East Texas, 1880

"Look at it, Mel." Her father gestured outward with his beefy hands as he spoke with reverence. "As far as you can see. . . . it's ours. My lifelong dream come true. Not one man in a thousand lives to see his dreams fulfilled. If only Mary was here to see it." A tough man, tall and muscular for his fifty-three years, Richard Barnett only softened when he spoke of his wife. Mel was certain there were tears in the big man's eyes, even though her mother had been dead more than twelve years.

His jaw tightened as he turned to Mel again. "I've spent most of my life planning for and working this ranch, building it up from nothing, keeping it going when common sense told me to walk away, tracking down rustlers, fighting the storms that threatened to wash us away. . . . For what? Have I worked all my life just to see my dream passed to strangers?" The aging man ran his fingers through his thinning silver hair. "Dammit, Mel, I want grandsons!" he nearly yelled, staring into her eyes.

"There may never be any grandsons," Mel said evenly.

"Hell fire, Melanie Louise. You are the stubbornnest woman I ever met. Is it too much to ask? Is it unreasonable to expect my only child to marry and give me heirs?"

Richard had never been a patient man, and his daughter had the capacity to drive him nearly insane with her willful disobedience. Seeing it in her pale blue eyes, identical to his own, he knew he'd lost the battle again. Other men had daughters who smiled sweetly and answered "Yes, Daddy" to every request. He had seen such young women with his own eyes. But it was his own fault. He had spoiled his daughter after her mother's death. When she had wanted to ride with him, he had never refused her. When she wanted to learn how to shoot he taught her himself. When she decided she was more comfortable in men's clothing and forsook everything feminine he indulged her. She was better educated than most men he knew, he had seen to that, but you'd never know it when she threw herself into working the ranch side by side with the cowhands.

Mel turned away from her father. She knew he was truly exasperated when he called her by her full name. To him, and to others on the ranch, she had always been Mel. From where she stood, atop the small hill, she could see almost the whole ranch, green open fields bound by gentle slopes and a shallow, rushing river. All was quiet now. The cattle drive had started the week before, and just a few hands remained.

"Sometimes I think you'd like to marry me off to the first fertile male that crosses my path," she said bitterly. "Grandsons! I have no intention ever of marrying." Her voice was determined. "I'm perfectly capable of running this ranch myself."

"And then what?" Her father grabbed her by the arms, firmly but with a gentle touch. "I don't understand you. Every woman wants a husband and a family."

"I don't," Mel said stubbornly, her teeth clenched.

"I've sat back and watched you chase away every cattleman's son in the state. I thought maybe you wanted a more. . . . dandified husband, so I allowed you to spend a year in Philadelphia with your aunt Cecilia." He said his sister-in-law's name as though it left a bitter taste in his mouth. "And what happens? You shoot some poor fella in the ass, for chrissakes."

"He deserved it," she spat.

"It don't matter." He sighed. "Brett Thompson still asks after you. Why, lots of times while you were away he came by just to ask how you were and when you'd be coming home. I think he'd still like to marry you."

"Brett Thompson." Mel wrinkled her nose in disgust.

"Brett's a good-lookin' boy. He'd get me fine, strappin' grandsons."

"With the brains of a steer." Mel jerked her arms out of his grip and backed away. She removed the wide-brimmed hat that held her golden hair off her neck and let it spill down her back. "Are you going to try to force me to marry Brett?"

Richard took her chin in his big hand and lifted her face to his. Another girl would have cried, faced him with watery eyes and trembling chin, but not Mel. Hers was a look of defiance. It was a look with which he had become distressingly familiar.

"I'll not force you to marry anyone, Mel, my beautiful pig-headed daughter. If your eyes were brown you'd be the very picture of your mother when I married her. I find it difficult to force you to do anything. I'm just asking you to think about the future. You're twenty years old, Mel, and I won't be around forever."

"Don't say that." Mel's voice softened.

"Well, it's true, dammit. I just want to see you happy, settled, with a family of your own."

"I'm perfectly happy right now," Mel insisted.

Richard frowned. Mel had been back at the ranch for nearly three months, and he knew she was anything but happy. She rarely smiled anymore, and once she had been so lighthearted. He missed her laughter.

He dismissed the urge to press her once again for a full explanation of her sudden return from Philadelphia and her change of disposition. He'd given up hope of ever hearing the whole story from her, though he longed to know what that man had done to her. "Let's change the subject."

He smiled.

"Thank you," she said insincerely.

"You remember my old friend James Maxwell?"

"I've heard you mention him. He died a long time ago, didn't he?"

"Almost fourteen years ago, though sometimes it seems like yesterday that Max and I were working side by side while Mary and his wife Caroline had babies and cooked for all the hands, and dragged us to church on Sunday. Then came the war, and then Max was killed." His voice drifted away as he remembered that day. "You were six years old. Do you remember them at all?"

Mel shook her head.

"Those were happy times, though we didn't have much, I can tell you. But we had such grand plans."

He didn't say anything more for a few moments, and Mel stood silently beside her father, allowing him to stay lost in the past. He wasn't normally a maudlin man, but every now and then she would find him reading over old letters, or standing silently over the graves of his wife and the three babies that hadn't survived their first days of life.

