Heartbreak Ranch (9 page)

“Good. I'm glad you realize that.”

“You know something, Jed?” she said, taking a step toward him. “I'm not ashamed of marrying Andrew. I may not have been the best judge of character, but I tried to do the right thing. I don't have to apologize to anyone for that. Maybe it wasn't the right choice to stay with him as long as I did, hoping he'd change. Maybe it wasn't the safe one. But at least I tried. I took a risk. Haven't you ever gambled on anything? Haven't you ever played the odds, taken a risk that just maybe wasn't the smartest, the safest?”

He watched her unblinkingly. “Sure. The most recent time was the other night on the terrace.”

He had the satisfaction of seeing the response on her face, her eyes widening slightly, her cheeks blooming with a fascinating shade of pink. And then she brushed carefully at the blades of grass clinging to her jeans. The act seemed to require an inordinate amount of concentration.

“Oh, that. Well, as risks go, a kiss isn't exactly dare-devil material. Especially with someone who's almost your sister.”

“You're not my sister,” he said flatly, and studied the renewed burst of color in her face with intense interest.

“I'm not lying to myself about it. Why should you? I kissed you because I wanted to, even though I knew it was a bad idea. The worst.”

His words had her eyes shooting sparks, and he paused for a moment, prepared to see her get a great deal more irritated. “I'm used to regarding you as a pest, a worry and a sometimes major pain in the butt. Wanting you was a shock. And it's not a habit I'm going to allow myself to get into.”

Her mouth opened, then closed again. He could see the confusion, amazement and fury work over her face. If the emotions hadn't mirrored so closely the ones he'd experienced in the hours since he'd followed that particular impulse, he would have been amused. But he was dead serious.

Her voice, when she found it, was lethally dangerous. “Kissing you didn't exactly make the top ten of my personal billboard chart of smart moves, either.”

The statement almost made him smile. Julianne in a snit could do that. “I just don't want you reading more into it than was there.”

She sighed gustily. “How will I ever get over the disappointment of not bearing your children?”

“I don't want you getting sidetracked while you're here. You've got a lot of thinking to do, and that's where you need to focus your concentration. To keep a clear mind you need to avoid complications.”

“All those profundities, and still no bubble gum,” she
marveled. “You want to be careful, Jed. It's starting to sound an awful lot like you can't wait for me to leave.”

Pulling out his pack of cigarettes again had less to do with a craving than for a sudden need to keep his hands busy. “I'm not pushing you on your way, if that's what you mean.”

She surveyed him thoughtfully. “I wonder how I can make you understand. Remember when you changed your name from Templeton to Sullivan? How old were you then, eighteen?”

He lit the cigarette he'd placed between his lips and puffed. “Nineteen. So what?”

“I couldn't understand why you felt you needed to take your birth name back, and you told me…”

“Because it was mine,” he confirmed flatly. “I wasn't adopted as a baby, you know.”

She nodded. “I remember. You were…what? Three?”

“I was four when I was taken away from my mother, six when I was adopted.” He lifted a shoulder negligibly. “When I was eighteen I asked Kimberley for a copy of the adoption papers. After a few months of putting me off, she finally sent them. I don't remember much about my life before I went to live with the Templetons.” The statement was not quite a lie. He spent more time than he cared to think about locking away the few memories he had. But that didn't change the fact that when he'd taken his birth name back he'd taken back a piece of that life. A piece that belonged to him.

“It was yours,” she said, satisfaction lacing her voice, as if she'd just discovered some deep, dark secret. “You wanted it because it represented a part of yourself.”

Because she was reading his motives a little more clearly than was comfortable, he feigned disinterest. “So?”

“So the way you felt about your name is the way I feel about the ranch. I wanted to return to it because it's mine.” She waved a dismissive hand, as if she noticed a protest on his lips. “Oh, I know it still has Harley's name on the papers, but my soul is here. I don't know whether I'll ever leave it again.”

Her words struck both gladness and terror in his heart. The last thing he wanted to do was to let her see either of the emotions. “That will be your decision,” he said, not looking at her. “Take your time.”

It wasn't until she'd remounted and ridden off that he lifted his eyes. He didn't deny himself the pleasure of watching her ride away. Her hair flowed like gold behind her where the wind caught it, and she moved as though she were one with the horse she was riding.

