IT WAS A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE…

But convenient for whom? Jude Langston had practically kidnapped Bess White and brought her to his San Antonio ranch. It wasn’t that he’d wanted her so desperately—he didn’t even like Bess. No, Jude’s cool green eyes were firmly fixed on the shares of his company that she’d inherited.

Bess had always thought of Jude as the Raw hide Man—lean and rough. But then she discovered he could also be unexpectedly gentle, and it devastated her. For as much as she fought it, Jude had captured her heart. Yet how could she stay in a marriage that was so much less than such a union should be?

The Rawhide Man

THE

ESSENTIAL COLLECTION

New York Times and USA TODAY Bestselling Author

Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Doris, Kay, Kathleen, June, Mary, Cindy, Sharalee, and all those lovely San Antonio ladies

Dear Reader,

I really can’t express how flattered I am and also how grateful I am to Mills & Boon Books for releasing this collection of my published works. It came as a great surprise. I never think of myself as writing books that are collectible. In fact, there are days when I forget that writing is work at all. What I do for a living is so much fun that it never seems like a job. And since I reside in a small community, and my daily life is confined to such mundane things as feeding the wild birds and looking after my herb patch in the backyard, I feel rather unconnected from what many would think of as a glamorous profession.

But when I read my email, or when I get letters from readers, or when I go on signing trips to bookstores to meet all of you, I feel truly blessed. Over the past thirty years I have made lasting friendships with many of you. And quite frankly, most of you are like part of my family. You can’t imagine how much you enrich my life. Thank you so much.

I also need to extend thanks to my family (my husband, James, son, Blayne, daughter-in-law, Christina, and granddaughter, Selena Marie), to my best friend, Ann, to my readers, booksellers and the wonderful people at Mills & Boon Books—from my editor of many years, Tara, to all the other fine and talented people who make up our publishing house. Thanks to all of you for making this job and my private life so worth living.

Thank you for this tribute, Mills & Boon, and for putting up with me for thirty long years! Love to all of you.

Diana Palmer

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter One

Thunder was crashing wildly outside the elegant middle Georgia house, but the poised young woman standing in the parlor was too numb to be frightened of it. The ordeal of the past two days had stripped her nerves of all feeling.

Elizabeth Meriam White was twenty-two and felt fifty. Her mother’s lingering illness had been torment enough, but she hadn’t expected the loss to be so traumatic. Wishing only the peace of oblivion for her beloved parent, she hadn’t realized how empty her own life was going to become. Now she had no one. Her stepsister had left that morning for Paris in a whirl of expensive perfume and chiffon, with her share of their mother’s estate firmly in hand. They’d never been close, but Bess had hoped for something more after the ordeal. She should have known better. Crystal had never once offered to help nurse her dying stepmother. After all, she’d told Bess carelessly, there was plenty of money to hire someone to do that.

Plenty of money. Bess could have cried. Yes, there had been, until Bess’s father died and her mother remarried to Jonathan Smythe and turned her father’s business interests over to him. Carla had never bothered with finance, except to make sure that the Rawhide Man couldn’t get his hands on that precious block of shares in the Texas oil corporation his father and Bess’s had pioneered together.

Bess shivered at the thought of Jude Langston. She’d always thought of him as rawhide through and through, because he was like that—lean and tough and very nearly invulnerable. He hadn’t been at the funeral, but Bess had seen her mother’s will and she knew he’d be along. Even in death, Carla’s obsession with besting Jude went on.

With a long sigh, Bess walked to the window and watched the rain beating down outside on the bleak, barren trees, whose autumn leaves had only just disappeared as cold December hovered overhead.

She leaned her forehead against the cold window-pane and closed her eyes. Oh, Mama, she thought miserably, I never knew what loneliness was until now. I never knew.

It had been a long year. A long two years. Carla had had a progressive kind of bone cancer that hadn’t responded to any kind of treatment, not radiation or chemotherapy. And Carla herself had refused any discussion of bone marrow transplants. So her death had been by inches, while Bess had tried to be brave and nurse her and not go to pieces. It hadn’t been easy. Her mother had been demanding and perverse and irritable and impatient. But Bess loved her. And she took care of her, up until the final hospital stay. She did it without any help from Crystal, too, because Crystal was having a mad fling with a French count and couldn’t be bothered to come home. Except to grab her share of the pitiful amount of money that was left, of course. Bess had reminded her coldly that hospital and doctor bills had drained the family resources. And then Crystal had asked about the oil stock….

Bess rubbed the back of her neck where it felt strained to the limit. She was sick all over with grief and the lack of rest and food. The stock, Crystal had said, might pull Bess out of the hole.

“Even so, you’ll have to sell the house, Bess,” Crystal had said, oddly sympathetic. “It’s mortgaged to the roots of the grass.”

“The minute he hears from the attorneys, Jude Langston will come down on my head like judgment,” Bess returned, “and you know it.”

“That sexy man,” Crystal said, nodding dreamily. “My God, what a waste, to look like that and be as hard as he is. He could have women by the barrelful, but all he wants to do is play around with oil and cattle and that baby of his.”

“Katy’s not a baby anymore,” Bess reminded her. “She’s almost ten.”

“That’s right, you go to the ranch every summer, don’t you, to those reunions? But you didn’t go this summer….” Crystal remarked.

Bess colored delicately and turned away. “I had to take care of Mother,” she said shortly.

“Yes, I know it was hard. I’d have helped darling, really I would, but…” Her delicate features twisted. “What will you do about the stock?”

“I wish I didn’t have it,” Bess said levelly. “I don’t relish having to face Jude. I only wish Mother hadn’t tied up the stock the way she did.”

“Oh, she hated him, all right,” Crystal said, laughing. “Even when she was able, she’d never go to the reunions, because she knew he’d be there. Why were they such enemies?”

