Rosemary Carter - A Husband Made In Texas

‘Now who’s being dramatic? It’s not as if the idea of a mortgage is new to you. Only the identity of the person holding it has changed.’

On the face of it, what he was saying was perfectly true. The ranch was heavily mortgaged, a fact that was never very far from her mind. Why then did she have this dread feeling that her world would never be the same again?

All at once, Kaitlin felt as if she could take no more. She had managed, somehow, to endure the loss of her parents and the hardships of the ranch. And now here was Flynn. Tough, arrogant, unyielding Flynn. He would not be as understanding as Bill had always been: if anything, he would be ruthless. Unable to hold his cool-eyed gaze a second longer, she dropped her head and put her face in her hands.

She flinched when his arm went around her shoulders. She hadn’t realized that he had left his chair.

‘Kaitlin,’ he said softly. ‘Are you crying?’

She lifted her head to look at him. Her eyes were dazed and a little damp, but she was able to say, ‘I don’t cry that easily.’

‘You never did, that’s one of the things I remember about you. You always were a gutsy girl.’

Gutsy... At this moment, when she did not know how to defend the attack on her beloved home, Kaitlin felt anything but gutsy. She yearned to lean against the hard body, to bury herself in it, to seek warming comfort from the man who had meant so much to her once. Yearnings that were quite inappropriate, for as she looked into the rugged face she knew that Flynn had become her adversary.

She twisted away from him. ‘Bill should have told me.’ Her voice was low. ‘Why didn’t he tell me, Flynn?’

‘I told you—I asked him not to.’

There was an emptiness as he moved away from her and went back to his chair. a feeling of coldness, of loneliness. Kaitlin had to force herself to concentrate on the issue at hand.

‘Why do I get the feeling there’s also another reason why Bill didn’t talk to me himself?’

‘What do you think, Kaitlin?’

‘Am I right?’

‘Maybe.’

‘What was it?’ She threw the words at him. And when he remained silent, ‘I need to know—don’t you understand? ’

‘Bill Seally,’ Flynn said deliberately, ‘is a weak man.’

‘No! You’re wrong! Bill is sweet and gentle and kind.’

‘I’m sure he’s all of those things. Bill hates making waves, he has a great need to be liked. He shies away from conflict, especially where friends are involved. A good friend’s daughter, in your case.’

Kaitlin’s cheeks were flushed. ‘He would have got the money I owed him,’ she said unhappily. ‘I’ve always tried very hard to keep up my payments.’

‘Not hard enough. You’re in arrears.’

‘I know that. But in the end Bill wouldn’t have lost any money. I was always utterly determined to pay every cent, including interest on back payments.’

‘How did you plan to do that?’

‘Profits from the ranch. Things are starting to come right, Flynn. Slowly, I admit, but it’s happening. It’s been an uphill battle ever since Dad died, but I’m hoping my financial situation will improve.’

‘You can’t blame Bill for having some doubts.’

The flush in Kaitlin’s face deepened. ‘If he felt that way, why didn’t he say anything? We could have talked. Bill knew how things were at the ranch. Knew that Dad had...’ She bit her lip. ‘He understood that I needed time.’

‘How much time, Kaitlin?’

‘I don’t know exactly.’

‘Bill didn’t know either, and the situation was beginning to worry him.’

She shouldn’t be surprised, Kaitlin realized. The signs had been there for some time, only she had been too preoccupied to notice them. There had been a strange restlessness in Bill and Alice, his wife, when she did see them, a way they had of not meeting her eyes when they talked. Bill and her father had been boyhood friends, classmates, their friendship was one of the few constants in her life. When her parents had died, Bill and Alice had been there, phoning her, extending invitations. Yet now that she came to think of it, she could not remember the last invitation: she had been too busy to wonder about it.

Kaitlin looked at Flynn. ‘You may not believe me, but I didn’t know about the mortgage until after my father’s death.’

‘I see.’

‘Until then I’d had almost nothing to do with the running of the ranch’

‘No part in the finances?’

‘None,’ she admitted.

She would not tell Flynn, who seemed to be holding her destiny in those very competent-looking hands, of her dismay when she had sat in the office of her father’s lawyer and learned that she had inherited the ranch. A hollow inheritance, for the ranch was so heavily in debt that it didn’t belong to her in the true sense of the word. Apart from the ranch, there had been nothing else.

Helplessly she had looked across the desk at the lawyer. ‘I don’t understand... It seems impossible...’

‘It’s the way it is, Miss Mullins. I’m sorry.’

‘I always thought we were secure. We lived well. There was money for parties and travelling and for college.’

‘There was money once,’ the lawyer agreed, ‘but much of it was used for the wrong purposes. There was also a lot of debt.’

‘What are you saying, Mr. Barclay? I need the truth.’

‘Your parents were living way beyond their means. I often warned your father to be more careful, but he kept insisting that things were fine. The mortgage was never meant to be more than short-term assistance, he was certain things would come right.’

But her father had been killed when he had skidded off the road on his way back to the ranch one stormy night. His truck had been found in a ditch. Witnesses said the vehicle seemed to veer suddenly on a slippery section of the road, before rolling over onto its side. Kaitlin had pretended to accept the explanation, but privately she had wondered if grief over her mother’s death had made her father careless. He had had no time to put his affairs in order.

Kaitlin looked at Flynn, shivering when she saw the enigmatic expression in his eyes, the implacability in the firm jaw. ‘You’re saying that Bill was eager to rid himself of the mortgage.’

‘Correct.’

‘That’s when you appeared on the scene. Flynn Henderson to the rescue.’

Flynn shrugged, seemingly unconcerned by her sarcasm.

‘Some coincidence that you just happened to come along at the right time,’ Kaitlin went on grimly. ‘Why don’t I think that’s the way it was?’

‘Because you’re too intelligent to believe it.’

He grinned at her, a grin that warmed his eyes and deepened the lines around them. If only, Kaitlin thought, he didn’t have the ability to send her heart somersaulting in her chest.

‘Then it wasn’t coincidence.’

‘Of course not. I’ve kept my eyes on the ranch ever since I left. I knew about the mortgage.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Wasn’t difficult, Kaitlin. A person can make a point of knowing certain things. Besides, word gets around. When I thought Bill Seally was getting nervous I went to talk to him. To his credit, I had to speak to him several times before he made his decision.’

Despite the heat of the day, Kaitlin was feeling colder by the minute. ‘Five years, and all that time you were just biding your time to take over here.’

That grin again. ‘Five years ago all I had was a burning ambition. I knew what I wanted, but I couldn’t afford to pay for a corner of one barn let alone the whole ranch.’

That was one thing that puzzled her: how on earth had Flynn managed to acquire what must surely be a small fortune?

Before she could ask the question, he said, ‘Do you remember what I told you the last time we were together?’