The Courting Cowboy Read online

  “Oh, dear,” Victoria murmured.

  Ty was getting the same feeling he’d had the night of the dance, when no matter how hard he’d tried, he hadn’t been able to get a second dance with her. He had a lot more than a dance on the table tonight, and at least two other people in the room seemed to know it. Corey hadn’t said a word, and Lacey was looking as suspicious as all get out.

  “What’s your stake in this?” the older woman asked J.J. with typical bluntness.

  “My reputation, madam,” he replied without hesitation. “I have been closely associated with the Willoughby Institute from its inception. To have it fail without doing everything within my power to save it would be a serious dereliction of duty.”

  “Not to mention the shortest road to the unemployment line,” Lacey added with a shrewd glance.

  J.J. had the decency to look offended. “Let me assure you, Ms. Kidder, my own welfare is in much less jeopardy than the institute’s. Should Neville win, I will always be able to find adequate employment precisely because of the level of loyalty I am exhibiting in this instance. A secretary’s loyalty is everything.” He paused and turned toward Victoria. “Much like a wife’s.”

  Charles is dead. Ty thought the words so strongly, at first he thought he’d said them aloud. When he realized he hadn’t, he thought maybe he should, just to remind everybody. Charles was dead. Victoria had a new life.

  He looked over at her. Her face was drawn and serious. No doubt she was contemplating J.J.’s words.

  “What do you suggest?” she asked her secretary.

  J.J. was ready with an answer, and upon hearing it, Ty felt doomed.

  “Come back to London. The board is willing to reinstate you and work with you to retain your bequest if you’ll help them fight Neville. It’s the only chance the Willoughby Institute has of surviving. Having the remaining founder out of the country doing menial, unrelated labor looks very bad to the courts. Neville is capitalizing on your current employment situation. If you had taken a position at a university, you would still be considered a viable entity. But, dear, teaching small children in the middle of nowhere is hardly doing your reputation any good.”

  Ty was definitely offended and tried hard not to look it. Talbot may not be London, but, well, there was no doubt about it. Talbot wasn’t London, and seventh-graders weren’t university students.

  “They’re rather nice, you know, small children,” Victoria said, looking much like she had the night he’d first met her. Somewhat lost, somewhat overwhelmed.

  “I know you, Victoria,” J.J. said. “Loyalty and responsibility are your first and second natures. You always do the right thing.”

  Silence descended on the living room like a dark, rain-filled cloud, weighing on everyone. Corey was the one who finally spoke.

  “Are you leaving us, Miss Willoughby?”

  Victoria looked up at J.J. “I have responsibilities here too.”

  “I would be the last to underestimate your worth to the Talbot school district,” J.J. said, “but it is not going to fall apart and disappear without you. The institute very well might. The school district can easily replace you with another teacher. To the institute, you are irreplaceable.”

  Ty rose suddenly, having reached his limit. “Victoria, could I see you in the kitchen, please.”

  He heard Lacey breathe a sigh of relief, which he thought was misplaced. He didn’t know what he was going to say, but, by God, he knew he had to say something or he was going to lose her. He took her hand when she stood up, and together they made their escape.

  In the kitchen she immediately went into his arms, holding on to him as though she would never let him go. He stroked her back and cradled her head to his shoulder.

  “Do you want me to ask him to leave, honey?” He knew he was taking a chance, offering to fight her battles for her, and he wasn’t surprised when she turned him down with a shake of her head. He was saddened, but he wasn’t surprised. He wanted to fight her battles, make her decisions, keep the world at bay. But he knew that that would be the quickest way to lose her, even quicker than doing what J.J. wanted.

  “I have to go,” she murmured against his chest.

  “No, you don’t,” he said immediately, his voice as firm as his conviction. “They’ve been getting along without you this long, they can do it awhile longer.”

  “They can do it until it’s all gone,” she agreed, lifting her head to look at him. “I want better than that for the institute, especially for those students who have fought so hard for their scholarships. And I guess I want it for Charles too.”

