Where the Heart Leads (15 page)

She gave him a glance that meant she wanted him to make himself scarce. He understood. Astrid knew they hadn't spent the night playing checkers, but Moira didn't want to throw their relationship in her sister's face.

Yeah, he understood, but it rubbed him the wrong way. There was a back-alley implication that left a bad taste in his mouth. Moira was better than that, and he was too.

Moira took the drawstring bag of clothes Astrid had dropped off upstairs and opened it on the unmade bed with Rafe looking on.

Jeans, shirts, a heavy sweater, underwear, tennies, boots, toiletries. Exactly what a girl needed who was spending the weekend with her lover.

She reached for a long-sleeved, blue-checked shirt, then hesitated. “Which should I wear, Rafe? Shorts or jeans?”

He picked up a lacy nightie and ran it through his fingers “This for tonight, darlin', but jeans for now. I thought we'd go down to the barn and I could show you the office suite, and then we could take a ride. I need to check on a couple of things.” He dropped the nightie on top of her pile. “Travis has only been able to work half days, so we're all tryin' to do a little more. Jimbo Crane is actin' foreman, and the other guys are taking on extra hours. I've sorta shut down my day job for the time being.”

He looked out the window as she dressed—as if she had any modesty left after last night.

“Don't get me wrong,” he continued. “I'm not givin' up on architecture. That's the Schuler in me. But the other half of me is McAllister, and I'll live on this land till the day I die.”

She zipped her jeans, buttoned her shirt, tied on one tennis shoe, then rummaged through the clothes pile for the other one.

“I can understand that.”
Ah—there it was, snagged on her red bra.
She shoved her foot in it and tied the lace. “There's a peace out here, like you're making a connection with something beyond yourself.”

“Yep. There's nothing like it.”

He offered her his arm, and they walked downstairs, grabbed hats off the mudroom pegs, and went out the kitchen door across the patio to the tarmac road.

Acorns crunched under their feet as they strolled down the tree-lined lane toward the barn.

Moira breathed deep. It was a beautiful day to be outside. The sun was warm, the sky was blue, and here and there, heaps of small gold leaves dotted the road.

Rafe paused as a deer came up to the barbed-wire fence, leapt over it with the grace of a ballerina, bounded across the road, and leapt into the next pasture, followed by three more deer in an evenly spaced line. At the same time, a tree in front of them let loose its leaves and they floated aimlessly to the ground.

Moira looked up in wonder.

Oh God—the showers of gold, the graceful deer—it was like a Disney movie. She could almost hear the symphony in the background.

“What kind of tree is this?”

Rafe hugged her a little closer. “Cedar elms. They shed their leaves every year about this time.”

As if on signal, two more trees showered their pathway with gold.

Moira caught her breath. “It's beautiful, so beautiful.”

And to think, if Colin hadn't died and left her high and dry, she would never have come to Texas, never have met Rafe, never have walked down this enchanted lane with him.

Suddenly she and Rafe were caught in a shimmer of shining gold.

Moira leaned her head against his shoulder and shut her eyes to absorb the beauty of the moment.

It would be so easy to fall in love with him.

But if she did, she'd have to end their relationship. Rafe was a good man, and she was…not a good woman.

Rafe took a break from accounts for a second to check on Moira.

She was still looking out the window.

He frowned. She'd been quieter this afternoon ever since the cedar elms unloaded on them—almost sad, like she was thinking about something. About last night? Was she comparing him to Colin Sanger?

He glanced at the gold band on his finger. In the three years since Beth's death, he'd never brought a woman home till now. Because of Delilah, of course, and—well—because of Beth.

But somehow, with Moira it seemed right. Like it had been right to take her to the Pumpkin Party. Like it had been right to bring her up to his ranch office.

Both he and Travis had fully equipped offices so they could keep track of sales and communicate with auction houses and livestock businesses all over the nation. The bloodlines of every cow, bull, and calf on the C Bar M were on record, as were all their tax records and contracts, although the older ones were still in the filing cabinets against the wall.

Right now he was checking up on expenditures. The ranch was big enough that it always turned a profit, but the size of it depended on his management.

Moira turned away from the window. “I understand that you own the ranch because you're the oldest son, but what about Travis and Rocky—and Delilah?”

