Joan Hohl – The Dakota Man (страница 2)

And Mitch did care about Karla, for her sake, because she was a genuinely nice person, and for his own sake, for she was the best assistant he had ever employed.

He had made some progress with Karla after calming her down following Natalie’s dramatic little scene. With some gentle probing—in between dwindling, hiccuping sobs—Mitch had learned that Karla was determined to have and keep her baby. Not for any leftover feelings for the father, because she had none, but simply because it was her baby.

A decision Mitch silently applauded.

Still, Karla had maintained that she felt too ashamed to go to her parents, who lived in Rapid City, to ask for their financial or moral support. Karla was an only child, so there were no siblings to apply to for assistance. And, though she had made some friends in the year and a half she had been in Deadwood, she felt none were close enough to dump her problems on.

That left him, Mitch Grainger, the man with the tough exterior, surrounding a core of marsh-mallow in regards to weeping, defenseless females.

Helluva note, for sure.

An ironic smile of acceptance teased the corners of his sculpted, masculine lips. He’d take on the combined roles of surrogate father, brother and friend to Karla because of his soft spot…and because, if he didn’t, and his sister ever found out about it, she’d have his hide.

His humor restored, Mitch reached for the intercom to summon Karla, just as a timid rap sounded on his office door, followed by the subdued sound of Karla’s voice.

“May I come in, Mr. Grainger?”

“Yes, of course.” He sighed; despite the numerous times he had asked her to call him Mitch, Karla had persisted in the more formal address. Now, after the emotional scene enacted mere minutes before, the formality seemed ludicrous. “Come in and sit down,” he instructed as the door opened and she stepped inside. “And, from now on, call me Mitch.”

“Yes, sir,” she said meekly, crossing to the chair in front of his desk and perching on the edge of the seat.

He threw his hands up in exasperation. “I give up, call me anything you like. How are you feeling?”

“Better.” She managed a tremulous smile. “Thank you…for the use of your shoulder to cry on.”

He smiled back. “I’ve had plenty of practice. Years back, my younger sister went through a period in her teens when she was a regular waterworks.” His wry confidence achieved the desired effect.

She laughed and eased back in the chair. But her laughter quickly faded, erased by a frown of consternation. “About Miss Crane… I’d like to go see her, explain…”

“No.” Mitch cut her off, his voice sharp.

Karla bit her trembling lip, blinked against a renewed well of tears. “But…it was a misunderstanding,” she said, her voice unsteady. “Surely, if I talked to her…”

He silenced her with a slashing movement of his hand. “No, Karla. Natalie didn’t ask for, or wait long enough to hear an explanation. She added one and one and came up with three—you, me and your baby. Her mistake.” His tone hardened with cold finality. “It’s over. Now, let’s discuss another matter of business.”

She frowned. “What business?”

“Your business.”

“Mine?” Karla’s expression went blank.

“The baby,” he said, nudging her memory. “Your baby. Have you made any plans? Do you want to keep working? Or…”

“Yes, I want to keep working,” she interrupted him. “That is, if you don’t mind?”

“Why would I mind?” He grinned. “Hell, you’re the best assistant I’ve ever employed.”

“Thank you.” A pleased glow brightened her brown eyes, and a flush colored her pale cheeks.

“Okay, you want to continue working.”

“Oh, yes, please.”

“How long?”

“As long as I can.” Karla hesitated a moment before quickly adding, “I’d like to work up to the last possible minute.”

“Forget it.” He shook his head. “I don’t think that would be good for you or the baby.”

“But the work’s not really physical,” she insisted. “Having a baby is expensive today, and I’ll need every dollar I can earn.”

“I provide excellent health insurance coverage for you, Karla,” he reminded her. “Including maternity benefits.”

“I know, and I appreciate that, but I want to save as much as I can for afterward,” she explained. “I’ll need enough to tide me over until I can go back to work.”

“Don’t concern yourself with finances, I’ll take care of that. I want you to concentrate on taking care of yourself, and the child you’re carrying.” He held up a hand when she would have protested. “Five more months, Karla.”

“Six,” she dared to bargain. “I’ll only be seven-and-a-half months by then.”

