CHAPTER ONE
IT WAS THE holiday season in Jacobsville, Texas. Gaily colored strands of lights crisscrossed the main street, and green garlands and wreaths graced each telephone pole along the way. In the center of town, all the small maple trees that grew out of square beds at intervals along the sidewalk were decorated with lights, as well.
People were bundled in coats, because even in South Texas it was cold in late November. They rushed along with shopping bags full of festively wrapped presents to go under the tree. And over on East Main Street, the Optimist Club had its yearly Christmas tree lot open already. A family of four was browsing its sawdust-covered grounds, early enough to have the pick of the beautifully shaped fir trees, just after Thanksgiving.
Dorie Wayne gazed at her surroundings the way a child would look through a store window at toys she couldn’t afford. Her hand went to the thin scar down an otherwise perfect cheek and she shivered. How long ago it seemed that she stood right here on this street corner in front of the Jacobsville Drugstore, and backed away from Corrigan Hart. It had been an instinctive move; at eighteen, he’d frightened her. He was so very masculine, a mature man with a cold temper and an iron will. He’d set his sights on Dorie, who found him fearful instead of attractive, despite the fact that any single woman hereabouts would have gone to him on her knees.
She recalled his jet-black hair and pale, metallic eyes. She’d wondered at first if it wasn’t her fairness that attracted him, because he was so dark. Dorie had hair so blond it was almost platinum, and it was cut short, falling into natural thick waves. Her complexion was delicate and fair, and she had big gray eyes, just a shade darker than Corrigan’s. He was very handsome—unlike his brothers. At least, that was what people said. Dorie hadn’t gotten to meet the others when she left Jacobsville. And only Corrigan and three of his brothers lived in Jacobsville. The fifth Hart male wasn’t talked about, ever. His name wasn’t even known locally.
Corrigan and three of his four brothers had come down to Jacobsville from San Antonio eight years ago to take over the rich cattle operation their grandfather had left to them in his will.
It had been something of a local joke that the Harts had no hearts, because they seemed immune to women. They kept to themselves and there was no gossip about them with women. But that changed when Dorie attended a local square dance and found herself whirling around the floor in Corrigan Hart’s arms.
Never one to pull his punches, he made his intentions obvious right at the start. He found her attractive. He was drawn to her. He wanted her. Just like that.
There was never any mention of marriage, engagement or even some furtive live-in arrangement. Corrigan said often that he wasn’t the marrying kind. He didn’t want ties. He made that very clear, because there was never any discussions of taking her to meet his brothers. He kept her away from their ranch.
But despite his aversion to relationships, he couldn’t seem to see enough of Dorie. He wanted her and with every new kiss Dorie grew weaker and hungrier for him.
Then one spring day, he kissed her into oblivion, picked her up in his arms and carried her right into her own bedroom the minute her father left for his weekly poker game.
Despite the drugging effect of masterful kisses and the poignant trembling his expert hands aroused, Dorie had come to her senses just barely in time and pushed him away. Dazed, he’d looked down at her with stunned, puzzled eyes, only belatedly realizing that she was trying to get away, not closer.
She remembered, red-faced even now, how he’d pulled away and stood up, breathing raggedly, eyes blazing with frustrated desire. He’d treated her to a scalding lecture about girls who teased. She’d treated him to one about confirmed bachelors who wouldn’t take no for an answer, especially since she’d told him she wasn’t the sleep-around sort.
He didn’t buy that, he’d told her coldly. She was just holding out for marriage, and there was no hope in that direction. He wanted to sleep with her, and she sure seemed to want him, too. But he didn’t want her for keeps.
Dorie had been in love with him, and his emotional rejection had broken something fragile inside her. But she hadn’t been about to let him see her pain.
He’d gone on, in the same vein. One insult had led to another, and once he’d gotten really worked up, he’d stormed out the door. His parting shot had been that she must be nuts if she thought he was going to buy her being a virgin. There was no such thing anymore, even at the young age of eighteen.
His rejection had closed doors between them. Dorie couldn’t bear the thought of staying in Jacobsville and having everybody know that Corrigan Hart had thrown her aside because she wouldn’t sleep with him. And everybody would know, somehow. They always knew the secret things in small towns.
That very night Dorie had made up her mind to take up her cousin Belinda’s offer to come to New York and get into modeling. Certainly Dorie had the looks and figure for it. She might be young, but she had poise and grace and an exquisite face framed by short, wavy blond hair. Out of that face, huge gray eyes shone like beacons, mirroring happiness or sorrow.
After that sordid evening, Dorie cut her losses and bought a bus ticket.
