Johanna Lindsey
All I Need Is You
Dedication
For A.J.
His father’s pride, his mother’s joy,
and his grandparents’ delight.
Welcome to the family, kiddo.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
“I don’t give a damn if you are part owner…
Chapter 2
When Casey stormed from the room, she didn’t head upstairs.
Chapter 3
There was a fire up ahead, a campfire—at least, Damian…
Chapter 4
I’m on my way to Texas to kill a man.
Chapter 5
The smell of coffee woke Damian, but he didn’t stir…
Chapter 6
Kid had hunkered down by the fire again and was…
Chapter 7
Casey was probably as glad to see Coffeyville the next…
Chapter 8
Just one hour further last night on the trail, and…
Chapter 9
Damian stood there with his hands raised, incredulous that he…
Chapter 10
Damian spent the next few days quite literally cooling his…
Chapter 11
Casey spent the rest of that day castigating herself for…
Chapter 12
It should have been an uneventful trip to Fort Worth,…
Chapter 13
The next town along the route wasn’t really a town,…
Chapter 14
Damian didn’t follow immediately after his young friend. If the…
Chapter 15
Damian had seen nothing wrong with their sharing a bed.
Chapter 16
“How dare you be a girl?”
Chapter 17
Damian gave up trying to get any sleep that night.
Chapter 18
Casey had thought Damian was joking about sleeping all day.
Chapter 19
Having found a watering hole, Casey set up camp a…
Chapter 20
An accident. That was what Damian had called the kiss…
Chapter 21
On the way to the train station the next morning,…
Chapter 22
Casey had been sleeping on one of the thickly upholstered…
Chapter 23
Casey was in the habit of asking around, in each…
Chapter 24
The Jersey Lilly, where Judge Roy Bean held court whether…
Chapter 25
Even though she realized that it was only temporary, being…
Chapter 26
At first, Damian found it quite amusing; Casey’s legendary composure…
Chapter 27
The very first thing she noticed about Barnet’s Saloon was…
Chapter 28
“Two brothers, both wanting to be mayors? Do you believe…
Chapter 29
Casey wasn’t in top form the next morning. She’d stopped…
Chapter 30
Expecting trouble, Casey didn’t get much sleep that first night…
Chapter 31
The ambush occurred about an hour out of Sanderson the…
Chapter 32
Damian couldn’t see behind the boulder that Casey had claimed…
Chapter 33
Casey awoke to find herself belly-down over a saddle on…
Chapter 34
It had been days since he’d seen Casey. Damian had…
Chapter 35
It was the middle of the following afternoon by the…
Chapter 36
It was a frustrating dilemma, whether to chase down Casey…
Chapter 37
They’d marched her back over to the saloon, where with…
Chapter 38
The little cabin must have been a regular hideout, because…
Chapter 39
It was becoming dark real fast, too fast. Jethro had…
Chapter 40
A bright, nearly full moon allowed them a quick ride…
Chapter 41
By the time they dropped Jed off at the undertaker…
Chapter 42
There was an overnight stop in the next town, as…
Chapter 43
Courtney was on the west range of the ranch when…
Chapter 44
Casey paused on the hill overlooking the Bar M Ranch…
Chapter 45
Later, in her spacious bedroom, a room still in the…
Chapter 46
Damian was having a real hard time traveling with Jack…
Chapter 47
It was a mansion by any standards, the K.C. ranch…
Chapter 48
I’m beginning to think I never should have told you…
Chapter 49
Casey found her father sitting on his horse outside the…
Chapter 50
Damian should have gotten on the next train heading north.
Chapter 51
Damian was about halfway to Chicago when he decided to…
Chapter 52
Casey and her mother took over the separate bed compartment…
Chapter 53
Casey couldn’t believe her rotten luck. To go from that…
Chapter 54
Two days later, Casey arrived halfway through the dinner Damian…
Chapter 55
They all gathered just before sunrise the next morning, while…
Chapter 56
Casey was already packing by the time Damian arrived at…
Chapter 57
Casey had taken the time to find out a few…
Chapter 58
Good comes with the bad and vice versa. Damian tried…
Enter the World of Johanna Lindsey
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Johanna Lindsey
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Texas, 1892
“I don’t give a damn if you are part owner of that ranch, you’re not going to run it!”
“That’s not fair and you know it! You’d let Tyler run it if he was here.”
“Tyler’s a full-grown man now. You’re just seventeen, Casey.”
“I don’t believe you said that. He’s full-grown at one year older’n me, when women my age have husbands and three kids already? But that’s not grown up enough for you? Or is it just because I’m a woman? And if you say it is, I swear I’ll never speak to you again.”