Finally he shook off his somber mood and smiled. "Max had four children, three daughters and a son, the eldest. Little Max was twelve or so when his father died. Caroline packed her family up and went back East less than a week after Max was buried. She never did like Texas, and she liked it even less after Max was killed."

Mel linked her arm through her father's. For all his boasts about the fulfillment of his dreams, she knew he hadn't had an easy life. Besides his immediate family, he had buried more friends than Mel could count. "Do you know what happened to his family?"

"I hear from Caroline every now and then. Sometimes there wouldn't be a word for years, and I'd figure she passed on or finally remarried and put this life behind her, and then I get one letter after another for a while." He grinned. "She said Little Max is just like his father, the spittin' image. For years I've been invitin' them to come out for a visit."

"Still doesn't like Texas, I guess."

"Caroline will never leave the East again. Oh, she says in her letters that she might one day, but I know it's a lie." His face lit up and a smile deepened the wrinkles around his eyes. "But Little Max has agreed to visit. He'll be here next week."

Mel was happy for her father and felt a bit of relief for herself. With his old friend's son to reminisce with he might forget about her marital status for a while. "That's great."

"Now I want you to make me a promise." Barnett returned his full attention to his daughter.

Mel narrowed her eyes and gave her father a piercing stare. "What kind of a promise?"

"While Little Max is here, be nice to him. Wear some of those pretty dresses your aunt Cecilia shipped out to you." Barnett looked his daughter up and down critically. She wore what she always did on the ranch: a cotton shirt tucked into denim trousers and a soft and serviceable pair of boots.

"You don't expect. . . ."

Barnett threw his hands up into the air. "I don't expect anything of you. I'm just asking you to act like a lady while Little Max is here."

"So I can entice him with my feminine wiles and convince him to marry me and stay here on the ranch and make babies." Mel made a rough noise that was supposed to be a laugh of derision but sounded more like a cry of pain. "Well, I certainly don't want a husband called Little Max. Sounds like the name for a puppy. Here Little Max," she called in a syrupy voice.

Barnett's good humor was gone. "Forget it. It was a dumb idea. At least promise me you won't shoot him, in the ass or anywhere else."

Mel turned away from her father and started walking toward the big white house. She stepped quickly, trying to outdistance him. It was useless, of course; his legs were so much longer than hers. She came to an abrupt halt.

"All right. I promise not to shoot him. But you can forget the rest of it. I'll just do my best to stay out of his way, and he'd better do the same."

She finished her march home alone, knowing now that once she had given her word she wouldn't break it. But an Easterner! Mel thought furiously as she entered the house by way of the wide front porch and ran up the stairs. She'd had her fill of Easterners, and now her father had invited one to the ranch. Her home! Her haven.

Mel's anger had faded somewhat since her return from Aunt Cecilia's, but she was still unable to talk to her father or anyone else about what had happened there. Too upset at first to explain, then too angry and embarrassed, now it simply didn't matter. She could never explain away her newfound reputation as a wild woman who shot her suitors when they rejected her. It didn't matter what the man had done; she was left with a tarnished reputation and a deep hatred for smooth-talking, lying Easterners.

Her year in Philadelphia was like a dream now, she had so worked to put it out of her mind. She had arrived at her mother's sister's house a gangly, unmannered tomboy. Aunt Cecilia had clucked and cooed, blaming Richard Barnett and all those years of living without a mother on a ranch in "that heathen country," as she always called it, for Mel's unacceptable development. But Mel had been a quick study at becoming a lady, as she was at everything else, drawing on the years of tutoring upon which her father had insisted. Aunt Cecilia had been proud of Mel's accomplishments, viewing them as a personal triumph, and Mel had been introduced first to her aunt's closest circle of friends and then to society. Aunt Cecilia had insisted on calling Richard Barnett a cattle baron, when that was an exaggeration, but "rancher" just didn't sound the same to her.

Of course, no one in Philadelphia had called her Mel. Aunt Cecilia had explained to her that Melanie was a perfectly lovely name, whereas "Mel" sounded like a stableboy. Mel had accepted her aunt's decision in pursuit of a better life, as she did everything else her aunt had taught her. She had mimicked her cousins, those two seemingly useless but always happy girls. After a few months back East Mel could embroider fairly well, though she hadn't touched a needle since her return to Texas. She had learned to smile sweetly, not laugh too loud, and to keep her opinions to herself. In the end, Melanie Barnett had made herself into a perfectly respectable lady, and Edward Fallon had come calling.

Edward. The thought of him still made her grit her teeth and ball her fists unconsciously. She wished, as she had a hundred times, that she had shot him in the heart, not in the backside. That lying, good-for-nothing. . . . and her father was bringing another one of them into their home to present to her as husband material.

He'd never even seen her, yet Little Max was willing to leave the comforts of the East for a chance at her father's ranch and the modest fortune he'd managed to build.

Mel paced almost frantically in the confines of her sparsely furnished room. She wouldn't let her father choose a husband for her, and no matter how fervently he denied it she knew he intended for her to marry Little Max.

She brought her anger under control, and after some thought Mel actually smiled. She had learned more in Philadelphia than how to embroider and sit like a lady. She knew what those Eastern charmers liked in a woman. . . . and what they didn't.

Little Max wouldn't last a week.

Copyright © 1994 by Linda Winstead