Ride the Tiger by Lindsay McKenna Read Free Book Online Page A

emanating from him. It was such an incredibly different feeling, one she’d never encountered before. It acted as a stabilizer to her raw, spinning state. “Perhaps not,” Dany ventured softly. “When I got home, I found out the truth. I spent the last five days with my father—at least I had that time with him. We really talked for the first time in our lives about a lot of things...important things. It was from him that I really began to understand about my parents and what they meant to each other. I stopped being angry at them after that, because I knew they both loved me in their own way, and gave me what they had to give me.”
    It wasn’t much, Gib wanted to tell her, swallowing his anger. “How did your mother react to your father’s death?”
    â€œTerribly. She went to pieces after he died. For a year, she stayed in bed. The doctor said she had suffered a severe nervous breakdown, and he prescribed a lot of tranquilizers. After she got over the grief of my father’s passing, I spent another year getting her off the drugs—she’d become addicted to them. Gradually, Maman came out of it and began to live again. I picked up the reins of managing the plantation, and really, it was easy for me, because I understood what had to be done. Our workers are my extended family. I spent more time with them than with my parents when I was growing up. So when my father died and I assumed control, they remained loyal.”
    â€œAnd you’ve been running this huge place by yourself ever since.” Gib was amazed in one sense, but he had his own mother’s example to look to, running their large Texas ranch and providing the bare essentials of life for five people. The set of Dany’s chin and the flash of pride in her eyes told him she was made out of the same bolt of cloth his mother had been.
    â€œIt has been hard,” Dany assured him with a small smile. “But also it’s been my salvation—my friend, if you will. I could bury myself in farm work and the accounting books or the mountains of export papers when things got tough with my mother. The Vietnamese people who work and live on our land are wonderful. They love this plantation and the soil as much as I do. The children I grew up with are now working with me. Most of their parents are old, but I refuse to kick them off the land. I ask the elders to contribute what they can, and in a way that gives them respect and importance. We operate more like a village hamlet than an agricultural business.”
    Gib shook his head. “This place seems too big for one person to handle effectively.”
    Dany shrugged. “I don’t have anything else to do. I’m used to working twelve to sixteen hours a day, Major.”
    Gib knew it was past time for him to leave. Crossing to the sofa, he picked up the report. “I’ll be back later,” he promised. “Next time, I’ll call ahead.”
    Dany nodded, chewing her lower lip with worry. “Couldn’t you just call me? We could talk over the phone.”
    Gib shook his head. “No. I don’t like this any more than you do, but it’s got to be done.”
    Dany felt suddenly crushed—and angry—at his insensitivity to her plight.
    Settling the garrison cap on his head, Gib looked over at her. Anger was in her eyes, but so was something else. Something that triggered his protective mechanism. “I’ll be in touch,” he promised huskily.

CHAPTER THREE
    â€œC olonel Parsons wants to see you right away,” Sergeant Jeffrey said from his desk.
    Frowning, Gib dropped the pencil onto his own desk. Damn. What now? “Thanks, Jeffrey.” Locating his utility cap in a lower drawer, Gib got to his feet and walked across the hollow-sounding plywood floor of the tent toward the door. He knew what the colonel wanted—an update on the Villard investigation.
    As Gib left the hot, steamy confines of