Heartbreaker (2 page)

She had almost forgotten how to laugh except
for the social sounds that passed for laughter but held no humor, or how to
smile except for the false mask of cheerfulness that kept pity away, but in the
darkness and privacy of her bedroom she felt a wry grin curving her mouth. If
she had to depend on Rafferty's goodwill for survival, she might as well go out
to the pasture, dig a hole and pull the dirt in over herself to save him the
time and trouble.

The next morning she loitered around the
house waiting for him to call for as long as she could, but she had chores to
do, and the cattle wouldn't wait. Finally she gave up and trudged out to the
barn, her mind already absorbed with the hundred and one problems the ranch
presented every day. She had several fields of hay that needed to be cut and
baled, but she'd been forced to sell the tractor and hay baler; the only way
she could get the hay cut would be to offer someone part of the hay if they'd
do the cutting and baling for her. She backed the pickup truck into the barn
and climbed into the hayloft, counting the bales she had left. The supply was
dwindling; she'd have to do something soon.

There was no way she could lift the heavy
bales, but she'd developed her own system for handling them. She had parked the
truck just under the door to the hayloft, so all she had to do was push the
bales to the open door and tip them through to land in the truck bed. Pushing the
hay wasn't easy; they were supposed to be hundred-pound bales, which meant that
she outweighed them by maybe seventeen pounds…if she hadn't lost weight,
which she suspected she had, and if the bales weighed only a hundred pounds,
which she suspected they didn't. Their weight varied, but some of them were so
heavy she could barely move them an inch at a time.

She drove the truck across the pasture to
where the cattle grazed; heads lifted, dark brown eyes surveyed the familiar
truck, and the entire herd began ambling toward her. Michelle stopped the truck
and climbed in back. Tossing the bales out was impossible, so she cut the twine
there in the back of the truck and loosened the hay with the pitchfork she had
brought along, then pitched the hay out in big clumps. She got back in the
truck, drove a piece down the pasture, and stopped to repeat the procedure. She
did it until the back of the pickup was empty, and by the time she was finished
her shoulders were aching so badly the muscles felt as if they were on fire. If
the herd hadn't been badly diminished in numbers from what it had been, she
couldn't have handled it. But if the herd were larger, she reminded herself,
she'd be able to afford help. When she remembered the number of people who used
to work on the ranch, the number needed to keep it going properly, a wave of
hopelessness hit her. Logic told her there was no way she could do it all
herself.

But what did logic have to do with cold
reality? She had to do it herself because she had no one else. Sometimes she
thought that was the one thing life seemed determined to teach her: that she
could depend only on herself, that there was no one she could trust, no one she
could rely on, no one strong enough to stand behind her and hold her up when
she needed to rest. There had been times when she'd felt a crushing sense of
loneliness, especially since her father had died, but there was also a certain
perverse comfort in knowing she could rely on no one but herself. She expected
nothing of other people, therefore she wasn't disappointed by any failure on
their part to live up to her expectations. She simply accepted facts as they
were, without any pretty dressing up, did what she had to do, and went on from
there. At least she was free now, and no longer dreaded waking up each day.

She trudged around the ranch doing the
chores, putting her mind in neutral gear and simply letting her body go through
the motions. It was easier that way; she could pay attention to her aches and
bruises when all the chores were finished, but the best way to get them done
was to ignore the protests of her muscles and the nicks and bruises she
acquired. None of her old friends would ever have believed that Michelle Cabot
was capable of turning her dainty hands to rough, physical chores. Sometimes it
amused her to imagine what their reactions would be, another mind game that she
played with herself to pass the time. Michelle Cabot had always been ready for
a party, or shopping, or a trip to
St. Moritz
, or a cruise on someone's yacht. Michelle Cabot had
always been laughing, making wisecracks with the best of them; she'd looked
perfectly
right
with a glass of champagne in her hand and diamonds in
her ears. The ultimate Golden Girl, that was her.

