Wyoming True - Diana Palmer Page 0,1

died, but nobody knew about the second husband, except that she’d divorced him. Cort Grier had dated her before he became entangled with Mina. He’d seen them on a dance floor, glued to each other at a party, and they left together. They’d dated often while he was in town. So presumably the cattle baron had a brief liaison with her. From what people said about her, she wasn’t picky about men. Anybody would do.

He didn’t like women like that. That was probably hypocritical, he considered, because he’d sown his own wild oats years ago. He averted his eyes from the divorcée’s blistering glare with magnificent indifference and sipped coffee.

People talked about the double standard, about men sleeping around while women were chastised for it. But there had been a legitimate reason for it a hundred and fifty years ago, when there was no real method of birth control. A husband wandered and spread his favors around so that he wouldn’t have an eternally pregnant wife who would die before reaching the age of forty. He wondered how many modern women even knew that or considered that social mores sometimes had justifiable foundations. Well, he amended, somewhat justifiable.

He glanced at the woman, who was smiling at the clerk and paying for her takeout. He didn’t like her. She knew it. He’d made his opinion of her quite clear at a party they’d both attended a week back. Their hostess had been matchmaking and nudged them together onto the dance floor. He could do Latin dances. So could she. But this was a slow two-step and he hated the contact.

“I don’t have a fatal contagious disease,” Ida had said bitingly when he held her as if he had a stick of dynamite in his reluctant arms. She was hating the contact, too, and hiding it in bad temper.

He lifted an eyebrow, his pale, glittery silver eyes lancing down into her china-blue ones. “Really? Have you had lab work to make sure?” he added, just to irritate her.

The glare grew hotter. “I don’t want to dance with you,” she said curtly. She was stiff even in the light embrace. Amazing, with her reputation, that she seemed to dislike him.

“They say any man will do, where you’re concerned,” he drawled. “I don’t appeal to you?”

She swallowed, hard, and glanced around as if hoping the music would stop.

“And here I thought you’d come up with something trite, along the lines that you only dated men in your own species,” he taunted.

Another couple, spinning around, came a little too close, and Jake pulled Ida abruptly closer and turned her to avoid a collision.

Her reaction was sudden and stark. She jerked away from him, almost shivering, her eyes lowered. “I can’t...” she began in a choked tone.

He’d glared at her. “Any man but me, is that how it goes?” he asked in a deep, biting whisper, viciously offended and not even sure why he was offended.

She hadn’t even looked at him. She’d turned and walked off the dance floor. Minutes later she’d thanked her hostess for the invitation and driven her car away. Jake, standing by the punch bowl, was confounded by her behavior. She’d actually seemed afraid of him. And that was fanciful thinking when the whole town knew what she was.

He glanced toward the counter, where she was picking up her order and smiling at the female clerk.

Maybe it was an act, he mused. Maybe she pretended to be nervous toward a man when she was stalking him. The problem with that theory was that she hadn’t come near Jake since the party. In fact, when she left the café, she went the long way around to the front door, so that she wouldn’t have to pass the table where he was sitting.

He finished his coffee and took the cup back to the counter. “You make good coffee, Cindy,” he told the employee, who was a married grandmother.

She grinned at him. “Thanks, Mr. McGuire. My husband runs on black coffee. He’s a trucker. If I couldn’t make it to suit him, I’d be in divorce court in no time,” she joked.

“Fat chance. Mack’s crazy about you,” he chuckled. He glanced toward the door. “The happy divorcée doesn’t eat with the common folk?” he added.

“Oh, you mean Ida,” she said. She grimaced. “She doesn’t go out much. She lives near us, you know. One night I heard her screaming and I called the sheriff’s department. I was afraid somebody might have broken in on her.