Christmas On His Ranch: Maggie's Dad / Cattleman's Choice

Antonia studied the sullen little face. “And you think that frightens me?”

“Everybody’s scared of my dad,” she returned proudly.

“Well, I’m not,” Antonia said coldly. “Your father can come up here if he likes and I’ll tell him the same thing I’ve told you. If you don’t do the work, you don’t pass. And there’s nothing he can do about it.”

“Oh, really?”

Antonia nodded. “Oh, really. And if you don’t turn in your homework by the time the final bell sounds, you’ll find out.”

“So will you,” Maggie replied.

Antonia refused to argue with the child. But when the end of class came and Maggie didn’t turn the homework in, she put a zero neatly next to the child’s name.

“Take this paper home, please,” she told the child, handing her a note with her grade on it.

Maggie took it. She smiled. And she didn’t say a word as she went out the door. Miss Hayes didn’t know that her daddy was picking her up today. But she was about to find out.

Antonia had chores to finish before she could go home. She didn’t doubt that Powell would be along. But she wasn’t going to back down. She had nothing to lose now. Even her job wasn’t that important if it meant being blackmailed by a nine-year-old.

Sure enough, it was only minutes since class was dismissed and she was clearing her desk when she heard footsteps coming down the hall. Only a handful of teachers would still be in the building, but those particular steps were heavy and forceful, and she knew who they belonged to.

She turned as the door opened and a familiar tall figure came into the room with eyes as dark as death.

He didn’t remove his hat, or exchange greetings. In his expensive suit and boots and Stetson, he looked very prosperous. But her eyes were seeing a younger man, a ragged and lonely young man who never fit in anywhere, who dreamed of not being poor. Sometimes she remembered that young man and loved him with a passion that even in dreams was overpowering.

“I’ve been expecting you,” she said, putting the past away in the back drawers of her mind. “She did get a zero, and she deserved it. I gave her all week to produce her homework, and she didn’t.”

“Oh, hell, you don’t have to pretend noble motives. I know why you’re picking on the kid. Well, lay off Maggie,” he said shortly. “You’re here to teach, not to take out old grudges on my daughter.”

She was sitting at her desk. She folded her hands together on its worn surface and simply stared at him, unblinking. “Your daughter is going to fail this grade,” she said composedly. “She won’t participate in class discussions, she won’t do any homework, and she refuses to even attempt answers on pop tests. I’m frankly amazed that she’s managed to get this far in school at all.” She smiled coldly. “I understand from the principal, who is also intimidated by you, that you have the influence to get anyone fired who doesn’t pass her.”

His face went rigid. “I don’t need to use any influence! She’s a smart child.”

She opened her desk drawer, took out Maggie’s last test paper and slid it across the desk to him. “Really?” she asked.

He moved into the classroom, to the desk. His lean, dark hand shot down to retrieve the paper. He looked at it with narrow, deep-set eyes, black eyes that were suddenly piercing on Antonia’s face.

“She didn’t write anything on this,” he said.

She nodded, taking it back. “She sat with her arms folded, giving me a haughty smile the whole time, and she didn’t move a muscle for the full thirty minutes.”

“She hasn’t acted that way before.”

“I wouldn’t know. I’m new here.”

He stared at her angrily. “And you don’t like her.”

She searched his cold eyes. “You really think I came all the way back to Wyoming to take out old resentments on Sally’s daughter?” she asked, and hated the guilt she felt when she asked the question. She knew she wasn’t being fair to Maggie, but the very sight of the child was like torture.

“Sally’s and mine,” he reminded her, as if he knew how it hurt her to remember.

She felt sick to her stomach. “Excuse me. Sally’s and yours,” she replied obligingly.

He nodded slowly. “Yes, that’s what really bothers you, isn’t it?” he said, almost to himself. “It’s because she looks just like Sally.”

“She’s her image,” she agreed flatly.

“And you still hate her, after all this time.”

Her hands clenched together. She didn’t drop her gaze. “We were talking about your daughter.”

“Maggie.”

“Yes.”

“You can’t even bring yourself to say her name, can you?” He perched himself on the edge of her desk. “I thought teachers were supposed to be impartial, to teach regardless of personal feelings toward their students.”

