Chapter Five

Annie had the opportunity to get her revenge minutes after they stepped off the train in Banning. As they moved down the platform, bags in hand, a young woman emerged from the station. She was slim, dark-haired, and beautiful. Whoever she was, she and Brady seemed very pleased to see each other.

“Brady! You’re back!”

“Just got off the train. It’s good to see you, Doreen. You’re looking prettier than ever.”

“Well, aren’t you nice to say so?”

Annie couldn’t believe it. The woman actually batted her eyelashes at Brady. If she’d had a fan, she would have been waving it like a practiced tease. She was plainly flirting with him. What’s more, the foolish grin on Brady’s face was all Annie needed to tell her that he enjoyed the attention.

Now why should she mind their interest in each other? Well, she didn’t.

“It’s fortunate that I stopped in the station just now, or I would have missed you. I had to send a telegram off for Daddy. He’s in need of medical supplies.”

Brady’s jaw muscles tightened and his eyes narrowed. “Something for Walter? Has he taken a turn for the worse?”

“No, nothing like that,” Doreen assured him. “Just restocking the cabinets.”

“How is Walter? Do you know?”

“As a matter of fact, I do. Daddy was out to the ranch just yesterday to check on his condition. He’s very frail, of course, but holding his own.” Her gaze wandered in Annie’s direction with a frank curiosity.

Annie had been wondering when they would get around to her.

“Sorry,” Brady apologized. “Doreen, this is Annie Johnson, Walter’s granddaughter. She lived at the ranch with her mother when she was a young girl. Annie, this is Doreen Thomas. She’s the daughter of our local doctor.”

Yes, Annie had already figured that one out. What she couldn’t determine was whether Brady might be courting Doreen Thomas. Not that it mattered. That’s what she firmly told herself, anyway.

“I’m afraid we’ve been very rude in ignoring you, Miss Johnson. Please do allow me to welcome you back to Banning.”

Annie seized the polite hand that was extended to her and pumped it vigorously. “Now don’t you go and worry about manners, Miz Thomas, ’cause I sure don’t. Ol’ Brady here—” She nudged him in the ribs. “—sez I oughtta know better. But I say life is just too danged short to bother yer head ’bout such things.”

“I see.” Doreen clearly didn’t see at all. Her wide, blue eyes gazed at Annie in puzzlement. “Of course, I didn’t know Walter had a granddaughter. Perhaps that’s because you’ve been away at school back east.”

Annie crowed with laughter. “Lord, no, not me. I bin travelin’ the West with a medicine show. Among other things, if you catch my meanin’.” She winked at Doreen, as if to imply among other things meant something not quite respectable. Doreen did not wink back.

Brady said nothing, but Annie sensed him growing more rigid by the second at her side. Good.

“You have not then been, um, educated? In the traditional sense, that is?”

Doreen Thomas obviously had, and most likely took pride in being a cultured young lady. Had Annie been so inclined, she could have matched her in that respect, rough though her life had been. Lydia Johnson’s family, who had turned their backs on her when she eloped with Walter’s son, had been a cultured people. Lydia had schooled her own intelligent daughter herself, making certain that Annie was both well-spoken and knowledgeable.

“Well, now, life teaches us, don’t it? It sure taught me. Like I know enough t’admire a purty dress when I see one, an’ that one yer wearin’ is mighty purty.”

Annie wasn’t particularly versed in the latest fashions, but she did realize that Doreen was turned out in high style, with an outfit that matched her sapphire eyes, a seductive bustle, and a pancake of a hat aslant her glossy curls.

“Why, thank you.”

“Made it yerself, did ya?”

“I have a dressmaker to do that for me, Miss Johnson,” Doreen informed Annie, this time without any warmth in her voice.

“Do ya now? Things sure must have changed around here then. Back when I was here folks purty much made all their own clothes with whatever was handy. Sometimes even feed sacks.”

“I think you’ll find Banning has changed considerably.”

