Buch lesen: «Taming of the Two»

Chapter One

Kate Gregory couldn’t believe what her sister was asking her to do. “No way,” she said firmly, rolling on her squeaky wooden desk chair back to her desk, effectively turning her back on her sister. “I am not getting involved in this ridiculous plan of yours.”

“But, Katie.” Bianca whined behind her, like the little sister she was twenty years ago instead of the grown woman she was today. “It’s a good cause. Think about it—it’s romantic. Don’t you have at least a little tiny bit of romance in your soul?”

Kate turned her chair around to face her sister. Now this was a question she could answer easily. “No. Not even a little tiny bit.” No way. Romance was a gamble, and she was fed up with gambling in life.

“Kate!” Bianca was aghast. “You don’t mean that.”

“Oh, yes, I do.” Kate smiled and turned back to the ledgers she was trying to balance for Gregory Farms, her family’s Texas business, arguably the finest racehorse breeders in the west.

It was the perfect metaphor for Bianca’s question, actually. For the past forty years, the Gregory family had lived through feast or famine, depending on horses’ bloodlines, track conditions, weather, jockeys’ health and drinking habits, voodoo and a host of other variables that couldn’t be controlled.

She was looking forward to leaving. Already she’d saved a considerable amount of money, and once she hit her goal, she was moving to Dallas—close enough to be here for her father and sister if they needed her, but far enough to be out of the business—to start a new career. Probably as an elementary school teacher. Early childhood education, people in Avon Lake might be surprised to know, was what she’d gotten her college bachelor’s degree in.

Some people might have said the racing life was an exciting life, but not Kate. Though she loved the animals, she could still remember some difficult early years when her family had subsisted on rice and beans and lived under constant threat of losing their home. Mother crying, father impatient, children ignored…it had been a very stressful life.

Bianca had been young then, and was lucky enough to have forgotten the worst of it. Bianca believed she had lived a life of nothing but happy prosperity.

Frankly it made her act like a bit of a spoiled brat sometimes.

Like now.

“Katie.” Bianca whirled Kate’s office chair around to face her. “Please.”

“No.”

“Do it for me.”

Kate shook her head, unable to fully comprehend her sister’s selfishness. “No, Bianca. I am not getting married for you.” It was incredible that she actually had to say it at all, much less over and over again.

“You don’t have to really get married,” Bianca hastened to correct her. “Just tell Daddy you are. As long as he believes you’re getting married, I can go ahead and plan my wedding.”

Kate dropped her hands in her lap and looked at her sister coolly. “Tell Daddy I’m getting married.”

Bianca nodded eagerly. “That’s right.”

“Invent a fiancé, plan a fake wedding, move into an imaginary home, and churn out and raise pretend children, presumably for the next thirty or forty years, until I retire with my nonexistent husband to bounce grandchildren I never had on my knee.”

“Well…” It looked as though the light was finally dawning on Bianca. “I guess you’re right.”

Kate threw her hands in the air. “Hallelujah. She has finally seen the light.”

Bianca nodded. And for a moment it seemed she had really seen the idiocy of her plan. But then she said, “We’ll have to find a real guy.” She tapped her chin thoughtfully.

“What?”

“Or maybe hire an actor.”

Kate’s jaw dropped. She gave Bianca a full ten, fifteen seconds to laugh and say she was kidding, but Bianca’s face remained completely serious. “Do you hear what you’re saying?” Kate asked at last. “Now you want to hire an actor? And have me pretend to marry him?”

“Well…”

“All this so you can mollify Dad’s old-fashioned, narrow-minded, Old World chauvinism? No way.”

Henry Gregory was adamant that his younger daughter couldn’t marry until his oldest had. But she knew it had come from the same place so many of his ideas about men and women came from: the old country and his own strict upbringing.

Before Kate’s mother had died, her father had left the business of the children to her. He’d been the parent who played with the girls, the soft touch who’d always had a smile and a wink for them even when they were in trouble.