Well, the ultimate Golden Girl had cattle to
feed, hay to cut, fences that needed repair, and that was only the tip of the
iceberg. She needed to dip the cattle, but that was something else she hadn't
figured out how to manage by herself. There was branding, castrating,
breeding… When she allowed herself to think of everything that needed
doing, she was swamped by hopelessness, so she usually didn't dwell on it. She
just took each day as it came, slogging along, doing what she could. It was
survival, and she'd become good at it.

By
ten o'clock
that night, when Rafferty hadn't called, Michelle braced herself and
called him again. Again the housekeeper answered; Michelle stifled a sigh,
wondering if Rafferty ever spent a night at home. "This is Michelle Cabot.
I'd like to speak to Rafferty, please. Is he home?"

"Yes, he's down at the barn. I'll switch
your call to him."

So he had a telephone in the barn. For a
moment she thought enviously of the operation he had as she listened to the
clicks the receiver made in her ear. Thinking about his ranch took her mind off
her suddenly galloping pulse and stifled breathing.

"Rafferty." His deep, impatient
voice barked the word in her ear, and she jumped, her hand tightening on the
receiver as her eyes closed.

"This is Michelle Cabot." She kept
her tone as remote as possible as she identified herself. "I'd like to
talk to,you, if you have the time."

"Right now I'm damned short of time.
I've got a mare in foal, so spit it out and make it fast."

"It'll take more time than that. I'd
like to make an appointment, then. Would it be convenient for me to come over
tomorrow morning?"

He laughed, a short, humorless bark.
"This is a working ranch, sugar, not a social event. I don't have time for
you tomorrow morning. Time's up."

"Then when?"

He muttered an impatient curse. "Look, I
don't have time for you
now
. I'll drop by tomorrow afternoon on my way
to town. About six." He hung up before she could agree or disagree, but as
she hung up, too, she thought ruefully that he was calling the shots, so it
didn't really matter if she liked the time or not. At least she had the
telephone call behind her now, and there were almost twenty hours in which to
brace herself for actually seeing him. She would stop work tomorrow in time to
shower and wash her hair, and she'd do the whole routine with makeup and
perfume, wear her white linen trousers and white silk shirt. Looking at her,
Rafferty would never suspect that she was anything other than what he'd always
thought her to be, pampered and useless.

It was late in the afternoon, the broiling sun
had pushed the temperature to a hundred degrees, and the cattle were skittish.
Rafferty was hot, sweaty, dusty and ill-tempered, and so were his men. They'd
spent too much time chasing after strays instead of getting the branding and
inoculating done, and now the deep, threatening rumble of thunder signaled a
summer thunderstorm. The men speeded up their work, wanting to get finished
before the storm hit.

Dust rose in the air as the anxious bawling
increased in volume and the stench of burning hide intensified. Rafferty worked
with the men, not disdaining any of the dirty jobs. It was
his
ranch,
his life. Ranching was hard, dirty work, but he'd made it profitable when
others had gone under, and he'd done it with his own sweat and steely
determination. His mother had left rather than tolerate the life; of course,
the ranch had been much smaller back then, not like the empire he'd built. His
father, and the ranch, hadn't been able to support her in the style she'd
wanted. Rafferty sometimes got a grim satisfaction from the knowledge that now
his mother regretted having been so hasty to desert her husband and son so long
ago. He didn't hate her; he didn't waste that much effort on her. He just
didn't have much use for her, or for any of the rich, spoiled, bored,
useless
people she considered her friends.

Nev Luther straightened from the last calf,
wiping his sweaty face on his shirt sleeve, then glancing at the sun and the
soaring black cloud bank of the approaching storm. "Well, that's it,"
he grunted. "We'd better get loaded up before that thing hits." Then
he glanced at his boss. "Ain't you supposed to see that Cabot gal
today?"

Nev
had been in the barn with Rafferty when he'd talked
to Michelle, so he'd overheard the conversation. After a quick look at his
watch, Rafferty swore aloud. He'd forgotten about her, and he wasn't grateful
to
Nev
for reminding him. There were few people walking the
earth who irritated him as much as Michelle Cabot.

