When Love Comes (19 page)

“If you had married him, we wouldn’t be in this trouble,” her mother said.

“No, it would be worse. You’d be faced with running a ranch that you know nothing about, because you’re too proud to be connected with a saloon. Meanwhile, I’d be tied to a man I don’t love, one I’m not even sure I like.”

“
I
don’t like him,” Eddie said.

“Do you like anybody?” his mother snapped.

“I like Broc,” Eddie said with a big grin.

“I know that. Do you like anybody else?”

He thought for a moment. “I like Amanda and Leo. That’s all.”

Eddie wasn’t aware of what he’d done, but his mother looked stricken.

“What do you think we ought to do?” Amanda asked Broc.

“You’ve got just one crop of calves on the ground and another to be born next year. Do you have anything you can sell so you can hold on for at least two more years?”

Every eye in the room focused on one or more pieces of furniture before gradually settling on her mother, who squirmed under the collective gazes before she raised her eyes to face them.

“It would be pointless to sell my furniture,” she said. “I’d never get half of what it’s worth. Besides, it’s Amanda’s inheritance.”

“I don’t want your furniture.” Amanda realized immediately she should have said she didn’t
need
the furniture, but she couldn’t retract her words now.

“This was my mother’s furniture,” her mother intoned. “Your father hauled every piece of it from Mississippi because he was certain you would value it as I have.”

Amanda didn’t value the furniture, and everybody knew it. “It’s not a question of whether I value it or not. It’s a question of being able to hold on to this ranch, of having a way to support all of us, of having something to leave Eddie and Gary as well as me.”

“I want the horses,” Eddie said. “Gary can have the cows.”

“There is another possible solution,” Broc said.

“What?” her mother asked.

“You could sell the bull. By using the calves you have now and the ones you’ll have next year, you can still upgrade your herd.”

“Do you think that will work?” her mother asked.

“It depends on a number of things, but you have to do one thing before anything else.”

“What is that?”

“You have to find out for sure whether you owe money to Ella Sibley. If you do, the judge will sell the bull for you.”

The familiar sinking feeling was back in the pit of Amanda’s stomach. She had managed to put the debt out of her mind because she was certain it was a mistake, but if a judge had proof to back up his belief, then he could do what he wanted with their property.

“Of course we don’t owe that woman any money,” her mother said. “My husband would have told me. He never kept anything from me.”

Amanda wondered how much of that was true. Her mother never kept anything from the family. She considered her wants to be of sufficient importance that everyone should know of them, but her father had played his cards close to the vest. He always said a businessman couldn’t be successful if everyone knew his secrets.

Amanda asked Broc, “How can we find out the truth?”

“I have to be back to Crystal Springs in a couple of days. I can go see Mrs. Sibley. If I learn anything useful, I’ll find a way of letting you know.”

It took Amanda only one second to make her decision. “I’ll go with you.”

Ella Sibley was a charming, elderly lady who lived in a modest but comfortably furnished house two blocks from the main street in Crystal Springs. “My husband liked to ranch, but I prefer living in town,” she told Broc and Amanda with a warm smile. “I’d rather have neighbors who talk than moo.”

The moment Amanda entered Mrs. Sibley’s house and
was welcomed with a cup of coffee and two sugar cookies, she was certain the debt was real. The flowered paper on the walls, the lace curtains at the windows, the starched crochet decorating the room, even the several daguerreotypes divided among three tables in the room—everything spoke of a woman who lived her life with integrity and a welcoming smile. Her powder white hair and diminutive stature made her look like everyone’s grandmother.

“That must make it a bit uncomfortable living in Texas,” Broc said.

“Not at all,” Ella said with one of her charming smiles. “There are a lot of men who want nothing to do with cows.”

“It’s a good thing not everyone agrees with you,” Broc said with an equally charming smile, “or Texas would still be as broke as it was when the war ended.”

Despite her distaste for cows, it soon became apparent Ella knew quite a bit about cows, ranching, and Texas. She was as interested in what Broc and his partners were doing on their ranch south of San Antonio as she was in what his friend was doing on his farm in California.

“Do you think your friend in California would adopt me as his grandmother?” she asked with a twinkle in her eye. “You make his farm sound like a perfect place to live.”

“I’m sure he’d love to have you.” Broc laughed. “And there’s a nice little town where you can get away from the smell of cows.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t notice the smell after it was filtered through acres of flowering fruit trees in bloom.” She sighed. “I can still remember an apple tree next to the house where I grew up.” She walked over to a window and pulled back the filmy curtain. “I’ve planted apple trees all around the house. I don’t care if they have any apples as long as they bloom every spring.”

