…” She hesitated. Keely’s mother was an alcoholic and it was a sensitive subject to her friend. “Anyway, Boone was mustering out of the Army at the time. His fiancée rushed to Germany where he’d been taken when he was airlifted out of combat, wounded, and then…poof. She was gone, Boone came home, and he never mentioned her name again. None of us could find out what happened.”

“Somebody said she was European royalty,” Keely ventured shyly.

“She was distantly related to some man who was knighted in England,” came the sarcastic reply. “Anyway, she ran out on Boone and he was bitter for a long time. So three weeks ago the phone rings and he gets a call from her. She’s been living with her father, who owns a private detective agency in SanAntonio. She told Boone she’d made a terrible mistake and wanted to make up.”

Keely’s heart fell. A rival who had a history with Boone. It made her miserable just to think about it, despite the fact that she would never get close enough to Boone to give the other woman any competition. “Boone doesn’t forgive people,” she said, thinking aloud.

“That’s right,” Winnie replied, smiling. “But he’s mellowed a bit. He takes her out on dates occasionally now. In fact, they’re going to a Desperado concert next week.”

Keely frowned. “He likes hard rock?” she asked, surprised. He looked so staid and dignified that she couldn’t picture him at a rock concert. She said so.

Winnie laughed. “I can,” she said. “He’s not the conservative, quiet man he seems to be. Especially when he loses his temper or gets in an argument.”

“Boone doesn’t argue,” Keely mused aloud.

He didn’t. If he was angry enough, he punched. Never women, of course, but his men knew not to push him, especially if he was broody. One horse handler had found out the hard way that nobody made jokes at the boss’s expense. Boone had been kicked by a horse, which the handler thought was hilarious. Boone roped the man, tied him to a post and anointed him with a bucket of recycled hay. All without saying a word.

Keely laughed out loud.

“What?” Winnie asked.

“I was remembering that horse wrangler….”

Winnie laughed, too. “He couldn’t believe it, he said, even when it was happening. Boone really does look so straitlaced, as if he’d never stoop to dirty his hands. His cowboys used to underestimate him. Not anymore.”

“The rattlesnake episode is noteworthy, as well,” came the amused reply.

“That cook was so shocked!” Winnie blurted out. “He was a really rotten cook, but he threatened to sue Boone if he fired him, so it looked as if we were stuck with him. He’d threatened to cook Boone a rattler if he made any more remarks about the food. He added a few spicy comments about why Boone’s fiancée took a powder. Then one morning he looks in his Dutch oven to see if it’s clean enough to cook in, and a rattlesnake jumps up right into his face!”

“Lucky for the cook it didn’t have any fangs.”

“The cook didn’t know that!” Winnie laughed. “He didn’t know who did it, either. He resigned on the spot. The men actually cheered as he drove off. The next cook was talented, and the soul of politeness to my brother.”

“I am not surprised.”

She shook her head. “Boone does have these little quirks,” his sister murmured. “Like never turning on the heat in his bedroom, even in icy weather, and always going around with his shirts buttoned to the neck.”

“I’ve never seen him with his shirt off,” Keely remarked. It was unusual, because most of the cowboys worked topless in summer heat when they were branding or doctoring cattle. But Boone never did.

“He used to be less prudish,” Winnie said.

“Boone, prudish?” Keely sounded shocked.

Winnie glanced at her and chuckled. “Well, I guess that really doesn’t fit at all.”

“No, it doesn’t.”

Winnie pursed her lips. “Come to think of it, he’s not the only prude around here. I’ve never even seen you in a T-shirt, Keely. You always wear long sleeves and high necklines.”

Keely had a good reason for that, one she’d never shared with anyone. It was the reason she didn’t date. It was a terrible secret. She would have died rather than tell Winnie, who might tell Boone….

“I was raised very strictly,” Keely said quietly. And she had been; for all their odd tendencies, both her parents had insisted that Keely go to Sunday School and church every single Sunday. “My father didn’t approve of clothing that was too flashy or revealing.”

Probably because Keely’s mother propositioned any man she fancied when she drank. She’d even tried to seduce Boone. Keely didn’t know that, and Winnie didn’t know how to tell her. It was one reason for Boone’s antagonism toward Keely.

Things would have been better if Keely knew where her father was. She’d told people she thought he was dead, because it was easier than admitting that he was an alcoholic, just like her mother, and linked up with a bunch of dangerous men. She’d missed her father at first. But she’d have been in more danger if she’d stayed with him.

She still loved him, in her way, despite what had happened to her.

“Come to think of it, Keely, you don’t even date.”

Keely shrugged. “I’m a vet tech. I have a busy life. I work on call, you know. If there’s an emergency at midnight on a weekend, I still go to the office.”

“That’s a lot of hogwash,” Winnie said gently as they paused to let the horses drink from one of the crystal-clear streams on the wooded property where they were riding. “I’ve even tried to set you up with nice men I know from work. You freeze when a man comes near you.”

“That’s because you work with the police, Winnie, and you bring cops home as prospective dates for me,” Keely said mischievously. It was true. Winnie worked as a clerk in the Jacobsville Police Department’s office during the day, and now she was doing a stint two nights a week as a dispatcher for the 911 center. In fact, she was hoping that job would work into something permanent, because being around Officer Kilraven all day when he was on the day shift was killing her.

“Policemen make me nervous,” Keely was saying. “For all you know, I might have a criminal past.”

Winnie wasn’t smiling. She shook her head. “You’re hiding something.”

“Nothing major. Honest.” What she suspected about her father, if true, would have shamed her. If Boone ever found out, she’d really die of shame. But she hadn’t heard from her father since she was thirteen, so it wasn’t likely that he’d just turn up someday with his new outlaw friends. She prayed that he wouldn’t. Her mother’s behavior was hard enough to live down as it was.

“There’s this really handsome policeman who’s been working with us for a few weeks. He’s just your type.”

“Kilraven,” Keely guessed.

“Yes! How did you know?”

“Because you talk about him all the time,” Keely returned. She pursed her lips. “Are you sure you aren’t interested in him? I mean, you’re single and eligible yourself.”

Winnie flushed. “He’s not my type.”

“Why not?”

Winnie shifted in the saddle uneasily. “He told me he wasn’t my type. He said I was too young to be mooning over a used-up lobo wolf like him and not to do it anymore.”

Keely gasped out loud. “He didn’t!”

The older girl nodded sadly. “He did. I didn’t realize that I was so obvious with it. I mean, he’s drop-dead gorgeous, most women look at him. He just noticed more when I did it. Because I’m who I am, I guess,” she added darkly. “Boone might have said something to him. He’s very protective of me. He thinks I’m too naive to be let loose on the world.”

“In his defense, you have led a sheltered life,” Keely said gently. “Kilraven is street smart. And he’s dangerous.”

“I know,” Winnie muttered. “There have been times that he’s been in situations where I sweat blood until he walks back into the station. He’s noticed that, too. He didn’t like it and he said so.” She took a long, sad breath and looked at Keely. “So you can know all about my private agony, but you won’t share yours? It’s no use, Keely. I know.”

Keely laughed nervously. “Know what? I don’t keep secrets.”

“Your whole life is a secret. But your biggest one is that you’re in love with my brother.”

Keely looked as if she’d been slapped.

“I would never tell him,” Winnie said quietly. “That’s the truth. I’m sorry for the way he treats you. I know how much it hurts.”

Keely shifted her eyes, embarrassed.

“Don’t be like that,” Winnie said, her voice gentle. “I won’t tell. Ever. Honest.”

Keely relaxed. She drew in a breath, watching the creek bubble over rocks. “It doesn’t hurt anything, what I feel. He’ll never know. And it helps me to understand what it might be like to love a man—even if that love is never returned. It’s a taste of something I can never have, that’s all.”

Winnie frowned. “What do you mean? Of course you’ll be loved one day! Keely, you’re only nineteen. Your whole life is ahead of you!”

Keely looked at her friend, and her dark eyes were soft and sad. “Not that way, it isn’t. I won’t ever marry.”

“But one day…”

She shook her head. “No.”

Winnie bit her lower lip. “When you’re a little older, it might be different,” she began. “Keely, you’re nineteen. Boone is thirty. That’s a big age difference, and he thinks about things like that. His fiancée was only a year younger than he was. He said that people should never marry unless they’re the same age.”

“Why?”

Winnie sighed. “I’ve never talked about it much, but our mother was twelve years younger than dad. He died a broken man because she ran away with his younger brother. He always said he made a major mistake by marrying someone from another generation. It was just too many years between them. They had nothing in common.”

Keely felt heartsick for the family. “Is your mother still alive?”

