The Man From Oklahoma

“Get off my land.”

The voice—deep and powerful—came from above them. Jamie squinted up the rocky cliff on the other side of the road. The man staring down at her didn’t look anything like the sleek, power-suited young oil-and-gas executive in the old news clippings. The man up on that cliff looked…rough…wild…and very angry.

Jamie shaded her eyes with a shaky hand. “Hello, Mr. Biddle, I’m—”

“I have my detectives, Ms. Evans. I know all about you.”

“Of course you do.” How much did he know?

“Isn’t the story of my wife’s disappearance too old for you media types?”

Jamie’s uneasiness intensified. He wasn’t reacting like a man in shock, a man who’d just been given terrible news. But surely the authorities had contacted him. Suddenly Jamie, who could spew out snappy lines for the camera without preparation, was having trouble finding words.

“Mr. Biddle, a source informed me an hour ago that…that your wife’s…her remains were found this morning. I’m…I’m sorry.”

For one moment Nathan Biddle sat so still atop his horse that he looked like a statue. He didn’t seem to be breathing. Then he turned the horse and headed back the way he’d come.

Jamie, despite her gift for glibness, could only stare at him soundlessly.

Dear Reader,

Trust your instincts. We’ve all heard that expression, but for Jamie Evans and Nathan Biddle it’s an especially tall order. They have every reason to mistrust each other. Early in my research, I became enthralled with this idea of trust. I had traveled to the heart of the Osage Hills and heard tales of ancient betrayals that haunted me for days.

Shortly after that trip, I was delighted when Oklahoma’s gracious First Lady, Cathy Keating, invited me to join her for lunch at the governor’s mansion. Mrs. Keating, herself a published author, loves books—those by Oklahomans in particular. She had obtained a copy of my Superromance novel, The Pull of the Moon, set in Tulsa, and she wanted to visit about the writing life. We talked about the great synergy of culture and history that makes Oklahoma unique—real cowboys, proud Indians, wild outlaws, wealthy oil barons. When I told Cathy that I was working on a story set on a ranch in the Osage Hills near the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, her eyes lit up.

For the next hour we bubbled with conversation about the deep forested canyons, the endless lakes and lush rolling hills of northeastern Oklahoma. Cathy fired up my imagination with lore about the historic town of Pawhuska and the Osage tribe, who became the wealthiest people per capita in the United States during the early oil boom days.

It is against this backdrop that Jamie Evans and Nathan Biddle not only learn to trust their instincts and believe in each other…they learn what it means to fall deeply in love.

I always enjoy hearing from my readers. Visit my Web site at http://www.superauthors.com or write to me at P.O. Box 720224, Norman, OK 73070.

Darlene Graham

The Man from Oklahoma

Darlene Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my beloved brothers, Ron and Rick.

You two have known me since the days of the dugout in the pasture and “The Claw.”

Amazingly, you still believe in me.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

PROLOGUE

AT ELEVEN-THIRTY on an ordinary Wednesday morning, right smack in the middle of his workweek, Susie Biddle called her husband Nathan’s office, and after making sure he wasn’t on the speakerphone or some such thing, informed him in a teasing voice that she was wearing “that little black thing,” and would he, perhaps, be interested in running home for lunch?

Nathan, after picking up the chair he’d tipped over, beat a path past his secretary’s desk and told her in a false-sounding too-loud voice that his wife had taken ill suddenly, and that he had to rush home immediately to tend to her. Cancel this afternoon’s meeting.

On his way out—sans coat, tie or briefcase—a couple of the secretaries in the outer office cast knowing smiles at each other, as if they suspected his real mission. Had Susie discussed their infertility troubles with these women? The thought might have bothered him under other circumstances, but, Nathan asked himself, considering the current state of their marriage, did he care? No, he most certainly did not.

Susie opened the door of their fine old Tulsa home before he even got the key in the lock. Sure enough, there she stood, with a come-hither look on her face and one hand planted saucily on her hip, wearing only that little black thing.

Man.

Nathan Biddle hadn’t seen the little black thing—or a willing wife—in quite a long time.

