True Love Ranch
There was only one thing standing between her and her dream.
Darcy looked at the truck in front of her and sighed heavily. She’d spent a lot of money on therapy trying to work out those lingering feelings for Joe. And she’d succeeded, she reminded herself. Years ago. Now he was a temporary obstacle. Not even an obstacle—just a distraction, that was all.
She had to remember that.
Joe looked in his rearview mirror at Darcy in her car. He sure hadn’t thought he’d see her today, or any other time, come to think of it. Sure, she was getting the ranch and whatever other assets Ken had to be distributed, but from what Joe understood, Darcy was busy living the high life in Chicago. For her, this would be just one more asset to liquidate. At the most he would have expected her to send a representative. Joe felt he could have dealt with a representative. He wasn’t so sure about Darcy. Somehow he was going to have to try not to let her get to him.
He’d just concentrate on his other business. There certainly was enough of it to keep him occupied. He pressed harder on the accelerator and the truck lurched forward.
Of course, the news of her divorce was a surprise. Maybe that was it—maybe she just wanted a change of scenery, something to help her forget the heartbreak.
Joe could have told her some things just can’t be forgotten. Or ignored.
Her car drew up a little too close to his back bumper, and he found himself smiling. Typical Darcy, he thought, always in a hurry. Somehow, that bulldozer quality had always endeared her to him.
Watching her in his rearview mirror, he studied her, marveling at her beauty. The finely arched eyebrows, determined chin, curved mouth. He looked back at the road, but her image stayed with him. Dark blond hair, evenly cut at the shoulder. If the stories that had circulated about her at the ranch were true, she’d probably paid a fortune for that haircut back in Chicago.
She sure had changed since he’d known her. Way back then, money hadn’t mattered to her one whit. At first he hadn’t believed the stories about her lifestyle after she’d left the ranch, but eventually he’d admitted to himself that he hadn’t wanted to believe them. The stories just made him feel that much more foolish for ever thinking they could make a go of it together.
Darcy Beckett, his wife, sharing ranch life with him—that had just been a stupid, immature dream.
He’d woken up a long time ago.
He looked back at her. Fancy car, fancy haircut. According to her grandfather, Darcy lived high off the hog. Drank champagne as though it were water. She probably even rinsed her mouth with it when she brushed her teeth. Or used fancy bottled water from France.
He glanced at the road to keep on course, then back at the mirror. Darcy was framed in its confines like a picture. For a moment, he saw her as she used to be. Her hair, which had been much lighter then, was long and straight. She used to live in jeans and T-shirts, not the kind of fancy clothes she was wearing now.
She’d grown up, and done a damn good job of it. He’d grant her that.
Her face... how many times had he seen that face in his dreams? She’d barely changed, he’d realized when he’d gotten up close. For a moment he’d gone dumb at the sight of those strong cheekbones and the stubborn chin he used to love to kiss. Her skin was as smooth-looking as ever. In memory, he could just reach out and touch her. In memory.
Hell, it wasn’t easy to forget Darcy Beckett.
She used to come to the ranch every summer, though he hadn’t met her until she was fifteen. He was seventeen then, and far too old for such a child. But the summer she was sixteen, she was looking not so much like a child anymore. And by her seventeenth summer she was so beautiful that he ached every time he saw her.
Fortunately or unfortunately—he’d never been able to decide which—Darcy had wanted him, too. They’d spent the entire summer watching each other sideways during the day when other people were around, and drawing together like magnets in the dark shadows of night. Sharing their inner selves, their dreams, planning a life together... and ultimately, making slow, sweet, incredible love. Until they’d gotten caught, that is.
Then she left and never came back. He never forgot her, never stopped comparing other women to her. For a long time he’d kept to himself, avoiding all romantic entanglements. But the glow of that summer romance had worn off eventually, and when he’d met a town girl named Maura Kinney, who was available and willing, he hadn’t bothered to resist.
When Maura had told him she was pregnant, he’d done the right thing and married her. Why not? Maybe he was still thinking of Darcy, but Darcy had married some high rider in the East and was, presumably, going to live happily ever after with him.
