Lone Calder Star (18 page)

"So can I." Quint turned on the other faucet, adding cold water to the mix of steaming, billowing bubbles.

For an instant Dallas seemed on the verge of arguing the point, then shrugged. "Have it your way." She slid the dishes into the soapy water and went back to clear the rest of the items from the table.

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By the time she finished, Quint was rinsing the silverware and adding them to the drain rack that already held the glasses and plates. Without a word, Dallas took a clean dish towel from the drawer and started drying the glasses.

"You aren't very comfortable with this arrangement, are you?" ()unit remarked.

"Don't be silly. I don't care if you wash dishes," Dallas countered.

"That isn't what I meant. I was talking about you and your grandfather moving out here."

This time Dallas wasn't as quick with an answer. When she did offer one, Quint sensed again that she had chosen her words with care.

"It's the safest place right now."

"That isn't what I asked," he countered in a firm but gentle voice.

There was the smallest flare of defiance in the look she gave him. "With Rutledge's threats hanging over us, I wouldn't be comfortable anywhere."

"And maybe even less living under the same roof with me?" Quint suggested.

"It's nothing personal," Dallas insisted. "I just don't want you to get the idea that I'm interested in becoming romantically involved. That's all."

"I had a feeling you were concerned about that," Quint admitted. "But you can set your mind at ease on that score. I'm not going to force myself on you, and I apologize if my behavior earlier today gave you the wrong impression."

"Apology acccptcd." yet she appeared far from reasured . If anything her tension had increased.

"Dallas.." he began.

She cut in quickly. "Let's just drop it, okay?" Her eyes were cooI with challenge, a look that was more in keeping with the woman he remembered from past encounters.

"If that's the way you want it, then as far as I'm concerned, it never happened."

"That's the way it has to be," Dallas stated firmly and abruptly laid the towel aside. "I'll take care of the rest of these dishes in the morning. My last test is tomorrow, and I need to do some studying for it."

Quint didn't try to stop her. There wasn't any reason to try. Everything had already been said.

Yet he sensed that nothing had changed.

How could it when he hadn't forgotten the feel of her warm lips against his or the sensation of her body pressed tightly to him?

That line had been crossed, and the memory of it would always be there to remind them of it every time they were in each other's company.

Quint awoke to the smell of bacon frying. It took him a second to remember he was no longer the only one in the house. A check of the clock on the bedside table showed it would be another five minutes before the alarm would sound. Reaching over, he switched it off and rolled out of bed.

Realizing that the days of padding to the bathroom in his underwear were gone, Quint tugged on a pair of jeans before heading down the hall. The dampness of the two towels hanging on the bathroom rack indicated he was far from the first one in there, and the tepid temperature of the water coming from the shower nozzle confirmed it. In record time, he showered, shaved, and changed into a clean set of clothes.

When he entered the kitchen, Empty was already seated at the table, digging into a plate of bacon and eggs. Dallas stood by the stove, a spatula in hand and something sizzling in the skillet before her.

"You two are early risers," Quint remarked and walked straight to the coffeepot.

"Habit," Empty said just before he shoveled in another mouthful of fried egg.

"t how do you like your eggs?" Dallas asked.

"I don't know. I've never had them this early in the morning' Quint told her. "1 don't usually sit
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down to breakfast until after the morning chores are done."

"I have two here that are over easy," she told him, nodding the skillet.

"You eat them," he said. "I'll fix my own after I've had this cup of coffee."

Taking him at his word, Dallas used the spatula to lift the eggs out of the skillet and onto a plate, then carried it to the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down. As she reached for the salt and pepper shakers, she glanced at her grandfather.

"You know we still have to drop the trailer key off and cancel the telephone and utilities," she said. "If I leave here no later than three-thirty, I should be able to get all of it done before I have to go to my class tonight."

"Might as well," Empty agreed and scooped strawberry jam onto his slice of toast. "No sense paying for a service we aren't using."

When Quint wandered over to the table, she glanced up, a sudden uncertainty flickering in her expression. "Sorry. I should have asked if it was all right with you if I left early."