She bit her lip. “We…don’t know,” she said. “We’ve never tried to find her or our uncle. They married, after the divorce, and moved to Montana. Neither one of them ever tried to contact us again.”

“That’s so sad.”

“It made Boone bitter. Well, that and then his fiancée cutting out on him. He doesn’t have a high opinion of women.”

“You can’t blame him, really,” Keely had to admit. She patted her horse’s neck. “It’s sad, isn’t it, that we’re both too young for the men we care about?”

“Only in their minds,” Winnie returned. “But we can always change their opinions. We just have to find an angle. One that works.”

Keely laughed. “Doesn’t that sound easy?”

Winnie grimaced. “Not really.” She tugged on the reins, backing her horse out of the creek. Keely followed suit. “Let’s talk about something more cheerful,” Winnie said on the way back to the ranch. “Are you coming to the big charity dance?”

Keely shook her head. “I’d like to, even without a date, but both my junior bosses are going, and so is our senior tech. I have to be on call.”

“That’s awful!”

“It’s fair, though. I was off last year.”

“I remember. Last year you stayed home.”

Keely studied the pommel as the leather squeaked under the steady motion of the horse’s body. “Nobody asked me to go with them.”

“You don’t encourage men,” Winnie pointed out.

Keely smiled sadly. “What for?” she asked. “Any man who asked me would have been second best. I don’t want to get involved with anyone.”

Winnie had always been curious about Keely’s odd private life. She wondered what had happened to the other woman to leave her so alone. “It’s just a dance,” she pointed out. “You don’t have to agree to marry the man when he takes you home.”

Keely burst out laughing. “You’re terrible!” she choked.

“Just pointing out an obvious fact,” came the amused reply.

“Anyway, I’ll be working. You go and have enough fun for both of us.”

“Any man who took me would be second choice, too,” she reminded her friend. “The difference is, I want to go so I can rub my date in Kilraven’s face.”

“He won’t go,” Keely murmured.

“What makes you think so?”

“Just a guess. He keeps to himself. He reminds me of Cash Grier, the way he was before he married Tippy Moore. Grier was a bona fide woman hater. I think Kilraven is, too.”

Winnie hesitated. “I wonder.”

Keely didn’t follow up on the remark. She felt sorry for Winnie. She felt sorry for herself, too. Men were such a headache….

She came back to the present in time to see Boone coming out of the examination room with Bailey on a leash. He walked right past Keely without looking at her or saying a word to her. She stared after him with her heart breaking right inside her chest. Then she turned and went back to work, putting on a happy face for the benefit of her coworkers.

Keely hated Boone’s ex-fiancée on sight. Misty Harris’s father ran a private detective agency in San Antonio, and she was wealthy. She was pretty, she was very intelligent and she looked down on other women. Boone, Winnie had told Keely, liked a woman with a good mind and an independent spirit. She also thought that the woman probably was good in bed, which made Keely uncomfortable.

The woman had a poisonous tongue, and she didn’t like Keely. It was obvious when she arrived for a date with Boone the next Friday night and found Keely sitting in the living room with Winnie.

“No dates?” she chided the other women, looking sleek in a black cocktail dress with her long black hair flowing over her shoulders. Her deep blue eyes were twinkling with malicious amusement. “Too bad. Boone’s taking me to the Desperado concert. He’s going to introduce me to the lead singer. We’ve had tickets for two months. It’s going to be a great evening!”

“I love Desperado,” Winnie had to agree.

“I wouldn’t miss this concert for anything,” the brunette purred.

There was a noise at the side door, scratching and howling.

“Oh, it’s that dog,” the brunette muttered. “He’s filthy. For God’s sake, Winnie, you aren’t going to let him in? The Persian rugs are priceless! He’ll get mud all over them!”

“Bailey is a member of the family,” Winnie said icily as she opened the door and pulled a towel from a shelf nearby. “Hello, old fellow!” she greeted the old German shepherd. “Did you get wet?”

She started toweling him dry and wiping his paws. He was panting and whining. His tongue was purple. He shuddered. His stomach was swollen.

With a practiced eye, Keely observed him. Something was wrong. She got up and joined Winnie at the sliding glass door, going down on one knee. Her hands touched the dog’s distended belly.

She clenched her teeth. “He’s got bloat,” she told Winnie.

“What was that?” Boone asked, taking the steps two at a time.

Keely looked up at him, trying not to betray her pleasure at just the sight of him. “Bailey’s got bloat. He needs to be seen by a vet right now.”

“Don’t be absurd,” Boone shot back. “Dogs don’t get bloat.”

“Big dogs do,” Keely said urgently. “You must have seen the condition in cattle at one time or another. Here. Feel!”

She grabbed his hand and carried it to the dog’s belly.

He felt it and scowled.

“Look at the color of his tongue,” Keely persisted. “He isn’t getting enough oxygen. If you don’t get him to the vet soon, he’ll be dead.”

“Oh, that’s ridiculous,” the brunette spat. “He’s just eaten too much. Put him in his kennel. He’ll be fine by morning.”

“He’ll be dead,” Keely repeated flatly.

“Listen, you, I’m not missing that concert for a stupid old dog with an upset stomach!” the brunette raged. “You’re just trying to get Boone to notice you by telling him something’s wrong with that dog! He knows what a crush you have on him. This is a pathetic act!”

Boone looked at Keely, who was pale and sick at heart to have her innermost secret spoken aloud for Boone to hear.

He ran his hand over Bailey’s stomach one last time. “It’s not bloat,” he pronounced. “He’s just had too much to eat and he’s got gas.” He got to his feet, patting the old dog on the head, smiling. “You’ll be fine, won’t you, old man?”

Keely glared at him. The dog was still panting and now he was whimpering loudly.

“He’s not your dog,” Boone shot at her. “Misty’s right. This is a bid for attention, just like old Bailey whining so that I’ll pet him. But it won’t work. I’m taking Misty to the concert.”

Keely was so infuriated that she wouldn’t even look at him. Bailey was dying.

“Let’s go,” Boone told Misty.

He didn’t speak to Keely again, or to Winnie. He and his date walked back to the garage. Minutes later, his car roared out down the driveway.

“What are we going to do?” Winnie asked, because she believed her best friend.

“We can let him die or take him to the vet,” Keely said curtly.

“Who’s driving?” was all the other woman asked.

The oldest of the three vets, Bentley Rydel, and the owner of the clinic, was on call. He was the best surgeon of the group. At thirty-two, he was the only unmarried one. People said it was because he was so antagonistic that no woman could get near him. It was probably the truth.

He helped Keely get Bailey into the X-ray room and onto the table. She held him while the X-rays were taken, petting him and talking soothingly to him. For a man who resembled nothing more than a human pit viper with other members of his own species, he was the soul of compassion with animals.

He and Winnie were back in ten minutes with the X-rays. He looked somber as he showed them the proof that Bailey’s stomach had turned over. “It’s a complicated and expensive procedure, and I can’t promise you that it will succeed. If I don’t operate, the necrosis will spread and he’ll die. He may die anyway. You have to make a decision.”

“He’s my brother’s dog,” Winnie said uneasily, petting the whimpering old animal.

“Your brother will have to give consent.”

“He won’t,” Keely said miserably. “He doesn’t think it’s bloat.”

Bentley’s eyebrows arched. “And what veterinary school did he graduate from?”

Winnie’s phone playing the theme from Star Wars interrupted the conversation. She answered it nervously. She’d recognized Boone’s number on the caller ID screen.

“It’s Boone!” she whispered with her hand over the phone. She grimaced. “Hello?” she said hesitantly.

“Where the hell is my dog?” he demanded.

Winnie took a deep breath. “Boone, we brought Bailey here to the vet…”

“We? Keely’s mixed up in this, isn’t she?” he demanded, outraged.

The vet, seeing Winnie’s pained expression, held out his hand for the phone. Winnie gave it to him gladly.

“This animal,” the vet began firmly, “has a severe case of bloat. I can show you on the X-rays where necrosis of tissue has already begun. If I don’t operate, he will be dead in an hour. The decision is yours, but I urge you to make it quickly.”

Boone hesitated. “Will he live?”

“I can’t promise you that,” Bentley said curtly. “He should have been brought in when the symptoms first presented. The delay has complicated the procedure. This conversation,” he added acidly, “is another delay.”

The curse was audible two feet from the cell phone. “Do it,” Boone said. “I’ll give you permission. My sister can be your witness. Do what you can. Please.”

“Certainly I will.” He handed the phone to Winnie. “Keely, we need to prep him for surgery.”

