He was smiling at her. He was smiling in that infuriating way that men do when they know something that you don’t. All along he’d known that he was the owner’s brother, but she hadn’t. She’d thought he was a blacksmith. But he’d always known who she was.
There are some advantages to age, Ellie thought. For one thing, you don’t have to worry about reputation. And you don’t have to worry about misconduct getting back to your mother.
What would her heroine, Jordan Neale, do in this situation? she wondered. That is, if Jordan weren’t happily married to Max?
A scene from the movie To Catch a Thief came to her mind. Grace Kelly had sexily slipped an arm around Cary Grant’s neck and . . .
Smiling as sweetly as she could, trying to let no one know that she was affected in any way by this man, Ellie stood up from the chair. Then, with as much poise as she could muster, she stood on tiptoe and slipped her hand around the neck of Woody’s brother and kissed him. It wasn’t a passionate kiss with frantic embracing, but a nice, long kiss that had a great deal of heat in it.
He kept his arms to his side, and when she pulled away from him, he was looking at her in amusement. And interest. Oh, yes. He was looking at her with lots of interest.
Stepping back, Ellie turned her head to look at Woody. He was standing there with his mouth open in shock. Behind him, even Valerie was staring with wide eyes. In fact, when Ellie looked around, she saw that the whole room had come to a standstill. Forks were paused on the way to mouths. One man was suspended in midair, his fanny six inches above a chair.
It was one of the ranch hands who broke the spell cast on the group. He was an older man, with the look that he’d been born in a saddle. He had a belly that hung down over his belt buckle, and when he stepped forward, he had that bowlegged walk of a true cowboy.
He stopped on the other side of Woody’s brother. “I’m next,” he said, then bent over, puckered up, and closed his eyes.
It was what was needed to break the tension in the room, and everyone exploded with laughter. Laughing, the people began slapping Woody’s brother on the back—she still didn’t know his name—then they slapped Ellie’s back too. At a couple of hard slaps, her head bent so far forward that she touched the man’s chest.
As for him, he just stood there, smiling at all the jests that were being made at his expense, saying nothing, just watching Ellie.
“And here I was feeling sorry for you being out there all alone,” Valerie said so only Ellie heard her. “Heavens! but I thought you were bored.”
The man put out his hand and said loudly over the ruckus around them, “Jessie Woodward. Nice to meet you.”
Laughing, Ellie took his hand in hers. All the tension had left the room. The people were no longer tiptoeing about in respect for “the writer,” but were now enjoying a morning of free time, free food, and the companionship of people who’d been together for a long time.
“Go on,” Woody said to his brother. “You two get out of here.”
For Ellie, she couldn’t speak because she’d just realized what she’d been told. Heaven help her, but the man’s name was Jessie!
Twenty-two
Once they were outside, away from the others, alone, “awkward” didn’t begin to describe how she felt. What was she supposed to say, “So how’s your horse this morning?”?
A couple of times she glanced up at him and gave him a weak little smile, but she really didn’t know what to say. They had experienced together . . . What? Lust? Something more?
For all that Ellie had written some sexy little books and in the last couple of days done some—for her—wild things, underneath it all, she was a woman who didn’t fool around.
As they approached the door to the summerhouse, Ellie could feel her feet becoming heavy. What was he expecting of her now? A wild morning in bed together? Last night, in the moonlight, she could have done that. She would probably have regretted it, but she might have done it. But now it was daylight and she was with a man she’d exchanged but a few words with. She’d had her hands all over his body, but she’d not talked to him.
But Jessie solved everything.
He stepped up onto the porch and held the door open for her, ignoring the fact that Ellie stood rooted where she was, still several feet away from the stairs. “I bet you’re hungry,” Jessie said. “I heard that last night Valerie had you pinned to a table autographing, then you spent dinner answering questions, and now this morning all you’ve done is write. How about if I make you an omelet the size of that state Valerie loves so much?”