She'd be sore tomorrow. There was nothing like horseback riding to awaken muscles that had been unused for years. He made a mental note to have Annie put some liniment out for her. An image of him rubbing lotion warmed from his palms into Julianne's taut, screaming muscles flitted across his mind and refused to be banished.

She'd been right when she'd said he wasn't a risk-taker. Life had been too full of events over which he'd had no control for him to enjoy giving up that control easily, to situations or to people. And wanting Julianne constituted the biggest risk he'd ever faced.

By the time she was a speck in the distance, the cigarette had burned down in his fingers. He ground it out absently. The feeling in her voice when she spoke of the ranch still rang in his ears. It shouldn't have surprised him. He'd always known what the ranch meant to her. It represented just as strong a pull for him, if for different reasons.

He gazed into the distance and wondered miserably how he'd forgive himself if he was responsible for driving Julianne off the ranch for good.

J
ulianne braced one foot against the rim of the tub and soaped it indolently. The water was as hot as she could stand it, frothing with bubbles, and deep enough to reach her chin when she slid down in it. She'd piled her hair haphazardly on top of her head to keep it dry, but already strands had loosened from the careless knot and were trailing in the water. She didn't care. It felt too darn good to soak like this. She had every intention of staying in the tub until dinnertime.

She held the washcloth over her leg and dribbled water over it. After a week, her muscles were slowly becoming accustomed to riding again, but they still protested at the end of the day, and loudly. She'd never mentioned it to Annie, but a bottle of liniment had magically appeared on her dresser the first day she'd gone riding, and Julianne had been using it ever since.

Lowering her leg, she slipped down in the water, resting her head against the back of the tub. The water lapping
above her shoulders, she closed her eyes and tried to recall the last time she'd felt this contented, this peaceful.

She'd been right to return to the ranch, right about the healing effect of being home with people who loved her. She'd divided her time almost equally between Annie and Gabe. For the first time in her life she was actually taking an interest in learning to cook; an interest, that is, aside from the obvious end result. Annie was teaching her, and their lessons ranged from hair-raising to hysterical.

For a couple of hours a day she followed Gabe around, taking a simultaneous joy and sadness in their time together. Jed had been right. The older man was slowing down. He appeared healthy enough, aside from the arthritis he stubbornly refused to admit to. But Julianne was struck by an awareness of how many years had passed since she'd dogged his tracks as a child. She'd learned a lot since those days, and wasn't taking for granted one minute of the time she had with him.

She shifted positions in the tub to ease her aching posterior. Her relationship with Jed was a little more complicated, but surely with both of them working at it, they could return to their old familiar footing. She looked forward to the time when they could once again be in the same room without that tension simmering and sparking between them. A shiver ran down her wet spine, and she sank lower in the water. The unexpected awareness between the two of them was the only thing that marred the days. But even with it, she was more content than she'd been in years.

Certainly life with Andrew hadn't fostered a similar sense of security. Even at the beginning, when their love had seemed fresh and strong, she had worried about his happiness, his reactions to life's disappointments.

Lazily, she reached out with her toe and pushed up the
lever, allowing some water to drain. Seconds later she pushed it down again and, with the same surefooted dexterity, turned on more hot water. When the bathwater was returned to a steaming temperature, she settled back again to soak.

“Might be someone else in the house who will need some hot water tonight,” a voice called through the bathroom door. “You'd best be leaving some.”

Julianne smiled without opening her eyes. “I will, Annie.”

“You've got a phone call. You want to return it when you're done in another few hours?”

Her smile grew wider. “Just bring it in here, will you?”

Annie pushed open the door and walked in the room, clucking her tongue and muttering dire warnings when Julianne dried off one hand and took the phone from her.

“You wouldn't want me to waste this hot water, would you?”

The housekeeper shook her head reprovingly. “I heard tell once about a woman in Butte who dropped the phone in a bath full of water and electrocuted herself. Took a week for someone to find her.”

“I'll bet her bath was cold by then.”

“You just keep smartin' off, girl. Someday maybe you'll learn to listen to your elders.” With that pronouncement Annie turned and exited the room. “Don't say I didn't warn you.” The words trailed in her wake.

