Heiress (40 page)

"Not one damned bit!" MacCrea flared, her anger at last penetrating.

"Now I know why you didn't tell me anything about your deal." The contempt she felt matched the violent anger that quivered through her whole body. "You were very careful not to let me know who all was involved, weren't you? You did it knowing how I would feel about it. How could you?"

"Easy. This was business," MacCrea stated emphatically.

"Business. Is that what you call it?" She had another name for it: betrayal, the ultimate betrayal. "All that time you spent in Houston, you were meeting with her, weren't you?" She felt sick to her stomach just thinking about the two of them together. She could imagine how Rachel must have gloated over it, knowing she had stolen someone else who had supposedly belonged to her alone.

"There were others involved in those meetings," he snapped. "I wasn't alone with her, if that's what you're implying. I told you: it was business."

"Am I supposed to believe that?" Abbie taunted.

"I don't give a damn whether you do or not!"

"That's obvious." She could tell that he had no intention of altering the situation, a situation that meant he would have continued contact with Rachel. "And it's equally obvious that you don't give a damn about me either!"

"If that's the way you want to look at it." There was no yielding in his hard stand. There wasn't even a glimmer of regret in his expression, not even a hint of apology for his actions.

"This invention of yours was always more important to you than I was. I was a fool not to see that. Well, now you've got it!" She hurled the papers at his face and stalked quickly to the trailer door. Gripping the handle, she glanced over her shoulder, consumed by the pain, jealousy, and anger that were so firmly intermixed she couldn't tell them apart. "I hope they keep your bed warm at night from now on, because I won't!"

She charged out of the trailer into the floodlit night, fighting the tears and trembling that threatened to overwhelm her. She could still see him standing there, towering over the strewn papers and broken pottery shards from the mug, his expression thin-lipped and angry. But she had crossed that fine line, now hating him with all the passion with which she had once loved him.

In the trailer MacCrea stared at the door, his fingers curling with the urge to go after her and shake her until her teeth rattled out of her head. Instead he turned, the papers crackling underfoot. He glanced at them, then, in a burst of frustration, he rammed his fist into a cabinet door, the pressed wood cracking and buckling under the force of the blow.

Chapter 25

Abbie looked on as the filly stood quietly while Ben cleaned and applied disinfectant to the large ulcerated sore under the foreleg caused by the rubbing splint. So far, River Breeze had adjusted well to the splints and lately had managed to hobble a few steps with them.

As Ben straightened to his feet, the messy task finished, the filly nuzzled Abbie's shoulder. The affectionate gesture seemed to be one of gratitude. Smiling, Abbie cradled the filly's silver head in the crook of her arm and lightly rubbed the arched neck with a small circular motion to imitate the nuzzling of a mare on her foal.

"You know we're doing all of this to help you, don't you, Breeze?" Abbie crooned, her chest tight with the pain of betrayal that just wouldn't go away. It was as fresh this morning as it had been two nights ago when she'd left MacCrea's trailer for the last time. If anything, the anger, hurt, and bitterness had grown stronger. When Ben left the stall to dispose of the soiled gauze pads, she pressed the side of her face against the filly's sleek neck. "You would never do that to me, would you, girl?" She drew comfort from that knowledge.

"Looks like she's healing real good."

Startled by the sound of Dobie's voice, Abbie stiffened. She hadn't heard him walk up to the stall and wondered how long he'd been standing there.

"Yes, she's coming along nicely." She gave the filly one last pat, then stepped away, feeling the strain of trying to behave normally so no one would guess that she had broken off with MacCrea. She couldn't talk about it—she didn't want to talk about it yet. "I planned to talk to you today about renting this barn and that section of pasture along the Brazos."

"But I already told you that you were welcome to use both. Neither one of them is of any use to me."

"But that was when we were talking about keeping only my filly here. Several local breeders have contacted us about training and showing their Arabians this fall. So far it looks like we're going to have about a dozen horses. Since Ben and I are going to have to rent facilities somewhere, I thought it would be much more convenient and more logical if I could work out some sort of arrangement with you to keep them here."

