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  CITY GIRL

  Judy Griffith Gill

  Chapter One

  Ryan McCall woke up from a nap, stared out the car window, and shouted, “Look, Mom! Snow!”

  Liss Tremayne glanced at her excited four-year-old in the rearview mirror. “Hush. I know. Don’t wake Jason.” Snow, she thought, inaccurately described the raging blizzard she’d been driving through for the past forty-five minutes. In the last fifteen, all the road markings had been obliterated, and her four-wheel-drive Blazer kept threatening to forge a trail of its own, straight into the ditch. She’d gone from extremely nervous to downright terrified but was determined not to let Ryan see. She ground her molars together and fought the wheel, slowing as a huge gust of wind slammed into the side of the Blazer, carrying a load of snow that obscured her vision for several seconds.

  Lord, what had she gotten herself into? Liss wondered, putting another soothing tape into the cassette player as soon as she could take one hand off the wheel for a second. Was she, as her in-laws insisted, out of her mind for leaving the safe, familiar city where she’d always lived and, on the last day of November, taking her children off into the wilderness? More precisely, to a cattle ranch, where they weren’t wanted and where they would have to share a house with a man she didn’t know and an old lady with a grudge against the world. Maybe she was out of her mind, but even if she and her sons weren’t wanted, her late uncle Ambrose Whittier’s will had offered a chance for her to make a better home for her children than she’d managed to in Vancouver.

  There were going to be problems, though, and far worse ones than snow. Kirk Allbright had seemed so nice when he’d picked her up at her house that morning at the beginning of the month. His slow smile had done crazy things to her insides, and when he’d shoved his silver-gray Stetson to the back of his head, letting a thick swath of straight dark-blond hair fall over his forehead, she’d had to force back a whistle. Half an hour later, the two of them had tacitly allied themselves against Mrs. Healey, Uncle Ambrose’s forbidding, elderly former housekeeper. She had done nothing but carp and complain from the moment they arrived at her house until the lawyer finally shut her up by saying that she, along with Liss and Kirk, had each inherited one-third share in Whittier Ranch. But, he’d added, they all had to agree to live there, together, for one year, if they wanted to inherit, or each would receive one hundred dollars and the property would be turned over to the government as a Provincial Park. After that, if two of them agreed, they could sell the ranch and split the proceeds.

  That was when Liss had learned that Kirk Allbright was Uncle Ambrose’s illegitimate son, and that he’d expected to inherit alone. His smiling gray eyes had gone cold and hard, and his mouth had formed a straight, taut line as he glared at her, silently accusing her of having somehow arranged all of this.

  Liss clenched her teeth and wrapped her hands tightly around the wheel. She fought another skid before she remembered to relax her grip and steer in the skid’s direction. Carefully, cautiously, she brought the car back under control. What a road! she thought. What a night! If only she hadn’t stopped all those times along the beautiful Coquihalla Highway to take literally hundreds of photographs. But the sky had been blue and cloudless then. The mountains and the endless vistas, roaring streams and cascading waterfalls, had cried out to be captured. She’d been unable to resist the vision of merchandising and advertising executives gasping in awe at her expertise, her knowledge of form and composition, depth of field, her sheer artistry. She had stopped in the town of Merritt at a high-speed Internet place to upload the new material from her camera’s disk to Graham James, her agent. Who knew what kind of internet service she might find at the ranch? If any.

  Now, though, she thought she might pay dearly for the delay, instead of having the photos pay her the dazzling sums she’d fantasized. Sums she was counting on to help pay for the brand new, top-of-the-line digital camera Graham had insisted she needed if she was to really make a name for herself. Personally, she preferred her old film cameras, but now they had been relegated to her black & white shots—the ones that really showed off her artistic abilities. In her not so very humble opinion, of course.

  “Can we make a snowman when we get there?” Ryan asked in a lower voice.