“Well?” was all she said.

With one big hand at her tiny waist and the other grasping the back of her slender neck, Nathan pulled Susie against his body while he danced her backward, toward privacy, all the while giving her a lusty kiss.

“You crazy woman,” he growled when they got to the door of the master suite. Then he kissed her again. Fiercely. Joyously. For at last the clouds of discontent that had enveloped her these past months seemed to have parted.

“Not crazy,” Susie said, laughing as his hungry mouth made its way down her slender neck. “Just fertile.”

But Nathan—who had never in their entire ten-year marriage received a call that tantalizing from Susie, fertile or not—was way beyond caring about Susie’s endless obsession with calendars and basal thermometers and fertility charts. Right now all he wanted was Susie.

She smelled like pure heaven and her skin felt as soft as rose petals. Her answering kisses told him that this was going to be easy, so easy. He didn’t feel even a glimmer of the anxiety about pregnancy that had disabled their sex life in recent months.

In fact, on that Wednesday afternoon, Nathan Biddle didn’t feel anything at all except Susie. Only Susie.

CHAPTER ONE

Oh, most beautiful of women,

You will wear the white of happiness.

My soul will slide into your soul.

I could never be lonely when I am with you.

—from an ancient Native American song to attract affection

Three years later

“IN THE VALLEY behind me, you can see the Hart Ranch, home of Tulsa philanthropist, Nathan Biddle. Biddle, known for his many efforts on behalf of disadvantaged children, has been living as a recluse in his childhood home here in these Osage Hills for three years, ever since his wife, oil heiress Susan Claremont Biddle, disappeared. But early this morning, authorities—Dammit!” Jamie Evans lowered her hand mike and tossed a hank of honey-blond hair out of her eyes. “The wind up here is absolutely ridiculous! Sorry, Dave. We’ll have to reshoot.”

Jamie sighed as she tottered across the gravel road on high heels toward the Channel Six van, wondering why she’d spent so much energy convincing her news director they needed this footage. All this work, all this setup, for ten seconds of film that would be obsolete by eleven o’clock tonight. But her instincts told her that this time she was on to something big. There was more to this story than a missing oil heiress whose remains had finally been found. As if that wasn’t enough. But the strange way Nathan Biddle had kept himself hidden in these hills, completely cut off from his former life only an hour away in Tulsa…

“You know, maybe we should forget about shooting from this plateau.” The lanky young cameraman tugged at his earring and made a disgruntled face at the forbidding isolated terrain below. “Aren’t we trespassing?”

Jamie glanced over her shoulder. Why was Dave so edgy? The ink was barely dry on his degree, but Dave Reardon was normally as aggressive as the most seasoned photojournalist. “Trespassing? On a ranch this big? Come on,” she chided, “look at that view—the meanders of the river and everything. You can see the entire ranching complex.” She fanned an arm toward the buildings below: a two-story native-sandstone house with a plantation-style porch stretching across its front; two long modern steel horse barns; and an old-fashioned gambrel-roofed barn, complete with a charming hay door tucked under the peak. Hart Ranch was a venerable old establishment, dating back to territorial days.

“That’s one fantastic visual.” She turned and made a face at her reflection in the side mirror of the Channel Six van. “Everybody wants to know what Biddle’s ranch looks like—especially now. I’m telling you, this’ll make a terrific teaser.” She yanked the door open, grabbing a brush and a can of hairspray off the front seat.

“None of the other stations have time to get out here and back to Tulsa before the newscast. They’ll all run the same old head shot of our ugly DA, preening and posturing about solving this heinous crime.”

She made a couple of determined chops at her thick hair, then stopped. “Wonder if I can show a close-up of the mysterious Mr. Biddle’s face at ten o’clock? By then they might have the dental records matched, maybe even know the cause of death, and I’ll have my second source confirmed, et cetera, et cetera.”

Dave was studying the landscape through the camera lens. “Dream on,” he muttered. “Nobody’s caught him on film for at least two years.” He lowered the camera. “Unless you’re gonna pull a Jamie and go banging on his front door or something.”