“That a fact? Say, does—”

She got no further. Brady, practically choking by now, cut her off with a cold, “That’s enough. Doreen, I’m sorry, but we need to go. Walter will be waiting for us at the ranch.”

Taking Annie by the elbow, he hauled her along the station platform, with Annie calling back over her shoulder a hearty, “Don’t y’be a stranger now, Miz Thomas. Y’hear?”

Brady was silent as they passed the extensive stock pens at the rail yard. She knew he would remain silent on the subject of her behavior until he was good and ready to vent his anger. That he was angry, Annie hadn’t the least doubt.

His silence was probably intended to make her suffer in suspense, just like on the train yesterday. Well, it hadn’t worked then, and it wouldn’t work now. She could hold out as long as he could.

They left the stock pens behind them, sidestepping a smart runabout on its way to the station. It was just the sort of carriage that would convey Doreen Thomas and was probably here to pick her up.

“I don’t see any buggy waiting to meet us,” she remarked to Brady.

He didn’t answer her.

“I suppose you didn’t wire ahead for someone to expect us.”

Still no reply.

“So,” she persisted, “are we supposed to walk to the ranch?”

This time she received a gruff “No.”

“Then where are we going?”

“To the livery stable to collect the buckboard and team I left in their care. And now I don’t want to hear another word out of you.”

“Not in the mood?”

He turned his head to glare at her.

“No, I guess not.”

They turned onto Banning’s main street. From what Annie could remember, and that wasn’t a great deal when she’d been only about five or six years old when she and her mother had departed, Banning had been just another typical, frontier cow town. There hadn’t been much of it, just a single, dusty street with the usual, high-faced saloons, a mercantile or two with hitching rails out front and a lone church.

It was that no longer. Doreen hadn’t exaggerated. Banning had changed. There was more traffic in the street, more emporiums, two more churches, and an impressive, new courthouse. Along the side streets they passed, which hadn’t existed before, Annie was able to glimpse a number of fashionable residences.

“Looks like the place has grown a lot,” she observed.

Brady merely grunted.

The livery stable was at the far end of the main street beside a blacksmith’s shop. Annie had a recollection of standing at its open doors, sucking on a stick of hard candy, and being fascinated by the sight of the smith laboring at his forge. It was one of the few pleasant memories she had taken away from Banning.

Now she was back, and she didn’t want to be here. The unpleasant memories far outnumbered the pleasant ones.

They were on the way to the ranch, with the town no longer in sight, when Brady halted the buckboard at the side of the road. Here we go again. Annie steeled herself for his verbal assault.

Face hard, he turned to her with an equally hard, “Are you pleased with yourself?”

“I believe I am.”

“You had to do it, didn’t you? You had to pay me back for taking your funds.”

“Seemed the right thing to do.”

“It was an idiotic thing to do. I’m surprised you didn’t go and ask Doreen for a chaw of tobacco.”

“Oh, that would have been good. I’m sorry I didn’t think of it.”

“I would have strangled you if you had. Doreen didn’t deserve your rude treatment. The Thomases are loyal friends.”

“Really? The way she was making cow eyes at you, I thought she might be much more than that.”

“Now you listen to me.”

He leaned close to her, so close she was hypnotically conscious of the way his pulse beat rhythmically in his strongly corded neck. Now why should she be so fascinated by something as ordinary as a pulse? Why did she consider it to be as forcefully male as the rest of him? It just didn’t seem right that Brady Malone could go on affecting her like this.

“You’re going to behave yourself while you’re here, both in Banning and at the ranch. Is that clear?”

“I’ll be the perfect lady. I’ll even write a letter of polite apology to your Doreen. All you have to do is give my money back to me.”

“I told you, you’re not getting that money until Walter is no longer with us.”

“Then I don’t see how you can expect me to behave myself.”

“You hard-headed, little—” He caught himself, taking a deep breath. “Let’s be reasonable. I’ll make a bargain with you.”