“Because she was a society girl,” Bess said bitterly, remembering. “And there’s nothing in the world Jude hates more. Katy’s mother was one, you know. She broke their engagement while he was in Vietnam and married someone else, even though she was carrying his child. He still takes that hatred out on anyone handy. Mother. Or me. I just wish the battle had died with her.”

“I think you’ll manage, sweet,” Crystal told her, sizing up her stepsister’s tall, elegant carriage. Bess wasn’t exactly pretty, but she was a lady and she had class, and it stuck out all over her, from her silver blond hair to her soft brown eyes and creamy complexion.

“Against Jude?” Bess smiled sadly. “I watched him back down an armed cowboy once, when I was with Dad at the Langston ranch. I was about fourteen, and one of the hands got mad at Jude for something. He took a couple of drinks and went at Jude with a loaded gun. Jude didn’t even flinch. He walked straight into the gun, took it away from the cowboy and beat him to his knees.”

“Your eyes flash when you talk about him,” Crystal observed, watching Bess. “He excites you, doesn’t he?”

“He frightens me.” The older girl laughed nervously.

Crystal shook her head slowly. “You’re awfully naive for a woman your age. It isn’t fear, but you aren’t experienced enough to know that, are you?” she asked absently. Then she shrugged and whirled away. “Have to run, pet. Jacques is meeting me at the airport. Let me know how things work out, won’t you?”

And that was that. Bess was left alone in the house, and it was getting dark. She had no family, no close friends—there hadn’t been the opportunity to make friends, with an invalid mother who needed constant care. So she was alone.

Involuntarily her mind went wandering back to Jude like a puppy that wouldn’t mind. He’d be along, all right. As soon as he realized that Bess had control of his precious stock, he’d be at her throat. He hadn’t managed to run over Carla, though, and he wasn’t going to run over Bess, either. She had the shares and she was keeping them. They were all that stood between her and starvation, and they paid a high dividend.

She let the curtain fall and turned away from the window too quickly to catch the flash of car lights against the glass. The force of the rain muffled the sound of a purring engine coming closer.

Bess went into the bare hall and sat down on the steps, ruffling her disheveled blond hair. She touched her face lightly, mentally comparing it with Crystal’s. Her nose was arrow straight; her mouth had a bee-stung appearance, full and red and soft. Her brown eyes were wide spaced and appealing. She wasn’t beautiful like her stepsister, but she wasn’t ugly, at least. Of course, she was very thin and small breasted—not voluptuous like Crystal. But someday she might find a man and get married. And again she thought of Jude and cursed her stubborn, stupid mind. Jude would never marry. For heaven’s sake, he’d never even bothered to marry Katy’s mother!

Bess stared around her at the opulent home, which had been part of the White estate for over a hundred years, surviving even the Civil War. How sad that it hadn’t been able to survive the Smythes, she thought with a surge of humor. Crystal was right, of course. It would have to be sold. Dividends from her stocks would provide enough to support her if she was frugal, but not to maintain the house as well.

With a weary groan she got to her feet. She might as well get busy and clean out some drawers or something. It would have been a blessing if she’d had a job to go to, but she’d been trained for nothing except managing this monstrous house. And soon she wouldn’t have even that. She laughed almost hysterically at the thought. She’d have to get a job.

The sudden clang of the doorbell made her jump. She hadn’t expected visitors in this wild rain.

She glanced at her hair in the mirror. It looked as if it had been caught in a windmill, but there was no time to fix it, and she wasn’t wearing makeup at all. She looked pale and plain and sickly. She hoped this wasn’t going to be another bill collector; she had enough trouble already, and the phone calls and demands for payment were growing hourly since the news of her mother’s death had been made public. When it rained it poured, she thought desperately.

A wild shudder went through her when she opened the door. The man outside was the image of every woman’s secret dream. Tall, broad shouldered and long legged, dressed in an expensive gray pin-striped suit with matching Stetson and boots, he looked like something out of a smart men’s magazine. But his face, deeply tanned, was as inscrutable as a stone carving. His mouth was rigid, as firm as his jaw. His eyes were deeply set under thick black lashes and they were a glittering pale green. His scowling eyebrows were the same jet black as the hair she glimpsed under his hat. And the whole portrait was so formidable that she instinctively stepped back.

“You’ve been expecting me, I imagine,” Jude Langston said curtly, just a trace of a Texas accent in his deep, measured voice.

“Oh, yes, along with flood, earthquake and volcanic eruptions,” she agreed, using the protective guise of humor that had always saved her nerves when she had to deal with him. “I won’t even bother asking why you’re here. Obviously, you’ve seen the will.”

He moved forward, and she knew him too well to stand her ground. He closed the door roughly behind him, and rain dripped from the wide brim of the gray hat that shadowed part of his face.

“Where can we talk?”

She turned, remembering that she was still Miss White of Oakgrove, and led him into the shabby parlor.

“Still the society girl, I see,” he taunted, dropping down onto the sofa. “Do I get coffee, Miss White, or aren’t the servants working today?”

She blanched, but her chin lifted and her brown eyes accused. “My mother died two days ago,” she said pointedly, “so could you save your sarcasm for a special occasion? Yes, there’s coffee, and no, there aren’t any servants. There haven’t been for a number of years. Or don’t you know yet that the only thing standing between me and imminent starvation is that block of oil shares you’re so hot to get your hands on?”

He looked as if she’d actually surprised him, but she turned away. “I’ll get the coffee,” she said curtly.

While she was gone, she cooled down her hot temper. It wouldn’t do her any good with Jude; the only chance she had was to keep her head and not go for his throat. By the time she carried the worn silver service into the living room, he’d discarded his topcoat and hat and was wandering around the room, glancing distastefully at the portrait of Carla and Bess above the mantel.

