this would be just one more asset to liquidate. At the most he would have expected her to send a representative. Joe felt he could have dealt with a representative. He wasn’t so sure about Darcy. Somehow he was going to have to try not to let her get to him.
He’d just concentrate on his other business. There certainly was enough of it to keep him occupied. He pressed harder on the accelerator and the truck lurched forward.
Of course, the news of her divorce was a surprise. Maybe that was it—maybe she just wanted a change of scenery, something to help her forget the heartbreak.
Joe could have told her some things just can’t be forgotten. Or ignored.
Her car drew up a little too close to his back bumper, and he found himself smiling. Typical Darcy, he thought, always in a hurry. Somehow, that bulldozer quality had always endeared her to him.
Watching her in his rearview mirror, he studied her, marveling at her beauty. The finely arched eyebrows, determined chin, curved mouth. He looked back at the road, but her image stayed with him. Dark blond hair, evenly cut at the shoulder. If the stories that had circulated about her at the ranch were true, she’d probably paid a fortune for that haircut back in Chicago.
She sure had changed since he’d known her. Way back then, money hadn’t mattered to her one whit. At first he hadn’t believed the stories about her lifestyle after she’d left the ranch, but eventually he’d admitted to himself that he hadn’t wanted to believe them. The stories just made him feel that much more foolish for ever thinking they could make a go of it together.
Darcy Beckett, his wife, sharing ranch life with him—that had just been a stupid, immature dream.
He’d woken up a long time ago.
He looked back at her. Fancy car, fancy haircut. According to her grandfather, Darcy lived high off the hog. Drank champagne as though it were water. She probably even rinsed her mouth with it when she brushed her teeth. Or used fancy bottled water from France.
He glanced at the road to keep on course, then back at the mirror. Darcy was framed in its confines like a picture. For a moment, he saw her as she used to be. Her hair, which had been much lighter then, was long and straight. She used to live in jeans and T-shirts, not the kind of fancy clothes she was wearing now.
She’d grown up, and done a damn good job of it. He’d grant her that.
Her face... how many times had he seen that face in his dreams? She’d barely changed, he’d realized when he’d gotten up close. For a moment he’d gone dumb at the sight of those strong cheekbones and the stubborn chin he used to love to kiss. Her skin was as smooth-looking as ever. In memory, he could just reach out and touch her. In memory.
Hell, it wasn’t easy to forget Darcy Beckett.
She used to come to the ranch every summer, though he hadn’t met her until she was fifteen. He was seventeen then, and far too old for such a child. But the summer she was sixteen, she was looking not so much like a child anymore. And by her seventeenth summer she was so beautiful that he ached every time he saw her.
Fortunately or unfortunately—he’d never been able to decide which—Darcy had wanted him, too. They’d spent the entire summer watching each other sideways during the day when other people were around, and drawing together like magnets in the dark shadows of night. Sharing their inner selves, their dreams, planning a life together... and ultimately, making slow, sweet, incredible love. Until they’d gotten caught, that is.
Then she left and never came back. He never forgot her, never stopped comparing other women to her. For a long time he’d kept to himself, avoiding all romantic entanglements. But the glow of that summer romance had worn off eventually, and when he’d met a town girl named Maura Kinney, who was available and willing, he hadn’t bothered to resist.
When Maura had told him she was pregnant, he’d done the right thing and married her. Why not? Maybe he was still thinking of Darcy, but Darcy had married some high rider in the East and was, presumably, going to live happily ever after with him.
He took a deep breath and then let it out, trying to relax his tense shoulders and neck. He still remembered the long months of wishing Darcy would come back, but not daring to ask Ken about her. He should have asked anyway, he realized now. But the boy he’d been was so cowed by the powerful R. Kenneth Beckett that he hadn’t dared let anyone know the depth of his feelings for the great man’s granddaughter. Hell, he’d been lucky to be able to hold on to his job. In those days, it wasn’t so easy to find good work that paid a fair wage; he couldn’t risk it.
Instead, he’d hidden his feelings. After all, he was young and he knew it. He thought surely his crush on Darcy would fade. It did, to an extent, when he wrote to her and didn’t get an answer. He even wrote a second time, just in case the first letter had been lost. Then a third time. Then he gave up. And he’d gone to so much trouble to get the address from Kenneth’s book without the old man knowing it, too.
Joe sighed, remembering. Eventually he’d started a life with another woman and his unborn child. He’d never truly been in love with Maura, but she’d been his friend. When she’d died after a short illness a couple of years ago, it had been a blow. Together they’d worked to build a life. When she died he’d had to start all over again.
He fastened his eyes on the route ahead. The old Watson place, a broken ruin of a house, was up there on the right. Almost home. The T.L. Ranch. He did this drive every day, but today, with the lawyer’s meeting pending, it felt completely different—different because when he arrived at the ranch he’d get out of the car and be face to face again with Darcy Beckett.
He’d been waiting for this day for a long time. Rosanna Kinney, his late wife’s sister, had been hounding him for the past eight months to get on out to her Oklahoma ranch and take over as foreman.
He would have refused flat out except that Rosanna had paid a large balance of Maura’s hospital bills, and now Joe felt indebted to her. If Maura had told him about the loan before it was too late—heck, if she’d told him about the necessity of getting the loan—he would have done something else, anything else, to get the money.
But Maura hadn’t told him, and so he didn’t find out until after the funeral.
Rosanna proposed that he pay back the twenty-thousand dollars in sweat equity. Besides, she pointed out, Ricky and Joe needed a home, not just a place to live and work. Joe said he’d come after his ailing employer no longer needed him. Well, Kenneth Beckett no longer needed Joe or anyone else.
Now Joe had a five-year plan to work off his debt to his sister-in-law and save enough to start his own ranch in Wyoming. He’d already picked the spot. It was great land and underdeveloped. It would come cheap. With what he had saved now, and what he’d accumulate in the next five years in Oklahoma, he would be set.
He’d even been feeling optimistic about it lately. It figured that Darcy would show up now, just to throw him off.
But it was temporary. He was leaving for Oklahoma; it was part of The Plan. Until recently that plan had been unappealing to him, but now it was starting to seem like a really good idea. After today’s meeting, Joe would have no more excuses for remaining in Holt.
He glanced back at Darcy. Suddenly it seemed that the sooner he got out, the better it would be for him. Falling for Darcy Beckett again was one mistake this foolish cowboy couldn’t afford to make again.
Chapter
