Jimmy Morris stood beside him, his stomach pressed to the bar and one boot on the brass foot rail. “When you’re talkin’ marriage, it isn’t a matter of bein’ better,” he said ponderously. “Ladies choose who they choose.”
“True enough,” Lyle agreed. “But it doesn’t hurt to try a bit of persuasion…” He winked. “You know what I mean.”
“Richard seems to think he’s got an edge on you,” Billy informed Glen, “and no one likes a man who’s too confident.”
“Even if he does buy the drinks,” Jimmy added.
“Richard’s celebrating already?” Glen asked, wondering if Richard knew something no one else did. Maybe he’d already asked Ellie and maybe she’d given him an encouraging response. The thought twisted his gut. To this point he’d trusted Ellie’s judgement. More or less. He was miserable and uncertain about her and Richard, but he’d always supposed that in the end Ellie would turn to him. Because of their friendship and everything they had in common…and their kisses.
Those kisses in the wee hours of Saturday night had been wonderful, the best of his life. He found it hard to believe they’d meant so little to her.
“Weston’s so sure of himself he’s taking odds.”
“Making himself the favorite,” Billy said, his mouth thinning with disapproval.
“Naturally,” Jimmy muttered and took a swallow of beer.
“We were kinda hopin’ you’d set him down a peg or two,” Lyle said in a tone that suggested more than one rancher had pinned his hopes on Glen.
Glen didn’t know what it was about Richard Weston. He’d never met anyone so likable, yet so universally disliked. He could be charming, witty and fun, and at the same time he was the biggest jackass in the state of Texas.
“What do you think?” Billy pressed.
“You’re not gonna take this sittin’ down, are you?” Lyle asked.
“You gotta do something,” Jimmy added. “We got money on you!”
All three men looked to Glen. Unfortunately he didn’t know what the hell to do.
ONE OF THE MOST DIFFICULT things Richard Weston had ever done was return to Promise—broke, his tail between his legs, seeking a handout from his family. Once he was home again, he figured he’d die of sheer boredom inside a month. Promise was about as Hicktown, U.S.A., as it could get. He stared at the walls of his old bedroom and sighed. Never in a million years did he guess he’d end up back here.
What intrigued him was how gullible folks in Promise were. Everyone—well, except for the sheriff and he couldn’t prove anything—accepted his lies without pause or question. In fact, he’d gotten a little careless, but it didn’t seem to matter. He’d certainly been right in assuming that he’d be safe here, at the ranch—safe from his troubles back east.
The boredom, though. He sighed. And the cows…
It’d taken him the better part of six years to get the stench of cattle from his skin. He’d never understood the attraction of following a bunch of pathetic-looking beasts from pasture to pasture. As far as he was concerned, cattle were headaches on the hoof. Yet his father and his brother had always acted as though there was nothing more wonderful in life than ranching. But it sure wasn’t for him; never had been, never would be. The mere thought of sitting in a saddle all day made him want to puke, although God knew Grady had done his best to get him to do some work around the place. Thus far, he’d managed to avoid doing anything of consequence. He’d volunteered to run errands, which gave him free use of the pickup—something that had come in handy for other reasons. The tradespeople around Promise trusted him, assumed he was taking care of ranch business. And he was. But he was seeing to his own needs, as well.
To his surprise he’d discovered some pleasant distractions in Promise. Ellie Frasier, for one. She was a sweet thing, pretty, too, if a guy didn’t mind small breasts and skinny legs. Personally he preferred a more voluptuous woman, but Ellie came with certain monetary compensations. A prosperous business, plus a healthy inheritance from her daddy, who’d doted on his only child.
It wouldn’t hurt him any to get his hands on old-man Frasier’s money. He could use it. He was in trouble, but all it took was money in the right places and his problem would vanish.
For now he was safe enough in Promise. No one knew about his family, and even if they managed to track him to Texas, they’d never find his hiding place.
He had Savannah to thank for that. He’d always been lucky— at least until his present difficulties. But then, everything had a way of working out. This latest episode was a good example.
No, he decided, lying on top of his quilt, hands folded behind his head, there could be worse things in this world than marrying Ellie Frasier. He’d ask her soon, and if she was opposed to selling the business, then he’d take it over. He could do well with it, too—aside from the fact that it would provide collateral for raising quick cash.
Actually Richard liked the idea of becoming a local businessman. He could remember one of his teachers, Lily Moorhouse, telling him he should be a politician. The old biddy just could be right. In a year or two he might even consider running for mayor. Promise could use his kind of leadership. This hayseed town needed someone to bring it into the twenty-first century.
The town had real possibilities, if he could convince people to listen to his ideas. For starters they needed to close down the bowling alley; in his view it gave the place a white-trash image. He’d buy up land outside town and get some investors to build a shopping complex. If not that, he’d bet he could get one of the big discount stores interested in the area. It was time the local shop owners found out about competitive pricing.
Everything hinged on Ellie. They’d kissed a couple of times, and although she didn’t exactly set him ablaze, she wasn’t bad. He knew she was sweet on Glen Patterson. That might be cause for concern if Patterson wasn’t so intent on putting his foot in his mouth, which he seemed to do with increasing regularity. Fortunately for Richard.
