The phone rang the next morning as they were walking out the door. “Let the answering machine take it,” Brady said.
“Okay, but I just want to listen to the message in case it’s anything important,” Kelsey said as the prerecorded message clicked on, followed by the beep and a man’s voice. “It’s Friday morning. This is Hargett. Brady, I want to talk to you about our…situation.”
Frowning, Brady pushed by Kelsey and headed for the machine.
“Look, I know I said I’d give you the full two weeks you’ve got left,” Hargett continued gruffly, “but I just can’t. Not after the way we left things the other morning. I want to talk to you about the money and everything else you promised me, ASAP—”
Brady clicked the stop button on the machine, then turned the answering machine off entirely so no further messages would be recorded in their absence.
“Why did you do that?” Kelsey demanded as the phone began to ring again a few minutes later.
Brady pushed her out the door and locked it behind them. “Because I know what he’s going to say.”
“Well, I don’t!” Kelsey argued.
Brady fixed her with a warning glance. “The message isn’t for you, Kelsey.”
“In other words,” Kelsey guessed, unable to help but feel hurt at the way he was shutting her out of whatever was going on with Hargett, as the phone continued to ring, as insistently as ever, “I should mind my own business.” And that hurt, because she’d thought Brady understood, accepted and appreciated her like no one else. Had she been wrong about that? And if so, what else was she wrong about? Kelsey wondered.
Brady sighed. Obviously realizing how upset she was, he closed the distance between them and cupped her shoulders gently. “Look, Hargett is a complex guy. What problems the two of us have are between him and me. I know you want to help me deal with him, but—” the hesitation was back in his voice “—the bottom line is, you can’t.”
Kelsey began to feel very uneasy. Brady was acting as if whatever Hargett said or did could somehow hurt the two of them and/or disrupt the happiness they’d found as man and wife. She swallowed hard. She wasn’t worried about herself. She had the feeling she could handle Hargett. But she didn’t want anything to happen to Brady. She cared about him too much. “Is he threatening you?” she asked warily.
Brady’s mouth tightened into a grim line. His eyes took on a remote look. “Not the way you think,” he said bluntly.
Kelsey thought about all the options and finally concluded, “He wants something from you, doesn’t he? That’s why he keeps calling and coming around.”
Brady turned his brooding glance to her and admitted, with a great deal of reluctance, “He wants me to go back to work for him.”
“Doing what?”
“Just…business,” Brady said vaguely, looking all the more evasive and uncomfortable. “It’s not anything I want to do. And it’s not important to the two of us, ’cause it’s not going to happen.”
Kelsey studied him wordlessly. There was something he still wasn’t telling her. And didn’t want her to know, Kelsey decided. “Maybe it’s not important to you,” she said, hurt at the way Brady kept refusing to confide in her.
Brady’s lips tightened in exasperation. “There is nothing that Hargett has to say to me that won’t keep until I’m of a mind to deal with him,” he said grimly. “And that’ll come soon enough.”
Seeing the worry come back into his dark blue eyes, Kelsey felt her uneasiness grow by leaps and bounds. “Look, I know you’ve gotten in over your head. And I just want you to know I don’t blame you,” Kelsey continued hastily, putting up a silencing hand before he could interrupt her. “It could have happened to anyone who needed money and had nowhere else to borrow it. And heaven knows we’ve had to sink a lot more than we thought into the house, bringing it back to a livable state. But it’s not too late, Brady. There’s still a way out. There’s always a way out.”
Brady studied her with obvious admiration and gratitude. “You’d forgive me,” he questioned thoughtfully, “even knowing I did something to compromise my future?”
“Yes,” Kelsey said firmly. “I would.”
“You’re some kind of woman, Kelsey,” Brady said with obvious admiration.
“Thank you.” Kelsey beamed at his praise.
“But we still don’t need to discuss this here and now,” Brady decided firmly. “What we do need to do is hurry and get to town if we want to catch Patricia Weatherby before she leaves for work at the chamber of commerce. Otherwise, she’s going to think we stood her up.”
