Wyoming Tough

Chapter NINE




MORIE THREW HERSELF into helping Shelby with details for the big production sale. In between, she had to cope with her father’s matchmaking. Daryl Coleman was tall and dark and quite good-looking. His family had huge feedlots in Northern Texas and Daryl himself was CEO of an oil company that was based in Oklahoma. He was savvy about technical innovations and a whiz with computers. He had everything a woman could have wanted. He just wasn’t Mallory Kirk.

But he liked Morie and he was always around. After Mallory’s suspicion and alternating hot-and-cold treatment, Daryl was a breath of fresh air. He had exquisite manners and he loved to dance. So did Morie. It was one of the things she loved most in life.

Daryl flew her to Dallas in the corporate jet that his family had shares in, and took her to an authentic Latin dance club.

“So you want to learn to tango,” he told her with a grin. “This is the place to learn.”

“I’m not keen on it,” she mumbled, looking around. “It looks a whole lot easier in movies.”

“None of the movies it’s in are authentic,” he assured her. He took her right hand in his left one and rested his free hand on her waist. “Tango is a battle between a man and a woman. It’s quick and slow, insistent and sensuous. Most of it is footwork. Just follow my lead. You’re an excellent dancer. This should be easy for you.”

“Easy!” she scoffed after she’d stumbled into him three times and almost upset a waiter with a tray of drinks headed for the restaurant at the other end of the club. No alcohol was allowed near the dance floor itself.

He chuckled. “You’re rusty, kid,” he teased. “You’ve been spending too much time around cattle and not enough around attractive, dashing men like me.”

She looked up at his good looks and twinkling dark eyes and burst out laughing. “And so modest!”

“I’m modest. After all, I have so much to be modest about,” he assured her.

She leaned against him with a breathless laugh. “Daryl, you’re a wonder.”

He hugged her close. “Sure I am. You really need to marry me,” he added with a smile. “Your father says so every time he sees me.”

She grimaced. “I like you a lot, but my dad is looking at mergers, not relationships. It’s a flat economy and he’s diversifying his investments. Like your folks,” she added drily.

He shrugged. “I haven’t met anybody I really want to marry,” he said honestly. “You’re pretty and sweet, and you won’t be marrying me for my money,” he added in a cold tone.

She stopped dancing and looked up. “Somebody did want to marry you for it,” she guessed.

He nodded. “She was sweet and pretty, too. I went nuts over her. Then, just before I was getting ready to propose, I saw her at a party sneaking into a bedroom with the host. They came back out a few minutes later, disheveled and laughing, and when I asked, she said sure she slept with him. He’d given her a diamond dinner ring and she wanted to pay him back for it.” His face hardened. “She said everybody did it, why was I so uptight? It was just sex.”

Morie searched his black eyes quietly. “That’s the attitude most people have today. Everything is okay now. Multiple lovers are the rule. Funny, isn’t it, that fifty years ago men and women alike were held to a higher standard of morality and families stayed together. Isn’t the divorce rate something like fifty percent?”

“Probably higher.” He sighed. “I’m so old-fashioned that I don’t fit in anywhere.”

“So am I, sweet man,” she replied, and pressed close to him, closing her eyes. “Maybe I should marry you, Daryl. We’re alike in a lot of ways. I really do like you.”

He hugged her close. “I like you, too, honey. I guess there are worse reasons to base a marriage on.”

She kept her eyes closed as they danced and tried not to think about how it had felt when Mallory held her close and kissed her in that incredibly sexy way and made her head spin. Maybe it would be safer to marry a man she only liked. Passionate love surely made life more complicated.

He kissed her hair. “What kind of ring would you like?” he asked matter-of-factly.

She drew in a long breath. “I don’t know. Maybe a ruby. I like rubies.”

“Coincidentally, my family has investments in a jewelry chain,” he teased. “So you can have whatever stone you fancy, and we’ll have a designer make it into your dream wedding set.”

Her dream wedding set would have included Mallory as the groom, but she couldn’t say that. She was falling into her father’s net headfirst, letting him rule her life. She’d tried rebellion, however, and it had ended badly. Very badly. It might be time to listen to her father’s advice and do something sensible. After all, Daryl was highly eligible and quite good-looking, and they’d known each other for a long time. It wouldn’t be a passionate relationship. But it would be a lasting one, she was certain.

Now all she had to do was stop thinking about Mallory Kirk. That wasn’t going to be easy.



MALLORY WAS HAVING PROBLEMS of his own. His brothers refused to be in the same room with Gelly, and when she came to the ranch, they made their disapproval known by walking away the minute her small used car pulled up at the front porch.

