Duncan's Bride Page 13

  “Does it stay below freezing for six months?” she asked, and he laughed.

  “No. We’ll have cold spells and warm spells. It may be sixty degrees or higher in January, but if we get blizzard conditions or a deep freeze the temperatures can go way below zero. We prepare for a blizzard and hope for the sixty degrees.”

  As if to bear him out, the weather then showed a warming trend and inched the temperatures upward into the fifties during the day. Madelyn felt more confident, because he’d been making preparations as if they were going into six months of darkness. That was how he’d made it by himself for seven years, by being cautious and prepared for anything. Still, by his own admission the winters could be hell. She would just have to make certain he didn’t take any chances with his own safety.

  Robert flew in the day before Christmas and spent three days with them. When he first saw Madelyn he gave her a hard, searching look, but whatever he saw must have reassured him, because he relaxed then and was an affable guest. She was amused at the way Reese and Robert related to each other, since they were so much alike, both very private and strong men. Their conversation consisted of sentence fragments, as if they were just throwing out random comments, but they both seemed comfortable with it. She was amazed at how much alike they were in manner, too. Robert was smoothly cosmopolitan, yet Reese’s mannerisms were much like his, illustrating how prosperous the ranch had been before the divorce. They differed only in that she had never seen Robert lose his temper, while Reese’s temper was like a volcano.

  Robert was surprisingly interested in the working of the ranch and rode out with Reese every day he was there. They spent a lot of time talking about futures and stock options, the ratio of feed to pound of beef, interest rates, inflation and government subsidies. Robert looked thoughtful a lot, as if he were weighing everything Reese said.

  The day before he left, Robert approached Madelyn. She was sprawled bonelessly across a big armchair, listening to the stereo with her eyes closed and one foot keeping time to the music. He said in amusement, “Never run if you can walk, never walk if you can stand, never stand if you can sit, and never sit if you can lie.”

  “Never talk if you can listen,” Madelyn added without opening her eyes.

  “Then you listen, and I’ll talk.”

  “This sounds serious. Are you going to tell me you’re in love with someone and are thinking of marriage?”

  “Good God, no,” he said, his amusement deepening.

  “Is there a new woman on the horizon?”

  “A bit closer than that.”

  “Why didn’t you bring her? Is it anyone I know?”

  “This is a family Christmas,” he replied, telling her with that one short sentence that his new lover hadn’t touched him any deeper than any of the others. “Her name is Natalie VanWein.”

  “Nope. I don’t know her.”

  “You’re supposed to listen while I talk, not ask questions about my love life.” He drew up a hassock and sat down on it, smiling a little as he noticed that she hadn’t even opened her eyes during their conversation.

  “So talk.”

  “I’ve never met anyone with a clearer head for business than Reese—excepting myself, of course,” he said mockingly.

  “Oh, of course.”

  “Listen, don’t talk. He sees what has to be done and he does it, without regard to obstacles. He has the kind of determination that won’t give up, no matter what the odds. He’ll make a go of this ranch. He’ll fight like hell until he has it the way it used to be.”

  Madelyn opened one eye. “And the point of this is?”

  “I’m a businessman. He strikes me as a better risk than a lot of ventures I’ve bet on. He doesn’t have to wait to build this place up. He could accept an investor and start right now.”

  “The investor, of course, being yurself.”

  He nodded. “I look for a profit. He’d make one. I want to invest in it personally, without involving Cannon Companies.”

  “Have you already talked to him about it?”

  “I wanted to talk to you first. You’re his wife, you know him better than I do. Would he go for it, or would I be wasting my time?”

  “Well, I won’t give you an opinion either way. You’re on your own. Like you said, he knows the business, so let him make up his own mind without having to consider anything I might have said either pro or con.”

  “It’s your home, too.”

  “I’m still learning to help, but I don’t know enough about the business of ranching to even begin to make an educated decision. And when it comes down to it, my home is based on my marriage, not where we live. We could live anywhere and I’d be content.”