“Yes, sir.” Keely was smiling. Her boss was a great negotiator. Now, at least Bailey had a chance, no thanks to the heartless woman who’d have sacrificed his life for a concert ticket.

The operation took two hours. Keely stood gowned beside the vet, administering anesthetic to the dog and checking his vital signs constantly. There was only a small amount of dead tissue, luckily, and she watched Bentley’s skillful hands cut it away efficiently.

“What was the delay?” he asked her.

She clenched her teeth. “Concert tickets for Desperado. Boone’s date didn’t want to miss it.”

“So she decided that Bailey should die.”

She grimaced. “I’m not sure she was being deliberately coldhearted.”

“You’d be surprised at how many people consider animals inanimate objects with no feelings. Old-timers come in sometimes and tell me in all seriousness that no animal feels pain.”

“Baloney,” she muttered.

He laughed shortly. “My opinion exactly.”

“How’s he doing?” she asked.

He nodded as he worked. “All right. There are no complications to worry about. I operated on Tom Walker’s Shiloh shepherd for this about two months ago, remember, and he had a tumor the size of my fist. We lost him despite the timely intervention.”

“We aren’t going to lose Bailey?” she asked worriedly.

“Not a chance. He’s old, but he’s a fighter.”

She smiled. Even if Boone gave her hell, it would be worth it. She was fond of the old dog, too, even if Boone felt she was using his pet. It made her furious that Boone believed that heartless brunette. Keely wasn’t stupid enough to think that such a play would work on a man with a head like a steel block. Boone wouldn’t care if she was Helen of Troy, he’d walk right by her without looking. She knew better than to try to chase him. She was amazed that he didn’t realize that.

“Done,” Bentley announced finally when the last suture was in place. Keely took away the anesthetic and waited while the vet examined the old dog. “I think he’ll do, but don’t quote me. We’ll know in the morning.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll carry him in for you,” he volunteered, because the dog was very heavy and Keely had problems carrying weight.

“You don’t have to,” she began self-consciously.

His pale blue eyes were kind as they met hers. “You’ve had some sort of injury to your left shoulder. I don’t have to see it to know it’s there. It won’t let you bear weight.”

She grimaced. “I didn’t realize it was so obvious.”

“I won’t give you away,” he said with a smile. “But I won’t make you carry loads too heavy, either.”

“Thanks, boss,” she said, smiling back.

He shrugged. “You’re the hardest worker I’ve got.” He seemed self-conscious after he said that, and he made a big production of lifting Bailey, very carefully, to one of the recovery cages where he’d be kept and monitored until he came out from under the anesthetic.

“I can stay and watch him,” she began.

He shook his head. “I had a call on my cell phone while we were prepping Bailey,” he reminded her. “There’s a heifer calving over at Cy Parks’s place. She’s having a hard time. It’s one of his purebred herd and he wants me there to make sure the calf is born alive.”

“So you have to go out there.”

He nodded. “I’ll check on Bailey when I get back. It’s Friday night,” he added with a faint smile. “Usually we get emergency cases all night, you know.”

“Want me to stay and answer the phone?” she asked.

He studied her quizzically. “It’s Friday night,” he repeated. “Why don’t you have a date?”

She shrugged. “Men hate me. If you don’t believe that, just ask Boone Sinclair.”

He looked over her shoulder and his eyebrows lifted as a door opened. “Speak of the devil,” he said in a voice that didn’t carry over Winnie’s greeting to her brother.

Chapter Two

Boone stalked into the room where Keely and Bentley were standing together beside the recovery cage, which contained Bailey. He didn’t look very belligerent now, and his concern for the old dog was evident as he knelt beside the cage and touched the head of the sleeping animal gently with his fingertips.

“Will he live?” he asked without looking up.

“We’ll know that in the morning,” Bentley said curtly. “He came through the surgery very well, and I didn’t find anything that would complicate his recovery. For an animal his age, he’s in excellent shape.”

Boone stood up, facing the vet. “Thank you.”

“Thank Keely,” came the short reply. “She ignored your suggestion to leave the animal alone until morning. At which time,” the vet added with a glitter in his eyes, “you’d have found him dead.”

Boone’s own eyes flashed. “I thought he was trying to get attention. Like Keely,” he added with icy sarcasm.

Bentley’s eyebrows lifted. “Do you really think Keely needs to beg any man for attention?” he asked, as if the remark was incredible to him.

Boone stiffened. “Her social life is not my concern. I’m grateful to you for saving Bailey.”

“We’ll know how successful I was in the morning,” Bentley replied. “Keely, can you get my medical bag for me, please?”

“Yes, sir.” She left the room, glad for something that would take her out of Boone’s immediate presence.

Boone glanced again at the cage. “He and I have been through some hard times together,” he told the vet. “If I’d realized how dangerous his condition was, I’d never have left him.” He looked at Bentley. “I didn’t know that dogs got bloat.”

“Now you do,” the vet replied. “Most large dogs are at risk for it.”

“What causes it?”

Bentley shook his head. “We don’t know. There are half a dozen theories, but no definite answers.”

“What did you do?”

“I excised the dead tissue and tacked his stomach to his backbone,” Bentley replied quietly. “I’ll prescribe a special diet for him. For the next couple of days, of course, he’ll get fluids.”

“You’ll let me know?” Boone added slowly.

Bentley recognized the worry in those dark eyes. “Of course.”

Boone turned to Winnie. His eyes were accusing.

She grimaced. “Now, listen, Keely knows what she’s doing, whatever you think,” she began defensively. “I agreed with her and I’ll take full responsibility for bringing Bailey over here.”

“I’m not complaining,” he said. His stern expression lightened. He bent and brushed an affectionate kiss onto Winnie’s forehead. “Thanks.”

She smiled, relieved that he wasn’t angry. “I love old Bailey, too.”

Keely came back with the medical bag and handed it to Bentley. She was holding his old raincoat, as well.

“I hate raincoats,” he began angrily.

She just held it up. He grimaced, but he slid his long arms into it and pulled it up. “Worrywart,” he muttered.

“You got pneumonia the last time you went out into a cold rain,” she reminded him.

He turned and smiled down at her; actually, it was more of a faint turning up of one side of his mouth. Bentley Rydel never smiled. “Go home,” he said.

She shook her head. “I won’t leave Bailey until I’m sure he’s out from under the anesthesia,” she said, and she didn’t look at Boone. “Besides, you’re sure to have at least one emergency call waiting for you when you get back.”

“I don’t pay you enough for all this overtime,” he pointed out.

She shrugged. “So I’ll never get rich.” She grinned.

He sighed. “Okay. I’m on my cell phone, if you need me.”

“Drive carefully.”

He made a face at her. But his expression was staid and impassive as he nodded to the Sinclairs on his way out.

Boone was glaring at Keely. She averted her eyes and went back to Bailey’s cage to check on him.

“We should go,” Winnie told her brother. “See you later, Keely.”

Keely nodded. She didn’t look at them.

Boone hesitated uncharacteristically, but he didn’t speak. He took Winnie’s arm and led her out the door.

“You couldn’t even say thanks to Keely for saving Bailey’s life?” she chided as they paused beside their respective vehicles.

He looked down at her coldly in the misty rain. “I could sue her for bringing Bailey here without permission.”

Winnie was shocked. “She saved his life!”

He avoided her gaze. “That’s beside the point. Let’s go. We’re getting wet.”

“What about your concert?” Winnie asked, and there was a faint bite in her tone.

“It’s not over. I’m going back.”

She wanted to say that his ex-fiancée wasn’t going to be pleased that he’d deserted her, even for a few minutes. But she didn’t say it. He was obviously out of humor, and it was never wise to push him.

Keely stayed with Bailey until he came to and Bentley returned from his call. There was a new emergency, a woman whose champion English springer spaniel was whelping and one of the puppies wouldn’t emerge. Once again, they had to do an emergency surgery to save mother and child.

It was two in the morning before they finished and Keely cleaned up. “Now go home,” Bentley said gently.

“I’ll have to.” She laughed. “I can’t keep my eyes open.”

“No matter what Boone Sinclair says,” he told her, “you did the right thing.” He glanced at Bailey, who was now sleeping peacefully thanks to a painkiller. “I think he’ll do.”

She smiled. Even though Boone had been a pain in the neck, he did love the old dog. She was glad that he wouldn’t have to give up his companion just yet.

She went home, tiptoeing past her mother’s room, and went to bed.

The next day, she worked until noon and then went home to do all the housework that her mother never bothered with. She finished just in time to start supper. By then, her mother was finishing the second whiskey highball and her best friend, Carly, had shown up for supper. Keely, who’d prepared enough just for her mother and herself, had to add potatoes and carrots to her stew to stretch it out. The grocery budget was meager. It took second place to the liquor budget.

