Czytaj książkę: «Christmas On The Range»

1

It was late, and Ivy was going to miss her class. Rachel was the only person, except Ivy’s best friend, who even knew the number of Ivy’s frugal prepaid cell phone. The call had come just as she was going to her second college class of the day. The argument could have waited until the evening, but her older sister never thought of anyone’s convenience. Well, except her own, that was.

“Rachel, I’m going to be late,” Ivy pleaded into the phone. She pushed back a strand of long, pale blond hair. Her green eyes darkened with worry. “And we’ve got a test today!”

“I don’t care what you’ve got,” her older sister snapped. “You just listen to me. I want that check for Dad’s property, as soon as you can get the insurance company to issue it! I’ve got overdue bills and you’re whining about college classes. It’s a waste of money! Aunt Hettie should never have left you that savings account,” she added angrily. “It should have been mine, too. I’m the oldest.”

She was, and she’d taken everything she could get her hands on, anything she could pawn for ready cash. Ivy had barely been able to keep enough to pay the funeral bills when they came due. It was a stroke of luck that Aunt Hettie had liked her and had left her a small inheritance. Perhaps she’d realized that Ivy would be lucky if she was able to keep so much as a penny of their father’s few assets.

It was the same painful argument they’d had for a solid month, since their father had died of a stroke. Ivy had been left with finding a place to live while Rachel called daily to talk to the attorney who was probating the will. All she wanted was the money. She’d coaxed their father into changing his will, so that she got everything when he died.

Despite the fact that he paid her little attention, Ivy was still grieving. She’d taken care of their father while he was dying from the stroke. He’d thought that Rachel was an angel. All their lives, it had been Rachel who got all the allowances, all the inherited jewelry—which Rachel pawned immediately—all the attention. Ivy was left with housework and yardwork and cooking for the three of them. It hadn’t been much of a life. Her rare dates had been immediately captivated by Rachel, who took pleasure in stealing them away from her younger, plainer sister, only to drop them days later. When Rachel had opted to go to New York and break into theater, their father had actually put a lien on his small house to pay for an apartment for her. It had meant budgeting to the bone and no new dresses for Ivy. When she tried to protest the unequal treatment the sisters received, their father said that Ivy was just jealous and that Rachel needed more because she was beautiful but emotionally challenged.

Translated, that meant Rachel had no feelings for anyone except herself. But Rachel had convinced their father that she adored him, and she’d filled his ears with lies about Ivy, right up to accusing her of sneaking out at night to meet men and stealing from the garage where she worked two evenings a week keeping books. No protest was enough to convince him that Ivy was honest, and that she didn’t even attract many men. She never could keep a prospective boyfriend once they saw Rachel.

“If I can learn bookkeeping, I’ll have a way to support myself, Rachel,” Ivy said quietly.

“You could marry a rich man one day, I guess, if you could find a blind one,” Rachel conceded, and laughed at her little joke. “Although where you expect to find one in Jacobsville, Texas, is beyond me.”

“I’m not looking for a husband. I’m in school at our community vocational college,” Ivy reminded her.

“So you are. What a pitiful future you’re heading for.” Rachel paused to take an audible sip of her drink. “I’ve got two auditions tomorrow. One’s for the lead in a new play, right on Broadway. Jerry says I’m a shoo-in. He has influence with the director.”

Ivy wasn’t usually sarcastic, but Rachel was getting on her nerves. “I thought Jerry didn’t want you to work.”

There was a frigid pause on the other end of the line. “Jerry doesn’t mind it,” she said coolly. “He just likes me to stay in, so that he can take care of me.”

“He feeds you uppers and downers and crystal meth and charges you for the privilege, you mean,” Ivy replied quietly. She didn’t add that Rachel was beautiful and that Jerry probably used her as bait to catch new clients. He took her to party after party. She talked about acting, but it was only talk. She could barely remember her own name when she was on drugs, much less remember lines for a play. She drank to excess as well, just like Jerry.

“Jerry takes care of me. He knows all the best people in theater. He’s promised to introduce me to one of the angels who’s producing that new comedy. I’m going to make it to Broadway or die trying,” Rachel said curtly. “And if we’re going to argue, we might as well not even speak!”

“I’m not arguing...”

“You’re putting Jerry down, all the time!”

Ivy felt as if she were standing on a precipice, looking at the bottom of the world. “Have you really forgotten what Jerry did to me?” she asked, recalling the one visit Rachel had made home, just after their father died. It had been an overnight one, with the insufferable Jerry at her side. Rachel had signed papers to have their father cremated, placing his ashes in the grave with those of his late wife, the girls’ mother. It was rushed and unpleasant, with Ivy left grieving alone for a parent who’d never loved her, who’d treated her very badly. Ivy had a big, forgiving heart. Rachel did manage a sniff into a handkerchief at the graveside service. But her eyes weren’t either wet or red. It was an act, as it always was with her.

