Rough Diamonds

“It was nothing. Besides, I’m used to harsh. I work for him.” She pointed toward Mallory.

“One more word and you’re a memory,” Mal-lory retorted, but his lips twitched upward at the corners.

She laughed and went back to work.

THAT NIGHT, THEY HAD A SERIES of old movies on one of the classic channels, starring Morie’s grandmother, Maria Kane. It was fascinating to watch her work, to see flashes of Shelby Kane and even herself in that beautiful, elfin face and exquisite posture.

“I wish I’d known you,” she whispered to the television screen. But Maria had died even before Shelby married Kingston Brannt. In fact, her funeral had been the catalyst that convinced King he couldn’t live without Shelby.

Morie had heard all about her parents’ romance. King and Shelby had been enemies from their earliest acquaintance. She and his brother, Danny, had been good friends who went out together on a strictly platonic basis. Then Danny had asked Shelby to pretend to be engaged to him, and he’d taken her home to Skylance. King had been eloquent in his antagonism to the match. It had provoked him into truly indefensible treatment of Shelby, for which he was later very sorry. Shelby, remembering, said that King had treated her like a princess from the day they married, trying to make up to her for all his former harsh treatment and rough words. He’d changed so much that Shelby often wondered if he was the same man she’d known in the beginning, she told her daughter.

“I can’t picture Dad being mean to you.” Morie had laughed. “He brings you flowers and chocolates all the time, buys you something every time he goes out of town, lavishes you with beautiful jewelry, takes you to Paris shopping… .”

“Yes, he’s the most wonderful husband any woman could ask for, now,” Shelby had replied, smiling. “But you didn’t know him before.” She shook her head. “It was a very difficult courtship. He was hurt by another relationship and he took it out on me.” She sighed, smiling at some secret memory. “I was showing a Western collection in New York during Fashion Week when he turned up in the audience. He picked me up and carried me out of the building. I was kicking and protesting, but he never missed a step.”

Morie burst out laughing. “I can imagine Dad doing something like that,” she remarked.

Shelby sighed, her eyes dreamy. “We had coffee and a misunderstanding. He took me back to my apartment, prepared to say goodbye for good.”

“Then what happened?” Morie asked, fascinated by the fact that her parents had once been young like her. It was hard to think of them as a dating couple.

“I asked him to kiss me goodbye,” she continued, and actually flushed. “We got engaged in the car and we were married three long days later.” She shook her head. “You never really know somebody until you live with them, Morie,” she added gently. “Your father always seemed to be the hardest, angriest, most untamable man on earth. But when we were alone…” She cleared her throat. The flush grew as she recalled their tempestuous, passionate wedding night and the unbelievable pleasure that had kept them in the hotel room for two days and nights with only bottled water and candy bars to sustain them through a marathon of lovemaking that had produced their first child, Cort. They were so hungry for each other that precautions had never entered their minds. But they’d both wanted children very much, so it hadn’t been a problem. The memory was so poignant that it could still turn her face red.

Morie laughed. “Mom, you’re blushing.”

Shelby chuckled self-consciously. “Yes, well, your father is a class of his own in some ways, and I won’t discuss it. It’s too personal. I just hope that you’re half as lucky as I’ve been in your choice of husbands.”

Morie grimaced. “If I don’t get out of here, I’ll never get married. Everybody wants me because I’ve got a rich father.”

“Some man will want you just for yourself. The traveling accountant was a bad choice. You were vulnerable and he was a predator,” Shelby said with a flash of anger. “He was very lucky that he got out of town before your father could get to him.”

“I’ll say.” She studied Shelby. “Why won’t Dad let me work on the ranch like Cort?”

“He and his father are very similar in some ways,” she replied. “Jim Brannt raised him to have a great respect for women and to understand that they are much too delicate for physical labor.” She shook her head. “I suppose some of that is my fault, too. You know, I lived with my aunt, and she was much the same. She didn’t want me to lift a finger because ladies didn’t do that. On the other hand, she hated my mother. She didn’t want me to turn out like her, either.”

“They play some of Grandmother’s movies on television,” she said. “She really was a wonderful actress. They said she married four men.”

Shelby nodded. “The last was the best…Brad. He died in a car crash just after I married King.”

“Did Grandmother commit suicide or was that just malicious gossip?” she wondered aloud.

“I never knew,” Shelby confided. “Brad said she overdosed because the studio fired her. But my aunt had often said she wasn’t the suicidal kind at all. Maybe she just accidentally took too many pills to help her sleep. I’d like to believe that’s the case.”

“Perhaps it was.”