It was the same every Saturday night that she was home, Keely thought miserably, hiding her discomfort while she served up a light supper in the dining room. Her mother, Ella, already drunk, was making fun of Keely’s conservative clothing while her best friend, Carly, added her own sarcastic comments to the mix. Both women were in their forties, and highly unconventional. Carly was no beauty, but Ella was. Ella had a lovely face and a good figure, and she used both to good advantage. A list of her past lovers, despite her substance abuse problem, would fill a small notebook. The mischief she caused was one of her favorite sources of amusement. Next to ridiculing Keely, that was. She and Carly considered virtue obsolete. No man, they emphasized, wanted an innocent woman these days. Virginity was a liability to a single woman.

“All you need is a man, Keely.” Carly Blair giggled, hoisting a potent Turkish cigarette to her too-red lips. “A few nights in the sack with an experienced man would take that prudish pout out of your lips.”

“You need to wear makeup,” her mother added, in between sips of her third whiskey highball. “And buy some clothes that don’t look like they came out of a mission thrift shop.”

Keely would have reminded them that she worked with animals in a veterinary clinic, not in an exclusive boutique, and that men were thin on the ground. But it only amused them more if she fought back. She’d learned to keep her head down when she was under fire.

The beef stew she’d had cooking all day in her Crock-Pot was fragrant and thick. She’d made yeast rolls to go with it, and a simple pound cake for dessert. Her efforts were unappreciated. The women hardly noticed what they were eating as they gossiped about a woman they knew in town who was having an affair. Their comments were earthy and embarrassing to Keely.

They knew that, of course; it was why they did it. What the two women didn’t know was that Keely couldn’t sustain a relationship with a boyfriend, much less a lover. She had a secret that she’d never shared with anyone except the doctor who had treated her. It would keep her alone for the rest of her life. She’d made sure that her mother didn’t know what she was hiding. The older woman was bitter and miserable and she loved making a victim of her daughter. Keely’s secret would have been more fodder for her attacks. So Keely kept a good distance between herself and her coldhearted parent.

She wondered often what had become of her father. She’d loved him very much, and she’d thought that he loved her. But he hadn’t been the same since he’d lost his game park. He’d turned to alcohol and then drugs to numb the pain and disappointment. He’d had no way to support himself, much less an adolescent daughter. He’d had to leave her with her mother. She’d done her best to make him let her stay, offering to get a job after school, anything! But he’d said that she needed security while she was growing up, and he could no longer provide it. Her mother wasn’t such a bad person, he’d said. Keely knew better, but she couldn’t change her father’s mind, so she rationalized that he’d probably forgotten what a cruel woman Ella could be. Besides that, she was terrified of his new friends; especially one of them, who’d slapped her around.

Ella owned land that she’d inherited, along with a sizable amount of money from her late parents. She’d loaned her husband the money for his game park to get him out of her life, Ella said. She’d quickly gone through the money she’d inherited, spending it on luxurious vacations, fancy cars and a mansion while Keely was living in meager circumstances with her father. But her mother’s wealth or lack of it was no concern to Keely. As soon as she was settled comfortably in her job, she was going to get another part-time job so that she could afford to move into a boardinghouse. She’d had all she could take of living here.

Her father had just left her on Ella’s front porch, crying and still pleading to go with him. Ella hadn’t been happy to find the adolescent back in her life, but she took her in, at least. At the age of thirteen, Keely had settled down slowly with the mother she barely remembered from childhood, who proceeded to make her life a misery.

“Boone Sinclair is dating that ex-fiancée of his who threw him over when he got out of the Army,” Carly Blair drawled, with a quick glance at Keely.

“Is he?” Ella looked at Keely, too. “Have you seen her?” she asked, because she knew that her daughter was friendly with Clark and Winnie Sinclair. “What does the woman look like?”

“She’s very pretty,” Keely replied calmly between bites of stew. “Long black hair and dark blue eyes.”

“Very pretty.” Ella laughed. “Nothing like you, Keely, right? You look like your father. I wanted a beautiful little girl who looked like me.” She wrinkled her nose. “What a disappointment you turned out to be.”

“We can’t all be beautiful, Mother,” Keely replied. “I’d rather be smart.”

“If you were smart, you’d go to college and get a better job,” Ella retorted. “Working as a technician for a veterinarian,” she added haughtily. “What a vulgar sort of job.”

“The senior veterinarian where Keely works is very good-looking,” Carly interrupted, shifting in her chair. She chuckled. “I tried to get him to take me out, but he gave me an icy glare and went back into his office.” She shrugged. “I guess he’s got a girlfriend somewhere.”

Keely was surprised at the remark. Carly was in her mid-forties and Bentley Rydel was only thirty-two years old. Bentley had mentioned, only once, that he couldn’t stand Carly. He probably didn’t like Keely’s mother, either, but he was too polite to say so. Not that they had pets that would need his services. Ella hated animals.

“Keely’s boss is a cold fish, like Boone Sinclair,” Ella said. She leaned back in her chair and studied her daughter with a cold expression. “You’ll never get anywhere with that man, you know,” she added in a slow drawl. “He may take his ex-fiancée around with him, but he’s no passionate lover.”

“How would you know?” Keely returned, stung by the comment and the way her mother aimed it at her.

Ella smiled mockingly. “Because I tried to seduce him myself, on more than one occasion,” she said, enjoying the look of horror on her daughter’s face. “He’s ice-cold. He doesn’t respond normally to women, not even when they come on to him physically. No matter what people say about his hot relationship with his ex-fiancée, I can assure you that he isn’t all that responsive to women.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t like older women,” Keely muttered icily, her eyes sparkling with temper as she pictured her mother using her wiles on Boone.

A cruel look passed over Ella’s face. “Well, he certainly doesn’t like you,” she retorted with deliberate sarcasm. “I told him you’re hot for your veterinarian boss and sleeping with him on the side.”

Keely was horrified. “What!” she burst out. “But, why?”

Ella laughed at her expression. “I wanted to see what he’d say,” she mused. “It was a disappointment. He didn’t react at all. So I asked him if he hadn’t noticed what a nice figure you’ve got, even if you aren’t pretty, and he said he didn’t feel attracted to children.”

Children. Keely was nineteen. That wasn’t childish. She didn’t think of herself as a child. But Boone did…

“Then I said that you might look like a child, but you knew what to do with a man, and he just walked away,” Ella continued. She saw Keely’s stricken expression. “So I suppose your little fantasy of love isn’t going to be fulfilled.” Her face took on a wicked cast. “I did mention in the course of conversation, before he left so rudely, that you had a crush on him and he could probably cut you out with your boss if he tried. He said that you were the last woman on earth he’d want.”

Keely wanted to sink through the floor. Some of Boone’s antagonistic behavior began to make sense. Her mother was feeding him lies about Keely, and he was swallowing them whole. She wondered how long Ella had been doing it, and if it was revenge because Boone wouldn’t touch her. Maybe she saw Keely as a rival and wanted to make sure there was no chance that Boone would weaken toward her daughter. Either way, it was devastating to the younger woman. She left the rest of her food untouched. She couldn’t choke down another bite.

“You might get somewhere with him if you stopped dressing out of thrift shops and wore a little makeup,” Ella chided.

“On my salary, all I can afford are clothes from thrift shops,” Keely said.

There was a hot silence. “Is that a dig at me?” Ella demanded, eyes flashing. “Because I give you a roof over your head and food to eat,” she added curtly. “You only have to do a little cooking and housework from time to time to earn your keep. That’s more than fair. I’m not obligated to dress you, as well!”

“I never said you were, Mother,” Keely replied.

“Don’t call me ‘Mother’!” Ella shot back, weaving a little in her chair. “I never wanted you in the first place. Your father was hot to have a son. He was disappointed when you turned out to be a girl, and I refused to get pregnant again. It ruined my waistline! It took me years to get my figure back!

“I wanted to give you up for adoption when you were eleven and your father divorced me, but he said he’d take you if I’d loan him enough money to open that game park. So I loaned him the money—which he never repaid, by the way—and he took you off my hands. He didn’t want you, either, Keely,” she added with a drunken smile. “Nobody wanted you. And nobody wants you now.”

“Ella,” Carly interrupted uneasily, “that’s harsh.” Keely’s face was as white as flour.

Ella blinked, as if she wasn’t quite aware of what she was saying. She stared blankly at Carly. “What’s harsh?”

Carly winced as Keely got to her feet and began clearing the table without saying a word.

