A Groom For Gwen. Jeanne Allan
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Название: A Groom For Gwen
Автор: Jeanne Allan
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
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“Who’s Gordon? Your ex-husband?”
“I’ve never been married. Gordon Pease is Bert’s nephew. He’s convinced I manipulated Bert into leaving me the ranch. That I took advantage of a senile old man. If he’d spent ten minutes with Bert in the past year he’d know the last thing Bert was, was senile.”
“What was he?”
“Lonely, I suppose.”
“So you were kind to him.”
“Bert wasn’t a pathetic old man who needed befriending,” Gwen said indignantly. “He enriched my life.”
“He left you a ranch because you listened to him?” Jake Stoner asked, skepticism filling his voice.
“He left it to me because he knew I’d love it. Bert married late, and his wife Sara died early. Bert should have remarried, but he didn’t, and all that’s left of his family is Gordon. Gordon moved to Colorado about five years ago and moved in with Bert for a short time. According to Bert, Gordon hated the ranch and everything about it. Gordon only wants the ranch because he thinks he can sell it and make a bundle.”
“You plan to sell it?”
“Never. All my life I’ve dreamed of my own home. A big house with a white picket fence. My dad was in the Air Force, and my mom would no more than get unpacked and it was time to pack up again. Mom and my brother Dan loved it, but not me. I wanted to settle. Mom says I take after my Grandmother Ashton. Both my grandfathers had itchy feet. They were always quitting their jobs and moving on to where the grass was sure to be greener. Grandmother Ashton hated it. She used to show me pictures and tell me about the home she grew up in back in Missouri.”
“With a white picket fence?”
“The fence is symbolic,” she said impatiently. “Putting down roots, that’s what counts. A place where a person belongs. So that no matter where you go, you know home is waiting for you to come back. I want a home which records our lives. I want marks on the wall showing how tall Crissie is at five and ten and fifteen years of age. I want to know that whatever weather I’m dressing for now, I’ll be dressing for the same weather five and ten Augusts from now. I want Crissie to be able to plant a tree and watch it grow for years and years.” Gwen gave an embarrassed laugh. “Sorry. My brother used to say I was a little irrational on the subject. It probably sounds stupid to a man like you who doesn’t like to stay long in one place.”
“There was a time when I considered settling down myself. Not too far from here. Even built myself a nice little place and...”
Gwen pulled into the ranch yard and parked the car. Then she turned to see why Jake Stoner hadn’t finished his sentence. He was staring in astonishment at Bert’s house. Her house. “I know it looks a little strange,” she said defensively, “but I like it. The earliest part dates from the early 1880’s, and every generation of Bert’s family added on to it. This is a house with character.”
Jake Stoner stepped out of the car and pivoted slowly on the heel of his boot, scanning the landscape. Squinting into the sun he methodically studied the various ranch buildings one by one. His gaze lit on the small stone house where Lawrence Hingle and Rod Heath, the ranch employees, had lived, then moved on to the earliest section of the main house. “I’ll be double-dog damned,” he said in quiet disbelief. He looked around again, eyed the mesa in the distance, and roared with laughter.
CHAPTER TWO
AFTER nine trips, Jake ought to be accustomed to being sent back equipped with the basic necessities such as a billfold with the proper driver’s license. He should have guessed Michaels would have taken care of the details.
Jake never would have guessed Michaels had a sense of humor. Sending Jake back to his own place. Jake wondered what Gwen would have said if he’d told her he’d built the stone section of the main house and the little stone house he now slept in. He’d chiseled the stone almost square like his pa taught him. The timbers for the porches across the front of both places were freighted in from the mountains. Long hours of backbreaking work. Work he hadn’t minded because he’d thought nothing more important than having his own ranch. Being his own man.
Folding his arms behind his head, Jake stared sightlessly at the ceiling. He’d been sixteen when Charlie Goodnight hired him on after the Civil War. Old enough and strong enough to do a man’s work. You had to be a man to trail cows up the Goodnight Trail from Texas. He’d never told Charlie he’d run away from home so he wouldn’t kill Frank the next time he laid into Jake with the bullwhip. Ma had turned a blind eye to his step-pa’s doings. Jake guessed she was scared of living alone. He tried not to think about her much.
He lay on an old iron bed, a sheet and an old faded quilt pulled up to his waist. The bed pushed up against the rock exterior wall. He’d left open the shutters, and shadows from a nearby scraggly pine flickered across the whitewashed lumber which paneled the other three walls. Someone else had put up the interior walls in what he’d built as the bunkhouse.
The main house he’d been building like the one Pa built near the banks of the Guadalupe River. If Jake shut his eyes he could see the Guadalupe making its way past gnarled and knotted bald cypress trees, their limbs covered with moss. Green, soft moss. Like the pillow on his mother’s best parlor chair.
Or his boss lady’s eyes.
Jake laughed softly. He’d seen the horrified look on her face when Mack’s previous owner talked of Mack being put down and knew instantly the dog had found a new home. Gwen Ashton tried to talk tough, but she was soft.
A soft heart wasn’t necessarily good. Not if it kept a person from making the tough decisions. Women could feel sorry for the damnedest creatures. He wondered about the old man. And where the little girl had come from if Gwen had never had a husband.
Never having a husband didn’t mean she’d never partaken of the pleasures of the marital bed. He’d never married, thanks to Marian, but he’d pleasured his share of women in his time.
Jake wondered if Gwen’s skin was as soft as her hear He moved restlessly in the bed. He shouldn’t be thinking those kinds of thoughts. Michaels didn’t act without a purpose. And one thing Jake was pretty sure about, Michaels hadn’t sent Jake here to sleep with a woman.
Soon enough Jake would figure out exactly why he’d been sent here. Until then, he had no intention of doing anything to annoy Michaels. Jake’s last trip, Michaels had said. Jake punched down his pillow. No mossy green eyes were going to keep him from finding the peace which had eluded him for over a hundred years.
Gwen stood on the porch fronting the oldest section of the main house and surveyed her domain. Home. How she’d envied Bert the steadfast pioneer genes running through his blood. No rootless wandering and always pulling up stakes for the Winthrop family. Bless Bert for giving her his home and his family history. She hugged herself. Her own home. A place to raise Crissie, a place where they could put down roots. Dynamite couldn’t blast her from her home.
From the other side of the screen door behind her she could hear Mrs. Kent, Doris, rattling pans in the kitchen. When Gwen counted her blessings, she put Bert’s housekeeper first. Nothing disturbed the forty-six-year-old widow, and Doris cooked like a dream. Crissie adored her. So did СКАЧАТЬ