Mendoza's Secret Fortune (The Fortunes of Texas: Cowboy Country) Read online

  “Yes, I have. It was my minor.”

  “You got a driver’s license? A reference?”

  She felt everything inside her start to crumble. A reference? She hadn’t counted on that. With shaking hands, she opened her purse and took out her license.

  He studied it. “Dallas?” At that he looked up. “Suppose you tell me what you’re doing in the middle of nowhere this far from home?”

  There it was. The impossible question. Part of her thought it was time to get up and walk out. But a more desperate part of her took charge. At least she managed to hold back the tears that were trying to make her eyes burn.

  * * *

  Cash waited, studying the young woman in front of him. Pretty enough to knock the wind from a guy. He might not get around much, but there was no mistaking that she was expensively dressed in a well-fitted green slacks suit, perfectly made up, and that her highlighted hair had been maintained by a better hairdresser than any around here. She smelled like money. Was this some kind of game for her?

  But there was a pinching around her eyes that told a very different story. This woman had troubles. Aw hell. He was a sucker for a sad story. Maybe he should just finish his pie and head on home.

  But then he remembered what would be coming home from school around four o’clock: Angie. His daughter from hell. A teen full of attitude and anger who refused to talk to him unless it was to say something nasty. A hellion. He was sure that somewhere inside he loved his daughter, but that was getting increasingly hard to remember.

  So he waited on high alert for whatever tale of woe this woman was selling. What the hey, anyway. She was certainly eye candy, worth a few more minutes of his time with her ash-blond hair and moss-green eyes. Didn’t see many like her around here. They tended to get snatched up fast, turned old faster by hard work...or they left on the first bus out.

  “You look desperate,” he finally said when she seemed unable to speak. Were those tears moistening her eyes? “Look, as long as you’re not wanted by the law, I probably won’t give a damn.”

  “I’m not running from the police,” she said quietly.

  He kind of liked the soft Texas twang in her voice. Just the hint of it, not overpowering. “So tell me what’s going on.”

  She cast her eyes down. “It’s very personal.”

  “Easiest person to tell something personal is a stranger.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, you don’t have to keep me around like a reminder if you don’t want. Get up, walk out, pretend we never talked.”

  She lifted her gaze, and the faintest smile curved her lips. A little of her anxiety eased. “Are you really that easygoing?”

  “I was. I got a daughter who’s making me less so. So let me start the truth or dare game. My daughter, Angie, is thirteen. Her mother died four months ago unexpectedly, so now she’s living with me. Thing is, she hates me. She can barely stand the sight of me.”

  “But why?”

  “Hell if I know. It’s always been that way. But now she’s living with me. I’m at wit’s end. I spend every minute of my working day worrying that when I get back to the house she’ll have run away. She’s always spoiling for a fight, too. I need someone to watch her. I hope this someone might get past her granite wall. At this point I don’t much care if she ever stops hating me, but I’d be a whole helluva lot happier if I knew someone was keeping her safe. So this isn’t going to be an easy job.”

  She nodded, clearly listening and absorbing. At least she didn’t look quite so close to tears.

  “So there you have it. An impossible job, an incorrigible kid and a desperate father. You get room and board and lousy pay for the package. Wanna run away now?”

  She lifted her hands from her lap, pushed the pie with melting ice cream to the side and folded them together tightly. Slender, delicate fingers, well-manicured. Oh, yeah, he could smell the money. Whatever the outcome, his curiosity became overwhelming.

  “Your turn,” he said.

  She nodded. He tried to wait patiently and filled his mouth with more pie and ice cream to ensure he didn’t speak and push her into flight. Even if this came to naught, he wanted to hear the story. It wasn’t often anymore that he got to hear a new one. All the stories in these parts had been coming his way for years. An awful lot were reruns just to make conversation.

  “I ran away from home,” she said finally.

  He stiffened. This woman embodied the thing he most feared about Angie. Maybe he should stop right now. But no, she was twenty-four, she’d said, and running away from home at that age raised all kinds of questions.

  “What happened?”

  “Ugly story.” She kept her voice low, and every so often it would crack a little. He leaned in to hear better.

  Another long pause, so he ate some more pie.

  “Okay,” she said. “Short version. My family is prominent in Dallas. The kind of prominence where social connections are important and scandal isn’t welcome. I became a scandal.”

  “You? How’s that?”

  “Well, they wouldn’t believe me. You probably won’t, either. But I was engaged to be married. I thought I loved him. Everybody was thrilled. I’d picked a guy from the right family, if you get me. Everyone’s sure he’s going to be a senator one day. Except for one little problem.”

  “You.”

  “Me.”

  “But what’s wrong with you?”

  “Oh, I was raised right, taught all the correct things. You could say I was groomed like a show filly specifically to get to this place.”

  “But?”

  “He raped me.”

  The words barely emerged from her throat. They sounded so tight that he was sure she almost choked on them.

  “To hell with him, then.”

  “You’d think.” She closed her eyes and her hands knotted into fists. “Nobody believed me, of course. Then I found out I was pregnant. I guess that rules me out as a nanny.”

