LITMIR.BIZ

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a date one time, with a cowboy I knew. Daddy found out. He had the cowboy chased clean out of the state, threatened him with an old felony charge he’d been acquitted of.” She swallowed. The memory was harsh. “Then he knocked me down the stairs and...” She stopped. “I never tried to go out with anybody again.”

      “Oh, child,” Delsey said softly. “I’m so sorry!”

      “So I wasn’t really comfortable with the idea of going places with Randall. I didn’t tell him much, but I let him know that it was dangerous for me to date anybody, and that we were too different to be involved with each other. But I told him I’d love to be his friend.” She smiled. “That worked out much better. He’s very nice.”

      Delsey, looking at her, could understand why Randall might have wanted to get involved with her. She was pretty and sweet and kind. But Randall could never settle for just one woman. He was too flighty. Ren, on the other hand, was certain that Merrie was like Randall’s other girlfriends who came here. Most of them came on to Ren. They were glittery women who had modern attitudes about sex. Delsey didn’t approve, but it wasn’t her place to say anything. If one of Randall’s women ended up in Ren’s bed, it didn’t concern her. They knew the score. She frowned. She hoped Ren wasn’t putting Merrie in that category. There could be consequences. He wasn’t around the woman enough to know her background, and Randall hadn’t been forthcoming about her. It was a recipe for disaster.

      Well, that wasn’t a problem that needed solving today. Delsey continued to help Merrie put her canvases and paints and accessories away, including the fine brushes she used.

      “What are you painting?” Delsey asked, looking pointedly at the sketchbook on the easel.

      “Promise you won’t tell him?” Merrie asked worriedly.

      “I promise.”

      She pulled up the cloth she’d draped over an old canvas she’d found and displayed the contents. The painting was only a sketch right now. She’d found a leftover canvas in the room and used it to sketch her subject while she’d waited for her art supplies to arrive. Since she had neither paint nor drawing pencils, she’d used a soft lead #2 pencil to do the preliminary outline.

      Even so, the image was so realistic it could have walked off the canvas. Delsey actually gasped.

      “You said you painted a little,” Delsey exclaimed. “This isn’t... It’s magnificent!” she said, lost for the right words.

      Merrie smiled. “Thanks. I’ve always loved to draw. Sari said that we might buy...” She almost said “an art supply store,” but she caught herself. She didn’t want to give away her monied background. It usually intimidated people. “That we might be able to exhibit my work at the local art store.”

      “Art store, nothing,” Delsey scoffed. She looked at the sketch with soft eyes. “You captured that look on his face that I could never understand.”

      “It’s sorrow,” Merrie said quietly. “He’s alone, inside himself. He can’t get out, or let anyone else in. He’s strong, and tender, and brimming over with love. But he doesn’t really trust women. Or like them very much.” She turned to Delsey, who seemed surprised at her perception of Ren. “How did he get mixed up with that woman you told me about?”

      Delsey bit her lower lip. “Angie? She was one of Randall’s girls. He brought her here to visit. She knew that Ren had more money than Randall inherited from his father, so she went after Ren. She was always wrapped around him, playing up to him. He’s a lonely man, for the most part, and she was aggressive physically. If you want my opinion, she made him so hungry that he got engaged to her in desperation. Then he found her with two of his business associates at a party. Apparently the three of them were romantically involved. Ren took the ring off her finger and flushed it down the toilet, with her watching.”

      “Poor Ren.”

      “She even spread lies about Ren online. We know a man who works for local rancher Mallory Kirk—Red Davis. Red’s a wonder. He can hack anything. The FBI tried to hire him, but he likes cattle better than people, so he refused. He did some work for Mallory’s brother, when his girlfriend was targeted by her vicious stepfather with obscene Photoshopped pictures online. He got rid of every trace. He did the same for Ren. Angie was arrested and prosecuted for what she did to him. She got off with probation, but she never put a word out about him again. Still, it’s made him bitter. That was months ago. He’s still brooding about it.”

      “I noticed.”

      “He’s not generally a mean person. I’m sorry that he’s been so hard on you. If you’d met under different circumstances, he might have reacted differently.”

      “In other words, if Randall hadn’t brought me here.”

      “Exactly. You’re the first woman Randall has brought here since Angie. That probably helped set him off.”

      Merrie sighed. Just her luck, to be attracted to a man who had a false impression of her because of Randall. She was only just realizing why Ren resented her presence here.

      “I probably should go back home,” she said, thinking out loud.

      “He’s not mad at you,” Delsey countered. “Besides, aren’t you trying to get away from that man who’s stalking you?”

      Merrie turned, frowning. She was putting these people in danger just by being in the house with them. Delsey was so like Mandy back home; sweet and kind and loving. “There are things you don’t know about me,” she began.

      The sound of the phone ringing downstairs interrupted them.

      “Oh, goodness, I’ll have to get that. I told Ren we should have phones upstairs and he said it was a waste of money,” she muttered on the way downstairs. “It isn’t his poor old legs that get worn out running up and down stairs to answer phones!”

      Merrie chuckled to herself. She looked at the sketch of Ren on the canvas. It captured the very essence of the man himself. It was, she decided, going to be the best painting she’d ever done.

      * * *

      SHE WORKED ON IT tirelessly for a week, reworking it until she had it just the way she wanted it. When it was finished, she turned it to face the wall, just in case he walked in, and started painting one of Hurricane.

      She was late to supper one night, and Ren was inflexible about house rules again, so she didn’t get to eat. She had a sandwich in the small cooler in her room that Delsey had provided. She washed it down with a bottle of spring water, also from Delsey. She hoped Ren wouldn’t discover her stash of food. He probably wouldn’t approve. And it wasn’t as if she hadn’t become accustomed to rigid rules of behavior back home. She’d just hoped it wouldn’t be like that someplace else. Maybe everybody was like her father and Ren, wanting things just so and refusing to change.

      She tiptoed back down to her art studio after she finished the sandwich, wearing her nightgown and a thick white cotton robe that covered every inch of her except for her bare feet. She’d forgotten to pack slippers.

      The door to the studio was ajar. She opened it, and there was Ren, gaping at the portrait of Hurricane that she’d just finished.

      He heard her come in and turned. He was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved red flannel shirt with a black checkerboard pattern. His feet were in socks, not boots. His hair was mussed, as if he’d brushed it back in irritation.

      “You did this?” he asked, amazement in his whole look.

      “Well...yes,” she confessed, flushing. She hoped he hadn’t looked at the other canvas. She glanced at it, relieved to see that it was still turned to the wall.

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