He smiled at her show of temerity. “Okay, six,” he conceded. “But you will spend that sixth month training your replacement.”

“But it won’t take me a whole month to train someone,” she exclaimed. “I won’t have anything to do!”

“Exactly. Consider it a small victory that I’m allowing that much.”

She heaved a sigh of defeat. “You’re the boss.”

“I know.” His grin lasted all of a few seconds before turning into a grimace. “Damn,” he muttered. “When the time comes, how in the hell are we ever going to find someone suitable to replace you?”

A little over a month later, and many miles distant to the southeast, an individual ministorm raged beneath a sun-drenched corner of Pennsylvania….

“Rat.” The scissors slashed through the voluminous skirt.

“Louse.” A seam tore asunder.

“Jerk.” The bodice was sheared into small pieces.

“Creep.” Tiny buttons went flying.

“There…done.” Her chest heaving from her emotion-driven exertions, Maggie Reynolds stepped back and glared down at the ragged shards of white watered taffeta material that had formerly been the most exquisite wedding gown she had ever seen.

With a final burst of furious energy, she gave a vicious kick of one bare foot, scattering the pile of material into large and small pieces that glimmered in the early June sunlight streaming through the bedroom window.

Tears pricked her eyes; Maggie told herself it was the glare of sunlight, and not the fact that she was to have been married in that designer extravagance in two weeks’ time.

The sting in her eyes grew sharper. Just two days before, Maggie’s intended groom had thrown her a vicious curveball right out of left field. After sharing her apartment and her bed with him for nearly a year, and after all the arrangements for their wedding had been in place for months, she had come home from work to find all of his belongings gone, his clothes closet empty, and a note—a damned note—propped against the napkin holder on the kitchen table. The words he had written were imprinted on her memory.

Maggie, I’m sorry, I really am, he had scrawled on the lined yellow paper she kept for grocery lists. But I can’t go through with our marriage. I have fallen in love with Ellen Bennethan, and we are eloping to Mexico today. Please try not to hate me too much. Todd.

The thought of his name brought his image front and center in Maggie’s mind. Average height, sharp dresser, attractive, with coal-black hair and pale blue eyes. And, evidently, a class-A cheat. A sneer curled her soft lips. Hate him? She didn’t hate him. She despised him. So, he had fallen in love with Ellen Bennethan, had he? Bull. He had fallen in love with her money. Ellen, a meek, simpering twit, who had never worked a day in her life, was the only child and heir of Carl Bennethan, owner and head honcho of the Bennethan Furniture Company, and Todd’s employer.

Dear Todd had just taken off, leaving Maggie to clean up the mess after him. Which in itself was bad enough. But the thing that bit the deepest was that they had made love the very night before he split.

No, Maggie corrected herself with disgust. They hadn’t made love, they had had sex. And it hadn’t been great sex, either. Great? Ha! It had never been great. Far from it. From the beginning, Todd had been less than an enthusiastic lover, never mind energetic.

Or was she the less-than-energetic one?

How many times over the previous year had she asked herself that question? Maggie mused, self-doubt raising its nasty little head in her mind. In truth, she acknowledged, she had never become so passionately aroused that she felt swept away by the moment. Perhaps there was something lacking in her….

The hell with that, Maggie thought, anger reasserting itself to overwhelm doubt. And, to hell with Todd, and men in general. In her private opinion, sex was highly overrated, a fictional fantasy.

Outrage restored, Maggie made a low growling sound deep in her throat, and gave the rendered sparkling white pieces another scattering kick.

“Bastard.”

“Feel better now?”

Maggie spun around at the sound of the smoky, dryly voiced question, to glare at the young woman leaning with indolent nonchalance against the door frame. The woman, Maggie’s best friend, Hannah Deturk, was tall, slim, elegant and almost too beautiful to be tolerated.

Maggie had often thought, and even more often said, that if she didn’t like Hannah so much, she could easily and quite happily hate her.

“Not a hell of a lot,” Maggie admitted in a near snarl. “But I’m not finished yet, either.”

“Indeed?” Hannah raised perfectly arched honey-brown eyebrows. “You’re going to take the scissors to your entire trousseau?”