“Do you have to make it so obvious that you don’t like her?” Mallory raged to Cane.

Cane gave him a cold look. “She framed Morie.”

“Damn it, she did not! Gelly just happened to be riding with Bates when he mentioned what he’d seen.”

“Like she just happened to know about the stolen drill in our former employee’s suitcase,” Cane retorted. “Anybody who makes Gelly mad gets fired.”

Mallory averted his dark eyes. “Coincidence.”

Cane stuck his hand in his pocket and went to the picture window to look out over the acres of green pasture just starting to stick up through the latest snow. “And I won’t agree to let her friend buy that so-called scrubland, in case you were going to ask.”

“Neither will I,” Tank added curtly as he joined them.

Mallory didn’t reply. He’d had Gelly harping on it for days. He was almost ready to sell it just to get her off his back. When she wasn’t being obnoxious, she was sweeter than she’d ever been. She caressed him and kissed him and told him how handsome he was, and how happy she was that he’d been saved from that money-grubbing girl he’d had to fire.

For a man whose lack of conventional good looks was imposing, it was an ego trip of the finest kind. It blinded him to her other faults. He wouldn’t concede that he was vulnerable because he was guilt-ridden over firing Morie on flimsy circumstantial evidence.

“Did that key to the display case ever show up?” Cane asked suddenly and with narrowed eyes.

Mallory joined him at the picture window, his hands jammed deep into his jean pockets. “Yeah,” he replied. “Found it in my coat pocket. I guess I forgot and put it there instead of back in the drawer where we keep it.”

“Odd,” Tank commented.

And Gelly knew about the key and where it was kept, because she’d admired that egg once and Mallory had pulled out the key to open the case and let her hold it. He didn’t mention that.

They moved to the display case and studied the egg.

“You know,” Mallory said suddenly, frowning, “it looks funny.”

“I was just noticing that,” Cane replied curtly. “Open it.”

Mallory brought the key out of the drawer and opened the glass doors of the ornate, wood-scrolled cabinet. He picked up the egg and frowned. “These settings look slipshod. And here—” he indicated the jewels “—they don’t look… Good God, it’s a fake!”

Cane’s jaw tautened. “A cheap fake.”

Mallory was seething. “Morie,” he said flatly. “She had the real one in her rucksack.”

“She handed it back to you,” Tank replied angrily. “You put it back in the case. I saw you do it. Morie was gone by then!”

Mallory didn’t want to admit that. It suited him to think Morie was a thief. He’d sent her packing, wounded her pride, treated her like a criminal, all on the word of a cowboy he hardly knew and a woman who harried him night and day to employ her friends and sell land to them.

His lean face was harassed. “Yes,” he had to concede, his eyes stormy. “She was gone by then.”

And all the joy in his life had gone with her. He was left with the emptiness in his heart and the certainty of long years ahead with Gelly to assuage the ache Morie had left behind. She couldn’t do it. He liked Gelly, but she didn’t stir him, not even with her most passionate kisses, except in the most basic way. Intellectually, she was a no-show. Her conversational skills revolved around popular television shows and movies and the latest fashions.

“It’s time to call in private detectives,” Cane said flatly. “In fact, Morie advised that some time ago, when I talked to her at the line cabin.”

Mallory glared at him. “What were you doing out there?”

His brother smiled coldly. “Looking for Morie after you’d upset her.”

“She was a hire. She stuck her nose into everything around here,” he muttered.

“Yes, like making canapés for a party and helping cook—and she didn’t even ask for extra pay or complain that she didn’t get it,” Tank reminded him.

Mallory felt guilty. “I meant to compensate her for that. Of course, she was running around after that judge friend of yours,” he added icily, turning to Cane.

“Danny Brannt is a gourmet chef,” Cane replied. “He and his wife have a housekeeper who was trained in Paris as a cook, and they’re always looking for new and exciting finger foods for parties. In fact, they’re famous for it. I understand that his housekeeper is helping to cater that big to-do at the Brannt Ranch next month. We were invited, I believe.”

“Yes,” Mallory murmured absently. “King Brannt has some seed bulls that are the talk of the industry. I have in mind to buy one from him for our breeding program.” He didn’t add that the mention of that last name stung. Not that Morie had any connection to that famous Brannt; she was just a poor working cowgirl.

“Can we afford one?” Cane asked amusedly. “We’re only just showing profit from the past two painful years of investments and stock adjustments.”

“We can afford one,” Mallory replied quietly. He glanced at his brother. “You and Tank are responsible for those successes as much as I am,” he added. “I know it’s been rough. I appreciate what you’ve done.”

