DIANA PALMER
Lacy

For my agent,

Maureen Walters, of Curtis Brown, Ltd.,

with love and thanks.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Coming Next Month

Chapter
One

The party was getting noisier by the minute.

Lacy Jarrett Whitehall watched it with an air of total withdrawal. All that wild jazz, the kicky dancing, the bathtub gin flowing like water as it was passed from sloshing glass to teacup. She wasn’t really as much a participant as she was an onlooker. It made her feel alive to watch other people enjoying themselves. Lacy hadn’t felt alive in a long time.

Many of the neighbors were elderly people, and she suffered a pang of conscience at what, to them, must have seemed like licentious behavior. The Charleston was considered a vulgar dance by the older generation. Jazz, they said, was decadent. Ladies smoked in public and swore—and some actually wore their stockings rolled to just below the kneecap. They wore galoshes, unfastened, so that they flapped when they walked—hence the name given to the new generation: flappers. Shocking behavior to a society that had only since the war come out of the Victorian Age. The war had changed everything. Even now, four years after the armistice, people were still recovering from the horror of it. Some had never recovered. Some never would.

In the other room, laughing couples were dancing merrily to “Yes, We Have No Bananas” blaring from Lacy’s new radio. It was like having an orchestra right in the room, and she marveled a little at the modern devices that were becoming so commonplace. Not that any of these gay souls were contemplating the scientific advances of the early twenties. They were too busy drinking Lacy’s stealthily obtained, prohibition-special gin and eating the catered food. Money could almost buy absolution, she mused. The only thing it couldn’t get her was the man she wanted most.

She fingered her teacup of gin with a long, slender finger, its pink nail perfectly rounded. The color matched the dropped-waist frock she was wearing with its skirt at her knees. It would have shocked Marion Whitehall and the local ladies around Spanish Flats, she thought. Like her friends, she wore her hair in the current bobbed fashion. It was thick and dark and straight, and it curved toward her delicate facial features like leaves lifting to the sun. Under impossibly thick lashes, her pale, bluish gray eyes had a restlessness that was echoed in the soft, shifting movements of her tall, perfectly proportioned body. She was twenty-four, and looked twenty-one. Perhaps being away from Coleman had taken some of the age off her. She laughed bitterly as she coped with the thought. Her eyes closed on a wave of pain so sweeping that it counteracted the stiff taste of the gin. Coleman! Would she ever forget?

It had all been a joke, the whole thing. One of brother-in-law Ben’s practical jokes had compromised Lacy, after she’d been locked in a line cabin all night with Cole. Nothing had happened, except that Cole had given her hell, blaming her for it. But it was what people thought happened that counted. In big cities, the new morals and wild living that had followed World War I were all the rage. But down in Spanish Flats, Texas, a two-hour drive from San Antonio, things were still very straitlaced. And the Whitehalls, while not wealthy, were well known and much respected in the community. Marion Whitehall had been in hysterics about the potential disgrace, so Cole had spared his mother’s tender feelings by marrying Lacy. But not willingly.

Lacy had been taken in by Marion Whitehall eight years ago, after Lacy’s own parents died on the Lusitania when it was torpedoed by the Germans. Lacy’s mother and Cole’s had been best friends. Lacy’s one remaining relative, a wealthy great-aunt, had declared herself too elderly and set in her ways to take on a teenager. The Whitehalls’ invitation had been a godsend. Lacy had agreed, but mostly because it allowed her to be near Cole. She’d worshipped him since her wealthy family had moved to Spanish Flats from Georgia when Lacy had been just thirteen to be near her great-aunt Lucy and great-uncle Horace Jacobsen, who had retired from business after making a fortune in the railroad industry. Great-uncle Horace had, in fact, founded the town of Spanish Flats and named it for the Whitehall ranch, which had sheltered him in a time of desperate need. He and Lacy’s great-aunt had been a social force in San Antonio in those days, but it was Spanish Flats Ranch, not Great-uncle Horace’s towering Victorian mansion that had fascinated Lacy from the beginning—as did the tall cattleman on the ranch property. It had been love on first impact, even though Cole’s first words to her had been scathing when she’d ridden too close to one of his prize bulls and had almost gotten gored. That hadn’t put her off, though. If anything, his cold, quiet, authoritative manner had attracted her, challenged her, long before she knew who he was.

Coleman Whitehall was an enigma in so many ways. A loner, like his old Comanche grandfather who’d taken him over in his youth and showed him a vanished way of life and thought. But he’d been kind to Lacy for all that, and there were times when she’d glimpsed a different man, watching him with the cowboys. The somber, serious Cole she thought she knew was missing in the lean rancher who got up very early one morning, caught a rattlesnake, defanged it and put it in bed with a cowboy who’d played a nasty practical joke on him. The resulting pandemonium had left him almost collapsed with laughter, along with the other witnesses. It had shown her aside of Cole that she remembered now for its very elusiveness.

Despite his responsibilities at home, the lure of airplanes and battle had gotten to Cole. He’d learned to fly at a local barnstorming show, and had become fascinated with this new mode of transportation. The sinking of the Lusitania had brought his fighting blood up, and convinced him that America would inevitably be pulled into war. He’d kept up his practice at the airfield, even though his father’s death had stopped him from joining the group of pilots in the French Escadrille Americaine, which became the exclusive Lafayette Escadrille.

When America did enter the war in 1917, a neighboring rancher had taken responsibility for the ranch and womenfolk in his absence, keeping the land grabbers away with financial expertise. Meanwhile Lacy and Katy and Ben and Marion had watched the newspapers with mounting horror, reading the posted casualty lists with stopped breath, with sinking fear. But Coleman seemed invincible. It wasn’t until the year after the armistice, when he’d turned up back at the ranch after a few sparsely worded letters, an old flying buddy in tow, that they’d learned he’d been shot down by the Germans. He’d only written that he’d been wounded, not how. But apparently it hadn’t done him any lasting damage. He was the same taciturn, hard man he’d been before he’d gone to France.

Well, not quite the same. Lacy treasured the precious few memories she had of Cole’s tenderness, his warmth. He hadn’t always been cold—especially not the day he’d left to go to war. There had been times when he was so human, so caring. Now, there was a coldness that was alien, a toughness that perhaps the war had created. Not that the family had any real idea of what the war had been like for him on a personal basis; he never spoke of it.

Ben had been too young to fight. With Cole’s return, he’d followed after his big brother with wide, dark eyes, all questions and pleas to hear about it. But Coleman wouldn’t tell him a thing. So Ben hounded Jude Sheridan. Jude, whom Coleman called Turk, had been an ace pilot with twelve credited kills. He was an easygoing, too-handsome man with a quick temper and a physique that kept young Katy awake nights sighing over him. Turk had filled Ben’s ear with bloodcurdling tales—until Coleman had gotten tired of it and stopped Turk from encouraging his young brother.

That was about the same time that he’d had to stop Katy from tagging along after the tall, blond flyer who’d become his ranch foreman. Turk was good with horses, and he had a shocking reputation with women. But that was something Katy wasn’t going to find out, Cole had informed her coldly. Turk was his friend, not a potential conquest, and Katy had better remember it. Even now, Lacy could see the heartbreak on the slender, green-eyed girl’s face as Cole blasted her dreams away. He’d even gone so far as to threaten her with firing Turk altogether. So Katy had withdrawn—from her brother, from her family—and had gone wild with the new morality. She’d bought outrageous clothes; she began to use makeup. She went to parties in San Antonio and drank outlawed bathtub gin. And the more Coleman threatened her, the wilder she got.

About that time, Ben had turned his attention to Lacy. It had been embarrassing, because she was twenty-three and Ben only eighteen. Coleman teased him about it when he got wind of it, which only added to the frustration. One night, Ben lured Cole and Lacy to a line cabin and locked them in. He went home to bed, and by the time they were discovered the next morning, they were hopelessly compromised. So Coleman did the expected thing and married her. But he resented her, ignored her, put a wall between them that all her efforts hadn’t dented. He refused to let her close enough to give their marriage a chance.

There had been an attraction between them for a long time—a purely physical one on his part—that had found its first expression the day he’d left for the war. Despite the promise of that long-ago embrace, he hadn’t touched Lacy since he’d been home again, not until after the wedding. The tension between them had reached flash point after an argument in the barn. Cole had backed her up against the wall that rainy morning in the barn and had kissed her until her mouth was swollen and her body raging with unexpected passion. That night, he’d come to her room and, in the darkness, had taken her. But it had been quick, and painful, and she remembered the strength in his lean hands as he’d held her wrists beside her head, not even allowing her to touch him through the brief intimacy while his hard mouth smothered her cries of pain. He’d left her immediately, white-faced, while she cried like a hurt child, and he hadn’t touched her again. The next morning, he’d acted as if nothing at all had happened. If anything, he was harder and colder than before. Lacy couldn’t bear the thought of any more of his brutal passion and his indifference. She’d packed her bags and gone to San Antonio, to be a companion to her great-aunt Lucy, Great-uncle Horace’s widow. Shortly thereafter, the gentle old lady had died. Now Lacy had the house and plenty of money that she hadn’t even expected to inherit. But without Cole, she had nothing.

She still shuddered, thinking about the morning she’d left Spanish Flats. Marion had been hurt, Katy and Ben shocked. Coleman had been…Coleman. Revealing nothing. Eight months had passed without a word from him, without an apology. Lacy had hated him at first because of the pain he’d inflicted so coldly. But one of her married friends had explained intimacy to her, and now she understood a little. She’d been a virgin, so it wasn’t unexpected that her first time had been difficult. Perhaps Cole just hadn’t cared enough to be gentle with her. At any rate, if it happened again, it might be less traumatic, and she might get pregnant. She blushed softly, thinking of how wonderful it would be to have a child, even under these circumstances. She was so totally alone. She could never have Cole, but it would have been nice to have his child.

It was such a good thing that she had Great-aunt Lucy’s inheritance. Added to the unexpectedly small inheritance her parents had left, it had made it possible for her to live in style and give extravagant parties. Coleman hated guests, and gaiety. Lacy could have done without them, too, if she’d had Coleman’s love. Even his affection. But she had nothing, except the contempt that had burned from his dark eyes every time he looked at her. She had money, and he was losing more of his by the day. That had been a point of contention between them from the very beginning. Cole had never gotten over the fact of her wealth…and his lack of it. It was an unexpected prejudice in a man who didn’t seem to have a bigoted bone in his lean body.

Lacy sipped her gin quietly, her eyes on the clock. Marion had written to say that Cole would be in San Antonio today, on business. She’d asked him to stop by and see Lacy while he was in town. Lovely Marion, always the matchmaker. But she didn’t know the real situation. There was nothing more hopeless than the relationship the way it was now. Even if Lacy had thought about asking Coleman for a divorce, as old-fashioned and proper as he was, she knew Cole would never agree to that. It had been his own principles, added to his mother’s horror of scandal, that had made him drag Lacy to the altar in the first place after the night in the line cabin, even though he hadn’t touched her. Apparently he was content for things to go on as they were; for Lacy to live in San Antonio, while he contented himself with business-as-usual at Spanish Flats. She laughed bitterly. All her young dreams of marriage and children and a husband to love and cherish her, and this was what she had. Twenty-four years old, and she felt fifty.

Children had been another problem. She’d worked up enough nerve to approach Coleman shortly after their marriage and ask him if he wanted them. She’d thought in her innocence that a child might make their relationship easier. His face had gone a horrible pale shade, and he’d said things to her that she still had trouble accepting. No, he’d told her, he didn’t want children. Not with a pampered little rich girl like Lacy. And after a few more insulting words, he’d stormed off in a black temper. She’d never had the nerve to ask him a second time. In her heart, she’d hoped that she might become pregnant after that uncomfortable night in his bed, but it hadn’t happened. Maybe it was just as well, because Cole would let no one close to him. She’d tried everything except being herself. It was hard to be herself around Cole, because he inhibited her so much. She wanted to play with him and tease him and make him laugh. She wanted to make him young, because he’d never been that. He’d been a man ever since she’d known him, a solitary, lonely figure with steel in his makeup—even at the age of nineteen—which he’d been when Lacy came to live with the Whitehalls.

In the other room, the radio was giving out New Orleans jazz, and the new Charleston dance was being demonstrated by two visitors whom Lacy didn’t know. There were a lot of people in the house that she didn’t know. What did it matter? They filled the empty rooms.

Lacy walked down the hall, her knee-length gray dress clinging softly to the slender lines of her body, down her hose-clad legs, to her buckled high heels. She felt restless again, hungry. She remembered the hardness of Cole’s mouth, the aching sweetness of his kiss that left her lips softly swollen. All that exquisite passion they’d shared the morning in the barn, and it had led to…that. She shivered. Surely women only allowed men such license with their bodies to get children.

Bess, one of her married friends, had told her that sex was the most exquisite experience in her life. “Mahhhhhvelous,” she’d said, laughing, her eyes full of the love she shared with her husband of five years. Lacy had been curious, despite her bad experience, to find out if intimacy could be pleasurable. But she wasn’t quite curious enough to let George Simon have what he’d been lusting after for the past few weeks. George was a sweet man, a good friend. But the thought of his greedy hands on her body was somehow offensive. It was a kind of sacrilege to think of letting anyone but Cole touch her that way.

What utter rot, she thought, with a harsh laugh. Ridiculous to moon over a man who didn’t love her. But worshipping him was such a habit. And she did. She loved everything about him, from the way he sat his horse to the arrogant tilt of his dark head, to the way his skin caught the light and burned like bronze. He wasn’t terribly good to look at, except to Lacy, but he had a masculinity that set her teeth on edge, that made her body go hot and throbbing. Just to touch him could make her tremble.

She sighed shakily as her gray eyes swept the hall. Would he come? Her heart pounded beneath her bodice. Just to see him, she thought, just to lay eyes on him once more, would be heaven. But it was already eleven o’clock, and Cole was usually in bed by nine so that he could be up at the crack of dawn. She turned back toward the living room with a heart like lead. No, he wasn’t coming tonight. It had been a foolish hope.

She went back to her guests, laughing, drinking more and more gin. The police made raids once in a while, but Lacy didn’t care if they came and found the gin. She might go to jail, and Coleman might come and bail her out. Then he might bring her home, and be so inflamed by smoldering passion that he’d do to her what Rudolph Valentino, as the sheik, had done to Agnes Ayres in that wildly passionate film The Sheik. Her heart ran away. She’d gone wild over that movie two years ago and had learned to do the tango soon after Valentino’s Blood and Sand film was released. But, of course, no one in her circle would do it like Valentino.

She took another sip of gin, lost in her thoughts. She jumped as a hand lightly touched her shoulder. She looked up, wide-spaced eyes huge in her face, and relaxed a little when she saw George Simon behind her.

