Christmas On His Ranch

Antonia was dying inside. She stared into her hot chocolate. That woman’s child, here, in her home! She could hardly bear the thought. It was like a violation to have Powell come here with that child.

“You’re upset,” he said ruefully. “I guessed you would be, but I thought you’d better know. He said he’d be back to check on me after Christmas. Wouldn’t want him to just show up without my telling you he was expected sooner or later. Not that I invited him,” he added curtly. “Surprised me, too, that he’d come to see about me. Of course, he was fond of your mother. It hurt him that the scandal upset her so much and caused her to have that first heart attack. Anyway, he’s taken it upon himself to be my guardian angel. Even sent the doctor when I first got sick, conspired with Mrs. Harper next door to look after me.” He sounded disgusted, but he smiled, too.

“That was nice of him,” she said, although Powell’s actions surprised her. “But thanks for warning me.” She forced a smile to her lips. “I’ll arrange to do something in the kitchen if he turns up.”

“It’s been nine years,” he reminded her.

“And you think I should have forgotten.” She nodded. “You forgive people, Dad. I used to, before all this. Perhaps I should be more charitable, but I can’t be. He and Sally made my life hell.” She stopped, dragging in a long breath.

“No other suitors, in all that time,” he remarked. “No social life, no dating. Girl, you’re going to die an old maid, with no kids of your own, no husband, no real security.”

“I enjoy my own company,” she said lightly. “And I don’t want a child.” That was a lie, but only a partial one. The children she had wanted were Powell’s, no one else’s.

Christmas Day passed uneventfully, except for the meager gifts she and her father exchanged and their shared memories of her late mother to keep them company.

The next day, she was packed and dressed for travel in a rose knit suit, her hair carefully coiffed, her long legs in hose and low-heeled shoes on her feet. Her burgundy velvet, full-length coat was slung over one arm, its dark lining gleaming in the overhead light, as she put her suitcase down and went to find her father to say goodbye.

Voices from the living room caught her attention and she moved in that direction. But at the doorway, she froze in place, and in time. That deep, gravelly voice was as familiar as her own, despite the many years since she’d last heard it. And then a tall, lean man turned, and cast narrow black eyes on her face. Powell!

She lifted her face slowly, not allowing a hint of emotion to show either in her posture or her eyes. She simply looked at him, reconciling this man in his thirties with the man who’d wanted to marry her. The memories were unfavorable, because he was definitely showing his age, in the new lines beside his mouth and eyes, in the silver that showed at his temples.

He was doing his share of looking, too. The girl he’d jilted was no longer visible in this quiet, conservatively dressed woman with her hair in a bun. She looked schoolmarmish, and he was surprised that the sight of her was still like a knife through the heart, after all these years. He’d been curious about her. He’d wanted to see her again, God knew why. Maybe because she refused to see him at her mother’s funeral. Now here she was, and he wasn’t sure he was glad. The sight of her touched something sensitive that he’d buried inside himself.

Antonia was the first to look away. The intensity of his gaze had left her shaking inside, but that reaction was quickly hidden. It would never do to show any weakness to him. “Sorry,” she told her father. “I didn’t realize you had company. If you’ll come and see me off, I’ll be on my way.”

Her father looked uncomfortable. “Powell came by to see how I was doing.”

“You’re leaving so soon?” Powell asked, addressing her directly for the first time in so many long years.

“I have to report back to work earlier than the students,” she said, pleased that her voice was steady and cool.

“Oh, yes. You teach, don’t you?”

She couldn’t quite meet his eyes. Her gaze fell somewhere between his aggressive chin and his thin but sensuous mouth, below that straight, arrogant nose and the high cheekbones of his lean face. He wasn’t handsome, but five minutes after they met him, most women were enchanted with him. He had an intangible something, authority perhaps, in the sureness of his movements, even in the way he held his head. He was overwhelming.

“I teach,” she agreed. Her eyes hadn’t quite met his. She turned to her father. “Dad?”

He excused himself and came forward to hug her. “Be careful. Phone when you get there, to let me know that you made it all right, will you? It’s been snowing again.”

“I’ll be fine. I have a phone in the car, if I get stuck.”

