When Cathryn was eight her world changed. It had also been a time of change for Rule. The same year that her mother died, leaving Cathryn stunned and withdrawn, solemn beyond her years, Rule was drafted. He was nineteen when he got off the plane in Saigon. By the time he returned three years later, nothing was the same.
Ward Donahue had remarried to a darkly beautiful woman from New Orleans. From the first Cathryn didn’t quite like Monica. For her father’s sake she hid her feelings and did her best to get along with Monica, establishing an uneasy truce. Each of them walked softly around the other. It wasn’t that Monica was the stereotypical wicked stepmother; she simply wasn’t a motherly woman, not even to her own daughter, Ricky. Monica liked bright lights and dancing, and from the first she didn’t fit in with the hardworking ranch life. She tried, for Ward’s sake. That was the one thing Cathryn never doubted, that Monica loved her father. For that reason she and Monica existed in mutual if unenthusiastic peace.
The upheaval in Rule’s life had been even greater. He had survived Vietnam, but sometimes it seemed as if only his body had returned. His dark, laughing eyes no longer laughed; they watched and brooded. His body was scarred with wounds that had healed, but the mental wounds he had suffered had changed him forever. He never talked about it. He seldom talked at all. He kept to himself and watched people with those hard, expressionless eyes, and soon he became an outcast.
He drank a lot, sitting alone and steadily downing the alcohol, his face closed and stony. Naturally he became even more attractive to women than he had been before. Some women couldn’t resist the aura of danger that clung to him like an invisible cloak. They dreamed of being the magic one who could comfort him, heal him and take him away from the nightmare he still lived.
He was involved in one scandal after another. His father threw him out of the house and no one else would hire him, the ranchers and merchants banding together to rid the neighborhood of him. Somehow he still found money for whiskey, and he sometimes disappeared for days, leading people to speculate that he had crawled off somewhere and died. But he always turned up like a bad penny, a bit thinner, more haggard, but always there.
It was inevitable that the hostility against him would escalate into violence; he had been involved with too many women, snarled at too many men. Ward Donahue found him one day lying sprawled in a ditch on the outskirts of town. Rule was battered from the punishment a group of men had decided was his due, and so thin that his bones shone white through his skin. Still silent and intent, his dark eyes glittered up at his rescuer with grim defiance even though he was unable to stand. Without a word Ward lifted the younger man in his arms as if he were a child and placed him in the pickup, taking him to the ranch to be cared for. A week later Rule crawled painfully onto a horse and rode with Ward about the ranch, performing the hard but necessary chore of riding fence, repairing broken fencing and rounding up strays. He was in such pain for the first few days that sweat poured from his body whenever he moved, yet he continued with grim determination.
He stopped drinking and began eating normal meals again. He grew stronger and gained weight, both from the food and from the hard physical work he was doing. He never talked about what had happened. The other ranch hands left him strictly alone except for what contact was necessary during work, but Rule was uncommunicative at the best of times. He worked and he ate and he slept, and whatever Ward Donahue asked of him he would have accomplished or died in the effort.
The affection and trust between the two men was evident; no one was surprised when Rule was made foreman after the previous foreman left for another job in Oklahoma. As Ward said to anyone who would listen, Rule had an instinct for horses and cattle, and Ward trusted him. By that time the ranch hands had become used to working with him and the transition was a peaceful one.
Shortly afterward Ward died of a massive stroke. Cathryn and Ricky were at school at the time, and Cathryn could still remember her surprise when Rule came to take her out of class. He led her outside and there told her of her father’s death, and he held her in his arms while she cried the violent tears of fresh grief, his lean callused hand smoothing back her heavy mahogany red hair. She had been slightly afraid of him, but now she clung to him, instinctively comforted by his steely strength. Her father had trusted him, so how could she do less?
Because of that tentative trust, Cathryn felt doubly betrayed when Rule began to act as if he owned the ranch. No one could take her father’s place. How dare he even try? But more and more Rule took his meals at the ranch house. He finally moved in completely, settling himself in the corner guestroom that overlooked the stables and bunkhouse. It was particularly galling that Monica made no effort to assert herself; she let Rule have his way in anything concerning the ranch. She was a woman who automatically leaned on whatever man was handy, and certainly she was no match for Rule. Looking back, Cathryn realized now that Monica had been utterly lost when it came to ranch matters, yet she had no other home for herself and Ricky, so she had been locked into a life that was alien to her, totally unable to handle a man like Rule, who was both determined and dangerous.
Cathryn was bitterly resentful of Rule’s takeover. Ward had literally picked him up out of the gutter and stood him on his feet, held him up until he could stand on his own, and this was how he was repaid, by Rule moving in and taking over.
The ranch was Cathryn’s, with Monica appointed as her legal guardian, but Cathryn had no voice in the running of it. Without exception the men went to Rule for their orders, despite everything Cathryn could do. She tried to do plenty. Losing her father had shocked her out of her shyness, and she fought for her ranch with the ferocity of the uninformed young, disobeying Rule at every turn. At that stage of her life Ricky had been a willing accomplice. Ricky was always willing to break rules, any rules. But no matter what she did, Cathryn always felt that she was no more irritating to Rule than a mosquito he could casually brush aside.
When he decided to branch out into horse breeding, Monica provided the capital over Cathryn’s vociferous opposition, dipping without argument into the funds set aside for the girls’ college educations. Whatever Rule wanted, he got. He had the Bar D under his thumb...for the time being. Cathryn lay awake at night and thought ahead with relish to the day when she would be of age, savoring in her mind the words she would say when she fired Rule Jackson.
Rule even extended his domination to her personal life. When she was fifteen she accepted a date with an eighteen-year-old boy to attend a dance. Rule found out about it and called the boy, quietly informing him that Cathryn wasn’t old enough yet to date. When Cathryn discovered what he had done she lost her temper, goaded into action and recklessness. Without thinking, she hit him, her palm slamming across his face with a force that numbed her arm.
He didn’t speak. His dark eyes narrowed; then, with the swiftness of a snake lashing out, he grabbed her arm and hauled her upstairs. Cathryn kicked and scratched and yelled every inch of the way, but it was a useless effort. He handled her with ease, his strength so much greater than hers that she was as helpless as an infant. Once they reached her room, he jerked her jeans down and sat on the bed, pulled her across his lap and gave her the spanking of her life. At fifteen Cathryn had just begun shaping from adolescence into the rounder form of womanhood, and the embarrassment she suffered had in some ways been worse than the pain inflicted by his callused palm. When he let her go she scrambled to her feet and repaired her clothing, her face twisted with fury.
“You’re asking me to treat you like a woman,” he said, his voice low and even. “But you’re just a kid and I treated you like a kid. Don’t push me until you’re old enough to handle it.”
Cathryn whirled and went flying down the stairs in search of Monica, her cheeks still wet with tears as she screamed that he should be fired, now.
Monica laughed in her face. “Don’t