He turned and watched her set the heavy service on the coffee table without offering to help. That was like him, the original chauvinist who had no time for women.

“Thank you,” she said elegantly, “for your kind offer of assistance.”

“Is the damned thing heavy?” he asked carelessly.

She almost laughed. The situation was unbelievable. She sat down and poured out the coffee, handing him his black without realizing what that little slip gave away.

“Should I be flattered that you remember how I take my coffee?” he asked, leaning back to study her insolently, running his eyes over every curve outlined by the simple gray jersey dress she was wearing.

“Don’t put on your cowboy drawl for me, mister,” she replied quietly, lifting her cup to her lips. “I know you.”

“You think you do,” he agreed, his green eyes narrowing.

“How’s Katy?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Growing up fast.” His gaze focused on her. “She asked about you when the family got together this summer.”

“I’m sorry I missed it,” she said. “I couldn’t leave Mother.”

He flexed his broad shoulders and leaned forward. The action stretched the fabric of his pants over his powerful thighs and Bess had to look away.

“That’s enough small talk,” he said suddenly, piercing her eyes with his. “You’re coming back to San Antonio with me.”

She hardly had time to catch her breath. “I’m what?”

“You heard me.” He set down his cup. “The only way I can control that stock is by marrying you. So that’s how we’ll do it.”

Her body jerked as if he’d hit her, and she stared at him uncomprehendingly. She might have thought of this before—it was so like Jude to take the direct approach.

“No,” she said shortly.

“Yes,” he replied. “I’ve waited years to get my hands on those shares, and I’m having them. If you come along with the deal, I’ll just have to make the best of it.”

She went red in the face and sat up straight. “What makes you think you’re any prize?” she asked in her coldest tone. “You’re cold and hard and you don’t care about anybody in the world except Katy!”

“That’s absolutely gospel,” he agreed, staring at her unblinkingly. “But you’ll go to the altar with me if I have to tie you up and gag you, except for the part where you say, ‘I do.’”

“I do not,” she corrected. “You can’t force me to marry you.”

“Think not?” He stood up, his green eyes glittering with cold humor, his face confident and frighteningly hard.

He left the room, and Bess stood up, staring helplessly around. What in the world was he doing!

Minutes later he was back, with her coat in one hand and her purse dangling from his fingers. He slung them at her. “I’ve undone the fuse box. You can call a real estate agent from San Antonio and put the house on the auction block. Any little things you want can be shipped out. Now put on that coat.”

She couldn’t believe this was happening. It must be a hallucination brought on by the strain, she told herself. But a minute later, always impatient, he was stuffing her into the coat. He jerked the hood up and thrust the purse into her hands.

“I won’t go!” she cried out.

“Like hell you won’t go.” He bent and swung her up into his arms like a sack of feathers and carried her out into the rain.

Chapter Two

This isn’t happening, Bess told herself an hour later as she sat beside Jude in the cockpit of his big Cessna. It simply isn’t happening!

But the sound of the engine was very real, and so was Jude’s set, humorless face as he concentrated on flying the plane.

Characteristically, he wasn’t trusting his life to another pilot. He liked having total control—in everything. That was why he was flying himself and that was why he wanted the block of shares that Bess now owned. It was also, Bess suspected, why no woman had ever managed to get him to the altar in a conventional way. Falling in love would be giving a measure of control to someone else, too.

She leaned back in the seat, staring blankly at the clouds ahead, and wondered how she was going to get herself out of this predicament. Surely some other way could be found to give him the stock, if he reimbursed her. She brightened. Until she remembered the exact wording of the will. She muttered under her breath. Carla had taken care of that angle, too. The only way Jude could possibly get the stock was to marry Bess. And that, Carla had smugly thought, he’d never do. He disliked Bess. Everyone knew it, too. They fought like cats and dogs, and people moved out of the way at Langston family get-togethers when they were both present.

The reunion two summers ago was the reason Bess had stayed away from the most recent gathering. She and Jude had gotten into a horrible fight about Katy. She could still blush at the language he’d used; the fact that there had been bystanders present hadn’t slowed him down one iota.

Katy had told Bess about a fight she’d been in at school, stating proudly that she’d done just like Daddy, she’d pounded the hell out of a boy twice her size, and wasn’t that super? “Super” had been Katy’s latest word; it described everything from her dog, Pal, to the calf Jude had given her to raise for 4-H.

Bess hadn’t thought it was super now that Katy was eight. She’d thought it was terrible, and she’d told Jude so later as they were sitting together having dinner with some of the other family members at a restaurant on the Paseo del Rio. Traditionally, they always concluded the annual picnic and rodeo at the restaurant, which Jude would book for an arm and a leg and the family would fill.

“What’s wrong with Katy sticking up for herself?” he’d demanded. “The damned boy hit her first.”

“She’s a girl,” Bess had burst out, exasperated with him. “For heaven’s sake, she already dresses and talks like a boy. What are you trying to do to her?”

“Teach her to stand up for herself,” he’d replied coolly, and had gone back to sipping his whiskey, raising his hand as another male member of the family entered the restaurant.

“Teaching her to be a freak,” Bess had said under her breath.

That had set him off. She could still see him rising, as slowly as a rattlesnake coiling, his eyes glittering and dangerous, his face taut.

“Katy is my daughter,” he’d said with a cold smile. “I decide what’s good or bad for her, and I don’t need help from some dainty little society lady who couldn’t fight her way out of an eclair! Who the hell do you think you are to tell me how to raise my daughter? What qualifies you to be anybody’s mother?” His voice was raised just enough to carry to the other tables, and there was a sudden hush, broken only by the sound of the river and the muffled voices of strolling passersby on the river walk. Bess had wanted to cringe.