“We are.”

“You aren’t doing it,” he continued. He smiled, but it wasn’t the sort of smile that comforted. “Let me tell you something, Antonia. You came home. But this is my town. I own half of it, and I know everybody on the school board. If you want to stay here, and teach here, you’d better be damn sure that you maintain an impartial attitude toward all the students.”

“Especially toward your daughter?” she asked.

He nodded. “I see you understand.”

“I won’t treat her unfairly, but I won’t play favorites, either,” she said icily. “She’s going to receive no grades that she doesn’t earn in my classroom. If you want to get me fired, go ahead.”

“Oh, hell, I don’t want your job,” he said abruptly. “It doesn’t matter to me if you stay here with your father. I don’t even care why you suddenly came back. But I won’t have my daughter persecuted for something that she didn’t do! She has nothing to do with the past.”

“Nothing?” Her eyes glittered up into his. “Sally was pregnant with that child when you married her, and she was born seven months later,” she said huskily, and the pain was a living, breathing thing. Even the threat of leukemia wasn’t that bad. “You were sleeping with Sally while you were swearing eternal devotion to me!”

Antonia didn’t have to be a math major to arrive at the difference. He’d married Sally less than a month after he broke up with Antonia, and Maggie was born seven months later. Which meant that Sally was pregnant when they married.

He took a slow, steady breath, but his eyes, his face, were terrible to see. He stared down at her as if he’d like to throw something.

Antonia averted her gaze to the desk, where her hands were so tightly clasped now that the knuckles were white. She relaxed them, so that he wouldn’t notice how tense she was.

“I shouldn’t have said that,” she said after a minute. “I had no right. Your marriage was your own business, and so is your daughter. I won’t be unkind to her. But I will expect her to do the same work I assign to the other students, and if she doesn’t, she’ll be graded accordingly.”

He stood up and shoved his hands into his pockets. The eyes that met hers were unreadable. “Maggie’s paid a higher price than you know already,” he said enigmatically. “I won’t let you hurt her.”

“I’m not in the habit of taking out my personal feelings on children, whatever you think of me.”

“You’re twenty-seven now,” he said, surprising her. “Yet you’re still unmarried. You have no children of your own.”

She smiled evenly. “Yes. I had a lucky escape.”

“And no inclination to find someone else? Make a life for yourself?”

“I have a life,” she said, and the fear came up into her mouth as she realized that she might not have it for much longer.

“Do you?” he asked. “Your father will die one day. Then you’ll be alone.”

Her eyes, full of fear, fell to the desk again. “I’ve been alone for a long time,” she said quietly. “It’s something…one learns to live with.”

He didn’t speak. After a minute, she heard his voice, as if from a distance. “Why did you come back?”

“For my father.”

“He’s getting better day by day. He didn’t need you.”

She looked up, searching his face, seeing the young man she’d loved in his dark eyes, his sensuous mouth. “Maybe I needed someone,” she said. She winced and dropped her eyes.

He laughed. It had an odd sound. “Just don’t turn your attention toward me, Antonia. You may need someone. I don’t. Least of all you.”

Before she could say a word, he’d gone out the door, as quietly as he’d come in.

Maggie was waiting at the door when he walked in. He’d taken her home before he had his talk with Antonia.

“Did you see her? Did you tell her off?” she asked excitedly. “I knew you’d show her who’s boss!”

His eyes narrowed. She hadn’t shown that much enthusiasm for anything in years. “What about that homework?”

She shrugged. “It was stupid stuff. She wanted us to write an essay about ourselves and do math problems and make up sentences to go with spelling words.”

He scowled. “You mean, you didn’t do it—any of it?”

“You told her I didn’t have to, didn’t you?” she countered.

He tossed his hat onto the side table in the hall and his eyes flashed at her. “Did you do any of the homework?”

“Well…no,” she muttered. “It was stupid, I told you.”

“Damn it! You lied!”

She backed up. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her. He frightened her when he looked that way. He made her feel guilty. She didn’t lie as a rule, but this was different. Miss Hayes was hurting her, so didn’t she have the right to hurt back?

