Lone Star Rancher. Laurie Paige

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      He grabbed a beer from the fridge, which held very little else, and went out on the patio to enjoy the twilight and the cool evening air. The cattle in the two thousand acres of pasture that comprised the ranch were grazing peacefully or bedded down while they chewed their cuds.

      The quiet appealed to him. No cars were on the paved county road. The interstate highway, I-35, that ran up the middle of the state through San Antonio, Austin and points north was too far away to be heard.

      He liked the distance to the horizon, as if one could ride into the sunset forever. He appreciated the vastness of these wide open spaces that were so different from New York where he’d grown up.

      Years ago, his mother had declared the triplets to be cowboys at heart. She said she’d known it from the moment they’d been born. Instead of crying, they’d come into the world yelling, “Whoopie-ti-yi-yo.”

      Or so she’d said many times with an almost perfectly straight face.

      He smiled, then took a long draught of cold beer. Sometimes he missed his mom, he admitted. When she came to the ranch, she fretted about the house and its lack of a feminine touch and worried about the boys’ love lives as well as their eating habits. She was into tofu and soybeans and healthy stuff. Married men, she pointed out, lived longer, healthier lives than bachelors.

      She especially worried about him. When he’d returned from Dallas, alone and still single, he’d told his family his fiancée had died in a car accident and had never mentioned it again. His mother probably thought his heart was still broken.

      Little did she know, as the saying went. He’d locked that unreliable organ away for good. The Flying Aces was the love of his life. It was enough.

      Clyde smiled again, then frowned as he remembered his promise to his sister. Steven wouldn’t care a whit if Jessica visited. Miles would flirt like mad with her when he was at the house, but most of the time he would be out on the back forty of the ranch, handling that part of the roundup.

      That would leave him to watch after their guest.

      He said a very bad word and was glad his mother wasn’t there to hear it. He would have to guard his tongue if and when the visitor arrived, too.

      Taking a long, long drink of the crisp, cold microbrew, he realized something else and nearly choked.

      “Damn,” he muttered, then gave a snort of laughter. “It figures,” he said to Smoky, a dog that had drifted by last year and decided to stay, and now, attracted by the laughter, ambled over for a pat on the head.

      He wondered if his sister had noted the day of the month when she’d called. That would be so like her.

      It was Friday the thirteenth.

      Two

      The wings of the airplane dipped first one way, then the other, as the flight approached San Antonio. Jessica closed her eyes and concentrated on keeping the soda and pretzels down. She wasn’t sure whether it was better to have a full stomach or an empty one when flying in bad weather.

      Lightning crackled, and several people gasped. A little girl screamed. So did her mother.

      St. Elmo’s fire danced along the front edge of the wing. Jessica thought the fuel tanks were located in the wings. Could they catch on fire?

      Summoning up her courage, she reflected on the idea of leaving New York to keep from being killed by a stalker, only to go down in an airplane crash in Texas. There was a kind of rough poetic justice in the thought.

      If the plane did crash, she wouldn’t have to impose on Violet’s brother, who didn’t want to fool with her in the first place. At least, that was the impression she’d gotten when her friend had carefully and thoroughly explained that the ranch was very busy at this time of the year.

      Jessica would mostly have the house to herself and would have to find her own amusements.

      Fine by her.

      Clyde Fortune, the first-born of the triplets, was to pick her up. He was the least outgoing of the three. The brothers were identical triplets, all with dark hair and chocolate-brown eyes, around six feet tall, muscular bodies.

      The last-born, Miles, had a dimple in one cheek, though, so maybe they weren’t identical. She didn’t know much about genetics, so she wasn’t sure. Anyway, they looked like the proverbial peas in the pod. As a teenager, she’d had a crush on Clyde, the quiet one of the Fortune triplets.

      Not that he, an older man, had known she existed.

      She’d gotten over her romantic feelings quick enough when one of them had remarked that “she was so skinny and talked with such a twang, you could use her for a guitar string” when one of their friend’s strings had broken.

      Amusement eased the pain of that ancient insult. Her lean frame had earned her a fortune of her own—not in the form of a living dreamboat, but in cold cash.

      At that instant, the plane touched down. Jessica thanked the heavens that they were safely on the ground. She collected her carry-on bag and all-purpose raincoat and headed for the baggage carousel.

      She didn’t see anyone she recognized. Several men looked her over, but none came forward. Apparently no one was waiting for her.

      Wonderful, she thought, feeling like unwanted baggage. She grabbed her suitcase when it came around the moving belt, then rolled it closer to the door, not sure if her ride expected her to go outside and wait at the curb. She should have asked Violet to be more specific about what she was supposed to do.

      The oddest thing happened then. Her eyes filled with tears. Astonished, she blinked rapidly until they dried up.

      Thirty minutes later, she was still standing by the sliding glass doors, watching as other passengers were met by their loved ones and hugged and kissed and made to feel wanted while she wondered what to do if Clyde didn’t show.

      She could take a room in San Antonio under an assumed name and hide out there just as well as the Flying Aces—

      “Jessica?”

      She jerked around and stared into a worried face and dark eyes with a scowl in their depths. “Yes.”

      “Sorry to be late. There was an accident on the highway. It took thirty minutes for the police to get it cleared and let the traffic through.”

      “That’s okay. I was just thinking of getting a room in town. Actually I could stay here just as well as at your place. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the Alamo.”

      “Violet would never let me hear the end of it if I let you do that.” Clyde plucked her two cases from her. “This way.”

      Although he did manage to crack a smile, Jessica wasn’t fooled. He was about as happy to see her as she was happy to be there. She silently said a word her mom had said she and her sister were never to use.

      He led the way to his truck.

      The СКАЧАТЬ