And they were. It was amazing, the looks that he got from his own kinfolk when he mentioned that their prized biscuit maker had gone missing.
“It’s your fault,” Rey said angrily. “You should have proposed to her.”
“I thought you guys had all that taken care of,” Corrigan said reasonably. “The rings, the minister, the gown, the invitations…”
“Everything except the most important part,” Cag told him coldly.
“Oh, that. Did we forget to tell her that he loved her?” Leo asked sharply. “Good Lord, we did! No wonder she left!” He glared at his brother. “You could have told her yourself if you hadn’t been chewing on your hurt pride. And speaking of pride, why didn’t you tell Tira the truth instead of hedging your bets with a bunch of lies?”
“Because Tira has a big mouth and I didn’t want the whole town to know I was dying of unrequited love for Dorie!” he raged. “She doesn’t want to marry me. She said so! A man has to have a little pride to cling to!”
“Pride and those sort of biscuits don’t mix,” Rey stressed. “We’ve got to get her back. Okay, boys, who do we know in the highway patrol? Better yet, don’t we know at least one Texas Ranger? Those boys can track anybody! Let’s pool resources here…”
Watching them work, Corrigan felt relieved for himself and just a little sorry for Dorie. She wouldn’t stand a chance.
She didn’t, either. A tall, good-looking man with black hair wearing a white Stetson and a Texas Ranger’s star on his uniform knocked at the door of her motel room in Victoria. When she answered it, he tipped his hat politely, smiled and put her in handcuffs.
They were halfway back to Jacobsville, her hastily packed suitcase and her purse beside her, before she got enough breath back to protest.
“But why have you arrested me?” she demanded.
“Why?” He thought for a minute and she saw him scowl in the rearview mirror. “Oh, I remember. Cattle rustling.” He nodded. “Yep, that’s it. Cattle rustling.” He glanced at her in the rearview mirror. “You see, rustling is a crime that cuts across county lines, which gave me the authority to arrest you.”
“Whose cattle have I rustled?” she demanded impertinently.
“The Hart Brothers filed the charges.”
“Hart… Corrigan Hart?” She made a furious sound under her breath. “No. Not Corrigan. Them. It was them! Them and their damned biscuits! It’s a put-up job,” she exclaimed. “They’ve falsely accused me so that they can get me back into their kitchen!”
He chuckled at the way she phrased it. The Hart brothers and their mania for biscuits was known far and wide. “No, ma’am, I can swear to that,” he told her. His twinkling black eyes shone out of a lean, darkly tanned face. His hair was black, too, straight and thick under that wide-brimmed white hat. “They showed me where it was.”
“It?”
“The bull you rustled. His stall was empty, all right.”
Her eyes bulged. “Didn’t you look for him on the ranch?”
“Yes, ma’am,” he assured her with a wide smile. “I looked. But the stall was empty, and they said he’d be in it if he hadn’t been rustled. That was a milliondollar bull, ma’am.” He shook his head. “They could shoot you for that. This is Texas, you know. Cattle rustling is a very serious charge.”
“How could I rustle a bull? Do you have any idea how much a bull weighs?” She was sounding hysterical. She calmed down. “All right. If I took that bull, where was he?”
“Probably hidden in your room, ma’am. I plan to phone back when we get to the Hart place and have the manager search it,” he assured her. His rakish grin widened. “Of course, if he doesn’t find a bull in your room, that will probably mean that I can drop the charges.”
“Drop them, the devil!” she flared, blowing a wisp of platinum hair out of her eyes. “I’ll sue the whole damned state for false arrest!”
He chuckled at her fury. “Sorry. You can’t. I had probable cause.”
“What probable cause?”
He glanced at her in the rearview mirror with a rakish grin. “You had a hamburger for lunch, didn’t you, ma’am?”
She was openly gasping by now. The man was a lunatic. He must be a friend of the brothers, that was the only possible explanation. She gave up arguing, because she couldn’t win. But she was going to do some serious damage to four ugly men when she got back to Jacobsville.
The ranger pulled up in front of the Harts’ ranch house and all four of them came tumbling out of the living room and down to the driveway. Every one of them was smiling except Corrigan.
“Thanks, Colton,” Leo said, shaking the ranger’s hand. “I don’t know what we’d have done without you.”
The man called Colton got out and opened the back seat to extricate a fuming, muttering Dorie. She glared at the brothers with eyes that promised retribution as her handcuffs were removed and her suitcase and purse handed to her.
“We found the bull,” Cag told the ranger. “He’d strayed just out behind the barn. Sorry to have put you to this trouble. We’ll make our own apologies to Miss Wayne, here.”
Colton stared at the fuming ex-prisoner with pursed lips. “Good luck,” he told them.
Dorie didn’t know where to start. She looked up at Colton and wondered how many years she could get for kicking a Texas Ranger’s shin.
Reading that intent in her eyes, he chuckled and climbed back into his car. “Tell Simon I said hello,” he called to them. “We miss seeing him around the state capital now that he’s given up public office.”
“I’ll tell him,” Cag promised.
That barely registered as he drove away with a wave of his hand, leaving Dorie alone with the men.
“Nice to see you again, Miss Wayne,” Cag said, tipping his hat. “Excuse me. Cows to feed.”
“Fences to mend,” Leo added, grinning as he followed Cag’s example.
“Right. Me, too.” Rey tipped his own hat and lit out after his brothers.
Which left Corrigan to face the music, and it was all furious discord and bass.
She folded her arms over her breasts and glared at him.
“It was their idea,” he said pointedly.
“Arrested for rustling. Me! He…that man…that Texas Ranger tried to infer that I had a bull hidden in my motel room, for God’s sake! He handcuffed me!” She held up her wrists to show them to him.
“He probably felt safer that way,” he remarked, observing her high color and furious face.
“I want to go home! Right now!”
He could see that it would be useless to try to talk to her. He only made one small effort. “Tira’s sorry,” he said quietly. “She wanted to tell you that she’s going to the Coltrains’ party with Charles Percy. I was going to drive, that’s all. I’d planned to take you with me.”
“I heard all about your ‘plan.’”
The pain in her eyes was hard to bear. He averted his gaze. “You’d said repeatedly that you wanted no part of me,” he said curtly. “I wasn’t about to let people think I was dying of love for you.”
“Wouldn’t that be one for the record books?” she said furiously.
His gaze met hers evenly. “I’ll get Joey to drive you home.”
He