“What kind of bargain?” she asked him suspiciously.

“Walter can’t last long. I want the old man to die in peace believing his granddaughter cares about him. If you agree to make that effort, then you’re free to go when he’s laid to rest. I’ll not only return your money, I’ll even manage somehow to add to your funds. Providing, that is, Walter doesn’t leave you anything.”

“And if I don’t agree to your bargain?”

He shoved his face in hers. “Then you’ll answer to me.”

“I’m not afraid of you, Brady Malone.”

A bold response, she thought, when, in fact, she was afraid of him. At least in this moment when she could see the threatening glitter in his deep brown eyes.

“And I don’t want anything from you or my grandfather either. All I want is my own money.”

“Is that it?”

“There is something else.”

“Name it.”

“If I stay, then I also want you to turn that Pinkerton agent’s report over to me after my grandfather is gone.”

“Done.”

Annie hesitated. His mouth was mere inches from hers, so near she could feel his warm breath. It was a temptation, that potent mouth of his.

“What are you waiting for?” he asked her softly. “If you’re worried I’m going to shadow your every movement at the ranch, you can forget it. As long as you keep your part of the bargain, I’ll stay away from you.”

His code of honor was such she knew she could trust him in that respect. She also knew that if she tried to run, he would only come after her and drag her back to the ranch. She had no choice but to stay and see what developed. For now, anyway.

“Very well,” she said, accepting his terms.

“Then let’s seal our bargain.”

For a few worried seconds—or was excited a more accurate description?—she thought he actually intended to kiss her. She could only breathe again when he stuck out his hand for her to shake.

His hand had to be much safer than his mouth, she reasoned. But it wasn’t. When he clasped her own offered hand, she experienced an immediate, intimate connection. A sensation of hard flesh against soft flesh, as if two naked bodies had come together in an action that meant infinitely more than the sealing of a bargain.

She felt light-headed when he released her hand. Light-headed and a little disappointed, as though she had lost something potentially important to her. Brady was casual about it all, gathering up the reins and flicking a signal to the two horses. The buckboard moved on.

Annie wasn’t able to shake off her confusion until they forded a shallow, meandering creek. He must have heard her sigh of appreciation, faint though it was, when she looked down over the side of the buckboard at the sun-dappled waters flowing gently over the gravel.

“You and water,” he remarked. “I noticed it back in Colorado when we were tramping along that stream. The sight of water seems to, I don’t know, comfort you somehow. Why is that?”

He was much too perceptive. “Does there have to be a reason?”

“I guess not.”

He wasn’t going to pursue it. Good, because she had no intention of explaining it to him.

They went on up the road, each of them silent. Annie had forgotten how beautiful Wyoming could be, reluctant though she was to admit it to herself. She hadn’t remembered how majestic the mountains were, rising in the west along the border of the wide, spreading valley through which they traveled. Or how blue the vast, morning sky was where a lone hawk rode the thermals high overhead. The scene deserved another sigh of appreciation, but she refused to issue it. This valley, or at least a large section of it, belonged to Walter Johnson. That was reason enough not to audibly admire any part of it.

They crossed another creek, and when they reached the other side, Brady halted the buckboard again. Off to Annie’s left cattle grazed on the tough, short grass that, after a summer of dryness, was more brown than green. The cattle didn’t seem to mind it.

“This is my spread here,” Brady said, “and those are my beeves.”

She turned to him in disbelief. “But this is WJ land, isn’t it?”

“Was. It’s my land now. Or will be when I finish paying off the yearly installments.”

“I can’t believe it. That my grandfather would part with so much as an acre of his precious ranch. How much do you own?”

“Enough.”

“He thinks that highly of you then?”

“Maybe. And you can forget what you’re thinking,” he said with that aggravating insightfulness of his. “When Walter is gone, I’ll continue to make those annual payments to his estate. And, no, I won’t inherit anything. Don’t want to either. Walter means for the ranch to be sold off and the money used to build a cattle museum in Banning.” He shrugged. “That’s his intention anyway, and I think it’s a worthy one.”