“You startled me,” she said in her calm, very Southern drawl.

“Sorry,” he said, grinning. Well, his teeth were perfect, even if he was slightly balding and overweight. “I just thought you might like to know that you have a visitor.”

She frowned. It was midnight, and despite the fact that the huge Victorian house was overrun with people, it was unusual for anyone to come calling so late. And then she remembered. Cole!

“Male or female?” she asked nervously.

“Definitely male,” George said, without smiling. “He looks like the portrait over the living room mantel. That’s where I left him, staring at it.”

Lacy spilled the drink down the front of the stylishly wispy dress and mopped frantically at it with a handkerchief. “Oh, damn,” she said curtly. “Well, I’ll worry about that later. He’s in the living room?”

“Say, kid…You’re like flour in the face. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said. Everything, she thought as she turned and walked stiffly down the long hall, dimly lit by sconces, her wide-heeled shoes beating a dainty tattoo on the bare, polished wood floors as she walked.

She hesitated at the doorway, her eyes huge in her face, her hand poised on the doorknob. She knew already who was going to be waiting for her. She knew by George’s description, but even more by that smell, that pungent smoke that teased her nose even as she opened the door and saw him.

Coleman Whitehall spun on his booted heel with the precision of an athlete. Which he was, of course; ranch work demanded that kind of muscle. His dark eyes narrowed as he looked at Lacy, blazing out of a face like leather under hair as dark as her own. His skin was bronzed, a legacy from the Comanche grandfather who’d instilled pure steel in his makeup and taught him that emotion was a plague to be avoided at all costs.

He was wearing work clothes. Jeans and boots, with wide, flaring leather chaps and a vest over his blue-patterned shirt, leather wristbands on the cuffs. A string hung out of the pocket, which would be the tobacco pouch he always carried, along with a small, flat packet of papers to roll cigarettes from. His forehead was oddly pale as he watched her, his wide-brimmed hat tossed carelessly onto an elegant Victorian wing chair. He lifted his square chin and stared at her with unblinking, unforgiving eyes, the very picture of a Texas cattleman with his weather-beaten face and unyielding pride and blatant arrogance.

She closed the door and moved forward. He didn’t frighten her. He never had, really, although he towered over her like a lean, taciturn giant. He’d hardly smiled in the years she’d lived under his roof. She wondered if he ever had as a boy. She loved him. But love was something he didn’t need. Love. And Lacy. He could do very well without either, and he’d proven it over the past eight lonely months.

“Hello, Cole,” she said softly.

He lifted the smoking cigarette to thin, firm lips that held a faintly mocking smile. “Hello, yourself, kiddo. You look prosperous enough,” he mused, his eyes narrow on her short dark hair in its bob, her face with its outrageously dark lip rouge, her blue eyes quiet and abnormally bright as she stood before him, very trendy in her soft gray dress that clung to her slender figure and displayed her long, elegant legs with scandalous efficiency.

She didn’t avoid his stare. Her eyes wandered over his face like loving hands, seeing the new lines, the rough edges. He was twenty-eight now, but he’d aged in these months they’d been apart. The war had aged him. Marriage hadn’t seemed to help.

“I’m doing very well, thanks,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. It was hard to handle this meeting, with the memory of her abrupt departure—and the reason for it—still between them. He seemed unperturbed by it, but her knees felt weak. “What brings you to San Antonio in the middle of the night?”

“I’ve been trying to sell cattle. Winter’s coming on. Feed’s getting hard to come by.” He studied her blatantly, but there was no feeling in his dark eyes. There was nothing at all.

She moved closer, inhaling the masculine smell of him, the scents of tobacco and leather that had become so familiar. She touched his sleeve gently, loving the warmth of him under it, only to have him jerk away from her and walk back toward the fireplace.

Her hand felt odd, extended like that. She pulled it back to her side with a wistful, bitter little smile. He still didn’t like her to touch him, after all this time. He never had. He took, but he never gave. Lacy wasn’t sure that he knew how to give.

“How is your mother?” she asked.

“She’s fine.”

“And Katy and Bennett?”

“My sister and brother are fine, too.”

She studied his long, lean back, watching him stare at his likeness above the mantel. She’d had it painted soon after she’d left Spanish Flats, and it was his mirror image. Dark, brooding, with eyes that followed her everywhere she went. He was wearing work clothes in the portrait, with a red bandanna at his throat and a white Stetson atop his dark, straight hair. She loved the portrait. She loved the man.

“What’s that in aid of?” he asked insolently, gesturing up at it. He turned, pinning her with his dark gaze. “For show? To let everyone know what a devoted little wife you are?”

She smiled sadly. “Are we going to have that argument again? I’m not suited to the ranch. You’ve been telling me that since the day I stepped on the place for the first time. I’m—how did you put it?—too genteel.” That was a lie. She was well suited, and she loved it. Her eyes glared at him. “But we both know why I left Spanish Flats, Cole.”

His eyes flashed, and a dark stain of color washed over his high cheekbones. He averted his eyes.

Oh, damn, Lacy thought miserably. My tongue will be the death of me. She laced her hands together. “Anyway, you never knew I was around,” she said stiffly. “Your day-to-day indifference finally chased me away.”

“What did you expect me to do?” he asked curtly. “Sit around and worship you? My ranch is in trouble, teetering on a precipice in this damned slow agricultural market. I’m too busy trying to support my family to dance attendance on a bored society girl.” He stared at her with cold, dark eyes. “That lounge lizard who led me in here seems to think you’re his private stock. Why?”

That sounded like jealousy, and her heart jumped, but she kept her features calm. “George is my friend. He’d like to marry me.”

“You’ve got a husband. Does he know?”

“No,” she said carelessly. He was getting on her nerves now. She went to the decanter and poured herself a china cup of gin, lacing it with water. She turned back defiantly and sipped her gin, knowing he’d recognize the smell. He did; she saw it in his disapproving stare. She grinned at him impishly over the rim of the delicate china cup. “Why don’t you go and tell him?”

“You should have already,” he said, his voice deep and smooth.

“What for?” she asked innocently. “To make him jealous?”

She could see the control he was exercising, and it excited her. Pushing Cole had always excited her.

“Lead him on,” he dared, “and I’ll kill him.”

Now that was pure possession, and it irritated her. He didn’t want her, but he wasn’t going to let anyone else have her. His flashing dark eyes were telling her so.

“You probably would, you wild man.” She drew back, lifting her chin to glare up at him, unafraid. “Well, let me tell you something, Coleman Whitehall. It’s a pleasant change to be admired and sought after by someone after being ignored by you!”

He stared at her with an odd expression. Almost amusement. “Where’s that temper been all these years?” he taunted. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“Oh, I’ve discovered lots of bad habits since I got away from you,” she told him. “I’ve decided that I like being myself. Don’t you like being disagreed with? God knows, everybody at the ranch is terrified of you!”

“Not you, I gather,” he drawled, taking a last draw from his cigarette.

“Never me.” She sipped some more gin, feeling reckless. “I’m doing great without you. I have a big, fancy house, and beautiful clothes, and lots of friends!”

He finished the cigarette and tossed it into the burning fireplace. The orange-and-yellow flames highlighted his bronzed skin, his sharp, well-defined features.

“The house and clothes don’t suit you, and your friends stink,” he said easily, standing erect with his hands on his slender hips. “You’re getting as wild as Katy. I don’t like it.”

“Then do something about it,” she challenged. “Make me stop, big man. You can do anything…Just ask Ben; he’s your fan club.”

He smiled ruefully. “Not since you left, he isn’t. Even Taggart and Cherry stopped talking to me once you were gone.”

“Nice of you to come right after me and take me home,” she said sarcastically. “Eight months and not even a postcard.”

“You’re the one who wanted to go.” His dark eyes searched her face quietly, and something flashed in them for an instant. “You’re not happy, Lacy,” he said quietly. “And that crowd in there isn’t going to make you happy.”

“What is, you?” she demanded. She felt like crying. She took another sip of gin and turned away from him, hurting like she never had. In the quiet, understated elegance of the enormous room, with its faint odor of lilacs, she felt as out of place as he looked. “Go away, Cole,” she said heavily. “There was never any room for me in your life. You wouldn’t even sleep with me—until that last night.” She didn’t see the expression that statement put on his face. “I decided to cut my losses and go back to the city, where I belonged. I thought you’d be pleased. After all, the marriage was forced on us.”

His face hardened. “You might have talked to me before you left.” He remembered how it had felt to watch her leave. She couldn’t know that his pride had been shattered by that defection, even though it was justified. He’d done his best to drive her away, to make damned sure he didn’t lose control again as he had that one night. The memory of the way he’d hurt her didn’t sit well on his conscience.

He might not have loved her, but he’d missed her. The color had gone out of his world when she’d left it. He stared at her now with an expression he was careful not to let her see. She was so lovely. She deserved a man who’d be good to her, who’d take proper care of her and give her a houseful of children…. His eyes closed briefly and he turned away. “But maybe it was just as well. We’d said it all already, hadn’t we, honey?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, we had,” she agreed. “I suppose we were just too different to make a successful marriage.” She bit her lower lip and closed her eyes. That was a lie, too. But it would please him to have her admit what he already believed.

“Is he your lover?” he asked suddenly, nodding toward the closed door. “That limp-wristed lizard who showed me in here?”

“I don’t have a lover, Cole,” she said, lifting her eyes bravely to his. “I’ve never had anyone…except you.”

He avoided her eyes, looking over at the mantel. Absently his fingers reached for the Bull Durham pouch. He pulled out a tissue-thin paper with deft, quick fingers and dabbed tobacco in a thin line in the middle of it, rolling it and sealing it with a flick of his tongue. He struck a match on the bricks of the fireplace and bent his dark head to light the finished product. Deep, pungent smoke filled the room.

She toyed with the dainty lace-and-cotton handkerchief in her hands. “Why did you come here?”

He shrugged, his broad chest rising and falling heavily. He turned around and his dark eyes searched her pale ones. He noticed her flushed face and the faint mist in her eyes. His heavy brows came together. “Have you been drinking all night?” he asked curtly.

“Of course,” she said, without subterfuge, and laughed defiantly. “Are you shocked? Or is it that you’re still back in the Dark Ages, when ladies didn’t do that sort of thing?”

“Decent women don’t do that sort of thing,” he told her, his voice unusually deep as he glared at her. “Or wear clothes like that,” he added, nodding toward the expanse of leg below the knee-deep hem of her skirt with her rolled-down hose held up by lacy garters.

“Don’t tell me you’re shocked to see my legs, Cole,” she taunted, lifting her chin as she smiled at him. “Of course, you never have seen my body, have you?” He looked frankly uncomfortable now, and she liked that. She liked making him uncomfortable. Her hands moved slowly down her body, and she watched his eyes follow the movement with satisfaction. “You can’t even talk about sex, can you, Cole? It’s something dark and sinful—and decent people only do it in the dark with the lights off—”

“Stop it!” he said shortly. He turned his back on her, smoking quietly, one hand touching the soft curve of a chair back. His breath seemed to come unsteadily. “Talking about…that…won’t change what happened.”

He almost sounded as if he regretted it. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he thought of it as a weakness. His upbringing had been rigid at best, and his Comanche grandfather had all but stolen him from his parents in those formative young years. He’d learned how to be a man years before age caught up with his conditioning, and tenderness hadn’t been part of his education.

The music suddenly got louder, attracting his attention to the closed door. “Is this a regular thing now, these parties?”

“I suppose so,” she confessed. “I can’t stand my own company, Cole.”

“I’m having some problems of my own.” He sat down in the dainty wing chair, looking so out of place in it that Lacy almost smiled in spite of the gravity between them.

She perched on the edge of the velvet-covered blue sofa and folded her hands primly in her lap.

“The elegant Miss Jarrett,” he murmured, studying her. “I had some exquisite dreams about you while I was in France.”

That shocked her. He’d never talked about France. “Did you? I wrote you every day,” she confessed shyly.

“And never mailed the letters,” he said, with a faint smile. “Katy told me.”

“I was afraid to. You were so reserved, and just because I was best friends with Katy and living in your house was no reason to think you’d welcome my letters. Even after the way we said good-bye,” she added, with unfamiliar self-consciousness. “You never wrote just to me, after all.”

He didn’t tell her why. “I wouldn’t have minded a letter or two. It got pretty bad over there,” he said.

She glanced up and then down. “You were shot down, weren’t you?”

“I got scratched up a little,” he said curtly. “Listen, suppose you come back to Spanish Flats?”

Her heart leapt straight up. She stared at him, searched his dark eyes. He was a proud man. It must have taken a lot of soul-searching for him to come and ask that. “Why, Cole?”

“Mother…isn’t well,” he said after a minute. “Katy’s being courted by some wild man from Chicago. Bennett’s trying to run off to France to join Ernest Hemingway and that Lost Generation of writers.” He ran a hand through his damp hair. “Lacy, they foreclosed on Johnson’s place yesterday,” he added, looking up with eyes as dark as his hair.

Her heart jumped. Spanish Flats was his life. “I still have the inheritance Great-aunt Lucy left me, and some from my parents,” she said gently. “I could—”

“I don’t want your damned money!” He got up, exploding in quiet rage. “I never did!”

“I know that, Cole,” she said, trying to soothe him. She stood, too, standing close to his tall, lean body. She stared up at him. “But I’d give it to you, all the same.”

There was a flicker of something in his dark eyes for just an instant. He reached out a lean hand, the one that wasn’t holding the cigarette, and drew his hard knuckles lightly down her creamy cheek, making her tingle all over. “Skin like a rose petal,” he murmured. “So lovely.”

Her full bow of a mouth parted as she sighed. She searched his eyes while time seemed to stop around them. She was a girl again, all shy and weak-kneed, worshipping Cole. Wanting him.

He saw that look and abruptly moved away again. Just like old times, Cole, she thought bitterly. She bit her lower lip until it hurt, trying to banish the other rejections from her mind. He didn’t want her to touch him. She’d have to get used to that.

“This was Mother’s idea,” he said tersely, smoking like a furnace. “She wants you to come home.”

“Marion, not you.” She nodded, sighing. “You don’t want me, do you, Cole? You never have.”

He stared up at the portrait without speaking. “You could come back with me on the train. Jack Henry is servicing my Ford, and Ben took Mother’s runabout yesterday and vanished with it. I caught the train instead.”

The music got louder again. Someone, probably someone tipsy, was playing with the radio knob.

“Why should I?” she asked, with what little pride she had left, shooting the question at him so sharply that it made him look at her. “What can Spanish Flats offer me that I can’t have right here?”

“Peace,” he said shortly, glaring at the music beyond the door. “These aren’t your kind of people.”