“You’ll do that homework, do you hear me?” he demanded. “And the next time you have a test, you won’t sit through it with your arms folded. Is that clear?”

She compressed her lips. “Yes, Daddy.”

“My God.” He bit off the words, staring at her furiously. “You’re just like your mother, aren’t you? Well, this is going to stop right now. No more lies—ever!”

“But, Daddy, I don’t lie…!”

He didn’t listen. He just turned and walked away. Maggie stared after him with tears burning her eyes, her small fists clenched at her sides. Just like her mother. That’s what Mrs. Bates said when she misbehaved. She knew that her father hadn’t cared about her mother. Her mother had cried because of it, when she drank so much. She’d said that she told a lie and Powell had hated her for it. Did this mean that he hated Maggie, too?

She followed him out into the hall. “Daddy!” she cried.

“What?”

He turned, glaring at her.

“She doesn’t like me!”

“Have you tried cooperating with her?” he replied coldly.

She shrugged, averting her eyes so that he wouldn’t see the tears and the pain in them. She was used to hiding her hurts in this cold house. She went up the staircase to her room without saying anything else.

He watched her walk away with a sense of hopelessness. His daughter had used him to get back at her teacher, and he’d let her. He’d gone flaming over to the school and made all sorts of accusations and charges, and Antonia had been the innocent party. His daughter had used him to get back at her teacher, and he’d let her. He was furious at having been so gullible. It was because he didn’t really know the child, he imagined. He spent as little time with her as possible, because she was a walking, talking reminder of his failed marriage.

Next time, he promised himself, he’d get his facts straight before he started attacking teachers. But he wasn’t sorry about what he’d said to Antonia. Let her stew on those charges. Maybe it would intimidate her enough that she wouldn’t deliberately hurt Maggie. He knew how she felt about Sally, he couldn’t help but know. Her resentments were painfully visible in her thin face.

He wondered why she’d come back to haunt him. He’d almost pushed her to the back of his mind over the years. Almost. He’d gone to see her father finally to get news of her, because the loneliness he felt was eating into him like acid. He’d wondered, for one insane moment, if there was any chance that they might recapture the magic they’d had together when she was eighteen.

But she’d quickly disabused him of any such fancies. Her attitude was cold and hard and uncaring. She seemed to have frozen over in the years she’d been away.

How could he blame her? All of Antonia’s misfortunes could be laid at his door, because he was distrustful of people, because he’d jumped to conclusions, because he hadn’t believed in Antonia’s basic innocence and decency. One impulsive decision had cost him everything he held dear. He wondered sometimes how he could have been so stupid.

Like today when he’d let Maggie stampede him into attacking Antonia for something she hadn’t done. It was just like old times. Sally’s daughter was already a master manipulator, at age nine. And it seemed that he was just as impulsive and dim as he’d ever been. He hadn’t really changed at all. He was just richer.

Meanwhile, there was Antonia’s reappearance and her disturbing thinness and paleness. She looked unwell. He wondered absently if she’d had some bout with disease. Perhaps that was why she’d come home, and not because of her father at all. But, wouldn’t a warm climate be the prescription for most illnesses that caused problems? Surely no doctor sent her into northern Wyoming in winter.

He had no answers for those questions, and it would do him well to stop asking them, he thought irritably. It was getting him nowhere. The past was dead. He had to let it go, before it destroyed his life all over again.

Chapter Five

Antonia didn’t move for a long time after Powell left the classroom. She stared blindly at her clasped hands. Of course she knew that he didn’t want her. Had she been unconsciously hoping for something different? And even if she had, she realized, there was no future at all in that sort of thinking.

She got up, cleared her desk, picked up her things and went home. She didn’t have time to sit and groan, even silently. She had to use her time wisely. She had a decision to make.

While she cooked supper for her father and herself, she thought about everything she’d wanted to do that she’d never made time for. She hadn’t traveled, which had been a very early dream. She hadn’t been involved in church or community, she hadn’t planned past the next day except to make up lesson plans for her classes. She’d more or less drifted along, assuming that she had forever. And now the line was drawn and she was close to walking across it.

