Knight in a White Stetson (15 page)

“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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C
alla 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.

She 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 beer 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.

“So they came to my ranch to look for you. How long did you think you could use me to hide out?”

“I wasn’t using you. I didn’t even know about you until I found you on that road with a flat tire.” His tone was unreadable,
but he hurt. The rejection was a slap, and just because he’d been
expecting it, it didn’t lessen the sting. He rested his hand on his
knee and concentrated on not touching her. “I was finished with
my
little tour of the West, and since I’d spent most of my childhood
on my grandfather’s ranch in California, this seemed like
a good place to stop and regroup.”

“Great. Well, thanks for choosing Hot Sulphur Lake for your regrouping. But now you’re going
to
have to leave. I can’t involve my family in this. The ranch is in a precarious enough position as it is.” She paused. “My God, Henry, I feel like I just stepped off a cliff.”

“I know. But I can’t leave right now. And I can’t let you go back to the ranch.”

Calla had had enough. She shoved him off her cot with her bare feet. He caught himself before he tumbled to the floor. She stood next to her cot, her nightgown settling around her ankles. “You keep saying that, but you’re wrong, spud. You are going to leave and I am going back to the ranch. The cows can wait until I hire another cowboy or until Lester gets back from Reno. I don’t want you or your Perfect Soil or your secrets anywhere near us. I don’t want them anywhere near Paradise. I have more than enough to handle as it is. I have the bank breathing down my neck,
I
have to deal with Clark and his prenuptial agreement,
I have a mysterious bunch of developers sneaking
around…”

Henry reached up and put his hands firmly on her hips. The movement stilled her instantly.

“Someone is watching you, Calla. I saw him at the wedding.”

Calla sank back down onto her cot. Her eyes were wide. “What?”

“Someone is watching you,” he repeated. “And until I talk to Pete and find out who it is, I can’t take any chances. I think it’s probably just routine surveillance—” Henry lifted a bare shoulder “—but then again, this guy was a local yokel, and the people I know don’t usually hire locals for that kind of job.”

“Oh, my God.” Calla’s head was spinning. Someone had been at Helen’s wedding, watching her? Someone from this weird world
to
which Henry and his beautiful ex-wife and funny, smooth-talking Peter Fish belonged? Suddenly, Two Creek didn’t seem nearly far enough away from the rest of the world. Suddenly, she wished cow camp were in the middle of the Himalayas. “Routine surveillance?” she whispered. “I can’t believe this.”