older woman’s face tautened. “Don’t talk to me like that. You live in my house, in case you’ve forgotten!”
“Not for much longer,” Keely gritted. “I’m moving out as soon as I can get a night job to go with my day job. I don’t care if I have to live in my car, it will be worth it! I’m not staying here any longer.”
She brushed past her mother and went into the house, down the hall, into her room. She locked the door behind her. She was shaking. It was the first time in memory that she’d stood up to her abusive parent.
Ella came to her door and knocked. Keely ignored her.
She knocked again, with the same result.
Ella was sobering up quickly. It had just dawned on her that if Keely left, she’d have nobody to do the chores. She couldn’t even cook. She’d been able to afford help until the past two or three years. But she was facing a drastic reduction in her capital, due to her bad business decisions. And there was something else, something more worrying, that she didn’t dare think about right now.
“I didn’t mean what I said!” she called through the door. “I’m sorry!”
“You’re always sorry,” Keely replied tightly.
“No. This time I’m really sorry!”
There was a hesitation. Keely started to weaken. Then she remembered her mother’s track record and kept quiet.
“I can’t cook!” Ella yelled through the door a minute later. “I’ll starve to death if you leave!”
“Buy a restaurant,” was Keely’s dry retort.
With what, Ella was thinking, but Keely’s light went off. She stood there, weaving, her mind dimmed, her heart racing. A long, long time ago, she’d cuddled Keely in her arms and sung lullabies to her. She’d loved her. What had happened to that soft, warm feeling? Had it died, all those years ago, when she learned the truth about her husband? So many secrets, she thought. So much pain. And it was still here. Nothing stopped it.
She needed another drink. She turned back down the hall toward her own room. She could plead her case with Keely tomorrow. There was plenty of time. The girl couldn’t leave. She had no place to go, and no money. As for getting a second job, how would Keely manage that when she worked all hours for that vet? She relaxed. Keely would stay. Ella was sure of it.
Saturday morning, Clark came to pick her up to go riding with him at the ranch.
She’d done that several times with Winnie. But she’d never done it with Clark. Winnie and Boone were usually both home on the weekend, but Winnie’s red VW Beetle was nowhere in sight when Clark drove up in front of the stables with Keely beside him.
He got out and opened the door for her with a flourish. Boone, who was saddling a horse of his own in the barn, stopped with the saddle in midair to glare at them.
“Oh, dear,” Keely muttered under her breath.
“He’s just a man,” Clark reminded her. “He can kill you, but he can’t eat you.”
“Are you sure?”
Boone had put the saddle back on the ground at the gate that kept his favorite gelding from leaving his stall. He stalked down the brick aisle toward Clark and Keely, who actually moved back a step as he approached with that measured, quick, dangerous tread.
He loomed over them, taller even than Clark, and looked intimidating. “I thought you were flying to Dallas today,” he told Clark.
Clark was intimidated by his older sibling and couldn’t hide it. He tried to look defiant, but he only looked guilty. “I’m going Monday,” he said, and it sounded like an apology. “I brought Keely. She’s going riding with me.”
Boone looked down at Keely, who was staring at her feet and mentally kicking herself for ever agreeing to Clark’s harebrained scheme.
“Is she, now?” Boone mused coldly. He glanced at Clark. “Fetch me a blanket for Tank from the tack room, will you? You can ask Billy to saddle two horses for you on the way.”
Clark brightened. His brother sounded almost friendly. “Sure!”
He grinned at Keely and moved quickly down the aisle of the barn toward the tack room, leaving Keely stranded with Boone, who looked oddly like a lion confronted by a thick, juicy steak.
“Tell Clark you don’t want to go riding, Keely,” he said slowly. “And ask him to take you home. Right now.”
First her mother, now Boone. She was so tired of people telling her what to do. She looked up at him with wide, dark green eyes. “Why do you care if I go riding with Clark?” she asked quietly. “I go riding with Winnie all the time.”
“There’s a difference.”
She felt threatened. Then she felt insulted. She met his dark, piercing stare with resignation. “It’s because my people aren’t rich or socially important, isn’t it?” she asked. “It’s because I’m poor.”
“And uneducated,” he added tauntingly.
Her face colored. “I have a diploma for the work I do,” she stammered.
“You’re a glorified groomer, Keely,” he said flatly. “You hold dogs and cats while the vet treats them.”
Her whole body tautened. “That isn’t true. I give anesthesia and shots…”
He held up a hand. “Spare me the minute details,” he said, sounding bored.
“We can’t all go to Harvard, you know,” she muttered.
“And some of us can’t even face community college,” he shot back. “You had a scholarship and you threw it away.”
She felt sick. “A scholarship that paid just for textbooks,” she corrected. “And only half of that. How in the world do you think I could afford to pay tuition and go to classes and hold down a full-time job, all at once?”
“You could give up the job.”
She laughed hollowly. “My mother would love that. Then she wouldn’t even have groceries.”
His dark eyes narrowed. “Do you pay rent?”
Her big, soft green eyes met his. “I do all the housework and all the cooking and cleaning and shopping. That’s my rent.”
“Who buys her liquor?” he asked with a cold smile. “And her see-through negligees?”
Keely’s face went scarlet. He was insinuating something. Her stare asked the question without words.
He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans, pulling the thick fabric taut over the hard, powerful muscles of his legs. “I dropped by your house to thank you, belatedly, for getting Bailey to the vet in time to save him,” he said curtly. “You weren’t home, but she was. She answered the door in a see-through negligee and invited me inside.”
The