Annie nodded and gazed again at the land Brady was buying. “I don’t see a house anywhere.”

“There isn’t one, and there won’t be until I can afford to build. Until then, I stay in the bunkhouse with the WJ hands. You forget what I told you back in Colorado, that I’m managing both my ranch and Walter’s.”

This was an unexpected complication. Annie had assumed Brady would be living on his own place somewhere far enough away from the WJ to make her safe from his assaults on her senses. But now...

****

The house and outbuildings that were the heart of the WJ Ranch finally came into view. As young as she was when she’d left this place, Annie must have imprinted its hateful image on her brain because she remembered it clearly, including how unhappy her mother’s life here had been after Annie’s father died.

Nothing had changed, including the huge old cottonwoods that sheltered the two-story house with its high corner tower, wide porch that wrapped around three sides, and wealth of gingerbread trim. It would have been a fashionable house on a shaded corner somewhere back east, but Annie thought it ill-suited for the Wyoming Territory. Even the iron stag on what passed for a lawn seemed out of place.

One of the ranch hands appeared from around the corner of the house when they drove up to the front steps. “Hey, boss,” he greeted Brady in a squeaky voice as he stood by the horses’ heads, prepared to assume responsibility for the buckboard. “Good to see you back. Poker in the bunkhouse hasn’t been the same without you.”

“Liar,” Brady chuckled. “Without me here to challenge you, you’ve probably been taking every pot. This is Miss Johnson.”

The cowboy, who had been eyeing Annie curiously, politely removed his hat. “Ma’am.”

“And you are?”

“Luther, ma’am.”

“Put your eyes back in your head, Luther,” Brady instructed him, “and tell the boys I’ll see them later.”

Annie could have climbed down from the buckboard without Brady’s assistance, but he didn’t give her that opportunity. Seizing her around the waist with his big hands, he lifted her to the ground. As always, his physical contact unnerved her.

Removing her bag from beneath the seat, he conducted her up the steps and through the front door. A woman who was a stranger to Annie was waiting for them in the hall. She had a severe face and dark, graying hair pulled back in an equally severe bun.

“This is Delores,” Brady said. “Your grandfather’s housekeeper.”

She glanced at Annie and nodded. It wasn’t a particularly friendly nod. Brady had told her on the train that Delores was devoted to Walter, so maybe that explained the woman’s attitude. Mistrust of the newly arrived granddaughter. It was going to be harder to obey her half of the bargain than she’d figured.

“You’d better go on up to him,” the housekeeper told Brady. “He’ll have heard the buckboard and be expecting you. You know how impatient he is.”

Annie could tell from her faint accent that she must be Mexican. Brady turned to Annie.

“Wait here while I prepare him.”

He hesitated before mounting the broad staircase, gazing at her as if he, too, wondered whether he could trust her. She knew he had to be thinking of her promise to behave herself.

“I shouldn’t be long,” he said, setting her bag on the floor.

“Don’t hurry on my account,” she called after him as he disappeared around a turn in the stairs. She was, after all, in no way eager to meet her grandfather.

While she waited for Brady’s return, she took the opportunity to renew her acquaintance with the somber interior of the house. What she could see of it, anyway, through the wide arch on her left. The parlor was in there, she knew, and the dining room behind it.

The parlor was still furnished with the heavy, stiff chairs and sofas she’d never been allowed to play on. The same massive oil paintings in their gilt frames hung on the walls. Their dark, dismal scenes had always frightened her a little.

She turned away from the view of the parlor. Delores remained standing at the foot of the staircase, watching her as if she thought Annie might try to steal a valuable ornament.

“Don’t you have a house to keep?” Annie challenged her tartly.

The old dragon didn’t bother answering. Nor did she go away. She just stood there, fingering the gold hoops in her ears.

