KNIGHT IN A WHITE STETSON Read online

  "I'll bet she was extremely smart."

  Henry considered that. "Not as smart as you."

  Calla sputtered. "Oh, please. I'm good at my job. There's a big difference. Was she very beautiful?"

  He wanted to argue the point, but decided it could wait. "Heidi? Yes. She was beautiful."

  "Poor Henry. You must have loved her very much."

  Henry shrugged. "Don't put too fine a point on it, Calla." They started up a hill. Calla, beside him, wasn't even breathing hard. "Our marriage was over just about the same time it started."

  "What happened?"

  "She slept with my brother." Henry was almost as stunned by that revelation as Calla obviously was. He'd never told a soul about Heidi and David's affair. It was something he planned to take to his grave.

  "Wow," Calla breathed, stunned. She didn't have any sisters, but she was darn sure she'd never have slept with their husbands if she had. "Uh, listen, we don't have to talk about this anymore."

  "I don't mind talking to you about Heidi. But you have to understand something. I was young. I fell into what I thought was love. But those feelings were dead long before Heidi and I divorced. She married me to get her hands on some information I owned and she lied to me about almost everything in our lives from the day I met her."

  Calla came to a dead stop, dragged him to a halt beside her. "Oh, Henry, I'm so sorry."

  Henry was unnerved. Calla's hazel eyes shined with sympathy and gentle concern. This was not the woman who faced thunderstorms with nary a whimper, was it? His chest tightened, and he felt a strange constriction in his throat. He removed her restraining hand from his arm and moved off again. They walked in silence for a long while.

  "How do you live with that kind of deception?" she asked quietly.

  "You live with it. But it makes for a pretty grim marriage."

  "I'll bet." She chewed on her lower lip for a minute.

  Don't do it, Calla. Don't marry him. You'll be sorrier than you could ever imagine possible, Henry said silently.

  "I have to do it, you know."

  As if she'd read his mind. "No, you don't."

  "You don't understand."

  He was angry. At her, at Dartmouth, at himself. "I think I do. You don't have to do this to save your ranch."

  "That isn't why I'm doing it." But her usual argument held none of the heat it normally did. Henry kept walking, not meeting her eyes.

  "Isn't it?"

  "No," she said slowly. "Or, anyway, it's not the only reason. It's more complicated than that. I care for Clark. He's everything I've ever wanted in a husband. He's smart and well educated and sophisticated. He's not like anyone from around here. I never knew anyone like him when I was growing up. You probably wouldn't understand that, but I've waited a long time to meet someone who wasn't just another hard-drinking good old boy with a John Deere cap and a plug of chewing tobacco in his lip and no future."

  "I understand it." He didn't want to. It made everything more difficult. But he did.

  "You do?"

  "Yes. When I met Heidi, I was the biggest lab geek you ever met." He smiled slightly. "Outside of an occasional afternoon on the ice, my lab was my entire world. I never found anything else as interesting. Not after my Dad sold—" He stopped. He could tell this woman about Heidi, but not about the farm? What was wrong with him today? he wondered. "Anyway, I never even had a date until my sophomore year in college, and then it was with this very nice, but unfortunately bucktoothed girl who was almost as socially inept as I was. We talked about quarks and the chemical foundations of evolution and Stephen Hawking all night. I think I saw her nod off about eight-thirty. Heidi was different from any woman I ever knew. She was confident and sexy and smart. Not just some good old girl lab assistant."

  "I'm glad you understand. Nobody else does."

  "Yeah, well, I don't want to be your pal on this issue, Calla. I said I understand, and I do, but don't fool yourself into thinking… Listen, I have my own…" He dragged his hand through his damp hair. Sighed. "Nobody wants to see you miserable. You will be with Clark, you know. He'll make you crazy inside a year."

  "Well, I say you're wrong. Everyone makes adjustments when they get married, you know."