“You’re driving to Arizona, in this weather?” Powell interrupted.

“I’ve been driving in this weather most of my adult life,” she informed him.

“You were terrified of slick roads when you were in your teens,” he recalled solemnly.

She smiled coldly at him. “I’m not a teenager now.”

The way she looked at him spoke volumes about her feelings. He didn’t avert his gaze, but his eyes were dark and quiet, full of secrets and seething accusation.

“Sally left a letter for you,” he said unexpectedly. “I never got around to posting it. Over the years, I’d forgotten about it.”

Her chest rose in a quick, angry breath. It reminded her of the letter that Sally had sent soon after Antonia had left town, the one she’d returned unopened. “Another one?” she asked in a frozen tone. “Well, I want nothing from your late wife, not even a letter.”

He bristled. “She was your friend once,” he reminded her curtly.

“She was my enemy.” She corrected him. “She ruined my reputation and all but killed my mother! Do you really believe I’d want any reminder of what she did?”

He didn’t seem to move for a minute. His face hardened. “She did nothing to hurt you deliberately,” he said tersely.

“Really? Will her good intentions bring back George Rutherford or my mother?” she demanded hotly, because George himself had died so soon after her mother had. “Will it erase all the gossip?”

He turned away and bent his head to light a cigar, apparently unconcerned. Antonia fought for control. Her hands were icy cold as she picked up her suitcase and winced at her father’s worried expression.

“I’ll phone you, Dad. Please take care of yourself,” she added.

“You’re upset,” he said distractedly. “Wait a bit…”

“I won’t…I can’t…” Her voice choked on the words and she averted her eyes from the long back of the man who was turned away from her. “Bye, Dad!”

She was out the door in a flash, and within two minutes she’d loaded her cases into the trunk and opened the door. But before she could get in, Powell was towering over her.

“Get a grip on yourself,” he said curtly, forcing her to look at him. “You won’t do your father any favors by landing in a ditch in the middle of nowhere!”

She shivered at the nearness of him and deliberately backed away, her gray eyes wide, accusing.

“You look so fragile,” he said, as if the words were torn from him. “Don’t you eat?”

“I eat enough.” She steadied herself on the door. “Goodbye.”

His big hand settled beside hers on the top of the door. “Why was Dawson Rutherford here a couple of nights ago?”

The question was totally unexpected. “Is that your business?” she asked coldly.

He smiled mockingly. “It could be. Rutherford’s father ruined mine, or didn’t you remember? I don’t intend to let his son ruin me.”

“My father and George Rutherford were friends.”

“And you and George were lovers.”

She didn’t say a word. She only looked at him. “You know the truth,” she said wearily. “You just don’t want to believe it.”

“George paid your way through college,” he reminded her.

“Yes, he did,” she agreed, smiling. “And I rewarded him by graduating with honors, second in my graduating class. He was a philanthropist and the best friend my family ever had. I miss him.”

“He was a rich old man with designs on you, whether you’ll admit it or not!”

She searched his deep-set black eyes. They never smiled. He was a hard man, and the passing years had only added to his sarcastic, harsh demeanor. He’d grown up dirt poor, looked down on in the community because of his parents. He’d struggled to get where he was, and she knew how difficult it had been. But his hard life had warped his perception of people. He looked for the worst, always. She’d known that, somehow, even when they were first engaged. And now, he was the sum of all the tragedies of his life. She’d loved him so much, she’d tried to make up to him for the love he’d never had, the life his circumstances had denied him. But even while he was courting her, he’d loved Sally most. He’d told Antonia so, when he broke their engagement and called her a streetwalker with a price tag….

“You’re staring,” he said irritably, ramming his hands into the pockets of his dark slacks.

“I was remembering the way you used to be, Powell,” she said simply. “You haven’t changed. You’re still the loner who never trusted anyone, who always expected people to do their worst.”

“I believed in you,” he replied solemnly.

She smiled. “No, you didn’t. If you had, you wouldn’t have swallowed Sally’s lies without—”

“Damn you!”

He had her by both shoulders, his cigar suddenly lying in the snow at their feet. He practically shook her, and she winced, because she was willow thin and he had the grip of a horseman, developed after long years of back-breaking ranch work long before he ever made any money at it.

