The Other Brother Read online

  Fayrene and Ralph Pruitt had been separated for nearly two years. Not legally, on paper, but physically. One day Fayrene had decided she was tired of Ralph paying more attention to his cattle and horses—even his pickup—than her. She had packed a bag and hauled tail to Phoenix to live with her sister. She called every couple of weeks to talk to Melanie, but never Ralph.

  There had never been a discussion about how Fayrene was to support herself. She had the same credit card she’d always carried, in the name of the ranch; Ralph had never asked her to give it back or stop using it. As long as she was his wife, she was entitled, he said.

  It was Melanie, however, who had to figure out how to pay the mounting bills.

  “I’m telling you, Daddy, we won’t make it through the winter at this rate. What are we supposed to do, sell off land? Or maybe Big Angus.”

  “We’re not selling so much as an acre of the PR, and we’re damn sure not selling Big Angus.”

  Big Angus was the enormous bull that was the foundation of their breeding program. His championship bloodline, not to mention his perfect confirmation, made him one of the most valuable bulls in the state.

  “You sound just like your mother,” Ralph went on, “always exaggerating, making things sound worse than they are.”

  “Daddy—”

  “I’m hungry. Do we still have any of that roast beef? We can have sandwiches.”

  And that, Melanie knew from past experience, was the end of any discussion on money.

  Melanie had been right about the end of any more money talk with her father. He stuffed two thick roast beef sandwiches, one after the other, into his mouth then kissed her on top of her head and went to bed.

  Monday morning she faced the chores alone again. Instead of her father, in the kitchen making coffee as he did most mornings, she found a note:

  Gone to the city. Don’t wait up.

  He meant Oklahoma City. If he’d been going to Rose Rock, he’d have said he was gone to town. In Oklahoma, there was generally only one “city,” and that was Oklahoma City. Tulsa was Tulsa; everything else was called by its name unless you lived in the country and were referring to the nearest town, then it was “town.” But “the city” was Oklahoma City.

  There was legitimate ranch business he could take care of in the city. The big tractor-supply places were there, and they needed a new part. But he usually had the parts store in town order whatever he needed.

  He was up to no good again. Gambling. There was no other logical explanation for this latest disappearing act.

  Melanie was so angry, so frustrated, she wished heartily for a punching bag. Or a cord of wood to chop. Since neither of those was handy, she bit down on her emotions and turned the mares out for the day. She found little satisfaction in mucking out their stalls, but it had to be done.

  When she went to the feed room in the back of the barn, she swore. Her father was supposed to have brought home a new load of sweet feed for the mares two days ago. Obviously he’d had more important things on his mind, because there were no new bags.

  She should wait until later, after she’d put in another few hours of work, but maybe the trip to the feed store in town would settle her down. Between anger at her father, and the dream she’d had of kissing Caleb, she felt ready to explode. Mucking out stalls had not helped.

  She drove to town, cursing herself for postponing her work, knowing that she would have to stop early enough that evening to get ready to go with Justin to the birthday party. Maybe she would drown her sorrows in beer. Except she never got drunk. She wasn’t much of a drinker at all. She was a sipper. It took her all night to get through two glasses of beer. If she was drinking bottles or cans, she couldn’t finish two unless she stayed up all night to get the job done. Still, she was looking forward to the evening.

  What she was not looking forward to, she thought as she stopped at the mailbox at the end of her driveway on her way back from the feed store, was opening the mail. It was, as usual, all bills. No prize patrol, no letter from Ed McMahon waiting to tell her she’d won a million dollars. Just another bill from the electric company, who, for some reason, expected money from them about this time every month. An insurance statement. An invoice from the credit card company. That was going to hurt.

  And hurt, it did. She put off opening it for as long as she could. She unloaded the sweet feed. She made sure the bags were stacked straight. She straightened up the rest of the storage room. She went to the house and made herself another roast beef sandwich. She would be glad to see the last of that roast; she was getting tired of it, no matter how good it tasted.