“Hell, I appreciate what you’ve done,” Cane said. “You’ve got the business head. Tank may be the marketing specialist, and I do like showing off our bulls at cattle shows with a little help from our cowboys who travel with me, but you’re the one with the genius to know where to put the money so that it will grow. That’s no mean feat in a flat economy.”

“I had help. Our stockbroker is the genius. I just followed his suggestions.” He looked worried. “Who could have taken that egg?” he wondered aloud. “And when did it go missing?”

“I don’t know. Sometime between the time that Morie left and you found the key. The question is, who had the key and the opportunity to get into the cabinet?”

“Couldn’t have been a break-in,” Mallory said, thinking out loud. “Not with our security system in place.”

“And I’d bet my stock portfolio on Mavie’s honesty,” Tank added.

Mallory nodded. “So would I. Her former boss isn’t the sort to suffer a thief any more than we are. She was with him for twenty years until he had to give up his ranch and retire, leaving her unemployed. She’s been a welcome addition to our staff.”

Cane pursed his sensual lips. “Bates, maybe?” He was thinking out loud. “He was the one who claimed to see Morie playing with the egg. Interesting, because Darby says she kept her door closed anytime she was in the bunkhouse, and she kept it locked.”

“Suspicious,” Mallory said flatly.

“A woman in a bunkhouse full of men would lock her door,” Cane shot back. “Especially one like Morie. Darby told me that she lived off campus when she was in college, because she refused to live in a coed dorm even if the whole world thought it was all right.”

His eyebrows arched. “She could have been lying.”

“Why do you think she lied in the first place?” Cane demanded. “Because Gelly said she did?”

“Let’s not bring Gelly into this,” Mallory said defensively. “I’m very fond of her.” He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets. “She’s having all sorts of financial problems because her father made bad investments.” He shrugged. “Maybe I should marry her….”

“I’m leaving the day she comes in the door,” Cane said harshly. “And Tank will go with me.”

“In a heartbeat,” Tank agreed. “We’ll take our share of the ranch profits with us,” he added in a cold tone. “You and Gelly try staying afloat financially with only a third of the land and cattle!”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Mallory returned, wounded.

“I’d do it in a heartbeat,” Tank assured him with flashing brown eyes.

“So would I,” Cane agreed. “I’m not living with Gelly.”

“What has she ever done to make you two so hostile?” Mallory exclaimed, exasperated.

Cane looked at Tank. “Blind as a bat.”

“And stubborn as a mule,” Tank agreed. “Can’t tell pyrite from gold.”

“Morie stole the egg,” Mallory roared. “She took it and hid it in her rucksack and was going to sell it!”

“Sure.” Cane took the fake egg in his hand and showed it to Tank. “And she replaced it with this one after we put it back in the cabinet,” he added with a droll look at his brother. “Of course, she was on her way home in a bus at the time. I guess it’s magic.”

Tank nodded. “And funny thing, the key reappeared in Mal’s coat pocket.”

“How convenient.”

“Gelly couldn’t have taken the egg,” Mallory said doggedly, answering a charge they hadn’t made verbally. “She hasn’t ever been alone in here!”

“We had a conference call from the state cattlemen’s association committee on grazing,” Cane reminded him. “All three of us went into the office to take it. Mavie was in the kitchen cooking dinner and Gelly was in here alone. As soon as we came back, she said she had an urgent matter to attend to in town.”

Mallory felt sick. “It couldn’t be her,” he protested, but it was a weak protest.

“If you believe her innocent, let’s prove it,” Cane said. “I know the best private detective in the business, Dane Lassiter from Houston. Let me have him do some investigating for us. If Gelly has nothing to hide, it will clear her.”

“And if not,” Tank put in, “it’s better to know now, especially if you’re bullheaded enough to try and marry her.”

“She loves me,” Mallory bit off. “She says she can’t live without me.” He averted his eyes. “She thinks I’m handsome.”

“Nobody thinks you’re handsome who isn’t lying,” Cane told him flatly. “Look in a mirror! But looks have nothing to do with character, and you’ve got plenty of that. Women don’t care about looks. They care about actions.”

Mallory glared at him.

“He’s right.” Tank clapped him on the back. “We love you. We won’t lie to you. But you might ask yourself why Gelly is. And why she keeps trying to get jobs for her friends and land for some stranger that she barely knows.”