She looked up into blazing eyes and wondered dimly why she wasn’t afraid of him. He looked intimidating with his black eyes flashing and his straight black hair falling down over his thick eyebrows.

“Sally didn’t lie!” he reiterated. “That’s the hell of it, Antonia! She was gentle and kind and she never lied to me. She cried when you had to leave town over what happened. She cried for weeks and weeks, because she hadn’t wanted to tell me what she knew about you and George! She couldn’t bear to see you two-timing me!”

She pulled away from him with a strength she didn’t know she had. “She deserved to cry!” she said through her teeth.

He called her a name that made her flush. She only smiled.

“Sticks and stones, Powell,” she said in a steady, if husky, tone. “But if you say that again, you’ll get the same thing I gave you the summer after I started college.”

He remembered very well the feel of her shoe on his shin. Even through his anger, he had to stifle a mental smile at the memory. Antonia had always had spirit. But he remembered other things, too; like her refusal to talk to him after her mother’s death, when he’d offered help. Sally had been long dead by then, but Antonia wouldn’t let him close enough to see if she still felt anything for him. She wouldn’t even now, and it caused him to lose his temper when he’d never meant to. She wouldn’t let go of the past. She wouldn’t give him a chance to find out if there was anything left of what they’d felt for each other. She didn’t care.

The knowledge infuriated him.

“Now, if you’re quite through insulting me, I have to go home,” she added firmly.

“I could have helped, when your mother died,” he said curtly. “You wouldn’t even see me!”

He sounded as if her refusal to speak to him had hurt. What a joke that would be. She didn’t look at him again. “I had nothing to say to you, and Dad and I didn’t want your help. One way or another, you had enough help from us to build your fortune.”

He scowled. “What the hell do you mean by that?”

She did look up, then, with a mocking little smile. “Have you forgotten already? Now if you’ll excuse me…?”

He didn’t move. His big fists clenched by his sides as she just walked around him to get into the car.

She started it, put it into Reverse, and pointedly didn’t look at him again, not even when she was driving off down the street toward the main highway. And if her hands shook, he couldn’t see them.

He stood watching, his boots absorbing the freezing cold of the snow around them, snowflakes touching the wide brim of his creamy Stetson. He had no idea what she’d meant with that last crack. It made him furious that he couldn’t even get her to talk to him. Nine years. He’d smoldered for nine years with seething outrage and anger, and he couldn’t get the chance to air it. He wanted a knock-down, drag-out argument with her, he wanted to get everything in the open. He wanted…second chances.

“Do you want some hot chocolate?” Ben Hayes called from the front door.

Powell didn’t answer him for a minute. “No,” he said in a subdued tone. “Thanks, but I’ll pass.”

Ben pulled his housecoat closer around him. “You can damn her until you die,” he remarked quietly. “But it won’t change one thing.”

Powell turned and faced him with an expression that wasn’t easily read. “Sally didn’t lie,” he said stubbornly. “I don’t care what anyone says about it. Innocent people don’t run, and they both did!”

Ben studied the tormented eyes in that lean face for a long moment. “You have to keep believing that, don’t you,” he asked coldly. “Because if you don’t, you’ve got nothing at all to show for the past nine years. The hatred you’ve saved up for Antonia is all that’s left of your life!”

Powell didn’t say another word. He strode angrily back to his four-wheel-drive vehicle and climbed in under the wheel.

Chapter Three

Antonia made it back to Tucson without a hitch, although there had been one or two places along the snow-covered roads that gave her real problems. She was shaken, but it never affected her driving. Powell Long had destroyed enough of her life. She wasn’t going to give him possession of one more minute of it, not even through hatred.

She kept busy for the remainder of her vacation and spent New Year’s Eve by herself, with only a brief telephone call to her father for company. They didn’t mention Powell.

Barrie stopped by on New Year’s Day, wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and trying not to look interested in Dawson’s visit to Antonia’s father’s house. It was always the same, though. Whenever Antonia went to Wyoming, Barrie would wait patiently until her friend said something about Dawson. Then she pretended that she wasn’t interested and changed the subject.

