The Humbug Man Read Online Free

Jeffries?” he asked in his deep, slow tone.
    “She doesn’t know a lot about cattle,” Blake said. “But she’s a whiz at math and accounts payable and organizing things. She’s the top secretary at Skyline Printing Services and a computer expert.”
    Maggie shifted restlessly. “Don’t brag about me that way,” she told her son. “I only learned accounting to get out of typesetting. And I learned computer programming to get out of accounting.”
    “Most women aren’t good at math.” Hollister’s dark eyes narrowed in his hard face. “My mother could barely count hens.”
    “It was always my best subject in school,” Maggie replied. “My dad was a farmer. He kept a tally book, and I was his payroll clerk. He taught me to add columns of figures in my head.”
    “Her parents are dead now,” Blake volunteered. “I have three uncles, but they’re spread all over the country and I never see them.”
    “A farmer?” Hollister persisted. “What kind of livestock did he have?”
    “Cattle and hogs,” she answered. “He had some high pastures, too. Right on the side of the hills, but he did very well. We had Jersey cows and a few Holsteins.”
    The tall man finished his coffee. “But you don’t know how to breed cattle?”
    “A handful of cows, mostly milk cows, doesn’t qualify anyone to handle several hundred head of beef cattle,” she reminded him. “It’s a totally different proposition. And I was only eighteen when I married Blake’s father and left the country for the city. I’ve forgotten most of what little I knew about the management of it.”
    Hollister’s big hands toyed with the empty cup. “I went to school with Bob Jeffries,” he said. “He was a grade behind me.”
    She sat very still. “He died in Central America before Blake was born. We’d been married less than six months.” She sighed. “It seems like a dream sometimes. Except for the talking proof sitting there trying to look invisible while he drinks his soda,” she added with a dry grin at Blake.
    Blake just grinned back, but he was listening.
    “Bob loved danger,” Maggie reminisced, aware of Hollister’s narrow gaze on her face. “He fed on adrenaline. Just after we were married he tried to give it up.” She smiled sadly. “It didn’t work out. For him it was like trying not to breathe.”
    “I never knew him,” Blake sighed. He looked up at Hollister. “You aren’t married, are you, Mr. Hollister?”
    Hollister stared into the empty coffee cup. “I was.” He put the cup down on the table and turned. “Thanks for the coffee. I’ll round up your hands and point them in the right direction.” He put on his coat and cocked his hat over one eye, glancing back at Blake and his mother without smiling. “If I were you, I’d stay inside until this snow lets up. And I’ll have that fence fixed before I let your men come home.”
    “Thanks for fixing the generator,” she said, alternately relieved and irritated by his shouldering of her own problems.
    He opened the door. “No problem. Good night.”
    He was gone in a whirl of wind and snowflakes, and Maggie stared after him feeling oddly empty and alone. How strange to feel that way about a man she disliked.
    “He must be divorced,” Maggie said absently.
    Blake joined her in the kitchen, draining his can of soft drink. “No, he’s a widower,” he told her. “Grandpa said his whole family was killed in an accident in the Rockies. Mr. Hollister was driving. His wife and son died, and he didn’t.” He shrugged, oblivious to the shock and horror on his mother’s soft face. “Grandpa said that was why he lived like he does, alone and away from everybody. That he was punishing himself because he didn’t die, too. Too bad. He sure is a nice man.”
    He glanced at his mother and did a double take at the look on her face. She actually looked interested. And that made him smile, but he was careful not to let her see him doing it.

Chapter Two
    W ith