He took a deep breath and then let it out, trying to relax his tense shoulders and neck. He still remembered the long months of wishing Darcy would come back, but not daring to ask Ken about her. He should have asked anyway, he realized now. But the boy he’d been was so cowed by the powerful R. Kenneth Beckett that he hadn’t dared let anyone know the depth of his feelings for the great man’s granddaughter. Hell, he’d been lucky to be able to hold on to his job. In those days, it wasn’t so easy to find good work that paid a fair wage; he couldn’t risk it.
Instead, he’d hidden his feelings. After all, he was young and he knew it. He thought surely his crush on Darcy would fade. It did, to an extent, when he wrote to her and didn’t get an answer. He even wrote a second time, just in case the first letter had been lost. Then a third time. Then he gave up. And he’d gone to so much trouble to get the address from Kenneth’s book without the old man knowing it, too.
Joe sighed, remembering. Eventually he’d started a life with another woman and his unborn child. He’d never truly been in love with Maura, but she’d been his friend. When she’d died after a short illness a couple of years ago, it had been a blow. Together they’d worked to build a life. When she died he’d had to start all over again.
He fastened his eyes on the route ahead. The old Watson place, a broken ruin of a house, was up there on the right. Almost home. The T.L. Ranch. He did this drive every day, but today, with the lawyer’s meeting pending, it felt completely different—different because when he arrived at the ranch he’d get out of the car and be face to face again with Darcy Beckett.
He’d been waiting for this day for a long time. Rosanna Kinney, his late wife’s sister, had been hounding him for the past eight months to get on out to her Oklahoma ranch and take over as foreman.
He would have refused flat out except that Rosanna had paid a large balance of Maura’s hospital bills, and now Joe felt indebted to her. If Maura had told him about the loan before it was too late—heck, if she’d told him about the necessity of getting the loan—he would have done something else, anything else, to get the money.
But Maura hadn’t told him, and so he didn’t find out until after the funeral.
Rosanna proposed that he pay back the twenty-thousand dollars in sweat equity. Besides, she pointed out, Ricky and Joe needed a home, not just a place to live and work. Joe said he’d come after his ailing employer no longer needed him. Well, Kenneth Beckett no longer needed Joe or anyone else.
Now Joe had a five-year plan to work off his debt to his sister-in-law and save enough to start his own ranch in Wyoming. He’d already picked the spot. It was great land and underdeveloped. It would come cheap. With what he had saved now, and what he’d accumulate in the next five years in Oklahoma, he would be set.
He’d even been feeling optimistic about it lately. It figured that Darcy would show up now, just to throw him off.
But it was temporary. He was leaving for Oklahoma; it was part of The Plan. Until recently that plan had been unappealing to him, but now it was starting to seem like a really good idea. After today’s meeting, Joe would have no more excuses for remaining in Holt.
He glanced back at Darcy. Suddenly it seemed that the sooner he got out, the better it would be for him. Falling for Darcy Beckett again was one mistake this foolish cowboy couldn’t afford to make again.
Chapter Two
Darcy rounded a corner, still following the pickup and thinking about the old days. She could see Joe in her mind’s eye, a little younger, a little thinner and a bit more baby-faced...but as devastatingly handsome as he was today. She never dreamed he’d still be working at the ranch. For years she’d felt guilty about the fact that he’d probably been fired; now it turned out that he never had been.
But her grandfather had been so angry! Once he’d learned of their secret trysts, he’d sent Darcy straight home, even though it was only the beginning of August. She’d assumed Joe had been sent on his way, too, especially when her letters had gone unanswered.
Now that she thought about it, though, it figured that he hadn’t been. R. Kenneth Beckett’s world was a man’s world. Always had been. She could see it now: Joe had been given a warning and a wink.
She turned into the driveway, and the ranch spread out before her. Her heart soared. Acres and acres of sharply angled hills, dotted with horses of all sizes and colors, cradled the beloved house in a valley.
It didn’t look much like a ranch, apart from the horses on the hill. It never had. The ranch had been built by a Swiss settler centuries before, and to Darcy the old European styling had always seemed like the setting for a fairy tale.
The house was large, with pointed gables and shady eaves. Thick vines climbed the wall and snaked across the front, netting the building’s facade like a spider web. The windows were beveled lead glass with diagonals of iron bar slashing it into diamonds. The window sills, however, were scaly with peeling paint. Closer inspection revealed two of the windows on the far corner of the house were broken, and Darcy could clearly see boards behind several others.