Shrugging, Annie went over to the pier glass to remove her hat and tidy her hair. She was not going to be nervous about the prospect of seeing her grandfather after all these years. Or so she tried to tell herself.

****

Brady paused outside the closed door of the master bedroom. He wasn’t looking forward to this interview, fearing that Walter might be expecting too much of a granddaughter who had to have changed considerably since he’d last glimpsed her. Not just physically either. Annie Johnson was not a woman a grandfather could be proud of. Not by reputation, anyway.

From the beginning, Brady had thought her deserving of his contempt. The trouble was, he didn’t feel that way about her. Not anymore. It wasn’t just his longing to get his hands on that alluring body of hers either, although God only knows that was bad enough.

It was other things as well. Things like admiring her toughness when he knew he shouldn’t. And all she had done to survive while making no apology about any of it, no matter how dishonest some of her actions had been. All that and much more he privately admired in her, and couldn’t seem to help himself.

Oh, hell, what was wrong with him? He didn’t need her getting under his skin like this.

Just go in there and get it over with, Malone. Then you don’t need to be anywhere near her. You can go back to cattle and cowhands and work off the illogical temptation of Annie Johnson.

Tapping on the door and not waiting for a reply, Brady entered the room. He found Walter in his bed, propped up against the ponderous headboard. Had the old man lost strength in his absence? Hard to tell when he hadn’t looked good in weeks.

“How are you feeling, Walter?”

“Never mind that,” Walter rasped, straining his furrowed neck to look behind Brady. “Did you bring her? Where is she?”

“Don’t get yourself all excited now. She’s here, waiting downstairs.”

“What’s the matter with you, boy? Why didn’t you bring her up with you? Go down and get her.”

“I’ll send her up in a minute.” Brady approached the bed. “First I want to have a word with you.”

“Does it have to be now?”

“Yes.”

“What is it then? And make it quick.”

“Your granddaughter has changed considerably since she left here.”

“Huh, that’s no surprise. I didn’t expect her to still be five years old. What’s the matter with you, boy?”

“I didn’t mean that.”

“No? Then what did you mean?”

“For one thing she didn’t want to come here.”

The old man thought about it for a few seconds. “I reckon that’s no surprise either. What else?”

“I think you should have this. After all, you paid for it.”

Brady extracted the notebook from the pocket inside his vest.

“What is it?”

“The Pinkerton agent’s report on Annie. It will explain those changes in your granddaughter better than I can.”

Brady’s hope was that, if Walter read the report first, he would not expect the granddaughter he had been counting on. And that if he was badly disappointed, this might be tempered by the reality of Annie herself when he met her. In an effort to protect both Annie and Walter, Brady also intended to soften the contents of the report by accompanying it with his own more positive impressions. But when he tried to hand the notebook to Walter, the old man impatiently waved it away.

“I don’t care about that now. All I care about is that the agent found her. Put his report on the desk over there with my other things. I’ll read it later. And, Brady?”

“Yes?”

“Thanks, boy, for bringing her to me. Now, no more delay. Fetch her.”

Brady crossed the room and laid the notebook on the desk. He wondered if Walter would ever get around to reading it. Well, he had tried. The rest now was up to Annie and her grandfather to make of each other what they would.

****

Annie was getting restless in the front hall when Brady finally descended the stairs.

“You can go up to him now. Delores will show you the way.”

And that was that. Without another word, he turned on his heel and strode down the hall, disappearing into the back regions of the house. Fine. She didn’t need him.

The housekeeper silently picked up Annie’s bag, together with her reticule which she’d earlier laid beside it, and preceded her up the stairs. She led Annie to the closed door of the master bedroom, pausing there and turning to her.

“I’ll put these in your room. It’s the one at the other end of the hall. I hear it was the one you occupied when you were a girl.”

Thoughtful of you, you old dragon.

“And don’t stay in there long, missy. He gets overtired; it could bring on another of his attacks.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it. I’ll make this visit as short as possible.”