“I might.” Banging on the door was exactly what she would do in most cases. But this wasn’t like most cases. She knew the Biddles’ story too well. This man would undoubtedly be in shock, in pain.

“I’ve got to think that one through.” She gave her hair one last swipe and started spraying. “Man! How on earth can a place be this windy and still be so warm in the middle of October?”

Her panty hose were sticking to her legs like plastic wrap, and her cream-colored linen suit couldn’t be more wrinkled if she’d slept in it. She’d probably look like holy hell on camera. But, hey, that’s life. Jamie had been working on this story ever since she transferred to Tulsa from Kansas City, and she wasn’t about to blow an opportunity like this—a one-of-a-kind six-o’clock teaser about the biggest breaking story in ages.

Her only regret was that she hadn’t come out to the ranch to sneak this footage before now. But who would have imagined the body would be found way out here in Osage County? It sure paid to have sources in the DA’s office. Still not satisfied with her hair repairs, she gave up and glanced back at Dave.

“Who would actually choose to live out in the middle of this godforsaken prairie?” She tossed the hairspray back onto the front seat.

Dave shrugged. “A guy whose family has owned the place since before the Land Run, I guess.” He went back to studying the view through the lens.

Dave had done his homework, too. They were a great team, charging around the state scooping the competition on stories that were visually startling and chock-full of eyewitness accounts and pithy little sound bites. They were so good that Dave’s footage and Jamie’s voice-over had once been picked up by the network news.

Only four years out of journalism school, pretty as a peach and smart as a whip, Jamie Evans was the undisputed princess of Channel Six, the one who garnered all the awards. The one the viewer focus groups liked most. The one people phoned the station to gush about.

And call it luck or call it instinct, but Jamie Evans was also the reporter who managed to be in the right place at the right time.

“Hey!” Dave cried. “I think I spotted our man!”

“Get a shot! Get a close-up!” Jamie ran across the road as fast as she dared in the heels.

Dave was already filming.

“Zoom in on his face,” Jamie urged. She tiptoed at Dave’s side but couldn’t see much without the magnification of the camera lens. “It’s got to be Biddle. He lives out here all alone.” She peered down at the ranch house, the outbuildings and the corrals below as the thrill of the chase coursed through her. “Try to get a good clean close-up.” Her heart pounded when she spotted a big man in a cowboy hat emerging from the barn with a horse on a lead.

“Uh-oh.” The skinny photographer jerked back from the lens. “He spotted us, too.” He frowned as he refocused. “Man! That dude looks mean.”

“Lemme look.”

Dave held the camera steady while Jamie scanned the scene below.

“Where the hell is he?”

Dave adjusted the camera upward and the man came into focus. Jamie almost stumbled off her high heels at the sight of him.

He was mounting a big muscular paint, and as Jamie watched his movements, her throat went dry. He was long-legged, broad-shouldered, wearing tight jeans, a faded chambray shirt and a beatup black cowboy hat.

He pulled the horse’s head around and took off at a hard gallop toward a dirt road that disappeared into a stand of blackjacks. Jamie figured—feared—that the road led to this plateau.

And when he got here, he would run them off. Great.

“Dave, he’s coming. You have the red light disabled?”

“Always,” Dave said. He was already taking the camera off the tripod.

“Okay. Whatever he says, whatever he does, keep that camera rolling. Aimed at him.”

Dave made a face that said duh. “You really think I should film this guy?” he said, “I was thinking it’d be better to get a good clean close-up of these rocks.”

Jamie ignored him and chewed a nail, thinking. “And don’t be obvious about it.”

“Huh?” Dave’s sarcasm was replaced by genuine confusion. Normally the photographer rolled the camera openly while Jamie let fly a barrage of questions.

“We’re out here all alone,” Jamie explained.

Dave winced and tugged on his earring. “So I noticed.”

Shoving her misbehaving hair firmly behind one ear, Jamie took a deep breath and walked with Dave to the edge of the plateau where they stood in plain sight, looking like a couple of stranded motorists. Jamie checked behind her, down the sloping gravel road. “You’re sure he saw us?” she asked after a few uncomfortable minutes had passed with no sign of the rider.