She’d been standing right here, on this very corner, waiting for the bus to pick her up in front of this drugstore, when Corrigan had found her.
Her abrupt withdrawal from him had halted him in his tracks. Whatever he’d been going to say, her shamed refusal to look at him, combined with her backward steps, stopped him. She was still smarting from his angry words, as well as from her own uninhibited behavior. She was ashamed that she’d given him such license with her body now that she knew there had only been desire on his part.
He hadn’t said a single word before the bus stopped for her. He hadn’t said a word as she hurriedly gave her ticket to the driver, got on the bus and waited for it to leave without looking his way again. He’d stood there in the trickling rain, without even a raincoat, with his hands deep in his jean pockets, and watched the bus pull away from the curb. That was how Dorie had remembered him all the long years, a lonely fading figure in the distance.
She’d loved him desperately. But her own self-respect wouldn’t let her settle for a furtive affair in the goldfish-bowl atmosphere of Jacobsville. She’d wanted a home, a husband, children, everything.
Corrigan had only wanted to sleep with her.
She’d gone, breathless and sick at heart, all the way to New York City, swearing her father to absolute secrecy about her movements.
There had been a letter, a few weeks after her arrival, from her father. In it, he told her that he’d seen Corrigan only once since her departure, and that he was now hot in pursuit of a rich divorcée with sophistication dripping from her fingers. If Dorie had any parting regrets about her decision to leave town, that was the end of them. Corrigan had made his feelings plain, if he was seeing some woman already.
Dorie wondered if her father hadn’t said something unpleasant to Corrigan Hart about his daughter’s sudden departure from home. It would have been like him. He was fiercely protective of his only child, especially since the death of her mother from heart disease some years past. And his opinion about philandering men was obvious to everyone.
He believed in the old-fashioned sort of courtship, the kind that ended in marriage. Only a handful of conventional people were left, he told Dorie over and over. Such people were the cornerstones of social order. If they all fell, chaos reigned. A man who loved a woman would want to give her, and his children, his name. And Corrigan, he added, had made it clear to the whole town that he wanted no part of marriage or a family. Dorie would have been asking for heartbreak if she’d given in to Corrigan’s selfish demands.
Her father was dead now. Dorie had come home for the funeral as well as to dispose of the house and property and decide her own future. She’d started out with such hopes of becoming a successful model. Her eyes closed and she shivered unconsciously at the memories.
“Dorie?”
She turned at the hesitant sound of her name. The face took a little longer to recognize. “Abby?” she said. “Abby Clark!”
“Abby Ballenger,” the other woman corrected with a grin. “I married Calhoun.”
“Calhoun!” Dorie was momentarily floored. The younger Ballenger brother had been a rounder and a half, and he was married? And to Abby, of all people, the shy and sweet girl for whom Calhoun and Justin had shared guardianship following the death of their parents.
“Surprising, isn’t it?” Abby asked, hugging the other woman. “And there’s more. We have three sons.”
“I haven’t been away that long, have I?” Dorie asked hesitantly.
“Eight years,” came the reply. Abby was a little older, but she still had the same pretty gray-blue eyes and dark hair, even if it had silver threads now. “Justin married Shelby Jacobs just after I married Calhoun. They have three sons, too,” she added on a sigh. “Not a girl in the bunch.”
Dorie shook her head. “For heaven’s sake!”
“We heard that you were in modeling...” Her voice trailed away as she saw the obvious long scar on the once-perfect cheek. “What happened?”
Dorie’s eyes were all but dead. “Not much. I decided that modeling wasn’t for me.” She laughed at some private joke. “I went back to school and completed a course in business. Now I work for a group of attorneys. I’m a stenographer.” Her gaze fell. “Jacobsville hasn’t changed a bit.”
“Jacobsville never changes,” Abby chuckled. “I find it comforting.” The laughter went out of her eyes. “We all heard about your father. I’m sorry. It must have been a blow.”
“He’d been in the nursing home near me for some time, but he always said he wanted to be buried here. That’s why I brought him home. I appreciated so many people coming to the funeral. It was kind.”
“I suppose you noticed one missing face in the crowd?” Abby asked carefully, because she knew how persistent Corrigan Hart had been in his pursuit of Dorie.
“Yes.” She twisted her purse in her hands. “Are they still making jokes about the Hart boys?”
“More than ever. There’s never been the slightest hint of gossip about any of them and a woman. I guess they’re all determined to die single. Especially Corrigan. He’s turned into a recluse. He stays out at the ranch all the time now. He’s never seen.”
“Why?”