"Damn it, I guess I'd better go,"
he said reluctantly. He knew what she wanted. It had surprised him that she had
called at all, rather than continuing to ignore the debt. She was probably
going to whine about how little money she had left and tell him that she
couldn't
possibly
scrape up that amount. Just thinking about her made
him want to grab her and shake her, hard. Or better yet, take a belt to her
backside. She was exactly what he disliked most: a spoiled, selfish parasite
who'd never done a day's work in her life. Her father had bankrupted himself
paying for her pleasure jaunts, but Langley Cabot had always been a bit of a
fool where his beloved only child had been concerned. Nothing had been too good
for darling little Michelle, nothing at all.

Too bad that darling Michelle was a spoiled
brat. Damn, she irritated him! She'd irritated him from the first moment he'd
seen her, prissing up to where her father had stood talking to him, with her
haughty nose in the air as if she'd smelled something bad. Well, maybe she had.
Sweat, the product of physical work, was an alien odor to her. She'd looked at
him the way she would have looked at a worm, then dismissed him as unimportant
and turned her back to him while she coaxed and wheedled something out of her
father with that charming Golden Girl act of hers.

"Say, boss, if you don't want to see
that fancy little thing, I'd be happy to fill in for you,"
Nev
offered, grinning.

"It's tempting," Rafferty said
sourly, checking his watch again. He could go home and clean up, but it would
make him late. He wasn't that far from the Cabot ranch now, and he wasn't in
the mood to drive all the way back to his house, shower, and then make the
drive again just so he wouldn't offend her dainty nose. She could put up with
him as he was, dirt, sweat and all; after all, she was the one begging for
favors. The mood he was in, he just might call in that debt, knowing good and
well she couldn't pay it. He wondered with sardonic amusement if she would
offer to pay it in another way. It would serve her right if he played along; it
would make her squirm with distaste to think of letting him have her pampered
body. After all, he was rough and dirty and worked for a living.

As he strode over to his truck and slid his
long length under the steering wheel, he couldn't keep the image from forming
in his mind: the image of Michelle Cabot lying beneath him, her slim body
naked, her pale gold hair spread out over his pillow as he moved in and out of
her. He felt his loins become heavy and full in response to the provocative
image, and he swore under his breath. Damn her, and damn himself. He'd spent
years watching her, brooding, wanting her and at the same time wanting to teach
her in whatever way it took not to be such a spoiled, selfish snob.

Other people hadn't seen her that way; she
could be charming when she chose, and she'd chosen to work that charm on the
local people, maybe just to amuse herself with their gullibility. The ranchers
and farmers in the area were a friendly group, rewarding themselves for their
endless hard work with informal get-togethers, parties and barbecues almost
every weekend, and Michelle had had them all eating out of her hand. They
didn't see the side of her that she'd revealed to him; she was always laughing,
dancing… but never with him. She would dance with every other man there,
but never with him. He'd watched her, all right, and because he was a healthy
male with a healthy libido he hadn't been able to stop himself from responding
physically to her lithe, curved body and sparkling smile, even though it made
him angry that he responded to her in any way. He didn't want to want her, but
just looking at her made him hungry.

Other men had watched her with hungry eyes,
too, including Mike Webster. Rafferty didn't think he'd ever forgive her for
what she'd done to Mike, whose marriage had been shaky even before Michelle had
burst onto the scene with her flirtatious manner and sparkling laughter. Mike
hadn't been any match for her; he'd fallen hard and fast, and the Webster
marriage had splintered beyond repair. Then Michelle had flitted on to fresher
prey, and Mike had been left with nothing but a ruined life. The young rancher
had lost everything he'd worked for, forced to sell his ranch because of the
divorce settlement. He was just one more man Michelle had ruined with her
selfishness, as she'd ruined her father. Even when
Langley
was deep in financial trouble he'd kept providing
money for Michelle's expensive life-style. Her father had been going under, but
she'd still insisted on buying her silks and jewels, and skiing vacations in
St. Moritz
. It would take a rich man to afford Michelle Cabot,
and a strong one.