But once Kate’s mother, Helen, had passed away, Henry had been like a lost animal, pacing the floors and trying to figure out the ways of the girls who, up to then, had just been playthings. Once he had the sole responsibility of raising Kate and Bianca, he had taken the job very seriously, even at the expense of losing his softer side with them.

“What else can I do?”

“You and Victor should just get married. Just do it. Elope. Dad will get over it.”

“What if he doesn’t? What if I do that and he disowns me and fires Victor?” Victor Blume was Bianca’s fiancé and her father’s top trainer.

“There’s no way he’s going to fire Victor,” Kate said, “he’s too valuable. And as for disowning you, that’s just silly.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because he loves you, Bianca, and he wants you to be happy. Even if it means going against his crazy outdated sixteenth-century notions of propriety.”

“What if you’re wrong?”

“I’m not.” Kate looked at her sister and shook her head firmly. “Look, I promise he’s just being an old blowhard.”

Bianca looked unconvinced. “Well, if you think about it, he’s really only looking after you. He doesn’t want you to be a lonely old spinster. You could give him real peace of mind if you convinced him you were happily engaged to someone.”

Kate gave her sister a long hard look before turning back to the desk and picking up a pen. It wasn’t worth responding to such an idiotic contention. “This conversation is finished, Bianca. Close the door on your way out, would you?” She looked back at the ledger and found the thing she was looking for. An item marked “Fire Essence” with a deposit amount of four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.

As their supply of frozen semen from the great racehorse Fireflight dwindled, the price was going up. This was a great opportunity to convince her father to invest in something solid so he’d have a nice nest egg no matter what happened with the races.

She was going to talk to him about it right away, before he got the idea to reinvest the money into something risky. He thrived on risk—it was a real worry for her.

She picked up the phone and dialed her father’s extension, but was stopped when Bianca stepped forward and took the receiver from Kate, pushing the off button.

“What about this…” Bianca began, using her persuasive voice again. “How about if you just give dating a try. Go out with a couple of guys, see where it leads. Maybe this whole problem would solve itself, naturally and honestly.”

Kate laughed. “How altruistic of you.”

“Believe it or not, Katie, I do care about you. It would probably do you some good to date a little bit instead of just working all the time.”

Kate scoffed. “I’ve dated every eligible guy in town—all four of them—and, with all due respect, thanks but no thanks.”

“Not every guy,” Bianca persisted. “For example, Ben Devere’s back. You never went out with him, even though,” her voice became conspiratorial, “honestly, I think he’s always had a thing for you.”

Kate bristled at the mention of Ben Devere. Talk about a risk she wasn’t willing to take! She’d bet on that one before and lost.

The black sheep son of the otherwise decent family who owned the property adjoining Gregory Farms, Ben Devere had always been a wild child and more than a little dangerous. When they were children, he used to set off fireworks down on the property border and when Kate cried and begged him to stop, he’d just laughed and lit another one.

When they were in high school he used to take his Jeep four-wheeling all over the pastures, which annoyed both her father and his own to no end, but which amused him enough to keep doing it. He was a wild kid, in stark contrast to her own serious nature, and they had butted heads over their differences repeatedly while growing up. In junior high school, he’d called her “Serious Sally” and she’d privately been a little afraid of his untamed ways.

But Kate could also remember, with crystal clarity, a time when she’d seen him shoot his own dog as it ran in the paddock. She’d watched the whole thing in sheer horror, then run away without looking back, vowing to never go within sixty yards of the Devere Ranch again. It was proof of what she’d already begun to suspect: Ben wasn’t what he seemed at all. Sure, people thought he was charming and smart, and more than one girl—heaven knew!—had fallen for his charisma. But the fact was, Ben Devere wasn’t who he appeared to be.

That conclusion made Kate more comfortable with what he’d done to her.

Ben had been regarded in high school and in town as a hot playboy; the kind of guy girls wouldn’t count on to call them in the morning, but with whom they were willing to take the chance nonetheless. If the stories were true, scores of women had fallen prey to his charms. Even Kate had kissed him once at a party, the summer after their senior year. It had been a hell of a kiss, and for a few weeks afterward, she’d harbored hopes that he would call and that perhaps…well, whatever. Later, she realized it had only been a heat of the moment hormonal rush for Ben.

