Jed's Sweet Revenge (14 page)

   The August sun burned a round hole in the sky directly over Thena’s head. Its rays seeped through her wide-brimmed straw hat, making a kaleidoscope of shadows on her drawing pad and the hypnotizing masculine face coming to life under her pencil.

She dug her toes in the sand and shifted a little, the beach feeling scratchy even through her shorts. That was the only distraction she allowed in her pursuit of the perfect likeness of Jed. She tuned out the gulls crying overhead, the rushing sound of the waves licking the tide line, and the steady whisper of the ocean breeze.

She’d drawn dozens of pictures of the Wyoming cowboy who’d left her emotions in such disarray a month ago. Instead of fading with time, her mental images of him grew more detailed. She drew him on horseback; she drew him looking squinty-eyed and sexy like Clint Eastwood; she drew him naked, using her imagination to fill in the parts she’d never
seen. She drew him, and she missed him more each time she finished.

The distant sound of Rasputin’s and Godiva’s ferocious barking made her leap up. Thena ran toward the warning, her heart hammering because it came from the west, where Sancia’s tiny old dock was located. She realized that she was going to spend the rest of her life hoping that Jed would come back.

Cendrillon and the dogs met her halfway to the dock. Thena tucked her drawing pad under one arm, then swung up on the mare’s back, and the four of them continued together. A few yards from the dock Thena stopped Cendrillon with a voice command. She removed the dark sunglasses she always wore on the beach and stared at the sleek cabin cruiser bellying up to her dock like a bloated whale.

Four clean-cut men, dressed in fashionable hiking clothes and carrying everything from backpacks to camera bags and rifles, tromped down the rickety dock toward her. Only Thena’s most curt commands kept Rasputin and Godiva from crouching for an attack.

“You must be the caretaker’s granddaughter,” called one of the men, a portly executive type who looked lost without his desk and secretary.

“This is a private island,” she said in a formal voice. “State your business.”

The man pulled a card from the vest pocket of his well-pressed khaki safari shirt. He started forward, was met by the dogs’ low growls, and stopped tentatively.

“I can’t have your animals endangering my group,” he informed her stiffly.

“I can’t have your group endangering my animals. “Who are you?”

“We’re from Baylor-Michaels-Sutton. Developers.”

Disbelief and anger zinged through Thena’s veins. “Has the island been sold?”

“Not yet. We’re prospective buyers.” His eyes, under a ridiculous-looking golf hat, assessed Cendrillon. “Is this one of the wild horses that comes with the place?”

Horror sent a chill down Thena’s back. Had she wounded Jed’s ego so much that he’d take this kind of revenge? No, she trusted his goodness too much to believe he’d sell her horses, especially Cendrillon. “None of the horses come with ‘this place,’ ” she answered in a freezing voice.

“I’m afraid the owner’s attorney says everything is included except the caretaker’s house and five acres around it. Animal populations, the old Gregg mansion, everything. We hope you’ll show us around. We want to do a little hunting while we’re here.”

Thena winced at his last remark and gave Cendrillon a silent signal, and the mare began backing away. “Let me go to the house and put on my hiking shoes,” she called sweetly, “and I’ll be glad to play guide.”

“Terrific! We’ll look for a campsite.”

Smiling, nodding, Thena swung Cendrillon around and nudged her into a fast lope, the dogs racing alongside. Find a campsite, my unsuspecting little visitors, she thought grimly. Rest. You’ll need all your energy before I’m finished with you. Jed had sent them, and his betrayal spurred her to bitter action.

   “Twenty-five,” Jed said lazily, leaning on the corral fence as he studied the prize-winning quarter horse mare. He wanted this horse badly, but as with most things he wanted, he knew how to appear nonchalant. “Yep. Let me have Miss Kitty Can Do for twenty-five thousand and I’ll pay whatever you want to board her until I find myself a ranch.”

Beyond the mare’s sleek body, the rolling green
hills of the Circle Ten Ranch stretched toward snowy mountain peaks far in the distance. Beside Jed, Mac Bullock, owner of both Miss Kitty Can Do and the Circle Ten Ranch, sighed mightily.