  Liss peered through the swirling white and again fought the car’s tendency to slide out of control. “It’ll be too late and too cold then, honey,” she said, and shivered. Suddenly she was more glad than ever that the lawyer, Lester Brown, had helped her choose this four-wheel-drive vehicle and had advanced her the funds from her first quarter’s dividend to buy warm winter clothing for herself and the kids. And the new camera, too, though he didn’t know that.

  “We could build it under the street lamp like we did last year,” Ryan said hopefully.

  Liss smiled. They’d done so because the weatherman had predicted rain by morning, washing away the snow kids on the coast considered exciting, and adults either saw as Christmas-card beautiful, or just plain a nuisance that caused far too many fender-benders. Since she didn’t have any fenders to get bent, and did appreciate the sight of snow-laden trees and houses, she was among the former adult group. Snow was usually short-lived down there at sea-level, if it came at all. This, however, was a whole new ball-game. “There’ll be lots of time to build snowmen at the ranch,” she said. “This snow won’t melt overnight, I promise you.”

  Street lamp? she thought. Hah! She hadn’t seen a street lamp for fifty miles, or a town, or a lighted house, or another car. She wondered if she’d see green grass before June, and swallowed hard. Since news of her move had gotten out, everyone she knew had some horror story to tell her about the nine- and ten-foot snowfalls in the Robson Valley, close up against the sheer western slopes of the Rockies; about temperatures of forty below zero; about what happened to people who got caught outside under such conditions.

  But going to Whittier Ranch or not going there might become a moot point if she couldn’t keep the damned car on the road, she told herself, and concentrated harder on her driving. She had chosen to ignore those horror stories and shrug off all the “good” advice she’d been offered. She and her children had a right to their place on the ranch, and she wouldn’t be stopped, not by the weather, not by Mrs. Healey’s bad manners, not even by Kirk Allbright’s attitude. There was nothing anybody could do to keep them out.

  * * * *

  The dog was huge. It stood between Liss and the front door of the house, its hackles up, its snarling lips curled open to reveal sharp teeth. Snow swirled around it, doing nothing to cool its rage at the intrusion of her car into the smooth, unplowed driveway that led to the front of the house.

  She tried to open the car door, but the dog barked hysterically and lunged toward her the instant the dome light came on. She slammed the door and, inanely, locked it. The dog was on a chain, but that chain was plenty long enough for those fangs to reach her, just as its claws were able to come so close to the car door she feared for its finish. All the maniacal animal had to do was stretch another two inches and he be scraping paint. His snarling, slavering bark was ferocious.

  Scrambling across to the other side of the car, Liss eased open the passenger door and stepped out into snow that reached her knees. Wading through it, she headed for the house, after admonishing Ryan to stay put till she figured out what was what.

  Sure. Right. The damn dog’s chain was also long enough for it to reach her before she was even half-way to the front porch. She floundered backwards, praying she wouldn’t fall, and shut herself thankfully into the warmth of the car. “Whew!”

  “What are we going to do?” Ryan asked.

  “Sit here and blow the horn until Mr. Allbright comes out to call off his hound.” She gave the horn another blast.
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  “Maybe he’s not home,” Jason said. When the car stopped, he had undone his and his brothers seatbelts and the two little boys had climbed out of their booster seats and leaned forward, hooking their elbows over the back of her seat. Their combined breath was warm on her neck as they, too, watched the enraged dog lunging against its chain, sweeping a wide arc from her car right up to the front door of the house it was guarding.

  After ten minutes of blowing the horn with no results, she knew she had to do something else. This was Friday evening. Allbright might not be home for hours. He might not come home at all, she realized. He likely had a hot date on this cold night. What if he was away for the weekend? For two cents, she’d turn around and head home—except conditions were so bad she knew she wouldn’t make it, and she didn’t think freezing to death in a ditch beside an empty, endless highway would be any better than freezing to death here. Besides, this was home for her and the kids now.

  She sighed. Fat lot of good it did to sit there telling herself she had a right to get into that house, when between her and the front door was a dog about as vicious as the highway behind her. But wait, she thought. “Front door” suggested “back door.” Liss smiled grimly. Right. She was not going to sit here and watch her children freeze! She shifted into drive and crept slowly around the house, peering at the place for any sign of occupancy. There was none, until she saw the dim yellow glow of a porch light. Relief washed through her.

