Always You by Jill Gregory Read Free Book Online

her temper beyond redemption.
    Hold on to your hat, Mel. Think—think good and hard before you speak. It’s smarter to use your brain, girl, and not let your tongue run away with you like a bronc that’s been jabbed with a hot poker.
    She swallowed back her retort and closed her eyes for a moment, trying to gather her composure. Since Pop’s death she’d been working hard to correct her faults; she’d tried to grow up and run things as responsibly and even handedly as he had. She’d made an effort to learn how to curb her wildfire temper, to be patient and tolerant of others’ weaknesses and stupidities, as he had been. Pop had often told her it had taken him forty years of his life to learn tolerance and control; Melora, upon taking over the ranch, had pledged to herself that she would become more like him immediately, no matter how hard it proved. So now she gave herself a lecture, struggling to subdue her instincts to lash out in anger.
    Compose yourself. Think first; then speak.
    So... she thought . She thought about this lanky, despicable Cal with his cold green eyes. She thought about him swinging from a hangman’s noose. She thought about his face turning a ghastly mottled purple, about him being cut down after a good long time and buried in a cheap pine casket on Boot Hill.
    She thought the entire notion absolutely lovely.
    Melora was smiling grimly as she opened her eyes. “Fine,” she said, mimicking the tone he had used with her earlier. “If you want the cameo, here. Take it.” Yet her trembling fingers fumbled on the clasp. “And I hope you’re cursed every moment you have it. Which won’t be long. When my fiancé catches up with you—”
    She broke off at the sudden nasty gleam that entered his eyes. Melora stared at him, silent, trying to read the keenly attuned, deadly set of his face.
    “Yes?” Cal prodded. He cocked his head to one side, mocking her. “Don’t you want to threaten me with the dire punishments Mr. Wyatt Holden will exact?”
    She studied him, her heart suddenly thudding. “I never told you Wyatt’s name,” she said slowly. “How do you know it?”
    “I know lots of things, Miss Deane, and none of them concerns you.” He reached to take the cameo, which dangled in her hand.
    Melora made a small moue but didn’t try to cling to the cameo. It was so fragile she feared it would break in a struggle. But as Cal’s fingers grazed hers, heat singed her, and she dropped the cameo into his hand as if it were a live coal.
    Cal appeared not to experience any such sensation. He stared down at the delicate ivory cameo for a moment, then slowly closed his callused fist around it.
    When he looked at her again, his gaze flicked over her with dismissive coldness. “Go get dressed.”
    His expression aloof and unreadable, he watched her gather up her carpetbag and her trunk and hurry off toward the trees.
    Beneath that steely gaze, she was only too glad to escape to the shelter of the trees.
    * * *
    Less than a quarter of an hour later Melora had washed in the stream, combed the tangles from her hair, and dressed in the only garments that would be serviceable in her present predicament. The mulberry traveling dress she’d packed for her honeymoon wouldn’t do, nor would her aqua silk faille, nor the cream-colored walking gown with its delicately embroidered lace sleeves; all were left neatly folded within her brass trunk. She had to make do with her lace-up boots and the dark green velvet riding habit she’d originally worn at school in Boston; her father had bought it for her right before she went off and left him and Jinx for the very first time.
    “You’ll be riding in pretty parks now, Mel, not on the ranch,” he’d told her, his eyes glistening with proud tears. “I don’t want those eastern girls turning up their noses at my little girl. So you must have a right and proper riding habit, the kind they wear in the East. According to the catalogs at Naughton’s, this