Angel Creek by Linda Howard
She looked up at him with tear-wet eyes that held both pain and a promise. “I’ll give you my answer soon,” she whispered.
Dee walked out on the porch and held out a glass of cool lemonade to Olivia, who sat on the very edge of the rocking chair, keeping it tilted forward on the rockers. She studied Olivia’s face, thinking that she had never before seen her friend as edgy as she was now.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
Olivia sipped her drink, then rolled the glass back and forth in her hands. She watched the motion of her own fingers as if fascinated. “I think I’m in love,” she blurted. She drew a deep, shaky breath. “With Luis Fronteras. And I’m scared.”
“Luis Fronteras?” Dee asked blankly. “Who’s he?”
“He works for Kyle Bellamy. He’s a Mexican. A drifter.”
Dee gave a low whistle of astonishment and slowly took her own seat. This was like a queen taking up with a commoner.
“He wants me to marry him,” Olivia continued.
“Are you going to?”
The look Olivia gave her was agonized. “I can’t bear the thought of not seeing him again. But it will hurt my parents so, and I don’t want that either. I don’t know what to do.”
Dee wasn’t sure what advice to give her. She knew how important family was to Olivia, and she also knew how impossible it was to stay away from the man you loved, even when your common sense told you to.
“What is he like?”
“Gentle,” Olivia said, then she frowned. “But I think he can be dangerous, too. It’s just that he’s always gentle with me, even when he’s—” She broke off, and her face turned pink.
“Aroused?” Dee suggested helpfully, grinning when Olivia’s flush deepened.
“Is Lucas gentle when he’s aroused?” Olivia retorted with spirit. “And don’t tell me you don’t know, because I won’t believe you. At the picnic he couldn’t stop looking for you, and he left right after lunch and never came back. I’ve thought right from the beginning that he’d be perfect for you,” she finished smugly.
“Perfect?” Dee said in disbelief. “He’s overbearing and arrogant, and he—” She broke off, because she couldn’t lie to either herself or Olivia. “I love him,” she finished flatly. “Damn it.”
Olivia threw herself back in the rocking chair with a whoop of laughter, sloshing the lemonade over the rim of the glass. “I knew it, I knew it! Well? Has he asked you to marry him?”
“He asked if marriage would be the price for Angel Creek. Not exactly the same thing.” Dee managed a crooked smile. “The fact that I love him doesn’t mean that he loves me.”
“Well, he does,” Olivia replied. “If you could have seen him at the picnic! He kept trying not to let it slip that he’d been seeing you, but he couldn’t talk about anything else.”
Dee went still. “He told other people about me?”
“No, he was just talking to me,” Olivia reassured her. “He came here after he left the picnic, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
Olivia cleared her throat, good manners wrestling with her curiosity. Curiosity won. “Does he . . . I mean, has he tried to . . . you know?”
“Make love to me?” Dee clarified in her blunt way.
Olivia flushed again but nodded.
“He’s a man.”
Dee evidently felt that her bald statement was explanation enough. Olivia decided to agree with her. “Do you like it when he touches you?” she asked in a rush. “I mean when he touches your . . .” She stopped, appalled at what she had been about to say. What if Dee hadn’t permitted Lucas such intimacies? With her question she had practically admitted that she and Luis . . .
“Stop blushing,” Dee ordered, though her own cheeks were growing warm.
“He has, then. Well? Did you like it?”
Confused, Dee wondered just what Olivia was asking and what part of the body she was thinking about. Caresses, or the actual sexual act? Then she shrugged, because the answer was the same regardless of the question. “Yes,” she said.
Olivia closed her eyes on a sigh of relief. “I’m so glad,” she said. “I thought I was wicked, even though Luis said everyone . . .” She stopped herself again and opened her eyes. She had never before had such an opportunity, and she felt giddy with the freedom. “Does he take your blouse off when he touches you there?”
Dee was beginning to feel harassed. “Yes.”
“Has he ever taken the top of your shift down? So that he can see your—er—breasts?”
“Yes.”
Though her face was bright red, Olivia wasn’t about to stop. “Has he ever kissed you there? Like a baby, I mean, only different. Well, maybe it’s the same—”
Dee erupted from her chair. “For God’s sake!” she yelled, goaded beyond endurance. “If you must know, he’s stripped me naked and done everything there is to do! And I enjoyed every minute of it!” She struggled with herself for control and took a deep breath. In a more moderate voice she said, “Maybe not every minute. It hurt the first time, but it was worth it. Though I do like it better when I’m on top.”
Olivia’s mouth moved, but no sound emerged. Her eyes were so huge they eclipsed her face. She shut her mouth.
They stared at each other in silence. Dee’s lips twitched first. She gulped, then bent double as she shrieked with laughter. Olivia pressed her hand to her mouth in an effort to stifle the unladylike sounds that were bubbling up, but it was a useless effort. She guffawed. That was the only word for it. The lemonade spilled in her lap.
When the hysterical fit of laughter had subsided into giggles they wiped their streaming eyes and struggled for composure. “Come inside and sponge your skirt,” Dee said, her voice still shaky with mirth.