  The door under that light was mercifully unlocked, and it led into an entryway that obviously served as a pantry and laundry room. It was nearly as large as her entire former house had been, and yet was only half the size of the kitchen beyond it. It took fifteen minutes to get everything out of the Blazer and into the house, and by the time she was finished, Liss was wet, exhausted, and half frozen. She staggered into the kitchen and dropped the last suitcase on the floor, then carefully dusted snow off her largest camera case and set it beside the others on the end of the table. Those cameras were important, and becoming more important as each moment passed, she decided, looking around in dull disgust at the dirt and clutter. Something sticky and brown had oozed down the side of the stove and pooled onto the floor. Jason knelt in it as he and Ryan bent over a box beside the stove.

  “Look, Mom!” Ryan’s brown eyes gleamed under his straight bangs. “Kitties. A big mama cat and little bitty babies.”

  She smiled and slumped against the fridge. They were there, safe, and together, and that was all that mattered. As Ryan picked up a kitten to show her, mama cat reared up with a hiss and swiped at his face, her claws bared. Startled, he dropped the kitten into its soft nest and leaped back while Liss jumped forward to haul Jason out of the cat’s reach. Ryan’s eyes flooded as he wailed, “The kitty scratched me!” Not to be outdone, Jason cried, too.

  Crouching, Liss gathered both boys close, soothing them and then cheering them with the promise of food. After wiping the scratches, which had just barely opened Ryan’s skin in two spots, and applying antiseptic cream, she managed an adequate meal for them of scrambled eggs and toast, glad she had brought the basics from home with her. The other house, she reminded herself, which was no longer their home. By now, the landlord had surely rented it to some other desperate person who could put up with its leaky pipes, antiquated heating system, drafts, and single-glazed windows.

  While they ate, she explored, munching a slice of toast and finding the rest of the house in the same state of chaos as the kitchen. There were plenty of bedrooms on the second floor. One was obviously Kirk’s, and another, at the end of the far wing, was also occupied—by a soundly sleeping, loudly snoring, completely oblivious Mrs. Healey, who apparently didn’t object to living in squalor. This was a housekeeper? Liss suspected Mrs. Healey had been something else to Uncle Ambrose, who apparently didn’t consider a clean house any more important than he or Kirk Allbright did. With a shudder at the sight of the littered room, Liss closed the door and returned to the one she’d chosen for the boys, to make up their beds with linens and warm quilts she found in a well-stocked closet.

  When the children had finished eating, she carried Jason and led a worn-out Ryan by the hand to their new room, telling them she’d be sleeping right next door. They were asleep almost before she finished pulling up their covers, and she headed back downstairs for the rest of their things.

  Leaning on the kitchen table, she looked at the opened suitcases spread over the floor, their contents jumbled from the boys’ search for pajamas. Exhaustion washed over her as she thought about carrying those bags upstairs. No. She couldn’t do it. She was too tired. She’d scramble some of those eggs for herself and then go to bed. The mess could wait till tomorrow. Who’d notice her clutter amid that which already existed?

  With her eggs cooking, she lifted one of her suitcases to the table and sought a nightgown and robe. She had just found the former when the back door opened on a gust of cold wind and two snowy figures stumbled inside and staggered kitchenward.

  Liss didn’t even think. She simply recognized the first of those figures as a deadly enemy and reacted, sweeping up the entire suitcase and flinging it at the intruders with a scream of pure terror.

  “Back! Back!” she cried frantically. “Sit! Lie down! Outside! Go home!” She snatched up a chair and held it threateningly before her as she edged around the table, putting more and more obstacles between herself and the slightly abashed looking dog with a lacy pink bra hanging out of his mouth and a pair of panties over his high, curving tail.

  Kirk walked toward Liss slowly, trying to look unthreatening, took the chair from her and set it on the floor. “Hello, Liss,” he said, and groaned silently. At close quarters, her scent affected him exactly as it had the first day he’d met her. He told himself it shouldn’t, that he couldn’t let it. In spite of himself, he drew in a deep breath of it and extended his hand.

