The Invitation by Jude Deveraux

Author:Jude Deveraux [Deveraux, Jude]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Western Romance
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 1994-01-02T04:18:40+00:00

Chapter 8

When morning came, I was glad this was going to be my last day on the trail ride. I hated being a failure, but I hated being hated more. For a few minutes I lay in my sleeping bag and thought about the entertaining stories I'd tell my editor when I got back toNew York . I'd get my revenge by making an entire publishing house laugh at my escapade in the wilds of Colorado . Better yet, I'd write a book that would make the world laugh at the big cowboy and his lust for the two-faced woman.

Feeling a great deal better about myself and about life in general, I got out of the hated sleeping bag, tugged at my jeans—is there anything worse than sleeping in your clothes?—

picked up my kit of toiletries, and headed for the stream to see if 1 could scour some of the grunge off my face. With the way my luck was running, I'd probably pick up a fungus from the clear mountain water and die a terrible death.

I'd just finished scrubbing when I heard heavy footsteps behind me. It was either our fearless leader or the last remaining dinosaur.

As usual he stopped near me, no doubt glaring down at me, just waiting to tell me I was doing something wrong. I ignored him as long as I could, then turned to look up at him, but was surprised to find standing there a man I'd never seen before.

"Oh!" I said, startled. "I thought you were someone else."

This seemed to surprise the man. They sure grow them dumb in Colorado , I thought. Big, beautiful, built, but definitely dumb.

"Who did you think I was?" he asked.

I stood up and looked at him. "I don't know if anyone's ever told you this, but you look a bit like our . . . our guide."

The man grinned at me as though I'd said something he'd waited all his life to hear, and I thought, This is great. I couldn't say or do anything to please one man, but this one seemed to be pleased by even a casual comment. Of course, being compared in looks to our cowboy leader might have seemed flattering to this man.

He extended his hand to me. "You must be Ruth. I'm Kane's brother, Mike."

I shook his hand, then set him straight. "I am not Ruth. I'm Cale Anderson, and your brother hates me."

I don't know whether it was the "hates me" part or the fact that I wasn't the beauteous Ruth, whom he'd obviously heard a lot about, but something seemed to bother him. He stood there opening and closing his mouth so that it looked like a pumping human heart on one of those PBS programs.

"But Ruth is— Ruth and Kane— I thought—"

Wow, I thought, a real intellectual here.

As though he could read my mind, he stopped flailing about and smiled at me, and he kept holding my hand even when I tugged on it.

"Look," he said, "I'm sorry about the mistake.

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