“Travis will always get a percentage of the profits—less, if he isn't acting as foreman. As a Colby, Rocky will too. Delilah will get her percentage when she comes of age because she's a blood McAllister, but she won't inherit. Travis is my heir, and unless I have a son, the third person in line is my father's younger brother.”

“That's complicated.” Moira paused for a second, then came out with it. “Is there any way the Colbys can get a foothold on the ranch again?”

“Why are you asking?”

“It seems old-fashioned that the female line can't inherit.”

Rafe shrugged. “In this case it doesn't matter. The Colbys own so little of the ranch that the only way they could get any control would be through marriage—and I'm not plannin' on proposing to Rocky anytime soon.” He closed down his computer. “Tell you what. How about we go downstairs and I'll show you how to make Star so happy that she'll gurgle at you.”

Moira watched as Rafe saddled the horses. Step-by-step, she realized, he was introducing her to his world. He'd already shown her the business office and coached her on brushing down Star, and now he was teaching how to saddle Star. Not that she'd be hefting a forty-pound saddle like Rocky did. That woman must be built of muscles.

After making sure her stirrups were okay, Rafe swung onto Sarge's back.

“I want to see what's happenin' in the three-eighteen,” he said as they started down the tarmac. “It's at the end of the road.”

She tilted her hat against the sun. “What's the three-eighteen?”

“We call our pastures by their acreage. Easier to keep track of them.”

“So, referring to the three-eighteen would mean you have three hundred eighteen acres in that particular pasture?”

“You got it. We lease some of neighbors' land too, the Johanssons', the Bartons', the Rodriguezes'. It takes a lot of grass to feed the number of cows we run, especially in this part of the country.”

They rode in silence for a while. It was an easy silence, Moira realized. Rafe was a comfortable person to be with.

At the end of the road, he opened the gate for her to ride through.

She looked around the pasture as he got back in the saddle again. He was right—the land was rough. The grass was sparse, the prickly pears were plentiful, and gnarly oaks grew in clumps, forming dense overhead canopies. To complete the scene, the other side of the river was bordered by jagged, sinister-looking cliffs.

She shivered. The place had a bad feel to it, and they were all alone.

Not quite alone. A white horse was galloping toward them at breakneck speed.

Rafe stood up in his saddle. “Damnit! I've told Rocky not to run Bella like that!”

Moira felt an urge to hide her face as Rocky approached. Now Rocky would know she'd spent the night.

But what was there for her to do—pull the saddle blanket over her head? And it wasn't as if the channels of communication in Bosque Bend hadn't already spread the word far and wide that Moira Farrar had gone home with Rafe McAllister last night.

So what? She was an adult—a
consenting
adult—and she could sleep with King Kong if she had the hankering to. Still, it bothered her that people would be talking about her, maybe even speculating on exactly what sexcapades had gone on in Rafe's bedroom—thank God that no one would know about the stairs.

The situation had been different with her and Colin. They'd been married. People expected them to have sex. But her relationship with Rafe was an affair—by definition, a temporary, shallow physical relationship that wouldn't last.

And for his sake, she wouldn't let it become anything more than that.

Rocky slowed Bella down to a trot as she drew nearer, then turned Bella to ride next to Rafe. Star nickered a greeting to her stablemate as Rocky gave Rafe the news.

“There's a dead calf under the live oaks up there, Rafe. Pretty well eaten up—looks like the panther got to him. I've called Travis to bring a truck in and pick up what's left.”

Rafe looked over at Moira, sleeping by his side. He must have exhausted her. God, he'd been on her night and day. Like they were honeymooners.

Crossing his arms behind his head, he lay back. For once, he hadn't dozed off afterward. Maybe it was that the house was too warm right now—he'd turned the thermostat up this morning when it was cooler, and the heat had risen into the second floor while they'd been out on the range. Or maybe it was that he had a lot to think about.

He liked Moira in his bed. He liked her in his house. He liked riding around the ranch with her. But Delilah had to come first, which meant there was no way Moira could move in with him. He'd have to get her back to the Lynnwood house tomorrow afternoon, before his mother dropped Delilah off.

They'd have lunch at Six-Shooter on Monday, of course, and he'd see her at rehearsal. After that, there would be the long wait till Friday, when Mom claimed her grandmotherly rights again.

Friday.
It seemed a long time off. He studied her as she slept, his eyes tracing the lines of her brow, her closed eyes, her cheek and jaw. Then, careful not to wake her, he slid out of bed, pulled on his jeans, zipped them without buttoning them, and walked into his office to get a sketch pad.