“What you said he did,” came the instant, caustic reply. “Jerry said he never gave you any sort of drugs!”

“Rachel!” she exclaimed, furious now, “I wouldn’t lie about something like that! I had a migraine and he switched my regular medicine with a powerful narcotic. When I saw what he was trying to give me, I threw them at him. He thought I was too sick to notice. He thought it would be funny if he could make me into an addict, just like you...!”

“Oh, grow up,” Rachel shouted. “I’m no addict! Everybody uses drugs! Even people in that little hick town where you live. How do you think I used to score before I moved to New York? There was always somebody dealing, and I knew where to find what I needed. You’re so naive, Ivy.”

“My brain still works,” she shot back.

“Watch your mouth, kid,” Rachel said angrily, “or I’ll see that you don’t get a penny of Dad’s estate.”

“Don’t worry, I never expected to get any of it,” Ivy said quietly. “You convinced Daddy that I was no good, so that he wouldn’t leave me anything.”

“You’ve got that pittance from Aunt Hettie,” Rachel repeated. “Even though I should have had it. I deserved it, having to live like white trash all those years when I was at home.”

“Rachel, if you got what you really deserved,” Ivy replied with a flash of bravado, “you’d be in federal prison.”

There was a muffled curse. “I have to go. Jerry’s back. Listen, you check with that lawyer and find out what’s the holdup. I can’t afford all these long-distance calls.”

“You never pay for them. You usually reverse the charges when you call me,” she was reminded.

“Just hurry up and get the paperwork through so you can send me my check. And don’t expect me to call you back until you’re ready to talk like an adult instead of a spoiled kid with a grudge!”

The receiver slammed down in her ear. She folded it back up with quiet resignation. Rachel would never believe that Jerry, her knight in shining armor, was nothing more than a sick little social climbing drug dealer with a felony record who was holding her hostage to substance abuse. Ivy had tried for the past year to make her older sibling listen, but she couldn’t. The two of them had never been close, but since Rachel got mixed up with Jerry, and hooked on meth, she didn’t seem capable of reason anymore. In the old days, even when Rachel was being difficult, she did seem to have some small affection for her sister. That all changed when she was a junior in high school. Something had happened, Ivy had never known what, that turned her against Ivy and made a real enemy of her. Alcohol and drug use hadn’t helped Rachel’s already abrasive personality. It had been an actual relief for Ivy when her sister left for New York just days after the odd blowup. But it seemed that she could cause trouble long-distance, whenever she liked.

Ivy went down the hall quickly to her next class, without any real enthusiasm. She didn’t want to spend her life working for someone else, but she certainly didn’t want to go to New York and end up as Rachel’s maid and cook, as she had been before her sister left Jacobs-ville. Letting Rachel have their inheritance would be the easier solution to the problem. Anything was better than having to live with Rachel again; even having to put up with Merrie York’s brother, Stuart, in order to have one true friend.

* * *

It was Friday, and when she left the campus for home, riding with her fellow boarder, Lita Dawson, who taught at the vocational college, she felt better. She’d passed her English test, she was certain of it. But typing was getting her down. She couldn’t manage more than fifty words a minute to save her life. One of the male students typing with both index fingers could do it faster than Ivy could.

They pulled up in front of the boardinghouse where they both lived. Ivy felt absolutely drained. She’d had to leave her father’s house because she couldn’t even afford to pay the light bill. Besides, Rachel had signed papers to put the house on the market the same day she’d signed the probate papers at a local lawyer’s office. Since Ivy wasn’t old enough, at almost nineteen, to handle the legal affairs, Rachel had charmed the new, young attorney handling the probate and convinced him that Ivy needed looking after, preferably in a boardinghouse. Then she’d flown back to New York, leaving Ivy to dip into a great-aunt’s small legacy and a part-time job as a bookkeeper at a garage on Monday and Thursday evenings to pay for her board and the small student fee that Texas residents paid at the state technical and vocational college. Rachel hadn’t even asked if Ivy had enough to live on.

Merrie had tried to get Stuart to help Ivy fight Rachel’s claim on the bulk of the estate, but Ivy almost had hysterics when she offered. She’d rather have lived in a cardboard box by the side of the road than have Stuart take over her life. She didn’t want to tell her best friend that her brother terrified her. Merrie would have asked why. There were secrets in Ivy’s past that she shared with no one.