It was impossible for Amanda not to like Ella Sibley. She
felt guilty when she realized she wished her mother was more like Ella.

“There’s something important we need to talk to you about,” Broc said.

“I knew there had to be,” Ella replied with a sly grin. “Beautiful young people don’t waste their time with an old woman unless they must.”

“Then the young people in Crystal Springs are missing an invaluable opportunity,” Broc told her.

“You’re a charming young man with a silver tongue,” Ella said, smiling even more broadly. “Now tell me your business. I expect you’ll be more honest when you talk about that.”

“It’s really my business,” Amanda said. “Broc just got caught up in it by accident.”

Ella was too much of a lady to betray her curiosity, but Amanda knew she must be curious.

“I allowed myself to lose my temper when a man here in Crystal Springs took exception to my face,” Broc said.

“Felix Yant,” Ella said with disgust. “I heard about what he did. I wish you’d broken more than his arm.”

Broc grinned. “I think the judge agreed with you, but he couldn’t say so. He said I didn’t have to go to jail if I could collect the debt owed you.”

“It’s my family that owes the debt,” Amanda said, “only we don’t know anything about it. Before my father died, he told us he had no debts. Broc and I came here hoping you had some document that would help us solve this mystery.”

“It’s no mystery,” Ella said. “Your father bought our stud bull after my husband died. I was to be paid fifty dollars a month until the total was paid. I was paid for less than a year. Then the payments stopped.”

“Do you have a bill of sale, a written agreement, or something we could look at?” Amanda asked. “My family has nothing.”

“How odd,” Ella said. “Of course you can look at the agreement. I gave the judge the original, but he returned it two days ago. I’ll get it for you.” Ella walked over to one of the tables bearing the daguerreotypes. She set all of them aside, lifted the top of the table, and took out a paper lying on top. “You’re fortunate you didn’t ask for it a month ago. It would have taken me hours to find it.”

“Let Broc see it,” Amanda said. “My father shared a lot with me, but nothing to do with business.” She watched uneasily as Broc took the document and began to read through it. She wasn’t reassured when his gaze intensified and his lips pursed in an expression of anger.

“The bastard!” he muttered. “The thieving, lying bastard.”

“Who’s a bastard?” Amanda asked.

“Yes, tell us both,” Ella said. “Nothing exciting has happened to me since a longhorn hooked one of our cowhand’s pants and ripped them from top to bottom. The best-equipped young man I’ve ever seen.”

Broc sputtered with laughter but sobered quickly. “Your family doesn’t owe Mrs. Sibley one cent,” he said to Amanda, “but Corby Wilson owes her seven hundred dollars.”

“Corby? Why does he owe her money?”

“It’s not clear from this document, but my guess is that your father didn’t have the cash to pay for the bull, and Corby didn’t have the cash to pay for his share of the saloon, so Corby assumed the debt for the bull in exchange for your father’s share in the saloon. Did Corby pay you directly?” Broc asked Mrs. Sibley.

“No. The payments were sent to the bank. The bank president would tell me when a deposit had been made.”

“Do you know how it was made?”

“It was always cash.”

Amanda didn’t know much about banking, but she could figure out that neither the bank president nor Mrs. Sibley had any way of knowing who’d actually made the payments. They only knew if money had been deposited. “If Corby’s name is on the document, we have nothing to worry about,” Amanda said.

“But Corby’s name
isn’t
on this paper,” Broc said. “It simply states that twenty-four payments of fifty dollars will be made—one each month for two years—by an agent appointed to make the payments on Aaron Liscomb’s behalf. The bank president in Cactus Bend said he had no knowledge of this transaction. The only possible explanation is that Corby was to make the payments. Did the bank president say your father had made any significant deposit two years ago?”

“No. He said my father didn’t trust banks.”

“Unless you have some other explanation, that leaves Corby.”

Amanda was so stunned, she could hardly think. Corby had said many times that he owed every bit of his success to her father, that he wouldn’t be where he was today without Aaron Liscomb. How could he possibly renege on a promise he’d made to his former partner? How could he have done this when he professed to love her, had asked her to marry him, promised to take care of all the problems on the Lazy T? Would he have forced her family to sell the ranch? Would he have forced all of them to work in the saloon or diner?

It shocked her to realize that at one time she’d considered marrying Corby, might still have done so if Broc hadn’t come along.

“Unfortunately, there’s nothing in the document that proves Corby assumed the debt,” Broc said. “Without that, I don’t know that we’re any better off than we were before.”

“Yes, we are,” Amanda declared, a fire burning in her belly. “When I get through with Corby Wilson,” she said to Ella, “he’ll be glad to pay every cent he owes you.”

“What do you propose to do?” Ella asked.