Mallory was weakening. He’d been stubborn because he was guilt-ridden about the way he’d treated Morie. His brothers were right. Morie couldn’t have taken the egg. She left the ranch just minutes after it was found in her rucksack, and Mallory was certain that he’d held the real egg in his hands in the bunkhouse. He’d put it back in the display case himself, after Morie was gone. So the real one had to have been replaced after Morie’s departure…replaced with this cheap copy that would only have fooled someone from a distance. None of them had thought to look at it closely. There had been no reason to.

“Let me call Dane,” Cane coaxed. “If you’re right about Gelly, I’ll apologize.”

“So will I,” Tank agreed.

Mallory drew in a long breath. “Okay,” he said after a minute. His expression was grim. “Call him.”



THE ESTATE WAS BRILLIANT with color and decoration, especially the huge stone patio where tables were going to be set up the following week for King’s gala production show. Ranchers were coming from all over the world to look at his prize cattle, which would be offered for sale at auction.

“Dad really does things on a big scale,” Morie mused as she and her mother went over the final plans with a staff of professionals who would complete the finishing touches and employ caterers for the occasion. It was much too large an endeavor for any one person, although Shelby kept a tight rein on the operation and dictated what she wanted done.

“Yes, he does,” Shelby said with a smile. “He’s very proud of his purebred herd.”

“So am I,” Morie replied. “Now that I know how a ranch operates from the ground up, I have even more admiration for the care Dad takes of his cattle and his men.”

“My daughter, the cowgirl,” Shelly chuckled.

“I enjoyed it. Most of it,” she replied and lowered her eyes.

Shelby turned back to the woman who was carrying out the party plans. “You were able to get Desperado to play for us, weren’t you?”

Tenny Welsh laughed. “Yes, I was,” she said, “although the group is semiretired now. They all have kids and touring isn’t conducive to raising a family, they say. But they’ll do it for you,” she told Shelby. “Heather Everett is best friends with the lead singer. She convinced them.”

“God bless her,” Shelby said fervently. “She’s such a sweetie.”

“So is her daughter, Odalie,” Tenny replied with a sigh. “Have you ever heard her sing? She has the voice of an angel!”

“Where did you hear her?” Morie asked, curious.

“She goes to our church and is a soloist in the choir,” the other woman replied with a smile. “It’s such a joy to hear her.”

“She’s had an offer from the Met, by the way,” Shelby told Morie. “She’s deliberating whether or not to go.”

“It would be a shame to waste a talent like that,” the caterer replied dreamily. “Oh, I’d love to have such a voice!”

Morie didn’t reply. She was thinking of her brother, Cort, who had such a hopeless passion for the shy blonde, who apparently hated him. Nobody knew why. Well, perhaps Cort did, but he was very tight-lipped about his private life.

“So here’s the final menu.” Shelby interrupted her thoughts as she handed the printed list to the caterer. “And please make certain that we have a variety of canapés to suit every taste, and plenty of fruit.”

“I always do,” Tenny reminded her with a smile. This wasn’t the first time she’d catered big social parties for the Brannts. “I know your tastes very well, Shelby.”

Shelby laughed. “It will be a gala occasion. We have a famous soccer star, four A-list actors and actresses, the CEO of a giant computer/software corporation, two government agents, a few assorted mercenaries and the former vice president.”

“Vice president?” Morie asked, surprised.

“He’s a friend of your father’s,” she replied. “Of course, so are the mercenaries,” she added amusedly. “He likes black sheep.”

“Well, they are interesting people,” Tenny added. Her face changed. “Especially that man, Grange, who works for the Pendletons. The stories I’ve heard about him!”

“Yes, he was a former major in the Green Berets,” Shelby confided. “And there was a rumor that he actually led a group of mercs down into Mexico to rescue Gracie Pendleton when she was kidnapped by that deposed South American dictator, Emilio Machado.”

“I’ve heard about him,” Morie said. She frowned. “Wasn’t something said about a connection between Machado and our Rick Marquez, who works as a homicide detective with San Antonio P.D.?” she added.

“Yes,” Tenny replied in a soft tone. “Some document has surfaced that connects him with Marquez’s mother.”

“Barbara, who owns the café in Jacobsville,” Morie commented. “She has wonderful food. I’ve eaten there when I visited a girlfriend….”

“No,” Tenny interrupted gently. “Not his foster mother. His real mother.”

Both women looked at her without speaking.

“Now isn’t that interesting,” Shelby said.

“And don’t you dare repeat it,” Tenny replied. “I heard it from someone I know and trust and I’m not supposed to tell. But you can keep a secret.” She smiled as she met Shelby’s eyes. “As I well know.”

“Yes.” Shelby didn’t comment further, leaving her daughter to wonder about the strange remark.