Moira snuffled in her sleep, then blinked. It was dark outside—how long had she slept? And where was Rafe?

She cleared her eyes and looked around the room and saw him sitting in a bedroom chair with a drawing tablet propped up on his knee and a pencil in his hand.

She shivered and pulled the covers up around her. The room was cold and she was totally naked—again. “What are you doing?”

He closed the tablet. “Drawin' you. I'll bring it over so you can see.”

She watched him approach. His shoulders were broad, his hips were narrow, the muscles on his arms and chest were well-defined without looking bulky.

No doubt about it—Rafe was a hunk.

He sat down beside her and opened the tablet. It was a portrait, a three-quarters close-up of her face with her head resting against the pillow. The sketch was almost poetic in its simplicity, a study in a minimalism that expresses everything.

Was this what she looked like to Rafe—a woman with soft, almost smiling lips and feathered eyelashes? A woman happy with herself and her lover?

“I love the way you've drawn me. You made me look like someone I've always wished I could be.”

Rafe laid the tablet down on the bed, then looked at her, his face more serious than she had ever seen it before.

“You are that woman, Moira. That's how I see you, and art sees true.”

T
hey slept late Sunday, and after breakfast, Rafe took her out with him again. The day was cold and the wind was blowing from the north, so he bundled her up in her UCLA sweatshirt, his bomber jacket, and an extra scarf before they went out. Maybe he should have gone alone, but she was leaving today, and he wanted to keep her with him as long as he could.

They rode back to the three-eighteen again.

“The panther's probably got a den in the cliffs,” he said, as he moved into the lead. “If I can spot it, Travis and I might be able to smoke it out next week when he's feeling better.”

He looked back and watched as Moira guided Star around a nasty stand of prickly pear.

She had a good seat on her and was handling the reins like she'd been doing it all her life. He could shape her up into a neat little horsewoman in no time. But would she want to come out to the ranch on a regular basis? Could she deal with being isolated with him every weekend? And then there was his cooking, which even his mother had told him wasn't fit for a dog.

He pulled back on his reins, laid them on Sarge's neck, and looked out over the rock-strewn pasture. “You should see this place in springtime. It's covered with bluebonnets.”

Moira rode up beside him. “Bluebonnets?”

“The state flower of Texas. They grow wild. Not that easy to propagate, but Beth got them to grow in those big pots around the front door in the spring. She had borders of flowers around the walk every season of the year—salvia and pansies mostly. She'd put Delilah on a blanket on the grass and explain what she was doin'—waterin' the plants, loosenin' the soil around them, then singin' to them so they would grow.”

“Donna Sue told me she had a beautiful voice.”

Rafe squinted his eyes and looked at the cliffs. “Beth qualified for the Metropolitan Opera tryouts, but decided not to follow up—said she didn't want to spend her life in a practice room.”

Moira nodded. “I can understand that. It's the same thing with an actor. There's no way to lead a normal life. Does her family still live in Bosque Bend?”

“Her parents died in a car accident the year after Beth died. Her brother is the only one left.”

“Chub?”

Rafe jerked his head in surprise. “You've met him?”

“Delilah recited a list of her aunts and uncles when I was guarding her from elephants in the restroom. She said Aunt Alice and Uncle Chub were mad at you.”

“Chub was always a little squirrely, and after Beth died, he started tellin' people I was the one responsible for…what happened to her, that I'd set it up somehow. God only knows where he came up with that, but Chub also thinks the moon landing was staged in an Arizona desert. Anyway, Bertie Fuller, your neighbor, bought into it.”

He moved Sarge down toward the river and looked at the cliffs again.

His voice came out soft and slow. “I would have given my life to save Beth. I'd gone to the barn, checkin' on a sick horse, and when I got back, she was lyin' on the ground in front of the house. It was New Year's Eve and there'd been a lot of gunfire all day so the coroner said it was celebratory gunfire—you know, aerial firing, when vaqueros shoot into the air to celebrate a holiday. Sometimes a bullet arcs and comes down on top of someone.”

Moira nodded. It happened every now and then in California too. But to have it happen to a woman who'd gone out to tend her flowers in her very own yard—that was cruel. Beth should be the one out riding with Rafe today, not her. Rafe didn't deserve to lose his wife, and Delilah didn't deserve to lose her mother.

