He was right, Susan conceded as she rubbed herself dry with a towel and put on clean clothes. When such things happened, it was almost always the woman who got blamed. She was asking for it, people would say. If she’d dressed or behaved differently, it would never have happened. Decent women didn’t get raped.

So she would say nothing. But she couldn’t stay here in Texas, not even if it meant leaving Bull.

Bull. Her heart contracted. She’d wanted him to be her first when the time was right. Now . . . no, she could never tell him what had happened. If he knew, he’d go after Ferg; and Ferg wouldn’t fight fair. He would find a way to backstab Bull and hurt him, or even destroy him. Whatever happened, she couldn’t involve Bull in this shameful nightmare. She would have to deal with it alone.

She had enough credit on her Master Charge to pay for the flight from Lubbock to Savannah. Getting to the airport would be a challenge. If she asked her parents to take her, they might try to stop her from leaving or, worse, invite Ferg to drive her. Any ranch employee she offered to pay would insist on getting permission from Ham. And involving Bull in any way was out of the question.

There was another option—riskier, but possible to do alone. She would buy her ticket over the phone, then make her escape plan. She had to believe it would work, that she would get home safely and somehow, later, find her way back to Bull.

* * *

Susan waited in her room until she heard Ferg’s car heading down the lane, most likely for town. Alone in the house, she called an airline ticket agent from the phone in Ham’s office. The earliest flight left at 6:15 that evening. She bought a single, one-way fare and packed her suitcase. The dirty clothes she’d worn that morning were bagged separately. She would toss them in a trash can along the way to the airport, where no one who knew her would ever find them.

Now came the risky part. If her parents, or Ferg, showed up before she left, she’d have a fight on her hands. She might not get away at all.

In Ham’s office, she wrote a note and left it open on his desk. The keys to the ranch vehicles hung on hooks inside one of the cabinet doors. By now Susan was familiar with them. She pocketed the spare key to one of the newer pickup trucks and walked outside. Leaving her suitcase next to the porch, she went back to the vehicle shed. The ranch employees knew her. No one questioned her when she took the truck, pulled it around to the front of the house, and loaded her suitcase inside. Minutes later she was headed up the highway.

The note she’d left told her family that she was going home and instructed Ham that his truck could be picked up in long-term parking. The spare key and the parking ticket would be inside.

She didn’t have Bull’s phone number, or anyway to get word to him now. But tonight, at home, she would get his number from information and try to call him. If she couldn’t reach him any other way, she would write him a letter.

She was on her way. She could go back to Savannah and take time to rest and heal while she made plans to move out of her parents’ house. She was stronger than what had happened today, Susan told herself—strong enough to put the nightmare behind her and move on with her life.

An unexpected tear trickled down her face. A hidden voice whispered that she was still in denial—that the sick horror of what Ferg had done to her was still sinking in. Well, let it sink. Whatever it took, she would push her way through this and come back to Bull a whole woman, ready to love him.

Everything would be all right, she told herself.

But what would she do if she was pregnant with Ferg’s baby?

* * *

Bull lay awake, gazing through the open window at the midnight sky. He was tired after a long day’s work, but he was wide awake, the night too warm, the bedsheet wrapped around his body from hours of tossing and turning.

Today he had held Susan in his arms and made her a promise—that if she’d wait for him, he would make this ranch a place she could be proud of. It was a promise he meant to keep at any cost. But he was just beginning to realize what he’d taken on.

For the past two years he’d put his money and effort into the barn and other outbuildings, the fences, the watering tanks, and the new windmill. But a quality woman like Susan would need a quality home, and the ranch house was as ugly and dilapidated as it had been on the day he’d first come home from the rodeo.

Williston Tyler had designed and constructed the house for his beloved wife. When she’d died in childbirth, the grieving man had lost all interest in finishing the place. To this day, it remained as he’d left it—the outside covered with cheap “temporary” siding, the windows unframed, the walls bare, the floors little more than rough planks, the kitchen barely functional.

The house was solidly built, with a gray tile roof, a broad front porch, four bedrooms, a dining room, and two baths. But making it as fine as Susan deserved, even if he did all the work himself, would cost more than he dared think about.

He’d be selling off more than half his herd this fall, keeping only the pregnant cows, the immature calves and yearlings, and the two young stud bulls to winter over. There’d be money coming in, but much of it would have to go for wages, feed, equipment, and maintenance on the ranch. There wouldn’t be much cash left for the house. To have it ready for Susan by next summer would take a miracle—and Bull refused to believe in miracles unless he could somehow make one of his own.

Nothing was sure in this life. Susan could easily change her mind about him. She could meet a more promising man at college or, God forbid, decide to go ahead and marry Ferg. But he had to believe she would come back to him. Only that belief would give him the resolve to finish the house.

But he couldn’t even start without a way to earn more money. He turned over in bed, racking his brain for a plan.

That plan had just dawned on him when the telephone rang.

The phone was in the ranch office. Trailing the tangled sheet, Bull stumbled down the dark hallway. He hoped to hell it was a wrong number. News that came in the middle of the night tended to be bad.

He grabbed the receiver in mid-ring. “Tyler,” he muttered.

“Bull, this is Susan.” There was a faint crackle on the line. Her voice was faint, but something in her tone alarmed him.

“Are you all right, Susan? Where are you?”

“I’m . . . fine.” He heard the hesitation and sensed that she was anything but fine. “I’m in Savannah, at the house,” she said. “I flew home alone. Sorry, I couldn’t tell you I was going. I just couldn’t stand it there anymore.”

Tags: Janet Dailey The Tylers of Texas Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net