  For an instant it almost did, but then Cash had another thought. Here was a young woman, pregnant and alone, and a prime example of the dangers in life. She might be a good object lesson. So instead of shutting it all down, he decided to ask more.

  “Why’d you have to run away?”

  “Because they insisted we push the marriage up and make things all right for Scott. When I swore I’d never marry him, they told me I had to get an abortion. Because if there was one thing that must not happen, it was the kind of scandal that would ruin Scott’s future and hurt my family as a result.”

  “That’s medieval!”

  “So was the part where they kept me locked up. I didn’t get to go anywhere by myself, and then only rarely. It took me months to find a way to escape.”

  “So you had to either marry your rapist or lose your child?”

  “That was it. Oh, and I had to vow never to tell anyone Scott had raped me. Not that anyone believed Scott would do such a thing.”

  He swore quietly. “Why didn’t they just send you to Europe for a year or two? Out of sight and all that?”

  “Evidence. There’d always be evidence if I kept this baby. I could threaten him by demanding a paternity test.”

  “They thought you’d do that?”

  “I’d accused him of rape, hadn’t I? They were sure I was lying about that. Scott would never do such a thing.”

  It sounded like a story from another age, or from one of those soap operas his mother had loved so much. Yet looking at Hope across the table, he could see very real pain. She’d have to be a pathological liar to make this up. In fact, a pathological liar probably could have come up with something more believable and inventive.

  He sighed. He was going to do this. In his heart of hearts, he knew he couldn’t send this woman on her way at least until h
e knew the truth. He’d have the weekend to see how she interacted with Angie, and he’d make a point of being close by for a while after Angie got home from school.

  “I guess,” he said, “that there’s no one I can call to ask about you?”

  “Not even my best friend knows what happened. I’m sorry. I’m wasting your time.” Her lower lip quivered.

  “I’ve got an idea. But before we go over to the sheriff’s office to check out your license, why don’t you eat some of that pie? Looks to me like you need the energy.”

  He hated treating her suspiciously, but he had a daughter to consider, hellion though she was. The sheriff could find out if she had any warrants or past crimes. Then he was going to hit his computer and see what he could learn about Hope Conroy. If she came from the kind of family she claimed, he’d bet the Dallas newspapers would mention her more than once. And certainly they’d announced this engagement.

  Satisfied he wasn’t being a total fool, he worked on finishing his pie.

  * * *

  Although Hope knew she had nothing in her background to worry about—as it was, she’d been allowed to do little enough in her life—she still felt nervous walking into the sheriff’s office. What if this somehow revealed her whereabouts to her family? And how could she ask about that without having to once again explain her situation?

  To her surprise, she and Cash were immediately taken to the sheriff himself in his back office. She guessed that meant her would-be employer had some pull around here.

  Cash made the introductions. The sheriff immediately aroused her interest. Gage Dalton moved stiffly as he rose from his chair, wincing faintly, and a burn scar covered one side of his face. She wondered what his story was, but not for long. She was too nervous about all of this to think of much besides herself.

  “I’m thinking about hiring Ms. Conroy to help me with Angie,” Cash said. “I wondered if we could get a background check.”

  Gage nodded as he resumed his seat. “Of course.” His dark gaze shifted to Hope. “You have ID?”

  Here it was. Gathering her courage in her hands, she said, “This won’t allow anyone to find me, will it?”

  For an instant she thought she’d completely blown it. Her stomach turned over and she felt almost sick enough to vomit.

  “Depends,” Gage said. “If you have any wants or warrants from law enforcement it will.”

  “But not my family or friends?”

  “Not unless they have an inside line at the DMV or the national criminal database. Is there something I need to know?”

  Cash stepped in, saving her. “Ms. Conroy is on the run from a shotgun marriage is all.”

  “Well, this sure won’t help them find you. But you know they can trace you other ways?”

  She nodded, her insides now feeling like a leaf shaking in the wind.

  “Credit cards, things like that,” the sheriff continued. “A good private detective wouldn’t take long. Would they send one?”

  Now her stomach quit doing somersaults and fell off a cliff. “They might,” she admitted.

  “We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” Cash said. She darted a glance at him because his voice had turned steely. His jaw looked a bit tight. What had she said?

  God, she just wanted to get up right now and run. But she needed this job so badly. She had a child to think of now, and that had to come first. With trembling hands, she once again pulled out her driver’s license and turned it over to Gage.

  “I can check on this in about ten minutes,” Gage said to Cash. “If you want me to go in depth, that might take a couple of days, and Ms. Conroy will have to sign a release.”

  “Let’s just start with this,” Cash said. “I can probably find out more of what I need to know online.”

  Hope looked down at her hands, feeling like a bug under a microscope. But what had she expected? This man was talking about trusting her with his daughter. It wasn’t enough to meet over a piece of pie, with her telling a crazy story, and assume everything was copacetic. No way. She understood that.