Her lips tugged into a smile. “No? What are my kind of people?”

He lifted an eyebrow at her. “Taggart and Cherry, of course,” he said.

Taggart and Cherry were two of the oldest ranch hands. Taggart had ridden with the James gang, back in the late 1800s, and Cherry had driven cattle up the Chisholm Trail with the big Texas outfits. They could tell stories, all right, and if they’d bathed more often than twice a month, they’d have been welcome in the house. Cole was careful to see that they sat on the porch when they came visiting, and that he was upwind of them.

She couldn’t help the grin. “It’s winter. You won’t have to worry about getting downwind.”

He smiled gently, traces of the younger Cole in his face for just a split second. Then he closed up again, like a clam. “Come home with me.”

She searched his eyes, hoping to find secrets there, but they were like a closed book. “You still haven’t told me what I’ll get if I come,” she repeated, the alcohol dimming her inhibitions, making her reckless for a change.

“What do you want?” he asked, with a mocking smile.

She gave it back. “Maybe I want you,” she said blatantly, the gin giving her a little reckless courage.

He didn’t say a word. His face hardened. His eyes went dark. “You hated it that night,” he said curtly. “You cried.”

“It hurt. It won’t again,” she said simply, airing her newly acquired knowledge. She lifted her chin stubbornly. “I’m twenty-four. This—” she gestured around her “—is what I have to look forward to in my old age. Loneliness and a few hangers-on, and some wild music and booze to dull the hurt. Well, if I’m going to grow old, I don’t want to do it alone.” She moved closer to him, her face quiet with pride. “I’ll go back with you. I’ll live with you. I’ll even pretend that we’re happy together, for appearances. But only if you stay in the same room with me, like a proper husband.” She hated making it an ultimatum, but she wanted a child. She might have to trick him into giving her one, or blackmail him into it, but she was determined.

He actually trembled. “What?” he sounded as if she’d astonished him.

“I want the appearance of normality, and no giggling family making fun of me because you make it so damned obvious that you don’t want me.”

“Stop cursing—” he shot back at her.

“I’ll curse if I feel like it,” she told him. “Cassie was forever making horrible remarks about your insistence on separate rooms, and so were Ben and Katy. Everyone knew you weren’t behaving like a husband. It was just one more humiliation to add to the humiliation of being treated like a stick of furniture! So, if I come back, those are my terms.”

He swallowed. His dark eyes touched every line, every curve of her face. For an instant, she could see him wavering. And then he closed up, all at once.

“I can’t be guided like a blind mule,” he told her bluntly, his stance threatening. “If you want to come, all right. But no conditions. You’ll have your old room, and you’ll sleep in it alone.”

“Would it be that hard for you to sleep with me?” she taunted. She slid her hands over her slender hips. “George wants to.”

His chest expanded roughly. “George can damned well go hang!”

“If you won’t, I’ll let him,” she threatened. Her eyes sparkled with the challenge. Let him sweat for a change. Let him wonder and worry. “I’ll stay right here, and—”

“Damn you!” His dark eyebrows seemed to meet in the middle as he glared at her. “Damn you, Lacy!”

“You can close your eyes and think of England,” she whispered mischievously, because this was fun. The idea of seducing Cole and making him enjoy it was the most delicious fun she’d had in eight long months. And if there was a little revenge mixed up in it, so what? The thought of luring him into her bed, of tempting and tantalizing him, was delightful, especially now that she knew it was unlikely to be painful a second time. Untold pleasures lay in store for both of them, if she could bluff him.

He muttered something under his breath, finished his cigarette, and slammed it into the fireplace. “Damn you!” he repeated.

She moved around in front of him, making him look at her. “Why did you come to me that night if you didn’t want me?”

“I did…want you,” he bit off.

“And now you don’t?”

Oh, God. She was killing him by inches! His body felt like drawn cord. What she was demanding was impossible, but he couldn’t let her carry out her threat. The thought of Lacy with any other man cut his heart. He drew a deep breath. He couldn’t show weakness, not now.

Attack was the best defense. He lifted his face and glared down at her. “Sex is a weapon women use,” he said coldly. “My grandfather taught me to live without it.”

“Your grandfather almost succeeded in making a slab of stone out of you!” she shot back.

“Caring is a weakness,” he said shortly. “It’s a disease. I won’t be owned by any damned woman—much less a society girl from Georgia with a fat wallet!”

Her face blanched. Her fists clenched at her sides. So it was going to be war. All right. He was asking for it.

“Nevertheless,” she said tautly, “if you want me to come back, you’ll have to share a room with me. I’m not going to have the family laughing at me a second time. You don’t even have to touch me, Cole,” she conceded, hoping proximity might accomplish what blackmail couldn’t. “But you are going to have to share my room. If you want me back…” she added calculatingly. “And I think you need me—at least to help you cope with Katy. Don’t you?”

“Haven’t you any pride, woman?”

“No. I gave it up the day I married you,” she told him. “My pride, my self-respect, and my hopes of a rosy future. If you want me back, I’ll come. But on my terms.”

His eyes were fierce, black as coal. He drew in a slow, deep breath. “Your terms,” he said curtly. “Blackmail, you mean.”

He looked so formidable that she almost backed down. Then she remembered how she’d learned to treat George when he got out of hand. She wondered absently if it might work on stone?

She moved a little closer, coquettishly, and deliberately batted her long eyelashes at him. “Kiss me, you fool!” she said vampishly, lifting her face and parting her red lips.

He stared down at her through narrowed eyes and hoped like hell she wouldn’t notice the sudden thunder of his heartbeat at that innocent teasing. “Stop that,” he said irritably, giving nothing away. “All right,” he said, with a rough sigh, “we’ll share a room.”

“Finally, a chink in the stone!” She sighed, smiling wickedly, and he actually seemed to soften a little. Miracle of miracles! Had she accidentally hit on a way to get to him?

He scowled at her for another few seconds, half irritated, half intrigued by this new Lacy. He pursed his lips and almost smiled down at the picture she made. “I’ll pick you up in the morning at seven.” He glanced toward the hall. “You’d better send that pack of coyotes home.”

She curtsied. “Yes, Your Worship!”

“Lacy…” he said warningly.

“You’re so handsome when you’re mad,” she sighed.

The scowl got worse. He actually seemed to vibrate, and she felt a fever of pleasure that she could knock him off-balance. If he were vulnerable, there might be a little hope. Eight months, wasted; years wasted—and now she’d discovered the way to reach him!

“Good night,” he said firmly.

She gave him an impish little grin. “Wouldn’t you like to stay the night?”

“I would not,” he said shortly.

“Then enjoy your last night alone,” she said, with a gleam in her blue eyes. She turned and walked away, on legs that could hardly hold her. And she was laughing when she reached the room where the party was still in full swing.

But the man letting himself out the front door wasn’t laughing. He never should have agreed to her terms. He should have told her to take them and go to hell. Only he was so hungry for the sight of her that his mind had stopped working. It was probably all bluff on her part, about sleeping with that tall clown. But how could he risk it? By God, he’d beat the man to death if he so much as touched her!

The violence of his feelings disturbed him. She was just a woman, just Lacy, who’d been around so long she was like the flowers his mother always put on the hall table. But things had been different since that night with her. He hadn’t meant to touch her. The marriage had been forced; he’d been determined to find some way to drive her from the ranch without ever consummating it. And then he’d started kissing her, and one thing had led to another. He wasn’t sorry, except for hurting her. It had been magic. But it was too big a risk to repeat. How in hell was he going to share a room with her and keep his secret? In that intimacy, which he’d avoided for years even with his men, how could he keep her from finding out?

He’d lose her when she knew, he thought. That hadn’t bothered him at first, but he’d had too much time to think. He’d missed her. He’d wanted her. Avoiding her hadn’t worked. He’d tried that, eight months’ worth, and tonight was the first time he’d felt alive since she’d left him. He sighed. Well, he’d take it one day at a time. That was what Turk always said: Stop gulping life down in a swallow. So maybe he’d try that. As he left the house, the look in his eyes was as grim as rain, as hopeless as dead flowers on a grave.

Chapter
Two

Lacy sat down heavily in the wing chair, still reeling from her demands and Cole’s reluctant agreement to them. She’d been bluffing, but fortunately he didn’t know that. Imagine, she thought, shy little Lacy Jarrett actually winning one over Coleman Whitehall. The gin had helped, of course. She still wasn’t used to it, and it had gone to her head. Also, she mused, to her tongue.

Back in the old days, she would have been too shy to even speak to him. Her eyes closed and she drifted back to those first, nerve-wracking days at Spanish Flats following the death of her parents.

Katy had been welcoming, like Marion and Ben. But Cole had been formal, distant, and almost hostile to her. She’d made a habit of keeping out of his way, so quiet when he was at the table for meals that she seemed invisible. It didn’t help that she started falling in love with him almost at once.

There had been rare times when he was less antagonistic. Once, he’d helped her save a kitten from a stray dog. He’d placed the tiny thing in her hands and his eyes had held hers for so long that she blushed furiously and was only able to stammer her thanks. When she’d gotten sick from being out in the sun without her bonnet, it was Cole who’d carried her inside to her bed, who’d hovered despite Marion and Katy’s ministrations until he was certain that she was all right. Occasionally he’d been home when Lacy went for the quiet walks she enjoyed so much, and he’d fallen into step beside her, pointing out crops and explaining the cattle business to her. Eventually she lost much of her fear of him, but he disturbed her so much when he came close that she couldn’t quite hide it.

Her reactions seemed to make him irritable, as if he didn’t understand that it was physical attraction and not fear that caused them. Cole didn’t go to parties, and Lacy had never known him to keep company with a woman. He worked from dawn until well after dark, overseeing every phase of ranch operation, even keeping the books and handling the mounting paperwork. He had a good business head, but he also had all the responsibility. It didn’t leave much time for recreation.

The blow came when war broke out in Europe. Everyone was sure that America would eventually become involved, and Lacy found herself worrying constantly that Cole would have to go. He was young and strong and patriotic. Even if he weren’t called up, it was inevitable that he would volunteer. His conversation about the news items in the papers told her that.

Aviation, the new science, was one of his consuming interests. He talked about airplanes as some boys talked about girls. He read everything he could find on the subject. Lacy was his only willing audience, soaking up the information he imparted enthusiastically—even while she prayed that the flying fever wouldn’t take him over to France, where American boys were flocking to join the Lafayette Escadrille.

But America’s entry into the war in April, 1917, smashed Lacy’s dreams. Cole enlisted and requested service with the fledgling Army Air Service. He’d wanted to volunteer for the famous Lafayette Escadrille a year earlier, along with other American pilots attached to the French Flying Corps. But the death of his father and the weight of responsibility for his mother and sister and brother—not to mention Lacy—put paid to that idea. However, when President Wilson announced American participation in the war, Cole immediately signed up. He found neighbors willing to handle ranch chores for him while his mother and Lacy assumed the duty of keeping the books, and Cole packed to leave for France.

He and Lacy had begun to enjoy a closer relationship, even if it was still tense and tentative. But the knowledge that he was going to war and might never come back had a devastating effect on Lacy’s pride. She burst into tears and was inconsolable. Even Cole, who’d misinterpreted her nervousness before, finally realized what her feelings for him were.

She passed by his room the morning he was dressing to leave—and was shocked when he dragged her inside and closed the door.

His shirt was completely unbuttoned down the front, hanging loose over his elegant dress slacks. He seemed taller, bigger, in disarray, and Lacy eyes went shyly over the expanse of tanned muscular chest with its thick, dark covering of body hair.

“You cried,” he said, without preamble, and his dark eyes held hers mercilessly.

There was little use in denying it. He saw too deeply. “I suppose you have to go?” she asked miserably.

“This is my country, Lacy,” he said simply. “It would be the essence of cowardice to refuse to fight for it.” His strong, brown hands held her upper arms firmly. “Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said about air power, about the edge it would give us on the Hun if we could assist the French Lafayette Escadrille in developing it?”

“Why the French?” she asked absently. The scent of him, the closeness of him, made her dizzy with pleasure. She only wanted to prolong it.

“Because the American air corps has no planes of its own,” he said simply. “We’ll be flying Nieuports and Sopwiths.”

“Flying is dangerous…” she began.

“Life is dangerous, Lacy,” he replied quietly. He looked at her soft mouth with its dark lip rouge. Absently he reached up and smudged it with his thumb, smiling as the bloodred color transferred itself from her lower lip to his skin. “Like being branded,” he teased. “I could use this war paint on my cattle.”

“It washes off,” Lacy pointed out.

“Does it?” He reached in his pocket for his handkerchief and, holding her firmly by the nape of her neck with his free hand, proceeded to wipe off every trace of it.

“Cole, don’t!” she protested, trying to turn her head.

“I’m not wearing that stain to the train station,” he replied, his mind on what he was doing, not what he was saying.

But Lacy went quite still, her wide eyes unblinking on his hard, dark face. “W—what?”

He smiled with faint indulgence as he finished his task and tossed the handkerchief into his dresser. “You heard me.” His gaze went over her soft oval face, from her short dark hair to her big blue eyes and down her straight little nose to the bow mouth he’d wiped clean. “This might have been unthinkable before. But I don’t know when I’ll come back again. Isn’t it permissible for a patriotic lad to be sent off with a kiss?”

Her fingers plucked nervously at the buttons of his shirt, tingling as they felt the warmth of his bare torso under them. “Of course,” she said, almost strangling.

His lean hands framed her face with an odd hesitancy and he moved closer, towering over her.

She could barely breathe. She’d dreamed of this moment for years, lived for it, hoped for it. Now it was happening, and she was self-conscious and shy and scared to death that she wouldn’t live up to his expectations.

“I…know nothing of kissing,” she confessed quickly.

She felt more than heard his breath catch, but the only sign he gave of having heard her was the jerky pressure of his hands increasing as he bent toward her.

“Practice makes perfect, don’t they say, Lacy?” he asked in an oddly husky tone, and his rough, coffee-scented mouth ground into hers without preamble or apology.

She gave in without a protest, yielding to his superior strength, to his growing hunger. She knew nothing, but he taught her, his mouth invading hers in the silence of the big, high-ceilinged room, his arms slowly enveloping her against the taut fitness of his tall body.

He lifted his head just briefly, to draw breath, and his dark, eyes met hers. She was dazed, weak, clinging to him while her parted, swollen lips invited again the madness he was teaching her.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered shamelessly.

“I’m not sure I could, in any case,” he whispered back. His head lowered again and this time his mouth was gentle, teasing, exploring hers with tenderness and lazy hunger that grew to anguished passion in no time at all.

