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“Don’t you care what all this talk is going to do to the Calder name?” Tara demanded.
“Is that what’s wrong, Tara?” he mocked. “Have your important friends started to shun you?”
“You say that as though you don’t believe they are important.” She was stiffly indignant, and slightly incredulous that he couldn’t see the greater scope of the matter. “I don’t think you realize what valuable contacts they can prove to be in the future. You certainly don’t make any effort to cultivate their friendship. I’m doing it all so that when we take over the ranch there will be a network of people in influential positions that will be beneficial to us.”
“You can’t wait for the day when my father turns control of the ranch over to me, can you?” Pride and strong will had always been two qualities Ty admired in his wife, fitting characteristics for his life’s partner. Tonight, her self-centeredness stuck in his craw.
“The sooner it happens, the better it will be for all of us.” Tara didn’t deny it. “We can’t afford to have scandal attached to the Calder name. I won’t have him destroy all the work I’ve done to make the name Calder mean something outside this state.”
“If you don’t fight for what belongs to you, the name won’t mean anything in this state.”
“That’s your father’s way of thinking,” Tara condemned. “What does it matter what these local people around here think? They aren’t important. The money your father is spending to fight this thing would buy another ranch some place else. The Triple C can become the first ranch of many scattered around the country, run by competent managers. The idea is to expand, and I don’t mean by building feedlots. You have to stop thinking so small, Ty.” She was insistent, urging and half angry. “Don’t be like your father, Ty. You have to be progressive and modern like mine.”
“That would solve your problems, wouldn’t it?” A muscle leaped convulsively along his clenched jaw. “Maybe I should change my name to Dyson, too, so I won’t be tarnished by anything that might b
lacken the Calder name.”
“I never suggested anything of the sort! Why are you trying to twist what I’m saying?” Tara flung her protest at him, resentment flaring. “In this world, you have to look out for yourself. Your father’s actions are going to affect us, Ty. They can hurt us. That’s all I’m saying.”
“You’re asking me to side against my father.” Behind all the smooth talk and an appeal for reason, it boiled down to that.
“I’m asking you to think about us.” Her chin was lifted at him, all her femininity sharpened into temper as she put her will against his.
“You think about us.” His voice was low and heavy as he swung away to stride for the door. “It’s your homecoming.”
There was an instant when she could not believe he intended to leave. But the resoluteness was in his squared shoulders.
“Where are you going?” she demanded, her hands curling into fists.
Ty paused at the door, jerking it open, then looked at her in a glance that raked and stripped. “Out,” he said simply.
The door was slammed to its frame. Tara stared at it, then whirled about to face the center of the room. Lately, Ty had started listening to her; then this had to happen.
Ty jumped into a truck and started driving, mindless of the blast of winter-cold air blowing in the opened windows. He had no destination, just an escape from the pressure of the thoughts crowding into his mind.
The right and wrong of something seemed to be all in the mind of the person making the judgment. Tara believed she was right. His father believed he was right. Where did his loyalties lie? In the past or the future?
He had no sense of time passing, no conscious choice of direction. It was a long time before Ty realized the truck had stopped moving. In the conelike pool of the headlights stood the log cabin where Jessy lived. The tension was still there, ruffling through him. He switched off the truck’s motor and lights and walked onto the front stoop of the cabin.
It was completely dark inside. It took him a minute to find the light switch on the wall. “Jessy!” he called, but she didn’t answer. The bedroom was empty, and the breakfast dishes were sitting in the sink. A glance at his watch gave him the time. She should have been home before this. She’d probably be walking in the door any time now, he told himself and fixed a pot of coffee to have waiting when she returned.
The cabin wasn’t the same without her presence to give it that earthy peace. He stoked the wood stove in the front room, trying to put some warmth into the air. He rattled around in the cabin’s emptiness. It was worse than being alone in the empty suite of rooms he shared with Tara.
“Dammit! Where is she?” Ty demanded of the four walls.
The headlight beams flashed over the ranch pickup parked in front of her cabin as Jessy drove up. Chimney smoke curled blue-white against the black web of tree limbs. Light spilled from the cabin windows to lay squares on the freeze-dried grass.
She wasn’t exactly in the mood for company after a full day’s work and an evening at her parents’ to celebrate her mother’s birthday. Besides, she knew Tara was home. There was no eagerness in her steps as she trudged up the steps to the cabin. The opening of the door brought Ty’s voice to her.
“Where the hell have you been? Do you realize it’s after ten o’clock? I’ve been here for almost two hours, not knowing where you were, not knowing if something might have happened. I’ve been half out of my mind!”
The cranky worry in his voice astonished her. There was an open possessiveness in his tone that he had never used with her before. And the dark scowl on his face when he confronted her at the door made it all the more blatant.
“It was Mom’s birthday,” Jessy said in a small, dazed voice.
His breath ran out in relief as he caught her and dragged her to him. She was shocked yet clearheaded, conscious of the strong arms around her and the temper that was thoroughly aroused. She realized just how deeply she had gotten into his feelings. It was in his voice and the constricting pressure of his arms.
“It’s been a helluva lonely wait, Jessy,” he muttered.