She carried empty plates into the kitchen, trying desperately not to let the women see her cry. Behind her, she heard murmuring, which grew louder, and then her mother’s voice arguing. She went out into the cold night air in her shirtsleeves, tears pouring down her cheeks. She wrapped her arms around herself and walked to the front yard, stopping at the railing that looked out over Comanche Wells, at the rolling pastureland and little oasis of deciduous trees that shaded the fenced land where purebred cattle grazed. It was a beautiful sight, with the air crisp and the moon shining on the leaves on the big oak tree that stood in the front yard, making it look as if the leaves had been painted silver. But Keely was blind to the beauty of it. She was sick to her stomach.

She heard the phone ring in the house, but she ignored it. First Boone’s fierce antagonism and the argument over Bailey and the ex-fiancée’s taunts the night before, and then her mother’s horrible assertions tonight. It was the worst two days of Keely’s recent life. She didn’t want to go back in. She wanted to stay out in the cold until she froze to death and the pain stopped.

“Keely?” Carly called from the back door. “It’s Clark Sinclair. He wants to speak to you.”

Keely hesitated for a moment. She turned and went back inside without meeting Carly’s eyes or looking toward the dining room where her mother sat finishing her drink.

She picked up the phone and said “Hello?” in a subdued tone.

“The old girl’s giving you hell, is she?” Clark mused. “How about going out? I know it’s late notice, but I just got in from Jacksonville and I want to talk to somebody. Winnie’s working late at dispatch, and God knows where Boone’s off to. How about it?”

“Oh, I’d really like that,” Keely said fervently.

“Need an escape plan, do we? I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“I’ll be ready. I’ll wait for you on the front porch.”

“God, it must be bad over there tonight!” he exclaimed. “I’ll hurry, so you don’t catch cold.” He hung up. So did Keely.

“Got a date?” Ella drawled, coming to the doorway in a zigzag with her highball glass still in her hands. It was empty now. “Who’s taking you someplace?”

Keely didn’t answer her. She went down the hall to her room and closed and locked the door behind her.

“I told you it was a mistake to tell her that,” Carly said plaintively. “You’ll be sorry tomorrow when you sober up.”

“Mistake to tell her what?” Ella muttered. “I need another drink.”

“No. You need to go to bed and sleep it off. Come on.” Carly led her down the hall to her own bedroom, pushed her inside and closed the door behind them. “How could you tell her that, Ella?” she asked softly as she helped her friend down onto the big double bed with its expensive pink comforter.

“I don’t care,” Ella said defiantly. “She’s in my way. I don’t want her here. I never did.”

“She does all the housework and all the cooking,” Carly said in one of her rare moments of compassion. “She works all day and sometimes half the night for her boss, and then she comes home and works like a housekeeper. You don’t appreciate how much she does for you.”

“I could hire somebody to do all that.” Ella waved the idea away.

“Could you afford to pay them?” Carly retorted.

Ella frowned. She was hard put just to pay utilities and buy groceries. But she didn’t reply.

Carly eyed her quietly. “If you push her, she’ll leave. Then what will you do?”

“I’ll do my own housework and cooking,” Ella said grandly.

Carly shook her head. “Okay. It’s your life. But you’re missing out.”

“On what?” Ella muttered.

“On the only family you have,” Carly replied in a subdued tone. “I don’t have anybody,” she added. “My parents are dead. I had no siblings. I was married, but I was never able to have a child. My husband is dead, too. You have a child, and you don’t want her. I’d have given anything to have a child of my own.”

“You can have Keely,” Ella said, laughing. “I’ll give her to you.”

Carly moved toward the door. “You can’t give people away, Ella.” She looked back. “You don’t really have anybody, either.”

“I have men.” Ella laughed coldly. “I can have any man I want.”

“For a night,” her friend agreed. “Old age is coming up fast, for both of us. Do you really want to drive your only child away? She’ll marry someday and have children of her own. You won’t even be allowed to see your grandchildren.”

“I’m not having grandchildren,” Ella shot back. “I’m not going to be old. I’m only in my late thirties!”

Carly laughed. “You’re heading toward fifty, Ella,” she reminded her friend. “All the beauty treatments in the world aren’t going to change that.”

“I’ll have a face-lift,” the other woman returned. “I’ll sell more land to pay for it.”

That was unwise. Ella had already sold most of the land her family had left her. If she sold the rest, she was going to be hard-pressed just to pay bills. But Carly could see that it did no good to argue with her.

“Good night,” she told Ella.

Ella made a face at her, collapsed on the pillow and was asleep in seconds. Carly didn’t say anything else. She just closed the door.

Keely put on a pair of brown corduroy slacks and a beige turtleneck sweater and ran a brush through her thick, straight blond hair. She hoped Clark didn’t have an expensive date in mind. She couldn’t dress for it. She threw an old beige Berber coat over her clothes and grabbed her purse.

True to his word, Clark pulled up in the yard in exactly ten minutes, driving his sports car.

Carly came out of Ella’s bedroom just as Keely was leaving.

“Is she asleep?” Keely asked dully.

“Yes.” Carly was worried, and it showed. “She should never have said that to you,” she added. “She loved you when you were a baby. You wouldn’t remember, you were too little, but I do. She was so happy…”

“So happy that she now treats me this way?” Keely asked, hurt.

Carly sighed. “She was different after your father left. She started drinking then, and it’s just gotten worse year after year.” She saw that she wasn’t getting through to the younger woman. “There are things you don’t know about your parents, Keely,” she said gently.

“Such as?”

Carly shook her head. “That’s not my place to tell you.” She turned away. “I’m going home. She’ll sleep until morning.”

“Lock the door when you leave, please,” Keely said.

“I’m leaving now. You can lock it.” Carly got her purse and stopped just as the door closed behind the two women.

“I’m as bad as she is, sometimes,” the older woman confessed quietly. “I shouldn’t make fun of the way you are, and neither should she. But you don’t fight back, Keely. You must learn to do that. You’re nineteen. Don’t spend the rest of your life knuckling under, just to keep peace.”

Keely frowned. “I don’t.”

“You do, baby,” Carly said softly. She sighed. “Ella and I are a bad influence on you. What you need to do is get an apartment of your own and live your own life.”

Keely searched the other woman’s eyes. “I’ve thought about that….”

“Do it,” Carly advised. “Get out while you can.”

Keely frowned. “What do you mean?”

Carly hesitated. “I’ve said too much already. Enjoy your date. Good night.”

Carly walked off to her small import car. Keely watched her for a minute before she went down the steps to where Clark was waiting in his sleek Lincoln. He leaned across and opened the door for her.

He grinned. “I’d come around and open it, but I’m too lazy,” he teased.

She smiled back. He was like a kinder version of Boone. Clark had the same black hair and dark eyes, but he was a little shorter than his brother, and his hair was wavy—unlike Boone’s, which was straight.

“Neither one of you resemble your sister,” she remarked.

He shrugged. “Winnie got our mother’s coloring. She doesn’t like that. We hated our mother.”

“So Winnie said.”

He glanced at her as they pulled out of her mother’s yard. “We share the feeling, don’t we, Keely?” he probed. “Your mother is a walking headache.”

She nodded. “She was in high form tonight,” she said wearily. “Drunk and vicious.”

“What was Carly saying to you?”

“That I have to learn to stand up to her,” she said. “Surprising, isn’t it, coming from mother’s best friend? The two of them make fun of me all the time.”

Clark glanced at her, and he didn’t smile. “She’s right about that. You need to stand up to my brother, too. Boone walks all over people who won’t fight back.”

She shivered. “I’m not taking on your brother,” she said. “He’s scary.”

“Scary? Boone?”

She averted her gaze to the window. “Can’t we talk about something else?”

He was disconcerted by her remark, but he pulled himself together quickly. “Sure! I just heard that the Chinese are launching another probe toward the moon.”

She gave him a wry look.

“You don’t like astronautics,” he murmured. “Okay. Politics?”

She groaned out loud. “I’m so sick of presidential candidates that I’m thinking of moving to someplace where nobody runs for public office.”

“The Amazon jungle comes to mind.”

Her eyes narrowed. “If I went far enough in, I might escape television and the Internet.”

“I can see the headlines now,” he said with mock horror. “Local vet technician eaten by jaguar in darkest jungles of South America!”

“No self-respecting jaguar would want to eat a human being,” she retorted. “Especially one who eats anchovies on pizza.”

“I didn’t know you liked anchovies.”

She sighed. “I don’t. But when I was little, I discovered that if I ordered them, my dad would let me have more than two slices of pizza.”

He laughed. “Your father must have been a card.”

