Page 61 of Wyoming Tough

“Told you the name wasn’t a coincidence, didn’t I?” Tank mused. “She had quality and breeding.”

“What the hell was she doing working for wages?” Cane wanted to know.

“She got tired of men wanting to marry her for her money,” Mallory said tersely.

“I can understand that,” Tank agreed.

“So she found a man who was loaded and now she’s engaged to him,” Mallory continued in a dull tone. “He’s a pretty boy. His father’s in the Fortune 500. No gold digging there. And her father likeshim.”

It was the emphasis on the last word that caught their attention.

“King doesn’t like you, I’m assuming,” Cane mused.

“Fat chance. I accused his daughter of theft and fired her,” Mallory said heavily. He took off his jacket, loosened his tie and dropped down into his recliner. “I must have been blind, to think she’d steal from us.”

“You had Gelly helping you think it,” Cane said sourly.

“Gelly was half-hysterical when we left,” Mallory confided. “Morie’s father hired a private detective.” He glanced at Cane. “The same one you hired, Dane Lassiter. When he mentioned that, Gelly almost fainted. And there’s something else. That friend of hers, Cardman, who wanted to buy our scrubland, he’s in the oil business. He does the fracturing process with injection wells to extract oil. He’s being sued in several states for sloppy work that resulted in groundwater contamination.”

“I seem to recall that you were in favor of selling him that land,” Tank commented to Mallory.

“Go ahead, rub it in. I’ve been a complete idiot,” Mallory grumbled. “No need to feel shy about commenting.”

“Anybody can be fooled by a woman,” Cane said sourly.

“Except me,” Tank said with a grin.

Nobody said anything. It wasn’t true. He used to have a fail-safe radar when it came to women. In fact, he’d been the first to suspect that Gelly wasn’t what she seemed to be. But his own track record was blemished since his last failed romance.

“What about Morie?” Cane asked.

“What about her?” Mallory returned belligerently.

“Don’t try to fool us…we’re your family,” Tank replied. “It was obvious that you felt something for her, even if you were fighting it tooth and nail.”

Mallory’s dark eyes grew narrow. “Maybe I did. But I’m not marrying into any family that belongs to King Brannt!”

“Ooooh,” Tank murmured drily. “Venomous.”

“Absolutely,” Cane agreed.

“He’s bullheaded, uncompromising, acid-tongued, confrontational, bad-tempered and he has the parlor manners of a rabid moose!”

“So you liked him, then,” Cane replied, nodding and smiling.

“I’ve never seen a rabid moose,” Tank commented.

“I’ll fly you to Texas. You can see for yourself,” Mallory muttered.

“To give the man credit, it would be offensive to have his only daughter charged with theft. And from what I’ve heard, nobody has a temper the equal of King Brannt’s.”

“I gather that you didn’t get to meet Cort at the party?” Cane mused.

Mallory frowned. “Who’s Cort?”

“Her older brother. If you think King’s got a temper, you ain’t seen nothing yet,” Cane drawled. “A cattleman made a nasty remark about his conservation practices that he didn’t like and he put the man through an antique screen in a restaurant. Police came, arrests were made. Cort just laughed. The cattleman was selling supposedly purebred cattle with bloodlines that were, shall we say, not of the purest. Cort exposed him at the hearing. The charges were dropped, very quickly, and the cattleman did a disappearing act. I hear they’re still looking for him.”

“Any cattleman worth his salt can spot a good bull by conformation alone,” Tank scoffed.

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