When had that happened? Grandfather had always taken great pride in his home. There had never been a chip of paint missing, much less scales of it peeling off.
Darcy swallowed a lump in her throat. If she’d known he was ill, if she’d known that the house had practically fallen to ruin, would she have tried one more time? Yes, a melancholy voice inside her said, of course I would have. Another question followed quickly: Would he have responded with more warmth if he’d known their time for reconciliation was drawing to a close?
Apparently not. After all, he had known he was ill, and yet he had neither contacted her nor had anyone else do so.
Bullheaded to the bitter end.
She tightened her hands on the steering wheel. It was more comfortable to be angry with him than to miss him. There was no point in mulling over the past.
Darcy parked the car next to the pickup truck and got out warily, watching Joe Tyler from the corner of her eye.
Joe raised his eyebrow. “You ready?” He gestured toward the house.
Darcy straightened and kept walking. “Yes, I am.”
“You don’t look ready. You look like you’ve been crying. Are you okay?”
“Yes, of course I’m okay.” She sniffed and hated herself for the giveaway. “It’s just hay fever. I always have hay fever when I come here.” She walked quickly toward the front door.
He followed.
Darcy hesitated at the door. She had always just walked right in, but that had been a very long time ago. She wasn’t at all sure whom she’d find in the house now or what they would expect of her.
She pushed the doorbell and waited, trying to ignore the fact that Joe Tyler was standing close behind her. Right—as if anyone could ignore such a presence. For one thing, he smelled fantastic. She could detect a hint of sweet laundry detergent or fabric softener mingling with the crisp masculine scent of aftershave. It was a combination that tempted her to lean back into him, as if collapsing into a freshly made bed.
Heat pulsated from him right through the gauzy batiste of her pantsuit. His proximity felt uncomfortably... what was the word? Intimate flew to mind. The heat that passed from him to her felt intimate.
This foolish line of thinking was getting her nowhere. A long time ago she and Joe had shared a predictable teenage curiosity about each other. Nothing more, she insisted silently. It was a lifetime ago, and Darcy had been married and divorced since then, had gone from carefree wealth to economic struggle. Now she knew that following the lead of sexual chemistry could only result in disaster.
There was no way she was going to make that mistake again.
“Why don’t you just go on in?” Joe reached past her toward the door. His arm brushed against her shoulder and left a burning spot on her skin.
“It’s not my home.” Although it was the closest thing she’d ever had.
“At the moment, it’s no one’s home, and I don’t want to stand here all day while you ring the bell.” He stepped around her and pushed the door open. “The Coxes are too deaf to hear it these days anyway.”
“The Coxes?” She remembered Anthea, the kind woman who worked as the housekeeper, and her husband, Hank, who was the family driver. “Are they still here?”
“For the time being.” He hesitated, then added gently, “It’ll be a short reunion. They’re getting ready to leave for Florida.”
“When?”
“I’m not sure. This week sometime.”
It was Darcy’s second encounter today with the living past, and the second time she felt her fond memories meant more than the truth did. “Is anyone else still here? Anyone I might know?”
Joe was quick to shake his head. “There’s no one here at all beyond some hired day help. The guys you knew are all long gone. The last of them was Skip Morton and he left—” he paused to think “—well, it must be nearly a year now.”
“Oh, no.” Darcy was filled with apprehension. She was walking into a situation that was even more unfamiliar than she’d anticipated.
“Things really changed over the past few years, Darce, and not for the best.”
“Oh.” Darcy didn’t know what else to say. She’d had such happy times here as a child. When she went in this door, what changed vision of the past would confront her? She hesitated, almost afraid to disturb her memories.
“Let’s go.” Joe guided her through the front door into the wooden entryway. “Like I said, it’s a little different since you were here last. Toward the end, your grandfather was too ill to do much with the place and too poor to hire someone else to do it for him.”
“But you said he had hired help.”
Joe shook his head. “Just a few men. All together we have our hands full just dealing with the livestock.”
A door at the end of the hall creaked open before Darcy could reply.
