Hidden in a Heartbeat (A Place Called Home, Book 3) Page 4

  She had accepted long ago that most people thought her acquiescence to her grandmother was done with a greedy eye toward inheritance. Some, she suspected, thought her too weak to stand up to Antonia. Among the few who knew her well enough to know that neither was true, her friends from college still urged her to break away. Perhaps only two of the long-time Dahlgren servants, Helmson and Kit Dugan, recognized the truth: Without Antonia, Rebecca would have no family, no history, no place.

  “Good night, Evvie,” Rebecca said as she headed out.

  “Going back to Far Hills Ranch?” Evvie Richards asked from behind the reception counter, making no bones that she’d listened to Rebecca and Vince’s conversation. Evvie didn’t wait for an answer. “You’re going to be working for the Suslands, huh? You know they say the place is cursed?”

  “I don’t – ”

  “Oh, me either,” Evvie said a little too quickly. ”A mighty interesting story, though. You heard how the first Susland ‘round these parts had an Indian wife and three little kids he sent to the reservation so he could marry a rich white woman? The Indian wife came back and asked ol’ Charles to take care of their only child that hadn’t died yet from illness at the reservation. When he said no, she cursed him and all his blood for turning away from his children, the tribe that had helped him, and her.

  “Curse or no curse, that family’s had its share of bad luck along with somebody else’s. Marti’s last of the Susland name, ever since her half-sister died in a car accident, eight, ten years ago. The things I could tell you...”

  Rebecca had been six years old when she’d learned how it felt to be the unwitting topic of gossip. It hadn’t felt good. She tried to ease away. “Ah, well, I better – ”

  Evvie’s ability to gather and disseminate information relied on her being attuned to her audience’s interests. She dropped that angle without a backward glance and tried another.

  “You know Marti’s got a little girl? Must be four or five now. Adopted her from an orphanage on some South American island a few years back. Guess Marti decided she wasn’t gonna get married and have a baby the regular way – must’ve been near fifty when she adopted Emily.” Evvie leaned forward on crossed forearms, bringing her impressive bosom even more to the forefront.

  “That Luke Chandler sure caused a stir when he hired on six years back. Some folks remembered when his father was foreman, but it was the single women who sat up and took notice. There was a near parade to that foreman’s house Marti had built, each one bringing brownies and cakes and such. Though ’parently the path to that man’s heart bypassed his stomach. Not that he was a saint, if you know what I mean.”

  Rebecca was afraid she did. She was even more afraid that she wanted to know more.

  Grandmother often said small things give people away. No matter how hard one might try to obscure the truth of one’s origins, the small things give away that truth. Now, it seemed to Rebecca, the small thing of her silence gave away her weakness.

  “He made it clear right off,” Evvie was continuing blithely, “that he wasn’t interested in a settlin’-down situation. Says no more than he means, that one. A few thought they could change his mind, and they got burned. None of ‘em can say he wasn’t clear as a cloudless sky about going his own way. Now, there’s some saying it’s because he and Marti found enough to keep ’em happy on the ranch, if you know what I mean.”

  She hadn’t wanted to hear this from her landlady before she first went to the ranch, she didn’t want to hear it now. “Evvie – ”

  “But that’s only those who smell a flower to see what kind of manure was used to grow it.”

  Rebecca pressed her lips tight to hold a totally unexpected spurt of laughter. She would never look at Helen Solsong the same.

  “Me, I don’t believe it. Why, she’s known him all his life, practically raised him, same as she did that passel of kids who came summers. And now Kendra’s back and married and a second little one on the way, and Grif and Ellyn happy as can be with those two kids of hers.”

  Rebecca felt as if a wave of words, names and connections had broken over her head, leaving her sputtering and gasping.