Abby seemed evasive. “He doesn’t mix and nobody knows much about his life. Odd, isn’t it, in a town this small, where we mostly know each other’s business, that he isn’t talked about? But he stays out of sight and none of the other boys ever speak about him. He’s become the original local mystery.”
“Well, don’t look at me as if I’m the answer. He couldn’t get rid of me fast enough,” she said with a twinge of remaining bitterness.
“That’s what you think. He became a holy terror in the weeks after you left town. Nobody would go near him.”
“He only wanted me,” Dorie said doggedly.
Abby’s eyes narrowed. “And you were terrified of him,” she recalled. “Calhoun used to joke about it. You were such an innocent and Corrigan was a rounder. He said it was poetic justice that rakes got caught by innocents.”
“I remember Calhoun being a rake.”
“He was,” Abby recalled. “But not now. He’s reformed. He’s the greatest family man I could have imagined, a doting father and a wonderful husband.” She sobered. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out for you and Corrigan. If you hadn’t taken off like that, I think he might have decided that he couldn’t live without you.”
“God forbid,” she laughed, her eyes quick and nervous. “He wasn’t a marrying man. He said so, frequently. And I was raised...well, you know how Dad was. Ministers have a decidedly conventional outlook on life.”
“I know.”
“I haven’t had such a bad time of it,” she lied, grateful that her old friend couldn’t read minds. She smiled. “I like New York.”
“Do you have anyone there?”
“You mean a boyfriend, or what do they call it, a significant other?” she murmured. “No. I...don’t have much to do with men.”
There was a strangely haunted look about her that Abby quickly dispelled with an offer of coffee and a sandwich in the local café.
“Yes, thanks, I’m not hungry but I’d love some hot chocolate.”
“Great!” Abby said. “I’ve got an hour to kill before I have to pick my two oldest boys up at school and the youngest from kindergarten. I’ll enjoy your company.”
The café was all but empty. It was a slow day, and except for a disgruntled looking cowboy sitting alone at a corner table, it was deserted.
Barbara, the owner, took their orders with a grin. “Nice to have pleasant company,” she said, glaring toward the cowboy in the corner. “He brought a little black cloud in with him, and it’s growing.” She leaned closer. “He’s one of the Hart employees,” she whispered. “Or, he was until this morning. It seems that Corrigan fired him.”
The sound of the man’s name was enough to make Dorie’s heart race, even after so many years. But she steeled herself not to let it show. She had nothing left to offer Corrigan, even if he was still interested in her. And that was a laugh. If he’d cared even a little, he’d have come to New York looking for her all those years ago.
“Fired him?” Abby glanced at the man and scowled. “But that’s Buck Wyley,” she protested. “He’s the Harts’ foreman. He’s been with them since they came here.”
“He made a remark Corrigan didn’t like. He got knocked on his pants for his trouble and summarily fired.” Barbara shrugged. “The Harts are all high-tempered, but until now I always thought Corrigan was fair. What sort of boss fires a man with Christmas only three weeks away?”
“Ebenezer Scrooge?” Abby ventured drily.
“Buck said he cut another cowboy’s wages to the bone for leaving a gate open.” She shook her head. “Funny, we’ve heard almost nothing about Corrigan for years, and all of a sudden he comes back into the light like a smoldering madman.”
“So I noticed,” Abby said.
Barbara wiped her hands on a dishcloth. “I don’t know what happened to set him off after so many years. The other brothers have been more visible lately, but not Corrigan. I’d wondered if he’d moved away for a while. Nobody even spoke of him.” She glanced at Dorie with curious eyes. “You’re Dorothy Wayne, aren’t you?” she asked then, smiling. “I thought I recognized you. Sorry about your pa.”
“Thanks,” Dorie said automatically. She noticed how Barbara’s eyes went to the thin scar on her cheek and flitted quickly away.
“I’ll get your order.”
Barbara went back behind the counter and Abby’s puzzled gaze went to the corner.
“Having a bad day, Buck?” she called.
He sipped black coffee. “It couldn’t get much worse, Mrs. Ballenger,” he replied in a deep, pleasant tone. “I don’t suppose Calhoun and Justin are hiring out at the feedlot?”
“They’d hire you in a minute, and you know it,” Abby told him. She smiled. “Why don’t you go out there and...”
“Oh, the devil!” Buck muttered, his black eyes flashing. He got to his feet and stood there, vibrating, as a tall, lean figure came through the open door.
Dorie actually caught her breath. The tall man was familiar to her, even after all those years. Dressed in tight jeans, with hand-tooled boots and a chambray shirt and a neat, spotless white Stetson atop his black hair, he looked formidable, even with the cane he was using for support.