“A welcoming thought at the moment.”
Neither of them meant it, but you couldn’t tell that by looking at them. Courtney Straton watched her husband and only daughter glaring at each other and sighed long and loud, hoping to get their attention. It didn’t work. The argument had escalated from heated words to shouting, and when Chandos and Casey argued, subtlety didn’t work. She doubted they even recalled that she was there.
This was an old argument. However, it had never been this heated before. Ever since Fletcher Straton had died last year, the ultimate fate of the Bar M Ranch was in question. The ranch would have belonged to Chandos, but Fletcher, knowing his son, had put a provision in his will that if Chandos refused the inheritance, the ranch would then go in equal shares to his three grandchildren. Which was exactly what had happened.
Chandos didn’t need the ranch. He had done well for himself. The incentive had been there, to prove to his father that he could match him, and he’d done that well enough. He might not own quite as many acres, but he had just as many head of cattle, and his house was nearly twice as large as Fletcher??
?s, which made it almost a mansion.
Combined, the Bar M and K.C. ranches formed one of the biggest spreads in Texas. Because they were owned by father and son, most folks had always considered them combined. It was only the father and the son who didn’t, and now only Chandos who still insisted on keeping them separate.
But separate didn’t mean allowing his daughter to run the ranch. He was quick to temper, and Casey wasn’t helping matters by turning stubborn on this particular subject no matter how serious she was about it.
They were much alike, these two. Unlike her two fair-haired brothers, Tyler at eighteen and Dillon, who was only fourteen, Casey took after Chandos in temperament and in looks. She got her hair from him, black as pitch. She got her height from him, making her, at five feet nine inches, about the tallest girl in the county.
The only thing Casey had inherited from Courtney was her remarkable eyes. On Casey, they were like softly glowing amber jewels. And for all that she professed to be a woman and was one by the standards of the West, where young women married at such young ages, she was late in filling out. Tall, lean, and lanky like her father, though without his muscles.
Yet she was a very pretty girl, if she would be still long enough for one to notice. Trouble was, Casey was never still. Standing, sitting, she was always in motion of one sort or another, pacing, or talking with her hands, or walking with long, masculine strides.
But if you caught her in a quiet moment, you’d notice how large her eyes were, how flawlessly smooth her skin was under her tan, how her nose was shaped rather pertly. Her brows were a bit too thick, her chin a bit too stubborn—like her father’s—but added to her finely chiseled cheekbones, these features weren’t so noticeable. What was disconcerting, though, was that she had the same uncanny ability as Chandos to hide her emotions when she chose to, completely, so that you had no idea whatsoever what she was thinking or feeling.
This wasn’t one of those times. But Casey had another of Chandos’s traits—strategizing. When one tactic didn’t work, she usually resorted to another.
Shouting hadn’t worked, so she switched to a calmer tone. “But the Bar M needs someone in command.”
“Sawtooth is doing well enough.”
“Sawtooth is sixty-seven years old. He was retired and living peacefully on his little spread when Grandpa died. He agreed to take over the reins only until you could find someone else. But you haven’t found anyone willing to take on those responsibilities without demanding half the profits, and you refuse to manage the place yourself.”
“I have enough headaches here. I don’t have time to divide myself—”
“But I do, and I can do it. You know I can. The Bar M is one-third mine. I have every right—”
“You’re not even eighteen yet, Casey—”
“What’s eighteen got to do with anything, I’d like to know? And besides, I will be in a few months—”
“Which is when you should be thinking about getting married and starting your own family. You can’t do that if you’re saddled with running the Bar M.”
“Marriage!” the girl snorted. “I’m only talking about a couple years, Daddy, just until Tyler finishes college. There isn’t anything I don’t know about running a ranch. You saw to that. You taught me all I know about ranching, all I know about surviving on the trail—”
“Biggest mistake I ever made,” Chandos mumbled.
“No, it wasn’t.” Courtney spoke up finally. “You wanted her to be able to handle any situation if we weren’t around to handle it for her.”
“Exactly,” Chandos said. “If we weren’t around.”
“I want to do this, and you haven’t given one good reason why I shouldn’t.”
“Then you haven’t been listening, little girl,” Chandos said, frowning. “You’re too young, you’re a female that the forty-some wranglers on the Bar M are not going to want to take orders from, and you’ve reached the time in your life when you should be looking for a husband. You won’t be finding one with your nose buried in ranch accounts and coming in off the range each day sweat-soaked and filthy.”