“All right,” Kelsey conceded reluctantly, unable to shake the feeling that trouble was just over the horizon. “But just so you know, Brady, we’re not finished talking about this.”
BRADY KNEW HE SHOULD HAVE told Kelsey who Hargett was and what he really wanted from him, aside from going back to work for Hargett and the company, that was. But he hadn’t because he knew she’d probably be furious when she found out everything he had been keeping from her and everyone else in Laramie. He was going to have to tell her, of course. And soon, given both the upcoming deadline he and Hargett had agreed upon when Brady had broken away, and the way Hargett was now breathing down his neck.
But he didn’t want to tell her.
He didn’t want anything to spoil the miracle the two of them had found. And he sensed, from the way Kelsey wasn’t really pushing him to confess all here and now, that Kelsey didn’t want anything to spoil their newfound love affair and “marriage of convenience,” either.
Not when they had a chance to make it all as real and solid and wonderful as the ranch they were now calling home.
They caught up with Patricia at nine-thirty. Her daughter, Molly, was already in school. Patricia wasn’t due to work over at the chamber of commerce until ten. “You’re here to talk to me about Rafe, aren’t you?” she said as she ushered Brady and Kelsey inside. She looked tired and stressed. “Well, you can forget it,” she stated emphatically. “I’m not going to go out with anyone who sees a married woman on the side.”
Glad she had wasted no time in getting to Patricia, Kelsey hastened to set the record straight. “I was the married woman Rafe was with that night, and it was not a real date, it was a practice date for his evening with you.”
Patricia blinked in confusion. “I don’t understand. Why would Rafe need a practice date?”
Kelsey rolled her eyes. “Because he’s such a klutz and he hasn’t dated anyone in a very long time and he has a wild crush on you and he really wanted everything to go just right. He thought if he had a trial run with me, I could critique him and then everything with you would go super smoothly. He really wanted to impress you. And he needed to get his confidence up to do that. That’s all it was, Patricia.”
“But the waiter said something about a husband coming in, being very upset—”
“That was me,” Brady said, owning up to his actions matter-of-factly. “Kelsey neglected to tell me what was going on, and I got the wrong idea. So, yeah, I was pretty jealous until Kelsey explained the situation. The point is, Rafe and Kelsey are just friends, Patricia. I wouldn’t be here, asking you to give Rafe Marshall a second chance, if there was anything else going on.”
Patricia sat down, her expression bleak. “Oh, dear. What a mess. I imagine, if I’d only given him half a chance, Rafe would have told me all this last night.”
“What happened in the past, including last night, isn’t important,” Brady said. “The future is.”
“DID YOU MEAN WHAT YOU SAID about the future?” Kelsey asked Brady as they turned into the path that led up to the ranch house. “About it being more important than anything that happened in the past, even yesterday?”
Brady nodded as he parked in front of the ranch house and cut the motor on his pickup. He wondered what Kelsey was trying to get up the nerve to ask him.
“Because there’s something I need to tell you,” she said. She bit into her lower lip uncertainly. “Something important.”
Before she could elaborate further, Brady heard another car. He turned and saw a familiar late-model Cadillac coming up the drive. He swore beneath his breath. Kelsey looked just as distressed at the ill-timed interruption.
“Let me take care of this,” Brady said firmly. Darn it all. He should have known that Hargett wouldn’t stop with a phone message, that he would show up here in person.
Brady climbed out of the pickup truck just as Hargett climbed out of the Cadillac. The two met halfway. Brady blew out an exasperated breath as he regarded their uninvited guest. “You want to see me, fine, but not here and not now.”
“Then when?” Hargett demanded unhappily as Kelsey dashed out of the pickup and threw herself between them.
“To get to him, you’re going to have to go through me,” she vowed.
Hargett’s brows drew together. As before, he was dressed in an elegant and expensive business suit, seemingly at odds with his rough-hewn appearance. “Is that so?” Hargett drawled, regarding Brady’s wife with obvious amusement.