But perhaps had never come and Kate had learned to regret having admitted to her affection for him. She’d also learned to regret having trusted him. If his friend Lou Parker was to be believed, he’d only been with Kate as a joke, the response to a dare. Lou’s subsequent advances on her had only served to make the insult that much greater.

Shortly after that, Ben Devere had left town and, after the humiliation she’d been through, she was glad to see the back of him. She’d hoped he’d never come back.

But now he had.

And her sister, who should have known better, was actually suggesting she date him.

“No way,” she said to Bianca, and reached down to pet her dog, Sierra, who was lying at her feet. She’d had the retriever for twelve years now, and he was getting old and thin, but he was a member of the family. “I’d rather become a nun. Now let me get back to work, I have to talk to Dad about the finances.”

Bianca perched her hands on her slender hips. “So that’s it? We’re just not talking about my marriage anymore?”

“No, I’d be glad to talk about your marriage. It’s my marriage, or the lack thereof, that I’m not talking about anymore.”

“Fine.” Bianca smirked. “Then I don’t have anything else to say to you at all.” She huffed out of the room and Kate watched her go with mild irritation.

It had always been this way with Bianca. She should have been used to it by now, but somehow she always hoped her sister would rise to the occasion and take the high road.

Oh, well. She didn’t have the time or the emotional cash to spend worrying about it now. She had to balance these books, and while a half million dollars was a nice thing to add to any accounting ledger, she was uncomfortable with keeping it in the regular accounts.

She picked up the phone again to call her father.

Ben Devere drove the muddy side roads from his farm to Gregory Farms slowly, trying to talk himself out of his mission even while he accelerated toward it.

He couldn’t believe he had to ask Kate Gregory—of all people!—for a favor, especially one that amounted to his only hope of saving his late father’s farm for his mother. Kate Gregory hated him.

Growing up, he’d had a little bit of a crush on Kate. Well, maybe crush was too strong a word. But he’d always noticed her. While the rest of the world had fawned over her younger sister’s blond-haired-and-blue-eyed version of Kewpie doll beauty, Ben had been fascinated by Kate’s more subtle—but infinitely more interesting—assets.

The long chestnut hair didn’t look like gold, the way they said Bianca’s did, but it glowed like amber in the sunlight, with hundreds of different variations of brown and auburn painting the strands. Ben could have studied it for hours without getting bored.

And her eyes—they were vivid green and just shy of catlike. They were warm and cool at the same time. Intelligent and alluring, and never lined with the unnatural colors so many of the girls wore.

Ben often thought Kate said a lot more with her eyes than she did with her voice.

Then there was her body. He took a breath just thinking about it. Tight and strong and slender. Ben guessed that while Bianca sat on her cushiony behind and asked the ranch hands to bring her bonbons, Kate did the heavy work around the place.

Privately, Ben suspected it was Kate who had kept Gregory Farms such formidable competition for the Devere Ranch for so many years, which made her an enemy in a sense, but an admirable one. All of which made it doubly hard to have to ask her for her help now, since it was to keep the competition in business.

Ben reminded himself how important this was for his mother’s quality of life.

The last time he’d seen Kate had been one of the worst days of his life. His old dog, Banjo, who had seen him through the loneliest of his childhood years straight through college, had stayed out one night and gotten into a tangle with a rabid raccoon. It hadn’t taken long to figure out what was wrong, and when the vet had advised them to take Banjo out back, Ben wouldn’t let anyone go except for himself. It was a private thing, between him and his old pal.

Pulling that trigger had been the worst moment of his life, and it had felt as though it had taken a year.

No sooner was it over with, and the dog had hit the ground, had Ben heard a gasp and turned to see Kate Gregory running across the lower pasture toward her house. She must have known what was going on; the word had gotten out as a warning to all the local residents of what had happened.

