One Heart to Win by Johanna Lindsey Read Free Book Online

back to New York, which was impossible, silly even,but it was just a dream, after all. Yet her fears had come to the surface in that dream, and before it started to fade from her mind, she realized she now had the means to avoid facing those fears—for a few days more.
    She just needed her maid to go along with her plan because it wasn’t going to work if Anna didn’t agree to help her. She wasn’t really asking for much, just a day or two of anonymity when she could talk to her father and observe him without his knowing who she was. They were three days early, so he wasn’t even expecting her yet! It wasn’t as if she weren’t going to show up at the Warren ranch or intended to hide in town for three days. But Anna had balked and was proving to be quite stubborn about it.
    “This will give me some time to talk to my brothers first before I introduce myself to Papa,” Tiffany explained. “It’s been five years since I saw Roy, longer since Sam and Carl visited. They were all still boys then. They’re men now. I want to know how they feel about Papa, now that they’re grown.”
    “You could ask them that in private, without pretending to be the housekeeper they are expecting.”
    Trust Anna to be forthright and logical. “Damnit, I’m not ready to be Frank Warren’s daughter when I don’t know anything about him and don’t even know why Mama left him. I thought she would tell me the truth when I came of age, but she didn’t. She gave me a bunch of excuses instead. I know she wouldn’t have let me come here no matter the reason if she believed he was a bad man. But he must have done something bad to make her leave him, and I’m not as forgiving as she is. I don’t know if I can reunite with him without accusing him of all sorts of things that might not even be true, and that’s a horrible way for us to get acquainted, isn’t it?”
    Anna pursed her lips. “You haven’t thought this through. He’ll know you. He’ll know—”
    Finally sensing victory, Tiffany cut in, “But he won’t! He hasn’t seen me since I was three years old. He sent the boys to New York, but not once in all these years did he ever come with them to see me. And I don’t really look enough like Mama—do I?—for him to think I’m his daughter. This will work. My brothers might recognize me, but I’ll convince them to play along. Two days, that’s all I’m asking for.”
    “You didn’t let me finish,” Anna admonished. “It’s your hair he’ll recognize. There’s no way anyone can forget the color of hair like yours.”
    “Then we’ll—”
    Tiffany paused as a porter carried a few crates off the train and set them down next to them, forcing them to move out of the way. Her only remaining trunk was set down, too. She hadn’t cried when she’d been told that most of her belongings had been stolen by the train robbers. They could be replaced. It was just one more thing to add to the list of complaints she was going to send off to her mother as soon as she had a chance to write her. Anna had been luckier. Her luggage, which she’d borrowed from her family, was so old and tattered that the robbers had ignored it.
    Tiffany responded to Anna’s remark about her hair, saying, “Then we’ll dye it.”
    Anna was horrified. “No . . . we . . . will . . . not!”
    “If you won’t help, I’ll do it myself. With black hair, my brothers might not even recognize me, but my father certainly won’t. Black hair will throw him off completely, so no suspicion will enter his mind. Please, Anna. I don’t know him at all, and he’s disappointed me most of my life by refusing to be a partof it. I would as soon stay in town for this courtship I’m not interested in and not lay eyes on my father at all. But since my mama shot that idea down, I’d like a few days at least to find out what he’s really like.”
    Anna tried a different tack to talk Tiffany out of her scheme. “You won’t find hair dye in a town this