“People are staring,” Bess had said under her breath.

“Well, my God, let them stare!” he’d boomed, scowling down at her. “If you’re so free with your damned advice on child raising, let’s tell everybody. Go ahead, Miss White, do advise me on the behavior of my child!”

Her face was white with embarrassment and humiliation, but she held her head up and stared back at him. “I don’t think I need to repeat it,” she said very calmly.

It made him even angrier that he couldn’t make her lose her composure entirely. That was when he’d started cursing. “You damned little prig,” he’d tacked on at the end, and by that time her face was as red as it had been white earlier. “Why don’t you get married and have kids of your own? Can’t you find a man good enough?” He’d laughed coldly and looked over her body with contempt. “Or can’t you find a man?”

And he’d turned and walked away, leaving her sitting there with tears stinging her eyes. The family had lost interest then and gone on to other topics. Bess had gone back to her hotel and packed. It was the last time she’d had any contact with Jude, until now.

“So quiet, Miss White,” he taunted, jerking her out of her reveries. “So ladylike. You didn’t even kick and scream. Is that kind of behavior too human for you?”

She lifted her chin, her perfect composure intact, and looked at him. “Look who’s talking about being human,” she said with a cool smile.

One of his thick eyebrows jerked. “But, then, I never claimed to be, did I?”

She averted her eyes. “If I’d had any doubts about it, you quelled them two summers ago.”

He made a sound deep in his throat. “You ran,” he recalled curtly. “Somehow, I didn’t expect that. You’ve never run from me before.”

The wording was unusual and it made her curious, but she wasn’t in the mood to start trying to unravel Jude again.

“I didn’t run,” she replied, telling the lie very calmly. “I simply didn’t see any reason to stay an extra day and give you any more free shots at me.”

He glanced at her. “I meant what I said about Katy,” he said darkly. “I don’t want her made into a miniature debutante, is that clear? You lay one hand on her wardrobe and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

There was no arguing with him when he was in that mood; she knew the look from memory. She turned her face away. “Don’t worry, I won’t be around long enough to do any damage.”

“You’ll be around. Now shut up,” he added, glaring her way. “I don’t like conversation when I’m flying this thing. You wouldn’t want to crash, would you?”

“The airplane wouldn’t dare,” she muttered angrily, glancing at him. “Like most everything else around you, it’s too intimidated to take the chance!”

Surprisingly, he laughed. But it was brief, and then his face was the familiar hard one she was accustomed to.

They landed at the San Antonio airport late that night, and Bess was exhausted. She barely noticed her surroundings until they were heading toward the exit and she got a good look at the walls. They were hung with paintings, all for sale, all exquisite, and most of Western subject matter.

“Oh, how beautiful!” she exclaimed over one, which showed a ranch house and a windmill overlooking a vast expanse of desert land. It looked like West Texas might have looked a hundred years ago, and she was instantly in love with it.

“Come on, for God’s sake,” Jude muttered, dragging her away with a steely hand on her arm. The touch went through her like fire.

“Could you stop grumbling for one minute?” she asked him, glaring up, and it was a long way despite her two-inch heels and her five feet, seven inches of height. “And glaring and scowling….”

He lifted an eyebrow and looked down his nose at her. “Why don’t you stop criticizing everybody around you and take a look at yourself, society girl?” he taunted. “What makes you think you’re perfect?”

She knew she wasn’t, but it hurt, coming from him. “I won’t marry you,” she said with controlled ferocity. “Not if you kill me first.”

“If I killed you first, there wouldn’t be much point in marrying you,” he said conversationally. He pulled her along with him. “And you might as well stop arguing. You’re going to marry me and that’s the end of it.”

They stepped out into the nippy air and she tugged her coat closer. It wasn’t raining here, but it was cold all the same. The palm trees looked chilly, and the mesquite and oak trees they drove past in Jude’s black Mercedes had no leaves on them. They looked as stark as the pecan trees back home.

Pecans reminded her of food, which reminded her that she hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, and then she remembered what he’d said about turning off the power.

“My gosh, you idiot!” she burst out, turning in the seat. “You cut off the power to the refrigerator!”

He glanced at her. “Don’t start name-calling. I’ve got an edge on you in that department. So what if it spoils? You won’t be there to eat it.”

“It will smell up the whole house!”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said calmly. “You can give me the name of a realtor.”

“You can’t order me to sell Oakgrove!” she burst out irrationally, though earlier she’d made up her mind to do just that. “It’s been in my family for over a hundred years!”

“You’ll sell it if I say so,” he returned, giving her a hard glare. “Shades of Scarlett O’Hara. It’s just a piece of land and an old house.”

She thought back to all the family picnics, the rides through the woods, the beautiful springs and summers and the loving care that each generation had lavished on the estate. Suddenly it was clear to her that she wouldn’t sell it, after all. “No,” she said. “It’s a legacy. If land is so unimportant, why do you hold on to Big Mesquite?”

“That’s different,” he said. “It’s mine.”

“Oakgrove is mine.”

“God, you’re stubborn,” he growled, glaring across the passenger seat at her. “What do you want the place for?”

“It’s my home,” she told him. “When you come to your senses, I’m going back there to live.” And I’ll figure out some way to maintain it, she added to herself.

He turned his attention back to the road. “I need those damned shares. Your mother,” he added curtly, “has very nearly cost me the corporation I’ve worked all my life to build up. By denying me the shares that were rightfully mine, she’s tied me up in a proxy fight that I’ve almost lost.”

“A proxy fight?” she asked dully.

“I have an enemy on my board of directors,” he said shortly, as if it irritated him to have to tell her even that much. “He’s shrewd and cunning, and he can sway votes. We’re almost even right now. I’ve got to have that block of shares you own or I’ll lose control of the corporation.”