“Yeah. Look, the wind’s picking up and the sun’s getting low. Wanna try to finish shooting the teaser?”

Jamie sighed. “Why not? At least we’ll look like we know what we’re doing.” She stood in her former spot, faced the camera and started to talk. “This is Jamie Evans, and behind me you see the Hart Ranch complex, home of Tulsa oil tycoon Nathan Hart Biddle—”

“Get off my land.” The voice—deep, powerful and sure—had come from above them. Jamie squinted up the wall of a rocky cliff on the other side of the road. With the sun behind him he stood out clearly, a striking silhouette among the black shapes of low cedars. The curves of his hat, the ragged tail of his hair blowing in the wind, the profile of the paint, all blended into a haunting image that made Jamie shudder.

The steely-eyed raven-haired man looking down at her seemed eerily familiar. Jamie chalked up the sensation to the fact that she had been studying archival news photos of the Biddles for the past couple of years. His face had surely been burned into her subconscious by now. But the Nathan Biddle staring down at her didn’t look anything like the sleek power-suited young oil-and-gas executive in those old news photos. The man up on that cliff looked…rough…wild, more like the aged sepia photographs she’d found of his Osage great-grandfather, Chief Black Wing.

She shaded her eyes with a shaky hand. “Hello. I’m Jamie Ev—”

“I know who you are. Isn’t this story getting a bit shopworn for your kind?”

Her kind? Well, she’d resent reporters, too, if she’d gone through what this man had. The media had insisted on going for the dramatic tear-jerker angle, focusing on the Biddles’ high-profile marriage—God, that must have been awful for him. Jamie began to feel sorry for the man.

“Could we talk to you, Mr. Biddle?”

“No. You are trespassing. Now leave.”

Jamie’s uneasiness intensified. He wasn’t acting like a man in shock, a man who’d just been given terrible news. But surely the authorities had already contacted him.

“Mr. Biddle, you really don’t know why we’re out here this afternoon?” She shot Dave a look and saw that the tape was rolling, though he had the camera braced casually under one arm.

The horse nickered in the answering silence. Then Biddle turned the animal and disappeared into the sun’s rays.

“What now?” Dave whispered.

“Just keep rolling.”

In no time horse and rider appeared around the base of the cliff. Man and animal seemed to move as one unit as they maneuvered expertly around leafless saplings and belly-high bluestem grass. In the saddle, Nathan Biddle looked relaxed, but his intense dark eyes remained fixed warily on Jamie as he rode toward her. Nobody said a word, so that as he reined the horse in, the squeak of leather and the crunch of gravel seemed magnified.

He stayed in the saddle, high above them. “Turn it off,” he said to Dave without looking at him. Dave made elaborate motions as if doing so.

“Talk,” Biddle said to Jamie while he gave her a once-over that made her want to run and crouch behind a limestone boulder. The close proximity of the massive horse didn’t help. Jamie had always been scared of horses.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Biddle,” she started, “we didn’t mean to disturb you. I work for Channel Six, as you know, and we’ve been following your story for some time—”

“I have my detectives, Ms. Evans. I know all about you.”

“Of course you do.” So how much do you know?

“Get to the point.”

Jamie swallowed and started again. “We’re shooting a teaser—I’m planning to do a package on the ten-o’clock news and—”

“A package? Why?”

It didn’t surprise her that he knew the terminology for a feature-length TV news story. “Why?” Jamie’s throat went dry.

His dark eyes narrowed at her hesitation. “The story of my wife’s disappearance is old, Ms. Evans. It’s…dead.”

“Well, uh, that’s just it. Something’s happened, I’m afraid. The authorities haven’t contacted you?”

“About what?”

“I don’t know how to tell you this.”

Biddle didn’t move.

“I don’t have any details, but…” Jamie, who could spew out lines for a snappy stand-up shot with no preparation, was having trouble finding words.

“What is this about?” Biddle demanded.