  “Not that I’d blame ’em if her and Luke did have some fun together,” Evvie declared, skipping back to her earlier thread. “Specially not Marti. He’s a fine looking man, and near twenty years younger than her. And that gives hope to all us past our first blush – or second. What I tell my Tom is, if I find out he’s fooling around on me when he’s on long hauls, I’ll go look for one just like Luke Chandler – if Marti Susland can do it, so can I. Tom hopes I’m joshing, but he’s not positive, not clear down to his socks, and that’s how I like it.”

  While Evvie chuckled, Rebecca slipped away.

  * * * *

  With sunset melting into twilight Luke spotted Marti heading toward his front door as he finished checking stocks of fencing, posts and staples for the morning. Marti had that look he’d seen on all the Suslands’ faces now and then – a mountain-moving look. He mostly admired it ... except when he suspected he was the mountain.

  Sure as hell, Marti had found out from Ms. Rebecca Dahlgren or some other source – sometimes he thought the only explanation for Marti knowing all she did was that cows told tales – that he’d dumped her protege well short of a complete tour.

  So he slipped out the shed’s side door, got in the nearest ranch truck and headed out. In the rear view mirror, he saw Marti standing on his front porch, hands on hips. Yep, definitely a night for the Ranchers Rest.

  A few beers with folks who didn’t ask a hundred questions and didn’t prompt more inside his head. A generous burger, greasy fries. Songs on the juke box. Maybe a couple games of poker without a lot of talk. Then home – after Marti gave up her watch.

  His bubble of the envisioned peaceful night burst along with Sally popping the top off his first bottle of beer.

  “Hey, Luke, I hear this woman from back East who’s living in Helen Solsong’s attic apartment is quite a looker. And she’s been out to Far Hills.” Herb Tabben, who had a small place the other side of the county, watched Luke expectantly.

  Luke grunted.

  “You holding out on us, Chandler?” demanded Robby Greene. No amount of evidence to the contrary ever persuaded Robby he wasn’t God’s gift to women. “Afraid you’ll lose the inside track?”

  “Yep, that’s what I’m afraid of,” Luke drawled.

  Everyone but Robby laughed.

  Sally, who doubled as bartender and waitress, said, “The way I hear it, Robby, she’s got enough money that if you could rope her instead of just swinging your loop ‘round like usual, you could take your hand out of your Pa’s pocket.”

  Robby clearly didn’t like the digs included in that comment. His interest overrode his pride. “How much money?”

  Sally gave him a cool look. “I haven’t been snooping in her bank book. Find out for yourself.”

  “Ask Helen, she’s snooped for sure,” someone behind Luke suggested, drawing chuckles. Helen Solsong’s tongue had hurt too many too often to be cut any slack.

  “Hell, Helen probably made it up – you know how she’s always trying to be so important,” said Herb in disgust.

  “I don’t think so,” ventured Frank Abserf. He was a nervous man, with a habit of pushing his hands through his lank hair that made those who bought insurance from him wonder if they’d made a mistake. As the next youngest brother of Evvie Richards, however, he was the conduit for an impeccable source.

  “What’s Evvie say?” Sally asked.

  Despite himself, Luke’s eyes shifted to Frank’s reflection in the mirrored surface of a beer advertising plaque behind the bar.

  “Evvie says this Rebecca’s from one of those real, real old families back East. Been here since the Mayflower, practically.”

  “That doesn’t mean anything,” Robby scoffed. “A lot of old families went through their money a long time ago.”

  “Not this one,” Frank said simply. “
There’s some big estate in one of those states back East – ”

  Delaware, Luke’s mind supplied unbidden.

  “Lots of real estate, and even more money in businesses. Corporations,” he elaborated importantly. “Evvie says it’s not like the DuPonts or Vanderbilts, with their own business. The Dahlgrens invested in other folks’ businesses.”

  “And a thousand Dahlgrens line up now for a piece of the pie.” Robby seemed to hope he was conveying he didn’t care to know Rebecca Dahlgren’s net worth. Nobody was buying it.

  Frank shook his head. “Evvie says there’s just this Rebecca and her grandmother left.”

  “So little Miss Rebecca will inherit it all.”