  He looked down at her, and a strangely tender look entered his pale eyes. “You’re really in love with him, aren’t you?”

  “I have been from the beginning. I never would have married him otherwise.”

  He examined her face closely, in much the same way he’d looked at her when he had first arrived, as if satisfying himself of the truth of her answer. Then he gave a brusque nod and got to his feet. “Then I’ll put the proposition to Reese and see what he thinks.”

  Reese turned it down, as Madelyn had expected he would. The ranch was his; it might take longer and be a harder fight to do it on his own, but every tree and every speck of dirt on the ranch belonged to him, and he refused to risk even one square inch of it with an outside investor. Robert took the refusal in good humor, because business was business, and his emotions were never involved any more than they were with women.

  Reese talked to her about it that night, lying in the darkness with her head pillowed on his shoulder. “Robert made me an offer today. If I took him as an investor, I could double the ranch’s operation, hire enough hands to work it and probably get back most of the former acreage within five years.”

  “I know. He talked to me about it, too.”

  He stiffened. “What did you tell him?”

  “To talk to you. It’s your ranch, and you know more about running it than anyone else.”

  “Would you rather I took his offer?”

  “Why should I care?”

  “Money,” he said succinctly.

  “I’m not doing without anything.” Her voice had a warm, amused tone to it.

  “You could have a lot more.”

  “I could have a lot less, too. I’m happy, Reese. If you took the offer I’d still be happy, and I’ll still be happy if you don’t take it.”

  “He said you wouldn’t take sides.”

  “That’s right, I won’t. It would be a no-win situation for me, and I don’t waste my energy.”

  He lay awake long after she was sleeping quietly in his arms. It was a way to instant financial security, but it would require that he do something he’d sworn never to do: risk ownership of the ranch. He already had a mortgage, but he was managing to make the payments. If he took an investor he would be paying off the bank but taking on another debtor, at a price he might not be able to meet. The big lure of it was that, perversely, he wanted to give Madelyn all the luxuries he would have been able to provide before.

  To take care of his wife as he wanted, he’d have to risk his ranch. He didn’t miss the irony of it.

  THE DAY AFTER Robert left, a big weather system swept in from Canada and it began snowing. At first it was just snow, but it didn’t stop. The temperature began dropping like a rock, and the wind picked up. Reese watched the weather build into something nasty, and the weather reports said it would get worse. While he still could, he herded the cattle into the most sheltered area and put out as much hay as possible, but he wasn’t certain he’d had enough time to get out as much as would be needed.

  On the way back to the barn it started snowing so heavily that visibility dropped to about ten feet, and the wind began piling up drifts that masked the shape of the land. His own ranch became an alien landscape to him, without any familiar landmarks to guide him. All he could go on was his own sen
se of direction, and he had to fight to ignore the disorienting swirl of snow. His horse picked its way carefully, trying to avoid the snow-covered holes and indentations that could easily cause it to fall and perhaps break a leg. Icicles began to form on the horse’s nose as the warm vapor of its breath froze. Reese put a gloved hand to his own face and found it coated with ice crystals.

  A ride that normally took twenty minutes stretched into an hour. He began to wonder if he had missed the barn entirely when it materialized out of the blowing snow, and even then he would have missed it if the door hadn’t been open revealing the gleam of yellow light. A brief frown creased his face; he knew he’d closed the door, and he certainly hadn’t left a light on. But it had been too close a call for him to be anything but grateful; another half hour and he wouldn’t have made it.

  He ducked his head and rode straight into the barn. It wasn’t until he caught movement out of the corner of his eye that he realized Madelyn had come out to the barn and was waiting for him, literally with a light in the window. She struggled against the wind to close the big doors, her slender body leaning into the teeth of the gale. The cow bawled restlessly, and the cats leaped for the loft. Reese slid out of the saddle and added his weight to Madelyn’s, closing the doors and dropping the big two-by-eight bar into the brackets.

