Do You Take This Enemy? Read Free

just done in proposing to Ashley.
    He had calculated how much land he would gain down to the last acre and he had flown his own plane over the Triple R, studying it carefully. It was the only way he could expand. Each of his neighbors was a descendant of settlers who had acquired the land at statehood or earlier, and no one around here was willing to sell. As far as he could see, Ashley was his best hope. She and her dad needed what he was offering. Gabe hoped she was mulling over his offer right now.
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    Ashley stood watching the dust hang in the road behind Gabriel Brant’s red pickup. She shook with anger. There would be a next time. The Brants didn’t give up on anything they set their mind to. The two families were stillfighting over Cotton Creek, only now the battles were in lawyers’ offices instead of with fists.
    Marry him! Paper marriage, sham marriage, it wouldn’t matter. Anything that tied a Ryder to a Brant was impossible. For four generations—five counting hers and Gabe’s—the Ryders and the Brants had fought over water rights. They had fought over damming up Cotton Creek, over the boundaries of their two ranches where Cotton Creek angled between the two and was the boundary line—a boundary line that kept shifting as the creek had shifted and changed. Now this miserable Brant wanted to break all traditions.
    She thought of the generations of hate, years of silence. Even in her childhood, she could remember her father’s rage at finding dead horses and overhearing him talk to Gus, their foreman, about killing cattle. When old Thomas, Gabriel Brant’s father, had run for the Texas senate, her dad had done everything he could to defeat him, including making very generous donations to Thomas’s opponent. Yet, in spite of her father’s efforts, Thomas Brant had won, giving the Brants even more power.
    Ashley had always heard that Thomas Brant was ruthlessly ambitious. The son obviously took after his father.
    She was furious that Gabriel Brant had tricked her into meeting with him and angry with herself because the moment she had laid eyes on him her pulse had jumped wildly. When she was younger, she had always thought he was the most handsome boy in Piedras and Lago counties—a deep secret she had never admitted to anyone except Becky Conners, her best friend growing up. Ashley shook her head. She didn’t want to discover that Gabriel Brant had turned into a sexy, handsome hunk who could make her short of breath. She should have outgrown all that when she got braces off her teeth and went away to college.
    But in all of Chicago, she had never met a man who made her breathing alter and her pulse jump like that. Not even Lars Moffet, and she had been ready to marry him.She was still seeing Gabriel Brant—tall, long-legged, dressed in a tight-fitting T-shirt that revealed abundant muscles. His dark-brown, thickly lashed bedroom eyes were sinful. His ruggedly handsome features were devilish. And his ambition was pure Brant.
    Frustrated, Ashley picked up a pebble and threw it down the road as hard as she could, wishing it was a big rock and she could lob it through the back window of Gabriel Brant’s pickup.
    She turned to walk to the house, but she knew she had to get control over her emotions before she returned indoors. Mrs. Farrin, their cook, had been with them since Ashley was three years old. She wasn’t ready to discuss Gabe’s proposition with Mrs. Farrin.
    Gabriel Brant had called her stubborn. “You’re a greedy snake, Gabriel Brant!”
    What angered and hurt the most, though, was the truth in what he said. Her dad had had a heart attack. He took medication for his blood pressure. They had had a run of sick horses and she knew that her dad wasn’t able to handle the ranch the way he used to. She had come home to help, but she couldn’t do all that needed to be done. She wasn’t a horse trainer, either. She was