She felt the wall at her back, cold and hard, and Cole’s heated body pressing her into it, in an intimacy that she’d never even dreamed. The contours of his flat stomach had changed quite suddenly; his mouth was hurting hers.

Frightened, her hands pressed frantically against the hair-roughened strength of his chest.

Cole drew back at once, his own eyes as shocked as hers at the barriers of decency he’d overstepped in his mindless desire. He stepped away from her, dark color overlaying his high cheekbones.

Lacy’s swollen lips were parted as she struggled for breath and composure, staring up at him with embarrassed comprehension. He shuddered just slightly, and, Lacy’s eyes encountered with sudden and startled starkness the visible evidence of his loss of control. She blushed red and averted her eyes even as Cole turned away from her.

She didn’t know what to say, what to do. Her body felt oddly swollen and hot, and there was a tightness in her lower stomach that she’d never experienced. Her bodice felt far too tight. She tugged at the lace of her white midi blouse and searched for the right words.

“I beg your pardon, Lacy,” Cole said in a taut, all-too-formal tone, although he didn’t look at her. “I never meant that to happen.”

“It’s all right,” she replied huskily. “I—I should have protested.”

“You did. Too late,” he added, with faint dryness, as he turned toward her, back in command of his senses once more. His dark hair was disheveled, lying over his broad forehead, and there was still that faint color on his high cheekbones. His deep brown eyes held a light that was puzzling as they swept with new boldness over Lacy’s slender body and back up to her own vivid blue eyes.

“I—I should go,” she faltered.

“Yes, you should,” he agreed. “You’ll be compromised if any of the family find us alone like this in my bedroom.”

But she didn’t move. Neither did he.

His chest rose and fell deeply. “Come here,” he said softly, and opened his arms.

She went into them gracefully, and laid her hot cheek against his cool, damp chest, the thick hair tickling her skin. His heartbeat was deep and quick, like his breathing, but he held her with utter decorum, his arms protective rather than passionate.

“Wait for me,” he whispered into her ear.

“All my life,” she replied brokenly.

His arms contracted then, and he shivered with feeling. But after a few seconds, he put her away from him, searching her eyes with banked-down hunger.

“I love you,” she said unsteadily, damning pride and self-respect.

“Yes,” he said, his voice deep and quiet, his face giving nothing away. “Try to help Mother with Katy and Ben while I’m away. Stay close to the house. Don’t go out alone, ever.”

“I won’t.”

He drew in a slow breath. “The war won’t last forever. And I’m not suicidal. No more tears.”

She managed a shaky smile. “Not until you leave, at least,” she promised.

His fingers traced her cheek tenderly. “I thought you were afraid of me, all these years. But it wasn’t fear, was it?” he asked, his jaw tightening as he looked at her. “You’ve loved me for a long time, and I never saw it.”

She nodded slowly. “I never meant you to know.”

“It’s just as well that I do, now,” he replied. He bent and brushed a slow, tender kiss over her lips. “Write to me,” he whispered. “I’ll come home, Lacy.”

“I’ll pray every night for you,” she replied. “Oh, Cole….”

“No more tears,” he said sternly when her eyes began to sparkle with them. “I can’t bear to see you cry.”

“Sorry.” She drew back from him, her heart in her face. “I’d better go, hadn’t I?”

“I’m afraid so.” His eyes swept over her one last time. “We’ll say our proper good-byes when I leave.”

“Our proper good-byes,” she agreed.

It had been the last time she’d seen him alone. He said a very formal good-bye to the family before a neighbor drove him to the train station. Lacy watched the Model T Ford drive away and she cried piteously, along with Marion and Katy, for the rest of the day.

Cole did write, but not to Lacy. He wrote to the family, and because there was no mention at all of what they’d shared in his bedroom, she didn’t write to him, either. Apparently he was eager to forget the intimacy. It was never referred to. His letters were full of airplanes and the beauty of France. He never spoke of the dogfights he participated in, but his name drifted back home to Texas in newspaper accounts of the air war, and along with several other Americans, he became known as an ace.

Katy grew wildly infatuated with the aces she read about—and especially with one they called Turk Sheridan, a blond Montana boy with nerves of steel who was considered the most daring of the fliers.

Late in 1918, as life droned on at the ranch, they received word that Cole had been wounded. Lacy almost went mad before they finally found out that he wasn’t critically ill, and that he would live. The letter came from Turk Sheridan, who added that he might come back with Cole to Texas after the war as the two men had become fast friends and Turk himself was a rancher.

Katy was over the moon about their prospective new lodger, but Lacy was worried about Cole. When his letters came again, they were in a different handwriting, and the tone of them was stiff and distant.

Cole came home soon after the armistice in 1919, with the big blond Turk in tow. Lacy went running to Cole, despite all her stubborn determination not to. When he put out his hands and almost pushed her away, his rejection total and all too public, Lacy felt something die inside her. There was no expression on Cole’s hard face, and nothing in his eyes. He was a different man.

He threw himself into the business of trying to get the ranch back on its feet, while Katy began a long and determined pursuit of Turk Sheridan, whose real name was Jude. Soon after the war, a wealthy great-aunt of Lacy’s died and left her an inheritance of monumental proportions. Lacy was grateful because it gave her some measure of independence, but it seemed to set her even further apart from Cole, who was foundering in hard financial times following the war.

They planted crops to supplement the cattle they raised, and Turk got his hands on an old biplane and used it to dust the crops with pesticides. It amazed everyone that not only did Cole refuse to go near it, he didn’t even care to discuss airplanes anymore. That shocked Lacy, who one day made the mistake of asking him why he’d lost his fascination with flying. His scalding reply had hurt her pride and her feelings, and she’d walked wide around him afterward.

About that time, young Ben developed a huge crush on Lacy. It was disturbing, because he was eighteen to her twenty-three and Lacy’s heart had always belonged to Cole, even if he didn’t want it. She let Ben down as gently as she could, but in revenge, he coaxed Lacy and Cole to a line cabin and locked them in, having had the foresight to also nail the shutters closed so that they couldn’t be forced from the inside.

Cole mistakenly thought Lacy had put Ben up to it, knowing how she felt about him, and Lacy shivered remembering the harsh, furious accusations he’d thrown at her all through the long night until some of the ranch hands rescued them the next morning. Lacy was compromised, and Cole was forced to marry her—not only to spare her reputation, but to save the family’s good name.

He’d been glad enough when she’d left. If that was so, then why, she wondered, did he want her to come back now? She didn’t dare think about it too much. With any luck, it wasn’t purely because of his family. There was a small possibility that he’d actually missed her.

She’d bluffed him into agreeing to her terms, to sharing a room. But remembering that night he’d stayed in her bed, she had faint misgivings about the wisdom of her actions. Despite her longing for a child and the depth of her love for him, she dreaded its physical expression. Well, she thought, that was a bridge she’d cross when she had to. Meanwhile, going home had a delight all its own. She was getting tired of the high life.

Chapter
Three

Katy Whitehall opened her eyes to a blinding whiteness. She groaned and turned over, shielding her eyelids from the sunlight coming in through the white curtains.

Her long dark hair lay in tangles around a white face, and huge green eyes opened, wincing. She tried to lift her head, groaned again, and fell back onto the pillows with a resigned sigh.

The door opened and Cassie came in, shaking her gray head, glowering down at the young woman as she put a cup of hot tea on the bedside table.

“Told you, I did,” she said in her deepest drawl, her black eyes accusing. “Told you that firewater would give you the devil’s own headache. Shameful, that’s what it is, coming in here in the wee hours of the morning. Mr. Cole would horsewhip you, was he here to see!”

“Well, he isn’t. He’s in San Antonio, selling cattle.” Katy dragged her slender body into a sitting position, her small breasts outlined under the pale fabric of her gown. She pushed back the weight of her hair and reached for the tea.

“Maybe he’s gone to see Miss Lacy, as well,” Cassie ventured, her hands on her broad hips.

Katy eyed her carefully. “Think so?”

“Well, miracles happen, don’t they?”

Katy forced a smile as she sipped the sweet tea. “So they say. Ben shouldn’t have done that to them,” she murmured.

“One joke too many,” Cassie agreed. “Left alone, they might have come to marriage all by themselves, for the right reasons.” Her dark face puckered as she pursed her lips. “He used to watch her, when she first came to live here,” she reminded Katy. “My man Jack Henry said he’d be mechanicing and he’d see Mr. Cole watching her like a chicken hawk, them dark eyes just fiery and full of longing.”

“You read too many of those outrageous novels,” Katy chided, giggling as the old woman shifted uncomfortably and averted her eyes. “You know very well that Cole’s immune to women. If he wasn’t, he’d have married long ago. He never was around girls very much. It was always business.”

“Had to be, didn’t it?” Cassie defended him. “After Mr. Bart died, weren’t nobody else to take care of his place. Ben were too young, and Miss Marion never had no business head.”

“Thank God Cole did, or we’d all be out looking for work.” Katy stretched, shuddering as the movement hurt her head. “I never should have had that third drink,” she moaned, holding her forehead in both hands.

“Mr. Turk had words with that young man who brung you home last night,” Cassie volunteered suddenly.

Katy’s heart jumped, but she didn’t look up immediately. Her big green eyes widened. “Turk did?”

Cassie smiled. Katy was only twenty-one; every single emotion showed on her face. Cassie had always known how she felt about Turk, but it wouldn’t do to encourage her. Cole wouldn’t stand for it. He’d already made that clear.

“Mr. Cole told him to watch out for you,” the old woman said.

Katy glowered. “I don’t need watching.”

“Yes, ma’am, you do,” came the hot reply. “Carousing all hours, drinking in public, cussing like a sailor…You’re shaming us all! Your poor mama won’t even go to her bridge club because she’s so afraid somebody will say something about you to her!”

The younger woman sat up straighter. “Well, Danny Marlone doesn’t think I shame him,” she replied, hiding her sudden vulnerability to her mother’s pride in blustering.

“He’s a gangster!” Cassie was off and running now, her eyes huge in her face. “Yes, he is—One of them Chicago mobsters, right down to that striped suit he wears and them fancy cigars he smokes and that big fedora! He’s not the man for you! He’s leading you off into hell!”

Katy sighed wearily. “Danny’s a nice man. He’s just a northerner, and that’s why you don’t like him. I like him a lot. He’s good to me. He buys me things,” she added, touching the diamond necklace he’d given her just last night. She smiled. “He’s very generous.”

Cassie’s eyes narrowed. “And what you giving him in return, girl?”

Katy actually blushed. “Not…that!” she burst out, sitting straighter and then groaning when it hurt her head. “I’m not sleeping with him!”

“Maybe he’ll expect you to, what with presents like that,” Cassie replied gruffly. She turned and went to the door. “Miss Marion has rode into Floresville with Mrs. Harrison to get her hair fixed, on account of Mr. Ben ain’t brought her runabout home yet. She say she be back about noon. Which it nearly is.”

She closed the door with a bang, and Katy glared at it. Danny was not a gangster. Not really. He might have done a few shady things, and he did run a speakeasy in the Windy City. But he was slick and Italian and handsome, and she liked being seen with him. She especially liked having Turk see her with him. Because she knew the foreman didn’t like it, and that made her blood sing.

Damn Turk! she thought, dashing aside the covers, headache and all, to get to her feet. Damn him! Letting Cole order him around, heeding that warning to keep his hands off the boss’s sister! She’d gone right through the roof when Ben had told her that. He’d overheard a hot argument between Turk and Cole, with Cole coming out on top, as usual. Turk had added that he liked women, not little girls, and that he didn’t have any interest in young Katy in the first place! Oh, how that had cut. It had cut her young heart to shreds. She’d been avoiding Turk ever since, and when she’d gone to that party in San Antonio and met Danny Marlone, she’d encouraged him like crazy. For the first time, she’d used her femininity to attract a man. It didn’t help that she began to wonder if it might even work on Turk. It was too late now. Cole had seen to that.

Sometimes she hated her big brother’s tyranny. Cole had been like this as long as Katy could remember. Always in charge, always throwing out orders. Ben had worshipped him for a long time, although her baby brother was beginning to lose that enchantment as he aged. But Lacy…Oh, poor Lacy. The older woman would wear her poor heart out on Cole’s utter indifference, and Katy could have cried for her friend. Cole had been quieter since Lacy’d left. Almost lonely, if the iron man ever got lonely. At any rate, he was working himself to death. And when Marion had asked him to stop and see Lacy, he didn’t even protest. Maybe he missed her. Katy grinned impishly. That would be something—to have her indomitable older brother actually fall in love. Cassie could be right; he might feel something. But he had a lot of practice at hiding his emotions. Especially since the war.

She tugged on a blue polka-dotted little frock with a swingy skirt and puffy sleeves that gave her a baby-doll look. She left her hair long and tied it back with a bright blue ribbon. Not bad, she told her reflection in the mirror. Not bad at all. She lifted her hair. Maybe she’d have it cut, like Lacy’s. She liked Lacy’s hair. She liked Lacy.

Her thin brows drew together as she thought about her best friend in San Antonio. She’d visited Lacy once or twice in the past month, once to go to a party. Odd, it didn’t seem like Lacy to have a houseful of people and all that booze. Katy had always been the flashier of the two girls, always out for adventure and excitement, the wilder the better. It had been Lacy who was quiet and dry-witted, bubbly only with people who knew her well. That Lacy wouldn’t have liked wild parties. But Cole had changed her. His constant indifference and neglect had done something terrible to her friend. It had aged her. Ben and his stupid plotting! If only he’d stopped to think what he was doing. Locking them in a boarded-up line cabin that not even Cole’s fabulous strength could break them out of. She shook her head. Ben should have realized that Lacy wasn’t for him. And there was little Faye Cameron, who worshipped him from afar, hanging on his every word. But Ben had no time for that tomboyish child with her soft blond hair and big blue eyes, despite the fact that most of the boys on the ranch adored her. Ben thought her young and frivolous and not nearly sophisticated enough for a fledgling famous writer such as himself.

Well, poor little Faye would have to fight for her own ground; Katy didn’t have time. She was expecting Danny later in the day, and she knew he was going to ask her to go back to Chicago with him. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say. He had to leave the following morning. His business in San Antonio was over, and it hadn’t included an impromptu meeting with a young Texas lady at a local party that had led to a week of frantic dating.

What would Turk say if she agreed to go with Danny? The question intrigued her. She knew very well what her brother would say and do. And it would be prudent to leave before he returned from San Antonio if she wanted to go through with it. But first she wanted to see Turk. She wanted to see his face when she told him.

He was down at the corral, tossing out orders to a few cowhands on horseback. Katy’s green eyes adored his tall, muscular body as he stood with his back to her, his deep voice faintly raised as he spoke. His hair was blondish brown, sun-bleached and thick and straight. His face was handsome enough, with strong lines and a mouth she’d dreamed of kissing. He had big, rough-looking hands and equally big feet, and her heart went crazy just looking at him.