Poor guy was out of his league with women, unlike Richard who had the whole mating ritual down to an art. The way he figured it, Ellie would agree to marry him before the end of the month. Maybe sooner. When he turned on the charm, there wasn’t a female within six states who could refuse him. Little Ellie Frasier didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell.
And over at Billy D’s Richard stood to pick up a few extra bucks betting on his own chances in the Texas two-step.
Altogether a sweet deal.
FOR MOST OF HIS ADULT LIFE Glen had been confident and self-assured. He’d taken over the family ranch with his brother, worked hard, kept his nose clean. Romantic involvements had been light and ultimately insignificant, causing no pain when they ended. Until now there’d been little to disrupt his calm existence.
Any problems he either solved himself or sought advice from Cal. This was the first time since he was thirteen years old that he felt the need to speak to his father about girls. Women. What his grandfather used to call “personal matters.”
His parents had moved into town a few years ago. His father had suffered a heart attack, and although the doctors had said he was good as new following his bypass surgery, his mother wasn’t taking any chances. For years they’d talked about moving into Promise one day. His father had insisted he wasn’t ready to retire, so they’d bought the Howe Mansion, which wasn’t really a mansion, just the largest house in town. Before another year was up it’d been renovated and turned into a bed-and-breakfast.
Glen had had his doubts about this venture. Cal, too. But their parents had proved them both wrong. The bed-and-breakfast was thriving, and so were Phil and Mary Patterson.
His mother complained that she didn’t see near enough of her sons. That being the case, she certainly looked surprised to see Glen when he walked into her kitchen.
“Hi, Mom,” he said, slipping up behind her and kissing her cheek.
Mary Patterson hugged him as though it’d been a week of Sundays since his last visit. “Taste
this,” she said, sticking a spoon in his face.
“What is it?” Glen asked, jerking he head back. He preferred not to be part of a culinary experiment.
“Chili. I’m practicing for the cook-off.”
“Mom, that’s not for months yet.”
“I know. This is a new recipe I’ve been playing around with. What do you think?”
Despite his better judgment, Glen tried the chili and tried to hide his response. It tasted…well, not like food. Not like something you’d seriously consider eating.
“It needs work, right?” she asked, studying him.
He nodded. For her guests his mother generally stayed with plain basic food. Good thing. “This recipe needs a rethink, Mom.”
She sighed and tossed the spoon into the sink. “I was afraid of that.”
“Where’s Dad?” Glen asked, hoping to make the inquiry sound casual.
“Upstairs. The sink in the bathroom’s plugged again.” Her gaze didn’t waver from his. “Something on your mind?”
He nodded. He could never hide anything from his mother.
“Does it involve Ellie Frasier?”
“Yeah.”
She grinned and pointed toward the stairway off the kitchen. “Talk to your father, but if you want advice about how to romance her, talk to me. Your father doesn’t know a damn thing about romance.”
Hiding a smile, Glen headed for the stairs. Just as his mother had said, he found his dad lying on the tile floor staring up at the sink, wrench in hand.
“Hi, Dad.”
“I thought I heard you downstairs talking to your mother.” Phil Patterson slid out from beneath the sink and reached for a rag to dry his hands. “And to think she was worried about me working too hard on the ranch. If anything’s going to kill me, it’ll be this sink.”
Glen sat down on the edge of the tub.
“Did you have something you wanted to ask me, son?”
Leaning forward, Glen removed his Stetson, slowly turning it in his hand. “How many years have you and Mom been married?”
“Well, your brother’s thirty-six, so this year we had our thirty-seventh anniversary. Thirty-seven years! Damn, it doesn’t seem that long. Hell if I can figure out when I got old.”
“You’re not.”
Phil smiled. “That’s my boy. Buttering me up, are you? So what do you need?”
“Just some advice.”
“Be glad to help if I can.” With an exaggerated groan, he stood up, lowered the toilet seat and sat there.
Glen wasn’t sure where to start. “When did you know you loved Mom?”
Phil considered the question for a moment. “When she told me I did.” He chuckled and Glen joined in. “Don’t laugh too hard, boy, it’s the truth. We’d dated in high school some, but she was two years younger. After I graduated, I enlisted. Joined the navy. We wrote back and forth and I saw a little of the world. Eventually your mother graduated and went away to college in Dallas. We didn’t see each other for three years, but we kept in touch. I must say she wrote a lot more letters than me.
“Then one Christmas, we both happened to be home at the same time. It was a shock to see her again. We’d been friends, stayed in touch, but somehow I’d never noticed how pretty she was.”
Glen nodded; his mother was still a pretty woman.
“I wasn’t the only one who noticed, either,” his father continued. “She got more attention than a prize heifer at the state fair. Until that Christmas I’d always thought of her as a friend. We’d dated from time to time, but it was nothing serious. That Christmas my eyes were opened.”
“Did you ask her to marry you then?”
“Hell, no. I wasn’t happy about other men paying attention to her, but I figured if she wanted to date someone else, I didn’t have the right to stand in her way.”
“You were sweet on her, though?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t realize how much until we’d kissed a few times.”