“Can’t you find some other way to get them?” she asked bitterly.

He sighed. “I’ve got my attorneys working on it right now, going over your mother’s will with a fine-tooth comb. But they aren’t optimistic, and neither am I. She’s made sure that I can’t buy those shares from you. Under the terms of the will, you can’t give them to me, either. It looks as if the only way I can control them is to marry you.” He glanced sideways, his eyes hot and angry. “It would almost be worth losing the corporation,” he muttered, “to send you home.”

She drew in a weary breath. “The corporation is your problem. If you can find a way to get the stocks, well and good, but I’m not marrying you. I’d rather starve.”

“The feeling is mutual, but neither of us may have any choice.”

“I have,” she returned.

“Not with me,” he replied calmly. “Not a chance in hell. If it takes marriage, you’ll marry me.”

“I hate you!” she burst out, remembering graphically the humiliation she’d suffered from him. “Give me one good reason why I should even consider being tied to you?”

“Katy,” he said simply.

She leaned back against the seat, feeling utterly defeated, and closed her eyes. “You don’t want me around Katy, you’ve said so often enough. I’ll corrupt her.”

He lit a cigarette as he drove, staring ahead at the streetlit expanse of the sprawling city of San Antonio. “She needs a mother,” he said finally. “I’ve done some thinking about what you said at that reunion. I’m not agreeing that you were right,” he added with a glare. “But I’m willing to concede that you weren’t totally off base. She’s growing up tough. Maybe too tough. A softening influence wouldn’t be such a bad idea. And she likes you,” he growled, as if that was totally incomprehensible.

“I like her, too,” she said quietly, and let him chew on that. “But what are you offering me? You’d be getting control of my shares and a mother for Katy, but what would I get?”

His eyebrows went up. “What do you want? To sleep with me?” He let his eyes wander over her wildly flushed face. “I suppose I could force myself….”

“Damn you!” she burst out, hurt by the sarcastic way he’d said it.

He turned his attention back to the road. “Come on, wildcat, tell me what you want.”

She shifted restlessly. “Not to be forced into marrying you.”

“That’s a foregone conclusion.” He puffed away on his cigarette. “Tell you what, society girl. If worse comes to worst and we have to go through with it, I’ll maintain that antebellum disaster for you, and you and Katy can spend summers there.”

She turned her head and studied his unyielding profile. “You would?”

“I would.” And he meant it, she knew. When he gave his word, he kept it.

She pursed her lips. “We couldn’t just have a quick marriage and a quicker annulment? To satisfy the terms of the will?”

“What would that do to Katy?” he asked suddenly.

She drew in a slow breath and let it out. “Oh.”

“Yes, oh. She’s so damned excited about having you here, she’s half crazy,” he said. “I told her,” he added with a cold stare, “that you were coming out here so that we could decide whether or not we wanted to get married.”

“She’ll never believe you want to marry me,” she replied tersely.

“Won’t she?” A mocking smile curled his lips. “I told her I was nursing a secret passion for you and hoped to win you over.”

“You bas—!”

“Uh, uh, uh,” he cautioned. “None of those unladylike words, if you please. You’ll embarrass me.”

“Satan himself couldn’t do that,” she shot back. “Oh, Jude, let me go home,” she moaned. “I can’t fight you. I’m too tired.”

“Then stop trying. You won’t win.”

She laughed bitterly. “Don’t I know it?” She turned away and looked out the window at the flat horizon as they headed south out of San Antonio. Tears pricked at her eyes as she thought how far away from home she was. From her mother. A sob caught in her throat and tears burst from her eyes as the control she’d maintained so valiantly slipped and broke.

“My God, you don’t even cry like a normal woman,” he ground out. “Stop that!”

She shook her head and dabbed at the tears. “I loved her,” she managed shakily. “It’s only been two days, for God’s sake, Jude…!”

“Well, all the tears in the world won’t bring her back, will they?” he asked irritably. “And in the shape she was in, would you really want to?”

She shifted on the seat. He couldn’t understand grief, she supposed, never having felt it. His mother had died when he was an infant, and his father had never been demonstrative. He had been even more unapproachable than Jude, worlds harder. Which was saying a lot, because the Rawhide Man was like steel.

She dashed the tears away and took a deep breath. “I don’t want to live with a coldhearted statue like you,” she said. “You’re…you’re like rawhide.”

“But you’ll do it, if it comes to that. You’ll do it for Katy’s sake.” He turned onto the long road that led to the ranch.

“I’ll run away!” she said dramatically.

“I’ll come after you and bring you back,” he said carelessly.

“Jude!” she ground out, exasperated.

“Remember that summer when you were fifteen?” he recalled with a chuckle. “You went out into the brush with Jess Bowman, and I rode all night to find you. You were huddled up in his coat with a twisted ankle, and he was walking down the road trying to flag down a car.”

“I remember,” she said, shuddering. “You broke his nose.”

“I hit when I get mad,” he said. “He riled me plenty, leaving you out there alone at night with rattlers crawling and cougars on the loose.”

“He couldn’t have carried me,” she protested.

“I did,” he reminded her. “And I wasn’t as heavy in those days as I am now.”

No, he’d filled out and firmed up and he was devastating. All man. She remembered that brief walk in his hard arms, the strength and power of his frame as he strode along. It was the safest she’d ever felt in her life—and the most afraid.

“That was the summer after Elise died, before I got Katy away from her stepfather. The last summer, too, that you ever spent any length of time at the ranch,” he recalled. “That was when you started avoiding me.”

She felt her cheeks go hot at the memory. She’d felt something that long-ago night that had haunted her ever since. And because it had frightened her, she’d avoided the ranch whenever possible, except for flying visits to see Katy. And the family reunions, of course, which came frequently during the year. Not that they were really family, but because of the partnership of her father and his, she was always included and expected to take part.

