No Strings Attached. Susan Andersen

      “You don’t want to talk to me, do you?” His eyes glittered with challenge, daring her to answer.

      Will you do it? they seemed to demand. Will you tell me the truth, like you promised last night?

      “No.” She shook her head. “I don’t.”

      “Why not?”

      “Because you never seem satisfied with what I say.” It was enough of the truth for now. She just didn’t add that she had trouble concentrating on the things she said because a part of her was too busy noticing him as a man. She had from the very beginning. And that his physical presence made her suddenly aware of herself as a woman.

      She swallowed and added, “And because you never take anything at face value. You always seem to suspect a hidden meaning, an ulterior motive—and you make me…uneasy.” It was a better word than nervous. Or self-conscious.

      “Maybe I wouldn’t have to look for hidden meanings if someone would talk to me. If I didn’t have to pry out every bit of information as if you held the secrets to Lincoln’s assassination and the rest of us had never heard of John Wilkes Booth.”

      She glared at him. “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s nothing to tell that you don’t already know.”

      “Just like I knew that Richard was murdered? Like I know how your father died? Or that you were run out of town?”

      “You didn’t ask those questions,” she said tightly as she battled the urge to throttle him. “It wasn’t my place to tell you anything about Richard’s death. I thought you knew already. The rest of it was none of your business.”

      “None of my business?” He shot her a fierce glare. “I own the Double F. I didn’t ask for it, I didn’t expect it. This inheritance was thrust upon me with no warning, no explanation, and I’m entitled to some questions.”

      “Why accept your inheritance then, if you didn’t want it? Why not stay in Charleston with your family and forget about this ranch in godforsaken Texas?”

      Derek closed his eyes for a moment, two, then opened them to reveal a very clear, very blue void. He stared at her with blank simplicity and said, “Will you answer my questions?”

      What choice did she have? She recognized his growing frustration in his inability to find satisfactory answers, but she hated remembering the things he was asking about. She knew so little. Only enough to be frightened.

      She had already far overstepped her bounds with her impudent questions and brazen observations, however. If she continued with such insolence or refused to answer him, he might reconsider his offer.

      She sighed. “All right.”

      “Please sit down.” He gestured to the nearest chair of four that flanked the table.

      She sat, folding her hands together with prim seriousness and resting them on the tabletop. She watched him cautiously, expectantly, but made no attempt to conceal her asperity.

      Derek remained silent, studying her with those brilliant blue eyes that shared nothing of the man behind them. Finally he pulled out a chair, and the wooden legs screeched across the plank floor. He sat, never taking his eyes off her.

      “Frank Edwards said the Double F was once a successful cattle and horse ranch, that the war caused its present condition. Is that true?”

      “For the most part.”

      His mouth tightened. “What is the rest of it, then?”

      She shook her head. “Richard didn’t confide in me, and he stopped discussing business in my presence after my father died. I can only tell you what I witnessed or overheard.”

      “Go on.”

      She took a deep breath and wet her suddenly dry lips with her tongue. “The Double F did very well for a long time. Once the war started, Richard all but worked himself to death to keep it going. But after a while, around the middle of the war, I suppose, he had to slow down.”

      She glanced down at her twined fingers and noticed her knuckles had turned white. She tried to relax her grip. “By then, not only weren’t there enough men, but the Cause desperately needed money, supplies, whatever anyone could spare.” She looked at Derek. “You must know what it was like.”

      He stared back at her, his gaze distant. Eventually he angled his head in her direction. “Yes.”

      “Richard gave all that he could. More than he should.” She smiled sadly. “He had a little cash besides Confederate scrip, which by then was all but worthless, but he couldn’t afford to part with it. He had to start making choices. The cattle and horses came first or there wouldn’t be a ranch, he said, so that’s what he worked to save. Other things just had to be ignored.”

      She glanced at Derek, whose eyes were alert with polite interest. “When the fighting was over, things didn’t improve. There still wasn’t any money, and Richard couldn’t afford the wages he’d paid before the war. When men began drifting through…well, too many young, healthy ones didn’t come home. Some were unable to do this kind of work, while others couldn’t settle down.”

      She paused, listening for a moment to the distant sounds of men and horses on a typical ranch workday. Richard had always said they were the sounds of heaven to him. The thought made her smile, and she continued.

      “The violence started…oh, more than two years ago. At first it seemed like just something more for Richard to worry about. There wasn’t enough law here, with too many strange, angry men moving through the countryside. Sheriff Gardner was new and untrained, and the violence became considerable. Eventually it seemed like rustlers were targeting the Double F.”

      “The same rustlers who murdered him?”

      Amber closed her eyes, but then immediately reopened them. The question allowed no escape, and the darkness made it all too easy for Richard’s image to return in full color and detail. Not the warm, laughing man she had come to love, but as she’d last seen him, cold and still, with a bullet in his chest.

      She glanced aside, through the window, and saw Gideon stride purposefully across the yard to the corral. “I assume so,” she said in a sketchy voice no more than a whisper. “No one ever saw them, before or after. I believe Richard had his suspicions before the shooting, but he refused to share them with me. For my own protection, he said. And since he’s been gone, the rustling has stopped.”

      “Stopped?” Derek straightened and stared at her, his interest obviously piqued.

      “At first I thought it was because Richard was dead. That it may have been a personal grudge, though I can’t imagine it. He had no enemies that I knew of.”

      She paused, probing Derek’s expression. Had something flickered in his gaze? Had his mouth tightened? He stared back, his expression as flat and distant as she had come to expect from him, and she decided she must have been mistaken.

      “During the first few months I was here, several others were wounded mysteriously. No culprit was ever found, and they left before Richard died. More left after his murder, until we had only the men who are here now. I’ve thought about it and decided perhaps the rustlers simply didn’t need to continue. Without a leader and enough men to work the ranch—”

      “There was no need to steal the cattle. They could just round them up after they wandered off,” Derek finished for her.

      “Yes. Men on smaller ranches simply turned their cattle loose when they left to fight.”

      He leaned back, tilting the chair to stand on its rear legs, and nodded thoughtfully. “It’s quite ingenious, really. You’ve heard nothing more since Richard died?”

      “No. I don’t go into Twigg and only the Andrews brothers visit, so I remain relatively isolated. Men don’t often tell women things of that nature, and though my father was an exception, that hasn’t been the case here.”

      Derek