  "You'll make every one of them. I can just imagine you in some East Coast drawing room, sipping tea and talking about the curtains." Henry laughed. Calla kicked the back of his ankle while he walked. "Hey! You're forgetting how I saved you from that storm already."

  "It'll take me a week to recover from your saving me."

  "Did he ask you for a prenuptial agreement?"

  That stopped her short. Henry didn't realize she'd stopped walking until he'd gone ahead several steps. He waited for her to catch up. Well, that son of a bitch.

  "Of course," she said casually when she reached him. "Everyone gets a prenup these days." He saw how she tested the new word on her tongue.

  "No, they don't."

  "Well, Clark says it's better for me to have one. He says I need one because of the ranch."

  "You only need one if he plans to divorce you and take half your family's legacy."

  "Now you're being a jerk."

  "Calla, you and I both know prenuptial agreements are designed for people who don't stay married 'til death do us part."

  "Well, no one does stay married 'til death do us part anymore, do they?"

  "What about your parents?"

  "My mother and father were special. No one has marriages like that anymore."

  "My parents have stayed married."

  "Well, I don't know them so they don't count."

  "So, you don't plan to stay married to Clark?"

  Calla shook her head. "You're twisting my words."

  "Your thoughts are twisted."

  Calla glared at him and then started down the ridge without him. Henry had to jog to keep up. He could see the low scrub of Two Creek Camp in the distance. He decided it was time to change the subject.

  "You'll be grateful to me for that old hot water trough tonight."

  She smiled back at him reluctantly. Henry marveled at her ability to get over a bout of foul temper. Heidi had been able to hold a sulk for weeks.

  "I guess I am a little on the disgusting side." She pulled at her ponytail. It was stiff with dried mud. "I can't wait to wash my hair."

  "I can't wait to wash your hair," he murmured. She was walking so fast, he didn't think she'd hear him. But he'd forgotten for a moment this was a woman who could determine the difference between a lonely calf and a hungry calf by the sound of the bawl. She turned on her heel to face him. He was walking downhill and nearly rammed into her when she stopped in his path.

  "Wait a minute, now. I'm pretty sure I've made this clear." She poked him in the chest, then snatched her finger back as if he'd been afire and singed her. "You and I have a strictly professional relationship. I admit there is some sort of … something … between us, but that's all it will ever be. I don't love you, you don't love me, we won't be sleeping together. Got it?"

  The new Henry, the one he'd only just discovered since sliding down that lava rock rabbit hole, wanted to say, we'll see about that. But the old, more prudent Henry said, "Got it."

  She frowned at him another moment, suspicious. "Well, okay then."

  Their horses waited patiently for them at the wire gate. Henry let the gate down and they stepped happily inside the pasture, as if nothing important had happened at all.

  * * *

  Chapter 14

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  Calla bathed while Henry, bareback, rode off on Sonny with Lucky tied behind—toward Deer Creek and their abandoned tack.

  He didn't return until an hour after dark. Calla snuggled into her sleeping bag and pretended to be asleep. She listened intently as he cared for the horses and returned the saddles to their trees in the tack tent. It was quiet for several minutes. Calla hoped he found the supper of beans and a fried steak she'd left covered in tin foil on the picnic table.

  S
he heard the clunk of metal on an enamel plate and closed her eyes briefly.

  She was in a sort of danger she'd never known. She was drowning in it.

  She'd waited for him to return to camp with a kind of nervous, anticipatory fear. She couldn't bear the thought of his being lost in the high-desert night. But she couldn't bear the thought of spending another night next to him any better.

  Outside, Henry rummaged around in the cooler for a minute. She heard him pop the top on a can of beer and walk slowly to the entrance of the sleeping tent. She squeezed her eyes shut, but he didn't enter. After a minute, he walked to the back of the tent. Calla listened as he stripped off his clothes and boots and eased into the warm water trough.