“He was.” She smiled reminiscently. “Animals loved him. I’ve seen him feed tigers right out of his hand without ever being bitten. Even snakes liked him.”

“That animal park must have been something else.”

“It was wonderful,” she replied. “We all loved it. But there was a tragic accident, and Dad lost everything.”

“Somebody got eaten?”

“Almost,” she replied, unwilling to say more. “There was a lawsuit.”

“And he lost,” he guessed.

She didn’t correct him. “It destroyed him.”

He frowned. “Did he commit suicide?”

She hesitated. This was Clark. He was her friend. She knew that he’d never tell Boone or even Winnie without asking her first. “He’s not dead,” she said quietly. “I don’t know where he is or what he’s doing. He developed a…a drinking problem.” She couldn’t tell him the whole truth. She glanced at him worriedly. “You won’t tell anybody?”

“Of course not.”

She studied her purse in her lap, turning it restlessly in her hands. “He left me with Mother and took off. That was six years ago, and I haven’t heard a word from him. For all I know, he could be dead.”

“You loved him.”

She nodded. “Very much.” She moved restlessly.

“What is it?”

She felt the pain of her mother’s words go right through her. “My mother said that she never wanted me. I ruined her figure,” she added with a hollow laugh.

“Good God! And I thought our mother was bad!” He stopped at a traffic light heading into Jacobsville and looked toward her. “Isn’t it a hell of a shame that we can’t choose our parents?”

“Yes, it is,” she agreed. “I was just sick when she said it. I should have guessed. She didn’t like me when I left, and she liked me even less when Dad dumped me on her, and now I think she hates me. I’ve tried to please her, keeping house and cooking and cleaning, but she doesn’t appreciate it. She grudges me the very food I eat.” She turned toward him. “I’ve got to get out of that house,” she said desperately. “I can’t take it anymore.”

“Mrs. Brown runs a very respectable boardinghouse,” he began.

She grimaced. “Yes, and charges a respectable price for rooms. I can’t afford it on my salary.”

“Hit Bentley up for a raise,” he suggested.

“Oh, right, I’ll do that first thing tomorrow,” she drawled.

“You’re scared of Bentley. You’re scared of Boone.” He pulled out into traffic. “You’re even scared of your mother. You have to step up and claim your own life, Keely.”

“What do you mean?”

“You can’t go through life being afraid of people. Especially people like my brother and Bentley Rydel. Do you know why they’re scary?” he persisted. “It’s because it’s hard work to talk to them. They’re both basically introverts who find it difficult to relate to other people. Consequently they’re quiet and somber and they don’t go out of their way to join in activities. They’re loners.”

She sighed. “I’m a loner, too, in my own way. But I don’t stand on the sidelines and glare at people all the time—or, worse, pretend they’re not there.”

“Is that Boone’s latest tactic?” he mused, chuckling. “He ignores you, does he?”

“He did until I argued about Bailey’s condition.”

“Thank God you did,” he said fervently. “Bailey belongs to Boone, but we all love the old fellow. I’ll never understand why Boone didn’t realize what had happened to him. He’s a cattleman—he’s seen bloat before.”

“His girlfriend convinced him that I was trying to get attention, using Bailey to lure Boone to my place of work.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” he burst out. “Boone’s not that stupid!”

“Well, apparently my mother’s been telling him that I have a crush on him, and now he thinks everything I do or say is an attempt to worm my way into his life,” she said bitterly.

“Ella told him that?” he exclaimed.

“Yes. And she told him that I’m sleeping with Bentley.”

“Does Bentley know that you’re sleeping with him?” he asked innocently.

She laughed. “I don’t know. I’ll ask him.”

He burst out laughing, too. “That’s more like it, kid,” he said. “You have to learn to roll with the punches and not take life so seriously.”

“It feels pretty serious to me lately,” she replied. “I feel like I’ve hit a wall tonight.”

“You should push your mother into one,” he told her. “Or better yet, tell her what a lousy mother she’s been.”

“She doesn’t listen when she’s drunk, and she’s mostly away from home when she’s sober.” She pursed her lips. “I work for veterinarians. I’ve been professionally taught to let sleeping dogs lie.”

He smiled. “Have you, now?”

“Where are you taking me?” she asked when he took a state highway instead of the Jacobsville road. “I thought we were going to a movie.”

“I’m not in the mood for a movie. I thought we might go to San Antonio for shrimp,” he replied. “I’m in the mood for some. What do you think?”

“We’ll be very late getting back,” she reminded him worriedly.

“What the hell,” he scoffed. “You can tell your mother you’re sleeping with me now instead of Bentley and she can mind her own business about when you come home.”

Her eyes almost popped.

He saw that and grinned. “Which brings to mind a matter I need a little help with. I think,” he added, “that you and I can be the solution for each others’ problems. If you’re game.”

All the way to San Antonio, she wondered what he meant, and how she would fit into his “solution.”

Chapter Three

The restaurant Clark took Keely to was one of the most exclusive in town, famous for its seafood. Keely was worried that she was dressed too casually for such a grand place, but she saw people dressed up and dressed down for the evening out. She relaxed and followed Clark and the hostess to a corner table. They were seated and provided with menus. Keely had to bite her tongue at the prices. Any one of these dishes would have equaled a day’s salary. But Clark just gave her a grin and told her to order what she wanted. They were celebrating. She wondered what they were celebrating, but he wouldn’t say.

Keely had eaten earlier, so she just had a very light meal. After she’d finished, she wondered if it was really the food that drew him here. He couldn’t take his eyes off the waitress who took their orders. And the waitress blushed prettily when he stared at her.

“Do you know her?” Keely asked softly when the waitress went to turn in their orders.

“Yes,” he said, grimacing. “I’m in love with her.”

Immediately Keely recalled Boone’s attitude toward his siblings becoming involved with someone from a lower economic class. He’d been vocal about it in the past. The look on Clark’s face was painful to see. She knew without asking that he was seeing the hopelessness of his own situation vividly.

“Is she the one you took to supper at the ranch?” she asked, remembering something she’d heard from Winnie.

He nodded. “Boone was polite to her, but later he asked me if I was out of my mind. He sees all working women as gold diggers who can’t wait to marry me and then divorce me for a big settlement.”

“Not all women want money,” she pointed out.

“Tell Boone. He doesn’t know.”

“That woman he goes out with seems to be obsessed with it,” Keely muttered.

“She doesn’t count, because she’s rich in her own right.”

“Yes. She’s beautiful, too,” she added with more bitterness than she realized.

He studied her across the white tablecloth with its fresh flowers, candles and silverware. “Think about it—would a man like Boone stick his head into the same noose he escaped once? That woman walked away from him when he was lying in a hospital with shrapnel wounds that could have killed him. She didn’t like hospitals. She thought he might be crippled, so she gave him back his ring. Now she’s in San Antonio and wants to go back to where they started. How do you think Boone feels about that?”

For the first time, she felt a glimmer of hope. “Your brother doesn’t forgive people,” she said softly. It was what she’d said once to Winnie.

“Exactly. Much less people who stick pins in his pride.”

“Then why is he taking her around with him?” Keely wanted to know.

He shrugged. “She’s beautiful and she has polished manners. Maybe he’s just lonely and he wants a showpiece on his arm. Or,” he added slowly, “maybe he has something in mind that she isn’t expecting. She wants to marry him again. But I don’t think he wants to marry her. And I think he’s got a good reason for going out with her at all.”

“God knows what it is,” Keely murmured.

“God does know. He probably doesn’t like it, either.”

“You think Boone is working on revenge?”

“Could be. He doesn’t often share his innermost thoughts with Winnie or me. Boone plays his hand close to his chest. He doesn’t give away anything.”

“What was he like before he came home wounded?” she wanted to know.

“He was less somber,” he told her. “He played practical jokes. He laughed. He enjoyed parties, and he loved to dance. Now, he’s the total opposite of the man he used to be. He’s bitter and edgy, and he won’t say why. He’s never talked to any of us about what happened to him over there.”

“You think whatever it was is what changed him so much?”

He nodded. “I miss the brother I had. I can’t get close to the man he’s become. He avoids me like the plague. More so, since I brought Nellie home with me for supper. He gave me a long lecture on the dangers of encouraging hired help. He was eloquent.”

“So you’re uneasy about taking her out on a date.”

“I’m uneasy about Boone finding out that I’m dating her,” he confessed. “Which brings me,” he added with a glance, “to the solution I need your help with.”

She gave him a wary look. “Why do I get the feeling that I shouldn’t have agreed to come here with you?”

“I can’t imagine.” He leaned toward her, smiling. “But if you’ll just cooperate in my little project, I’ll return the favor one day.”