The cowboys turned their mounts and rode off. Turk stared after them, his wide-brimmed straw hat pushed to the back of his head, his jeans close-fitting, sensuously clinging to his long, powerful legs above booted feet.

“Hi, cowboy,” Katy drawled. At least her head hurt less, but her heart didn’t. It got bruised every time she looked at him.

He turned, one corner of his chiseled mouth tugging up at the sight of her in the revealing fabric of her dress. “Hello, tidbit. Going somewhere?”

“Just waiting for Danny.” She shrugged. “He’s taking me for a drive in his Alfa Romeo.”

The gray eyes darkened. He didn’t say anything, but the rigidity of his face spoke volumes. “Cole won’t like it.”

“Cole isn’t here,” she replied haughtily.

“For God’s sake, Katy! What’s gotten into you lately?” he demanded. “You’ve gone hog-wild, and at the worst possible time. Cole’s got enough worries, with foreclosures all over the place and your mother’s health failing.”

That was true. Despite her vivacity, her trips to the hairdresser, her forced cheeriness, Marion was growing thinner and weaker by the day. Katy didn’t like being reminded of it, and her chin lifted.

“Nothing I do will help Mother,” she told him. “She’s not been the same since Cole ran Lacy off.”

“He didn’t run her off,” he said curtly. “She left.”

“What was there to stay here for?” she demanded, exasperated. “When he wasn’t ignoring her, he was treating her like a rug. They didn’t even share a room! Cole never wanted to marry her; Ben forced him to.”

“Little Ben has a bad case of exalted ego,” Turk said, his eyes cold. “Someone needs to show him how to be less self-centered.”

“Faye’s trying,” she said mischievously. “Maybe if she chases him long enough, she’ll catch him.”

“They’re worlds apart,” he replied, his gaze wistful, as if he were talking about someone else. “Nothing in common except their birthplace. He’s a city boy, despite the fact that he grew up here. She’s a country girl.”

“Two worlds can merge.” She looked at her feet. “You were a city boy,” she said. It was blatant fishing, because she didn’t know that. She knew nothing about Turk except his real name and his war record.

“No,” he replied. “I was born in Montana. I grew up on a ranch down on the Yellowstone.”

“You didn’t go back there after the war,” she murmured.

His eyes darkened as they studied her averted face. She was fishing. Always fishing, always wondering about him. He wondered about her, too, but it wouldn’t do to let it show. Cole had said hands-off, and he owed Cole too much to argue. Besides, he told himself, Katy was just a kid. She’d get over him.

“There was nothing to go back to,” he said. His eyes grew dull and sad as the memories came back. “Nothing at all.”

“Don’t you have family anywhere?” she asked curiously.

That shouldn’t have set him off, but it did. Sometimes Katy irritated him with her constant probing into his life. He didn’t like it. He didn’t want her any closer than she was right now. In that, he and Cole were almost too much alike. Okay. If she wanted the truth, she could have it. He stared harshly down at her. “I had a wife. She died one winter, while I was away selling cattle. She froze to death sitting up in a chair. She’d gotten sick and couldn’t build a fire. She was pregnant.”

Katy felt her body go rigid with the words. She looked up into a face like stone…and suddenly understood so much. A wounded man. A badly wounded man, heart dead, and he wanted no more of love or commitment. And now it all made sense. The way he’d avoided her, the way he went through women as if they were no more than toys with which to amuse himself. Of course. There was safety in numbers. If he had a lot of women, he didn’t have to worry about the risk of involvement.

Her face went white. She stared at him helplessly, all her dreams dying slowly in the green eyes that went quietly dead in her face.

He saw that, and his conscience stung. “Yes,” he said curtly. “Yes, I thought so. Bringing that Northern hoodlum down here, running wild, all of that was because of me, wasn’t it? Because I wasn’t dancing attendance on you!”

It hurt to hear it put into words. It stung her eyes and made them water.

He saw the tears and felt vaguely guilty. She was just a kid, after all. And even if he wanted her as much as she wanted him, there was no way it could work. He wasn’t sure he had anything to give. Like Cole said, Katy was too vulnerable for a quick affair.

“Katy, I’m sorry if that hurts. But, girl, I’ve got nothing left to give,” he said softly. “I don’t want your young heart, Katy. I can’t give you mine. I lost mine when I lost Lorene. If it weren’t for Cole, I wouldn’t even be alive. Don’t you understand? I loved her,” he said roughly. “I can’t ever love anyone else!”

“I haven’t asked you to love me! I don’t feel like that…” she burst out, hurt pride and frustrated passion making her wild.

“I’m not blind!” he tossed back, his gray eyes stormy. “You’ve followed me around, sighed over me, made love to me with your eyes for the past few months! You’ve done everything to make me notice you except strip naked!”

She drew back her hand and slapped him across the cheek as hard as she could. Her face was wet, and she didn’t even realize that it was soaking with spilled tears. She sobbed as she looked at the redness her fingers had made. “Damn you! Damn you! I don’t care about you. I never could!”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” he growled. It was all getting out of hand. He started to reach for her, to try and explain.

But she shrugged off his hands and ran, blind, uncertain of the direction she was taking. She ran past the corral where the remuda was kept, through the spread of mesquite trees with their feathery, thorned fronds blowing softly in the wind, down the trail into the hay barn. Sobbing, she fought her way through the bales to a dark, quiet corner and lay in the yellow, sweet-smelling hay, her body shaking from the force of her pain.

Her heart had fed for years on the hope of someday having Turk for her very own. She went to sleep dreaming of how it would be if he kissed her, if he loved her. She planned a future that was based on loving him, that included marriage and children. And now, none of it would ever happen. He had nothing to give. She didn’t know how she was going to stay alive….

Footsteps sounded behind her, but she wouldn’t look up. She knew she was in disgrace. Shame washed her in blushes. She couldn’t face him.

“You little fool,” Turk muttered. He knelt beside her, forcing her onto her back with hands that had no gentleness. He glared down at her, feeling impotent, hating the indignity of her behavior for both of them. “This won’t help, Katy.”

“Leave me alone,” she whispered, shaking. She rubbed her eyes with the backs of her hands. “Go away and let me be by myself.”

He caught her wrists and pulled her up, holding her in front of him, his gray eyes fierce as they held her tear-soaked green ones. “Listen to me, young lady. I came out of the war alive—when more than any damned thing, I wanted to die. Your brother forced me to go on; he got me off the bottle and gave me a job and I owe him for that. He said hands-off where you’re concerned, and by God, hands-off it’s going to be. Do you understand me?”

“You don’t need that for an excuse,” she shot back. “We both know you don’t want me!”

“Do we?” he asked under his breath.

The way she looked was tearing him apart. Loyalty to Cole stopped him only for a second. He’d watched her, too, although he hated admitting it. He’d watched her and wanted her for a long time, and only his conscience had kept him from running screaming to her room in the darkness. He wanted her. God, he did! And she wanted him, too. He could see it, almost taste it. Would it be so wrong, just one time, just once to hold her and touch her and end the exquisite torment of desire she aroused in him? Afterward, would she hate him? He tried to think of afterward, but the scent of her—the vulnerable tenderness in those big green eyes—made him reckless. Oh, to hell with it! She was going to give in to somebody, maybe that lousy gangster. So why should he hold back? At least, he wouldn’t hurt her….

His hands went out to her hips. In his kneeling position, he drew her roughly to his body and pressed her belly into his. He watched the shock in her eyes dilate the pupils until they were black, and he laughed bitterly as he felt her body stiffen in the blatantly intimate embrace.

“Do you feel that, Katy? Has your Chicago gangster taught you what it means?” he asked suggestively, dragging her hips slowly against the hard thrust of his to let her feel graphically the tangible proof of his desire.

Her nails bit into the hard round muscles of his arms through his brown-patterned shirt and she trembled. Her eyes were on his mouth now, because what he was showing her embarrassed her.

“I’ve seen you in your room at night,” he said his lips against her forehead, his voice husky and rough, “standing in front of the curtains to undress, your arms lifted, your breasts straining against those thin gowns you wear. And I’ve gone running into town to have a woman, to forget, to get rid of what you’ve done to me.”

“I didn’t…know,” she whispered, her voice as unsteady as his. She could feel her breasts swelling against him, even through the two thin layers of fabric. His chest was warm and hard, and she felt the cushy springiness of hair that must cover it.

“Does he make love to you, that slick gangster?” he whispered.

“Not—not yet.”

“Are you going to let him, Katy?” he asked under his breath.

“Yes!” she said recklessly. “Yes, because you won’t!”

“Oh, but I will, tidbit,” he breathed, bending. His hands slid down her hips to her waist, then up still farther to her unbound breasts. He cupped their small softness, taking their warm weight, his thumbs teasing the nipples hard. She bit back a cry, and he slid his mouth down to hers to take it into the warm darkness past his lips.

It was the first kiss, the very first one she’d ever shared with him. Her eyes closed, her head went back to give him full access. Her mouth opened hungrily, eagerly, letting his tongue probe inside, letting it tangle with her own in the hot, still darkness of the barn.

His fingers had a faint tremor now. She felt them on the buttons of her dress. She stiffened, but she didn’t stop him. This was all she’d have of him when she left with Danny. Because she was going. After this, after what she’d told him, after what she was going to do with him in this dark barn, she’d have to leave.

“You know what this is going to lead to?” he asked, his mouth poised just above her own as he found the last button at her waist.

“Yes,” she said, shaking. “I’ll be…leaving with Danny,” she told him. She would, she’d have to, because of what was going to happen now. She’d have to ask Danny to take her away, today. He would, she knew. She couldn’t tell him why, but he’d do what she asked. Meanwhile, she wanted this man obsessively. And these few minutes with him, even without his love, would last all her life. “You don’t have to love me. Just be my lover. I’ll live on it…all my life!” Her voice broke. “Because I lied. I do love you. I always have, always will. I love you, Turk!” Her voice broke as his hands moved.

“You little fool! You’re not old enough to know what love is. This is just sex,” he whispered angrily. But it didn’t feel like just sex as he pulled the fabric slowly away from her pretty pink breasts and peeled it down to her waist, his darkening eyes sensuous on the creamy flesh with its dark pink tips gone hard with desire. “And speaking of little…” he murmured, reaching out to touch the tips with warm, slow fingers, watching her body tauten and tremble, her breath indrawn sharply.

She let him lay her down, let him remove the dress and the chemise and the garter belt and hose and shoes, until she was nude under the dark warmth of his eyes and the scent of her own body filled her nostrils.

“Cole and I used to talk about women when we were overseas,” he whispered, kneeling over her as he stripped off his shirt. “He said that your grandfather was a full-blooded Comanche, and that the old man used to say that Indians could smell a woman. Now I know what he meant.” He tossed his shirt aside and reached for his belt, smiling sensually as she watched him. “Don’t turn your face away, Katy,” he said gently as he began to lower the tight jeans and shorts he wore under them. “You let me see you. Now I’m going to let you see me.”

Her eyes widened as the jeans slid away from his body…and she saw for herself the wild difference between man and woman, between male and female.

“My God, what an expression!” He laughed softly as he moved away long enough to remove the rest of his clothing.

“I’ve never seen a man…like that,” she whispered as he stretched alongside her.

“Not even the Chicago hood?” he taunted.

“Oh…no,” she said, her voice faltering, her eyes widening as he loomed above her.

“Don’t worry. I won’t hurt you too much,” he said softly, Cole’s warnings and his own misgivings drowning in a passion too-long denied. His hand smoothed down her body, feeling the softness of her breasts, brushing over her belly and down to the exquisite softness below it. He touched her with blatant intimacy, and she flinched and caught at his hand.

“Shh,” he whispered. He opened his mouth on hers, tasting its soft trembling, and ignored the dainty little hand tugging halfheartedly at his fingers as he found a moist opening and began to play around it.

Her body arched and her voice broke on a faint little cry.

His lips lifted until they were just brushing hers. “I don’t have anything to use,” he whispered. “And I’m just not confident enough to try rolling away from you in time. So we’re going to make love this way. I’m going to be your first man, but not technically. Do you understand? I’m going to fulfill you without the risk of pregnancy, and then I’m going to show you how to do it to me.”

“But…” she protested as his fingers moved again. She cried out, gasping, as he found more sensitive tissue and began to stroke it.

“Look at me,” he whispered as he increased the pressure and the rhythm, holding her shocked eyes. “Let me watch you.”

Her face went bloodred as he stroked and tormented. She began to writhe helplessly, and his dark eyes were all over her, watching her breasts swell and tauten even more, watching the restless movements of her long, elegant legs, hearing sweet, whimpering sounds that aroused him unbearably.

He was hurting. Worse. Dying. He grasped one of her hands and pushed it against his swollen flesh, wrapping it around him, holding it there when she would have jerked it away.

“God, I hurt,” he whispered, his voice tormented even as his hand grew more bold where it touched her. “Like this…Help me!”

He taught her the movement, whispered explicit, embarrassing instructions that she was too aroused to protest. She touched him, stroked him, closed around him, and felt him throb. Her eyes looked up into his, and he saw her pupils beginning to dilate.

“Turk!” she cried out, her voice frantic, rasping.

His free hand was behind her neck, holding her still, his other hand feverish, his eyes shockingly thorough as he held her wild gaze. “Now,” he whispered roughly. “Feel it, Katy. Feel it. Feel it, and let me watch!”

Spasms of hot lightning shot through her virginal body. She arched up against that tormenting hand and cried out, forcing him to fulfill her. Her body went into convulsions, and he watched, feeling them as his hand probed gently past the maidenhead. He shook all over, and in that moment of feverish arousal, forgot caution.

“To hell with this!” he groaned. He forced her back into the hay with the hot pressure of his open mouth. His body rolled onto hers and he thrust her legs apart with his hand. He went into her with rough, piercing motion, burying himself, and she was so involved in her own culmination that she didn’t even feel pain. She welcomed him, arching up to his hard, hot body, her hands finding his hips, her nails digging in.

He rocked furiously above her, his breath dragging out in gasps, his thighs shuddering as he arched down again and again, his eyes on her, his jaw clenched with the most exquisite pleasure he’d ever had.

“Take me inside,” he whispered, his voice strained, deep with mingled arousal and passion. “Take me, Katy!”

It happened to her again. The whispered words, the rough motion of his body, the feverish rhythm with which he drove into her made it happen again.