"If that's the case, I don't see why not," he replied with a falsely indifferent shrug. As tight as Dobie was with money, Abbie had been certain he wouldn't turn down the opportunity to make an extra dollar. She hadn't misjudged him. "Course"—he glanced around at the interior of the old barn—"this place isn't in very good shape."

"Ben and I can fix it up. We'll pay for the improvements." With what, she didn't know. But that was a worry she'd leave for another time. Maybe by then she'd have sold her Mercedes. "But we would expect a break on the rent because of it."

"I promise I'll be fair with you, Abbie. Anything is better than the nothing I'm getting for it now."

"I suppose that's true."

Knowing that now it was simply a matter of dickering over the price, she felt a little more relieved. It would be good to wake up in the mornings and once again hear the whinny of horses. She had missed that since leaving River Bend. And she could imagine how much harder it must have been on Ben. For nearly all his sixty-odd years, he'd been surrounded by horses—Arabian horses. The care and training of them were both his vocation and avocation. Without them, he felt useless and lost.

The side door of the barn banged shut. Abbie turned, expecting to see Ben. Instead it was MacCrea coming toward her, his long, lazy stride eating up the space between them. Stung, she felt all the hurts coming back, that terrible ache, and the rawness of wounds too fresh even to have begun to heal.

"What do you want?" She heard the brittleness in her voice—rigid and cold like a thin shell of ice. That's the way she felt. She looked him in the eye, taking care to ignore the probe of his dark gaze and not to let her glance slip to the heavy brush of his mustache to watch his mouth when he spoke.

"I want to talk to you."

Beside her, Dobie took a step toward the door. Abbie stopped him. "You don't have to leave, Dobie. I'm not interested in hearing anything he has to say." Pivoting sharply, she swung away from MacCrea.

"I had hoped you would have cooled off enough by now to let me explain a few things to you."

She swung back to face him, cold with rage. "There's no explanation you could give that would justify anything."

When she started to walk away from him, MacCrea grabbed her arm. "Dammit, Abbie—"

"Take your hand off me!" Burned by the contact, she exploded in anger. Releasing her arm, he drew back. "Don't touch me, MacCrea. Don't ever come near me again. Do you hear? I don't want to see—or hear from—you. Just get out! And stay out!"

MacCrea looked at her for a long, hard moment, then snapped, "With pleasure."

In the next second, Abbie was staring at his back as he walked out of the barn. She continued to tremble, but it was more in reaction than anger. MacCrea was gone. She kept reminding herself that she should be relieved to have him out of her life. But why wasn't she? With the exception of Ben, the men she'd known had never brought her anything but grief from her father to her husband and all the way to MacCrea. She swore she wouldn't be any man's fool again.

Dobie came over to stand beside her. "Are you okay, Abbie?"

"Of course," she answered sharply.

"He wasn't right for you. I always knew that," Dobie said. "The man's a wildcatter. His kind are never in one place very long—always moving on to find the next big strike. A woman like you needs a home—a place you can sink your roots in and raise a family. You need a man to look after you and—"

"I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself. I don't need any man to do that." More specifically, she didn't need Dobie. And she could almost guarantee where he was leading this conversation. "If you'll excuse me, I have work to do—and I'm sure you do, too."

"Yeah, I. . . I do." He nodded, then glanced at her hesitantly before he turned to walk to the door. "I'll talk to you later about the rent for this."

"Fine."

After coming to terms on the rental, Abbie had insisted that a lease agreement be drawn up, covering both the barn area and pasturage, and the house they were living in. Although she doubted that Dobie would go back on his word, she preferred not to take anything on trust.

For the next two weeks, with the help of a laborer to do the heavy work, she and Ben had repaired the barn, fixed the fences, built small paddocks, and spray-painted everything in preparation for the arrival of their new charges. Even then, the facilities were barely adequate to fill their most basic needs—certainly nothing to compare with what they'd had at River Bend.