“I’m going to confront him with what he’s done, and tell him he has to pay you what he owes.”

“You have no proof,” Ella reminded her.

“There couldn’t be anybody else. Everybody will know that.”

“It’s not a matter of what everybody knows,” Ella said. “It’s what you can prove. And if your friend has read the document correctly, you can’t prove anything.”

Amanda turned to Broc, hoping he had some brilliant plan to prove Corby owed the money, but Broc simply shook his head. “She’s right. Without something that says otherwise, the person who owns the bull owes the money.”

“I’ll kill him!” Amanda threatened. “Carruthers threatened to burn him out. I’ll help.”

“I can understand how you feel,” Ella said with a hearty laugh, “but killing him won’t help. You still won’t have the money to pay for the bull. If you burn the saloon down, neither one of you will have any money.”

“I’m just so angry I don’t know what I’m saying,” Amanda said.

She stood. She couldn’t subject Ella to any more of her temper, and right now she thought she would explode if she couldn’t work off some of the rage that burned through her. What an odd time to discover that even though she’d complained about being responsible for the ranch, she wanted it, didn’t mind working to make it successful. Owning the Lazy T gave her the opportunity to make a marriage of choice rather than one of necessity. It had given her the chance to find a man like Broc.

That was another sin to add to Corby’s list. Unless he would agree to repay the debt, he would be responsible for Broc going to jail. Amanda could forgive him many things, but she couldn’t forgive him that.

“Thank you for seeing us,” she said to Ella. “I hope we haven’t upset you.”

“Not at all,” Ella assured her. “I have too little in my life to interest me. You’ve given me my most entertaining afternoon
in years. I’d love to be able to say you didn’t have to pay the rest of the money, but unfortunately I need it to live on.”

“I wouldn’t accept if you offered,” Amanda said. “You deserve payment, and I’ll see you get it.”

“Please let me know how things work out. I feel somehow responsible.”

“Please don’t. Thanks for the coffee and the cookies.”

As soon as they were outside, she turned to Broc. “What am I going to do?”

“We’re going to find a way to prove Corby owes that money.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. In the meantime, we’re going to have a nice dinner and take a walk in the moonlight.”

Amanda felt she should try to keep her mind focused on finding a solution to her problem, but it was difficult to think of anything other than Broc’s nearness. Walking in the moonlight with the man she loved was not a situation likely to keep her thoughts centered on anything beyond Broc. Besides, she had tomorrow to worry.

“Are you feeling better?” Broc asked.

“As long as I don’t think about Corby, I’m fine. I’d much rather think about you.” She probably shouldn’t have been so direct, but she was tired of restraint. She was tired of responsibility. She was tired of thinking of others first and herself later…if at all.

“I’d much rather think about you, too,” Broc said. “I don’t find Corby nearly as attractive.”

Amanda giggled. Usually she would have been embarrassed. According to her mother, ladies didn’t giggle, but she didn’t feel like a lady, at least not a grown one. She felt like a girl who’d fallen in love for the first time and couldn’t
believe it had happened to her. She thanked whatever lucky star it was that prevented her from marrying Corby because it was the easiest and most practical thing to do.

“What are you going to do after you get out of jail?” She was afraid of the answer, but she had to ask.

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“Many things, but mostly you.”

They’d enjoyed a quiet dinner in a little restaurant where no one knew them. After they’d walked every street in Crystal Springs, they ended beside the spring that gave the town its name.

Dark clouds obscured the moon, but lights from the main street and the homes nearby provided enough illumination for them to see each other. In the shadows she was able to imagine he was the perfect young man he’d been before the war. She wished she’d known him then. She could easily imagine him as the hero in a romantic comedy. Even now, he was her idea of a perfect hero.

“Do you want to sit?” Broc asked.

Someone had been thoughtful enough to place several benches around the source of the springs. Amanda could imagine young couples coming here on sultry summer afternoons, resting in the shade of the tall maples and walnuts that shaded the springs. She was certain others preferred moonlit evenings when a soft breeze could give birth to romance in even the most jaded soul. Even with the moonlight now partially obscured by clouds, the evening had worked its magic on her. She wanted to stay here forever, to hide in the safety of this moment, to stretch it out until it encompassed the rest of her life.

“I’ll sit if you’ll sit next to me,” she answered.

Broc chuckled softly. “I was planning on it.”

She sat down. Broc settled down next to her and placed his arm around her shoulders. Amanda didn’t wait for an invitation to lean into his embrace.

“Will you come back?” she asked.

“Are you sure you want me to?”

“Yes.”

“It won’t be easy.”

“Why?”