She closed her eyes and arched her head back with a peculiar little cry, her nipples hard and pointing. One of his hands swallowed one of them roughly. His mouth forced hers open and penetrated it in the same motion, with the same rhythm, as his body. She heard the noise of the sliding hay under them, smelled the hot, pungent smell of their union, heard his heart slamming in his chest, felt the wiry roughness of his body hair against her soft skin. And then he cried out, with such achingly wild pleasure that her eyes opened and she looked up, seeing him arched above her, his neck corded with muscle, his face violently red, his eyes closed, his teeth clenched. He convulsed again and again with rippling muscle, and she looked down to where they were locked together and watched as he suddenly drew back and covered her body with his. She felt a wetness on her belly after his body shuddered and then collapsed on top of her, gasping for breath. “Oh, God,” he breathed unsteadily. “I hope it was in time! I couldn’t stop…!”

Her hands touched him with wonder. He’d said that he wouldn’t and then he had, suddenly, as if he hadn’t been able to hold back. Her eyes closed as she drifted in the soft aftermath, a little sad because she knew that this would be the last time, the only time. Because she loved him, and would lose him. He had no heart to give her, only a body that knew no emotion past fulfillment; any woman would have done.

“Are you all right, Katy?” he asked, lifting his sweaty head to look at her with soft concern.

“Yes, I’m all right,” she replied, with the shreds of her pride. She even managed a smile, but she couldn’t quite look at him.

“And this is why I wouldn’t touch you before,” he said gently, watching her move slowly away and start putting her clothes on again. “Because afterward comes shame…and then guilt.”

He was being tender, and she hated it. Hated what was only pity mingled with conscience. She drew her underpants back on and her garter belt over them. There was no self-consciousness left, at least. Danny would like that. He didn’t know she was a virgin. He’d even said that he wouldn’t want one. So all her problems were solved at once. She’d given her virginity to the only man she’d ever love—to pave the way for the only man who loved her.

“Say something,” he said quietly, watching her, vaguely ashamed of his own loss of control. He hadn’t meant to let it happen. His big body still trembled softly with the force of his fulfillment. Was it because she’d been a virgin that it had been so intense? he wondered dazedly. He’d never felt it like that.

“I’m all right!” she said roughly. Would the shame never stop? She knew he didn’t love her, but she’d thought the experience with him would be profound, reverent. And it had only been sex. Very pleasurable, very nice. But without his love, it was only physical. She wondered if she’d always remember it with the same degree of bitterness.

She pulled the chemise over her head and then pulled on her dress. Behind her, she heard him putting his own clothes back on and tried not to remember the beauty of his body without them. Hard muscles covered with dark blond hair, strength and beauty in every sinew. She’d never forget this. He would, of course. There would be other women. Her eyes closed; she didn’t want to know about them. She was only one in a line, and that’s all she would ever be. Now she wouldn’t even have the dignity of being the one that got away. And when it was too late, she finally understood why he’d kept his distance. He’d wanted her to keep her illusions. Now she had none left.

With her hand on the last button, she stepped into her wide-heeled shoes and turned to face him with her chin proudly lifted.

“Thanks for the lesson,” she said quietly.

He actually winced. “No,” he said under his breath, searching her dark, wounded green eyes. “No, don’t make it into something cheap. It wasn’t.”

Her lower lip trembled, threatening to leave her defenseless. She forced herself to smile. “Okay.”

He moved forward, catching her arms as she tried to get away, to run.

“Don’t go,” he said. “Don’t let that man make you into a plaything. He’ll use you and throw you out.”

She looked up, loving him with her eyes. “So long, cowboy.” She smiled faintly, sadly. “I loved you, Turk,” she whispered. She touched his hard face, feeling the muscles harden. “I always will, until I die. I may have other men, but I’ll never give all of myself again.”

“He’ll hurt you!” he ground out, hating this, hating the pain. He hadn’t expected that it would hurt when she left, that he wouldn’t be able to take her in his stride and walk away.

She touched her fingers to his firm mouth. “No. You’ve seen to that,” she said, her voice exquisitely tender. “No one could possibly have made it as perfect as you did. He won’t hurt me.” Her eyes searched his one last time, sad and resigned. “I’ll love you until I die, Turk.”

She turned and moved quickly away, so that he wouldn’t see the tears. It was good-bye. They both knew it.

Long after she’d left, Turk sat on the steps of the barn loft, smoking a cigarette, his eyes blank and sad. After Lorene, he’d never wanted anyone else, not permanently. He’d wanted to have Katy; he couldn’t deny that. He’d only kept his distance so long because he’d promised Cole. But now…

His body ached. Despite the feverish fulfillment he’d had with her, a completion he’d never known with another woman, ever, he was hungry all over again. He remembered her small, taut breasts under his chest, the nipples arousing him as they rubbed against his muscles….

He got up abruptly and took the cigarette outside to grind it out under the heel of his boot. His face set into harsh lines, he went back toward the house. He owed Cole so much, but there had to be a way out of this. Maybe he could talk to her, maybe they could work something out.

It had only been thirty minutes or so since she’d left the barn, long enough to smoke three cigarettes. So it came as a shock when he got to the house and found it empty.

Cassie came back into the kitchen from the pantry to find him staring toward the staircase.

“If you looking for Miss Katy,” she said shortly, “she ain’t here. She done gone, luggage and all, with that Chicago gangster.”

He felt his heart sinking. He turned, his eyes dark, quiet. “When?”

“Not five minutes ago.” She sighed. “Mr. Cole going to be like a wild man. And how is I going to tell Miss Marion?” Her tired, lined eyes misted. “My baby, gone off with that—that man! How come you let her go, Mr. Turk?” she demanded.

“She’s of age,” he said harshly, when all his fighting instincts were screaming for him to go after the man and kill him. But what could he offer her? He didn’t want to get married. And after what had happened, it would be impossible all the way around if she stayed here. His friendship with Cole would be at risk; Katy would grow to hate him. And that Chicago man did seem sincere enough, explaining patiently to Turk the night before that their late arrival had been innocent. He cared about Katy, he’d told Turk. He wouldn’t do anything to hurt her. Perhaps he’d marry her…

Why should that hurt so much? He turned on his heels and stalked out of the house. Cassie was crying softly as he went out the door.

The shock was almost too much for Marion Whitehall. She came home to a tearful Cassie and was hit with the news just as she put her purse down on the hall table.

Her elegant features contorted; her dark eyes filled with tears under their frame of curling, silvery hair. “Gone?” she exclaimed. “My Katy, gone? To—to live with a man? Why didn’t someone stop her?”

“Mr. Turk got here too late, and Mr. Cole ain’t come home yet, that’s why,” Cassie moaned. “And I was out in the garden. Nobody was here to stop her. Mr. Turk said she was of age—and he just stomped off somewhere in a temper. Mr. Cole going to be so mad!”

Marion sat down. She felt sick all the way to her shoes. Katy. Her baby. How could she do this? “Has Ben come home?” she asked.

“I doesn’t think so,” Cassie said, sobbing. “He didn’t come down for breakfast, so I looks in his room, and he ain’t been in it. So I reckon he ain’t here. Oh, Lord! What a terrible day this is! What a terrible homecoming for Mr. Cole!”

Marion felt the tears running down her cheeks. “Did she leave a message? A note? Anything?”

“I’ll go look,” Cassie said, ambling toward the staircase.

Just then, the front door flew open, and Ben Whitehall came rushing through it, his dark eyes wild, his dark hair disheveled like his once-immaculate gray suit. “I got it!” he burst out, “I got it! I got it! He hired me!”

He grabbed Cassie and spun her around in an impromptu dance, too exuberant to notice that nobody was smiling. “I’m going to work for a brand spanking new San Antonio newspaper.” He laughed. “They hired me to write news. I’ve been out with the owner and his daughter, and I have to go back—” He stopped, frowning as the somber faces of his mother and housekeeper penetrated his enthusiasm. He let go of Cassie. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Your sister just left for Chicago,” Marion said miserably, her face a study in desperation and shame. “To live with the owner of a speakeasy!”

Chapter
Four

Ben’s face froze. He straightened, running an idle hand through his thick, dark hair. He stared at his mother. “She left with that gangster?” he asked, as if he could hardly believe what he’d heard. “Why didn’t somebody stop her?”

“Turk apparently didn’t get here in time,” Marion said quietly, her eyes wet with tears. “My little girl…in that terrible place! Oh, Ben! What will become of her?”

“Now, Mama,” Ben said awkwardly. He knelt before her, rubbing her hands in his. “Mama, she’s a big girl. Are you sure they aren’t getting married?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Cassie’s looking for a note or something. Why did she do it?” she asked, lifting eyes as dark as his own to question him. “She’s been so wild lately, but I never expected her to do anything like this. Ben—” she leaned forward urgently “—Coleman will kill him.”

“Yes, I know,” he said. It was the truth, too. Cole had a hell of a temper, and he doted on Katy. He wouldn’t put it past his big brother to get on the first train North with a pistol on his hip.

“How are we going to tell him?” she persisted, gnawing on her lower lip.

Ben forced a smile. Just his luck, he thought miserably. Here he’d came home with the best news of his budding career, and there was nobody to listen. Sister Katy had stolen his thunder.

“Here,” Cassie called from the hall, waving a piece of paper. “She did leave us a note!”

Marion took it from her with trembling hands and read it. “Mama and all,” Katy had scribbled. “Danny and I are engaged. We are going to Chicago today to meet his parents. We’ll invite you all to the wedding! Wish us luck. Love, Katy.”

Ben met his mother’s dark eyes. “Do you believe it?”

She shook her head. “But it’s important that we make Coleman believe it…Do you understand me, Ben, Cassie?”

They both nodded. Cole’s temper wasn’t something to arouse unnecessarily. It was frankly dangerous.

MEANWHILE KATY WAS SITTING jauntily beside Danny in the spiffy Alfa Romeo, forcing herself to laugh gaily and pretend wild enthusiasm for the long trip North.

Beside her, Danny Marlone was grinning from ear to ear, his complexion even darker against his perfect white teeth. He gave his companion a warm glance and began to whistle.

“You’ll love the Windy City, baby,” he said. “I’ll show you all the best places. There’s a beach…You’ll love that. I’ve got this big house, all stone, on a hill overlooking the lake, chock-full of servants. You’ll have everything you want. Everything!”

“Darling, I did tell this one itty-bitty white lie,” she said, wanting everything aboveboard.

He caught her hand and pressed the palm to his lips. “What itty-bitty white lie?”

She swallowed, trying not to think about Turk and how it had been…“Well, so that my brother wouldn’t kill you, I said we were getting married.”

“Darling! But this is so sudden!” He chuckled, grinning at her.

She just stared, taken aback.

“It sounds great, doesn’t it? Mr. and Mrs. Danny Marlone,” he said, clasping her fingers closer. He laid her open palm on his thigh. “Yeah, I like that. We’ll go whole hog, too. Announcements in all the papers, only the best people at the wedding. Your family can come. Your big brother can give you away. Oh, it’ll be great, honey!”

Her breath lodged in her chest. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing! “But I thought you just—just wanted to have an affair!” she burst out, turning to face him.

“I want you,” he said, and the look in his eyes made her feel oddly humble. That wasn’t lust. That was love, pure and simple, and even while she marveled at being the recipient of it, she ached to have that look from Turk. She never would, now. Never.

“For keeps?” she whispered.

He nodded. He pulled the car to the side of the road and let the engine idle while he stared at her. “For keeps. Let’s get married.”

“I’m not a virgin,” she said straight-out, without going into detail.

“Neither am I. So what?” he asked bluntly.

Her cheeks went rosy. She smiled, feeling really shy. “Well…”

He bent and put his mouth over hers. It wasn’t unpleasant, letting him kiss her. He ran his hands slowly over her shoulders, down over her breasts, and that wasn’t unpleasant, either.

He laughed. “You’re not that experienced, either, chick,” he whispered as she flushed again. He winked at her as he moved back under the wheel and put it in gear. “We’ll get along okay. Now sit back and watch this baby run!” He hit the accelerator, and the car shot forward with a surge of pure power.

Katy, sitting beside him, suddenly felt as if she’d won a lottery. So there wouldn’t be any disgrace. She’d be a respectable married lady, and Cole wouldn’t come and kill Danny. She closed her eyes and smiled. She wondered what Turk would say when he found out. He’d probably be relieved to hear that she was out of his hair once and for all, she thought bitterly. She comforted herself with the hope that she wouldn’t be pregnant. Turk had tried to spare her that shame. It was one thing to go to Danny without her chastity, quite another to present him with another man’s child. She had too much character for that kind of dirty trick. But…what if Turk’s actions had been too late?

FAR AWAY, ON THE NORTHERN end of San Antonio, Lacy was clutching her husband’s sleeve as he helped her on board the morning train that ran down through Floresville and stopped on a siding near Spanish Flats.

He was deadly quiet this morning, all business. Still in his work clothes, he drew feminine eyes nevertheless. But he never returned those sly glances, or even acknowledged them. He helped Lacy into a seat and slid lazily down beside her. Deceptive, that slow movement of his lean, hard body. She’d seen him in a hurry once or twice, and he was as quick as greased lightning and twice as dangerous.

“Katy will be glad of some young company,” he remarked as the train pulled slowly out of the station, lurching with the first movements.

“What’s he like, this Chicago man she’s seeing?” Lacy asked.

He shrugged. “Italian. Dark, well mannered, a little shady. Turk doesn’t like him.”

“Turk doesn’t like anybody around Katy, and you know it,” she murmured dryly, glancing up at his hard face.

Dark, angry eyes cut down into hers. “Turk is the best friend I have in the world. But even he isn’t permitted that kind of familiarity. Katy isn’t going to become one of Turk’s castoffs.”

“Oh, no,” Lacy said demurely, folding her hands over the lap of her dark skirt. “But she’s perfect for a gangster?”

“It isn’t that kind of relationship. She’s young. She’s just having a fling,” he said.

She watched him cross his long legs and roll a cigarette. He was so capable, she thought. Always in perfect command, taking charge, making everything all right. She’d felt secure with him, even in their early days together. She’d never been afraid when Cole was anywhere around.

“Why won’t you let Turk near her?” she asked bluntly.

He turned in the seat, with his arm draped carelessly over the back, and studied her. “Because he seduces everything in skirts,” he said matter-of-factly. “Katy would be easy prey. Then it would be impossible. He’d be embarrassed and guilty about it, and she’d be compromised or worse. I’d have to do something about it, and that wouldn’t help anybody. No. It’s better this way.”

“You don’t think he could settle down, maybe get married?” she persisted gently.

“He was married,” he said. “She died. He’s never wanted anyone else like that. I’m not sure he can. He likes his own company now.”

“Like you,” she said, smiling faintly.

His broad shoulders lifted and fell. “I’m used to it. It takes too much time and effort, letting people get close. More often than not, they find a weakness and exploit it. If you keep them at arm’s length, that can’t happen.”