Shelby had hugged her. “Anyway, you don’t want to go around covered in mud and calf poop, really, do you?” she teased. “Even if you were muddy from archaeology, at least it was clean dirt.”

Morie had burst out laughing.

Her father had come into the room during the conversation. He wore a satisfied expression as he bent to kiss Shelby and hug her close.

“I got tickets,” he told her.

“To The Firebird?” Shelby exclaimed excitedly. “But they were sold out!”

“Old Doc Caldwell was persuaded to part with his. I thought his wife was going to kiss me to death since she hates Stravinsky,” he said, and produced the tickets out of his shirt pocket. He handed them to Shelby.

“When are we going?” she asked.

“Tonight.” He glanced at Morie and patted her cheek affectionately. “Sorry, kid, I couldn’t get an extra ticket.”

“Not a problem, Dad,” she’d replied with a smile. “Debussy is more to my taste. Stravinsky is a little too experimental for my tastes.”

“Want a new dress to wear to it?” King asked Shelby. “We can fly up to Dallas to Neiman Marcus.”

“I have a wonderful new dress in the closet that I’ve been saving.” She pressed close to him and was enfolded hungrily in his arms. “Thanks, sweetheart.”

He kissed her hair. “Nothing’s too good for my best girl.”

Watching them, Morie was suddenly aware that their love for each other had only intensified since they’d been married. They were still like newlyweds, often lost in each other and unaware of anything around them. She’d hoped for that sort of romance in her own life, and she’d never found it. Cort, too, remarked that their parents were exceptionally suited to each other and that he envied that relationship.

Cort, of course, was sweet on the daughter of King’s neighbor and friend, Cole Everett, who had a son and a daughter and lived nearby on the Big Spur Ranch. They frequently traded seed bulls and went to conventions together. Odalie Everett was blonde and blue-eyed like her beautiful mother, and although she wasn’t really pretty, she had a voice that was soulful and clear as a bell. She sounded just like her mother, except that Heather had been a famous contemporary singer before she married her stepbrother, Cole, and Odalie was being groomed for an operatic career. Her parents were dead set against her forming any sort of relationship with a man because of her musical aspirations. It would be difficult for her to pursue such a demanding career and have a family. She had a voice that had been hailed by critics from California to New York and she was training at the Met already. Cort, unsurprisingly, had never made his feelings for her known. In fact, he pretended that he had none. He’d been Odalie’s enemy for years, for reasons that no one understood. Least of all poor Odalie, who adored him.

Morie snapped back to the present. She had her own worries. Her brother would have to find his way to love all by himself. She turned her attention back to the television as the commercial ended and her grandmother came back onto the screen, larger than life.

After the movie ended, Morie looked in the mirror and was surprised to see that she was almost the image of her grandmother. If she’d used makeup and had her hair styled properly, she could have been mistaken for Maria Kane. So it was just as well that she’d neglected her hair and packed away her cosmetics to work on the Rancho Real, she decided. It would never do for people who watched old classic movies to notice that resemblance and start asking questions.

DARBY PRESENTED HER with a cell phone the next morning. “Boss said to get that for you and make sure you carry it when you’re out alone. Still got that pistol I gave you in your saddlebags?”

“I do,” she replied. “Have they caught that escaped killer yet?”

He shook his head. “He’s a hunter. Knows these woods like the back of his hand, and is able to live off the land. It will take them a long time to hunt him down. He’s got kinfolk around here, too, and the sheriff thinks some of them may be helping him hide.”

“I don’t know that I’d help a killer escape the law,” she remarked.

“What if it was your brother or your father?” he asked simply.

She sighed. “That’s a harder choice.”

“Killer’s got a cousin that they think might help him. They’ve got his place staked out. They’re sure Bascomb is getting food and shelter somewhere.” He shook his head. “But the cousin’s place is miles from here. I don’t think Joe Bascomb would turn up on the ranch.”

“He doesn’t have anything against the Kirks, does he?” she asked a little worriedly.

“Not that I know of,” Darby told her. “In fact, Tank testified as a character witness for him during the trial. Tank still thinks he’s innocent.”

“What did he do?”

“Killed a man that he said was beating up his girlfriend. Said he didn’t mean to do it. He hit the man and he fell into a brick wall, hit his head and died. Would have probably been ruled accidental except the girlfriend suddenly testified that he banged the man’s head against the wall and killed him deliberately.”

“Why would she lie?” she asked.