She noticed that Nellie, waiting on another table, was sending pained looks toward Clark, who was oblivious to her interest. “This is upsetting Nellie,” she pointed out.

“Not for long. I’ll speak with her before we leave. Listen, you’re my best friend. I need you to be a friend and help me divert Boone from guessing how involved I am with Nellie. We’re going to pretend to get involved, if you’re game.”

“Involved?” Keely squeaked. “Listen here, Boone already thinks I’m sleeping with Bentley, thanks to my mother. He won’t believe I’m turning my attention to you. He hates me!” she exclaimed. “He’ll go out of his mind if he thinks you’re serious about me, and he’ll stop it any way he can. I’ll lose my job and have to stay at home, my mother will drive me crazy—”

“Your mother will be thrilled if you go out with me, because I’m rich,” Clark said sardonically. “She won’t cause trouble. And Boone will spend his time trying to think up ways to get you out of my life, unaware of what’s really going on.”

“Boone isn’t stupid,” she worried. “He’s going to wonder what you see in me. I’m poor, I work at a menial job…”

“I’ll take care of all that,” he said, smoothing it over. “All you have to do is pretend to find me fascinating.” He grinned. “Actually I am fascinating,” he added. “Not to mention highly eligible and charming.”

She made a face at him.

“But my brother can’t know it’s not for real,” Clark added seriously. “He’s got control of all my money until I turn twenty-seven. Then I can get to my trust. That’s next year. I can’t afford to tick him off just yet. But I’m not giving up Nellie.” He glanced toward the young waitress, who blushed again at his interest and almost overturned a tray looking at him. “You have to help us,” he told her. “You helped Bailey and he’s just a dog. I’m a kind, thoughtful man who treats you like a little sister.”

“That’s it, play on my heartstrings,” Keely muttered.

He grinned. “Come on. It will drive Boone nuts, you know it will. You’ll love it!”

Thinking of the way Boone had treated her, she had to admit that the deception would pay dividends in the form of revenge. But Boone was a formidable enemy and Keely was uncertain about making one of him. That was funny, considering his hostile and condescending attitude toward her. He was her enemy already.

“I’ll save you if it gets too rough,” he promised.

She knew it was a bad idea. She was going to regret giving in. “If I agree to do it, I have to tell Winnie the truth,” she began.

“No,” he said immediately. “Winnie can’t keep a secret, and she’s afraid of Boone, too. If he puts on the pressure, she’ll tell him everything she knows.”

Keely grimaced. “I just know this is going to end badly.”

“But you’ll do it, won’t you?” he asked with a cajoling smile.

She sighed. She grimaced. Clark had been her friend as long as Winnie had. He’d helped her out of half a dozen scrapes involving her mother. “Okay,” she said at last.

He grinned from ear to ear. “Okay! Now. How about dessert?”

Before they left the restaurant, he introduced her to Nellie and explained to the waitress who Keely was and what her place was in his life. Nellie brightened at once. She was glowing when Clark added that Keely was going to be the red herring so that he and Nellie could go on dates without Boone knowing.

Keely noticed that the other woman was very demure and meek, and Clark seemed to love that attitude. But Keely noticed something that he didn’t; there was a faint glint in Nellie’s eyes that didn’t go with a meek demeanor. She couldn’t help but be apprehensive. Maybe Nellie’s allure for him was Boone’s disapproval; in many ways, he’d only just started to try the boundaries of his big brother’s control. And Nellie had to know that the family was rich. She was a working girl, like Keely. If she turned out to be a gold digger, Keely stood to be burned at the stake by Clark’s older brother for her part in this. She wished she’d refused. She really did.

They were very late getting home. It was one o’clock in the morning when Clark drove up at Keely’s front door.

Until that moment, she hadn’t remembered her mother’s vicious words. They came back with cruel force when she saw the living-room light still on. She didn’t want to go inside. If she’d had anywhere else to go, she wouldn’t set foot in the place.

But her choices, like her salary, were limited. She had to live with her mother until she could make better arrangements.

Clark was watching her with open sympathy. “She probably doesn’t even remember saying it,” he murmured. “Drunks aren’t big on memory.”

She glanced at him, curious. “How would you know that?”

He hesitated, but only for a minute. “After Boone’s fiancée threw him over, he went on a two-week bender. He didn’t remember a lot of the things he said to me, but I’ve never forgotten any of them. The crowning jewel,” he added with taut features, “was that I’d never measure up to him and that I wasn’t fit to run a ranch.”

“Oh, Clark,” she sympathized. She could only imagine being a man and having Boone as a big brother to try to live up to. Those were very big shoes to have to fill.

“He sobered up and didn’t remember anything he’d said to me. But words hurt.”

“Tell me about it,” Keely sympathized.

He turned to her. “We’re both in the same boat, aren’t we? We’re people who don’t measure up to the expectations of the people we live with.”

“Winnie and I think you’re great just the way you are,” she replied doggedly.

He laughed, surprised. “Really?”

“Really. You’ve got a wonderful sense of humor, you’re never moody or sarcastic and you’ve got a big heart.” Her eyes narrowed. “If I’d told you that Bailey needed emergency care immediately, you’d have packed him into the car and taken him right to the vet.”

He sighed. “Yes, I guess I would have.”

“Boone thought it was a pitiful plea for attention on my part,” she added sadly. “I guess my mother’s said a lot of things to him about me.”

“Apparently. She doesn’t like you, does she?”

“The feeling is mutual. We’re sort of stuck together until I can get a raise or a second job.”

“How would you manage a second job?” he asked.

“Getting away from my mother’s constant abuse would make me manage. I can’t imagine living in a place where nobody makes fun of me.”

“You could work for me,” he suggested.

She shook her head. “Thanks, but no thanks. I want to be completely independent.”

“I figured that, but it didn’t hurt to ask.”

She smiled. “You really are a nice man.”

“I’ll pick you up next Saturday morning. We can go riding at the ranch. We might as well make a start at getting on Boone’s nerves,” he added with a dry chuckle.

“Take all his bullets away before I get there,” she pleaded.

“He’s not so bad,” he told her.

She shivered. “Sure he isn’t.”

The front door opened and Keely’s mother came out onto the porch. “Who’s that out there?” she drawled, hanging on to one of the supporting posts. She was wearing floral silk slacks with a fluffy pink robe. Her hair was disheveled and she looked sleepy.

“Don’t pay her any attention,” Keely advised Clark with a sad little sigh. “She doesn’t even know what she’s saying. I’ll see you next Saturday.”

“Thanks, Keely,” he told her with sincere affection.

She shrugged. “You’d do it for me,” she said, and smiled. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

She got out of the car and walked up to the porch, shaking inside, dreading another confrontation with her parent. She tried to walk past Ella, but the older woman stopped her.

“Where have you been?” she demanded.

Keely looked at her. For the first time she didn’t back down, even though her knees were shaking. “Out,” she replied tersely.

The older woman’s face tautened. “Don’t talk to me like that. You live in my house, in case you’ve forgotten!”

“Not for much longer,” Keely gritted. “I’m moving out as soon as I can get a night job to go with my day job. I don’t care if I have to live in my car, it will be worth it! I’m not staying here any longer.”

She brushed past her mother and went into the house, down the hall, into her room. She locked the door behind her. She was shaking. It was the first time in memory that she’d stood up to her abusive parent.

Ella came to her door and knocked. Keely ignored her.

She knocked again, with the same result.

Ella was sobering up quickly. It had just dawned on her that if Keely left, she’d have nobody to do the chores. She couldn’t even cook. She’d been able to afford help until the past two or three years. But she was facing a drastic reduction in her capital, due to her bad business decisions. And there was something else, something more worrying, that she didn’t dare think about right now.

“I didn’t mean what I said!” she called through the door. “I’m sorry!”

“You’re always sorry,” Keely replied tightly.

“No. This time I’m really sorry!”

There was a hesitation. Keely started to weaken. Then she remembered her mother’s track record and kept quiet.

“I can’t cook!” Ella yelled through the door a minute later. “I’ll starve to death if you leave!”

“Buy a restaurant,” was Keely’s dry retort.

With what, Ella was thinking, but Keely’s light went off. She stood there, weaving, her mind dimmed, her heart racing. A long, long time ago, she’d cuddled Keely in her arms and sung lullabies to her. She’d loved her. What had happened to that soft, warm feeling? Had it died, all those years ago, when she learned the truth about her husband? So many secrets, she thought. So much pain. And it was still here. Nothing stopped it.