“Why did you stay away?” he asked quietly. “We’ve had our disagreements over the years, God knows, but I’ve never hurt you.”

That was true enough. She stared down at her hands, folded in her lap. “I don’t know,” she lied.

He lifted a careless eyebrow. “Were you afraid I’d make a pass?”

She flushed, and he threw back his head and laughed deeply.

“You were fifteen,” he reminded her with a chuckle. “And you had even less to draw a man’s eye than you do now.” His eyes were on her small breasts, and she wanted to dive through the window.

Defensively she folded her arms over her chest and lowered her eye to the floorboard, so embarrassed that she wanted to cry.

“For God’s sake, stop that,” he growled. “You’d appeal to some men, I suppose. You just don’t appeal to me.”

Was that conscience, she wondered numbly? If it was, it didn’t console her much.

“I’ll get down on my knees and give thanks for that small blessing,” she said coldly.

“You’re the one with the small blessings, all right,” he murmured wickedly.

She half turned in the seat to glare at him, and he chuckled at her fury.

“God, you’re something when you get mad,” he said with rare mischief. “All dark eyes and wild hair and teeth and claws. It sure as hell beats that so-elegant coolness you wear around you most of the time.”

She regained her composure with an effort and stared at him calmly. “My mother raised me to be a lady,” she told him.

“You’re that,” he agreed coldly. “But you’d be a hell of a lot more exciting if she’d raised you to be a woman, instead.”

There was no reply to a blatant remark like that, so she turned her attention back to the darkened landscape and ignored him. Which seemed to be exactly what he wanted.

Chapter Three

Aggie Lopez, Jude’s housekeeper, met them in her dressing gown, yawning.

“Is Bess’s room ready?” Jude asked curtly.

“Yes, Señor Langston,” Aggie said agreeably, giving Bess a brief but thorough appraisal. Then she grinned. “You need some feeding up, señorita. A few weeks of refritos and enchiladas and my good Texas chili will put meat on those bones, I promise you. Come, I will take you up to your room and then I’ll bring you some food. The little one has only just gone to sleep. She was so excited…!”

“But it’s after midnight,” Bess exclaimed.

“Go ahead,” Jude growled, glaring at her with piercing green eyes, “say something about her bedtime hour. You’ve managed to disapprove of every other damned thing, why not that as well?”

She glared back at him, her chin lifted. “Children need their rest just like adults do,” she threw at him. “And speaking of rest, look at you!”

“What’s wrong with me?” he asked pugnaciously.

“Oh, Lord, just give me a full day with no interruptions and I’ll be glad to give you an itemized list!”

Aggie was staring at them with her jaw in a slightly drooping posture, her small, plump figure glued to the banister of the long staircase that ran up to the second story.

Jude glanced at Aggie. “Well, what the hell are you gaping at? Are you going to show her upstairs or not?”

“You are…really getting married?” the older woman asked, lifting her eyebrows until they almost touched the salt-and-pepper hair that was drawn into a tight bun.

“It’s a love match, too,” Bess assured her with a tight smile at Jude. “He loves my stocks and I love his daughter.”

Jude said something rude under his breath and turned on his heel to stomp off into his study. He slammed the door with hurricane force behind him.

Aggie flinched. “Someday he will break all the windows,” she said, sighing. “Ay, ay, life is so exciting since I came to work here.” She eyed Bess. “It is none of my affair, you understand, but you are not the picture of a happy bride.”

“I don’t want to be a bride,” she muttered. “He’s trying to make me.”

“As I thought,” Aggie said. She shook her head. “I will not ask why you do not refuse him. Six months I have worked for Mr. Langston. In that time, I have never known him not to get his own way. Have you known him long, señorita?”

“I’ve known him most of my life,” Bess grumbled as she followed the older woman up the staircase.

“Then I do not need to tell you anything about him,” Aggie said quietly. She glanced at Bess as she stopped in front of the room where Bess always stayed when she visited the ranch. “He said that you have lost your mother. I am very sorry.”

Tears welled up in Bess’s eyes and her lower lip trembled precariously. “Yes.”

Impulsively, Aggie put an arm around her. “Señorita, grief passes. I, too, lost my mother many years ago. I do not forget the hurt, but time is kind.”

Bess nodded jerkily and tried to smile.

“Here, now. Katy insisted on redecorating the room when she heard you were coming.” Aggie led Bess into the spacious room, which boasted a new bedspread and matching curtains of cream with beige and blue flowers, a deep blue carpet and elegant wallpaper. There were fresh flowers, mums, in a vase on the chest of drawers.

“It’s beautiful!” Bess burst out.

“Oh, I hoped you’d like it!” came a joyous voice from the connecting door across the room.

Bess’s eyes lit up. “Katy!” she exclaimed, and held out her arms.

Katy ran into them, laughing. She was the image of her father—pale green eyes framed by black hair and a stubborn square jaw. She was going to be tall, too. She already came up almost to Bess’s shoulders.

“You smell nice,” Katy remarked as she drew back to look at the older woman. “Like flowers. You always smell so good, Bess!”

“I’m glad you think so,” Bess said with a grin.

“How’s school?”

Katy made a face. “I hate math and English grammar. But band is great. I play the flute! And I like chorus pretty well, and art class is neat.”

“I’d love to hear you play,” Bess said. She ruffled the short dark hair. “You’re the nicest welcome I’ve had so far.”

“Been at it with Dad again, huh?” Katy murmured with a wicked smile. “I heard,” she confessed.

Bess colored delicately. “We, uh, had a slight disagreement.”