Olivia stood and followed her into the cabin. “Don’t try to change the subject,” she warned, and her shoulders began shaking again. “I want to know all about it. If you think I’m going to let a chance like this go by, you’re crazy!”
“Ask Luis,” Dee replied maddeningly, and it set them both off again.
13
KYLE BELLAMY KICKED AT THE DRY CREEK BED, THEN looked up at the cloudless sky. It hadn’t rained in six weeks. It might not rain for another six weeks. They didn’t normally get that much rain anyway, but then they didn’t usually need it because of the runoff from the snowcaps. But there hadn’t been as much snow during the past winter, and now they weren’t getting even the normal amount of rain. Who knew how long it would last? Droughts sometimes lasted for years, turning what had been fertile into wasteland. He’d never thought it would happen here, but hell, no one ever settled where they thought there’d be a drought.
He felt an almost sickening sense of panic. He had sworn that he’d make something of himself, something respectable, and he’d been close enough to taste it. Now the damn weather was turning it into dust, literally. The weather! Of all the ways he could have been done in, of all the things that could have caught up with him, it was the weather that would bring him to his knees.
There was only one creek left running now on the Bar B. When it dried up his cattle would die. Without the cattle he wouldn’t have the ranch, wouldn’t have the money to restock, because he’d just spent all of his capital to add to the herd. Damn, why hadn’t he waited? But he’d wanted the ranch to expand, and now he was in danger of losing everything. He wouldn’t be able to pay his men’s wages, would end up as nothing . . . again.
God, he’d been so close. He had thought the years when he’d had to steal food to survive were finished. He had buried his memories of the little boy who lived in the streets of New Orleans and was sold into prostitution at the age of ten. He never let himself think about the man he had killed when he was just twelve, to escape the horror. He had thought he’d never again have to cheat or lie. All he’d wanted was to be like respectable folks everywhere, to be welcomed into people’s homes and treated like someone who counted. He’d had that in Prosper. Only Tillie had known him when he had lived
He had planned to marry, have kids, do all the normal, respectable things and wallow in the doing of them, for that was what he had never before had. His dream had come true for a while, yet now he could see it slipping away from him. Even his plans for Olivia Millican didn’t seem to be going anywhere. He called on her, paid all sorts of attention to her, but she still remained maddeningly indifferent to him. Damn it, the banker’s money would have made all the difference to him.
Now, unless it rained soon, all of his plans were going to be just like the ground he walked on: dust.
He had racked his brain trying to think of ways to beat the drought. He had thought of building long troughs and filling barrels with water from the well, then hauling the water out to the troughs. But he had too many cattle; they would go mad at the scent of water and trample one another trying to get to it, knocking the troughs over. He couldn’t dump the water into the water holes, because the ground was so dry it would just soak it up. Hell, he probably didn’t even have enough water in the well to fill more than a couple of barrels anyway. The water table had to be low, too.
Why had he bought more cattle? If the herd was smaller, there would be more graze and water to go around.
Maybe he could sell off part of the herd. They were too thin; he’d lose money if he did, but not as much as he’d lose if they all died. But he was afraid they wouldn’t survive the cattle drive to a railhead, either.
He wasn’t the only one who was hurting. People in town were getting by fine and would be all right as long as their wells held out. But the other ranchers were all in the same fix he was in; the only creek still running that he knew of was Angel Creek, and he didn’t guess it had ever gone dry.
It could have been his. It should have been his. He’d never thought the Swann woman would be so stubborn about selling, but she wouldn’t even talk about it. He’d even asked her to marry him when it had become obvious she wasn’t about to sell, but she’d turned that down, too. The only time in his life he’d asked any woman to marry him, and she hadn’t even hesitated before refusing. The funny thing was, by then the land hadn’t been his only reason for asking. Dee Swann was a damn fine-looking woman, with those witch-green eyes, and she was respected in town. Maybe not well liked, but they sure respected her. And she was tough enough that she didn’t give a damn if they liked her or not.
She was sitting in that rich little valley with all of that water, not doing anything but raising that garden of hers and letting all the rest of the land lie fallow. It was wonderful grazing, the vegetation fed by the creek even when there wasn’t any rain, and it was going to waste.
After she had refused to marry him he had followed the creek out of the valley, thinking that maybe he could divert it toward his land. To his surprise the creek bed had veered sharply to the east and dissipated at the foot of the mountains, seeping underground through porous rock to emerge again only God knew where. It came from the mountains and went back to the mountains, detouring only through that little valley and creating some of the best land he had ever seen.
The Bar B had been good land—not as good as Angel Creek, but good ranch land. In the four years he’d been there the rain had come regularly and the water holes had stayed fresh. He’d always worried more about the winters than about the summers, afraid a blizzard would wipe him out, but instead there hadn’t been enough snow this past year, and the runoff hadn’t been sufficient. Now one rainless summer was destroying a lifetime of dreams.