The housekeeper nodded, satisfied. Annie thought she would go away now. She didn’t. She opened the door without rapping on it and poked her head in.

“She’s here,” Delores announced. “And don’t you go getting yourself all in a dither about it.”

A gravelly voice from within croaked a cantankerous, “Don’t sass me, woman. Just step aside for her, and then go away.”

The tones of both housekeeper and employer were sharp ones, but underneath their brusqueness Annie could detect a mutual tolerance, maybe even an affection of sorts. Not that she cared what their relationship was. All that mattered to her in this moment was getting through this difficult first visit.

Squaring her shoulders, refusing to be intimidated by her grandfather as she had been in the old days, Annie swept past Delores and into the room. She stopped just short of the high bed on which the old man lay, his head and shoulders elevated against the headboard by a mound of pillows.

Brady had told her often enough her grandfather was no longer the man she remembered, that he was had greatly changed. Even so, she was shocked by just how much age and illness had altered him.

The Walter Johnson Annie had known was a hard, uncompromising man who could be as harsh as the land that had bred him. The shrunken figure on the bed was no longer that man. He was a stranger.

“Come around here, girl, where I can see you better. My eyes aren’t what they used to be.”

Annie obeyed him, moving around to the side of the bed. She hoped he didn’t expect her to lean down and kiss that wrinkled, weathered cheek, which had once been a healthy brown from his long days in the sun but now wore a sickroom pallor. She was relieved when, instead, he reached out a hand, horny and gnarled with age. She accepted it unwillingly. Not until his fingers closed weakly around hers did she realize how much his strength had diminished.

What hadn’t changed were his sharp wits. “Yeah, I’m no longer the same.” He cackled softly with laughter. “Don’t let anyone tell you, girl, that age isn’t as mean as hornets. Well, what have you got to say to me?”

Had she been forthright, Annie would have had a great deal to say to him. Whatever his condition was now, she had no pity for him. Why should she when he’d never had any regard for females, not even his wife who’d died long before Annie was born? All he’d cared about were his ranch and his son. And she would remind him, too, of how badly he’d treated her mother after Annie’s father died, resenting her for still being alive when his son was in his grave.

But all she could muster in the end was a murmured, “Granddad.”

“I expect that will have to be good enough for now. Well, let’s have a look at you.” Dropping her hand, he peered up at her out of a pair of watery, but still shrewd, eyes. “Turned out to be a looker, haven’t you? Just like your mama. But you have my Will’s amber eyes and the same color of hair. Like the bark o’ them serviceberry trees we got out back, I always thought.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Annie said abruptly. “I do have something more to say to you.”

“I’m listening. My ears are still good, even if my eyes ain’t.”

“Just why did you bring me here? You never cared about me one way or another when I was a child. As I recall, you pretty much ignored me, except to growl at me if I got in your way.”

“Thought you might get around to that.”

“Well?”

“Yeah, I did treat you badly, both you and your mama. I’m sorry about that now. Guess the regrets are what happen when a man gets old. I want to mend things, girl, while I still have the time for it. Too late for your mother, a’ course, but you’re still here.”

“Mend them how?”

“By us getting to know one another, this time around fair and square. I don’t want to die, Annie, without making peace with my only grandchild. That’s if you’re willing.”

She wanted to tell him she was decidedly unwilling. But she couldn’t bring herself to do that. Maybe just because of those old eyes of his gazing up at her with such earnest appeal. Were those actually emotional tears in them? Unbelievable.

“I’ll think about it.”

“Good enough.” He sank back against the pillows, suddenly looking weary, his voice fretful. “You can go now. I can see you want to.”

Annie gladly left the room, closing the door softly behind her.

It’s all about his guilt, she thought bitterly as she moved down the hall to her room. He wanted her forgiveness. But she didn’t owe him that. Damn it, she didn’t owe Walter Johnson anything at all.