She needed another drink. She turned back down the hall toward her own room. She could plead her case with Keely tomorrow. There was plenty of time. The girl couldn’t leave. She had no place to go, and no money. As for getting a second job, how would Keely manage that when she worked all hours for that vet? She relaxed. Keely would stay. Ella was sure of it.

Saturday morning, Clark came to pick her up to go riding with him at the ranch.

She’d done that several times with Winnie. But she’d never done it with Clark. Winnie and Boone were usually both home on the weekend, but Winnie’s red VW Beetle was nowhere in sight when Clark drove up in front of the stables with Keely beside him.

He got out and opened the door for her with a flourish. Boone, who was saddling a horse of his own in the barn, stopped with the saddle in midair to glare at them.

“Oh, dear,” Keely muttered under her breath.

“He’s just a man,” Clark reminded her. “He can kill you, but he can’t eat you.”

“Are you sure?”

Boone had put the saddle back on the ground at the gate that kept his favorite gelding from leaving his stall. He stalked down the brick aisle toward Clark and Keely, who actually moved back a step as he approached with that measured, quick, dangerous tread.

He loomed over them, taller even than Clark, and looked intimidating. “I thought you were flying to Dallas today,” he told Clark.

Clark was intimidated by his older sibling and couldn’t hide it. He tried to look defiant, but he only looked guilty. “I’m going Monday,” he said, and it sounded like an apology. “I brought Keely. She’s going riding with me.”

Boone looked down at Keely, who was staring at her feet and mentally kicking herself for ever agreeing to Clark’s harebrained scheme.

“Is she, now?” Boone mused coldly. He glanced at Clark. “Fetch me a blanket for Tank from the tack room, will you? You can ask Billy to saddle two horses for you on the way.”

Clark brightened. His brother sounded almost friendly. “Sure!”

He grinned at Keely and moved quickly down the aisle of the barn toward the tack room, leaving Keely stranded with Boone, who looked oddly like a lion confronted by a thick, juicy steak.

“Tell Clark you don’t want to go riding, Keely,” he said slowly. “And ask him to take you home. Right now.”

First her mother, now Boone. She was so tired of people telling her what to do. She looked up at him with wide, dark green eyes. “Why do you care if I go riding with Clark?” she asked quietly. “I go riding with Winnie all the time.”

“There’s a difference.”

She felt threatened. Then she felt insulted. She met his dark, piercing stare with resignation. “It’s because my people aren’t rich or socially important, isn’t it?” she asked. “It’s because I’m poor.”

“And uneducated,” he added tauntingly.

Her face colored. “I have a diploma for the work I do,” she stammered.

“You’re a glorified groomer, Keely,” he said flatly. “You hold dogs and cats while the vet treats them.”

Her whole body tautened. “That isn’t true. I give anesthesia and shots…”

He held up a hand. “Spare me the minute details,” he said, sounding bored.

“We can’t all go to Harvard, you know,” she muttered.

“And some of us can’t even face community college,” he shot back. “You had a scholarship and you threw it away.”

She felt sick. “A scholarship that paid just for textbooks,” she corrected. “And only half of that. How in the world do you think I could afford to pay tuition and go to classes and hold down a full-time job, all at once?”

“You could give up the job.”

She laughed hollowly. “My mother would love that. Then she wouldn’t even have groceries.”

His dark eyes narrowed. “Do you pay rent?”

Her big, soft green eyes met his. “I do all the housework and all the cooking and cleaning and shopping. That’s my rent.”

“Who buys her liquor?” he asked with a cold smile. “And her see-through negligees?”

Keely’s face went scarlet. He was insinuating something. Her stare asked the question without words.

He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans, pulling the thick fabric taut over the hard, powerful muscles of his legs. “I dropped by your house to thank you, belatedly, for getting Bailey to the vet in time to save him,” he said curtly. “You weren’t home, but she was. She answered the door in a see-through negligee and invited me inside.”

The shame was overpowering. She averted her face.

“Embarrassed?” he scoffed. “Why? Like mother, like daughter. I’m sure you wear similar things for Bentley,” he added with honey-dripping sarcasm.

She couldn’t manage a reply. His opinion of her was painful. She’d loved him secretly for years, and he could treat her like this. He wouldn’t even give her the benefit of the doubt.

Her lack of response made him angry. Why it should also make him feel guilty was a question he couldn’t answer. “You keep away from Clark,” he said shortly. “I don’t want you going out with him. Do you hear me, Keely?”

“It’s just for a ride….”

“I don’t give a damn what it’s for!” he snapped, watching her body tense, her eyes grow frightened. That made him even angrier. He stepped toward her and was infuriated when she backed up. “Get out of Clark’s life. Today!” he told her in a goaded undertone.

She felt her knees go weak. He was intimidating. She couldn’t even force her eyes back up to his. She was so tired of being afraid of everybody; especially of Boone.

Before he could say anything else, Clark came up with a blanket. He was grinning. “Billy’s got the horses saddled. He’s bringing them right up!”

Boone glared down at Keely. “I think Keely wants to go home,” he said.

“You do?” Clark exclaimed, surprised.

Keely drew in a quick breath and stepped close to Clark. “I’d like to go riding,” she replied.

Clark glanced at Boone, whose eyes were black as jet. “What’s going on?” he asked his brother. He frowned. “Do you really mind if I just take Keely riding?”

Boone glared at Keely as if he’d like to roast her on a spit. He glared at his brother, too. His lips made a thin line. “Oh, hell!” Boone bit off. “Do what you damned well please!”

He turned and strode out of the barn, apparently oblivious to the blanket Clark was holding out and the saddle he’d left sitting at the stall gate. His long, quick strides were audible on the paved floor, echoing down the aisle.

Clark ground his teeth together as he watched Boone’s departure. “I hope he doesn’t run into any of his men on the way to wherever he’s going,” he said with visible misgivings.

“Why?” Keely asked, relieved that Boone hadn’t said anything more.

Suddenly there was a distant voice, a sharp curse and the sound of water being splashed.

“Oh, boy,” Clark said heavily.

Keely stared down the aisle. A tall, dripping wet cowboy came into the barn, sloshing water as he walked. He was wringing out his felt hat, muttering. He looked up and saw Keely and Clark and grimaced.

“What happened to you, Riley?” Clark exclaimed.

The cowboy glowered at him. “I just made a comment about how good you and Miss Keely looked together,” he said defensively. “Boone picked me up and tossed me into the watering trough!”

Clark exchanged a glance with Keely. She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing as the cowboy passed on down the aisle, muttering about his freshly laundered clothing having to go right back into the washing machine. He headed out the back door of the barn toward the bunkhouse beyond.

“Poor guy,” Keely said. She looked up. “Your brother has a very nasty temper.”

“Yes.” He drew in a breath. “Well, it wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be,” he added, smiling. “Let’s go for a nice ride and pretend that my brother likes you and can’t wait to welcome you into our family!”

“Optimist,” Keely said and grinned.

Boone was gone when they came back from the lazy ride around the ranch, but Winnie was just putting her car into the garage. She drove a cute little red Volkswagen Beetle, her pride and joy because she was paying for it herself.

She came out of the garage frowning. She didn’t even notice Clark and Keely at first, not until she’d passed right by the barn.

“What’s wrong with you?” Clark called to her.

She stopped, glanced at them and looked blank. “What?”

“I said, what’s wrong with you?” Clark repeated as he and Keely joined his sister near the corral.

“Bad day at work?” Keely asked sympathetically.

Winnie was tight-mouthed. “I had a little upset with Kilraven,” she muttered.

Keely’s eyebrows arched. “What sort of upset?”

Winnie grimaced. “I didn’t mention the ten-thirty-two involved in a ten-sixteen physical,” she said, describing a possible weapon involved in a domestic dispute. “The caller said her husband was drunk, had beaten her up in front of the kids and was holding a pistol to her head. The phone went dead and I dispatched Kilraven. I’d just managed to get the caller back on the phone and I was listening to her while I gave him the information, and the caller was hysterical, so I got rattled and didn’t tell him about the gun. When he got to the address I gave him, he had a .45 caliber Colt automatic shoved into his face.”

Keely gasped. “Was he shot?”

“No thanks to me, he wasn’t,” Winnie said miserably. “I was also supposed to put out a ten-three, ten-thirty-three, calling for radio silence while he went into the house. I messed up everything. It was my first shift working all alone without my instructor, and I just blew it! My supervisor said I could have gotten someone killed, and she was right.” She burst into tears. “Kilraven called for backup and talked the man out of the gun, God knows how. After the man was in custody on the way to the detention center, Kilraven called me on his cell phone and said that if I ever sent him on a call again and left out vital details of the disturbance, he’d have me fired.”

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