“I’m going to see my father this weekend.” Lita, dark-haired and eyed, smiled at the younger woman. “How about you?”

Ivy smiled. “If Merrie remembers, we’ll probably go window-shopping.” She sighed, smiling lazily. “I might see something I can daydream about owning,” she chuckled.

“One day some nice man is going to come along and treat you the way you deserve to be treated,” Lita said kindly. “You wait and see.”

Ivy knew better, but she only smiled. She wasn’t anxious to offer any man control of her life. She was through living in fear.

She went in the side door, glancing over to see if Mrs. Brown was home. The landlady must be grocery shopping, she decided. It was a Friday ritual. Ivy got to eat with Mrs. Brown and Lita Dawson, the other tenant, on the weekends. She and Lita took turns cooking and cleaning up the kitchen, to help elderly Mrs. Brown manage the extra work. It was nice, not having to drive into town to get a sandwich. The pizza place delivered, but Ivy was sick of pizza. She liked her small boardinghouse, and Lita was nice, if a little older than Ivy. Lita was newly divorced and missing her ex-husband to a terrible degree. She fell back on her degree and taught computer technology at the vocational college, and let Ivy ride back and forth with her for help with the gas money.

She’d no sooner put down her purse than the cell phone rang.

“It’s the weekend!” came a jolly, laughing voice. It was Merrie York, her best friend from high school.

“I noticed,” Ivy chuckled. “How’d you do on your tests?”

“I’m sure I passed something, but I’m not sure what. My biology final is approaching and lab work is killing me. I can’t make the microscope work!”

“You’re training to be a nurse, not a lab assistant,” Ivy pointed out.

“Come up here and tell that to my biology professor,” Merrie dared her. “Never mind, I’ll graduate even if I have to take every course three times.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Come over and spend the weekend with me,” Merrie invited.

Ivy’s heart flipped over. “Thanks, but I have some things to do around here...”

“He’s in Oklahoma, settling a new group of cattle with a sale barn,” Merrie coaxed wryly.

Ivy hesitated. “Can you put that in writing and get it notarized?”

“He really likes you, deep inside.”

“He’s made an art of hiding his fondness for me,” Ivy shot back. “I love you, Merrie, but I don’t fancy being cannon fodder. It’s been a long week. Rachel and I had another argument today.”

“Long distance?”

“Exactly.”

“And over Sir Lancelot the drug lord.”

“You know me too well.”

Merrie laughed. “We’ve been friends since middle school,” she reminded Ivy.

“Yes, the debutante and the tomboy. What a pair we made.”

“You’re not quite the tomboy you used to be,” Merrie said.

“We conform when we have to. Why do you want me there this weekend?”

“For selfish reasons,” the other woman said mischievously. “I need a study partner and everybody else in my class has a social life.”

“I don’t want a social life,” Ivy said. “I want to make good grades and graduate and get a job that pays at least minimum wage.”

“Your folks left you a savings account and some stocks,” Merrie pointed out.

That was true, but Rachel had walked away with most of the money and all of the stocks.

“Your folks left you Stuart,” Ivy replied dryly.

“Don’t remind me!”

“Actually, I suppose it was the other way around, wasn’t it?” Ivy thought aloud. “Your folks left you to Stuart.”

“He’s a really great brother,” Merrie said gently. “And he likes most women...”

“He likes all women, except me,” Ivy countered. “I really couldn’t handle a weekend with Stuart right now. Not on top of being harassed by Rachel and final exams.”

“You’re a whiz at math,” her friend countered. “You hardly ever have to study.”

“Translation—I work math problems every day for four hours after class so that I can appear to be smart.”

Merrie laughed. “Come on over. Mrs. Rhodes is making homemade yeast rolls for supper, and we have all the pay per view channels. We can study and then watch that new adventure movie.”

Ivy was weakening. On weekends, it was mostly takeout at the boardinghouse. Ivy’s stomach rebelled at the thought of pizza or more sweet and sour chicken or tacos. “I could really use an edible meal that didn’t come in a box, I guess.”

“If I tell Mrs. Rhodes you’re coming, she’ll make you a cherry pie.”

“That does it. I’ll pack a nightgown and see you in thirty minutes, or as soon as I can get a cab.”

“I could come and get you.”

“No. Cabs are cheap in town. I’m not destitute,” she added proudly, although she practically was. The cab fare would have to come out of her snack money for the next week. She really did have to budget to the bone. But her pride wouldn’t let her accept Merrie’s offer.

“All right, Miss Independence. I’ll have Jack leave the gate open.”

