The Rancher's Bride. Stella Bagwell

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СКАЧАТЬ soft drinks if you’d like,” he offered.

      As Rose pulled out a chair, she immediately started to decline the drink, then suddenly thought better of it. She’d been out in the heat for several hours and had only stopped to drink from her thermos a couple of times. Keeling over with heatstroke was the last thing she wanted to do in front of this man.

      “Iced tea would be nice,” she told him.

      He fixed two glasses of the drink, gave one to Rose, then placed the other one at the end of the table to her left.

      “I’ll be right back,” he said.

      Feeling more than awkward, she watched him leave the room. The television was still playing somewhere in another part of the house. Rose supposed Harlan’s daughter was watching it and as her gaze wandered around the untidy kitchen, she couldn’t help but think the girl was like the yearling he’d been working with earlier. She probably balked at doing anything except what she wanted.

      Rose had taken several sips of the cold, sweetened tea when Harlan returned with a folded white paper in his hand.

      After taking a seat, he handed her the document. “Before we talk anymore about the water, I think you need to see this.”

      Rose’s heart was suddenly pattering out of control, but whether it was reacting to Harlan’s closeness or the dread of what she was about to read, she wasn’t sure.

      Praying her hands would remain steady, she unfolded the legal-size document and quickly scanned the typewritten paragraphs. By the time she reached the end of the page every last drop of blood had drained from her face. A sick feeling roiled in her stomach.

      “This is—unbelievable!” she said in a voice hardly above a whisper.

      “Believe me, Miss Murdock, it’s legal and binding.”

      Rose lifted her eyes to his. “I’m not doubting its authenticity,” she quickly assured him. “I’m talking about my father—”

      Biting down on her lip, she looked away from him. How could Tomas have done such a thing to his family, she wondered sickly. First that woman—his mistress, whom they still hadn’t been able to track down! For all they knew she might turn up any day and demand more money, or even worse, her babies back. Now this!

      Forcing her gaze back to him, she said, “I must tell you Mr.—Harlan, my sisters and I knew nothing of this. We’re, well, actually we’re finding that our father kept a good many things from us while he was alive. But this is—I can’t imagine what he was thinking!”

      Harlan could see she was clearly wounded by the knowledge that her father had borrowed money from him and used the Bar M as collateral. Hell, if his old man had done such a thing to him, he’d be more than wounded, Harlan thought. He’d be wanting to draw blood.

      “Did he tell you why he wanted the money?” Rose asked. “Why did he come to you rather than go to the bank?”

      The pain in her gray eyes bothered Harlan. He looked away from her as his forefinger unconsciously slid up and down the side of the cold, sweaty glass.

      “He didn’t say exactly what he wanted the money for and I didn’t ask. Tomas was my friend. When I first moved onto this place, he helped me while others didn’t bother to offer. Your father didn’t have to tell me why he needed the money. I was just glad to be able to help him out. As to why he came to me rather than the bank, well—” Harlan shrugged and forced himself to look at Tomas’s daughter. “I got the impression he didn’t want to have to do any explaining and that maybe he had already borrowed to the hilt.”

      It didn’t surprise Rose that this man was so intuitive. There was something about his strong presence that told her he’d done, seen and lived a lot in his thirty-some years. He was no man’s fool.

      Rose’s fingers tightened on the promissory note in her hands. “Daddy was—we used his life insurance to pay off his debts. At least, the ones we were aware of. Are you— calling us in on this?”

      Harlan glanced at her sharply. She seemed to expect the very worst from him. Was she always so negative? Or was she only reacting that way to him?

      “Why, no. I’m not calling you in on the loan.”

      She felt sick with relief. “That’s hard to believe.”

      Her eyes were full of moisture. She blinked them several times as she looked at the paper in her hands. Harlan suddenly felt like a bastard, although he didn’t know why. When he’d loaned Tomas Murdock money, he’d done it to help the older man, not jeopardize his ranch or his family.

      “I’m not a loan shark.”

      With slow, jerky movements, Rose refolded the paper and lay it on the table a few inches from Harlan Hamilton’s tough, tanned fingers. “That’s obvious. The payment has been overdue for some time now and you haven’t notified or billed us. Why?”

      Harlan wasn’t really sure why. It wasn’t as if he was set for money. Since the drought had hit, he could use the thousands he’d lent Tomas. Even in the cooler season of the year, the Flying H needed water wells drilled. But he’d been loathe to collect the debt.

      “I knew Tomas had died. And I figured you and your sisters had plenty on your minds as it was.”

      Rose never had had a high opinion of men, and over the past few months since she’d learned of her daddy’s infidelities, she’d lost even more respect for the male gender. To think that this man had considered her and her family’s grief before himself was hard for Rose to digest.

      “I must tell you…at the present, there’s no way we could find the money to pay you back. Even if we sold the last head of cattle we had, we couldn’t come up with what our father borrowed from you.”

      She was telling the truth. Harlan could see that plainly. He could also see that Rose Murdock was not a frivolous woman. She was plainspoken and no-nonsense. What surprised him about her admission was that the Bar M could be that drained of funds.

      Harlan had lived here for seven years. His neighbors to the west owned the largest ranch in the county, perhaps one of the largest in the whole state of New Mexico. They raised good cattle and even better horses. They had plenty of rich grazing land along the Hondo river and several skilled cowboys to take care of it all. But what she’d just said about repaying the loan and the fact that she’d been line riding herself told Harlan things had changed drastically on the Bar M.

      The whole idea was hard for Harlan to absorb, but not nearly as hard, he figured, as it was for Rose Murdock. “I’m not worried about you paying me back right now.”

      Nerves clenched her stomach like a vice. “You should be.”

      “I need water more than I need money.”

      He took off his battered straw hat and ran a hand through his hair. It was the color of sable and just as shiny. Worn a bit longer than the current fashion, the dark strands fell haphazardly across his forehead and curled around his ears and neck. The front of his shirt was soiled and a large patch of sweat had soaked through the gray material in the middle of his chest. Rose thought he looked a bit like she’d imagined the cowhands did who worked this land when it was still a wild, dangerous territory. Rough, tough and just a little reckless.

      “I СКАЧАТЬ