  His words seemed to whip her into action. She slapped his hand aside and glared at him. “‘Hello’?” she shouted. “‘Hello’? Is that all you can say after leaving a vicious animal chained between the driveway and the door when you’re expecting someone to arrive? What kind of monster are you, not to be here when that person and her two innocent little children show up in the middle of a blizzard, and can’t get inside the house because there’s nobody around to call off the animal? And now you come waltzing in here after a nice, cozy evening out with one of your women while I’ve been out there on your stupid treacherous country roads, driving through the dark and the snow without another car in sight for miles and miles, and not even a motel or a town or anything, and then coming in and finding this pigsty waiting for me and you have the gall to say ‘hello’?” She gasped for breath and flung an arm in a wide sweep around the kitchen.

  Kirk winced. It was a pigsty. He had to admit it. But it had been one hell of a week, and he hadn’t had time to do much more than work and catch an hour or two of sleep before going back out to work some more, which was what he had to do if he was going to keep this ranch, especially now it had to support not only him and his dog, but two women and two kids.

  He gaped at this invader in his kitchen, slid his gaze over suitcases and boxes, then slowly peeled off his thick leather gloves and unbuttoned his sheepskin jacket. She’d seemed so . . . even-tempered the first time he’d met her. Bending, he lifted the panties from their perch on his dog’s bushy tail and dangled them from one finger. Liss Tremayne, her face as white as the underwear he held, still held a chair in front of her as if she would fling it as she had the suitcase. She’d backed around the table as she’d shouted conflicting orders at his perfectly harmless and undoubtedly confused dog.

  She was dressed in jeans and a thick red sweater. Her nearly black hair tumbled loose around her shoulders, and her almond-shaped eyes were huge with terror, pinned on the dog. When she came up against the counter, she stopped of necessity and stared at Kirk as if only then becoming aware of his presence.

  “Call him off,” she begged, her voice sh
aking. “Please send him away. Oh, lord, he’s eating my bra!”

  Kirk took the bra from Marsh’s slack jaws and dangled it from the same finger as the panties. “Sit, Marsh.” Obediently, the dog, a cross between a husky and a shepherd, lowered himself onto his haunches, tongue lolling, ears pricked up, head cocked. “Stay,” Kirk added, and bent to pick up the spilled suitcase, stuffing items of feminine apparel back in it willy-nilly. He set it on the table, put his snow-damp Stetson on top of the fridge, and slid out of his shearling coat.

  “Send that horrible beast outside!” she demanded.

  “The hell I will. This is Marsh’s home, too, you know.”

  “Yes, sure, and as far as you’re concerned, he takes precedence over me and my children and you want us to leave,” she went on, her voice growing more shrill. “Is that what you expected to accomplish by leaving this mess? Or did you figure you could live like a slob for weeks and weeks simply because I was coming to clean it all up? I didn’t come to be a servant to you, Kirk Allbright! I didn’t come to have my children threatened by a man-eating beast! Even your damned cat clawed at Ryan and . . . and . . . I must have been out of my mind to think this would be a safe place to raise my children, but don’t think your snow or your mean animals or your squalor is going to drive me away! Move!” she added, pushing him hard as her voice cracked and tears spurted from her dark eyes. “Get out of my way! I’m going to bed!”

  Her tears undid his tight control. Dammit, he was tired, and hungry, and cold, and he didn’t need a woman screaming at him the minute he got home from a long and exhausting day. He’d been racing the weather for the past three days, and every one of them had been hell. And now this! The nerve of her, berating him about going out with women, as if it were any of her affair what he did. This was exactly what he’d been afraid of when he’d learned he was to have her and the old bat dumped on him! Mrs. Healey’s behavior since her arrival the previous week had been enough to deal with, and now here came this one, pulling that one female trick geared to turn a man inside out. Well, he’d had enough of women this past week. Hell, the past year!