“You didn’t drive such hard bargains a few years ago when all you could afford was an old gelding only worth five hundred dollars on a good day,” Mac reminded him. “Now you’re traipsin’ around in five-hundred-dollars boots.” But he grinned. “Howsome-ever, you got yourself a deal on Miss Kitty.”

Jed grinned back, held out a hand, and they shook. “You sure have changed, boy,” Mac commented for at least the tenth time. “Sure have.”

“Reckon so.”

Changed, yeah. He was working on himself, fixing himself up as if he’d never noticed what he looked like before, which he hadn’t. As they walked silently past the huge barns and well-kept lawns that made up the nucleus of the Circle Ten, Jed took a moment to consider everything he’d bought since coming home from Sancia Island a month ago. He had a five-thousand-dollar gold watch and an expensive new wardrobe. He also had a black Ferrari and five new mares, some of which cost more than he’d made rodeoing in his entire life.

If money couldn’t buy happiness, it could at least keep him distracted from thinking about Thena. Of course, among his purchases were two dozen books, whose titles included
Mystical Islands of the Georgia Coast, French for Beginners, Movie Classics of Yesteryear
, and
The Annotated Works of Charles Dickens
. He assured himself that just because he liked to spend all his spare time reading the subjects that interested her didn’t mean that he thought about the lady herself all the time.

Mac’s wife, Barbara, a stout brunette in dungarees and—as if it were usual ranch attire—a silk shirt, came out of the family’s huge ranchhouse and crossed the yard excitedly, waving her arms. “Jed, if
you don’t find some way of letting that danged hotel of yours know how to reach you, your attorney’s gonna have a conniption.”

“It’d do him good,” Jed drawled wryly. “He doesn’t get much exercise.”

“He’s been lookin’ for you for two days. The hotel manager traced you up here.” Barbara held up a note she’d taken. “This is the message your lawyer left at the hotel: ‘Trouble at your island,’ ” she read. “ ‘Clients of mine were attacked by local woman and her dogs. Woman in jail. Dogs in jail. Clients pressing charges. Call me about this situation immediately.’ ”

Barbara Bullock looked up quizzically. “What kind of wild woman lives on your island?”

Jed was already running toward his truck. “One I hope to marry someday,” he called back over his shoulder.

   The Dundee municipal police force, which consisted of Chief Archie MacKay and Deputy Roy Payne, was casual and friendly. So was the municipal jail, which consisted of five cells with whitewashed concrete walls, a front desk, Archie’s office, and a meeting room that doubled as Roy’s office and the site of the local Masonic lodge.

Dundee had no dog pound, and Archie was too nice a man to send Rasputin and Godiva to the county pound, miles away, so he let them share Thena’s cell. Her cell was cheerful by ordinary jail standards, but it was still a cell, with one high, narrow window in the back wall and a single, depressing light fixture overhead.

By standing on a chair, Thena could almost see out the window. As she had done every afternoon for the past three days, she perched on the cell’s sturdy metal chair and tilted her face as close to the window as she could, worshiping the scent of fresh air
and the narrow ray of sunlight. Rasputin and Godiva lay morosely on the cell bunk, their eyes trained on the window with a misery that equaled her own.

She might have to go to jail for weeks, even several months. The developers said she’d shot at them. In truth, she’d only fired the shotgun in the air, but it was four to one, their word against hers. The attorney appointed by the county had explained the possibility of a jail term. She couldn’t afford the combination of her bail, a fine, and the hospital costs incurred by the two men Rasputin and Godiva had bitten.

Rasputin and Godiva … worst of all, the developers wanted them put to sleep, and the attorney had said that was a distinct possibility too. Her dear companions would die for crimes they had committed at her urging, minor crimes, just nibbles. They hadn’t done much more than break the skin on two well-padded male rumps.

Thena wiped a few recalcitrant tears off her face and dried her hands on the gauzy yellow pants she wore with sandals and an orange top. She grasped the edge of the cell window with both hands and stood on tiptoe, straining to put her face directly in the midst of golden sunlight.

