Johanna Lindsey - Angel

This was Cassie’s second visit to her father’s ranch in Texas. She had been amazed the first time she’d seen the house he had built here ten years ago. It was an exact replica of the one he had left behind in Wyoming. Even the furnishings were the same. It was like being at home — until she walked outside.

Her father had wanted her to visit for a long time, but her mother had refused to let her travel without her until she’d reached the age of eighteen two years ago. And Catherine Stuart wouldn’t step foot on Charles Stuart’s ranch unless there was a dire emergency— involving their only child. She hadn’t seen her ex-husband in the ten years since he’d left Wyoming, hadn’t spoken to him in twenty, even though they’d lived in the same house for the first ten years of Cassie’s life. Their relationship, or their lack of one, was the one thing Cassie had never tried to meddle in. As much as she wished it were otherwise, her parents despised each other.

But Cassie had told her mother all about the Catlins and the MacKauleys when she’d returned home in the spring of last year, and about her new friend, Jenny Catlin, who was two years younger than Cassie. Cassie had found Jenny nothing but melancholy this visit because she was at an age when she wanted to get married, and lamented that the only good-looking young men in the area happened to be R. J. MacKauley’s four sons, who were, unfortunately, her sworn enemies.

Cassie really wished that Jenny hadn’t mentioned the MacKauley men in the same breath with marriage. It had got her to thinking that maybe Jenny didn’t see them in the same light that her mother and older brother did. It had got her to noticing how Clayton MacKauley, R. J.‘s youngest son, stared at Jenny in church, and how the young girl blushed each time she caught him at it.

This probably won’t surprise you, either, Mama, but I’ve managed to include the Stuarts in the feud — at least the one with me. Papa doesn’t even know about it yet, but I’m sure he won’t be happy about it when he finds out. I’ll get to leave, after all, but he’ll still have to live with these people after I’m gone.

And before you start cussing him for letting me meddle, I have to tell you he wasn’t here to stop me. Actually, it started before he left, not long after I arrived, but it was all done in secret like a conspiracy, and then Papa got a letter from this man in North Texas whom he’d been bargaining with for two years for the purchase of a prize bull, and the man finally decided he’d sell. And don’t cuss Papa for leaving me alone, either, to go get his new bull, because he was only supposed to be gone for less than two weeks, and I am twenty now and fully capable of running his ranch — when I’m not meddling. Besides, he wanted me to go with him, but I begged off, since I had already begun my… well, there’s no easy way to put this. What I did was try my hand at matchmaking again, and unfortunately, this time I succeeded.

I managed to convince Jenny Catlin and Clayton MacKauley that each was in love with the other. And it really did seem as if they were, Mama. They were so surprised and pleased by my fabrications. It was so easy to get them together and, after only three weeks, to help them leave for Austin to marry secretly. Unfortunately, on the wedding night they discovered that neither one loved the other, that the romance was only in my own wishful imagination. Apparently I mistook the situation entirely, but that is nothing new. I seem to do that quite frequently, as you well know. Of course, I have tried to set things right. I went to the Catlin ranch to try to explain that my intentions had been good, if misguided. Dorothy Catlin wouldn’t talk to me. Her son, Buck, advised me to leave Texas and not come back.

Buck hadn’t put it as nicely as that, but her mother didn’t need to know how nasty he’d been in his anger, or about the threats she had received from the MacKauleys, who had actually set a date for her to vacate, or else they’d burn her father’s ranch down. There was no need to mention that Richard MacKauley had been picking up her mail and then telling her he’d lost it, which was why she hadn’t had a letter from her mother these past six weeks, or that she’d come out of the bank in Caully to find molasses dumped all over the seat and floor of her carriage, or that three of her father’s hands had been intimidated into quitting, including his foreman. Nor did she intend to mention the note slipped under the front door that said if her cat was found out on the range again, she’d be invited to the barbecue.

And it was best that her mother not know that Sam Hadley and Rafferty Slater, two Catlin hired hands, had cornered her in the livery in town and frightened her badly with their manhandling before someone happened by to put a stop to it, or that she had been wearing her modified Colt gun to town ever since that incident, rather than just out on the range, and would continue to do so despite the amusement it was causing the good folks of Caully.

And she most especially wasn’t going to tell her mother that her father had been gone seven weeks now and wasn’t expected back for another three because his new prize bull had kicked him and he’d broken two ribs and one foot in the fall. It sufficed for her to say:

They are such nice families, but when they don’t like someone, they are pains in the asses, and right now neither family likes me very much.

She thought about scratching out the “pains in the asses,” but decided her mother could use a laugh about now. Cassie certainly could, but then she had only three more weeks to set things right, because she knew exactly what her father would do when he returned. He’d simply abandon what he’d built here over the past ten years and relocate. After all, he ranched because he enjoyed it, not because he needed to earn a living from it, not when he came from one of the richest families in Connecticut. But Cassie would never forgive herself if the situation came to that.

Since they won’t even listen to my apologies, I did the only other thing I could think of. I sent for Grandpa Kimbal’s good friend, the man they call the Peacemaker. I have no doubt whatsoever that he will be able to end the hostilities here the very day he arrives, and I expect him any day now.