It was a subtle and not arrogant reminder that the two women lived in different social strata. Merrie’s home was a sprawling brick mansion with a wrought-iron gate running up a bricked driveway. There was an armed guard, Jack, at the front gate, miles of electrified fence and two killer Dobermans who had the run of the property at night. If that didn’t deter trespassers, there were the ranch hands, half of whom were ex-military. Stuart was particular about the people who worked for him, because his home contained priceless inherited antiques. He also owned four herd sires who commanded incredible stud fees; straws of their semen sold for thousands of dollars each and were shipped all over the world.

“Should I wear body armor, or will Chayce recognize me?”

Chayce McLeod was the chief of security for York Properties, which Stuart headed. He’d worked for J.B. Hammock, but Stuart had offered him a bigger salary and fringe benefits. Chayce was worth it. He had a degree in management and he was a past master at handling men. There were plenty of them to handle on a spread this size. Most people didn’t know that Chayce was also an ex-federal agent. He was dishy, too, but Ivy was immune to him.

Stuart’s ranch, all twenty thousand acres of it, was only a part of an empire that spanned three states and included real estate, investments, feedlots and a ranching equipment company. Stuart and Merrie were very rich. But neither of them led a frantic social life. Stuart worked on the ranch, just as he had when he was in his teens—just as his father had until he died of a heart attack when Merrie was thirteen. Now, Stuart was thirty. Merrie, like Ivy, was only eighteen, almost nineteen. There were no other relatives. Their mother had died giving birth to Merrie.

Merrie sighed at the long pause. “Of course Chayce will recognize you. Ivy, you’re not in one of your moods again, are you?”

“My dad was a mechanic, Merrie,” she reminded her friend, “and my mother was a C.P.A. in a firm.”

“My grandfather was a gambler who got lucky down in the Caribbean,” Merrie retorted. “He was probably a closet pirate, and family legend says he was actually arrested for arms dealing when he was in his sixties. That’s where our money came from. It certainly didn’t come from hard work and honest living. Our parents instilled a vicious work ethic in both of us, as you may have noticed. We don’t just sit around sipping mint juleps and making remarks about the working class. Now will you just shut up and start packing?”

Ivy laughed. “Okay. I’ll see you shortly.”

“That’s my buddy.”

Ivy had to admit that neither Merrie nor Stuart could ever be accused of resting on the family fortune. Stuart was always working on the ranch, when he wasn’t flying to the family corporation’s board meetings or meeting with legislators on agricultural bills or giving workshops on new facets of the beef industry. He had a degree from Yale in business, and he spoke Spanish fluently. He was also the most handsome, sensuous, attractive man Ivy had ever known. It took a lot of work for her to pretend that he didn’t affect her. It was self-defense. Stuart preferred tall, beautiful, independent blondes, preferably rich ones. He was vocal about marriage, which he abhorred. His women came and went. Nobody lasted more than six months.

But Ivy was plain and soft-spoken, not really an executive sort of woman even if she’d been older than she was. She lived in a world far removed from Stuart’s, and his friends intimidated her. She didn’t know a certificate of deposit from a treasury bond, and her background didn’t include yearly trips to exotic places. She didn’t read literary fiction, listen to classical music, drive a luxury car or go shopping in boutiques. She lived a quiet life, working and studying hard to provide a future for herself. Merrie was in nursing school in San Antonio, where she lived in the dorm and drove a new Mercedes. The two only saw each other when Merrie came home for the occasional weekend. Ivy missed her.

That was why she took a chance and packed her bag. Merrie wouldn’t lie to her about Stuart being there, she knew. But he frequently turned up unexpectedly. It wasn’t surprising that he disliked Ivy. He’d known her sister, Rachel, before she went to New York. He was scathing about her lifestyle, which had been extremely modern even when she was still in high school. He thought Ivy was going to be just like her. Which proved that he didn’t know his sister’s best friend in the least.

Jack, the guard on the front gate at Merrie’s house, recognized Ivy in the local cab, and grinned at her. He waved the cab through without even asking for any identification. One hurdle successfully passed, she told herself.

Merrie was waiting for her at the front steps of the sprawling brick mansion. She ran down the steps and around to the back door of the cab, throwing her arms around Ivy the minute she opened the door and got out.

Ivy was medium height and slender, with long, straight, pale blond hair and green eyes. Merrie took after her brother—she was tall for a woman, and she had dark hair and light eyes. She towered over Ivy.

“I’m so glad you came,” Merrie said happily. “Sometimes the walls just close in on me when I’m here alone. The house is way too big for two people and a housekeeper.”

“Both of you will marry someday and fill it up with kids,” Ivy teased.