  He hadn't come in for clean clothes, Calla thought suddenly. He'd probably walk back into the tent naked. Dripping wet and glistening and naked. The idea thrilled her, terrified her, stopped the very breath in her lungs.

  She was in trouble. Big trouble.

  Footfalls rounded the back of the tent and a second later Henry opened the tent flaps. He peered in for a second before stepping through. Calla was so interested to see whether or not he was naked, she forgot to pretend she was asleep. Unfortunately, she was not fully rewarded, though a bare, hairy chest had never held such appeal in her entire life. He had put his dirty jeans back on. He met her eyes.

  "You're not asleep?" he whispered. Why, she didn't know. They were as alone as two people could be.

  "No," she whispered back. "How did it go?"

  "No trouble. The saddles are both pretty wet, though. Did the tents leak?"

  "A little in the tack tent. But I repaired this one over the winter, and it's pretty sound. Did you eat?"

  "Yeah. Thanks. It was good." He stood, his hands shoved in his pockets, his shirt tucked under his arm, at the entrance to the tent. He felt at a loss. She'd made it perfectly clear she wanted this attraction to go no further. Why couldn't he accept it?

  "Well, thanks for going out," she said after a breathless minute. "We could have done it tomorrow, you know."

  "I thought you wanted to move cows tomorrow. Our saddles will still be wet in the morning as it is."

  "That's true." They were silent for another long minute. "I'll unbolt those saddle trees in the morning before we leave," Henry said. "I'll move over. It does smell a little rank in there."

  "You don't have to." Calla sat up in her cot and crossed her legs under her nightgown. Henry didn't take his eyes from her. "I decided you really don't need me up here. I think I'll take Toke and head home in the morning early."

  Henry didn't speak for a long time.

  "Calla, I can't let you do that," he said finally.

  "What?"

  "I can't let you go back to the ranch just now."

  "Henry, maybe you've forgotten something. You are in no position to boss me."

  "I have to tell you something." He seemed to make a decision, and walked slowly forward and lowered himself onto the edge of Calla's cot. He didn't touch her. Calla drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs and waited.

  "Do you remember what I told you today about Heidi? About her wanting something valuable that I owned?"

  Calla nodded.

  "Well, what I own is knowledge, information actually, that is potentially very dangerous, and very important to a certain group of people."

  "Something to do with your work." She made it a statement. She already knew the answer.

  "Yes. Something I began developing during my time at Purdue. It was based on a formula I'd been working on off and on for a couple years. After I left school, I think I mentioned this, I worked for an ag-chem company called AgriFactor. You probably know it."

  She nodded. The co-op carried a huge assortment of their various products.

  Henry continued. "Eventually, I perfected the formula. I called it Perfect Soil, but their trade name for it is StableFactor. It's a soil enhancement chemical, they're using it mostly in the Middle East now, to grow wheat. During routine experiments, I found out something about the formula. If I made certain variations, it could be used as an effective, inexpensive defoliant. Under the right circumstances, it has the potential to render affected soil useless for a very long time."

  Calla listened quietly. Henry kept his eyes on her, but his thoughts had already drifted from her and back into that part of himself he'd been keeping closed since the day she met him. Impulsively, she took his hand. His fingers clasped around hers.

  "I told Heidi about the experiments. A few months later, I was approached by a branch of the defense industry, an organization called International Chemical Defense. They wanted the mutated formula."

  "You think Heidi told them about it?"

  "I know she did. She never admitted it, of course—she was extremely good at her job. But soon after I rejected the offer from I.C.D., despite her objections, she began the affair with David. She compiled a very good blackmail portfolio against him—videotape, photos, receipts, everything. He's a junior senator, on his way up politically, vulnerable. And he loves his family. She told me she'd expose the affair if I didn't leave AgriFactor."

  "What a bitch. And naturally, you did."

  Henry narrowed his gaze. "I was naive."

  "And you loved your brother, despite the fact that he slept with your wife."