Yet, when she’d seen Ben have to shoot his own dog, she hadn’t even mustered a single word of sympathy. She’d just run off into the sunset, literally and figuratively.

That’s the way Kate had always been—aloof, detached. Like no one could really get close to her or touch her heart.

He pulled his Jeep to a halt outside the main barn and got out. He took a deep breath. He didn’t want to do it. He just had to remind himself that, if he was careful, he might just score the one thing that could save his family’s farm. His feet crunched the gravel below him as he took slow steps toward the barn office.

“Ben?”

He turned.

The surprised voice belonged to none other than the platinum-haired Bianca, who was coming from the direction of the office. “Is that Ben Devere?”

“That’s right.”

“Good Lord, we were just talking about you.”

“We? We who?” This was weird. He didn’t even know anyone knew he was back. “And what were you saying?”

“Oh.” She hesitated just long enough to imply she was hiding something. “Nothing, really. Just that you were here in town. So what brings you here?”

This was it. Time to take that step. “I was hoping to see Kate.”

“Oh, were you?” Bianca raised an eyebrow. “How interesting! Now, why is that? You’re not planning to ask my single sister out on a date of some sort, are you?”

“Um, no.” He frowned. That was a strange question. “It was a business matter.”

Bianca’s face fell and her lips puffed into that famous Bianca Gregory pout. “Oh. Darn.”

He felt a little like he’d stepped into someone else’s bizarre dream. “I’m sorry…what?”

Bianca shrugged with the drama of a four-year-old child. “Nothing. Never mind.”

Ben looked down at the earth beneath his feet and briefly weighed the relative merits of selling the farm and moving his mother to a smaller place, closer to him, versus begging the Gregory girls for their help.

Saving the farm won, of course. “Look, I understand you have the capability of siring a mare by Fireflight.” It was awkward but he couldn’t think of another way to word it. Word underground was that the Gregorys had somehow acquired frozen genetic material from one of the finest racehorses ever to hit the turf and if there was one thing that could save his farm, it was a foal or two by Fireflight.

Dawning understanding came into Bianca’s pale blue eyes. “Oo-oh, I see. You’re here to make a purchase.”

“Depending on the cost, yes.” That was where this conversation was going to get really sticky. His finances were limited and he could only bluff so far before they, potentially, made him look like the desperate man he was. “So what’s your price?”

Bianca looked at him, raising her finger to her mouth and looking him over as she considered. “From what I hear, the Devere Ranch doesn’t have a whole lot of money, Ben.”

“Don’t listen to everything you hear.”

“Fireflight’s worth a whole lot.”

“Potentially.” He tried to look casual. “You never know what you’re gonna end up with. Artificial insemination of a mare…well, it’s a hell of a gamble. You know that.”

She gave a nonconcessionary nod. “It’s a gamble a lot of people are willing to pay a hell of a lot of money for.” She eyed him. “Victor’s working a colt out at the track every morning, and he says the times are absolutely amazing. He may even beat his sire. So I’m thinking it’s a pretty safe bet anyone who sires a mare by Fireflight will end up with a profit in the end. That is, if they can pay up front.”

“What are we talking about?”

“Half a million.”

He couldn’t shell out more than a quarter million. Not for such a risky chance as this. After all, the money was going to be coming out of his pocket, not the ranch’s. “Well, Bianca, this business being what it is, I think I’d rather just take a chance with what I’ve got.” He gave a short nod and started back toward his truck.

“I think I might know a way you can take it for free, though,” Bianca called behind him in a singsong voice.

This was no time to stand on pride. He stopped and turned back to her, cautiously keeping his face impassive. “Who do I have to kill?”

She laughed. “You only have to date my sister.”

She hadn’t said what he thought she’d said. Surely she wasn’t suggesting it was worth five hundred grand to Kate to have a date. “What are you talking about?”

Bianca gave a slow smile and sauntered over toward him. “I need a little favor. If you succeed, you get Fireflight and my sister, and you have a chance at real happiness. If you don’t succeed—” she shrugged “—well, you’re no worse off than you are now. What do you say, are you a betting man, Ben Devere?”