He didn’t look at the table where Dorie was sitting, which was on the other side of the café from Buck.
“You fired me,” Buck snapped at him. “What do you want, another punch at me? This time, you’ll get it back in spades, gimpy leg or not!”
Corrigan Hart just stared at the man, his pale eyes like chrome sparkling in sunlight.
“Those purebred Angus we got from Montana are coming in by truck this morning,” he said. “You’re the only one who knows how to use the master program for the computerized herd records.”
“And you need me,” Buck agreed with a cold smile. “For how long?”
“Two weeks,” came the curt reply. “You’ll work that long for your severance pay. If you’re still of a mind to quit.”
“Quit, hell!” Buck shot back, astonished. “You fired me!”
“I did not!” the older man replied curtly. “I said you could mind your own damned business or get out.”
Buck’s head turned and he stared at the other man for a minute. “If I come back, you’d better keep your fists to yourself from now on,” he said shortly.
The other man didn’t blink. “You know why you got hit.”
Buck glanced warily toward Dorie and a ruddy color ran along his high cheekbones. “I never meant it the way you took it,” he retorted.
“You’ll think twice before you presume to make such remarks to me again, then, won’t you?”
Buck made a movement that his employer took for assent.
“And your Christmas bonus is now history!” he added.
Buck let out an angry breath, almost spoke, but crushed his lips together finally in furious submission.
“Go home!” the older man said abruptly.
Buck pulled his hat over his eyes, tossed a dollar bill on the table with his coffee cup and strode out with barely a tip of the hat to the women present, muttering under his breath as he went.
The door closed with a snap. Corrigan Hart didn’t move. He stood very still for a moment, as if steeling himself.
Then he turned, and his pale eyes stared right into Dorie’s. But the anger in them eclipsed into a look of such shock that Dorie blinked.
“What happened to you?” he asked shortly.
She knew what he meant without asking. She put a hand self-consciously to her cheek. “An accident,” she said stiffly.
His chin lifted. The tension in the café was so thick that Abby shifted uncomfortably at the table.
“You don’t model now,” he continued.
The certainty in the statement made her miserable. “No. Of course I don’t.”
He leaned heavily on the cane. “Sorry about your father,” he said curtly.
She nodded.
His face seemed pinched as he stared at her. Even across the room, the heat in the look was tangible to Dorie. Her hands holding the mug of hot chocolate went white at the knuckles from the pressure of them around it.
He glanced at Abby. “How are things at the feedlot?”
“Much as usual,” she replied pleasantly. “Calhoun and Justin are still turning away business. Nice, in the flat cattle market this fall.”
“I agree. We’ve culled as many head as possible and we’re venturing into new areas of crossbreeding. Nothing but purebreds now. We’re hoping to pioneer a new breed.”
“Good for you,” Abby replied.
His eyes went back to Dorie. They lingered on her wan face, her lack of spirit. “How long are you going to stay?” he asked.
The question was voiced in such a way it seemed like a challenge. Her shoulders rose and fell. “Until I tie up all the loose ends, I suppose. They’ve given me two weeks off at the law firm where I work.”
“As an attorney?”
She shook her head. “A stenographer.”
He scowled. “With your head for figures?” he asked shortly.
Her gaze was puzzled. She hadn’t realized that he was aware of her aptitude for math.
“It’s a waste,” he persisted. “You’d have been a natural at bookkeeping and marketing.”
She’d often thought so, too, but she hadn’t pursued her interest in that field. Especially after her first attempt at modeling.
He gave her a calculating stare. “Clarisse Marston has opened a boutique in town. She designs women’s clothes and has them made up at a local textile plant. She sells all over the state.”
“Yes,” Abby added. “In fact, she’s now doing a lot of designing for Todd Burke’s wife, Jane—you know, her signature rodeo line of sportswear.”
“I’ve heard of it, even in New York,” Dorie admitted.
“The thing Clarisse doesn’t have is someone to help her with marketing and bookkeeping.” He shook his head. “It amazes me that she hasn’t gone belly-up already.”
Abby started to speak, but the look on Corrigan’s face silenced her. She only smiled at Dorie.
“This is your home,” Corrigan persisted quietly. “You were born and raised in Jacobsville. Surely having a good job here would be preferable to being a stenographer in New York. Unless,” he added slowly, “there’s some reason you want to stay there.”
His eyes were flashing. Dorie looked into the film on her cooling hot chocolate. “I don’t have anyone in New York.” She shifted her legs. “I don’t have anyone here, either, now.”
“But you do,” Abby protested. “All your friends.”
“Of course, she may miss the bright lights and excitement,” Corrigan drawled.