  But she also wasn’t used to this. She had come from a world where everyone who mattered knew who she was. She had never had to prove herself in this way. Or in most ways, she realized. Not for the first time in the past few weeks she faced how sheltered she had been. Now all the shelters were gone.

  Time to grow up, she thought as they waited for the results of her record to come back. She had a child to think about now, and there was going to be no support from any direction as far as she could tell. Escape meant freedom. Freedom meant responsibility. Simply running wasn’t, and would never be, enough.

  Ten minutes later, as Gage had promised, a deputy returned her license announcing she was clean, not so much as a parking ticket.

  Gage and Cash had been talking generally about people they knew, the local economy and ranching. With a start she realized she hadn’t even remotely paid attention.

  Not only was that rude, but they must be wondering what was wrong with her. All she knew was that she was tired, frightened, alone and embarking on a task she wasn’t sure she could handle.

  But then she stiffened herself internally and told herself to stop being a wuss. She’d had three paths out of that situation, and two of them led directly to hell as far as she was concerned. Flight was all that was left to her...and to her child.

  Cash rose and shook the sheriff’s hand. “Thanks, Gage.”

  Remembering her manners, Hope summoned a smile and offered her own hand for a shake. “Thank you for your time.”

  “Good luck to you,” Gage said. “Both of you.”

  Cash laughed, but didn’t sound quite happy. “We shall see, I suppose.”

  Hope guessed they would.

  * * *

  Hope’s sporty little silver car looked out of place on the street where she had parked it. It might have had a sign flashing Outsider on it. She couldn’t even sell it because it was in her father’s name. Entirely too dependent, she thought. Dependent on that man for everything, about to be handed off to a man who had a streak of cruelty she never would have imagined until that night when he took her virginity against her will. A bubble of anger burst in her, but she held it back. Not now. Maybe never. There were more important things than indulging fury about how she had been treated.

  Cash had driven her to her car and he climbed out to help her. A gentleman’s manners in one who looked like anything but a gentleman. Of course, gentlemen weren’t always, were they.

  “You won’t get to drive that much around here,” he said after she climbed in behind the wheel. “You probably won’t want to, anyway. It’ll take a beating on the roads, especially out toward my place. Speaking of which...”

  She looked up, waiting, gripping her keys until they bit into her hand.

  “My ranch is pretty isolated. I’m serious. You might go a week or longer without seeing a soul but me, my daughter, my housekeeper and my hired hands. Can you handle that?”

  Tension suddenly let go. Isolated. “Right now that sounds wonderful.”

  “Right now it probably does. Anyway, I’ve got an old pickup you can use so you won’t be stuck out there when Angie’s in school. You can run on into town if you need to. But most of the time—” he shrugged “—I hope you like horses and cows.”

  “I love horses. I haven’t been close to too many cows.”

  “Now’s your chance. Well, if you’re not changing your mind, follow me. We should get home a little before Angie gets off the bus, so you’ll have a chance to settle in and look around.”

  “Thank you. Sincerely.”

  His eyes crinkled in the corners. “Tell me that again after you’ve met my daughter.”

  That almost sounded like a threat, Hope thought as she turned on her car and pulled out to follow his truc
k. Then her mood shifted abruptly. It had been doing that a lot lately, but all of a sudden she felt almost giddy. Relief for starters. She had a job.

  A bubble of laughter escaped her, and a genuine smile softened her face for the first time in months. And for the first time, she actually noticed that it was a pretty September day.

  * * *

  Leading the way, Cash wondered if he’d lost his marbles. On the other hand, asking this woman to be a companion to Angie seemed better than having Angie racketing about all by herself too much of the time. All that seemed to do was heighten her hostility.

  But if her anger with him had a dial to turn it down a notch or two, he hadn’t found it.

  He was, he admitted, totally at a loss. When Sandy had left him, Angie had still been in diapers. In one fell swoop, he’d lost wife and daughter to distance. He couldn’t make as many visits as he might have liked because of the demands of work, and Sandy had moved all the way to Arizona. He still felt guilty about that, but over the years as Angie had distanced him, even during his visits, the guilt had become easier to live with. Now she was in his house and broken connections, or at least damaged ones, stared him in the face.

  He quite simply didn’t know how to reach her.

  Which brought him to this moment in time. Leading a strange woman, a pregnant runaway, home in the hopes that she might be able to at least keep the girl safer. That maybe she could reach Angie at least a bit.

  That she could somehow find a way around all his screwups as a father. Because he really did hold himself responsible for this. Clearly he’d failed in some essential way, and blaming it on distance didn’t excuse him. He wondered if he was missing some basic instinct or knowledge. Wondered what he could have done differently, how he could have changed things. No answers arrived.

  He reminded himself that his daughter was still grieving her mother. That was killer all by itself. But in the meantime, he had to do something. He couldn’t just leave her alone for long stretches of time to brood and hurt and fuel her anger. She needed someone, and he was working long hours. The ranch demanded almost all he had in these hard times and didn’t leave a whole lot of room for so-called bonding experiences. Not that Angie would let him get that close.