“Yes.” Kelsey kept her arms out on either side of her and backed up until she was totally blocking Hargett’s access to Brady. “Listen here, Hargett, I don’t know what it is that you’ve got hanging over Brady’s head, but I think you should just forget about getting him to come back to work for you, and go home.”
Brady clamped his hands on her shoulders and attempted to move her, so she was no longer shielding him with her body. “Kelsey, you don’t have to defend me here,” he said, frustrated at the way Kelsey was digging in her heels and refusing to budge.
“Actually,” Hargett interrupted, raising his brow and folding his arms in front of him, “I want to hear what this wife of yours has to say, Brady. I admire a gal with gumption. Plus, unless I am mistaken, and I don’t think I am, this little filly really loves you.”
“I’m not a filly, but you’re right, I do love him,” Kelsey retorted hotly.
And I love you, Brady thought. But he wasn’t telling Kelsey that. Not here and not now. Not in front of Hargett. That could wait until they were alone and had a properly romantic setting, so he could kiss and hold Kelsey the way he wanted to kiss and hold her when he told her he loved her for the very first time.
“And I want to protect him from the likes of you,” Kelsey argued hotly.
Hargett laughed.
Brady glared at him. Of all the times he didn’t need the kind of interference Hargett was capable of, it was now. “I will talk to you later,” he promised again, looking at Hargett. “Right now, you need to leave,” he stated emphatically.
But instead of leaving, Hargett said, frowning, “You didn’t tell her who I was, did you?”
At that, it was all Brady could do not to cringe. He swore beneath his breath. “No. I didn’t. Not yet.”
“Which means she doesn’t know who you really are, either,” Hargett concluded heavily, with a telling, sympathetic look at Kelsey. “Does she?”
HARGETT AND BRADY MIGHT as well have been talking in secret code, for all Kelsey was getting of their conversation. “Of course I know who he is!” Kelsey retorted, reassuring herself there was absolutely no need for her to panic, despite the secretive glances Brady and Hargett were exchanging. “He’s Brady Anderson. My husband.” She pressed a hand to her heart and continued in a low, fiercely emotional tone of voice. “And I love him with all my heart and soul.”
“I think you’ve done enough damage here,” Brady told Hargett tightly.
“I’m not the one who kept something that important from my wife,” Hargett countered, looking Brady up and down. “But you’re right, Brady. This is a discussion you and Kelsey should have alone. When you’ve finished, call me at the inn. Or come by and see me in person. Like I said on the phone, we have some very important business to discuss.” He handed Brady a small card, with a phone number scribbled on the back. He tipped his hat at Kelsey, went back to his Cadillac, climbed in and drove away. Kelsey stared at Brady, waiting for the explanation to come.
Brady sighed, swept off his hat and slammed it against his thigh. His jaw was clenched. He looked and acted as frustrated and upset as Kelsey suddenly felt. “That was my dad.” He pushed the words through his teeth.
As the meaning of Brady’s words sank in, Kelsey felt like she’d just had all the air knocked out of her lungs. “Your dad,” she repeated, stunned.
“Yes.” Brady clenched his jaw all the more. He turned and looked Kelsey square in the eye. “His full name is Hargett Anderson and he owns the Anderson Oil Company.”
Kelsey’s knees grew weak. “Not the same company that owns all those gas stations.”
“One and the same.”
She leaned against the back of Brady’s pickup truck. “And you’re an heir to all that?”
“Not just an heir.” Brady’s midnight-blue eyes glimmered with barely checked resentment. “The only heir.”
Kelsey worked to contain her hurt, even as she struggled to understand why Brady had done what he had. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she whispered.
Brady slammed his hat back on his head and tugged the brim low across his forehead. “Because for the last two years I have been trying to live a normal life, the kind of life I never had the chance to live as a kid.”
“Your father disapproved of that?”