She looked at him curiously. He was trying to goad her. Why?
“Is Jacobsville too small for you now, city girl?” he persisted with a mocking smile.
“No, it isn’t that at all,” she said. She cleared her throat.
“Come home,” Abby coaxed.
She didn’t answer.
“Still afraid of me?” Corrigan asked with a harsh laugh when her head jerked up. “That’s why you left. Is it why you won’t come back?”
She colored furiously, the first trace of color that had shown in her face since the strange conversation began.
“I’m not...afraid of you!” she faltered.
But she was, and he knew it. His silver eyes narrowed and that familiar, mocking smile turned up his thin upper lip. “Prove it.”
“Maybe Miss Marston doesn’t want a bookkeeper.”
“She does,” he returned.
She hesitated. “She might not like me.”
“She will.”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “I can’t make a decision that important in a few seconds,” she told him. “I have to think about it.”
“Take your time,” he replied. “Nobody’s rushing you.”
“It would be lovely if you came back, though,” Abby said with a smile. “No matter how many friends we have, we can always use one more.”
“Exactly,” Corrigan told her. His eyes narrowed. “Of course, you needn’t consider me in your decision. I’m not trying to get you to come back for my sake. But I’m sure there are plenty of other bachelors left around here who’d be delighted to give you a whirl, if you needed an incentive.”
His lean face was so hard and closed that not one flicker of emotion got away from it.
Abby was eyeing him curiously, but she didn’t say a word, not even when her gaze fell to his hand on the silver knob of the cane and saw it go white from the pressure.
He eased up on the handle, just the same. “Well?”
“I’d like to,” Dorie said quietly. She didn’t look at him. Odd, how his statement had hurt, after all those years. She looked back on the past with desperation these days, wondering how her life would have been if she hadn’t resisted him that night he’d tried to carry her to bed.
She hadn’t wanted an affair, but he was an honorable man, in his fashion. Perhaps he would have followed up with a proposal, despite his obvious distaste for the married state. Or perhaps he wouldn’t have. There might have been a child...
She grimaced and lifted the cup of chocolate to her lips. It was tepid and vaguely distasteful.
“Go see Clarisse, why don’t you?” he added. “You’ve nothing to lose, and a lot to gain. She’s a sweet woman. You’ll like her.”
Did he? She didn’t dare wonder about that, or voice her curiosity. “I might do that,” she replied.
The tap of the cane seemed unusually loud as he turned back to the door. “Give the brothers my best,” Corrigan told Abby. He nodded and was gone.
Only then did Dorie look up, her eyes on his tall, muscular body as he walked carefully back to the big double-cabbed black ranch pickup truck he drove.
“What happened to him?” Dorie asked.
Abby sipped her own hot chocolate before she answered. “It happened the week after you left town. He went on a hunting trip in Montana with some other men. During a heavy, late-spring snow, Corrigan and another man went off on their own in a four-wheel-drive utility vehicle to scout another section of the hunting range.”
“And?” Dorie prompted.
“The truck went over a steep incline and overturned. The other man was killed outright. Corrigan was pinned and couldn’t get free. He lay there most of the night and into the next day before the party came looking for them and found him. By that time, he was unconscious. The impact broke his leg in two places, and he had frostbite, as well. He almost died.”
Dorie caught her breath. “How horrible!”
“They wanted to amputate the leg, but...” she shrugged. “He refused them permission to operate, so they did the best they could. The leg is usable, just, but it will always be stiff. They said later that it was a miracle he didn’t lose any toes. He had just enough sense left to wrap himself in one of those thin thermal sheets the men had carried on the trip. It saved him from a dangerous frostbite.”
“Poor man.”
“Oh, don’t make that mistake,” Abby mused. “Nobody is allowed to pity Corrigan Hart. Just ask his brothers.”
“All the same, he never seemed the sort of man to lose control of anything, not even a truck.”
“He wasn’t himself but he didn’t lose control, either.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Abby grimaced. “He and the other man, the one who was driving, had been drinking. He blamed himself not only for the wreck, but for the other man’s death. He knew the man wasn’t fit to drive but he didn’t try to stop him. They say he’s been punishing himself ever since. That’s why he never comes into town, or has any social life. He’s withdrawn into himself and nobody can drag him back out. He’s become a hermit.”
“But, why?”
“Why was he drinking, you mean?” Abby said, and Dorie nodded. Still, Abby hesitated to put it into words.
“Tell me,” came the persistent nudge from Dorie.
Abby’s eyes were apologetic. “Nobody knows, really. But the gossip was that he was trying to get over losing you.”