LITMIR.BIZ

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Mr. Morgan, they can eat with you. Almost ready. Hurry.”

      “Give me just a few minutes.” Cassandra felt her heart drop into the pit of her stomach as she spun away from the window and fumbled in the carpetbag for her only presentable dress. Once more it was time to begin the ugly game of lies and deception, playing her wits against the Tolliver men from behind the mask of Ryan’s grieving sweetheart.

      The mask she was prepared to wear for the rest of her life.

      Morgan sat in the dining rooming, leaning back in his chair as Chang carried in platters of bacon, flapjacks and scrambled eggs to accompany the steaming pot of beans he had already placed on the table.

      In the Tolliver household it was a long-standing custom not to eat breakfast before the morning chores were done. Morgan had risen at six, gulped down a mug of hot black coffee and gone outside to look after the stock. Most of the ranch’s fifteen thousand head of Texas longhorns had been driven to summer pasture in the mountains, but there were horses to feed and water, cows to milk, orphan calves to tend and, this morning, a torn windmill vane to repair.

      Morgan could easily have paid someone else to do the chores, but the truth was, he enjoyed them. He liked rising at dawn, watching the sky fill with light and hearing the morning chorus as each creature on the ranch welcomed a new day. He savored the slow rhythm of seasons, each one blending into the next, cycling like the spokes of the great medicine wheel. And he never lost his wonder at each new life that appeared on the ranch, from quivering foals to clutches of yellow-brown ducklings. Though he gave the matter little conscious thought, Morgan could not imagine his life without this work, without this land.

      Earlier, he’d been on his way out of the barn when he’d glimpsed a figure in the upstairs window. Stepping back into the shadows, he had caught his breath at the sight of Cassandra Riley leaning into the sunlight, her creamy breasts straining the thin muslin shift where they thrust over the windowsill.

      Her loose-hanging curls had caught fire in the morning sunlight, falling over the whiteness of shoulders and breasts to ring her delicate vulpine features with flame. Morgan had never thought her beautiful, but for one riveting instant, the sight of her in that sunlit window was almost enough to strike a man blind.

      He would bet good money the little schemer knew exactly what she was doing.

      For the space of a breath he had allowed his eyes to feast on the forbidden sight. Then, as Chang came out onto the porch, he had slipped back into the barn and made a discreet exit through a rear door. Cassandra Riley was looking for a protector, casting her web for any man within range, Morgan told himself. He would go straight to hell before he’d let her know he had almost stumbled into that trap.

      The letter to Hamilton Crawford was already on its way to Fort Caspar, with wiry young Johnny Chang mounted on the fastest of the Tolliver cow ponies. How long would it take for Ham to come up with some answers? Two weeks, at least, maybe a good deal longer, Morgan reckoned. In the meantime he would be wise to watch Cassandra’s every move—a challenge in its own right.

      A light bump on the table’s edge startled Morgan out of his reverie. His attention shifted sideways to where the elder of the two Chang boys had just moved Jacob’s chair into its customary position at the head of the table. The old man looked more haunted than ever, Morgan thought.

      “Rotten night.” Jacob’s eyes burned like embers in the hollowed pits of their sockets. “You’ve got a strange look about you this morning. Care to tell me what’s going on inside that stubborn Shoshone head of yours?”

      “Not much.” Morgan poured the old man a cup of coffee from the pot Chang had just placed on the table and added a generous dollop of cream. “Just wondering if we ought to get some of those new white-faced Hereford cows, like the ones Alex Swan’s been bringing in over on Chugwater.”

      “What’s wrong with longhorns?” Jacob demanded, his gaze narrowing beneath the bristled crags of his eyebrows.

      “Nothing.” Morgan poured his own coffee and watched the steam curl upward toward the rafters. “Nothing, that is, if you don’t have to put them in railroad cars. Got word last fall that a full third of the steers we shipped to Omaha were horn-gouged by the time they were unloaded. We had to lower the price for the whole lot.” Morgan had given his father this information at the time, but now Jacob looked as if he had no memory of it. Ryan’s disappearance had taken as much of a toll on the old man’s mind as it had on his body.

      “Humph!” Jacob cleared his throat and spat into his cloth napkin. “Longhorns are range bred—tough enough to stand the winters in these parts. Those short-legged bally-faced meatballs over on Swan’s place will bog down in the drifts and starve to death. Take my word for it. Don’t waste time and money finding out the hard way!”

      “Want to wager on it?” Morgan speared two flapjacks and dropped them onto his plate. Arguing was a long-established way of communication between the two of them. Now he used it deliberately, as a means to rouse the old man’s interest and draw his mind away from Ryan. “I’ll bring in a hundred head of Herefords this fall, early enough to season them to the cold. With that hay crop we’re growing down in the bottoms—”

      “Hay!” Jacob snorted. “Hell, that’s another waste of time! We’ve never had any trouble finding winter pasture for the longhorns.”

      “But we always lose some,” Morgan said. “In a killer winter, we could lose the whole herd. A good supply of hay would keep us from being wiped out.”

      “Bull.” Jacob toyed with the scrambled eggs Thomas Chang had spooned onto his plate. “These damned newfangled notions of yours are going to—”

      He stopped speaking, his mouth, like his fork, frozen in midmotion. Morgan turned in his seat to follow the direction of his father’s gaze.

      Cassandra Riley stood, hesitating, in the doorway of the dining room.

      She was modestly clad now, in a faded chambray gown with wrist-length sleeves, a high, crocheted collar and a shapeless waist, hiked up in front to accommodate her bulging belly. Her fiery mane of curls had been tamed into a coiled braid at the nape of her neck.

      Eyes nervous, mouth fixed in a tentative smile, she walked toward the table. She looked as demure as a round little quail, Morgan thought, and almost as innocent.

      “May I?” She paused next to the empty place setting on the far side of the table. Morgan scowled, annoyed at himself for having failed to notice the third plate earlier. Warned, he would have been prepared for her entrance and he would have made more of an effort to prepare his father.

      Rising swiftly, Morgan strode around the table to pull out her chair. Her downcast eyes avoided his as she moved into place. “Remember, we have an agreement,” he growled in her ear. “My father’s not to be told anything.”

      She nodded almost imperceptibly before lowering herself into the chair. She was every inch the proper lady now, hiding the siren he had seen in the upstairs window.

      “Miss Cassandra Riley…my father.” Morgan mouthed a curt introduction.

      “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Tolliver.” Her voice was artificially bright.

      “Ma’am.” Jacob acknowledged her greeting with the lift of a bristled eyebrow. Even after all these years, he had the manners of a mountain man. But that hadn’t stopped him from being the very devil with women in his day.

      As Morgan took his seat, he shot her another warning glare across the table. Could he trust her to keep her mouth shut? Would she even care how much pain her lie could bring to a grief-stricken old man?

      Glancing down, he realized he had lost all interest in breakfast. He could not venture to guess what the unpredictable Miss Cassandra Riley would do or say next. He only knew that if she so much as mentioned Ryan to his father, she would be one sorry woman.

      Cassandra spooned a mound of scrambled eggs onto her plate, passionately wishing she’d chosen to eat in the bedroom. Were these two gloomy men all that was left

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