But this time, she didn’t. She searched Antonia’s eyes. “Does he…look well?” she asked.

“He’s fine,” Antonia replied honestly. “He’s quit smoking, so that’s good news.”

“Did he mention the widow?”

Antonia smiled sympathetically and shook her head. “He doesn’t have much to do with women, Barrie. In fact, Dad says they call him ‘the iceman’ around Bighorn. They’re still looking for a woman who can thaw him out.”

“Dawson?” Barrie burst out. “But he’s always had women hanging on him…!”

“Not these days. Apparently all he’s interested in is making money.”

Barrie looked shocked. “Since when?”

“I don’t know. For the past few years at least,” Antonia replied, frowning. “He’s your stepbrother. You’d know more about that than I would. Wouldn’t you?”

Barrie averted her eyes. “I don’t see him. I don’t go home.”

“Yes, I know, but you must hear about him….”

“Only from you,” the other woman said stiffly. “I don’t…we don’t have any mutual friends.”

“Doesn’t he ever come to see you?”

Barrie went pale. “He wouldn’t.” She bit off the words and forced a smile to her face. “We’re poison to each other, didn’t you know?” She looked at her watch. “I’m going to a dance. Want to come?”

Antonia shook her head. “Not me. I’m too tired. I’ll see you back at work.”

“Sure. You look worse than you did when you left. Did you see Powell?”

Antonia flinched.

“Sorry,” came the instant reply. “Listen, don’t tell me anything about Dawson even if I beg, and I swear I won’t mention Powell again, okay? I’m really sorry. I suppose we both have wounds too raw to expose. See you!”

Barrie left, and Antonia quickly found something to do, so that she wouldn’t have to think any more about Powell.

But, oh, it was hard. He’d literally jilted her the day before the wedding. The invitations had been sent out, the church booked, the minister ready to officiate at the ceremony. Antonia had a dress from Neiman Marcus, a heavenly creation that George had helped her buy—which had become part of the fiasco when she admitted it to Powell. And then, out of the blue, Sally had dropped her bombshell. She’d told Powell that George Rutherford was Antonia’s sugar daddy and he was paying for her body. Everyone in Bighorn knew it. They probably did, Sally had worked hard enough spreading the rumor. The gossip alone was enough to send Powell crazy. He’d turned on Antonia in a rage and canceled the wedding. She didn’t like remembering the things he’d said to her.

Some of the guests didn’t get notified in time and came to the church, expecting a wedding. Antonia had had to face them and tell them the sad news. She had been publicly humiliated, and then there was the scandal that involved poor George. He’d had to move back to Sheridan, to the headquarters ranch of the Rutherford chain. It had been a shame, because the Rutherford Bighorn Ranch had been his favorite. He’d escaped a lot of the censure and spared Antonia some of it, especially when he exiled himself to France. But Antonia and her father and mother got the whole measure of local outrage. Denial did no good, because how could she defend herself against knowing glances and haughty treatment? The gossip had hurt her mother most, leaving her virtually isolated from most of the people who knew her. She’d had a mild heart attack from the treatment of her only child as a social outcast. Ironically that had seemed to bring some people to their senses, and the pressure had been eased a bit. But Antonia had left town very quickly, to spare her mother any more torment, taking her broken heart with her.

Perhaps if Powell had thought it through, if the wedding hadn’t been so near, the ending might have been different. He’d always been quick-tempered and impulsive. He hated being talked about. Antonia knew that at least three people had talked to him about the rumors, and one of them was the very minister who was to marry them. Later, Antonia had discovered that they were all friends of Sally and her family.

To be fair to Powell, he’d had more than his share of public scandal. His father had been a hopeless gambler who lost everything his mother slaved at housekeeping jobs to provide. In the end he’d killed himself when he incurred a debt he knew he’d never be able to repay. Powell had watched his mother be torn apart by the gossip, and eventually her heart wore out and she simply didn’t wake up one morning.