  “Charles is dead.” He wanted to say it about fourteen times, but he held himself to once.

  “Not as long as the Willoughby Institute is doing his work.”

  All the more reason to let the damn thing go, Ty thought. Hell, it was Charles’s own son who wanted the money.

  “Doesn’t Neville have any rights in this?” he asked. “Shouldn’t he be able to decide what happens to the institute?”

  “You don’t understand. It’s more than the institute and the scholarships. It’s a wealth of knowledge Charles and I believed in. I still believe in it.”

  She was holding on to him, her head lying on his chest, but she was slipping away, miles and miles away. He felt it in every bone he had.

  “I don’t want you to go.” His voice was gruff. He didn’t dare get any plainer. She was a grown woman, and making love to her a few times didn’t put his brand on her. If she stayed, it had to be because she wanted to stay.

  “I have to go, Ty. I made commitments, promises.”

  Above all else, Ty knew she was a woman of her word. She’d made commitments in Talbot too, but the ones in London were older, stronger.

  He’d lost. Way down in his heart he knew it. He held her as long as he could, and later that night he went to her room and made love with her one last time.

  When morning came he watched her leave with Jeremy Geoffrey-John James III.

  “Buck up, son,” he said when Corey got to looking sad and abandoned.

  “Maybe next time, son,” Lacey said to the older Garrett, patting his arm as she passed him on her way back into the house. Corey followed her leaving Ty alone on the front porch to watch a storm roll down out of Wyoming.

  Winter was getting ready to come on good, all right. He sighed and stuck his hands in his coat pockets, still staring at the ranch road. She was gone, and she wouldn’t be back. By his way of thinking, it had been a miracle that Victoria Miranda Elizabeth Willoughby had ever shown up in Talbot, Colorado, in the first place. Only a fool would bet on a miracle happening twice.

  Thirteen

  London was decked out in full regalia for the Christmas holidays, so romantic, so Dickensian, so incredibly lonely. It was snowing again, a wet, chilling, gray snow that no amount of baubles and tinsel could cover. Victoria sighed and forced her gaze back to her desk.

  She tidied up a stack of C.E.W.IV stationery and reached for a C.E.W.IV pen out of an elaborate C.E.W.IV hand-carved mahogany pencil cup. She’d been wrong about the stationery. Her name wasn’t on it. Her name wasn’t on anything except page three of the Willoughby Institute directory. Page three. Apparently, Charles had overseen a few changes he’d forgotten to tell her about before his death.

  She’d been in London for almost a month and was still working on saving the C.E.W.IV scholarships. Her modest bequest was at the bottom of the board’s priority list, not having near the charm and cachet of a publicly given scholarship. Everyone was interested in her well-being and future, especially as long as she was working with them against Neville. But even she had to agree, they were sure that working toward the whole Willoughby pie made more sense than trying to extract a thin sliver that benefited no one except herself. Actually, she did agree. She wasn’t destitute, and she did feel the greater good came from saving the institute intact. At least that was how she’d felt in the beginning.

  She came to work every morning, wal
king through the door of the Willoughby Institute and into an office marked C.E.W.IV. She spent all day with C.E.W.IV’s portrait staring down at her, all sunken jowls and thinning hair, and she had decided that he had been a singularly unattractive man, thereby shocking herself into working harder to make up for such nonsensical thoughts. He’d been brilliant. He’d told her so himself a hundred thousand times. If she’d ever entertained a doubt, all she had to do was look at the four walls covered with awards, citations, degrees, commendations, et cetera, et cetera.

  The room reminded her a lot of home. She’d always covered her walls with the tangible evidence of her intelligence too. It all looked rather silly now.

  Charles had smoked, and on his desk was a C.E.W.IV ashtray with a book of C.E.W.IV matches, gold script on a hunter-green background. Willoughby colors.

  Ty Garrett didn’t smoke.