“It’s a pretty lonely life,” she reminded him, gray eyes soft and searching.

“Loneliness and independence are different words for the same thing. Freedom. I like mine. I don’t think I could survive being hog-tied and smothered.”

“I never tried to smother you,” she said, defending herself. “I just hated being ignored constantly.”

“And the one time I didn’t ignore you,” he replied quietly, watching her blush, “you cried all night long. I heard you, even through the wall.”

She turned her face away, but he caught her chin and jerked it back around to search it, his eyes dark and fierce.

“You walked away,” she said unsteadily, glancing around. There was no one near enough to hear them; the train was remarkably uncrowded for that time of day. She looked back at him. “You knew you’d hurt me, and you couldn’t get out fast enough. Of course I cried.”

“What could I have said or done then?” he asked, eyes narrow and dark. “I thought you wanted me. You seemed to, that morning.”

Her lips parted at the memory of it: his mouth warm and searching, his body hard and hungry against her own. It had been so sweet, so heady. “Yes, I wanted you,” she whispered. “I thought it would be the way it was that morning. But afterward, it was like being…used,” she said falteringly. “You wouldn’t even let me touch you.”

His jaw clenched as he stared down at her, his chest rising and falling unevenly. He did want, so desperately, to tell her why he’d hurt her. But he wondered if she’d believe him even if he could make his pride bend that far. “That’s past history, anyway, Lacy,” he said curtly. He lifted the cigarette to his parted lips and took a long draw. “We’ll have to make the best of things, if we can.”

She looked out the window, to the low horizon and acres of flat, unfenced land outside it. “I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that we could get a divorce?”

“No. So it looks as if you’re stuck, doesn’t it, kiddo?” he asked, with a cold smile.

“Or you are,” she replied sweetly, and smiled back.

He glanced down at the neat dark suit she was wearing and the pretty little hat on her dark head. “I’m glad you aren’t wearing any of those outrageous new dresses like what you had on last night,” he commented. “I have a hell of a time keeping my cowhands working as it is, without you women driving them crazy. They’ve been hanging around the house for weeks now, trying to get a glimpse of Katy’s legs. I finally burned two of her more revealing dresses.”

“Just your style, cattle king,” she taunted. “If you can’t reason with people, run over them. You were always like that, even when you were younger.”

“Don’t expect me to change, Lacy. I’m too old.”

She shook her head, staring at the rugged features, the straight nose and chiseled, wide mouth, the square jaw. It wasn’t the nicest face she’d ever seen on a man, but it suited him, and she loved every hard line of it. Bronzed skin, deep-set dark eyes, heavy brows, thick straight hair that fell into an unruly heap on his broad forehead. He was sensuous. Yes, he really was, she thought suddenly, even in the way he moved. But it was only an illusion, because he was more repressed than any man she’d ever known and he hated the very idea of sex. She’d wondered a time or two how many women he’d had in his life. Oddly, enough, she sometimes thought there had hardly been any.

“You’re staring, honey,” he chided, watching her intense scrutiny.

“You’re a very sensuous man,” she said quietly, watching the impact of that statement freeze his hard features.

He turned his face away from her and leaned back to smoke his cigarette in a frigid silence.

“I’m sorry if I offended you,” she said after a minute, settling down into her own comfortable seat as the train gathered speed.

“No. It wasn’t that,” he replied, his voice even, quiet.

Well, whatever it was, he didn’t volunteer anything more. He sat with his hat down over his eyes, the cigarette smoking between his lean, dark fingers, and he didn’t say another word.

Still, her eyes continued to study him, running like hands down his long, lean body with its rippling play of muscle as he shifted.

“Why do they call Jude Turk?” she asked unexpectedly.

His thin lips actually smiled, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Because there aren’t any fiercer fighters than the Turks. He’s a force to behold when he’s mad, kiddo. A mean man.”

“As mean as you?” she teased softly, her blue eyes twinkling in their frame of soft, forward-curving hair.

He glanced down at her with one eye. “About half,” he said. That eye went down to her full breasts and lingered, then went back up again to catch her blush. “Embarrassed?”

“You’re the one who won’t talk about sex,” she reminded him.

He looked as if he wanted to say something, but he shrugged and closed his eyes again.

If only he could talk to her, she thought miserably. If only they could just communicate. She sometimes thought that there was a loving, giving man locked up in those suppressed emotions. That Cole was a keg of dynamite, waiting for a match—that as a lover he’d be everything she could want. If she could only find the spark to ignite him. But he seemed not to care about that side of his nature. And only occasionally, like just now, did any hint of it come out. He was the most complex and puzzling man she’d ever known. Perhaps that was why, after all the years she’d known him, he still fascinated her.

Ben was waiting for them at the siding, dressed in a beige city suit with a derby on his head, hands in his pockets as he leaned back against the building. The aging but jaunty black runabout was parked nearby, its top down.

Lacy couldn’t help but grin at the picture of gay youth he presented. “The future famous writer,” she murmured. “Do you think he’ll make it, Cole?”

“I suppose he’ll keep trying until he dies, at least,” he said. “Don’t encourage him,” he added unexpectedly.

She glared at him as he got up to let her out of the seat. “I never did.”

“He’s still got a wild crush on you,” he said. His dark eyes narrowed. “This time, if he makes one move toward you, brother or no brother, I’ll beat him to his knees.”

“Cole!” she gasped, shocked by the hard look in his eyes.

“You remember what I said,” he told her, and took her arm firmly in his hand as he retrieved the carpetbag with her clothes in it and walked off the train with Lacy in tow.

“Lacy, darling!” Ben said in his most sophisticated tone, spreading open his arms. “How are you?”

“She’s fine,” Cole said, with a cutting edge in his deep voice as he dared Ben to come one step closer. “How’s Mother?”

“Upset…” Ben started, obviously nonplussed by his brother’s sudden possessiveness. “Katy’s gone.”

Standing next to him, Lacy actually felt the tension grow in Cole’s lean, powerful body. “She’s what?” he demanded.

“It’s okay; she’s not going to live in sin or anything,” Ben said quickly. “She’s going to marry that Danny Marlone. He’s taking her to his mother’s until the wedding.”

“It’s too quick,” Cole said shortly. “They’ve only known each other for a few weeks. And where the hell was Turk while this was going on?”

“At the ranch. He said she was of age. Besides,” he added ruefully, “she was long gone before he knew about it.”

“He could have gone after her!” Cole shot at him. “So could’ve you!”

“And done what, for God’s sake?” Ben demanded coldly. “She’s over twenty-one!”

Cole glared at him until he actually moved backward a step.

“He’s right,” Lacy interrupted gently. She touched his arm, noticing with a faint hope that he didn’t jerk away this time. “She’s a grown woman. You can’t force her to come back. And knowing Katy, she’d never go off with a man she didn’t love.”

“You don’t know her lately,” he replied quietly. “She’s changed. Gone wild.”

“It’s just the new age.” Ben laughed. “Times are changing, for the better. Everything’s looser, less rigid. Girls are getting liberated, that’s all.”

“They’re getting loose, that’s all,” Cole returned curtly. “Short skirts, cussing, drinking, running wild with men…The younger generation’s going to hell!”

“Well, yours sure did the world a lot of good, didn’t it?” Ben shot back. “The war to end all wars…isn’t that what they called it? How many men did you kill, big brother?”

Cole hit him. The movement of the taller man’s fist was so fast, Ben didn’t even see it coming. And Lacy didn’t say a single word. If anything, she moved even closer to Cole, her accusing blue eyes on Ben’s bruised face as he got slowly to his feet, rubbing his chin.

“Okay, I was out of line,” he muttered, glaring at his brother. “But so were you. The world’s changing. If you can’t change with it, you’ll be left behind. Car’s over here.”

He went ahead of them, looking so ruffled and trying so hard to be dignified that Lacy had to fight back a smile.

“No censure?” Cole chided, glancing at her. “I thought you’d jump to his defense.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry you didn’t hit him harder,” she replied calmly.

He stopped walking and looked down at her, finding the same wild spirit in her eyes that he’d seen and liked when she was still in her teens. It would have matched his own—in another time, another place. What a hell of a pity, the way it was between them. Perhaps he should have told her in the very beginning how little he had to offer. He should have told her the truth.

His fingers touched her hair. It was soft and cool, and he wondered why she was so rigid, hardly breathing.

“Does that frighten you?” he asked, searching her eyes. “You’ve stopped breathing.”

“I don’t want you to stop,” she confessed in a whisper, returning the soft scrutiny. “I was afraid that if I moved, you’d think I didn’t want you to touch me.”

His fingers actually trembled. “Lacy—”

“Are you two coming with me or not?” Ben called belligerently from the car.

Cole couldn’t help laughing. “Young rooster,” he muttered. “Okay, son. We’re on our way.”

Lacy sighed softly as Cole moved ahead. Thanks, Ben, she thought viciously. Someday I’ll do you a favor!

Just as they reached the car, a small blond whirlwind erupted from a horse and ran pell-mell toward Ben.

“Hi!” Faye Cameron burst out, jumping on to the running board to plant an airy kiss on Ben’s cheek. “I didn’t know you were back from the big city! How are you? Hi, Lacy. Good to see you again. Cole, you’re looking good.”

“What do you want?” Ben muttered, glaring at her. “I told you—I don’t have time to come calling right now. I’m busy.”

“But it’s my birthday party,” Faye told him, her big blue eyes wide and hopeful. “I’ll be eighteen. Oh, Ben…You promised you’d come. It’s tonight!”

Ben shifted his hat on his head and looked and felt uncomfortable. That was the trouble with women, he thought irritably. You took them to bed once or twice and they tried to own you. Still, he thought, watching her, she was a hot little thing in bed, all soft little breasts and hot skin—and she’d do anything in the world to please him. If it hadn’t been for her father, he’d have been over to see her before this. But the old man didn’t like him, and Ben wasn’t sure what Ira Cameron might do if he found out Ben had seduced his only child.

“Gee, honey, I’m sorry,” Ben said soothingly, tweaking her hair gently. “But I’ve just got myself a nice job in San Antonio, writing for a newspaper.”

“Ben, how great!” she burst out, all smiles.

Well, at least he had one person to share his triumphs with. He grinned. “I’ll be the only reporter on the staff, too. Mr. Bradley said I was so good that he wouldn’t need anybody except me! I get a pretty good salary and my own office, and I’ve even been invited to visit the Bradleys at their home.”

“That’s swell, Ben,” Faye said. She frowned. “But doesn’t a big city newspaper need more than just one reporter?”

Ben had wondered about that himself, but he glossed it over. “I’m good, I tell you. And even people in San Antonio know about the ranch and that we’re solid citizens. Mr. Bradley said that was good for business. I’ll come over in a week or two and tell you all about it, okay? But just now I’ve promised to meet my employer and his daughter at their home for dinner,” he added, and Faye seemed to understand. “I’ll make it up to you.”

“Sure,” Faye said, but it was with a pale smile. So the boss had a daughter. And her Ben was so ambitious…She moved back from the car, all her bright laughter gone, her beauty diminished. “Sure. Well, nice seeing you. ’Bye!”

She ran for her horse, but not before Lacy had seen the pain and tears in her eyes. Poor little thing, she thought bitterly. Ben was so thoughtless!

Cole didn’t say a word. Perhaps he thought Ben was justified. Men!

They got into the car, and Ben cranked the engine. Behind them, Faye Cameron sat tall in the saddle, her young breasts thrusting against the fabric of her yellow shirt, her well-rounded hip emphasized by the jeans. The sun made a halo of her blond curls, made silver tracks of the wash of tears on her pale cheeks. As she watched them drive away, she dashed an angry hand over her wet face.

“I’ll make you care someday, Ben Whitehall,” she whispered brokenly. “Someday, somehow, I’ll make you care!”

She wished she knew more about men. She’d tried to be everything he’d wanted in bed. She’d let him do the most incredible things to her young body without a single protest, when she wondered if it was quite normal. He’d even kissed the inside of her thighs!

Of course, Ben was experienced. He’d told her once about one of his women, describing in detail exactly what he’d done to her. Faye had turned red and gasped at the brazen conversation, but she’d listened all the same. And when he’d finished, and Ben saw the look on her face, he’d thrown her down on the bed and taken her, standing up, her thighs in his strong hands as he looked down at her body on the bed; then he’d laughed as he shuddered with completion. The memory made her hot all over. She shifted uncomfortably in the saddle, her lips parted, her breasts gone hard with desire. She wanted him to follow her home and make love to her. But he wasn’t going to do that. She’d have to wait until he could fit her into his busy life.

She turned the horse slowly, hurting as she never had before. If only she could read and write, if only she were intelligent and educated. Ben only wanted her in bed because she wasn’t smart enough to associate with him in public. But maybe if she got pregnant, he’d want her. Her lips pursed. Yes. Maybe that was the only way she’d ever get him. And Cole would make him marry her. She smiled. It would be poetic justice, even, since it was Ben who’d forced Cole to marry Lacy. She sat up straighter as she urged her mount into a canter. It was a beautiful day after all. It felt good to be eighteen and already a woman.

Behind her, the roadster lurched into motion as Ben pushed down the accelerator. He wondered if Faye was going to be difficult. She was a sweet kid, but that Jessica Bradley was some chick! He couldn’t think of anything he’d like better than doing to the sleek brunette what he’d been doing to little Faye. Only more of it. He began to whistle as the car went racing madly down the long dirt road toward Spanish Flats.

Chapter
Five

Ben had the top down, and the old 1914 runabout was filled with choking dust. It was a good thing his mother had stopped him from putting that Lizzie label on it, Lacy thought wryly, or people would have done some staring. GIRLS, WATCH YOUR STEP-INS painted on the side would have drawn a few eyes! That fad had really caught on with the young people, even in Spanish Flats.

The runabout was a tight fit for the three of them. It was as old as Cole’s big Ford touring car, but few local people could afford new cars anyway. Just to be able to own a Tin Lizzie was quite a feat following the war, given the problems of depending on agriculture for a living. Lacy felt her lungs filling with dust, but she held her tongue. Cole was used to dust; he lived with it day in and day out. He’d only think less of her for acting like the tenderfoot she sometimes was.

Sitting close beside her, his long arm over the back of the seat, Cole stared straight ahead, his body as taut as drawn cord. Lacy felt that tension and was puzzled by it. Surely the argument with Ben hadn’t caused it, and she was certain it wasn’t proximity to her. Perhaps it was the memories young Ben had unwittingly aroused. Or maybe, she grinned to herself, it was that Ben was driving. Odd that Cole hadn’t protested, but he sometimes indulged his younger brother. And it was obvious how much Ben enjoyed driving. Cole tended to be more at home on horseback. Once he’d driven his big car through a haystack, and the guffawing cowboys who saw him do it were saved from certain death only by divine intervention. It had started raining just as Cole went for the first man. Cole hadn’t driven a lot since then.