He looked over at her.

“It must have been hard for you when Colin died. Y'all had only been married—what—two years?”

Her voice went flat. “Two years, one month, and one day.”

He frowned. Had he heard her right? Where had the grieving widow gone, the bowed head, the fluttering hands, and the whispery voice? What was going on? Was she angry at Colin because he'd died on her? Because he hadn't checked the water level before diving into the pool for that nighttime swim?

He tried again. “What did you do after you were married? TV? The stage? That Johnny Blue sci-fi thing was the last one I remember you on.”

“I stayed home. I don't want to talk about it.”

C'mon!
He'd spilled his guts to her—it had wrenched his soul to tell Moira about Beth, but he'd wanted her to know what happened because he wanted her to know about
him
. Well, also because he wanted to start the ball rolling so she'd tell him more about herself.

It was like every damn time he thought they had some real communication going, she backed out on him. Sure, the sex was hot, but he wanted more than sex. He wanted to get to know her, for her to tell him things about herself, like why that damn scar was so important to her.

She didn't need to tell him about her love life with Colin. In fact, he'd prefer the King of Hollywood be left out of it. But she could at least tell him about her family and how she grew up. He didn't even know what her favorite color was.

He clucked at Sarge to get him moving a little faster. Was he just another stud to her? Was that the Hollywood way of life—any bed in a storm, wham-bam-thank-you-sir?

He looked over at her. Moira, her jaw set, was sitting up in the saddle like she had a board down her back and staring straight ahead.

No. There was something else going on. And it was tearing her to pieces.

Moira looked at Rafe across the kitchen table.

Her wonderful weekend was almost over. And it was ending on a sour note. Why did he want to know about her marriage? Had he heard something?

She took a bite of one of the less charred slices of pizza he'd burned in the microwave and washed it down with water.

“It's time for me to pack up so you can take me home. Didn't you say your mother will be bringing Delilah back about two o'clock?”

He gave her his usual easy smile. “Usually. Sometimes she's late, like when you and Astrid—” He fished his cell phone out of his pocket.

“Travis! What's up?…What?…Damn that horse! I'll be right there.”

He grabbed his jacket. “I need to get down to the barn
muy pronto
to help Travis control Bella. She's thrown a shoe and won't let the blacksmith fix her up.”

Moira pushed back her chair. “I'll go pack.”

Climbing the stairs was like rereading an erotic novel. Had she really been so hot that she'd torn Rafe's pirate shirt off him? That she'd screamed “Now, now, now!” at the top of her lungs?

She ran her hand along the antique crazy quilt, which was back in place after Rafe had pulled it off the railing to cover them as they drowsed on the landing Friday night. Rafe may not be much of a cook, but he did keep a neat house. He'd even given her space in his closet for her clothes.

But she was clearing it out now and throwing everything pell-mell into the laundry bag Astrid had used for the delivery—probably because a suitcase would have set off Mrs. Fuller's radar. One last look around and she was ready to go.

Her eyes fell on Rafe's art tablet, and she picked it up to take one more look at the sketch he had made of her. His portrait of the herself of her dreams.

She stared at the page to commit it to memory before replacing the tablet on Rafe's bed stand.

Time to go. Hefting the laundry bag, she headed down the stairs to the foyer. Rafe wasn't back yet so she stepped up to the family room to look at the photos of him on his mother's collage.

She couldn't tell which baby he was because all of them were bald, but his red hair stood out in older pictures of him. One picture showed him and Travis performing in what looked like a country fair. Another was of him, his brother, and sister all dressed up for Christmas. And then there was the wedding picture, which she hadn't singled out before. Beth was radiant with happiness, and Rafe looked like he'd just won the lottery.

Moira studied the photo. Beth was tall and had light hair, just as she'd imagined, but surprisingly, her build was lanky rather than voluptuous, and although she had a wonderful smile, she wasn't Hollywood beautiful. In fact, her nose was long and, technically speaking, her jaw was a little wide. But her face glowed with happiness.

Moira whipped around to face the window.
Was that a car stopping out front?

A maroon Mercedes was parked at the curb, and Enid McAllister was walking up the sidewalk with Delilah skipping beside her.

Enid had brought Delilah home early.

And now she was working the front door.