“Yes. He grew up dirt poor. He had no connections. He had to do everything on his own and he sees no reason why I should have to do the same when he could hand it all to me on a silver platter.”
“But you don’t want to help him run his company.”
Brady frowned. “I’ve got the talent to do it, no question.”
Kelsey recalled what a fierce bargainer he was. How he cared about every aspect of the business, and always watched the bottom line.
“I just wasn’t happy as an oil company exec,” Brady continued, as if willing her to understand. “Dad thought it was a phase, that I would get over my need to be my own man and blaze my own path. But I knew that wasn’t the case. I not only had what it took to be a cowboy, but to own my own ranch as well. Anyway, I made this deal with my dad. He had to stop pressuring me and totally stay out of my life during the two years I was proving my mettle. If I couldn’t do it, learn the business and save enough money to purchase a ranch of my own and make it a success, then at the end of that time I would go back to Houston and spend the rest of my life working for him and the company again.”
“So that’s why you were so desperate to go into partnership with me and make this ranch work,” Kelsey supposed slowly, “even if it meant borrowing money from Wade McCabe to stock it.”
Brady shot her an irritated look. “I could have bought a ranch of my own.”
“Not one this big,” Kelsey countered, mocking his mildly irritated tone. She glared at him, not sure whether she was more hurt or angry, just knowing she was both. “Not without my seed money, too.” How could he have kept something this important from her, even after Hargett started coming around and while he knew she was worried about Hargett’s interference, the way he seemed to be pressuring Brady?
Brady stubbornly held his ground. “I thought we’d be good together. I wanted this ranch to be a success for both of us, Kelsey.”
“When were you going to tell me?” Kelsey demanded.
“Soon,” Brady said vaguely.
“Today?” Kelsey pressed, as impatient to get to the truth as he was reluctant to give it.
Brady shrugged, as if that hardly mattered. “I probably would have waited a few more days,” he conceded after a minute.
“Or in other words, as long as possible,” Kelsey guessed.
“Or until I’d gotten my trust fund.”
Kelsey’s heart sank. Just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse, she found out there was yet another element to Brady’s duplicity.
“I’m due to come into my trust fund in a little over a week now—that’s the deadline Hargett keeps referring to,” Brady continued. “My getting the funds was contingent upon my being a success as a rancher. That’s why I wasn’t worried about paying Wade McCabe back, or building an indoor arena or anything else, because I knew I’d have the money to do anything we wanted to do here if I just made it a few more weeks.”
“You must’ve really wanted this,” Kelsey said as a chill descended over her heart.
Brady nodded affirmatively. “There’s a lot we can do with those funds to continue to fix up this place, Kelsey. Heck, with that kind of money, we could go state-of-the-art on everything and make the Lockhart-Anderson Ranch a real showplace.”
Kelsey had once thought Brady’s ambition and ability to dream big were laudable. That was before she had been used to further both. “Well, I have to hand it to you, Brady,” Kelsey said bitterly. “You made a complete and utter fool out of me. Here I thought you’d done all this because you wanted me as your partner so we could build something real and lasting. When all I ever was was the means to an end.”
Brady released a short, impatient breath and gave her a look that said she was making this unnecessarily hard on them both. “You can’t seriously believe that,” he said.
The problem was, she did. Not once, Kelsey recalled, had Brady ever said he loved her. Or even could be falling in love with her. Not once had he hinted that he wanted their marriage to be anything more than a furthering of the business arrangement and the friendship they already had.
Once, she’d thought those things would be enough to make her happy. But that had been before she’d fallen in love with Brady. Now she needed him to love her, too. If he didn’t… Well, Kelsey didn’t see any reason to continue on with an arrangement that was only going to devastate her in the end. She looked at him steadily, wanting him to come to grips with the harsh reality of the situation, too. “You needed me to make your dreams of owning your own ranch come true.”
Brady’s face hardened. “I needed you for a lot more than that, Kelsey.”