Now that was something Glen could understand. “Did you try to talk to her?”
Phil chuckled again. “I sure did, but all we seemed to do was argue. Nothing I said was right. I told her I thought she was pretty, and even that came out like an insult.”
This story was sounding more familiar by the minute. “So what happened?”
His father grew thoughtful. “It was time to head back to the base, and I knew if I didn’t try to explain myself one last time, I might not get another chance. I called her all evening, but she was out—you can imagine how that made me feel, especially since I couldn’t very well ring her doorbell in the middle of the night.” He smiled at the memory. “So I stood outside her bedroom and threw stones at the window until she woke up.
“It’s not a good idea to wake your mother out of a sound sleep, even now. It took me a while to convince her to hear me out. Luckily she agreed and sat with me on the porch. By that time I was so confused I didn’t know what to say.”
Glen edged closer to his father, keenly interested in the details of his parents’ courtship.
“I stammered and stuttered and told her how much I valued her friendship and hated the idea of returning to Maine with this bad feeling between us. That was when she looked me full in the eye and asked if I loved her.”
His mother had always been a gutsy woman and Glen admired her for it. “What did you tell her?”
“I didn’t know what to say. It was the first time I’d ever thought about it. We were friends, hung around with the same crowd, exchanged letters, that sort of thing. She wanted to know if I loved her, and for the life of me I didn’t have an answer.”
It went without saying that wasn’t what his mother had wanted to hear.
“When I hesitated, Mary leaped to her feet and announced I was the biggest fool who’d ever lived if I hadn’t figured out how I felt about her after three years. My, was she mad.” Shaking his head, he rubbed the side of his jaw. “Her eyes had fire in them. In all the years we’ve been married, I’ve only seen her get that riled a handful of times. She told me if I married some Yankee girl I’d regret it the rest of my life.”
He paused a moment, lost in his memories. “Then before I could stop her, she raced into the house. By the time I’d gathered my wits and followed her, she was already running up the stairs. Her father and her mother both stood on the landing, looking down at me as though they wanted to string me up from the nearest tree.”
“What’d you do?”
“What I should have done a hell of a lot sooner. I shouted up at her father for permission to marry his daughter.”
That scene filled Glen’s mind. His father a young sailor, standing at the bottom of the stairs, watching the love of his life racing away. “What’d Mom do?”
“She stopped, halfway between her parents and me. I’ll never forget the look of shock on her face as she turned around and stared at me.”
“She burst into tears, right?”
“No. She stood here, calm as could be and asked me when I wanted the wedding to take place. Hell if I knew, so I said that was up to her, and she suggested six months.”
“I thought your anniversary was Valentine’s Day.”
“It is. Once we decided to get married, I wasn’t willing to wait six months. By summer she was pregnant with your brother.” He looked at Glen. “Why all these questions?”
“Just curious.”
“You going to ask Ellie to marry you?”
“I’ve been thinking about it.”
His father’s grin widened. “Did she tell you you’re in love with her yet?”
“Nope. I don’t think she realizes it herself.”
Phil stood and slapped him on the back. “Then start a new family tradition and tell her yourself, boy. It’s about time the men in this family took the initiative.”
CHAPTER 8
RICHARD ROLLED OUT OF BED and reached for his jeans. Savannah was making breakfast, and if his nose didn’t deceive him, it smelled like one of his favorites.
French toast.
Yawning, he grabbed a shirt on his way out the door and bounded down the stairs and into the kitchen.
“Mornin’,” he said, yawning again. He glanced at the wall clock and was surprised to see it was after nine. A midmorning breakfast cooked specially for him meant his sister was planning on a little heart-to-heart. Damn.
“Morning,” Savannah returned in that gentle way of hers. At times it was all he could do not to leap behind her, waving his arms and screaming at the top of his lungs. He wondered if he’d get a reaction from her even then. Somehow he doubted it.
“Grady needs you to drive into town this morning.”
“No problem.” Actually Richard liked running errands. They suited his purpose. Every time Grady sent him into town, he managed to pick up an item or two for himself and put it on his brother’s tab without Grady’s knowing a thing about it.
Savannah delivered a plate to the table where Richard sat waiting. He dug into the meal after slathering his hot toast with plenty of butter and syrup. Savannah didn’t disappear, which meant the errand for Grady wasn’t the only thing on her mind.
“There’s been plenty of talk around town about you and Ellie,” she said, clutching the back of the chair opposite his.
The tension in her fingers told him she felt awkward addressing the subject. Lord, his sister was easy to read!
“That so?” He stuffed another forkful of French toast in his mouth.
“Ellie’s a real sweetheart.”
He shrugged.
Savannah pulled out the chair and sat down.
Damn it, he’d asked for that. Knowing his sister was fond of the other woman, he should have talked her up, fabricated a few things, let his sister think he’d fallen in love with Ellie. He hadn’t, but his interest in her was definitely high at the moment. A lot was riding on this, and if he managed to manipulate the situation to his liking, it meant staying in the community. After fixing his current problems of course. Yeah, he could see a future here. Become one of the leading lights in Promise. Turn this place around. And it all hinged on little Ellie Frasier.