mahogany; dark eyes, not as dark as Rule’s, but a soft deep brown. Her skin, thankfully, had no freckles. She could tan lightly, but had never been able to acquire a deep tan. What else was there? What else would attract a man’s attention? Her nose was straight and dainty, but not classical. Her mouth looked vulnerable, sensitive; her facial bones were delicate, finely drawn. Fairly tall, slender and long-legged, with narrow hips, a slim waist and rather nice, round breasts. She didn’t have voluptuous curves, but she did have the long, clean lines of good breeding and a certain grace of movement. Rule had compared her to a long-legged filly. And Rule had always wanted a red-haired woman.
No great beauty, the young woman in the mirror, but passable.
Passable enough to hold Rule Jackson’s interest?
Stop it! she told herself fiercely, turning away from the mirror. She didn’t want to hold his interest! She couldn’t handle him and she knew it. If she had any sense at all she’d take herself back to Chicago, continue her rather boring job and forget the nagging, incessant ache for the home where she had grown up. But this was her home, and perhaps she didn’t have any sense. She knew every plank in this old house, had never forgotten anything about it, and she wanted to stay there.
She went downstairs to the kitchen. Lorna turned from the stove as she entered and gave her a friendly smile. “Have a good sleep?”
“Marvelous,” Cathryn sighed. “I haven’t slept this late in years.”
“Rule said you were worn out,” said Lorna comfortably. “You’ve lost some weight, too, since your last visit. Are you ready for breakfast?”
“It’s almost lunchtime, so I think I’ll wait. Where is everyone?”
“Monica is still asleep; Ricky went out with the men today.”
Cathryn lifted her eyebrows questioningly, and Lorna shrugged. She was a big-boned woman in her late forties or early fifties, her brown hair showing no trace of gray, and her pleasantly unremarkable features revealed only contentment with her life. Acceptance was in her eyes as she said slowly, “Ricky’s having a rough time right now.”
“In what way?” Cathryn asked. It was true that Ricky seemed even more highly strung than before, as if she were only barely under control.
Again Lorna shrugged. “I expect she woke up one day and realized that she doesn’t have what she wanted, and she panicked. What has she done with her life? Wasted it. She has no husband, no children, nothing of any importance that she can say belongs to her. The only thing she’s ever really had is her looks, and they haven’t gotten her the man she wanted.”
“She’s been married twice,” said Cathryn.
“But not to Rule.”
Shocked, Cathryn sat silently, trying to follow Lorna’s reasoning. Rule? And Ricky? Ricky had always alternated wildly between rebelling against Rule and following him with slavish devotion, while Rule had always treated her with stoic tolerance. Was that the basis for Ricky’s sudden outbreak of hostility? Was that why she didn’t want Cathryn to stay? Once again Cathryn had the uneasy thought that somehow Ricky knew that Rule had made love to her when she was seventeen. It was impossible, but yet...
It was all impossible. Ricky couldn’t be in love with Rule. Cathryn had known what it was to love, and she could see none of the signs in Ricky, no gentling, no caring. Her reactions to Rule were a mixture of fear and hostility that bordered on actual hate; that, too, Cathryn understood all too well. How many years had she stayed away because of those same feelings?
Agitated, she felt a sudden, powerful need to be alone for a while, so she said, “Does Wallace’s Drugstore still stay open on Sundays?”
Lorna nodded. “Are you thinking of driving into town?”
“If no one else needs the car, I will.”
“Nobody that I know of, and even if they did there’s other means of going,” Lorna said practically. “Would you mind picking up a few things?”
“I’ll be glad to,” Cathryn replied. “But to be on the safe side, write everything down. No matter how careful I try to be, I always forget one item unless I have a list, and it’s usually the most-needed thing that I forget.”
With a chuckle Lorna pulled open a drawer and extracted a notepad from which she tore the top sheet. She handed it to Cathryn. “It’s already done. I’m guilty of the same thing, so I always write things down as I think of them. Let me get some money from Rule’s desk.”
“No, I have enough,” Cathryn protested, looking at the list of items. It was mostly first-aid things such as alcohol and bandages, nothing very expensive. Besides, anything bought for the ranch was her responsibility.
“All right, but keep the sales receipt. Taxes.”
Cathryn nodded. “Do you know where the keys to the station wagon are?”
“Usually in the ignition, unless Rule took them out this morning to keep Ricky from disappearing as she sometimes does. If he did, then they’ll be in his pocket, but since Ricky went with them he wouldn’t have had any reason for taking the keys.”
Cathryn made a face at that information and went upstairs to get her purse. Was Ricky so bad that it was necessary to hide the car keys from her? And what if someone else needed the car? But then, Lorna and Monica would make arrangements beforehand if they needed the car, and in any medical emergency Rule could be located quickly enough. The plane would be faster than a car anyway.
She was in luck. The keys were still dangling from the ignition. She opened the door and slid behind the wheel, looking forward to her little trip.
The station wagon wasn’t a new model and it had a rather battered appearance, but the engine caught immediately and hummed with steady precision. Like everything else on the ranch, it was kept in good mechanical condition, another indication of Rule’s excellent management. There was no way she could fault him on that score.
She felt pride in the way the ranch looked as she drove down the dusty road that led to the highway. It wasn’t a huge ranch or a rich one, though it had done well enough. She knew that Rule had brought new life into it with his horses, though it had been a comfortable place before that. But now the land had the well-tended look that only devotion and hard work could bring.
The town was small, but Cathryn supposed it had everything required by civilization. It was as familiar to her as her own face, never changing much despite the passage of time. San Antonio was the nearest large city, almost eighty miles distant, but to someone used to Texas distances, that didn’t seem like a long trip. No one felt denied by the undemanding tenor of life in Uvalde County.
Probably the last scandal in memory was the last one Rule had figured in, Cathryn thought absently as she parked the station wagon against the curb, joining the lineup of dusty pickups and assorted cars. She could hear the jukebox inside, and a smile lit her face as memories washed over her. How many Sunday afternoons had she spent here as a teenager? The pharmacy was located in the back of the building. The front was occupied by a booming hamburger business. Red-topped stools lined the counter and several booths marched down the opposite wall, while a few small tables were scattered about the remaining space. The stools and booths were crowded, while the tables remained empty, always the last to be filled. A quick glance around told her that the majority of the customers were teenagers, just as it had always been, though there were enough adults on hand