“Fat chance, in Stuart’s case,” Merrie chuckled. “Come on in. Where’s your bag?”

“In the boot...”

The Hispanic driver was already at the trunk, smiling as he lifted out Ivy’s bag and carried it all the way up to the porch for her. But before Ivy could reach into her purse, Merrie pressed a big bill into the driver’s hand and spoke to him in her own, elegant Spanish.

Ivy started to argue, but the cab was racing down the driveway and Merrie was halfway up the front steps.

“Don’t argue,” she told Ivy with a grin. “You know you can’t win.”

“I know,” the other woman sighed. “Thanks, Merrie, but...”

“But you’ve got about three dollars spare a week, and you’d do without lunch one day at school to pay for the cab,” came the quiet reply. “If you were in my place, you’d do it for me,” she added, and Ivy couldn’t argue. But it did hurt her pride.

“Listen,” Merrie added, “one day when you’re a fabulously rich owner of a bookkeeping firm, and driving a Rolls, you can pay me back. Okay?”

Ivy just laughed. “Listen, no C.P.A. ever got rich enough to own a Rolls,” came the dry reply. “But I really will pay you back.”

“Friends help friends,” Merrie said simply. “Come on in.”

* * *

The house was huge, really huge. The one thing that set rich people apart from poor people, Ivy pondered, was space. If you were wealthy, you could afford plenty of room in your house and a bathroom the size of a garage. You could also afford enough land to give you some privacy and a place to plant flowers and trees and have a fish pond...

“What are you brooding about now?” Merrie asked on the way up the staircase.

“Space,” Ivy murmured.

“Outer?”

“No. Personal space,” Ivy qualified the answer. “I was thinking that how much space you have depends on how much money you have. I’d love to have just a yard. And maybe a fish pond,” she added.

“You can feed our Chinese goldfish any time you want to,” the other girl offered.

Ivy didn’t reply. She noticed, not for the first time, how much Merrie resembled her older brother. They were both tall and slender, with jet-black hair. Merrie wore her hair long, but Stuart’s was short and conventionally cut. Her eyes, pale blue like Stuart’s, could take on a steely, dangerous quality when she was angry. Not that Merrie could hold a candle to Stuart in a temper. Ivy had seen grown men hide in the barn when he passed by. Stuart’s pale, deep-set eyes weren’t the only indication of bad temper. His walk was just as good a measure of ill humor. He usually glided like a runner. But when he was angry, his walk slowed. The slower the walk, the worse the temper.

Ivy had learned early in her friendship with Merrie to see how fast Stuart was moving before she approached any room he was in. One memorable day when he’d lost a prize cattle dog to a coyote, she actually pleaded a migraine headache she didn’t have to avoid sitting at the supper table with him.

It was a nasty habit of his to be bitingly sarcastic to anyone within range when he was mad, especially if the object of his anger was out of reach.

Merrie led Ivy into the bedroom that adjoined hers and watched as Ivy opened the small bag and brought out a clean pair of jeans and a cotton T-shirt. She frowned. “No nightgown?”

Ivy winced. “Rachel upset me. I forgot.”

“No problem. You can borrow one of mine. It will drag the floor behind you like a train, of course, but it will fit most everywhere else.” Her eyes narrowed. “I suppose Rachel is after the money.”

Ivy nodded, looking down into her small bag. “She was good at convincing Daddy I didn’t deserve anything.”

“She told lies.”

Ivy nodded again. “But he believed her. Rachel could be so sweet and loving when she wanted something. He drank...” She stopped at once.

Merrie sat down on the bed and folded her hands in her lap. “I know he drank, Ivy,” she said gently. “Stuart had him investigated.”

Her eyes widened in disbelief. “What?”

Merrie bit her lower lip. “I can’t tell you why, so don’t even ask. Suffice it to say that it was an eye-opening experience.”

Ivy wondered how much information Stuart’s private detective had ferreted out about the private lives of the Conley family.

“We just knew that he drank,” Merrie said at once, when she saw her friend’s tortured expression. She patted Ivy’s hand. “Nobody has that perfect childhood they put in motion pictures, you know. Dad wanted Stuart to raise thoroughbreds to race in competition. It was something he’d never been able to do. He tried to force Stuart through agricultural college.” She laughed hollowly. “Nobody could force my brother to do anything, not even Dad.”

“Were they very much alike?” Ivy asked, because she’d only met the elder York a few times.

“No. Well, in one way they were,” she corrected. “Dad in a bad temper could cost us good hired men. Stuart cost us our best, and oldest, horse wrangler last week.”

“How?”

“He made a remark Stuart didn’t like when Stuart ran the Jaguar through the barn and into its back wall.”