  Then there was nothing legitimate standing between her and the bills. With grim resolve, she carried them to the desk in the small den off the living room and grabbed the letter opener. As if about to take a dose of particularly foul-tasting medicine, she held her breath and opened the worst of them—the credit card bill—first.

  She nearly staggered at the amount due. Good grief! Last month she had paid off the entire balance, and now the account was completely maxed out. All five digits of the allowable amount. What the— In one month?

  “Mama, what have you done?”

  The list of charges was as long as her arm and took up two pages. None was for less than five hundred dollars. Department stores—high-end ones. Victoria’s Secret? What could her mother have bought there for six-hundred-fifty-seven dollars? There were other places listed, whose merchandise or services Melanie could only guess at.

  The charge that stopped her heart was from a Scottsdale clinic for more than ten thousand dollars.

  Oh, God. A clinic? Her mother was ill. How serious was it? It must be bad to cost that much. Why hadn’t Mama called to tell them?

  She reached for the phone with trembling hands and dialed her mother’s number in Arizona. She got the damn answering machine.

  “Mama, it’s Melanie. Are you there? If you’re there pick up. I just got the credit card bill. Mama, what’s wrong? Are you sick? Hurt? What’s happened? All that money charged to the clinic. Why didn’t you let the insurance cover it? Please call. You’ve got me terrified here. Call. And hurry, Mama.”

  A sick feeling bubbled in the pit of Melanie’s stomach. Oh, God. Her mother was sick, and the Pruitt Ranch was in big financial trouble. Heaven help her, there was no way she could pay off the credit card balance this time. And with interest rates that would do a loan shark proud, it was going to take years to pay off.

  And how could she even consider worrying about such a trivial matter as that when for all she knew her mother could be dying?

  Melanie sat heavily and buried her face in her hands. What was she going to do? How could she help her mother? She had to assume that if her mother was in a really bad way she would have called. Or Aunt Karen would have. But nobody ran up a ten-thousand-dollar tab at a clinic for a hangnail or a bout with the flu.

  And why, oh why, hadn’t she used their health insurance instead of charging it all to the credit card? Had she lost her mind?

  She was obviously feeling well enough to buy out half of the finer shops in Phoenix, whose charges were dated after the charge at the clinic. That was something, then.

  If her mother’s health weren’t enough, Melanie felt as if the very survival of the PR rested on her shoulders. In truth, it did. Her parents certainly weren’t helping. They were, in fact, the problem. Both of them.

  She loved her parents deeply, but right now all she wanted to do was knock their heads together. They had to stop this. She had to make them stop.

  But how? She had tried talking, begging, demanding. Nothing had worked. What else could she do? She couldn’t sit around and let them take the ranch under. She knew they didn’t want the ranch to go under any more than she did, it was just that they had both become as irresponsible as a couple of teenagers since Mama had moved out. She supposed she should be grateful they’d…

  That was it. She didn’t have to convince them of anything. When her parents had se
parated they had agreed that they wanted to ensure that if anything happened to one of them, Melanie would still have the ranch. They’d had their lawyer draw up papers giving Melanie fifty percent of the ranch, with twenty-five percent going to each of her parents. Unless the two of them joined forces—an event not likely to happen in the foreseeable future—control rested in Melanie’s hands. It was time she exercised it.

  She reached for the phone.

  Thirty minutes later it was done. They weren’t out of debt, weren’t going to be for a good long while. But neither of her parents would be able to add to the problem. She had closed the credit card account and canceled the ATM cards. No one could charge anything to the ranch, except at the feed store in town, and no one could withdraw cash from the bank without writing a check. And she had the only checkbook. If her mother’s health caused more expenses Melanie would handle it. Somehow.

  Heaven help her, her mother and father were going to hit the roof when they found out what she’d done.

  She wished her actions made her feel better but they didn’t. That sick feeling still rumbled in her stomach. Who was she to tell her parents what to do? They had worked hard all their lives, built this ranch up from the small, one-man operation Grandpa had left Daddy. They were her parents, and she was treating them like children, taking control of their money, cutting them off.