She heard the door to the cell area open, but didn’t bother to turn around or get down from the chair. Roy, a round-faced young man with thinning black hair and wide eyes, wandered in periodically to offer sympathy and snacks, so Thena assumed that he had come to visit. She waited apathetically for his high-pitched voice to split the silence.

“Thena.”

The voice was anything but high-pitched. Her name rumbled off it like low thunder. It was unmistakable.

Thena whirled around and got down from the chair with shaking legs. Her eyes flew to the calm, lean face and hazel eyes she’d drawn so lovingly, so many
times. Jedidiah. Rasputin and Godiva clambered off the bunk, their tails wagging as if this traumatic situation finally made them admit that he was their friend.

But he wasn’t a friend. He’d sent the developers. Thena didn’t move, didn’t speak as her long-simmering fury mingled with her shock. He looked back at her with troubled eyes, reading those emotions. Behind Jed, Roy stood grinning broadly.

“Mr. Powers has gotten all the charges dropped!” he chirped. “You’re free! And the dogs too!” He stepped forward and unlocked the cell door.

Free. The word obliterated every other concern, including puzzlement over why Jed had come to help her. Thena cried out without meaning to and clasped her hands to her mouth. When the cell door opened, she rushed out with the dogs right behind her. Wordlessly, recklessly, she ran down the short hallway, flung open the door to the reception area, and headed for light and fresh air and freedom.

When Jed finally caught up with her, she was kneeling on the lawn in front of the jail, her face raised to the sun and the breeze. The dogs rolled in the grass with their own display of ecstasy.

Jed lowered himself beside her, sitting on his bootheels. She didn’t acknowledge his presence at all, for which he was glad, because he needed a few seconds to swallow the lump in his throat. The sight of her wistfully trying to look out the window in the cell had torn him up. He understood her love for being outdoors; he knew what torture the cell must have been. He hurt for her. He cursed Chester Porter Thompson the fourth and his independent decision to send developers to Sancia.

“Miss Witch, you sure know how to get in trouble,” he said softly.

She turned to look at him, her eyes glittering like cold silver stars. “I’ll hate you for the rest of my life.”

Nothing changed about Jed except the look on his
face, which went from tender to stunned. “I just got you off the hook,” he reminded her in a distracted voice. Couldn’t she see that he was innocent, that he was here because he loved her?

“But you let me sit in jail for three days, first. It was a terrific revenge tactic.”

Stark, wounded anger replaced his amazement. “I didn’t know what had happened until this mornin’. I caught the first plane out of Cheyenne, as soon as I heard.”

She paused, surprised. Then a new thought flared inside her. “But you sent the developers.” She wanted him to hurt the way she’d hurt during the past few days. “You’re just a backwoods drifter with no concern for anyone or anything but yourself. How could I have ever thought you’d understand why Sancia is too beautiful to destroy? You don’t know anything about beauty.”

“My attorney sent the developers. I didn’t even know they were comin’ here, dammit.”

“Your attorney is negotiating to sell Sancia?”

“Yep.”

“At your direction.”

He nodded slowly, defeated. “Yep.”

She raked his new appearance with a disgusted gaze, arrogantly dismissing the creased slacks, the monogrammed sports shirt, the gleaming wristwatch, and the beautiful boots. “I don’t know why I ever thought you were worth my trouble,” she added, her voice breaking. “You can buy success, but you can’t buy class. Your mother was a Gregg and she had class. But you didn’t inherit it.”

That was too much torment, too much provocation. He’d heard taunts like that before in his life, but none had ever hurt him more than these of Thena’s. He struck back viciously. “Seein’ as how you think so badly of me,” Jed told her in a low, vibrating voice. “I’ll live up to it. I’ll bulldoze everything
on Sancia and sell every horse for dog food. Includin’ Cendrillon.”

Neither of them was surprised when she slapped him. Jed stood slowly, barely noting the stinging of his jaw, feeling dead inside, his body following commands that he wasn’t conscious of giving it. Thena stood too, staring up at him with a grief that momentarily eclipsed everything else. For one brief instant he thought she was going to reach out to him. But she turned quickly, called her dogs in a tearful voice, and walked toward the city docks, toward her island and her life. The man who loved her had just promised to destroy both.