Ellie opened her mouth to protest that she wasn’t hungry. For the last three years she’d been fat, and she’d learned that fat girls shouldn’t eat in public. Even in restaurants they can receive looks of disgust from other women. But now she was no longer fat, so it was okay to eat truckloads. When her stomach let out a growl, Ellie looked up at Jessie with wide eyes. Then they both laughed and the tension between them was gone.
“Come on,” he said, then went inside the house, leaving Ellie to follow on her own.
When she entered the little kitchen, he was already pulling dishes out of the cabinets and ingredients out of the refrigerator. “You seem familiar with this house,” she said, making an attempt at conversation. Ellie thought he was a good-looking man, with the kind of looks that appealed to her. But Daria wouldn’t like him, though. But then Daria said that Mel Gibson “did nothing” for her.
Ellie climbed onto a stool on the other side of the bar that separated the kitchen from the living room.
In what seemed like seconds, Jessie placed a tall glass of tomato juice in front of her. There was a stalk of celery in it and celery seeds floating on top.
“Alcohol?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Jessie said as he gave her a one-sided smirk, then wiggled his eyebrows. “To loosen you up for later.”
Since he was saying what she feared, as though he were reading her mind, she laughed.
Turning his back to her, he pulled out cookware, then more things from the refrigerator, and began to move about as though he knew what he was doing. “So what do you want to know?” Jessie asked, his back to her.
The drink was strong, made with Snappy Tom, so it was hot, just the way she liked it. She was so empty of food that just one sip began to relax her.
“Know about what?” she asked.
Jessie turned his head just enough to give her a raised-eyebrow look that said she knew very well what he was talking about.
Ellie took another drink. “Everything about everybody,” she said. “You first.”
“Not much to tell about me,” Jessie said. “My brother’s the one. He—”
“No!” Ellie said in warning. “You.”
She couldn’t see his face but she felt his smile.
“Okay, I’m forty-two. I’ve been married once, but it didn’t work out. I was gone too much and she got lonesome, so she figured out how to get rid of the blues. Men, mostly. No kids, so we divorced.”
He put a bowl full of tortilla chips in front of her and some red-hot salsa.
“What else?” she asked as he put scallions down on a cutting board and began to chop them. Judging from the way he handled the knife, he’d done this before.
“Not much. I’ve worked for my brother for a number of years now. Ten? Maybe it’s only eight; I don’t remember.”
“What do you do?”
“Manage this place, for one thing.”
She could tell that he didn’t want to talk about himself, and for her, that was a point in his favor. Martin was a nonstop talker. Sometimes Ellie hid inside her clothes closet behind her long skirts so he couldn’t find her, just so she could have a few minutes of silence.
“Okay,” she said, deciding to let him off the hook. “What about Valerie and Woody?”
Ellie could see Jessie visibly relax when the questions stopped being about him.
“Okay,” Jessie said, knife poised above the scallions. “Where do I s
tart? Valerie was chosen for her beauty and her fertility. Woody was married for thirty years to a very nice woman, but they had no kids, so Woody spent his time making money. Everything he touches seems to turn to money. If Woody stuck a pitchfork in the ground, he’d hit a gold mine.”
Ellie was pretending that she was interested in the tortilla chip in her hand, but she was listening very hard to the way Jessie said this. She was glad that, as hard as she listened, she could detect no sound of jealousy about his brother’s good fortune.
When Ellie said nothing, Jessie continued. “Unexpectedly, she fell ill and died over the course of about six weeks, and suddenly, Woody was alone. Truthfully, he’d had no experience with women.”
Jessie put the scallions in a skillet, then began to chop tomatoes and green peppers. “And that’s when Valerie showed up. She was from Texas, graduated from some expensive private college, and not married. Experienced, but unmarried.”
At that Jessie looked up at Ellie, maybe to see how she was going to respond to that statement. But Ellie didn’t say anything. She was listening too hard to want to interrupt.