  “Uh-huh. That’s what Evvie says. But she says you’d hardly know it. Rebecca’s not flashy or snooty. Kind of quiet.”

  Luke wondered if there was a soul in this world that Evvie Richards didn’t consider quiet compared to herself.

  “And Evvie said something else.”

  “What?” asked several voices, including Robby’s.

  “She said that there’s some big secret about this Rebecca. She’s a Dahlgren, sure enough,” he said staunchly, as if someone had questioned that. “But none of them other Dahlgrens got dark hair, dark eyes and golden skin.”

  * * * *

  Rebecca’s spirits sank but her back straightened with Luke Chandler’s first, dark glare toward her.

  She’d arrived at Far Hills Ranch before he left his house this morning with time to spare, even though it had produced a homicidal longing aimed at her alarm clock when it went off. As soon as Luke opened his door, she headed toward him. He didn’t appear in a good mood to start, and his expression soured more when he saw her.

  She produced a professional smile. “Good morning.”

  “You been here all night? Looks like you slept in your car, if you slept at all.”

  “I slept in my own bed.”

  “Glad to hear it,” he muttered. Before she could untangle what that might mean, he added. “Looks like you could stand more time there. Go home, get rid of those half-shiners.”

  For a breath-held instant, she thought his extended fingers would brush against her cheek. Instead, they sketched a horizontal wave in the vicinity of her eyes.

  “If you are thinking you will get rid of me by telling me I have circles under my eyes, you should know that I don’t give up that easily.” A flash of insight made her feel almost comradely toward him. “I’m sure you don’t give up on a heifer – ” She emphasized the word, which she’d remembered from the day before. “ – if she doesn’t have a calf the first year.”

  “Matter of fact,” he drawled, “we do. Weed her out of the herd, ship her to market and sell her for what we can get.”

  “Oh.”

  Taking advantage of her surprise, he started that same maneuver of simply walking past her that he’d used the first day. This time she recovered quickly and countered it by turning on the heel of her hiking boot and taking three quick steps to catch up.

  “Well, I will not be shipped off to market. I want this contract and – ”

  He stopped so abruptly she’d gone two steps past him before turning back.

  “Why? Why are you so all-fired set on this job? Sure isn’t because you need money, Ms. Dahlgren.”

  “Ah, I see ...” She extended the words with the sigh of a woman wise in the ways of the world, and weary of them. “You’ve been investigating my connections, Mr. Chandler.”

  “No need to investigate. Around here, news comes to you whether you want it or not. And somebody new provides a fresh crop of news to talk about. It’s not like where you come from, where people probably have a lot of entertainment, so they don’t bother talking about each oth – ”

  “It’s exactly like where I come from.”

  He stared at her. She wouldn’t look away. Nor would she hurry into an explanation that would, by trying to cover up her unguarded words, point them out more sharply.

  When he finally broke the silence, he took a new direction.

  “I’ve got to get the boys started.”

  “Fine, then we’ll continue our tour after that,” she said breezily to his departing back.

  Before following him to the new, large barn that was the centerpiece of well-maintained outbuildings, corrals and chutes, she allowed herself a huff of expelled breath.

  “Well, that went well,” she muttered. At least he hadn’t succeeded in shipping her off to market. Not yet.

  Not ever, she vowed. She had one solid clue to her father’s identity. She was going to follow it as far as it would take her. And that required access to the Far Hills records.

  When she walked into the barn, Luke was perched on what looked like a section of wood fencing used as a door to a tackroom. Sitting atop it made Luke a casual, yet commanding presence over the eight men gathered nearby.

  As if he needed any help handing out commands.

  “... Ted, wrap up what you started yesterday, then take the section north of Leaping Star’s Overlook. Think you can finish it today? If you can’t, say so, and I’ll send somebody – Walt, you go up there after you wrap up that bull pasture you thought you’d be done with yesterday. And I want it done this time, understand? It’s better to have one section finished than three half-done.”