Her deepest regret was losing Powell. Looking back, she wondered what might have happened if she’d challenged Sally, if she’d dared Powell to prove that she’d been two-timing him with her mother’s old suitor. She’d only been eighteen, very much in love and trusting and full of dreams. It would have served her better to have been suspicious and hard-hearted, at least where Sally was concerned. She’d never believed that her best friend would stab her in the back. How silly of her not to realize that strongest friends make the best enemies; they always know where the weaknesses are hidden.

Antonia’s weakness had been her own certainty that Powell loved her as much as she loved him, that nothing could separate them. She hadn’t counted on Sally’s ability as an actress.

Powell had never said that he loved Antonia. How strange, she thought, that she hadn’t realized that until they’d gone their separate ways. Powell had been ardent, hungry for her, but never out of control. No wonder, she thought bitterly, since he’d obviously been sleeping with Sally the whole time. Why should he have been wild for any women when he was having one on the side?

He’d asked Antonia to marry him. Her parents had been respected in the community, something his own parents hadn’t been. He’d enjoyed being connected to Antonia’s parents and enjoying the overflow of their acceptance by local people in the church and community. He’d spent as much time with them as he had with Antonia. And when he talked about building up his little cattle ranch that he’d inherited from his father, it had been her own father who’d advised him and opened doors for him so that he could get loans, financing. On the strength of his father’s weakness for gambling, nobody would have loaned Powell the price of a theater ticket. But Antonia’s father was a different proposition; he was an honest man with no visible vices.

Antonia had harbored no suspicions that an ambitious man might take advantage of an untried girl in his quest for wealth. Now, from her vantage point of many years, she could look back and see the calculation that had led to Powell’s proposal of marriage. He hadn’t wanted Antonia with any deathless passion. He’d wanted her father’s influence. With it, he’d built a pitiful little fifty-acre ranch into a multimillion-dollar enterprise of purebred cattle and land. Perhaps breaking the engagement was all part of his master plan, too. Once he’d had what he wanted from the engagement, he could marry the woman he really loved—Sally.

It wouldn’t have surprised Antonia to discover that Sally had worked hand in glove with Powell to help him achieve his goals. The only odd thing was that he hadn’t been happy with Sally, from all accounts, or she with him.

She wondered why she hadn’t considered that angle all those years ago. Probably the heartbreak of her circumstances had blinded her to any deeper motives. Now it seemed futile and unreal. Powell was ancient history. She had to let go of the past. Somehow, she had to forgive and forget. It would be a pity to carry the hatred and resentment to her grave.

Grave. She stared into the pan that contained the stir-fry she was making for supper. She’d never thought about where she wanted to rest for eternity. She had insurance, still in effect, although it wasn’t much. And she’d always thought that she’d rest beside her mother in the small Methodist church cemetery. Now she had to get those details finalized, just in case the treatment wasn’t successful—if she decided to have it—and without her father knowing. He wasn’t going to be told until the last possible minute.

She finished preparing supper and called her father to the table, careful to talk about mundane things and pretend to be happy at being home again.

But he wasn’t fooled. His keen eyes probed her face. “Something’s upset you. What is it?”

She grimaced. “Maggie Long,” she said, sidestepping the real issue.

“I see. Just like her father when he was a kid, I hear,” he added. “Little hellion, isn’t she?”

“Only to me,” Antonia mused. “She liked Mrs. Donalds.”

“No wonder,” he replied, finishing his coffee. “Mrs. Donalds was one of Sally’s younger cousins. So Maggie was related to her. She petted the kid, gave her special favors, did everything but give her answers to tests. She was teacher’s pet. First time any teacher treated her that way, so I guess it went to her head.”

“How do you know?”

“It’s a small town, girl,” he reminded her with a chuckle. “I know everything.” He stared at her levelly. “Even that Powell came to see you at school this afternoon. Gave you hell about the kid, didn’t he?”

She shifted in her chair. “I won’t give her special favors,” she muttered. “I don’t care if he does get me fired.”

“He’ll have a hard time doing that,” her father said easily. “I have friends on the school board, too.”

“Perhaps they could switch the girl to another class,” she wondered aloud.