“I could never say that,” Julianne murmured in amusement. She brought the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

“Julianne. Darling.”

For an instant it felt as if every organ in her system failed. Breathing stopped, veins clogged. And then, as comprehension registered, they resumed their functions with a violent rush that left her weak.

“Andrew.” She sat up straight in the water, which only a minute ago had been the temperature of a Jacuzzi. Now it seemed as icy as a snow-fed stream. She moistened her lips, strove to keep her voice steady. “Why are you calling me?”

“I've missed you, darling.”

Oh, God, she could almost picture his face as he formed the words. The too-sensitive mouth with its determined quiver, that little-boy vulnerability that could be so tempting to nurture. So destructive to live with.

“We don't have anything to say to each other.”

“Don't be like that, sweetheart.” There was just enough shake in his voice to make the demand sound persuasive.

“Surely you'll want to know when the trial is starting. Don't you care enough to wonder whether my release on bail is going to be my last taste of freedom for the next decade?”

An unnatural calm settled over her then. In the months since she'd left him, the reasons had never seemed clearer than they were right now. “You made your choices, Andrew. I made mine. We both have to live with them.”

She heard the faint rattle of ice against crystal and knew intuitively that he was drinking. She closed her eyes for an instant as pain twisted through her. It had taken her too many years to realize that the only kind of strength Andrew had was what he could draw from her or from the bottle. Even before she'd moved out, before the scandal, she'd had the sensation of drowning in her ex-husband's excesses.

“You're the one who always seemed to know what was right, Julianne. You had all the answers.”

If only that had been true, she thought, she wouldn't be having this conversation. “Hardly.”

There was a long pause, and when he spoke again, his
voice was slightly steadier. “I didn't call to argue. I need your help, darling. I know I can count on you. You were always there for me.”

Bitterness welled, from a pocket buried so deeply she was surprised at its explosive appearance. “Would that have been when you tried to crawl into the bottle to solve your problems, Andrew? Or when you'd disappear for weeks at a time and come home a few hundred thousand dollars poorer? Maybe you're thinking of those other women you were with, or perhaps it's all been a hallucination caused by the current drug of choice.”

“I know I've disappointed you. I've disappointed myself.” His voice held a fine tremble. “But I've hit rock bottom here. My lawyers say there's no way I can avoid jail time unless I give up the name of the man I was running the drugs for.”

“So do it,” she said flatly. “For once in your life, do the right thing.”

She heard his breath hitch over the line. “I can't, he's too powerful. He'll kill me. I owe him money, and he's not going to stop until he gets it. Please, you've got to help me. I have to pay him off so he'll leave me alone. I won't even be safe in prison.”

“I don't have any money.” She was suddenly, fiercely glad that it was true. “Every liquid asset of ours you either lost or is tied up. I couldn't help you if I wanted to. And I don't.”

“I was desperate after you left me, don't you see? I never would have gotten in so deep if I had been thinking clearly. Your leaving drove me over the edge.” In the silence that followed, the only noise was the quiet crackling of the bath bubbles popping.

“I'm not going to let you lay this on me, Andrew.” The process of getting air to her lungs had never seemed more
difficult. “For once, just admit you made the wrong choice. No one forced you, no one is responsible but
you.
” How familiar this conversation seemed, she thought wildly. Like an unwelcome episode of déjà vu. So many scenes had played out just like this one. Andrew pleading, her demanding that he take responsibility. And this awful sense of guilt for not being able to be strong enough for both of them.

“I miss you, Julianne. You know how much I love you.”

“Don't say that!” Water splashed dangerously close to the edge of the tub as she stood up and snatched at the towel nearby. “Don't ever say that. My mistake at one time was in thinking that your sick need for me constituted love. It never did. I was your crutch, but that's over. I don't have any money, and I can't help you get out of this mess you've made.”

“You have the ranch.”

For a moment the room seemed to circle and spin, before his next words righted it, and set the final spark to her temper.

“Call your father. He promised the ranch to you. All you have to do is have him sign over the papers. I'm not asking you to sell the whole thing, but there's so much land, Julianne.” The words didn't quite manage to avoid a whine. “All I need is five hundred thousand. The ranch must be worth millions. I'm just asking for a piece of it.”