“They have slight disagreements over the color of the sky,” Katy told Aggie without blinking an eye, and she laughed. “Dad likes to give orders and Bess doesn’t like to take them.”

“Now, Katy…” Bess began.

“I know. ‘Now, Katy, mind your own business.’“ Katy sighed. She arched her eyebrows. “But you’re going to be my mom, so it is kind of my business, isn’t it?”

At the sound of the word, Bess’s eyes glittered again with unshed tears. She was going to have to stop this!

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Katy said quickly, after a speaking glare from Aggie. “I’m very sorry, I forgot!”

“It’s all right,” Bess said, brushing away the tears. “It’s just so fresh, you know. I loved her very much.”

“I never knew my mother,” Katy said, “but Dad said she was a first-class bit—”

“No!” Aggie burst out, horrified. “You must not say such things!”

Katy’s lips pouted. “Dad does.”

“Yes, but you shouldn’t speak that way of your mother,” Bess said gently. “Besides, ladies don’t use language like that.”

Katy just stared at her blankly. “Huh?”

“You’ll have to show me around the ranch tomorrow,” Bess said quickly, deciding to let it drop for the time being. “It’s more than a year since I visited. I’m sure there are a lot of changes.”

That brought the smile back to Katy’s young face. “You bet! Unless…you wouldn’t rather Dad showed you around?” she asked with a calculating look, and Bess knew she was thinking about that dreadful lie Jude had told her.

“He can show me around later,” Bess promised the young girl. “Now, how about bed? I’m so sleepy I can hardly stand up.”

“Where are your things, señorita, and I will unpack,” Aggie volunteered.

“I’m wearing them,” Bess said gaily, opening her coat to disclose the dress underneath. “Jude decided that I could do without clothes, makeup and all those other frivolous things.”

Aggie scowled. “I will lend you one of my gowns,” she said. “Men, they never think about these things,” she muttered as she went out the door.

Katy was watching her closely. “Why didn’t you pack a suitcase?” she asked slowly.

“Because your father picked me up in what I have on and carried me bodily out the door, that’s why,” she said.

Katy tried to stifle a laugh, but it burst out anyway. “Good night, Bess!” she said, and beat a hasty retreat back to her own room, closing the door quickly. Behind it, there was hysterical laughter.

* * *

Bess had forgotten just how big Big Mesquite really was until she walked around the grounds with Katy the next day. The house, which she’d always loved, was very old and very Victorian, with a turret and exquisite gingerbread woodwork. Jude had obviously had it painted not too many months ago, because it was blistering white.

“I remember summers long ago when I used to swing in that front porch swing,” Bess recalled dreamily, hanging on to a small mimosa tree in the front yard as she stared toward the house. “And your grandmother would make iced tea and big, thick tomato sandwiches and I’d swing and munch.”

“Did you and Dad used to play together?” Katy asked, all eyes.

“No, darling,” Bess said, laughing. “Your father was already a grown man when I was barely in my teens. I hardly ever saw him in those days. He was away at college, and then in Vietnam.”

“Oh, yes, I know all about the war,” Katy said seriously. “Dad’s got an awful—”

“Katy!” Aggie called out the door. “Deanne wants to talk to you on the telephone!”

“Okay, Aggie!” Katy moved away from the tree. “Deanne’s my best friend,” she explained. “I won’t be long.”

“Don’t hurry on my account,” Bess told her. “I’ll just ramble around and look at the stock.”

“Don’t go close to the corral. Dad’s got Blanket in there,” the young girl cautioned.

“What a name. Does it belong to a bull?”

“No, a horse.” Katy laughed. “They call her that because she likes to fall on people—like a blanket.”

“I’ll watch my step,” Bess promised.

Katy ran into the house and Bess wandered quietly around the yard in the same jersey dress she’d worn the day before. She had one of Jude’s Windbreakers wrapped around herself to keep out the cold, and she hated the pleasure it gave her to wear something of his. She was really going to have to stop feeling that way. If he ever found out how he affected her, it could be a disaster, in more ways than one.

As she was thinking about him, he came out of the barn with a halter in his hand, heading straight for Blanket.

Bess climbed up on the fence and leaned her arms over the top rail. “Going to bounce around a little?” she asked. “Don’t fall off, now.”

“No, I’m not going to bounce around,” he said curtly. “I’m going to put her on a halter so Bandy can work her.”

She watched him approach the horse, talking softly and gently to it in a tone she’d never heard him use except, infrequently, with Katy. He moved closer inch by inch, soothing the horse, until he was near enough to ease the halter over the jet black muzzle and lock it in place. He continued to stroke the silky black mane while the horse trembled in the chill air, not from cold but from nervousness.

Bess didn’t speak. She didn’t dare. Jude would climb all over her if she spooked the horse. But he glanced at her warily when the little bowlegged cowboy named Bandy came out of the barn with a lunging rein to attach to the halter.

Jude said something to the cowboy and then climbed over the fence, perching himself on the top rail near Bess. He was wearing denims and the old battered gray Stetson he used on the rare occasions when he was around the ranch. He looked good in denim. He looked good in anything, that long, muscular body sheer elegance when he moved.

“Don’t trust her too far, Bandy,” Jude said as he lit a cigarette. He glanced at Bess. “She’s a lot like some women. All long legs and nerves.”

Her chin lifted. She’d put up her hair to keep it out of her face, and she looked chic and elegant even in his leather jacket.

“Where did you get that?” he asked, indicating the jacket.

“Aggie got it out for me,” she said defensively. “You wouldn’t let me pack,” she reminded him.

“It doesn’t do much for you,” he remarked derisively. “It keeps me warm,” she returned. “But if you want it back…”

“Oh, hell, stop playing Joan of Arc,” he growled, his green eyes glittering at her over a wisp of cigarette smoke. “It’s an old jacket. I had it when I was in Vietnam.”