“How was the big city?” Ben yelled at Lacy above the road and engine noise.

“Lonely,” she said, without thinking.

“That isn’t what Katy said after she went to that last party!” Ben chuckled.

Lacy stared at her hands in her lap. “No, I guess not.” She remembered the party. It had been like all the others she gave. Wild and bright and long. And the only person who hadn’t enjoyed it was Lacy herself. She enjoyed nothing without Cole.

His fingers touched her neck, lightly brushing it, as if by accident. Her pulse increased, her breath decreased. She looked up into dark, searching eyes and felt her whole body go rigid with mingled desire and pleasure.

His eyes dropped to her mouth, lingering there for so long that her lips involuntarily parted. She wondered what he would do if Ben weren’t sitting beside them, and thought in her heart she knew. She would have given anything at that moment to have Ben leap out of the car and vanish, so that she could be totally alone with her husband.

Ben didn’t vanish, of course, and Cole was distracted by a herd of cattle being moved in the distance. His eyes narrowed, watching, and Lacy smiled at that intense scrutiny. Just like a cattleman to be fascinated by anything on four legs.

It took only a few minutes to get to Spanish Flats, and Marion came rushing out to meet them. She didn’t hug Cole—that was forbidden, and everyone in the family knew and respected his dislike of physical contact. But she hugged Lacy, warmly and for a long time. Marion did look thinner, older.

“I’m so glad you’re here to help me cope, darling,” Marion said brokenly. “My baby’s run off with a gangster, Lacy!”

Lacy patted her on the back awkwardly. “Now, Marion. She’s a big girl, all grown up.”

“And if she isn’t now, she soon will be,” Cole said shortly. “Is it true—about the marriage?”

“Why, yes, of course.” Marion lied glibly, not believing it would really happen. She even smiled. “We’ll all be invited to the wedding.”

“You can go for all of us,” Cole said, his smile as icy as his tone. “If I went, I’d kill the—” He almost said it, remembered Lacy and his mother in the nick of time, and walked off without another word.

“Whew, that was close,” Ben said, with a shudder. “I opened my mouth out of turn and set him off at the siding. He’s still mad.”

“Why did you do that to him, Ben?” Lacy asked softly, her eyes quiet and accusing. “You know he won’t talk about the war.”

“Maybe that’s why,” Ben muttered. “He’s hiding something. He’s been hiding it ever since he came back, and Turk helps him. Neither one of them will tell the truth…”

“What happened is their business,” Marion said, touching her son’s arm lightly. “It’s none of ours.”

Ben sighed roughly. “Well, maybe so. I’ll put up the car and bring your bags in, Lacy.”

Lacy followed Marion inside, to be grabbed and soundly smothered by Cassie, who cried all over her and enthused about her coming home—and then rushed off to get hot tea to serve.

“You look well, at least,” Marion said later as they sat alone in the elegant living room sipping sweet tea from the dainty china cups Marion had brought here from her girlhood home in Houston.

“I wish I could say that I felt it,” Lacy confided. “I’ve been dead for eight months. It’s been horrible without him.”

Marion put her cup down gently on the carved oak coffee table. “He hasn’t been the picture of joy, either. He’s been even more quiet than usual working until all hours. You know, I didn’t even have to twist his arm to get him to go see you. He almost volunteered.”

“Maybe he wanted to see how many lovers I had.” Lacy laughed bitterly.

“He knows better than that,” the older woman scoffed. “So do I. I used to watch you, watching him. So much love, all wasted on him. He and Turk are much alike, Lacy. They wrapped themselves in steel after they came back from the war, and now they’re trying to live without ties of any kind. I don’t know what happened, of course, but I’m almost certain that Katy didn’t go to Chicago for love of that smooth-talking gangster she’s been dating.”

“You think Turk said something to her?” Lacy asked, studying the wrinkled face.

“I’m certain that he did. Perhaps he told her that there was no hope, or said something cruel to her. But Katy wouldn’t have gone like that without a reason. And she didn’t seem in love to me. At least not with Danny Marlone!”

Katy was her friend, but Lacy wondered if anyone really knew her heart. Lacy never had, although she loved the younger girl like a sister. If there was one man in the world Katy would die for, though, it was Turk. Just the least notice from him could put the younger woman into dreams of ecstasy for hours. It was almost pitiful, the way she watched him and found excuses to be with him. Turk, on the other hand, was, as Marion had said, a lot like Cole. His face gave away nothing, and he seemed to hide his own vulnerabilities in humor. If he had vulnerabilities. Perhaps personal tragedy had damaged him, too. Cole had said that Turk’s wife died. That would be shattering, especially to a man who was so much a man. It would be like an indictment of his masculinity that he’d failed to save her.

“You’re very quiet,” Marion murmured.

“I’m worried about Katy, too,” she confessed. “Is he a nice man, this Danny? Will he be good to her?”

“I suppose so, darling. But it’s his business that bothers me. He owns a speakeasy, and I don’t think he’s above making dishonest deals. It bothers me. Still, what can we do? She’s a grown woman now. I was married and had Coleman when I was just her age. My hands are tied.” She took another sip of tea. “At least Coleman believed me. He won’t go rushing up there with his pistol.”

“Believed you?” Lacy probed.

“Darling, I don’t believe a word of the note Katy left me,” came the quiet reply. “I don’t think that man has any intention of marrying her.”

“Oh.” Lacy felt shattered by that statement. She loved Katy. Katy had always been a good girl, despite her coquettishness. And now, for her to go and—and live with a man! Oh, Katy, how could you? she thought miserably. How could you let Turk cause you to do something like that?

Then she remembered her own threat to Cole if he didn’t share her room. About George. Well, she comforted herself, the ends justified the means, didn’t they? But until tonight, she wouldn’t know. And remembering the last time, she wondered if she was going to have enough courage to go through with this. She did love Cole. But would her love for him be enough to save their marriage?

Ben borrowed the car for his dinner date, careful to reassure his mother that he was leaving in plenty of time for the long drive—and that he wouldn’t wreck her pretty little black runabout.

Mothers, he thought to himself as he gunned the engine going down the long, winding dirt road. The sky was cloudy, but perhaps it wouldn’t rain. Anyway, there was a top—if he could remember how to put it up!

He was still bothered about the new atmosphere between himself and Cole. In all the arguments they’d ever had, Cole had never lifted a hand to him before. That was out of character, even if the display of temper wasn’t. He’d certainly hit a nerve. He knew that his big brother was hiding something; he just couldn’t figure out what it was. Marion had said it was none of his business, but he wondered all the same. Cole was so secretive about his private life. And especially about Lacy.

Ben grimaced, remembering how he’d brought about that disastrous marriage. He hadn’t meant to force them into a corner; it had all been a big joke. But it wasn’t funny the next morning when they were let out. Lacy had been white as a sheet and crying, something the spunky girl had never done in front of him before. Of course, the look on Cole’s face had been enough to reduce a strong man to tears—utterly ferocious. Ben had gone to visit an aunt in Houston the same day, to get out of Cole’s way while he cooled off. And by the time he came back, Cole and Lacy were married.

He’d wanted Lacy for himself. She was so lovely, so cultured. While Coleman had been way during the war, Ben had been Lacy’s shadow. Then when Coleman had come home again, the older man had been so cold and remote that no one could approach him except Turk. He’d actually backed away from Lacy when she’d gone running, with her heart in her eyes, to welcome him home from France after armistice was declared. He knew he’d never forget the way Lacy had looked, or how she’d reacted to Cole’s distance during the months and years that followed. She’d been talking of leaving the ranch, for the first time, when Ben had hit on his practical joke. He’d asked Lacy to marry him, in desperation, and she’d refused with such gentleness.

It had almost killed him to know, finally, that she’d only felt affection for him, and that had rankled. Like Katy, Ben was used to getting his own way, especially with women. He sighed, thinking about the girls he’d been out with in San Antonio. He sometimes felt certain that he knew more about women even than Cole did. Cole seemed remarkably repressed; he always walked off when Ben and Turk started talking about their conquests. Especially since the war.

Turk was a rounder, he thought. The ace pilot had been his hero for a long time. Cole was too hard an act to follow. Turk was more human. Ben admired his success with women, his cool, easy manner. Turk was high-tempered, too, like Cole, but he was a little more forgiving and less rigid in his attitudes. Ben wondered how Cole got along with Lacy when the lights went out. He thought that might have been why Lacy left him in the first place. They’d had separate rooms, and Ben suspected, as did the others in the family, that the marriage had never been consummated. That would hurt a woman like Lacy, to have everyone think her own husband considered her undesirable. She’d stayed in San Antonio eight months, and there had been a man hanging around her, from what Katy said. But for Lacy to come home with Cole, the man must not have meant much to her. Lacy probably still loved Cole, despite everything. Looking back, he couldn’t remember a time when Lacy hadn’t looked at the older man with her heart in her sad eyes. But Ben hadn’t noticed—not until he’d played his infamous practical joke and forced Lacy into the anguish of a loveless marriage. He sometimes felt very guilty about that.

His mind went back to meeting them at the siding, to little Faye Cameron’s sudden appearance. She was a cute thing, that blond tomboy, but hardly the kind of woman he needed. Writers, he decided, were loners. They couldn’t be restricted to just one woman. They needed lots of women.

Of course, there was Jessica Bradley, the daughter of the new periodical’s publisher. She was a dish. Very dark, with creamy skin, and a very kissable mouth, and a body he was aching to get his hands on. Now there was a sophisticated little doll. He began to whistle as he thought about her and increased his speed. Poor little Faye would just have to set her sights a little lower. A rancher’s daughter needed a cattleman, anyway, not a famous writer.

The Bradleys were waiting for him when he got to the elegant residence near the Alamo. Randolph Bradley was tall and silver-haired, with a neatly clipped mustache and very blue eyes. His daughter apparently took after her mother, whose portrait hung above the elegant mantle in the Victorian living room.

“Mama is in Europe, of course,” Jessica informed him as they sipped champagne cocktails before being served dinner in the spacious dining room. She moved closer to him, drowning him in exquisite scent. “She detests the frontier. It’s nothing like New York. But Papa insisted that we come here to take over this territorial publication.”

“Papa knows a good business venture when he sees one,” Bradley said haughtily. He looked down his nose at her and made a face. “This little publication is going to become a force in Western journalism, you wait and see, daughter. Now, Whitehall, tell me about yourself. Your people are in cattle ranching, I understand.”

Ben felt uncomfortable. “Why, yes,” he replied, with a faint smile, trying to sound as confident and urbane as his host. “My brother handles that end of it, of course. I’m more into the—uh…financial side of things.” Thank God Cole wasn’t here to hear him or he’d be into something else—like Cole’s fist!

“Good man. Nasty things, cattle,” the older man said, lifting his glass. “We’re going to make you into the reporter of the century. Scandal, crime, tragedy—We’ll make a fortune! Here’s to profit, son.”

Ben lifted his own glass. Waterford crystal, he recognized. Very nice. The bit about scandal, crime, and tragedy had gone right over his head. “Here’s to profit!”

It was a wonderful evening. Old man Bradley went out of his way to be courteous, and Jessica’s dark eyes made Ben into a nervous wreck with their frank sensuality. He was never aware of what he ate, but he was thankful for his mother’s insistence on proper table manners. At least he didn’t embarrass himself by not knowing which fork to use.

“Well,” Bradley said when they’d finished dessert and were sipping glasses of brandy in the living room, “I must get my rest. Bed at eight every evening, you know, son. It keeps the body fit.”

“Yes, of course,” Ben said falteringly, rising to his feet awkwardly. “I must be getting back home…”

“That long drive at this time of night? Don’t be absurd!” Bradley scoffed. “You’ll stay with us. Can’t have my star reporter on the road in the middle of the night. I need you, my boy. Your connections in San Antonio will be invaluable to me…to us! Advertising counts, you know, and a locally known name sells ads. Good business. Sleep well, my boy. Good night, my dear,” he told Jessica, bending to kiss her cheek warmly.

“Good night, Daddy,” Jessica said demurely. “I’ll show our guest to his room. An early night won’t hurt any of us.”

“My thoughts exactly.” Bradley chuckled as he climbed the winding staircase.

“Come along, Bennett,” Jessica told Ben. She put her glass down and took his hand in hers.

She was wearing a filmy blue creation, very lacy and clinging, and Ben’s heart actually hurt him with its wild pounding. She was the most sophisticated woman he’d ever known. His age exactly, but she was much more worldly than he was. And so sexy!

As she opened the door to a room in the wing across from where her father had vanished, he expected her to bid him good night. But she came in with him…and locked the door behind her.

“Now,” she whispered huskily, “I can do what I’ve waited all night for.”

“And what is that?” he asked, drinking in the scent of her.

“This,” she murmured, drawing his head down to hers.

God, could she kiss! He felt his toes curling at the first impact of her soft, moist lips. Her tongue went quickly into his mouth, thrusting, teasing. He reached for her, all restraint gone at the intimacy of her hips pushing urgently against his. She was no virgin. Not this little number!

Seconds later, she led him to the bed, but she moved back when he reached for her.

“Not yet, little Ben.” She laughed softly. She backed away, smoothing the dress down her body, her dark eyes sultry and triumphant as she saw the desire in his.

She peeled the buttons from their buttonholes with slender, deft fingers, and let him watch as she peeled the bodice down and stepped out of the dress, standing only in her pale lilac chemise and hose. Holding his eyes, she toyed with the thin straps, easing them slowly down her arms, her lips parted, her tongue touching her teeth.

Ben sat rigidly on the white coverlet, astonished at her lack of embarrassment. She tugged the chemise away from her small, taut breasts and let it fall. Standing in her knickers and garter belt and hose, she kicked the chemise across the polished wood floor and lifted her arms to remove the hairpins and loosen her long, dark hair.

Her back arched as she moved toward him. “How do you like me, little Ben?” she whispered. “Hmm?”

“God, you’re…lovely!” he choked.

“Then don’t sit there, lovey dove…Show Jessica you like her,” she whispered, lifting his hands.

She put them on her firm breasts, his palms hard against the taut, dark nipples, and watched with glittery, excited eyes as he caressed them.

“Come on, honey. Don’t be slow,” she teased, drawing his hands down to her knickers and garter belt.

He removed them with trembling hands, his heart pounding as he eased them off and peeled down her silky hose. She laughed a little wildly, sliding back onto the coverlet, glorious in her pink nudity, moving sensuously on the bed under his intense stare.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.