  Heaven help her.

  Billy Ray’s birthday celebration that night at the Road Hog Saloon was, by all accounts, a rousing success.

  By all accounts except Melanie’s. She was most definitely not enjoying herself. Her beer kept disappearing right out of her glass. She reached for the pitcher on the table to give herself a refill, but, oh, great. The pitcher was empty.

  “More beer!” she yelled. But the band was so loud, she doubted anyone heard her. It was a local group called the Aloha Shirt Boys, named for the shirts they wore, not the music they played; they played country and western, with a little Cajun thrown in now and then, and they played it loud. L-O-U-D loud.

  “More beer!” she yelled again, pounding the pitcher on the table. Why wasn’t there any more beer?

  “Hey, sweetcakes.” Her buddy, Justin, slid in next to her in the booth. “Whatcha hollering about?” He had picked her up at seven, as planned, and they had driven to the Road Hog for Billy Ray’s party, both grateful that whoever had done the choosing had chosen the Road Hog over Deuces at the other end of town. If the Road Hog was a dump, Deuces was three notches below a dive.

  “I’m outta beer.” She frowned at her empty glass, the empty pitcher, then at Justin. Her pal. Caleb’s brother. Caleb, with the magic lips.

  No, no, no. Mustn’t think about Caleb’s lips. Nope. Bad lips. Shame on those lips. No more lips for her, by golly. She shouldn’t even be thinking about lips, but she needed lips to drink her beer.

  “I’m outta beer,” she said again.

  It was easier to think about beer. If she just kept thinking about it, pouring it down her throat, she wouldn’t have to think about Caleb’s lips. Or her father. Or her mother’s health. Now there was a subject to get a girl to drinking.

  Her father didn’t yet know what she’d done, but she had called her mother back and left a second message, warning her not to use the credit card because it would be turned down.

  Oh, boy, howdy, that was going to go over like a lead balloon.

  They were going to hate her. Mama and Daddy were both going to hate her for this.

  “I want more beer.”

  Good grief, was that her voice? That ugly, whiny sound?

  Her parents weren’t here. And neither were Caleb’s lips. She was safe for now.

  “Where you been?” she demanded of Justin. “This’s the firs’ I’ve seen you since we got here.”

  Justin hooted. “Sweetcakes, did you know your words are slurring?”

  She blinked and opened her eyes wide. “Are not.”

  “Are too.”

  “Tha’s a lie.”

  Justin hooted again. “You’re drunk as a skunk. How much beer have you had?”

  “This is her third pitcher.” The waitress, Linda, clunked down a fresh pitcher of beer and whipped the empty one away.

  Justin goggled. “Third? What’s the deal, Mel? You never drink this much.”

  Using two hands to make sure she didn’t spill a drop, Melanie refilled her parched glass, then guzzled the entire contents to soothe her parched throat.

  “Ah.” She slapped the glass back down onto the table and smacked her lips. “Tha’s better.”

  Justin was starting to get worried. This wasn’t like Mel at all. She never drank this much, and she damn sure never guzzled a full glass in one gulp. “Three pitchers?”

  “’S a lie.”

  “Come on, pal, what’s going on? It’s me, here. You can tell me anything, you know that.”

  “Nope.” She shook her head and refilled her glass yet again. “You’re my fun pal. Caleb’s my talkin’-to pal.”

  “You want me to call Caleb?”

  Her eyes nearly popped out of her head. “Lips?”

  Justin burst out laughing.

  “No way, José.” She shook her head so hard she nearly fell against him. “He’s part of the prob— The prol— The damn reason. Him and his lips.” She snorted. “His lips, my parents. Either one would be enough to send a girl to the nearest bar, and I’ve got ’em both to deal with.”

  The way Mel was glaring at him, as though Caleb and his lips and her parents, whatever they had to do with anything, were somehow his fault, had Justin swallowing back another burst of laughter. Sober, she was capable of giving him a black eye if he made her too mad. He had no idea what she might do when drunk, because he’d never seen her like this before. He didn’t know how to deal with this Mel.