  "Calla, don't romanticize this. As I told you, I was the quintessential lab geek before I joined I.C.D. I didn't know how the game was played."

  Calla didn't respond, but she held tightly to his hand.

  "Anyway—" he took a deep breath "—I left the patent for Perfect Soil at AgriFactor and took the results of the experiments for the mutation with me to I.C.D."

  Calla was fascinated, in spite of the trickle of dread that dripped into her adrenal glands. Life on a cattle ranch didn't afford one much experience with international chemical intrigue.

  "What did they want you to do with it? It's essentially just an agricultural application, right? Even in the mutated form."

  "Calla, do you recall the old saying that an army marches on its stomach?"

  "Oh. I see what you mean."

  "Right. If I.C.D. could develop something for the defense industry that could effectively wipe out the food production of an aggressor nation by air, and still be harmless to nonmilitary personnel, and then use conventional methods to blockade provisional import, that nation and its government would be on its knees in a matter of weeks. It's a cheap, bloodless way to make sure the whole world is doing just what you think it should be doing."

  "Geez." A horrible idea was forming quickly in Calla's head. "Who is Pete?"

  "Pete works for my boss. My ex-boss. Lieutenant Colonel Lyndon Frank. Pete trained me."

  "Trained you for what?"

  Henry shrugged. "Apparently, when the military, even when it's working under the guise of defense research, inherits a lab geek from central California, they feel it's necessary to give him a little glimpse into the world of violence he's helping perpetuate. Pete was my guide into that world."

  "What kind of training?"

  "The basics. My years on the ice helped, as most of it was just physical stuff." He shrugged again. "I found it interesting. Challenging. In much the same way I find chemistry challenging, I guess. In chemistry, the thrill is discovering what secrets the physical world possesses. In the kind of training Pete gave me, I found out what kind of secrets I possessed."

  Calla longed to inquire what those secrets were, but she was coming to the realization that Henry and his odd world were now descending on her little corner of Paradise. And she wanted to know why.

  "What was Pete doing at Two Creek? Did you tell him where you were?"

  "When I left I.C.D. two months ago, I made arrangements with Colonel Frank that I was to be left alone. I didn't take many precautions against being found. I would have been pretty easy to track."

  "Even at Two Creek?"

  "Even at Two Creek. If you ask the right questions and buy enough be
er for the old boys at the Last Chance, I expect you can learn anything you want in a town like Paradise."

  "But why? You gave them the mutated formula or whatever you call it."

  "No, I didn't."

  "You didn't?" Calla breathed. "Why not?"

  Henry searched her face in the darkness of the tent. The droplets of water that had glistened on his skin were dried mow, and Calla could clearly see the outline of the muscles on his chest. His breathing was even, but his free hand was pulled into a fist.

  "Did you think I could develop something like that and then just give it to the highest bidder? This is potentially the total destruction of the Third World's farmland we're talking about. Food production. The only truly important business there is. I.C.D. had plans to fly to Haiti as soon as the formula was perfected. A politically unstable island nation without the ability to produce its own food for seven or eight years would be a wonderful research target. The military regime would collapse. People would starve. I've made more mistakes in my life than I can count, but I'm not about to have that on my shoulders. I took my research files and erased everything from the mainframe computers at I.C.D. Pete was here because they've apparently decided what I have on Frank is not as important as the formula."

  "But aren't there other ways to accomplish the same things your formula can accomplish? There are hundreds of herbicides out there."

  "Not hundreds, and nothing as cheap, as fast and as long-term as mine. It's also dioxin-free, essentially harmless to people and animals, so it can be sprayed over huge areas without many casualties." Henry's handsome features twisted. "The safer alternative to Agent Orange."

  Calla felt sick. She had been a fool to trust this man. She'd been a fool to feel anything at all for him. He'd come into her life, into her family's life, and he'd brought more trouble with him than she could possibly handle. She was suddenly furious. She released his hand.