“They met through one of those chance-in-a-million things. Her brother was in the hospital with a broken leg at the time that Woody’s wife was in the hospital—one of those small, private hospitals where ‘only the best’ is a norm, so Valerie didn’t have to check to see that Woody was rich. She was pregnant by my brother almost before they closed the coffin on his wife.”
Ellie wasn’t going to fall for his poor-little-rich-man-seduced-by-the-younger-woman story. It was her feeling that, no matter how they’d met, or how much money was involved, Valerie and Woody were a love match. She kept her eyes on a chip as she spoke. “So I guess your big brother used to spend lots of time with you when his first wife was alive, but now he spends all his time with his beautiful young wife and his new son.”
When Jessie was silent, she looked at him, and for a moment, she thought that he was going to be furious—and Ellie knew that if he was angry, she’d back down. Why, oh, why couldn’t she keep her big mouth shut?
But Jessie looked at her in astonishment; then he roared with laughter. “You really call the shots as you see them, don’t you?” he said. “You’re the only person who hasn’t believed my story about Valerie being a piranha and after my brother’s money.”
She didn’t share his laughter. “Why would you want anyone to think that?” she asked.
He gave her a one-sided grin. “Every time I tell that story to a female, she wants to prove to me that she isn’t a gold digger, so she falls right into my arms.”
Ellie knew that she was supposed to laugh at what he’d just said, but she didn’t. Instead, she was annoyed, and, when she thought about what he’d said, she was angry. He was using a line on her that he admitted to using on all women.
He was standing there, looking at her, waiting for her reply, but she couldn’t think of what to say.
As luck would have it, the phone rang and saved her from having to answer. But when she picked it up, a male voice asked for Jessie. Obviously, everyone on the ranch knew where he was.
Wiping his hands on a towel, he walked around the bar, then took the phone from her and listened for quite a while. And it was easy to see from the look on his face that something bad had happened. Her first thought was that Woody had had a heart attack.
“I’ll be right there,” Jessie said softly, then put down the receiver. “I have to go,” he said, and started for the door. “I’m sorry about breakfast and sorry about . . .” He trailed off.
“What is it?” she asked, her hand going to her mouth in fear. “Is it Woody?”
Jessie paused at the door. “No. One of the men committed suicide last night and he was just found.”
At the word “suicide,” Ellie halted. In the last three years that action had haunted her, followed her about.
Reaching out, Jessie put his hand on her cheek and smiled at her. “Look, you and I need to talk. There’s something between us, and . . .” He didn’t seem to understand it any more than she did. “After I take care of this with Lew, I’ll come back and we’ll spend some time together.” With that, he opened the door and left the little house.
For a moment Ellie just stood there in a daze. As long as he didn’t touch her, she was all right. But when he touched her, she didn’t seem able to think straight. And when he—
“Lew!” she said out loud; then the next second she was out the door and running to catch up with Jessie. “Lew McClelland?” she asked him. “The man who flew me here? He committed suicide?”
“Yeah,” Jessie said as he walked quickly. “Sorry you met him. Look, you’re a guest, so why don’t you go back—”
“Why did he kill himself?” Ellie asked. “He was a nice man. I liked him a lot.”
At that Jessie gave her a sharp look, but he didn’t slow his walking. “Lew was depressed, deeply depressed. I knew it and some other people did, but we couldn’t do anything about it. Now it’s too late.”
In trying to keep up with him, Ellie was getting out of breath, and when she tripped over a rock, she caught herself with his arm.
Jessie steadied her, then gave a bit of a frown. “I think you should go back to the summerhouse. In fact, I think maybe this isn’t a good time for a visit.”
Ellie acted as though she hadn’t heard him. “What were you told on the phone?” she asked.
For a moment Jessie blinked at her. “Is this writer curiosity or real interest?”
Talk about not pulling punches, she thought, but didn’t say that. “I liked him,” she said, with her mouth set in a firm line. She wasn’t going to give up.
“All right,” Jessie said with a sigh. “His wife, Sharon, found him this morning. She says that last night they had a big fight. She’s been wanting to leave the ranch for months now. She wants to move back east so she can have a career. But Lew refused to leave, so last night she asked him for a divorce. It looks like Lew shot himself in despair.”