  Victoria closed her eyes and rested her chin in the palm of her hand, leaning her elbow on the desk and dreamily slipping off into memories. Such slips of the mind happened at least twenty times a day, and she’d given up counting them at night.

  Ty had the most dazzling white smile. His lips were so firm, his kiss so tender. She loved the way he tasted. She missed the way he felt. She missed him, and the more she missed him, the more she doubted the necessity of her presence in London.

  She’d taken a leave of absence from her teaching job in Talbot. The school board had allowed it, but had held out no guarantees, given her lack of tenure or even longevity. She’d worked three months, then asked for three weeks off. Combined with her two weeks of Christmas vacation, she had hoped to have her work in London finished and be back in Colorado by January. Reality had hit her shortly after her arrival. Saving the Willoughby Institute was not a five-week job; it was a lifetime job.

  A lifetime of shuffling C.E.W.IV papers and folders. A lifetime of fighting Neville. A lifetime of initials and roman numerals. She didn’t think she was quite up to it. She didn’t think she was up to it at all.

  She opened her eyes and lowered her gaze to the business at hand, the C.E.W.IV scholarship number three. What on earth, she wondered, made William Scott Fitzgerald’s education more important than, Corey Garrett’s? William Scott was to be the third recipient of the coveted scholarship, and she’d spent two weeks wheedling the money out of the board, the courts, and Neville—just so William Scott could thank Charles Edward Willoughby IV for a superior education. And while she was doing all that for someone she didn’t know, Corey Allen Garrett was probably getting a third-rate science education from a substitute teacher who was probably ignoring all the notes and instructions Victoria had left.

  Charles, damn him, had managed to dominate her life even more dead than alive. He’d slapped his name on everything from the pencils to the rugs, on three sons and a wife, and it still wasn’t enough. He’d had to go and leave his affairs in just enough of a mess that some barristers could actually make a career out of sorting through all of it, and some people—namely herself and Neville—could spend their lives fighting over it, keeping his name in the forefront of their minds and on the tips of their tongues year after year after year.

  Victoria slumped to the desk, hiding her face in her arms. If she stayed in London and did what she was supposed to do, a lifetime of dry, dusty papers, old books, and fights with Neville awaited her. It had been so much easier to be ignored and shuffled off when everyone had thought Neville was the only Willoughby of consequence. Then she had an idea, an idea that had been niggling in the back of her mind for days, growing stronger and stronger with the approach of holidays she didn’t want to face alone, with only J.J.’s stalwart companionship and the company of a few old, very old—nearly ancient, actually—friends she’d shared with Charles.

  “Victoria.” Her intercom buzzed and J.J.’s voice came over the speaker. “Don’t forget. We’re leaving for Spencer’s in one hour to meet with Gerald Gardner and Lord Wakefield.”

  The room fell silent. J.J. never expected a reply unless he had a question. After a moment Victoria buzzed him back.

  “I’m sorry, J.J., but I won’t be able to make Spencer’s this evening.”

  Silence fell again and lasted longer. Victoria could almost hear J.J. thinking in the other room.

  “I beg your pardon, Victoria,” he finally replied via the intercom, “but are you ill?”

  She pushed in her button, said, “No,” and let her finger slide off onto the C.E.W.IV hunter-green blotter.

  “Not ill?” he asked again after a moment.

  “No.”

  In less than a minute the door to her office opened and J.J. peeked around the jamb. “How serious is the trouble we’re in? A little serious, serious, or very serious?”

  “Very, very serious,” she said, watching him from across a lengthy expanse of hunter-green carpet.

  “Is it Fitzgerald’s essay? I thought it was a bit impertinent of him to use grassland ecology, your specialty.”

  “No,” she said. “Fitzgerald’s essay is fine, but I don’t think it will get him a Charles Edward Willoughby the Fourth scholarship this year, because I don’t think there’s going to be another one available.”

  J.J. only grinned. “You’ve underestimated yourself again, Victoria. By the time you get through with Wakefield, we’ll have funded two, maybe three more of our scholarships, and gained a strong ally against Neville.”