"I don't have a problem with it," Quint replied.

"Right after breakfast, I'll put a roast in the slow cooker, along with some carrots and potatoes.

You two can have that for supper tonight."

Quint wasn't ready to face the thought of breakfast and she was adding supper into the mix.

Rather than comment on that, he asked instead, "How late will you be tonight?"

"I probably won't be back until around eleven or so. Just leave the door unlocked." Dallas snapped a slice of crisp bacon in two and sent a sharp glance at Empty. "Don't wait up for me. I don't want to walk in and find you sitting in the recliner with a shotgun on your lap."

" Those times you found me that way I had cause," Empty insisted.

The good-natured squabbling between the two reminded Quint of his own grandfather and his occasionally irascible ways. It made him smile.

"The shotgun's locked in the gun cabinet," Quint told her. "I'll see that it stays there, so you won't have any worries on that score."

With a loud harrumph Empty expressed his opinion of that. " You'll change your tune real fast the first time somebody comes snooping around here."

Privately Quint couldn't argue with that and responded with a noncommittal smile. But he knew his troubles with the Rutledges had only started.

A thin cloud drifted in front of the waning moon, dimming its light and intensifying the star-twinkle in the night sky. But Dallas look no notice of it, her senses dulled by a fatigue that was both physical and mental. At the moment all of her attention was foused on locating the Cee Bar's entrance gate.

But the truck's headlight beams were slow to separate the gate's tall posts from the roadside shadows. It suddenly loomed on the right, forcing Dallas to slam on the brakes. As the truck fishtailed nearly to a stop, Dallas swung the wheel and drove through the gate, sending up a silent prayer of gratitude that no one had been behind her.

With the rutted lane twisting before her, Dallas sagged against the seat and allowed her mind to wander back over the chaos of the last nearly forty-eight hours. When she threw in the pressure of final exams, she could easily see why she felt so dull and drained. She also knew the worst wasn't over. Not by a long shot.

She doubted, though, that Quint really believed that.

Quint. There was a big, hollow ache in her chest at the mere thought of him. Unconsciously she touched a fingertip to her lips, recalling the crush of his mouth on them, the anger that had been in it, along with the heat and the need. The memory of it stirred through her, livening her own desires.

Dallas sternly reminded herself that she could not become emotionally involved with Quint.

Nothing could come from it but heartache. And her life was complicated enough right now,
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thank to the threat Boone had made against her grandfather.

"Dear God," she murmured, a tightness gripping her throat, "I can't help it. I hate the Rutledges.

I hate them."

Light bloomed in the darkness, spilling from the tall security light in the ranch yard, as Dallas rounded the last curve. The yellow gleam of the porch light beckoned her from the ranch house.

With a deepening weariness of body and spirit, Dallas automatically set her sights on it.

Seconds after the truck rolled into the ranch yard, a muffled boom shattered the stillness.

Certain it was made by a shotgun, she slammed on the brakes, alarm shooting through her as she jerked her head toward the barn that had almost simultaneously erupted with the panicked squawking of chickens.

In a flash, Dallas whipped the pickup toward the barn and tromped on the accelerator, the truck's fast-spinning tires spitting gravel. She barely gave it time to come to a full stop near the door before she charged out of it, leaving the lights on and the engine running.

"Empty, is that you?" Dallas yelled as two chickens fought to get through the partially opened barn door, wings flapping. "Are you all right?"

Before she reached the opening, Quint stepped out, hatless and holding the shotgun at his side, the muzzle pointed at the ground.

"It's only me," he said. "Sorry if I gave you a scare."

"You did. I was sure-" Her initial wave of relief was replaced with a new concern. "What were you shooting?"

"A raccoon," Quint replied and held up the lifeless body of a big male. "I heard the chickens making a racket and thought I'd better check it out in case the intruder was the two-footed kind.

I'm glad it wasn't ,"

" So am I." Dallas murmured, feeling a bit like a yo-yo on its downward spin as she absently watched him lay the dead animal on a pile of wood next to the barn.