“She was sweet on Bascomb, but he was in love with his late wife and didn’t want anything to do with this girl. Story was, she called him to come help her because she was scared of her new boyfriend. He was fond of her, so he went. The boyfriend had hit her once or twice and Joe Bas-comb intervened to save her.” He sighed. “Noble effort. He saved her and he said she got even with him because he wouldn’t get involved with her, although she denied it in court. It got him convicted. It’s a capital offense, too. He slipped away from the transport deputy, handcuffs and leg irons and all, and hid out in the woods. They found the cuffs and irons later.” He smiled. “Joe’s a blacksmith. Wasn’t hard for him to get free, I expect.”

“He sounds like a decent man.”

He nodded. “More than one decent man’s gone to prison on the word of a spiteful woman, however.” He checked his watch. “Best get going or you’ll be late back for lunch.”

“I’m on my way.”

She saddled her horse and rode off.

AT LEAST SHE DIDN’T HAVE TO worry about the escaped killer so much, now that she knew why he’d been convicted. Of course, he’d be desperate and she didn’t want to get in his way or threaten him. But she could understand his plight. Sadly, there didn’t seem to be any way to save him. He’d go to prison for life or die in the electric chair at a judge’s pleasure. It didn’t seem right.

She found no more breaks in the line. The weather was beautiful. The predicted snow didn’t materialize. Everything was getting green and lush, and she finally took off her jacket because it was getting hot.

She paused by a stream and closed her eyes to listen to it gurgle along. She felt herself relax. A twig snapped. She whirled and looked around her, her hand tight on the bridle of her mount. A good thing, because the gelding jumped at the sound. Horses were nervous creatures, she thought, and usually with good reason. She’d seen one tear loose from a hitching post and go careening over a fence just from a pan being dropped in the kitchen.

“What is it, boy?” she asked softly, looking around with some unease.

Nothing stirred. But she cut her losses. She mounted, turned the horse and urged him into a gallop toward the ranch.

LATER, SHE TOLD MALLORY about it when he came home. She found him in the kitchen drinking coffee with Mavie. He was concerned.

“It’s not unlikely that Joe might come here. Tank helped him in court and thinks he’s innocent,” Mallory said. “But the fact is that he’s an escaped, convicted killer. If you help him or Tank helps him, there will be consequences. You remember that.”

“I didn’t see anybody,” she protested. “I just heard a branch snap, like somebody stepped on it. I thought I should tell you, just the same. Could have been an animal, I expect.”

“Could have been. Or could have been Joe Bascomb,” he added. “You keep your eyes open. Darby give you that cell phone?”

She nodded and produced it.

His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. “Cane said he thought he’d seen you before. Now that he mentioned it, you do look familiar.”

“I told him…I just have that sort of face.” She laughed. She couldn’t react to the remark. “I might look like somebody you remember.”

He frowned. “Not really. Tank and I were watching this old movie on the classics channel. It starred that actress who killed herself—what was her name? Kane,” he said finally. “Maria Kane. That’s it. You remind me of her.”

“I do?” She smiled broadly to hide her discomfort. “Thanks! I think she was gorgeous! I watched that movie myself. I like the old black-and-white ones.”

He was diverted, as she’d meant him to be. “Me, too. I’m partial to Randolph Scott and Gary Cooper and John Wayne, myself.”

She raised her hand. “Bette Davis.”

He made a face. “Hard as nails. I like feminine women.”

She shifted uncomfortably. He was making a statement. Probably Gelly Bruner was his ideal. He’d already said he liked the pretty blonde actress in the werewolf movie. Gelly was blonde and blue-eyed, and pretty, also. Morie, with her dark hair and eyes and olive complexion, would never be to his taste. He might like kissing her, but he wasn’t looking at her as if he wanted anything more from her.

“Do you ever wear anything besides slacks and shirts with writing or pictures on them?” he asked suddenly.

She stared at him. “I’d have a real hard time pulling calves in a dress.” She said it with a straight face.

He gave a sudden laugh. “Damn!”

“Well, I would, boss,” she said reasonably.

He just sipped his coffee. “I guess you would.”

Piano music was coming from the living room. It was soft and pretty at first, then there were fumbles and then a crash. “Damn it!” Tank groaned.

They heard him get up and soon he came into the kitchen. He glanced at Morie. “I can’t get the rhythm of that coda. Do you have your iPod with you, with the soundtracks on it?”

“No,” she replied. She’d left it in the bunkhouse. “But I can show you.”

He frowned. “You can play a piano?”

She shifted as Mallory stared openly at her. “Sort of.”

“Sort of.” Tank caught her hand and pulled her along with him to the living room. He seated her at the grand piano. “Show me.”

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