True Heart. Peggy Nicholson

lighter, I think. Maybe a grilled breast of chicken if Mo—” But no, Mo was still holding the high-cholesterol line. Nothing on his menu but cow or deep-fried.

      “Go back to the city,” Tripp jeered, halfway between teasing and something sharper. “You’ll find a yuppie sandwich on every corner.”

      Wish on. “I’m here to stay, Tripp.” She looked him straight in the eye, and ordered a steakburger when the waitress came.

      They called a tacit truce over Mo’s meltingly tender strip steaks, sticking to small, safe topics while they ate. Kaley explained that Whitey had refused to consult a doctor, so she’d gone to Durango for crutches.

      She wanted to know how Tripp had made it down from the high country so soon. She hadn’t expected to see him back for a day or so yet, but she learned that he’d ridden only halfway. He’d trailered his packhorses up and back through Suntop land, a shortcut Rafe Montana permitted his closest neighbors.

      She asked after Tripp’s brother, and learned that Mac was working for a rodeo stock contractor out of Laramie, serving as a pickup man in the bronc events, also doing his own share of bull riding.

      Riding those horned freight trains—now that sounded like Mac McGraw, macho from his boot heels to his eyebrows. He was devil-may-care, where his big brother was the steady one. The caring one, she’d once thought.

      Tripp asked how she’d liked teaching high-school English, so she tossed off a few war stories—the laughable times and the ones where you wanted to tear out your hair in frustration. The kids were the very best of the bargain. All the hurdles the bureaucrats placed between you and actual teaching—that was the worst of it.

      “Are you thinking about teaching in Trueheart?” he asked after he’d ordered coffee and she’d wistfully passed.

      She stifled a stinging retort, remembering how he’d protested when she went away to college in Ohio, where Oberlin College had offered her a full scholarship. How hard she’d had to work to persuade him that this was a good thing, the smart thing, her getting her B.A. and certification to teach. Because once she was certified, he could run his ranch and she could help him, but if beef prices kept dropping, she’d be able to teach in Trueheart or Cortez or Durango and carry them over the rough spots.

      All the same, Tripp had hated her running off to the city. Had said she’d never be satisfied with ranching life after that. Yet now here he was asking, as if he’d thought up the idea himself!

      “I’ve considered it,” she said slowly, swallowing her resentment. Teaching had been part of her plan when she’d thought that Jim was still in the picture. Her baby would be born in April. Then, assuming that her daughter was healthy, that the antibiotic hadn’t…harmed her, by the following September the baby would be old enough to do without her mother for eight hours a day, if an outside job proved to be necessary. Kaley didn’t like it, knew she’d hate leaving her baby, but it was no more than most single mothers had to do.

      Tripp leaned forward, hands flat on the table. “That’s what you should do, Kaley, if you want to stay in Colorado. Take a teaching job here—or even better in Durango. Or Boulder. It’d be more like what you’re used to, a real city.”

      Kaley shook her head. She was done with cities. When she’d settled for a shallow life in the city with a shallow man was when her life had taken its wrong turn. Besides, her plan didn’t work anymore now that Jim had flown away. She couldn’t both manage her ranch and teach.

      “You should do that,” Tripp insisted, his callused fingertips whitening on the tabletop. “I’m offering the appraised value on your land. It’s fair—Jim hired the appraiser himself. You should take your half of the money and buy a nice little house in Durango or Denver or—”

      “Or maybe Miami,” she cut in. “Or how about Spain? Would that be far enough for you?” As his eyebrows drew together, she shook her head. “Get used to it, Tripp. I’m not selling.” So much for truces!

      “You’re not selling. Yeah, that’s big talk,” he snapped. “But the question is, can you keep? You understand I can call your loan anytime after shipping day? That it’s all due—the forty thou plus interest, all in one balloon payment?”

      If Tripp insisted on full payback, there was no way she could keep the ranch—she was as good as sunk. Bad enough to be at anyone’s mercy, but to be at this man’s? How much mercy had he shown her the last time? “Jim walked right into that one, didn’t he?” she said bitterly. “He’s always too impatient to read the fine print.”

      Tripp’s face darkened; his scar went pale. “You’re saying I tricked your brother? Pulled a fast one?”

      Whoa, girl! Her temper had grabbed the bit and run right away with her. But this wasn’t the cynical city, where slick moves were a given. This was Trueheart, where the Code of the West still held. Where a man would fight for his honor and his good name, sometimes to the death. She drew a breath, sighed it out, and shook her head slowly. No, her brother had been a fool, but he’d needed no help in that, or received any. “No, Tripp, I’m…not saying that. Don’t believe it.”

      When still he waited with narrowed eyes, she added reluctantly, “Sorry. I’m sorry…I know you’re just looking out for yourself. But then, so am I. I want to keep the ranch in my family.” Below the edge of the table, she touched her stomach for luck. “Is that so hard to understand?”

      “Wanting’s one thing, Kaley,” Tripp said bleakly. “Everyone wants. But doing?” He stood up from the table. “That’s another.”

      CHAPTER SIX

      THEY DROVE halfway back to his truck before either of them ventured to speak again. At last Tripp cleared his throat and said huskily, “Look, I know this isn’t easy, but you need to face it. There’s no way you can make a go of this. I reckon you’ve forgotten, how hard ranching is.”

      “I ranched for almost eighteen years till I went off to college,” she reminded him.

      “You worked with a father, a brother and a younger Whitey to help you. Now it’s you and a lame old man. You won’t last out the winter.”

      “I will!” she insisted, staring down the tunnel of her headlights. “I know it won’t be easy, but I will.” She had no place else on earth to go. No place she wanted to be.

      “Kaley, you’ll quit.”

      Her hands clenched till they ached on the wheel. “You’re calling me a quitter?”

      “Aren’t you?” he taunted. “Who walked out on who back there in Phoenix?”

      She had half a mind to pull over and order him out. Let him hoof it the rest of the way to his truck.

      “Why did you leave him?” Tripp probed her silence. “Or did you?”

      She shot him a seething glance. He’d maneuvered her as neatly as a cutting horse splits a calf out of the herd. Left her nothing but two bad choices. She could let him brand her a quitter, a woman who’d walked out on her marriage—or she could admit that, yes, once again, she’d failed to hold her man’s love. “It’s none of your business, you know.”

      “Yeah?” His harsh laughter goaded her. “Sounds like he left you!”

      And so Richard had, in his heart. By rejecting her baby, he’d rejected her. All she’d saved from the disaster was her pride. “He didn’t,” she said flatly. “I reached the decision. I walked out the door. I drove to Vegas and got the divorce. Here I am.” The truth, as far as it went.

      “But why?” Tripp demanded.

      No way was she telling him about the baby! He thought—now—that she wouldn’t last till Christmas? What would he think if he knew she’d be five months pregnant by then? In six weeks, come calf-shipping day, Tripp could call in his loan, by the terms of the contract. Somehow she had to persuade him to let it ride for another year. And fat