  “What the hell are you doing out here?” he asked in a raspy voice as he grabbed her to him. “Damn it, Maddie, you can get lost going from the house to the barn in a blow like this!”

  “I hooked up to the tension line,” she said, clinging to him. Her voice was thin. “How did you get back? You can’t see out there.”

  He felt the panic in her, because he’d begun feeling some of it himself. If he’d been five feet farther away, he wouldn’t have seen the light. “Sheer blind luck,” he said grimly.

  She looked up at his ice-crusted face. “You have to get warm before frostbite starts.”

  “The horse first.”

  “I’ll do it.” She pointed toward the tack room, where he kept a small space heater. “I turned on the heater so it would be warm in there. Now, go on.”

  Actually, the barn felt warm to him after being outside; the animals gave off enough heat that the temperature inside the barn was above freezing, which was all that he required right now. Still, he went into the tack room and felt the heat envelop him almost unbearably. He didn’t try to brush the ice from his face; he let it melt, so it wouldn’t damage his skin. It had actually insulated his face from the wind, but too much longer would have resulted in frostbite. He’d had mild cases before, and it was painful enough that he’d rather not go through it again.

  Madelyn unsaddled the horse and rubbed it down. The big animal sighed with pleasure in a way that was almost human. Then she threw a warm blanket over it and gave it feed and water, patting the muscled neck in appreciation. The animal had earned it.

  She hurried to Reese and found him knocking chunks of snow off his heavy shearling coat. That shocking white layer of ice and snow was gone from his face; what was almost as shocking was that he already seemed to have recovered his strength, as if the ordeal had been nothing out of the ordinary. She had been in torment since the howling wind had started, pacing the house and trying not to weep uncontrollably, and finally fighting her way out to the barn so she would be there to help him if—no, when—he made it back. Her heart was still pounding. She didn’t have to be told how easily he might not have made it back, even though she couldn’t bear to let the thought form.

  “It won’t be easy getting back to the house,” he said grimly. “The wind is probably gusting up to sixty miles an hour. We’ll both hook on to the line, but I’m going to tie you to me as a safeguard.”

  He knotted a rope around his waist, then looped and knotted it around her, with no more than four feet of slack between them. “I want you within reach. I’m going to try to hold on to you, but I damn sure don’t want you getting any farther away from me than this.”

  He put his coat back on and settled his hat firmly on his head. He eyed Madelyn sternly. “Don’t you have a hat?”

  She produced a thick woolen scarf from her pocket and draped it over her head, then wound the ends around her neck. They each got a length of nylon cord with heavy metal clips on each end and attached one end to their belts, leaving the other end free to clip to the line. They left the barn by the small side door; though the line was anchored right beside it, Reese had to grab Madelyn by the waist to keep the wind from tumbling her head over heels. Still holding her, he grabbed her line and hooked it overhead, then secured his own.

  It was almost impossible to make headway. For every yard they progressed, stumbling and fighting, the wind would knock them back two feet. It tore her out of his grasp and knocked her feet out from under her, hanging her in the air from the line at her waist. Reese lunged for her, yelling something that she couldn’t understand, and hauled her against him. It was obvious she wasn’t going to be able to stay on her feet. He locked her against his side with a grip that compressed her ribs, almost shutting off her breath. She gasped for air, but couldn’t manage more than a painful wheeze. She couldn’t have yelled to make him understand, even if she’d had the breath, because the howling wind drowned out everything else. She dangled in his grip like a rag doll, her sight fading and her struggles becoming weaker.

  Reese stumbled against the back steps, then up onto the porch. The house blocked some of the wind, and he managed to open the back door, then reach up and unhook both their lines. He staggered into the house and fell to the floor of the utility room with Madelyn still in his arms, but managed to turn so that he took most of the shock. “Are you all right?” He gasped the question, breathing hard from exertion. The wind had gotten worse just since he’d made it back to the barn.

