Winter Roses. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ of you will marry someday and fill it up with kids,” Ivy teased.

      “Fat chance, in Stuart’s case,” Merrie chuckled. “Come on in. Where’s your bag?”

      “In the boot…”

      The Hispanic driver was already at the trunk, smiling as he lifted out Ivy’s bag and carried it all the way up to the porch for her. But before Ivy could reach into her purse, Merrie pressed a big bill into the driver’s hand and spoke to him in her own, elegant Spanish.

      Ivy started to argue, but the cab was racing down the driveway and Merrie was halfway up the front steps.

      “Don’t argue,” she told Ivy with a grin. “You know you can’t win.”

      “I know,” the other woman sighed. “Thanks, Merrie, but…”

      “But you’ve got about three dollars spare a week, and you’d do without lunch one day at school to pay for the cab,” came the quiet reply. “If you were in my place, you’d do it for me,” she added, and Ivy couldn’t argue. But it did hurt her pride.

      “Listen,” Merrie added, “one day when you’re a fabulously rich owner of a bookkeeping firm, and driving a Rolls, you can pay me back. Okay?”

      Ivy just laughed. “Listen, no C.P.A. ever got rich enough to own a Rolls,” came the dry reply. “But I really will pay you back.”

      “Friends help friends,” Merrie said simply. “Come on in.”

      The house was huge, really huge. The one thing that set rich people apart from poor people, Ivy pondered, was space. If you were wealthy, you could afford plenty of room in your house and a bathroom the size of a garage. You could also afford enough land to give you some privacy and a place to plant flowers and trees and have a fish pond…

      “What are you brooding about now?” Merrie asked on the way up the staircase.

      “Space,” Ivy murmured.

      “Outer?”

      “No. Personal space,” Ivy qualified the answer. “I was thinking that how much space you have depends on how much money you have. I’d love to have just a yard. And maybe a fish pond,” she added.

      “You can feed our Chinese goldfish any time you want to,” the other girl offered.

      Ivy didn’t reply. She noticed, not for the first time, how much Merrie resembled her older brother. They were both tall and slender, with jet-black hair. Merrie wore her hair long, but Stuart’s was short and conventionally cut. Her eyes, pale blue like Stuart’s, could take on a steely, dangerous quality when she was angry. Not that Merrie could hold a candle to Stuart in a temper. Ivy had seen grown men hide in the barn when he passed by. Stuart’s pale, deep-set eyes weren’t the only indication of bad temper. His walk was just as good a measure of ill humor. He usually glided like a runner. But when he was angry, his walk slowed. The slower the walk, the worse the temper.

      Ivy had learned early in her friendship with Merrie to see how fast Stuart was moving before she approached any room he was in. One memorable day when he’d lost a prize cattle dog to a coyote, she actually pleaded a migraine headache she didn’t have to avoid sitting at the supper table with him.

      It was a nasty habit of his to be bitingly sarcastic to anyone within range when he was mad, especially if the object of his anger was out of reach.

      Merrie led Ivy into the bedroom that adjoined hers and watched as Ivy opened the small bag and brought out a clean pair of jeans and a cotton T-shirt. She frowned. “No nightgown?”

      Ivy winced. “Rachel upset me. I forgot.”

      “No problem. You can borrow one of mine. It will drag the floor behind you like a train, of course, but it will fit most everywhere else.” Her eyes narrowed. “I suppose Rachel is after the money.”

      Ivy nodded, looking down into her small bag. “She was good at convincing Daddy I didn’t deserve anything.”

      “She told lies.”

      Ivy nodded again. “But he believed her. Rachel could be so sweet and loving when she wanted something. He drank…” She stopped at once.

      Merrie sat down on the bed and folded her hands in her lap. “I know he drank, Ivy,” she said gently. “Stuart had him investigated.”

      Her eyes widened in disbelief. “What?”

      Merrie bit her lower lip. “I can’t tell you why, so don’t even ask. Suffice it to say that it was an eye-opening experience.”

      Ivy wondered how much information Stuart’s private detective had ferreted out about the private lives of the Conley family.

      “We just knew that he drank,” Merrie said at once, when she saw her friend’s tortured expression. She patted Ivy’s hand. “Nobody has that perfect childhood they put in motion pictures, you know. Dad wanted Stuart to raise thoroughbreds to race in competition. It was something he’d never been able to do. He tried to force Stuart through agricultural college.” She laughed hollowly. “Nobody could force my brother to do anything, not even Dad.”

      “Were they very much alike?” Ivy asked, because she’d only met the elder York a few times.

      “No. Well, in one way they were,” she corrected. “Dad in a bad temper could cost us good hired men. Stuart cost us our best, and oldest, horse wrangler last week.”

      “How?”

      “He made a remark Stuart didn’t like when Stuart ran the Jaguar through the barn and into its back wall.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      IVY could hardly contain her amusement. Merrie’s brother was one of the most self-contained people she’d ever known. He never lost control of himself. “Stuart ran the Jag through the barn? The new Jaguar, the XJ?”

      Merrie grimaced. “I’m afraid so. He was talking on his cell phone at the time.”

      “About what, for heaven’s sake?”

      “One of the managers at the Jacobsville sales barn mixed up the lot numbers and sold Stuart’s purebred cows, all of whom were pregnant by Big Blue, for the price of open heifers,” she added, the term “open heifer” denoting a two-year-old female who wasn’t pregnant. Big Blue was a champion Black Angus herd sire.

      “That was an expensive mistake,” Ivy commented.

      “And not only for us,” Merrie added, tongue-in-cheek. “Stuart took every cattle trailer we had and every one he could borrow, complete with drivers, went to the sale barn and brought back every single remaining bull or cow or calf he was offering for sale. Then he shipped them to another sale barn in Oklahoma by train. That’s why he’s in Oklahoma. He said this time, they’re going to be certain which lots they’re selling at which price, because he’s having it written on their hides in magic marker.”

      Ivy just grinned. She knew Stuart would do no such thing, even if he felt like it.

      “The СКАЧАТЬ