“I’m glad to hear that.” He smiled and started walking toward the pillared house on the knoll, his father and Cathleen a yard ahead of them.
“Let’s go out to dinner tonight,” she said.
“And where would you suggest?” Ty mocked. “In your extensive travels of late, have you discovered any restaurant in the area other than Sally’s?”
“We’ll go to Sally’s. I don’t care.” She gave a blithe shrug, showing herself remarkably easy to please for a change. “It’s Saturday night and I don’t feel like staying at home.”
“Are you going to Sally’s tonight?” Cat turned, having been listening to their conversation. “Please, can I go with you?” she asked, all green-eyed eagerness.
“Cat, you shouldn’t invite yourself,” her father said in mild reprimand.
“But I want to go,” she protested.
“Ah, that sounds like somebody’s going to be there that you want to see,” Tara guessed with an impish smile. “It couldn’t be that Tkylor boy, could it?”
“Tara!” Cat gave her a low-voiced warning, flashing her a look of annoyance while she glanced anxiously at her father to see if he’d heard.
“Taylor?” Ty frowned. “You don’t mean Repp Taylor?”
“The very same.” Tara nodded. “Cathleen has a crush on him.”
“Why, he’s twenty years old.” Chase Calder frowned at his fifteen-year-old daughter.
“Don’t pay any attention to Tara.” Cathleen glared at her to be silent and faced the front with an angry little flounce of her head. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Repp Taylor is much too old for me.”
“I should certainly hope so,” her father retorted.
“Can I go with them tonight, please?” She went back to her initial request, this time asking permission from her father first. “Other girls my age get to have dates, but I never go anywhere.”
“It’s all right, Dad Calder,” Tara spoke up. “Cat can come with us, can’t she, Ty?”
“I don’t even remember saying that we were going,” he replied.
“Yes, you did—just by not saying we weren’t,” she declared airily.
“Don’t ever argue with that kind of logic, Ty,” his father warned. “You’ll never win.”
Tara laughed. It was at times like these that Ty believed everything was going to work out for them, despite the frequent separations when Tara could endure the isolation of the ranch no more and left for a few days to return to what she laughingly called civilization.
When they were alone in their rooms, Ty queried her. “What’s this about Repp Taylor?” He pulled on a clean white shirt, buttoning it. The young cowboy showed promise of being a good, solid hand, steady and reliable.
“It’s simple. Cat is sweet on him.” She turned her back to him. “Zip me up.” Ty took a nibble of a white shoulder before he did, feeling the little shudder it sent through her. “I thought it would be fun to do our little bit in the furtherance of young love.”
“Since you seem to know so much, how does Repp feel about her?”
“Adorably guilty because she’s so young and a Calder.”
The first person Ty saw when he entered Sally’s restaurant and bar was Jessy, seated at a table with Dick Ballard. She looked up and met his gaze for an instant, then responded to some remark Ballard made. Ty was a step or two behind Tara and Cathleen as they walked to a vacant table. They were barely seated when Cat popped up.
“May I have some change so I can play the jukebox?” She held out her hand expectantly to Ty.
He dug in his pocket and gave her some. She was gone in a flash. Tara glanced at him knowingly and murmured, “Guess who is at the pool table?”
Repp Taylor stood tall and lean, with jet-dark hair and eyes. With a smile, he nodded to Cat, then ambled over to lean on the cue stick and check out the selections she was making.
But Ty didn’t share Tara’s interest in these opening moves of courtship, even though she gave him a play-by-play description as it innocently unfolded over the evening. His mind was on other things, mainly the image of Jessy with that strongly expec
tant look burrowing into him. He hadn’t seen her since the last time he’d stopped by her cabin. He still wasn’t sure what had prodded him into kissing her, whether it had been out of anger at Tara, or something else. In many respects, Jessy was a sensitive creature despite her outward show of toughness. Now he wished he’d made amends for his behavior that night.