Part of the Bargain. Linda Lael Miller

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ reached out and patted her father’s work-worn hand, resting now on the gearshift knob. “We can talk tonight. Anyway, we’ve got lots of time.”

      Ken started the truck’s powerful engine, but his wise blue eyes had not strayed from his daughter’s face. “You’ll stay here awhile, then?” he asked hopefully.

      Libby nodded, but she suddenly found that she had to look away. “As long as you’ll let me, Dad.”

      The truck was moving now, jolting and rattling over the rough ranch roads with a pleasantly familiar vigor. “I expected you before this,” he said. “Lib…”

      She turned an imploring look on him. “Later, Dad—okay? Could we please talk about the heavy stuff later?”

      Ken swept off his old cowboy hat and ran a practiced arm across his forehead. “Later it is, dumplin’.” Graciously he changed the subject. “Been reading your comic strip in the funny papers, and it seems like every kid in town’s wearing one of those T-shirts you designed.”

      Libby smiled; her career as a syndicated cartoonist was certainly safe conversational ground. And it had all started right here, on this ranch, when she’d sent away the coupon printed on a matchbook and begun taking art lessons by mail. After that, she’d won a scholarship to a prestigious college, graduated, and made her mark, not in portraits or commercial design, as some of her friends had, but in cartooning. Her character, Liberated Lizzie, a cave-girl with modern ideas, had created something of a sensation and was now featured not only in the Sunday newspapers but also on T-shirts, greeting cards, coffee mugs and calendars. There was a deal pending with a poster company, and Libby’s bank balance was fat with the advance payment for a projected book.

      She would have to work hard to fulfill her obligations—there was the weekly cartoon strip to do, of course, and the panels for the book had to be sketched in. She hoped that between these tasks and the endless allure of the Circle Bar B, she might be able to turn her thoughts from Jonathan and the mess she’d made of her personal life.

      “Career-wise, I’m doing fine,” Libby said aloud, as much to herself as to her father. “I don’t suppose I could use the sunporch for a studio?”

      Ken laughed. “Cathy’s been working for a month to get it ready, and I had some of the boys put in a skylight. All you’ve got to do is set up your gear.”

      Impulsively Libby leaned over and kissed her father’s beard-stubbled cheek. “I love you!”

      “Good,” he retorted. “A husband you can dump—a daddy you’re pretty well stuck with.”

      The word “husband” jarred Libby a little, bringing an unwelcome image of Aaron into her mind as it did, and she didn’t speak again until the house came into sight.

      Originally the main ranch house, the structure set aside for the general foreman was an enormous, drafty place with plenty of Victorian scrollwork, gabled windows and porches. It overlooked a sizable spring-fed pond and boasted its own sheltering copse of evergreens and cottonwood trees.

      The truck lurched a little as Ken brought it to a stop in the gravel driveway, and through the windshield Libby could see glimmering patches of the silver-blue sparkle that was the pond. She longed to hurry there now, kick off her shoes on the grassy bank and ruin her stockings wading in the cold, clear water.

      But her father was getting out of the truck, and Cathy Barlow, Libby’s cousin and cherished friend, was dashing down the driveway, her pretty face alight with greeting.

      Libby laughed and stood waiting beside the pickup truck, her arms out wide.

      After an energetic hug had been exchanged, Cathy drew back in Libby’s arms and lifted a graceful hand to sign the words: “I’ve missed you so much!”

      “And I’ve missed you,” Libby signed back, though she spoke the words aloud, too.

      Cathy’s green eyes sparkled. “You haven’t forgotten how to sign!” she enthused, bringing both hands into play now. She had been deaf since childhood, but she communicated so skillfully that Libby often forgot that they weren’t conversing verbally. “Have you been practicing?”

      She had. Signing had been a game for her and Jonathan to play during the long, difficult hours she’d spent at his hospital bedside. Libby nodded and tears of love and pride gathered in her dark blue eyes as she surveyed her cousin—physically, she and Cathy bore no resemblance to each other at all.

      Cathy was petite, her eyes wide, mischievous emeralds, her hair a glistening profusion of copper and chestnut and gold that reached almost to her waist. Libby was of medium height, and her silver-blond hair fell just short of her shoulders.

      “I’ll be back later,” Ken said quietly, signing the words as he spoke so that Cathy could understand, too. “You two have plenty to say to each other, it looks like.”

      Cathy nodded and smiled, but there was something sad trembling behind the joy in her green eyes, something that made Libby want to scurry back to the truck and beg to be driven back to the airstrip. From there she could fly to Kalispell and catch a connecting flight to Denver and then New York….

      Good Lord—surely Jess hadn’t been so heartless as to share his ridiculous suspicions with Cathy!

      The interior of the house was cool and airy, and Libby followed along behind Cathy, her thoughts and feelings in an incomprehensible tangle. She was glad to be home, no doubt about it. She’d yearned for the quiet sanity of this place almost from the moment of leaving it.

      On the other hand, she wasn’t certain that she’d been wise to come back. Jess obviously intended to make her feel less than welcome, and although she had certainly never been intimately involved with Stacey Barlowe, Cathy’s husband, sometimes her feelings toward him weren’t all that clearly defined.

      Unlike his younger brother, Stace was a warm, outgoing person, and through the shattering events of the past year and a half, he had been a tender and steadfast friend. Adrift in waters of confusion and grief, Libby had told Stacey things that she had never breathed to another living soul, and it was true that, as Jess had so bitterly pointed out, she had written to the man when she couldn’t bring herself to contact her own father.

      But she wasn’t in love with Stace, Libby told herself firmly. She had always looked up to him, that was all—like an older brother. Maybe she’d become a little too dependent on him in the bargain, but that didn’t mean she cared for him in a romantic way, did it?

      She sighed, and Cathy turned to look at her pensively, almost as though she had heard the sound. That was impossible, of course, but Cathy was as perceptive as anyone Libby had ever known, and she often felt sounds.

      “Glad to be home?” the deaf woman inquired, gesturing gently.

      Libby didn’t miss the tremor in her cousin’s hands, but she forced a weary smile to her face and nodded in answer to the question.

      Suddenly Cathy’s eyes were sparkling again, and she caught Libby’s hand in her own and tugged her through an archway and into the glassed-in sunporch that overlooked the pond.

      Libby drew in a swift, delighted breath. There was indeed a skylight in the roof—a big one. A drawing table had been set up in the best light the room offered, along with a lamp for night work, and there were flowering plants hanging from the exposed beams СКАЧАТЬ