was the wrong thing to say. His dark eyes kindled and his face took on the sheen of stone. “Did you?” he asked deliberately, and the mockery in his face was daunting. “Was that why you came with Gerald, or is it his money you’re after?”
“You don’t understand—” she began.
“I understand women all too well,” he returned coldly. He moved away from her without another word, almost colliding with Gerald, who was coming out of the house as he was entering it.
“Sorry, Winthrop,” Gerald murmured, curious about the expression on his brother’s face. “I was looking for Nicky.”
“I’m out here, Mr. Christopher!” she called.
“Oh, for God’s sake, I’m Gerald here,” he said shortly, joining her with a resigned glance over his shoulder as the door slammed behind Winthrop. He looked even younger in jeans and a pullover shirt. Nicky moved over to make room for him on the swing, and struggled to regain her lost poise. Winthrop was going to make her life miserable, she just knew it, and her stupid careless remark had provoked him. “Mr. Christopher was my father,” Gerald continued, “and he was Mister Christopher, too,” he added with a faint smile. “Our mother was on a camping trip up here. She wandered off and he found her. He nursed her back to health and she left, thinking that was the end of it.”
“Was it?” Nicole asked.
Gerald laughed. “No. As a matter of fact, Dad followed her all the way to New York, found her at some social gathering, picked her up and carried her to the train station and brought her here. Eventually, to save her reputation, she agreed to marry him.”
“I guess he was used to getting his own way,” Nicky mused, and in her mind’s eye she could see Winthrop doing exactly the same thing. Her fine skin flushed just a little at the unexpected thought.
“They were happy together,” Gerald said. “She died one spring of pneumonia. He died six months later. They said it was a heart attack, but I’ve often wondered if it wasn’t loneliness that did it.” He paused for a moment, then said suddenly, “I’m sorry Winthrop’s so inhospitable.” He glanced at Nicole’s quiet face. “You aren’t afraid of him, are you? If you are, don’t ever let him see it. He’s a good man, but he’s pretty hard on women.”
“I’m not afraid of him,” she said. And she meant it. She wondered if there was any chance that he found her as disturbing as she found him. That didn’t bear thinking about.
“You must miss all this in Chicago,” Nicole said, looking up at her boss.
“I miss this, and other things,” he replied. He stared at a house far on a hill in the distance, his eyes narrowed and unexpectedly sad. “Sadie Todd lives over there,” he said absently, “with her invalid mother. We’ll have to go and visit her while we’re here.”
“She was nursing at the general hospital, wasn’t she?”
“Yes. She had to give up her job and come home when her mother had a stroke. Mrs. Todd is completely paralyzed on one side and doesn’t seem to want to get any better. Sadie said she couldn’t leave her at the mercy of strangers. Her father is dead.”
She knew almost to the day when Sadie had left, because Gerald Christopher had withdrawn into a tight little shell afterward and seemed to walk around in a fog. He’d put enough pressure on himself thereafter to give him that ulcer. But it had surprised her that he wanted to come home, because he worked like a Trojan all the time lately. She was almost sure that Sadie was the reason he felt the need of a month’s vacation in Montana. She smiled to herself.
“I’d like very much to go and see her,” she said.
He smiled down at her. “You’re a nice person, Nicole.” He got up. “I’m going to make a few phone calls. Just sit and enjoy the view, if you like.”
“Yes, sir,” she promised.
He went inside, and she lounged in the swing until Mary called her to have a sandwich. She sat in the spacious kitchen, enjoying a huge ham sandwich and a glass of iced tea while Mary prepared what promised to be the world’s largest moose stew. They talked about the ranch and the country and the weather, and then Nicole went out the back door and wandered down to the river, just to look around.
She could imagine this country in the years of the Lewis and Clark expedition. She’d read a copy of their actual journal, enjoying its rather anecdotal style, seeing the country through their eyes in the days before supersonic jets and superhighways. Trappers would have come through here, she mused, kneeling beside the river with her eyes on the distant peaks. They’d have trapped beaver and fox and they’d have hunted.
Kentucky had its own mountain country, and Nicole had been in it a few times in her life. It had been a different setting then. Elegance. Parties. Sophisticated people. Wealth. She sat down on a huge rock beside the river and tore at a twig, listening to the watery bubble of the river working its way downstream. She much preferred this kind of wealth. Trees and cattle and land. Yes.
“Daydreaming?”
She turned to find Winthrop Christopher sitting astride a big black stallion, watching her.
“I like the river,” she explained. “We have one in Chicago, of course, but it’s not the same. We have concrete and steel instead of trees.”
“I know. I’ve been to Chicago. Even to the office, in fact.” His eyes narrowed. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
She did. Even that brief glance had stamped him onto her memory, but it wouldn’t do to let him know that. She avoided a direct answer. “It’s always hectic. I don’t pay a lot of attention to visitors, I’m afraid.”
“The morning I came, you were sitting at that computer with a stack of steno pads at your elbow and a telephone in your hand. You barely looked up when I went into Gerald’s office.” He smiled mockingly. “I was wearing a suit. Maybe I looked different.”
“I can’t quite imagine you in a suit, Mr. Christopher,” she said, thinking, top that, cattle king.
“Winthrop,” he corrected. “I’m not that much older than you. Eleven years or so. I’m thirty-four.”
“How old is your brother?” she asked, curious.
He lifted his chin. “Thirty.”
“Sometimes he seems older,” she mused. “When they call the stockholders’ meetings, for instance.”
He glanced into the distance. “No doubt. I’m glad I don’t have to deal with those damned things. That’s Gerald’s sole province now. I just run my ranch, and the only stockholder I have to please is myself. Gerald doesn’t own enough shares to squabble over the decisions I make.”
“You inherited the ranch, didn’t you?”
He stared at her for a minute, and she swallowed hard, sure that he was going to give her some sarcastic financial rundown and chide her for asking. But, surprisingly, he didn’t. He just nodded. “That was the way my father wanted it. He knew I’d hold it as long as I lived, no matter what. You’ll find that Gerald isn’t terribly sentimental. He’d just as soon have a photograph as the object itself.”
She