“To use a common term, I’ll be a jailbird. That’s not something a woman should have to accept in her husband or for her children. Your mother doesn’t like me now. She’s going to hold me responsible if you lose the ranch or the bull. Gary will blame me for that, as well as for Priscilla not liking him. You won’t be able to ignore the way people react to the way I look. Can you imagine what it would do to our children to be teased and taunted about their father’s scarred face? I have eight brothers and sisters. I know how cruel children can be.”

“I don’t care.”

“Maybe you’ll be able to ignore your family because they’re adults and should know better, but the things that can happen to your children will tear you apart. You may not think so now, but I know.”

Amanda had to convince Broc to come back to her. Together they could figure out how to face the future. Whatever the difficulties, they would be easier with him at her side. Maybe he didn’t know it yet, but anyone who dared badger or make fun of him for his looks would have to deal with her. She wouldn’t hesitate to tackle anyone who dared tease their children. Longhorn cows had been known to kill wolves in defense of their calves. Amanda didn’t see any reason she should be less protective.

“I don’t want to talk about any of that tonight,” she said to Broc. “I want to think about the present and let the future take care of itself.”

“Do you think it will?”

He sounded unsure of himself. It hurt her to realize the extent to which his injury had undermined his confidence in himself, the depth of his fear that no one would ever be able to love him. That was something she could do for him. She could love him year after year, his face growing more dear to her with each passing day. She could give him children who would think he was the most wonderful father in the world, capable of slaying all dragons and solving all problems. She would surround him with so much love, he would forget his face wasn’t perfect.

In her eyes, it was.

“We’ll have problems like everyone else,” she said, “but we have something they don’t, something so strong and so deep it will see us through any difficulty.”

It bothered her that he didn’t respond. She had to teach him to be optimistic again. In order to do that, she suspected he would have to get over his fear of facing his family. That was something she’d figured out without his telling her, but it was a battle for another day. This night was made for romance, and she didn’t intend to waste it.

“Kiss me.”

In the beginning, stealing moments for kisses had been exciting, something they did because they enjoyed it, because their kisses could say things they were reluctant to put into words. It was like stepping out of the real world for a few minutes. It was a time to feel young and free, to allow herself to be filled with love and hope.

Though she was certain Broc’s feelings for her hadn’t changed, his kisses had been different lately. There was a hesitancy to them, a bittersweet sadness because he was the cause of all her troubles. That feeling had intensified after Corby fired him and she quit in response.

“Kisses won’t change anything,” Broc said.

“I don’t want you to kiss me because I think it will make things better. I want you to kiss me because you want to, because you love me, and because I love you.”

Broc chuckled softly. “Any more reasons?”

“Hundreds, but they’re all I need.”

His kiss was gentle, but she didn’t want gentle. She wanted him to overpower her, to sweep her away with the strength of his love, to overwhelm her senses until she wasn’t aware of anything except him. She wanted to feel he couldn’t get enough of her, that he was going to devour her inch by inch. She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him the way she wanted him to kiss her.

Broc didn’t need an explanation to realize she needed more than he was offering. Or maybe he’d been holding back, wanting to make sure her feelings for him hadn’t changed. She thought she’d made that clear, but apparently actions were easier to believe than words. She didn’t intend to leave any room for doubt.

She leaned forward, her breasts pressed hard against his chest, and kissed him with so much force she was certain her lips would be bruised. She reached deep inside herself in hopes of blasting through the last remnants of his reserve, his hesitation, his doubt. She was determined that by the time this night was over, there would be no barriers between them.

It took only seconds before she could feel his resistance begin to dissolve, the distance between them lessen. Broc took a breath, seemed to gather himself. Then his arms tightened around her, nearly crushing her with the ferocity of his embrace. From somewhere deep inside her came an answering response that leapt forward with the speed of a startled antelope, with the explosive force of an angry bull. It was as though the two of them were trying to hold on to each other so tightly nothing could ever tear them apart. More than that, she was trying to make Broc believe nothing
could ever dent her love for him, that she wanted to be with him no matter what might happen in the future.

She wanted him to understand that he
was
her future.

Broc broke their embrace. “I shouldn’t be kissing you where anybody could walk up and see us.”

“What’s wrong with that? I love you, and you love me.”

“My mother would say I’m endangering your reputation. Your mother would say I’ve ruined you.”

Amanda tightened her hold on Broc. “I’m not my mother, and this isn’t Mississippi before the war. This is Texas. Everything is different here.”

“Only because everything is so unsettled. In a few years it will be the same all over again.”

“In a few years we’ll be an older, respectable couple. People will be used to us kissing. They’ll know we’re not ashamed of our attraction to each other. We’ll probably have half a dozen children to prove it.”

Broc’s bark of laughter was so spontaneous, it drew an answering laugh from Amanda.