  “No, J.J. The scholarships are gone, finished, and so is the Willoughby Institute.”

  He lifted a brow in question.

  “It’s over,” she said.

  “Over?”

  “Neville is the heir. Neville can have it all,” she said, stating her case as simply as possible.

  J.J. hastened to disagree. “Charles never meant—”

  “Charles is dead,” Victoria interrupted, once again stating her case as simply as possible. Charles was dead. If he’d wanted things different than they were going to be, then he should have been more careful, more precise in his will. If he had wanted her to spend the rest of her life taking care of his name, he should have taken better care of her.

  But he had not been careful, and she had been forced to find another life, a life she wanted back.

  “Will you call the airline for me, J.J.?” she asked, her mind made up.

  “I’d rather not,” he said honestly. “I think we should talk.”

  “And I think I should go home.” Home to the shortgrass prairie and the man she loved.

  * * *

  Talbot hadn’t changed much in five weeks. Victoria thought she would probably think the same thing if she’d been gone five years. There was more snow than there had been at Thanksgiving, and it seemed the town and surrounding countryside would enjoy a white Christmas.

  She’d picked a terrible time to return unannounced. Her house was dark and cold, and the wind was howling down out of the north, bringing a winter storm full of more snow. She didn’t have a Christmas tree or any decorations hanging at the door. The school was closed, so there was no one about to chat with. She needed to call Glen Frazer first thing in the morning and let him know she was back and would return to her teaching duties on schedule. She knew he’d doubted whether she would ever return. But his doubts weren’t the ones that had plagued her across the Atlantic.

  Ty had let her go physically, emotionally, completely. She’d felt it in his last kiss. He was so unlike Charles, who even in death had tried to hold on to her. Of the two, she thought Ty’s decision took the greater love, but her inexperience in such matters left plenty of room for confusion and doubts.

  After numerous trips and untold struggling, she finally got the last of her luggage inside. She allowed herself a moment to catch her breath, then went through the house, turning on lights and turning up the heat. She’d stopped on her way out of Denver to buy groceries, knowing the store in Talbot would be closed by the time she got home. Canned soup and a grilled cheese sandwich sounded wonderful after hours on an airplane, and she’d bou
ght some pre-made cookie dough to give herself a treat.

  Each time her path crossed in front of the telephone, she hesitated, wondering if it was too late to call Ty, and knowing the lateness of the hour was only an excuse to hide her fears. She’d thought about calling Lacey first and “testing the waters,” to use the older woman’s phrase, then decided she’d rather be a complete coward than merely half a coward.

  After eating her dinner she put some cookies in the oven and set about building a fire in the fireplace. She hadn’t used it before, but even with the heat on high, the house had the chill of rooms left unused for too long. When she was still cold after the fire was burning strong, she decided to take a long, hot bath. Afterward she promised herself she would call Ty, whether she’d found the courage or not.

  * * *

  Ty pulled his leather gloves on over a worn cotton pair and pushed his hat lower on his forehead to protect his face from the blowing snow. It was a hell of a night to be out driving around, but there was little enough to do in Talbot without letting Corey miss the MacKenzies’ annual Christmas party. Jake MacKenzie was Corey’s best friend, and Ty knew the two boys would be up long after the other guests went home. Barbara MacKenzie had offered to bring Corey home in the morning:

  She was a good woman, still pretty in her own way. He’d dated her a few times after high school. Then she’d gone and married Buck MacKenzie, and that had been the end of that.

  He swung himself up into his pickup and slammed the door. The temperature was dropping toward zero. He started the truck and had to wait for it to warm up while he slowly gave the engine gas and huddled on the seat, watching the snow come down all over town. He headed for home.

  On the corner of First Avenue and Third Street, Glen Frazer’s house was covered in Christmas lights from stem to stern. He had a Santa Claus climbing on the roof and a choir of angels in his front yard. Every year he tried to outdo himself, and this year he’d added a sleigh and reindeer to the lawn.