  “Yessir,” said the young hand with the wide smile.

  “All right, Ted?”

  “Mphfh.”

  “What the hell have you got in your mouth, Ted?”

  “Donuts,” offered Walt, pinch-hitting for his friend whose puffed cheek and working jaw showed he was in no position to talk. Walt held up a donut, as if Luke needed a visual aid, then used it to gesture to the large bakery box now three-quarters empty, sitting atop a wooden crate. “Rebecca brought ‘em.”

  Luke looked from the box to his men, all in various stages of chewing, to where she stood.

  Before he could say anything, Ted swallowed, and said, “I’ll finish that today, Luke. Barring disasters.”

  Luke slowly turned back to the men.

  “Good. Okay, everybody got a two-way who might need it?” Heads nodded. “Get to work then.”

  With a detour to grab a donut or two, the men filed past her with nods, smiles and thanks. With the last one gone, she let her smile drop, and contemplated the man still sitting atop the door.

  “Donuts, huh? You trying to bribe the boys?”

  “I’m trying to get off on the right foot with them. When I get this job, I’m going to need a lot of data, some will come from them. And if I can’t get preliminary information any other way ...”

  “If you get this information you say you need, give us a proposal and we say no, will you leave me alone to do my job?”

  No. Not until she found out the connection between Far Hills Ranch, the Suslands and the man who’d written her mother that long-ago letter.

  She knew better than to tell him that truth.

  “You have your job, I have mine. Mine is learning about this ranch, so that I can provide a useful and accurate proposal that will work well for Far Hills when you hire me to select and implement a computer system.”

  Hands propped so low on his hips they were nearly on his thighs, he muttered something, then hopped down with unerring grace.

  “Get in the damned truck.”

  She stifled a grin when he snagged the last two donuts. The same rattletrap truck as yesterday started without a protest.

  * * * *

  She took the offensive this time.

  “I heard you ask the men if they had two-ways – radios?”

  He made a sound of confirmation. His eyes never rested as he surveyed the unending rises and falls around them. To her it not only all looked alike, it all looked empty. She almost asked him what he saw. But she wasn’t in this battered truck beside this shuttered man to learn about him. Another man was her quest. Luke Chandler was simply a means to her ends.

  “Not cell phones?”

  This
sound was dismissive. “Coverage here’s spotty – with a lot of space between the spots. And no need to be on a phone every minute.”

  She did not point out the contradiction in his two complaints. “Then why the radios?”

  “This is a big spread. Man alone can get hurt. Without the radio you might not start looking til sunset, might not find him for a couple days.”

  “So, you do think some technology’s good?”

  “Sure. I like DVDs, too.”

  She ignored the faint mockery. “That’s a start. You don’t have an aversion to computers in general? Or laptops in particular?” She slid her small model out of the leather envelope that fit in her large shoulder bag.

  “Laptop?” The tilt of his head was decidedly skeptical.

  “Actually, a tablet. You can read the screen at any angle. And even with strong or dim light, you can – ”

  “Never work.”

  “This might not be right for you, but there are extremely durable models available.”

  “A hundred degrees in summer, forty-below in winter?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted, making a note in a file. “I’ll find out. Maybe you couldn’t use it every day, just as some days your truck won’t start.” The flash of his eyes she suspected was amusement. “The Army’s used models for combat conditions, so – ”

  “What’s the battery life? I’m out fourteen, sixteen hours, or more.”

  Without a word she uncoiled the accessory cord, plugged one end into the computer, the other into the truck cigarette lighter.

  “That’s fine as long as the truck’s battery lasts. Besides, those keys are too damned small.”

  “It’s a standard laptop keybo – ”

  He leaned over and stabbed a blunt-tipped forefinger down. What appeared was eeewvssssss.

  “I will take all your specifications into account,” she said stiffly.

  He wasn’t a means to an ends, he was an irritating, stubborn, male roadblock with eyes he kept hidden and a rear end that –