At that instant, her head had never been clearer, her resolve stronger. “Never. I'm not surprised you'd ask, Andrew. But I am surprised if you thought it would work. Don't call me again.”

She cut his protest short with one touch of her finger. With more care than the acts required, she put the phone down and used the towel to dry off. She caught her re
flection in the glass. Her face was pale, set. For just a moment it reminded her of other times over the past few years, other reflections: After she'd spent the day finding and pouring all the liquor stashed in the house down the drain, only to have Andrew stagger in after an afternoon at one of his clubs. Or when she'd accompanied him to Gamblers Anonymous meetings for a month, and then discovered that he'd taken off again, this time for Atlantic City.

She slipped her robe on and walked into her bedroom. And then, of course, there was that final time when she'd followed him to their place in Key West, hoping to keep him from the booze and the high stakes card games. Instead she'd found him entertaining a redhead in their bed.

Life with Andrew, she reflected, had been no life at all. She'd had little opportunity to do more than react to his choices. It had taken her too many years to recognize the vicious circle that she'd been drawn into, the cycle of abetting and enabling his weaknesses. She wondered how long it would take for her to stop feeling as though walking away from him constituted a personal failure.

She crossed to the dresser and took out underwear. She was just slipping on a fresh pair of jeans when the phone she'd left in the other room rang. She started for an instant, and then ignored it. No doubt it was for Jed. Annie often took messages for him, which he returned after supper when he went to his den.

She stood in front of her closet, tapping a finger against her lips. The large space was filled to overflowing, making it difficult to find anything easily. She resolved to spend some time the next day hauling some of her clothes to a closet in one of the extra bedrooms.

Making a decision, she took a pale yellow short-sleeved
silk blouse from its hanger and put it on. She was buttoning it when Annie knocked at her bedroom door.

“Phone's for you again, Julianne.”

Her gaze flew to the door, her body going still. It was a long moment before she found her voice. “Tell him…I can't come to the phone.” Her words were greeted with silence. Annie had returned downstairs.

Immediately castigating herself for her cowardice, Julianne strode into the bathroom, picked up the phone and turned it on. “I don't want you calling me again. I gave you my answer and it was final.”

There was a long silence, and then a familiar voice drawled, “I hadn't expected a rousing rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne,' but I think you can do better than that.”

Relief and delight rushed through her. “Shelby! Oh, it's great to hear from you. Tell me that you're at your dad's place.”

“We just got in this morning. J.T. has been a tyrant. The plane ride wore him out, poor little thing.”

“How long are you staying?”

“A week.” Julianne could picture the other woman as she answered, pacing through the house. Shelby could serve as evidence for the theory of perpetual motion.

“We're having supper with Dad tonight, but he mentioned wanting to invite a few neighbors over for a get-together tomorrow evening. We can catch up then, and make plans for the rest of my stay.”

“Sounds great.”

“Invite Annie and Jed, will you? And don't let Annie bring too much. Tell her she doesn't have to worry about the food. I've actually become pretty domesticated over the last few years.”

“Now, that's hard to believe,” Julianne teased.

“Believe. I didn't mind endless suppers of Ramin noo
dles for myself, but Steve requires a bit more nourishment. I take pity on the man occasionally and provide him with a real meal.”

It was nice that some things didn't change, Julianne reflected after hanging up the phone. Catching up with Shelby had taken the better part of a half hour, and only the interruption of J.T.'s howling had cut their chat short. It didn't matter how much time passed between their talks or visits. Their friendship remained constant.

She hadn't admitted how shaken she'd been by Andrew's call until she realized how much the conversation with Shelby had soothed her. She'd found peace here, finally. That wasn't going to change. She wouldn't let it.

 

Annie's brows rose when Julianne entered the kitchen a couple of minutes after six.

“Fall asleep in the bathtub? You know what time we eat around here.”

Circling the table, she snatched a piece of still-warm homemade bread off Jed's plate and barely dodged the fork he stabbed in her direction. She took a bite and closed her eyes in ecstasy. “Oh, God, Annie, this is so great.” She slipped into her chair and countered Jed's glower with a smug grin. “Way too much butter on this, though, big guy. You better start watching your cholesterol. Can't have those arteries hardening up on you.”