For a moment Ellie held on to Jessie’s arm and looked up into his dark eyes. But she wasn’t seeing him. Instead, she was seeing that nice man who’d met her at the airport. “Lew wasn’t that much in love with his wife because he was flirting with me,” Ellie said softly. “And, anyway, he was proud of her having a career. It was in the way he grinned when he told me that his wife had decorated the summerhouse.”
Jessie frowned. “Just because a man flirts with one woman—” he began, then cut himself off. For a moment he was silent as a couple of men rode past them. From the looks on their faces, they’d learned about Lew.
When they were alone again, Jessie bent down closer to her and lowered his voice. “I know quite a bit more about this than others do. Truthfully, it’s not coming as a great shock to me. Sharon’s been confiding in me for a long time. There were two men inside Lew. He was good at his job, but in a personal way, he wasn’t an easy man to live with. Sharon gave up a lot for him.”
That overused phrase of “pushing your buttons” came into play. “Suicide,” “depression,” “gave up a lot,” and, above all else, “for me” were phrases that pushed so many buttons in Ellie’s head that she was close to exploding.
“Let me guess,” Ellie said through her teeth. “His wife says that she gave up a lucrative career to move out here to the middle of nowhere to be with him. She lives her life for him.”
Jessie had dropped her arm and was looking at her as though she were about to lose her mind, but Ellie couldn’t seem to stop.
“Tell me,” Ellie said, venom in her voice. “Did the woman act as though she were reluctant to tell you about how miserable her life was? Did she say that all she wanted was a husband, but Lew was more interested in money than he was in her? Did she hint that Lew might be . . . well, insane?”
Jessie stared at her in shock, and his horrified look made Ellie come back to herself.
“Sorry,” she said, starting to back away from him. “I’m sure this isn’t the
truth. I’m sure she’s a nice woman and I’m just talking from my own personal experience, but—”
Jessie was still looking at her as though she had escaped from the local loony bin. Ellie glanced at her watch. “I have to go. I have to . . . change clothes,” she said, searching for some reason to leave instead of just turning tail and running. “I think Valerie wants me for . . . for something,” she said, continuing to back away from him. He seemed frozen in place as he stared at her.
“I’m sorry about what I said,” Ellie said, desperately wanting him to stop thinking she was crazy. The divorce court had required that she prove that she was sane, but she couldn’t do it then and she couldn’t do it now. “It’s just that I liked Lew, liked him a lot.” She was still backing up as she spoke, putting more and more distance between them. “But I didn’t feel any depression coming from him, and I think that after what I’ve been through these last three years, I’d know when a person is depressed. Madison is depressed, but Lew wasn’t.”
“Who is Madison?” Jessie snapped, the first words he’d said in minutes.
Ellie waved her hand in dismissal. “Just a friend of mine.”
Jessie was glaring at her, his eyebrows drawn into a deep frown. “What’s he to you?”
It took Ellie a moment to know what Jessie was talking about, as her mind was on Lew. “She. Madison is a she,” she said, then took a deep breath. “If you’re asking me about men in my life, I have a husband who is probably at this moment having lunch with someone and telling him or her what a jerk I am because I ran off for the weekend, heaven only knows where, with heaven only knows who. But the difference is that this time it’s true. And I’m sure that this weekend is going to cost me even more than he did cost me.” She knew this didn’t make sense, but how could she explain a future that hadn’t happened yet but that she knew? “I really do have to go,” she said lamely.
He was still standing there looking at her, so she glared at him, willing him to leave. He wasn’t for her. This thing with Lew had reminded her that she was still married and she still had to go through a vicious divorce. And her lovely weekend had turned into a fiasco. There was Valerie hauling her around to show her off, and Jessie had already admitted that he was using lines on her that he used on all women when he was trying to get them into bed with him. So much for her fantasies about love and a future, et cetera. And now this . . . This death of a man she’d liked very much.