Casey was red-faced by then, most likely from anger, though it was hard to tell. “Marriage again!” she all but sneered. “There hasn’t been a man around these parts in the last two years worth my taking notice of. Or do you want me to marry just anyone? If that’s the case, I can think of a dozen men who are eligible. I’ll go rope me one tomorrow, if that’s what it’ll take to—”
“Don’t be impertinent.”
“I’m being absolutely serious,” Casey insisted. “You’d let a husband of mine run the Bar M, wouldn’t you? You’d find that perfectly acceptable. Well, I’ll have a candidate for you no later than—”
“You’ll do no such thing. You will not marry just to get your hands on those account ledgers—”
“I’ve had my hands on those account books for months now, Daddy. Sawtooth is half blind, if you didn’t realize it. Trying to tally the ledgers gives him a powerful headache that actually makes him physically ill.”
It was Chandos who was red-faced now, and there was no doubt in his case that it was from anger. “Why wasn’t I told about this?”
“Maybe because every time Sawtooth rides over here to see you, you’re out on the range somewhere. And maybe because you won’t step foot on the Bar M to find out why he came over in the first place. And maybe because you don’t really care about the Bar M. You’d just as soon see it fall to ruin now that Grandpa’s gone, just to spite his memory.”
“Casey!” This from Courtney in an appalled tone.
But Casey had already blanched. She’d gone too far and knew it. And before her father could blast her for doing so, she ran from the room.
Courtney started to assure Chandos that Casey had just let her emotions run away with her, that she hadn’t really meant what she’d said; but, tight-lipped, he marched out of the room right behind Casey. Only not to follow her. He headed off toward the back of the house, a more direct route to the stable, while she’d run toward the front.
Which was entirely too bad. Chandos shouldn’t have let the argument end like that, with Casey riddled with guilt now, but still determined to change her father’s mind. He should have been more explicit with his reasons. He should have pointed out that he didn’t want to see Casey get hurt when she failed, which she was bound to do.
The cowboys on the Bar M might accept her for a while, because they knew her as Fletcher’s granddaughter, but inevitably there would be new men, and those who didn’t know her and hadn’t known Fletcher would start dissension soon enough. It might be different if she were an older woman, a widow or the like, but she wasn’t. Most men simply wouldn’t take orders from a woman, much less one they considered a young girl.
But Chandos hadn’t mentioned any of that, at least not clearly enough. Courtney would have to talk to her herself, though she would give her a day or two to calm down first. Casey was unpredictable when her emotions were riled.
Chapter 2
When Casey stormed from the room, she didn’t head upstairs. The front porch was closer, and at this time of the morning it was usually empty and peaceful. Today was no different.
It was a big porch, only ten feet wide but some eighty feet long, fronting the entire length of the house. It was filled with small white tables and chairs, a couple of two-seater swings that her father had built, and a profusion of plants that her mother babied and that hid the numerous spittoons the ranch hands made use of.
She moved to the railing, gripping it until her knuckles turned white. As far as the eye could see was Straton land, either her father’s or her grandfather’s, vast plains dotted with the occasional hill or a lonely stand of trees around a watering hole, and the usual cactuses and fauna of Texas. There was a forest on the northern border, but you couldn’t see it from the house. A creek bed divided the two properties. Farther south, they shared a freshwater lake teeming with bass. It was stark land, it was beautiful land. Yet
on that fine spring morning Casey noticed nothing.
She never should have said what she did to her father, but then, he’d been so unreasonable. And choking on both guilt and anger wasn’t an easy thing to deal with. Anger she was used to, growing up with two brothers who delighted in teasing her. But guilt was another matter, and for something that might be true…
What else was she to think? Her father had always given the impression that he really didn’t care about the Bar M. He didn’t want anything to do with anything that had ever belonged to Fletcher Straton. Everyone knew that. Yet Casey had loved her grandfather. She had never understood why he and Chandos couldn’t bury the hatchet, so to speak, and get along after all these years. Fletcher had made every effort. But Chandos was unyielding.
She knew the history, of course—how Meara, Fletcher’s wife, had left him, apparently because of his unfaithfulness. She had taken their son with her, and although Fletcher had searched far and wide for them, intent on bringing them home, they had completely disappeared.
He didn’t find out how they had managed to elude him so thoroughly until years later, when Chandos showed up at the Bar M. He had been lucky he hadn’t been shot on sight riding in on his pinto, wearing buckskins, his long black braids, and little else. He’d looked like a full-fledged Indian, all except for his deep blue eyes, Meara’s eyes, and the only way his father was able to recognize him.