He mounted his horse, his handsome face drawn as he looked around. Everything still looked green, but it was deceptive. The vegetation was dry and brittle, making a faint crackling sound whenever a breeze stirred. He would have railed at fate if it would have done any good, but he had learned while still a boy in the muddy streets that the only help to be had was what he could provide for himself. Cursing, as well as praying, was a waste of breath.
There was only one person he could talk to about it, only one person who would understand what it meant to him. Not even the other ranchers could know how hard this hit him. Since it was still early afternoon he counted on the saloon being almost empty, and when he got there he found it was. Tillie wasn’t in sight, though, and he scowled at the thought that she might be with a customer. Verna, the other saloon girl, was propped against the bar chatting with the bartender. She straightened when she saw Kyle walk in.
“Is Tillie upstairs?” he asked, ignoring the look of disappointment on Verna’s face. He imagined she heard that question too often. It couldn’t be easy for her, being essentially in competition with Tillie for what business Prosper could provide. Knowing Tillie, though, she probably often sent men Verna’s way.
“She went over to the hat shop,” Verna replied.
Kyle got a shot glass of whiskey from the bartender and sat down to wait, but he wasn’t a patient man, and it quickly got on his nerves. Hell, what did he care if the townspeople saw him walking with Tillie? He was going to lose the ranch, so what did his carefully cultivated respectability matter? When it came down to it, he’d been born a gutter rat and would die one, no matter how hard he tried to change things.
When he found her Tillie was just leaving the shop, a hatbox held in her hands like an offering. She never gave any indication in public that she knew him, and now she started past him without even glancing in his direction. Kyle stopped her, taking the hatbox from her hands and tucking it under his arm. “I’ll walk you back to the saloon.”
She lifted her eyebrows in surprise. “You shouldn’t be seen with me like this. None of the mamas will want you courting their daughters.”
“I don’t give a damn,” he said under his breath.
She began strolling down the sidewalk. “After all the work you’ve done to make a place for yourself here?”
He didn’t want to talk about it on the street. His emotions were too raw, his disappointment too strong.
Not many people were out stirring around in the heat, but he saw heads swiveling to watch his progress down the street with Tillie. It would be all over town by nightfall that Kyle Bellamy had been parading around town with one of the saloon girls, as brassy as if he didn’t know any better. And he simply didn’t care. What he cared about was his ranch, and the lack of rain. Let them pass judgment if they wanted. He was sick and tired of the whole charade, pretending to be a gentleman when he didn’t have a genteel bone in his body.
The saloon was blessedly cool after the harsh glare of the sun. The bartender didn’t pay them any mind as they started up the stairs. Verna watched them go with a hint of envy in her expression.
When they were in her room Tillie sat down before her mirrored vanity and slowly began removing hat pins from the delicate froth of velvet and veiling that had been perched on her head. She never visited any of the shops while dressed in the immodest, brightly colored dresses she wore in the saloon. The dress she had on was as demure as any of the dresses the good wives of the town wore to church, but it had probably cost considerably more. Tillie’s taste in clothes ran toward the expensive. The bronze fabric was wonderfully flattering to her complexion. He reached out and fingered her sleeve, thinking that her love of good clothes was probably the last remnant of her former life.
“Open that hatbox for me,” she said. Her rich brown eyes held a mixture of excitement and satisfaction. Tillie adored hats.
Kyle obeyed, taking the top off and lifting out a small bit of fur and velvet. The hat was a dark burgundy color, the fur was black, and a dashing little black plume curled around the edge. The half veil was attached to the hat with twin cascades of dark red rhinestones. It looked ridiculous in his big hand, but Tillie set it on her head and angled it over one eye, and it was immediately transformed into a mas
“Miss Wesner does such good work,” she purred, turning her head from side to side in sublime satisfaction. “I designed the hat, and she made it exactly as I described it.”
“And now you have to have a gown made to match it.”
“Of course.” She met his eyes in the mirror and gave him a slow smile. She must have seen something in his face, because the smile faded and she briskly removed the hat, swiveling to face him. “What’s wrong?”
“The drought,” he said simply. “I’m losing the ranch.”
She was silent. She knew what drought meant, knew that nature was both fickle and merciless.
“I only have one creek still running, and it’s low,” he said. “When it dries up the cattle will start dying. I tried, but I’ve lost.”
“You’ve started over before. Do it again.”
“Why bother? I’m beginning to think I should have stayed with the cards. At least then I could do something about a run of bad luck.”
Tillie shook her head. “You’d have gotten killed. You’re a good cheat, but you aren’t that good. I could always spot you.”
He pinched her chin. “Only because you’re so damn good at it yourself, darlin’.”
Tillie shrugged, saying nothing. Kyle examined her exquisite face, searching for some sign of the life she had led in either her skin or her expression, but she looked as serene as a nun. She hadn’t changed much at all from the days of her girlhood in New Orleans. “Why don’t you go back?” he asked suddenly. “You could do it. No one would have to know.”
She didn’t move but subtly withdrew anyway, her expression going blank. “Why would I want to go back?”
“Your family is one of the richest in Louisiana. Why would you want to live like this, in one room over a saloon, when you can have a mansion?”