DARYL CAME OVER TO TALK to King about a new seed bull that his father wanted to add to the breeding program, but he stopped by long enough to speak with Morie privately.

“You said you wanted rubies,” he reminded her.

She flushed, because she hadn’t really taken the engagement thing seriously. He had, apparently. “Daryl…”

“If you don’t like the design, we can change it,” he assured her. He opened the jeweler’s box. “I had it made up like this, because I know how much you love roses.”

She caught her breath when she saw the rings. They were the most unique and beautiful settings she’d ever seen in her life. They looked like living blood in their exquisite eighteen-karat-gold settings. The engagement ring was a rose, its petals outlined in gold and set in glittering pigeon’s blood rubies, the largest of which made the center. The engagement ring was studded with rubies and made to interlock with the wedding band.

“Here.” Daryl pulled them out of the box and took her hand. He hesitated with a grin. “Want to try them on? No sales pressure. They come with a demented fiancé, but you can dump him anytime you like if you find someone more deserving.”

She looked into his black eyes with real pleasure. He’d taken her to movies and taught her to tango, he’d ridden with her over the acres and acres of her father’s huge ranch. He’d been a friend and even a confidant. She’d told him, although not her parents, the whole truth of her sojourn on the Rancho Real and found him a sympathetic and caring listener. He was also as quiet as a clam. He’d never divulged her secrets to her parents.

She could do worse.

He laughed, because she’d said it out loud. “Yes, you could,” he assured her. “I even still have most of my own teeth!”

“Most of them?” she asked with a curious frown.

His black eyes twinkled. “Your brother knocked one of them out when we were in college together. I can’t even remember what we fought over. But he said that since he couldn’t beat me in a fair fight, we’d be better off as friends, and we have been, all these years.”

“Yes, well, my brother has an attitude problem from time to time,” she conceded. He was hot-tempered, the way Shelby had said their father once was, and he tended to be impulsive to a fault. But he was a good person. Like Daryl.

She shrugged. “Might as well try them on, since you went to so much trouble having them designed for me,” she teased and held out her hand.

They were a perfect fit. They complemented her beautiful hands with their faint olive tan, and the settings glittered in the light with a thousand reflections. The cut was exquisite.

“I love them,” she confessed.

He smiled. “Good! So. When are we getting married?”

She stared at him in panic. Mallory was still out there somewhere, even if he hated her and considered her a thief. She should hate him, but she couldn’t. She loved him. The thing was, if he’d had second thoughts about her, he’d have been in touch by now. He’d have phoned, written, something, anything. But there had been only silence from him. He still thought she was a thief. It tormented her.

“He won’t change his mind, Morena,” he said gently, using her real name. “Men like that are never wrong, in their own opinion. You’re clinging to dreams. It’s better, always better, to deal in reality.”

“You’re right, of course,” she said in a subdued tone. “It’s just…”

He bent and kissed her forehead. “An engagement isn’t a marriage. Just say yes. We’ll announce it at the production sale and make your father and my father very happy so they’ll shut up trying to pressure us into getting married.” He lifted his head. “And if things do somehow work out for you and your suspicious rancher, I’ll take back the rings and go shopping elsewhere,” he offered firmly. “You have nothing to lose, really.”

She drew in a soft breath. He made sense. She didn’t really agree, but she was certain that the future would be dark enough if she went through it alone. In some ways Daryl was perfect for her, and her father would be ecstatic. It might be enough to stop him from digging into her recent past and steamrolling over the Kirks in revenge if he found out why Mallory had fired her. That alone was reason enough to say yes. Daryl was right about one other thing—an engagement wasn’t a marriage. She could break it anytime she liked, with no hard feelings.

She touched the rings. “Pity to waste them.”

“Just what I was thinking,” he agreed.

Her dark eyes twinkled. “Okay. We can be engaged. But it’s like a trial engagement,” she added firmly. “Just that.”

He touched her nose with the tip of his forefinger. “Just that. I promise.”

Her father was over the moon when they gave him the news. “Thank God you finally saw sense,” he told her. He shook Daryl’s hand. “Welcome to the family. You can be married very soon.”

“We’re not rushing it,” Daryl said, when he noted her discomfort. “We’re going to take our time and get to know each other.”

King’s dark eyes narrowed. “Is that necessary? Why?”

“Now, Dad,” Morie said gently. “Don’t push.”

“It’s because of that damned Wyoming rancher who fired you, isn’t it?” her father demanded suddenly. “The lowlife son of Satan is going to find himself on the wrong side of a defamation-of-character lawsuit just as soon as I find out who framed you! And his isn’t the only head that’s going to roll when I do!”