This Calder Sky (Calder Saga 3)

“I will be a lady,” she hissed and tried to strain free of his steel hold.

“It doesn’t matter.” Lazy with satisfaction, he ran his eyes over her animated features. “What man wants a tame, dull lady when he can enjoy the excitement of someone who is all woman? You don’t need to change to satisfy me.”

The need to impose his will on her ran through him. The rashness of it made him catch her shoulders and pull her against him. His mouth silenced her faint outcry with the domination of his hard kiss. It lasted only seconds. Interrupted by someone’s approach, Chase released her and stepped away, trying to get a hold on the turbulence of his emotions.

“Hello, Chase.” The slightly timid voice of a young girl announced the intruder.

Indifferent recognition registered on Chase’s face. “Hello, Dorie.” He ignored the shyly flirtatious look she gave him, mentally dismissing her as too young to warrant more than polite attention.

“Is there anything I can help you with?” the girl offered.

“No, thanks.” His gaze had already returned to Maggie, clashing with hers before it suddenly hit him that the two girls were roughly the same age. His mouth twisted in self-mockery as the hard brown of his eyes softened to velvet in a silent apology to Maggie for his actions. Some of her stiffness melted in an equally silent acceptance of his apology. His finger briefly touched the pointed brim of his hat to take his leave from them before he turned to retrace his steps and rejoin Buck.

“Gee,” Dorie murmured enviously as she watched him walk away. “I wish Chase Calder would look at me the way he looked at you.” With a sigh, she glanced back at Maggie and smiled to show there were no hard feelings. “I found some hairpins. Would you like me to fix your hair?”

“No.” This time when Maggie glanced in the mirror, she saw what Chase had noticed. She was too young for this particular style of dress, and a change in hairdos wouldn’t alter that. She felt like an adolescent caught wearing lipstick and playing at adulthood. That’s what the mirror showed her, regardless of the maturity she felt inside. Yet Chase’s remark hadn’t shaken her resolve that someday she’d wear a dress like this—with high-heeled shoes, jewelry, and all the accessories that belonged with it. No one was going to say she couldn’t be a lady, especially a Calder. Unconsciously, Maggie shared her father’s resentment of the Calders’ status, power, and prestige.

After one last look at herself in the mirror, Maggie turned from it. “I’d better change back into my own clothes.” She started toward the dressing room in the back and her schoolmate tagged along, eyeing her with new interest.

“I heard that you’ve been seeing a lot of Chase Calder lately,” Dorie remarked. “Is that true?”

“Where did you hear that?”

“I don’t remember.” The girl shrugged, because the source didn’t seem important. “You know how it is in the store; half the people come in just to gossip. Have you been meeting him?”

“I’ve seen him a few times,” Maggie admitted and felt herself being elevated to a new position of importance by the association.

“What’s it like … when he … does it to you?” The girl stammered over the question, too embarrassed to be forthright, yet too curious to keep silent.

And Maggie realized what kind of gossip had been circulating. Her lips came together in a straight line as she regarded her supposed friend with a steadiness Dorie couldn’t match.

“When he does what?” Maggie challenged. Then she bluntly added, “Do you mean when he makes love to me?”

“I wasn’t trying to pry, Maggie. Honest.”

The end result was the same, and it hurt Maggie, stinging her temper. “Why don’t you go ask Chase to show you? Then you won’t have to ask me what it’s like. You can find out for yourself.”

“I couldn’t.” The girl drew back in shock.

“Why not? He’s very good at deflowering virgins.” Maggie closed the dressing room door and began trembling. Her eyes smarted with tears, but she determinedly blinked them away and stripped out of the dress. Dorie had vanished from the back storage area when Maggie came out wearing her blouse and jeans again.

Webb pulled up to the gasoline pumps and stopped the station wagon. As he climbed out, a teen-aged boy came trotting out of the building. “Shall I fill it up for you, Mr. Calder?”

“Yes, and check the oil.” Automatically, he glanced at the vehicles parked nearby. The ranch pickup he passed over, but his gaze paused on the truck belonging to O’Rourke. The sight of it aroused the suspicious questions that had been running through his mind for the last week. They were little more than hunches, but Webb often relied on gut feelings, which ultimately proved to be correct.

He walked over to the truck and wandered around it, stopping to poke at the dirt and gravel lodged in the tire treads and pull out the long grass stems caught in the rusted cracks of the chrome bumper. The grass was a common variety, although it grew in abundance on Triple C land, especially around the Broken Butte. The main road bisecting the rarely used track to that section had recently been resurfaced with new gravel. A sharpedged chip of stone was wedged in the tire treads. Neither item was conclusive evidence that O’Rourke had been in the vicinity, yet they both showed he could have been. Webb strolled thoughtfully back to his car, running this information through his mind.

“Sometimes I wonder how Angus keeps that truck running,” the boy at the pumps remarked with a shake of his head. The comment revealed he had observed Webb’s close inspection of the pickup. “You were almost a quart low, so I put one in.”

“Fine.” He nodded, but he was more interested in what else the teen-ager might have noticed. “Trucks take a beating in this country, especially the kind of range land Angus has.”

“Yeah, I suppose. Lately, most of his miles have been put on coming back and forth to town. I’ll bet he’s been here almost as much as he’s at home.” The pump nozzle automatically shut off and the boy clicked it to manual to fill the gas tank all the way to the top.

“Oh?” It was a prompting sound.

“If he isn’t in the café having coffee, then he’s at Jake’s having a beer with Tucker,” the boy explained. “It’s no wonder his place always looks like it’s about to fall in around his ears.”

Tucker. Webb glanced at the café. A “Closed” sign hung on the door. He sifted through the information he knew about the man, ignoring his reputation as a cook. Some years ago, there had been a questionable involvement in the purchase of stolen goods, but there had been no proof that Tucker had known what he was buying. The man kept his hands clean, but Webb was equally certain that Tucker had contacts with dirt on their hands. Tucker could easily act as a middleman for O’Rourke, possibly even a silent partner. He doubted that O’Rourke was in this alone—if he was the one who had stolen the beef.