“Yeah,” Kelsey agreed sarcastically, remembering how wonderful it had been when they’d been together in bed. “You needed me for passion. Fun. Companionship.” But not as a real wife. Tears stung her eyes. “No wonder your father was so disapproving and so upset to find you here with me. He knew all along what you were up to even when I had no clue.” It was funny, in a sad sort of way. For so long she’d been afraid to give her heart to anyone, for fear she’d get hurt. When she finally had put that fear aside and given her heart to Brady Anderson, she’d ended up devastated, anyway. How ironic was that?
“Don’t use my father as an excuse. Yes, he’s a pain. But Hargett’s not the problem here, Kelsey. You are. You don’t even have to tell me. I can see it by the look on your face. You’ve got one foot out the door already, don’t you?”
Kelsey didn’t want to hear Brady spout off what everyone else already thought—that she was so naturally fickle she couldn’t be trusted to love anyone. Because that wasn’t what had happened here. Brady had betrayed her, not the other way around. “You can’t seriously expect me to stay in this marriage, knowing what I know now!”
Brady glared at her. “You just told my father that you loved me,” he reminded her grimly. “Or was that all a lie?”
Kelsey hurt, just thinking how quickly she had jumped to his defense. She stared at Brady in confusion. “I didn’t even know who you really were,” she reminded him quietly, abruptly feeling as confused and adrift as she had when she and Brady had first met the previous summer, when they had both been ranch hands on Travis McCabe’s ranch. “So how could I love you?” she asked him sadly. “How could I love anything we’ve done together or been to each other when none of it, absolutely none of it, has been real?”
Brady looked away a long moment, before returning his gaze to her. “Great excuse, Kelse. But it doesn’t wash with me. You’re just looking for a way out because you’re scared to make a commitment.”
Kelsey didn’t feel that way at all. But, she figured uneasily, maybe he did. And that hurt her more than she could possibly say. “You’d like to blame this all on me,” she stated angrily, “but I’m not going to make it that simple for you. You know what I think?” Kelsey demanded, stomping closer, not stopping until they stood toe-to-toe and nose-to-nose. “I think you’re the one who wants out of our marriage of convenience, Brady. Not telling me who you were was just a way of providing yourself with the insurance to do just that, once you had met your father’s terms and gotten your inheritance, of course.”
Brady regarded her stoically. “I’m not that cold-blooded, Kelsey.”
“Maybe not consciously,” Kelsey allowed, feeling as if her heart were breaking. “But the bottom line is still the bottom line, in ranching or relationships or anything else.” Able to see he still disagreed, she pushed on deliberately, “You told me yourself how much you like a challenge. And there’s no greater challenge around here than winning my heart. It was probably a real test of your mettle, wasn’t it?” she asked, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. “After all, you’ve gone where no man has ever gone before.”
“You asked me to marry you, remember? You invited me to your bed! Furthermore,” Brady thundered on brusquely, giving her no chance to interrupt, “I’ve been a good husband to you.”
Kelsey had once thought so, too. But that had been before Brady’s father had showed Kelsey just how superficial and shallow her relationship with Brady really was. “Good husbands don’t keep secrets from their wives,” Kelsey shot back tightly. Good husbands had confidence in their wives.
And damn it all, Brady had known how much his pretending to be something other than what he was, how much his keeping something that important from her, even after they’d started to get close, would hurt. But he had gone on and done it anyway.
Kelsey clamped her arms in front of her and continued to regard him angrily. “Face it, Brady, if you had really cared about me, if you had really wanted this marriage of ours to work, you would never have shut me out this way.”
But he had, and that spoke volumes about what was in his heart. The bottom line was he didn’t trust her enough to confide in her. And without trust, there could be no love. And love and trust were the two things she wanted most of all.
Brady hooked his thumbs through the belt loops on his jeans and stared down at her with resentment. His mouth tightened into a thin line. “You’re saying it’s over?”
Kelsey looked at him with unbearable sadness. “Don’t you see?” she said quietly. “It has to be.”