“Mr. Biddle, a source informed me about an hour ago that…that your wife’s…her remains were found this morning. By hunters. I’m…I’m sorry.” Jamie’s voice grew weak and the last word had come out almost soundless.

For one moment Nathan Biddle sat so still atop the paint that he looked like a statue. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. Then he closed his eyes, swallowed and drew in a tortured breath. “Where?” he said through tightened lips.

“On a sandbar, a small island, out in the Arkansas River,” Jamie answered softly.

Biddle did not turn his head, but his eyes moved to the camera. “Use any of that—” he angled the hat subtly toward Dave “—and I will sue your asses off.”

Dave slid his fingers around and pressed the off button on the camera, this time for real.

Biddle turned the paint, heading back the way he had come. This time the squeak of leather and the crunch of gravel made an eerie counterpoint to the fading light and gusting evening air. He didn’t look back as he galloped across the road, up the embankment and around the rocky base of the cliff.

Jamie, with her gift for glibness, could only stare at his back as he rode away, unable to think of a thing to say. But what could one possibly say to a man who had just been told that after three long years, his wife’s remains had been found in this wild lonely country?

“I promise,” she finally murmured, “I won’t use the footage.” But Dave was the only one who heard her.

CHAPTER TWO

ALONE. THE WORD took on a new and terrible meaning as Nathan Biddle stared out at the spectacular sunset he had seen so many times from this broad window. He braced his palms wide on the sill, suddenly remembering the day his grandfather Biddle had installed the majestic expanse of glass in the western wall of the enormous Hart Ranch house.

“Nathan, my boy,” the old man had said, “your grandmother’s people came from those hills out there. The Osage, a fierce and proud nation. And filthy rich, too!” Gramps had slapped him on the back as if it was a great joke.

For so long—months after Susie had disappeared—Nathan had waited for a ransom note that never came. Maybe someone was after the Osage oil money, he and his lawyers had reasoned. Such atrocities, in the name of greed, had been visited upon the wealthy Osage people before. Nathan hoped that maybe someone would demand the millions that he would gladly pay, and then Susie and their unborn child would be magically restored to him.

But now these Osage Hills, beloved resting place, of his ancestors, had become Susie’s resting place, as well. She had been out there all this time. All this time while he had been searching the world for her, she had been right out there on an island in a river…alone.

He had sensed from the first, of course, that Susie would never come back. Had felt it in his body.

Hunters, the reporter woman had said. He hadn’t even turned on the TV. And wouldn’t. He did not want to see what the jackals were saying about Susie, about him, about the one who had done this. That was for the city people in Tulsa to look at, to eat with their nightly meal, digesting someone else’s pain like so much junk food. Tears stung his eyes.

The clouds gathered in radiant silence as the liquid orange Oklahoma sun touched down on the rim of the rolling hills. Nathan focused his burning eyes there, at that convergence of light on the far horizon.

He tried not to think of the last time he had seen Susie, but her voice reverberated in his mind, anyway: “Nathan, I’m pregnant!” Those words would echo in him forever, like his own heartbeat. They had been the words he’d desperately wanted to hear, though he’d never admitted it, not to her, not even to himself.

Their battle against infertility, the child they were finally going to have, none of it seemed real now. It seemed as if the only thing that remained from his former life was this land where he had grown up, these endless hills.

He put his forehead to the glass and fought the rage, the tears, the self-pity. When his mind cooled and he raised his head, the clouds seemed brighter than any he had ever seen. The strange sight caused a sudden unease to pass over him. He looked around the room, cast in an amber glow, and the furniture—his grandfather’s furniture—looked the same as it always had, yet not the same at all.

Grief, he knew by now, could have strange and unpredictable effects on a man’s mind. He turned his head slowly, looking back at the clouds, and they had altered again. Before his eyes they suddenly took shape above the setting sun as first one, then many faces formed. As he stared, this wall of faces stirred in him an unbidden anger, then sadness and finally a strange resolve. It seemed as if this vision had been trying to form for the past three years. He shook his head and blinked, then rubbed his eyes. When he looked again, the faces had vanished. Only ordinary clouds remained, following the sun to bed.