“It would cause gossip,” Ben Hayes said. “There’s been enough of that already. You just stick to your guns and don’t give in. She’ll come around eventually.”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” she said heavily. She ran a hand over her blond hair. “I’m tired,” she added with a wan smile. “Do you mind if I go to bed early?”

“Of course not.” He looked worried. “I thought you went to see the doctor. Didn’t he give you something to perk you up?”

“He said I need vitamins,” she lied glibly. “I bought some, but they haven’t had time to take effect. I need to eat more, too, he said.”

He was still scowling. “Well, if you don’t start getting better soon, you’d better go back and let him do some tests. It isn’t natural for a woman your age to be so tired all the time.”

Her heart skipped. Of course it wasn’t, but she didn’t want him to suspect that she was so ill.

“I’ll do that,” she assured him. She got up and collected the plates. “I’ll just do these few dishes and then I’ll leave you to your television.”

“Oh, I hate that stuff,” he said. “I’d much rather read in the evenings. I only keep the thing on for the noise.”

She laughed. “I do the same thing in Tucson,” she confessed. “It’s company, anyway.”

“Yes, but I’d much rather have you here,” he confessed. “I’m glad you came home, Antonia. It’s not so lonely now.”

She had a twinge of conscience at the pleasure he betrayed. He’d lost her mother and now he was going to lose her. How would he cope, with no relatives left in the world? Her mother had been an only child, and her father’s one sister had died of cancer years ago. Antonia bit her lip. He was in danger of losing his only child, and she was too cowardly to tell him.

He patted her on the shoulder. “Don’t you do too much in here. Get an early night. Leave those if you want, and I’ll wash them later.”

“I don’t mind,” she protested, grinning. “I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

“Don’t wake me up when you leave,” he called over his shoulder. “I’m sleeping late.”

“Lucky devil,” she called back.

He only laughed, leaving her to the dishes.

She finished them and went to bed. But she didn’t sleep. She lay awake, seeing Maggie Long’s surly expression and hating eyes, and Powell’s unwelcoming scrutiny. They’d both love to see her back in Arizona, and it looked as if they were going to do their combined best to make her life hell if she stayed here. She’d be walking on eggshells for the rest of the school year with Maggie, and if she failed the child for not doing her homework, Powell would be standing in her classroom every day to complain.

She rolled over with a sigh. Things had been so uncomplicated when she was eighteen, she thought wistfully. She’d been in love and looking forward to marriage and children. Her eyes closed on a wave of pain. Maggie would have been her child, her daughter. She’d have had blond hair and gray eyes, perhaps, like Antonia. And if she’d been Antonia’s child, she’d have been loved and wanted and cared for. She wouldn’t have a surly expression and eyes that hated.

Powell had said something about Maggie…what was it? That Maggie had paid a higher price than any of them. What had he meant? Surely he cared for the child. He certainly fought hard enough when he felt she was attacked.

Well, it wasn’t her problem, she decided finally. And she wasn’t going to let it turn into her problem. She still hadn’t decided what to do about her other problem.

Julie was the brightest spot in Antonia’s days. The little girl was always cheerful, helpful, doing whatever she could to smooth Antonia’s path and make it easy for her to teach the class. She remembered where Mrs. Donalds had kept things, she knew what material had been covered and she was always eager to do anything she was asked.

Maggie on the other hand was resentful and ice-cold. She did nothing voluntarily. She was still refusing to turn in her homework. Talking to her did no good. She just glared back.

“I’ll give you one more chance to make up this work,” Antonia told her at the end of her second week teaching the class. “If you don’t turn it in Monday, you’ll get another zero.”

Maggie smiled haughtily. “And my daddy will cuss you out again. I’ll tell him you slapped me, too.”

Antonia’s gray eyes glittered at the child. “You would, wouldn’t you?” she asked coldly. “I don’t doubt that you can lie, Maggie. Well, go ahead. See how much damage you can do.”

Maggie’s reaction was unexpected. Tears filled her blue eyes and she shivered.

She whirled and ran out of the classroom, leaving Antonia deflated and feeling badly for the child. She clenched her hands on the desk to keep them from shaking. How could she have been so hateful and cold?