But the hard physical work left Abbie too exhausted to think about anything—not her former home or its new owners nor even MacCrea. With the approach of noon, Abbie trudged to the house while Ben went to the barn to check on the filly one more time. Every bone and muscle in her body felt bruised, but she had the satisfaction of knowing they had accomplished the impossible. When the first of the horses arrived tomorrow, the place would be ready and presentable.

Pushing open the back door, Abbie walked into the small kitchen, but no cooking odors met her. Babs always had lunch ready for them when they came in at noon. But this time her mother sat at the chrome table in the kitchen, holding the receiver from the wall-mounted telephone to her ear with a raised shoulder while jotting down something on the notepad in front of her.

"Yes, that sounds fine," she said into the phone. When she heard Abbie push the door shut, she started to turn around, then grabbed for the phone to keep it from slipping off her shoulder, the coiled cord pulled taut. "What?. . . All right. Let me call you back after I've had time to check on this." She told the party on the line good-bye as she walked over to hang up the phone. "I didn't realize what time it was, Abbie. This morning has just slipped through my fingers like butter." Hurriedly she began gathering up her papers and notebooks from the table. "I'll have lunch ready in just a few minutes. I'm afraid it'll have to be something cold."

"That's all right. I'll set the table for you."

"Just sit down and rest. You've worked all morning as it is."

Abbie was too tired to argue and gladly sat down in one of the chrome dinette chairs. "Who was that on the phone?" But Babs had her head buried in the refrigerator. She came out of it juggling bowls of potato and macaroni salad and a pitcher of iced tea.

As Abbie was about to repeat her question, Babs finally answered, "You've been so busy lately I haven't had a chance to tell you that Josie Phillips called me last week and asked if I'd help her plan a party for Homer's birthday next month. Her youngest daughter is in the hospital and Josie has a houseful of grandchildren. So I said of course I would."

"It should be fun for you." Abbie smiled wanly, vaguely resenting the fact that her mother's friends called only when they wanted something from her.

"She's. . . she's offered to pay me, the same amount it would have cost her for a professional party consultant for something this size: fifteen hundred dollars. And I'm in charge of arranging and coordinating everything."

"Fif—Momma, that's wonderful. But are you sure you want to do that? I mean, isn't it going to be awkward working for your friends?"

Men do it all the time in business," Babs insisted logically. "Ever since Josie called me last week, I've been thinking: what is the one thing I am really good at? Giving parties. Your father and I used to give three or four really large parties every year, and who knows how many little dinner affairs? When I think of how much money we spent a year just on entertaining. . . why, your wedding alone came to almost five hundred thousand dollars. If your father had only said something to me—but how could he? I never wanted to discuss business or finances."

"You can't blame yourself, Momma. I don't think Daddy realized what kind of situation he was in financially." Or if he did, she doubted that he would have admitted it.

"I've never talked about it, but I think you know that my family didn't have very much when I married your father. It wasn't the money. I would have married him if he was as poor as a wetback. But suddenly I didn't have to worry about whether we could afford to buy a new dress or coat—or anything, for that matter. It was like playing with Monopoly money. There was always more if you ran out. Sometimes, I was even deliberately extravagant because I knew he was spending money on—" She stopped abruptly, catching herself before she referred to Rachel or her mother by name. "Anyway, that's all over. And I'm looking at this birthday party for Homer as sort of a trial run. If it works out the way I think it will, then I'm seriously considering going into business for myself."

"You mean that, don't you?" Abbie said as she realized it was true. As preposterous as the combination of Babs and business sounded to her, she couldn't laugh at it.

"I most certainly do. In the last thirty years, I've probably had more experience at it than any professional consultant in Houston. I know all the caterers and suppliers personally. And I can track down anything, no matter how unusual. That's no different than a scavenger hunt. And look at the people I know—people who have been to my parties in the past. They already know what I can do."

"Momma, you don't have to convince me," Abbie laughed. "I believe you can do it, too."

"For now, I can work right out of this house. I know you've been talking about finding a job in addition to your work with the horses, and I was wondering whether. . . you'd like to go into business with me—assuming, of course, that this works and I'm offered more parties."