Actually, she had expected him several weeks ago and was definitely starting to worry over his delay, after he’d assured her that he would come. He really was her only hope. Perhaps she ought to send him another telegram when she went to town tomorrow to post her mother’s letter.

So now you know why I haven’t written. I really hated having to admit that I’d put my foot in it once again, at least before I’d mended what I’d wrought. And I will write again just as soon as it’s all over and Papa’s neighbors are back to just hating each other.

Cassie bit her lip, frowning at the letter. She’d saved the worst for last — how to convince her mother not to rush down here to save her “baby” from another catastrophe of her own making. Deviously. She’d invite her.

I know you were just exaggerating when you said you’d come down here with an army, but you are welcome to come if you don’t mind traveling in the middle of winter. I’m sure Papa won’t mind if you pay us a visit. Of course, the trouble here will be over before you could manage to get here, so he might wonder at your reason for coming. You don’t suppose he might think you were interested in a reconciliation, do you?

Cassie decided to end the letter right there. She knew her mother well, and after reading that last question, Catherine Stuart would most likely rip the letter up and toss it into the nearest fire. She could also imagine her mother’s verbal response to the question. “Reconcile with that faithless whoremonger? When I’m dead and buried, and you can tell him I said so!”

Cassie had been telling him or telling her what the other had to say for as long as she could remember. If there was no one around to relay their conversations through, would they break down and speak to each other? No. One or the other of them — depending on which one was the most determined to say something— would search until he or she found someone who would speak for them.

Cassie pushed herself away from the desk, stretching, and then looked down at Marabelle. “At least that’s one worry out of the way — for the moment,” she told the cat. “Now if the Peacemaker would just show up to solve the other, we might be able to stay until spring as planned.”

She was putting all her hopes in her grandpa’s friend, but she had good reason to do so. Once she’d seen him say a few words to a man who was in a murderous rage, and he had him laughing within five minutes. His talent for soothing folks was incredible, and he’d need all of that talent for the animosity she’d stirred up.

The Double C Ranch wasn’t hard to locate. If you rode due north out of town as directed, you sort of ran into it. But it wasn’t what Angel had been expecting. This far south, most ranchers took a cue from their Mexican neighbors and built the Spanish-style adobe houses that helped to ward off the worst of the summer heat.

What Angel rode up to was a two-story wooden house of mansion size in a design more common in the Northwest. A half-dozen steps led up to a porch that surrounded the lower floor and was wide enough to accommodate chairs, rockers, and even a two-seater wooden swing in each corner. A balcony with double doors that opened onto it from what he assumed were bedrooms circled the second floor of the house and shaded the porch below.

The house seemed vaguely familiar to him, as if he’d seen it before, though he’d never come this far south before. The outbuildings, or what he’d seen of them before he got this close, were spread out behind the main house, so that twenty feet from the front of the house, you couldn’t tell that this was a working ranch. Even the carriage drawn up in front was more like the fancy rigs you’d see in a large city than the smaller buckboards favored in the country.

Angel got no farther than that twenty feet when the front door opened and a black cat the size of a mountain lion was suddenly loping in his direction. He had no time to wonder where the hell it had come from — it was inconceivable that it had come from inside the house— before he was fighting to control his terrified mount and reach for his gun at the same time.

He hadn’t quite reached his gun before his hat flew off his head to the accompaniment of a shot, and he heard, “Don’t even think about it, mister.”

Angel had only seconds to make up his mind as his eyes went to the speaker to find a woman with a gun trained on him, then back to the cat, which had been somewhat arrested by the shot and wasn’t coming at him quite so quickly now. But it was still coming, and his horse was getting desperate, sidestepping, wildly tossing its head, and finally rearing up on its hind legs.

While he was fighting to keep his seat— he was damned if he was going to face that enormous animal on the ground — the woman spoke again, one word. When his horse had all four hooves back on the ground, he saw that the cat had stopped and was just sitting there now, not five feet away, looking up at him with large yellow eyes.

Marabelle, she’d said, in a tone meant to be obeyed. He hadn’t heard her wrong. Marabelle… and he did something he never did, something he couldn’t afford to do in his line of work. He got mad and showed it.

“Lady, if you don’t get that animal out of my sight immediately,” he gritted out in what was by force of habit a very moderate tone, “I won’t be responsible for what happens.”

She seemed to take exception to that, probably because she was the one holding the gun — still trained on him. “You aren’t in a position to—”

What happened took only seconds, Angel palming his gun and sending off one shot that knocked the weapon from her hand, her cry of “Son of a bitch!” as she shook her stinging fingers, the cat snarling, loudly, in response to her cry, and Angel’s horse starting to buck wildly in response to the cat’s snarl. Angel ended up in the dirt this time, the horse lit out for the next county, and the now hissing cat was no more than a foot away from him before she said it again, that one word that stopped the feline immediately. Marabelle.

He had a mind to shoot it anyway. He had a mind to shoot her, too. He couldn’t remember when he’d been so out of control of his emotions. An idiot could surmise that the cat, whatever it was, belonged to her. A pet. It had to be a pet to obey her like that. And she’d let it out to terrify his horse, terrify him, too, he didn’t doubt.