“Joe? Is that you?” An elderly man bustled down the hall toward them. “How are you, son? Didn’t recognize you from back there without my glasses on. How’s Ricky?”
Darcy felt Joe glance at her quickly. Who was Ricky? she wondered. Another ranch hand? Was someone else requested at the reading of Grandfather’s will?
“Just getting over a cold, but he’s all right,” Joe said. He took off his hat and tossed it onto the foyer table. His hair was dark and gleaming. “How are you and the missus?”
“Fine, fine.” Hank turned his gaze to Darcy. “My stars, this isn’t Little Darcy, is it?”
“Not so little anymore.” She smiled, but tears burned behind her eyes. Hank had aged thirty years in the last ten, but he was still wonderfully familiar. He made the place feel like home in a way that no one else could. “I’m awfully glad to see you, Hank.” Impulsively she went to him and gave the frail body a hug. Hank returned the hug with the warm kindness she remembered.
“Wait ’til Anthea sees you.” He hesitated and appeared to think that over before saying, “She’ll be so sorry it’s just to say good-bye.”
“I can’t wait to see her,” Darcy said, trepidation weakening her words.
“You waited ten years,” Joe said quietly.
Darcy bristled.
“Come right this way,” Hank Cox said, walking through a heavy oak doorway to the left.
Neither Darcy nor Joe moved. They stood facing each other like boxers in opposite corners of the ring.
“What did you mean, ‘you waited ten years’?” she demanded.
“Just that your grandfather could have used your help over the past few years, and if you weren’t so bullheaded—”
“Me bullheaded? What about him?”
“Both of you. Not that it’s any of my business,” he added as an afterthought.
“It certainly isn’t.” She was sorely tempted to spit the truth right into Joe Tyler’s condescending face, but it was none of his business. Let him think the worst of her—what did she care?
He stood for a moment with his eyes fixed on her, and his enviably sculpted mouth quirked into the half smile she’d noticed earlier. “Sweetheart, you’re way too uptight.”
“Don’t call me ‘sweetheart.’”
“See?”
She felt her face flush. “You have no right to speak to me that way.”
“You didn’t used to feel that way.”
Exactly three hard, solid heartbeats passed before she managed to say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” His casual approach to what had meant so much to her was humiliating.
He stopped and turned back to her. Suddenly his hair looked darker—if that was possible—and his eyes looked like blue stormclouds. And his mouth—that sensually curved mouth; it was really starting to get on Darcy’s nerves—was quirked, openly mocking. “You didn’t used to mind one bit when I called you my sweetheart. Or have you forgotten?”
“There’s nothing to forget,” she answered, refusing to be bowled over by him. She raised her chin.
He gave a quick jerk of his head and sucked air in through his teeth. “Are you challenging me, Darcy?”
“To do what?” Darcy asked, deliberately misunderstanding.
He didn’t miss a beat “To make a more lasting impression on your memory.”
Part of her wanted to slap that complacent smirk right off his face, but at the moment she felt too weak and tingly to move. Once she had enjoyed this sensation. Now she hated it.
“If you’re ready...” Hank Cox returned to the doorway with a puzzled frown and swept a hand toward the other room. Darcy had almost forgotten he was waiting. She strode into the library and sat down in an embroidered antique chair.
The room was actually in pretty good shape, except for some chips in the built-in bookshelves and a few pieces of old furniture that had seen better days.
A little gray-haired woman who would have been perfectly cast as Mrs. Claus approached with teapot in hand but not a shred of recognition in her eye. “I’m Anthea Cox, and I’m delighted to meet you.”
“It’s me, Anthea. Darcy.” She stared hard into the woman’s eyes, willing her to remember. “Darcy Beckett.”
“Oh, my.” Anthea put a hand to her chest. “Little Darcy—is it really you?”
Darcy felt tears prick her eyes. “Yes. It’s been a long time.”
“It certainly has,” the woman answered, her voice wavering with emotion. “Far too long.” She walked over and reached her hand out to touch Darcy’s cheek. “How lovely you’ve turned out to be. I always knew you would.”
“Th-thanks,” Darcy said awkwardly, giving Anthea a quick embrace. She was keenly aware of Joe, standing nearby, listening.