  “You hold that thought, sweetcakes.” He patted her on the shoulder. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “I don’ thin’ so.”

  Halfway out of the booth, Justin paused and looked back at her. “You don’t think I’ll be back?”

  “Nope.” She took a sip of beer and smacked her lips.

  “Why not?”

  “’Cuz Blaire Harding just walked in, an’ I happen to know you’ve got a baaad case of the hots for her.”

  At the mention of Blaire Harding’s name, Justin’s head whipped around all on its own. Without direction from his brain, his eyes scanned, then zeroed in on her as if they were laser-guided. Without looking back, he slid from the booth.

  “See ya, kid,” he said over his shoulder. Because Mel was right. He had a baaad case of the hots for Blaire Harding, and the woman had been avoiding him like the plague for days.

  But before he got too carried away, he made his way outside—where he could make sure Blaire didn’t leave before he had a chance to drool—er, talk to her. The noise level was slightly lower outside than in, which was his reason for going there. He unclipped his cell phone from his belt and called Caleb.

  Caleb pulled into the gravel parking lot in front of the Road Hog and killed the engine, but he didn’t get out right away. Justin had to be lying. The kid would consider it a good practical joke to get Caleb riled up and have him driving all the way into town to see about Melanie.

  Melanie herself was probably in on the joke.

  Drunk. That was a good one. Melanie never got drunk. It took her all night long to sip her way through one or two beers. And that certainly didn’t make her drunk.

  It was much more likely that Justin got hooked up with a woman and didn’t want to drive Melanie home. Melanie wouldn’t care, because she and Justin were just friends.

  But then, he would have sworn he and Melanie were just friends, too, until she’d knocked his socks off with that kiss the other night at the party. Now he wasn’t sure what they were to each other.

  It flashed through his mind that calling him to come rescue Melanie could be nothing more than a trick to get him to come to Billy Ray’s party. Justin and Melanie weren’t abo
ve such a scheme.

  It wasn’t that he didn’t like Billy Ray. How could you not like a guy who put up with everyone calling him by his first and last names together, all his life? His name wasn’t Billy Ray Somebody. Ray was not his middle name, it was his last name. But for some reason, everyone in his family was known by their first and last names joined together. And the names always ran together as if they were one word: BillyRay, his brother DonnieRay, their daddy JuniorRay, their sister ConnieRay, and their mother, Mrs. Ray, pronounced MizRay. MizRay, as far as anyone could tell, did not have a first name other than Miz.

  Caleb liked them all just fine. It was only that Billy Ray and his crowd were several years younger than Caleb, and he could take only so much rowdy partying.

  Could it be that at thirty-three he was getting old?

  Nah, thirty-three wasn’t old. Never mind the aching muscles as he finally climbed out of his pickup. Muscles were supposed to ache after a long hard day.

  The noise from the band was loud in the parking lot. He took a deep breath and braced himself before pushing the door of the Road Hog open and stepping inside. The blast of sound that hit him made him wince. The wall of smoke choked him. Two more good reasons to have stayed home—preservation of his lungs and eardrums.

  “Hey, Caleb!” Billy Ray himself, obviously just coming from the men’s room, spotted him instantly and gave Caleb a hearty slap on the back. Or, he would have, if he hadn’t been three sheets to the wind. His aim was off and his hand barely glanced off Caleb’s shoulder. But the force of his own movement, without Caleb’s solid back to stop him, nearly sent him face-first to the floor. He staggered, then righted himself and grinned sloppily. “Glad you came, buddy. Come on over to my table and have a beer.”

  Caleb tucked his hands into his back pockets and pretended he hadn’t heard the invitation. “Looks like a big party.” He had to shout to make himself heard over the band and the crowd.

  “It’s the best!” Billy Ray answered. “Oops. There’s Carol Anne flaggin’ me down.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Wouldn’t wanna keep the lady waiting, now, would I?”