"I'll bury him in the morning-which isn't far away," Quint added, moving within range of the yard light when he turned towards her. The barn's shadows no longer concealed his slightly tousled hair. His denim jacket hung partially open, exposing a narrow wedge of chest hairs and a strip of tautly muscled flesh. Her heart started thumping crazily.

With an effort, Dallas dragged her gaze up to his face and was immediately mesmerized by the soft light in his eyes. More than four feet separated them, but it seemed slight, something easily spanned. And with each passing second of silence, the sense of intimacy swirling between them thickened.

Dallas tried to think of something to say and break the spell of it, but her mind was blank, and her feet were rooted to the spot.

"How did your test go?" The gentleness of his voice was like a caress.

"Fine, I guess-I hope," she corrected hastily and struggled to focus her thoughts.

A slow smile lifted the corners of his mouth. "If you're like me, by the time I finished the last exam, I was too tired to care how I did. That lasted about as long as it took for the results to be posted."

"I'm beat, that's for sure." Dallas was quick to seize the excuse he offered. "I'd better call it a night before I fall over."

She turned away, eager to escape from him while she could still deny that she felt anything more than a physical attraction. She climbed into the cab of the pickup and deliberately didn't offer him a ride to the house. The last thing Dallas wanted was to spend any more time alone with Quint, especially tonight.

For once, luck was on her side, and she reached the privacy of her bedroom as Ouint walked in to the living room to lock the shotgun back in its cabinet.

A midnight-blue Ferrari rolled to a stop in front of the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. On a nearby
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street corner, a group of Dickens', costumed carolers broke into a rousing rendition of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." Boone Rutledge took no notice of them as he climbed out of the Ferrari and tossed the keys to the doorman at the curb.

"I shouldn't be more than five minutes. Keep it handy," he ordered and strode to the door.

He paused a few feet inside the hotel lobby for a quick scan of its occupants, totally ignoring the sweeps of evergreen boughs twinkling with Christmas lights. Within seconds, Boone spotted his father, dressed in an impeccably tailored black tuxedo with a white tie, gliding across the marbled lobby in his wheelchair, bound for the bank of elevators. As always, Harold Barnett accompanied him, walking directly behind the wheelchair.

Boone quickly crossed the lobby to intercept them. Both men stopped when they observed his approach, and Max angled his chair toward him and raked his glance over the suit Boone wore.

"Formal dress is required for tonight's dinner," Max curtly informed him.

"I have other plans this evening. I told you that this morning," Boone reminded him with cool stiffness.

"In Little Mexico, I suppose," Max replied with a small curl of contempt. "So why did you bother to come here at all?"

His nostrils flared slightly in anger, but Boone managed to keep his temper in check. "I thought you would want to know it's been confirmed. The Garners have moved onto the Cee Bar."

"You're certain of that?" Max demanded.

"Dallas arranged for the phone and utilities to the trailer to be turned off yesterday. Not a single possession was left in the trailer."

Max folded his hands together in his lap and digested this piece of news.

" It never occured to me that Echohawk would move them onto the ranch with him."

"I remember the Calders mentioning that Echohawk had a tendency to pick up strays."

"It's a pity yon didn't remember that before," Max said in dry rebuke. "We could have anticipated the possibility if you had. Now it complicates things."

"I know," Boone agreed.

"We'll have to find a way to use it to our advantage," Max stated and shot a challenging look at his son. "What have you done about the hay?"

"Nothing yet."

"Why not?" Max asked in harsh demand.

"There's a new moon Sunday night," Boone replied. "That'll be the best time to take care of it."

"See that you do." Once again his hand was at the controls, sending the wheelchair toward the bank of elevators and leaving Boone standing there by himself.

Evergreen trees of varying heights and types were propped along the front of the grocery store, scenting the air with their pine smell. The minute he climbed out of the truck, Empty Garner walked over to survey the selection. Having just come from church, he was dressed in what he persisted in calling his Sunday go to meeting clothes-a western-cut suit, a bolo tie, and a spotless black cowboy hat.