Freddy’s heart stopped. For a moment she couldn’t breathe. Then she reminded herself this was Dal, and she knew him. He’d made mistakes in the past, but he wouldn’t make the same mistakes in the future. Not a man who had punished himself for so long.
She unclenched her fists. “We should keep an eye on the drovers. I don’t think they’d betray us, but who knows? Jack has a talent for finding weak spots.”
“Freddy?” Dal said in a thick voice. “Thank you for not asking if I accepted Lola’s offer.”
She held his gaze, and something warm flooded her chest and made her fingers tremble. The shock of suddenly realizing how much she cared for this man shook her deeply. And for the first time she realized she would be sorry to see the drive end, sorry to watch him ride away toward the high mountain meadows of Montana.
“If you don’t take off that nightgown in the next minute, I’m going to rip it off of you,” he said hoarsely. “I won’t be able to help myself.”
“What? We’re finished with pretty poetry?” she teased, smiling.
Standing, he gazed down at her with a look in his eyes that sent a thrill of anticipation shivering through her body. “ ‘Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying.’ ”
She knew that one. “ ‘And this same flower that smiles to-day, Tomorrow will be dying.’ ” Laughing, she ran to the bed, jumped into the tussled sheets, threw off her nightgown, and opened her arms. He came to her and buried his head between her breasts.
He spent the rest of the night demonstrating that she still had much to learn about the pleasures between men and women.
On the first day Les slept around the clock, rousing only briefly to peer around the hotel room before she dropped back to the pillow and slept again. Hunger woke her near suppertime on the second day and she ate ravenously from the tray served by the woman Dal had hired to sit with her. They talked for a while, then Les dozed again. When she awoke near midnight, Mrs. Goodnight dozed in a chair beside the window.
Folding her hands on top of the sheets, Les leaned against a mound of pillows and gazed at the moonlight shining in the window. In camp, the longhorns would be standing and blowing about now. The night shifts would be changing. Ward was asleep inside his tent.
Closing her eyes, she lifted both hands to rub her temples. What was she going to do?
She had promised herself that Ward would be happy when they got Pa’s inheritance—and the hitting would stop. His temper would vanish when they had the money—and the hitting would stop. Once he felt important, felt equal to a Roark, the hitting would stop.
But in her heart she suspected that she would always be the target for his frustrations and disappointments. And the frustration and disappointment would continue because Ward would never be a man like Pa. He would never be a man that other men respected.
Alone in the dark she could admit that she no longer respected him either. She wasn’t sure she even liked him anymore. But what could she do?
He had sold his store and sacrificed everything to accompany her on this drive. And he was her only hope in the event they did not deliver two thousand cattle to the yards in Abilene. If they didn’t win, she would be lost without him. Wouldn’t she?
It troubled her to recognize that Alex and Freddy would also be lost if they didn’t win Pa’s inheritance, yet she didn’t doubt that her sisters would somehow survive.
Staring at the moonlight, she wondered if she, too, could find the determination and courage to build a life for herself without Pa’s money. And without Ward. Such a thought was so foreign that her mind shied away from it. But she forced herself to take a closer look.
After several minutes, she released a long sigh. She couldn’t see herself clearly anymore. The cattle drive was changing things, changing her. Smothering a yawn, she eased back on the pillows, surprised that the idea of losing Ward didn’t frighten her as it once had.
In the morning, she enjoyed a long tub bath and washed her hair. Mrs. Goodnight had sent her trail clothes out to be laundered and they smelled fresh when she put them on. When she looked in the mirror, color had returned to her cheeks, not the high gloss of fever, but the pink glow of returning health. Her brown hair had a glossy sheen.
“A gentleman has arrived for you, Miss.”
“That will be Mr. Hamm, my fiancé,” she said to Mrs. Goodnight, looking around the room to check if she had forgotten anything.
“He’s very handsome.”
“Ward?” Her eyebrows lifted. Maybe Dal had come for her. She hoped so, as she dreaded riding back to the herd with Ward.
But it was Luther waiting in the tiny hotel lobby. He swept his hat from his head. “Mr. Hamm was engaged, and as I was coming into town anyway, I volunteered to bring you back.”