“How about a nice cup of tea?” Anthea asked. “I remember how you like it, with lots of sugar and cream.”
Her sugar and cream days had been over for a long time, but Darcy saw it was important to Anthea and said, “How kind. I’d love some.” Seeing that Anthea’s hands shook with age, Darcy reached out to help, but the older woman didn’t notice.
“Nothing quite like a nice cuppa to cure what ails you,” Anthea murmured. She’d always said that, but Darcy didn’t believe it anymore.
Darcy watched the thin trickle of tea dance in and around the cup as Anthea poured unsteadily.
“Dear, did you see that Joe is here, too?” Hank Cox asked from across the room.
Anthea Cox looked up. The teapot shifted position but continued to pour, now onto the table, as she said, “Well, Joseph, how nice—”
“Excuse me, Anthea,” Darcy said, reaching for the teapot. The older woman apparently didn’t hear her, because just as Darcy was about to grasp the teapot Anthea shifted both her gaze and the teapot back to Darcy.
“Mr. Beckett would have been so pleased that you’ve come back at last,” she said faintly to Darcy, who was frantically setting empty tea cups under the trickling stream.
Joe walked over and took the pot from Anthea Cox, saying, “I was just telling Darcy myself what a shame it was that she waited so long to come back.”
Darcy looked daggers at him. She wanted to tell him that the responsibility for her absence was not hers alone, but she knew it would sound petty. If he remembered that she’d given him her virginity, it certainly didn’t seem to mean much to him now. “Well, our past doesn’t mean that much to me, either,” she contended, looking down at her shoes. She didn’t realize she’d spoken the words aloud until she looked up.
Three surprised gazes landed on her like bugs.
“What do you mean, dear?” Anthea asked.
A long moment of silence followed.
“I mean,” Darcy stammered, “I mean that the past is the past, and there’s no point in regretting it now.” She leveled her gaze on Joe. “No matter how much I might want to.”
“Quite so,” Anthea agreed. “Quite so.”
There was a strained silence, but before the awkwardness became torturous a man walked into the room wearing a fine gray pinstripe suit and carrying a thin leather briefcase. “I’m sorry I’m late.” He gave a cursory nod to everyone in the room, then settled his gaze on Darcy and Joe. “I’m Edward Connor, Mr. Beckett’s attorney. You must be Ms. Beckett and Mr. Tyler.”
They both nodded.
“Good. Then we’ll sort out the future of the True Love Ranch.”
“The True Love Ranch?” Darcy repeated incredulously. “What’s that?”
“This is that,” Joe answered. “Didn’t you know?”
“The T.L. Ranch...you’re saying that stands for True Love?”
Joe looked at her strangely. “Yeah. You must have known that.”
She shook her head, trying to make sense of the sentimental name her grandfather had given to his home. “I can’t believe it.”
From the top shelf Joe took the baseball that had been signed to her grandfather by Babe Ruth and tossed it in the air. “It’s absolutely true.” He caught the ball.
“Does anyone know where the name came from?”
“Well, yeah. He named it in honor of his wife,” Joe said simply.
“What?”
“Your grandfather. He named it in honor of your grandmother.”
“You must be mistaken.”
Joe shook his head and tossed the ball again. “Nope. He told me so himself. Why the shock? Can’t you believe the old guy loved his wife?”
“Frankly, no.”
“Come on, Darce,” Joe said, using the old nickname he’d given her.
“I never thought he loved anyone.”
Joe’s look hardened. “He loved you, and you know it.”
She gave a wry laugh, ignoring the increasingly impatient lawyer and the increasingly confused Coxes. “That’s why he refused to speak to me when I married a man he didn’t approve of.”
“He was right, wasn’t he?”
“That’s not the point.”
“No,” Joe agreed, apparently no more concerned about the others in the room than Darcy was. “It’s not. He was worried about you. I think it was the only way he could think of to make you reconsider your decision.”
“At some point he must have realized it wasn’t working.”
Joe shrugged. “You Becketts are so inflexible sometimes. He probably didn’t know how to approach you anymore than you knew how to approach him.”
Just then the lawyer cleared his throat. “Excuse me, I just have some papers here for your signatures, and then I think we’ll be ready to go,” he said.