Moira went cold. There wasn't time for her to scoot herself upstairs and lock herself in a bathroom, and hiding wasn't in her nature anyway. She'd have to brazen it out. Delilah wouldn't question her presence, but Enid would know damn well why she was standing there with a laundry bag at her feet and no car at the curb. Not that she would say anything with her granddaughter on the scene.

The door swung open, and Moira put a welcoming smile on her face and stepped down into the foyer.

Enid froze on the threshold, but Delilah shrieked with joy and rushed inside. “Pretty lady!”

Moira opened her arms and braced herself for the usual assault. Over Delilah's head, she could see a warm smile spreading across Rafe's mother's face.

A warm smile?
What was going on? In the hospital, Enid had obviously preferred Travis's girlfriend to his wife, and now she was smiling at the woman who had spent the weekend in her older son's bed, as if welcoming her to the family.

Rafe could hear Bella's stomping and crashing from halfway down the path.

What had set her off this time? That is, besides the blacksmith being impertinent enough to lift her queenship's foot. Bella let out a bloodcurdling scream, and Rafe started running. That horse had been born mean.

The blue heeler in the blacksmith's pickup started barking as he approached, and Bella went off into another fit of whinnies. She did not like dogs. In fact, she'd trampled the bejeezus out of the last one they'd had on the place.

Rafe walked into the barn and took stock of the situation. Bella had worked herself into a lather, her eyes were rolling, and she was snorting—if she were a dragon, the barn would be in flames.

Travis had managed to get a rope around her neck and secure it to the posts on either side of the stall so Bella couldn't rear up and scream anymore, but she was still taking angry bites at the air.

“She won't let the blacksmith get to her,” Travis said. “Nothing to do but sedate her.”

Rafe nodded and headed for the tack room refrigerator. “I'll take care of that.”

He filled a syringe with the sedative, squeezed a drop out of the tip, then walked toward Bella's stall with the needle behind his leg. Bella might be mean, but she wasn't dumb. She knew what the syringe meant, and she didn't like it.

She eyed him suspiciously as he entered the stall. Travis started a meaningless conversation with the blacksmith to divert her attention while Rafe leaned casually against the wall on the other side of her. Without looking at Bella, Travis moved half a step closer to her, a challenge she couldn't refuse.

She lifted her head, narrowed her eyes, and bared her teeth.

That was his opening. Rafe went in for a quick shot, then backed away as she screamed her outrage and flailed at the rope.

She began to wilt. Her eyes glazed over and she wobbled on her feet.

The blacksmith took it from there.

Rafe ran his hand around the cold steering wheel as he drove Moira back to the Lynnwood house. The afternoon sky had covered itself with low-hanging clouds, and a freeze was being predicted for tomorrow. That was Texas weather for you—seventy degrees one day, freezing the next.

He looked over at her. Her head was slumped on her shoulder and her eyes were closed. He smiled and his loins stirred with memory. She hadn't gotten that much sleep at the ranch, and he hadn't either.

That had been an interesting scene he'd walked in on when he returned to the house—Moira, holding Delilah on her hip, was standing in front of the collage of him and his siblings while his mother was pointing out his baby picture to her. He had to hand it to both of them—they were acting like it was the most natural thing in the world, but just to be on the safe side, he'd asked his mother to stay with Delilah, then hustled Moira into the truck to take her back to the Lynnwood house.

Damn, he wished she could stay another night—or two—or a couple of months. Lunches and rehearsals on Monday, then Friday nights and Saturday nights at the ranch were not enough. Friday night through Sunday morning—it was the same calendar he'd set his other girlfriends—but sex on schedule wasn't what he wanted from Moira.

What
did
he want from her? Why
had
he brought her out to the house instead of taking her to a ritzy hotel in Waco? Maybe because Moira was different from the casual girls he'd hung out with.

She was different from Beth too.

Both of them were beautiful, he thought, but Beth was light itself, totally transparent, a butterfly, while Moira was an old soul, opaque with mystery and passion.

He turned the corner into Lynnwood, and Moira began to stir. She was fully awake and gathering together her things by the time he parked in the driveway.

He helped her down to the ground, then kissed her in front of God, man, and Bertie Fuller, who was unearthing the last of her Halloween tombstones, before he walked her up the sidewalk.

He could feel Bertie's eyes drilling a hole through him all the way back to the dually. Whatever someone had said that had turned that woman against him, it had worked. He wouldn't be surprised if flying monkeys followed him all the way home.