of garbled profanity. Joe sensed that his father-in-law knew exactly what was going on. He could imagine how trapped and scared the once-powerful man must feel. But there was nothing more that could be done.
Joe walked out into the sunshine with his wife, both of them lost in thought. Their lives had taken an abrupt turn. There were some far-reaching decisions to be made.
“Let’s have some lunch at the hotel before we drive home,” he said. “It’ll be easier to talk there than in the buggy.”
They walked into the hotel restaurant. The busy noon lunch hour had passed, so getting a quiet table wasn’t a problem. Amelia ordered chicken soup. “I don’t really feel like eating,” she said.
“Neither do I, but we’ve got to eat sometime.” Joe ordered the same thing, with coffee for him and tea for her. “Are you all right?” he asked her as their beverages arrived.
“I will be.” Amelia added milk to her tea and stirred it. “I just need a little time. It’s not as if Loren Hollister was ever much of a father to me. But I need to be there for him. At least you won’t have to worry about my running off to St. Louis.”
“I hadn’t even thought of that.” Joe took a deep breath, knowing what he needed to say and that it wouldn’t be easy. “You can’t take care of your father and Mason and run the ranch on your own. As soon as your father’s ready to come home, I’ll be closing my house and moving back to the ranch with you.”
He watched her face as he spoke the words. At first she looked surprised. Then her expression hardened. “No,” she said.
“Amelia, you’re going to need—”
“No, listen.” She cut him off. “I’ve already thought this through. You could’ve stayed on the ranch with your family. Instead you chose to go off and live your own life. Now that you’re gone, I don’t want you back—not in the house and not in my bed. Ralph is an excellent foreman. He’s already running things at the ranch. And there’s a strong, kindly man, a former buffalo soldier, who tends the animals when they’re sick or hurt. I’m sure that if I offered to raise his pay, he’d be willing to come inside and take care of my father—the lifting, the bathing and changing, things I could never do myself. So you see, I’ll be fine.” She took a sip of her tea and set the cup onto its saucer with a click. “I don’t need you, Joe.”
“Are you saying you want a divorce?”
She gave him an odd little smile. “Not at all. I like being a respectable married woman who’s free to make her own choices. And there’s a small matter of property—the house you built, the livestock, and the lumber business, for which you use land that you filed on under my name. Being Mrs. Joe Dollarhide has certain advantages, and I don’t want to lose them. And then, of course, there’s Mason—” She broke off. “Oh, look. Here comes the waiter. I think maybe I could eat a little something after all.”
Forcing himself to eat, Joe watched as his wife calmly finished her chicken soup.
Who was this woman?
Over the years, he’d let himself believe that he’d married a helpless little doll. But the wife who sat across the table from him was strong-willed and calculating, even cold.
He could understand that she had no great love for her father, who’d left her at a young age, then married her off at the first opportunity. Joe could even understand her lack of feelings for a husband who’d put his ambition ahead of their marriage. But was he seeing something new in her—or was he seeing what had been there all along?
They finished their lunch and, after stopping to buy a peppermint stick for Mason, made the long, tense drive back to the ranch. When Joe pulled the buggy up to the house, he saw Mason on the porch. Ralph Tomlinson was with him. Joe had paid little attention to the hired help since leaving the ranch. But as Tomlinson came down the steps to give Amelia a hand and take the buggy, Joe couldn’t help but notice his rugged good looks, and the way his gaze lingered on her as he helped her to the ground. Did the foreman have something to do with Amelia’s refusal to let her husband come home?