Antonia had comforted Powell. She’d gone to the funeral home with him and held his hand all through the ordeal of giving up the mother he’d loved. Perhaps grief had challenged his reason, because although he’d hidden it well, the loss had destroyed something in him. He’d never quite recovered from it, and Sally had been behind the scenes, offering even more comfort when Antonia wasn’t around. Susceptible to her soft voice, perhaps he’d listened when he shouldn’t have. But in the end, he’d believed Sally, and he’d married her. He’d never said he loved Antonia, and it had been just after they’d become engaged that Powell had managed several loans, on the strength of her father’s excellent references, to get the property he’d inherited out of hock. He was just beginning to make it pay when he’d called off the wedding.

The pain was like a knife. She’d loved Powell more than her own life. She’d been devastated by his defection. The only consolation she’d had was that she’d put him off physically until after the wedding. Perhaps that had hurt him most, thinking that she was sleeping with poor old George when she wouldn’t go to bed with him. Who knew? She couldn’t go back and do things differently. She could only go forward. But the future looked much more bleak than the past.

She went back to work in the new year, apparently rested and unworried. But the doctor’s appointment was still looming at the end of her first week after she started teaching.

She didn’t expect them to find anything. She was run-down and tired all the time, and she’d lost a lot of weight. Probably she needed vitamins or iron tablets or something. When the doctor ordered a blood test, a complete blood count, she went along to the lab and sat patiently while they worked her in and took blood for testing. Then she went home with no particular intuition about what was about to happen.

It was early Monday morning when she had a call at work from the doctor’s office. They asked her to come in immediately.

She was too frightened to ask why. She left her class to the sympathetic vice principal and went right over to Dr. Claridge’s office.

They didn’t make her wait, either. She was hustled right in, no appointment, no nothing.

He got up when she entered his office and shook hands. “Sit down, Antonia. I’ve got the lab results from your blood test. We have to make some quick decisions.”

“Quick…?” Her heart was beating wildly. She could barely breathe. She was aware of her cold hands gripping her purse like a life raft. “What sort of decisions?”

He leaned forward, his forearms on his legs. “Antonia, we’ve known each other for several years. This isn’t an easy thing to tell someone.” He grimaced. “My dear, you’ve got leukemia.”

She stared at him without comprehension. Leukemia. Wasn’t that cancer? Wasn’t it…fatal?

Her breath suspended in midair. “I’m…going to die?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.

“No,” he replied. “Your condition is treatable. You can undergo a program of chemotherapy and radiation, which will probably keep it in remission for some years.”

Remission. Probably. Radiation. Chemotherapy. Her aunt had died of cancer when Antonia was a little girl. She remembered with terror the therapy’s effects on her aunt. Headaches, nausea…

She stood up. “I can’t think.”

Dr. Claridge stood up, too. He took her hands in his. “Antonia, it isn’t necessarily a death sentence. We can start treatment right away. We can buy time for you.”

She swallowed, closing her eyes. She’d been worried about her argument with Powell, about the anguish of the past, about Sally’s cruelty and her own torment. And now she was going to die, and what did any of that matter?

She was going to die!

“I want…to think about it,” she said huskily.

“Of course you do. But don’t take too long, Antonia,” he said gently. “All right?”

She managed to nod. She thanked him, followed the nurse out to reception, paid her bill, smiled at the girl and walked out. She didn’t remember doing any of it. She drove back to her apartment, closed the door and collapsed right there on the floor in tears.

Leukemia. She had a deadly disease. She’d expected a future, and now, instead, there was going to be an ending. There would be no more Christmases with her father. She wouldn’t marry and have children. It was all…over.

When the first of the shock passed, and she’d exhausted herself crying, she got up and made herself a cup of coffee. It was a mundane, ordinary thing to do. But now, even such a simple act had a poignancy. How many more cups would she have time to drink in what was left of her life?

She smiled at her own self-pity. That wasn’t going to do her any good. She had to decide what to do. Did she want to prolong the agony, as her aunt had, until every penny of her medical insurance ran out, until she bankrupted herself and her father, put herself and him through the long drawn-out treatments when she might still lose the battle? What quality of life would she have if she suffered as her aunt had?

She had to think not what was best for her, but what was best for her father. She wasn’t going to rush into treatment until she was certain that she had a chance of surviving. If she was only going to be able to keep it at bay for a few painful months, then she had some difficult decisions to make. If only she could think clearly! She was too shocked to be rational. She needed time. She needed peace.