Duncan's Bride Read online

  “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