  She didn’t answer, and sudden fear brought him up on his knees beside her. Her eyes were closed, her lips blue. He grabbed her shoulder, shouting at her. “Maddie! Madelyn, damn it, what’s wrong? Are you hurt—wake up and answer me!”

  She coughed, then moaned a little and tried to curl on her side, her arms coming up to hug herself. She coughed again, then went into a paroxysm of convulsive coughing and gagging, writhing from the force of it. Reese pulled her up into his arms and held her, his face white.

  Finally she managed to wheeze, “Shut the door,” and he lashed out with his boot, kicking the door shut with a force that rattled it on its frame.

  He unwound the scarf from her head and began opening her coat. The rope around their waists still tied them together and he hastily pulled the knots out. “Are you hurt?” he asked again, his face a grim mask.

  Coughing had brought color to her face, but it was quickly fading, leaving her deathly pale. “I’m all right,” she said, her voice so hoarse she could barely make a sound. “I just couldn’t breathe.”

  Realization hit him like a kick by a mule. He’d almost smothered her with the force of his grip. His face grim, vicious curses coming from between his tightly clenched teeth, he laid her back on the floor as gently as possible and stretched out his leg so he could get his knife out of his pocket. Her eyes widened as he snapped the blade open and began slicing through the pullover sweater she wore under the coat. Beneath the sweater was a shirt, but it buttoned down the front and therefore escaped being cut off. When her torso was bare he bagan carefully feeling her ribs, his face intent as he searched for any sign of give, his eyes locked on her face to see the least hint of discomfort. She flinched several times, but the ribs felt all right. Her pale skin was already becoming discolored with bruises.

  “I almost killed you,” he said harshly as he lifted her in his arms and got to his feet.

  “It wasn’t that bad,” she managed to say.

  He gave her a violent look. “You were unconscious.” He carried her up the stairs and to their bedroom, where he laid her on the bed. He shrugged out of his own coat and let it fall to the floor; then he very gently but implacably stripped her of every stitch and exa
mined her from head to toe. Except for the bruising across her ribs, she was fine. He bent his head and brushed his lips across the dark band as if he would absorb the pain.

  Madelyn put her hand on his hair, threading her fingers through the dark strands. “Reese, I’m okay, I promise.”

  He got to his feet. “I’ll put a cold compress on it to stop the bruising from getting any worse.”

  She made a disbelieving sound. “Trust me, I can’t just lie here and let you put an ice bag on my side! You know how ice down your shirt feels, and besides, I’m cold. I’d rather have a cup of hot chocolate, or coffee.”

  The strength of her tone reassured him, and another critical look told him that the color was coming back into her face. She sat up, rather gingerly holding her side but without any real pain, and gave him a wifely survey. “You’re soaking wet from riding in that blizzard. You need to get out of those clothes, and then we’ll both have something hot to drink.”

  She got dry clothes out for both Reese and herself and began dressing while he stripped and toweled off. She looked at her ruined sweater with disbelief, then tossed it into the trash. Reese saw her expression and smiled faintly. “I didn’t want to move you any more than I had to until I knew what was wrong,” he explained, rubbing a towel over his shoulders.

  “Actually, I was a little relieved when the sweater was all you cut. For a split second I was afraid you were going to do a tracheotomy.”

  “You were talking and breathing, so I ruled that out. I’ve done one before, though.”

  “You’ve actually taken your pocketknife and cut someone’s throat open?” she demanded incredulously, her voice rising.

  “I had to. One of the hands got kicked in the throat, and he was choking to death. I slit his trachea and held it open with my finger until someone brought a drinking straw to insert for him to breathe through. We got him to a hospital, they put in a regular trach tube until the swelling went down enough for him to breathe again, and he did just fine.”

  “How did you know what to do?”