And probably it brought back memories he’d rather not dredge up, she thought, feeling guilty. She averted her eyes to the cowboy working the young filly on the leading rein in a long, wide circle.

“You didn’t hit the floor screaming bloody murder this morning,” he remarked. “Does that mean you’ve stopped fighting the idea of marriage?”

She drew one long, polished fingernail across the top rail of the fence and watched it scar the old wood. “Katy was so excited,” she said quietly.

“Yes, I told you that.”

Her dark eyes pinned him. “I don’t like you very much, Judah Barnett Langston,” she said.

He took a long draw from the cigarette and pursed his chiseled lips. “What a disappointment,” he said after a minute, and his eyes were mocking. “I thought you might be harboring a secret passion for me.”

“Sorry to dash your dreams,” she replied. “I’d rather lust after a rattlesnake.”

He chuckled softly, and his cold green eyes wandered over her slimness slowly. “You’d have better luck there, all right,” he remarked. “Hell, you’re too fragile for sex.”

She gasped at the unexpectedly intimate remark and felt her face go hot.

His eyebrows lifted at her expression. “Well, my God, I do know what sex is,” he said.

“I didn’t say a word,” she chewed off.

“You were thinking it,” he said. He smiled tauntingly. “I didn’t find Katy under a cabbage leaf.”

Her eyes fell away from his. The discussion was getting far too intimate for her taste. She knew hardly anything about intimacy except for what she’d read. And the last person she wanted to learn that kind of lesson from was Jude Langston. She couldn’t picture him being either patient or tender with a woman.

“Is Katy matchmaking?” he asked after a minute. “She deserted you.”

“Her friend Deanne called,” she murmured.

He scowled. “Deanne is a city kid. Very sophisticated for her age. I don’t like Katy associating with her.”

“Why, because she wears dresses?” she asked. “Is Katy going to run the ranch for you when she grows up, bullwhip and all?”

He just stared at her until she dropped her eyes. She’d never been able to outglare him, not ever, and it rankled.

“I wish she’d been a boy sometimes,” he said, surprising her. “But that wasn’t her fault.”

“She’s going on ten,” she said quietly. “The age of parties and pretty dresses and boys is coming along down the road. It would be sad if she was excluded from all those things because she was too tough to fit in. Wouldn’t it?”

He glared at her and threw down his cigarette. “Why don’t you mind your own damned business? Go arrange some flowers or something. That’s all you’re good for!”

He got down off the fence, and tears stung her eyes as she did likewise. She turned on her heel and stomped back off toward the house.

A piercing whistle split the air and she stopped and whirled. “What!” she yelled.

“Go into town and get some clothes. I’ve opened an account for you at Joske’s.”

She caught her breath. Things were moving fast. Too fast. “I don’t want any, thanks.”

“Suit yourself,” he said carelessly. “If you want to be married in your slip, it’s your business.” He turned back to Bandy.

“I’m not going to marry you!” she yelled at him.

“You are if I can’t find another way to get those shares!” At that, she almost scooped up a rock and threw it at him. But she knew Jude too well, so she didn’t.

* * *

By the end of the week, it was sadly apparent that there were no loopholes in Bess’s mother’s will. Jude came in Friday afternoon looking as if he’d like to tie her to a stake and roast her. Instead, he ordered her into the living room and closed the door behind them.

“There’s no way out except marriage,” he said without dressing it up. “We can’t break the will unless we can prove mental incompetence, and your family attorney assures me that we can’t.”

“No,” Bess said, “she was in her right mind up until the very end.”

He picked up a book on the table by the window and abruptly slammed it down on the highly polished surface. “Damn it, I don’t want marriage!” he cursed, glaring at Bess.

“Well, don’t blame me,” she shot back. “I didn’t drag you off out here and try to force you into it. I’d just as soon forget the whole thing!”

“So would I, but I’ve got to have those damned shares, and soon. It’s no use fighting me, Bess.” He rammed his hands in the pockets of his gray slacks. “I’ll talk to a minister about the ceremony. We can have it at San Jose, if you like.”

“At the mission?” she asked. Her eyes brightened a little. “That sounds nice.”

“Then you’ll agree to the marriage?” he asked quietly, and she knew he was in deadly earnest.

“I don’t seem to have much choice,” she replied. “And you’re right—Katy does need a woman’s touch. And I need her. I don’t have anyone else to love now that Mother’s…” She broke off, trying desperately to keep the tears from falling. “She was all the family I had in the world.”

He turned away, obviously uncomfortable at her show of emotion. “You’d better go to the printer and get some invitations sent out. I’ll have my secretary make you a list of people to invite.” He glanced at her. “Do you want your stepsister to come?”

“No,” she said without thinking.

He laughed shortly. “Somehow, I didn’t think you would. But you owe her the courtesy of telling her about the marriage. She is your only living relative.”

“I will.” Several weeks from now, she added silently.

He studied her. “You don’t like Crystal, do you?’

“Neither would you, if she didn’t worship the ground you walk on,” she said with bitter sarcasm. “Crystal’s main ambition in life is to keep Crystal happy and comfortable. But men don’t notice that very often.”

“No,” he agreed, “they’re too busy noticing how much woman she is.” His eyes went up and down Bess’s slender figure. “She puts you in the shade, doesn’t she?”

Not for the world would she have let him see how much that hurt. She smiled coolly and turned to leave the room.

“So proud,” he chided. “So poised. Does anything ever ruffle you, society girl? I’ll bet you’d be that way in bed with a man, all cool discipline and—”

“Stop that,” she bit out, glaring at him. “How I’d be is none of your business.” She stopped, her eyes uncertain.

He laughed shortly as he read the fear in them. “Don’t get your hopes up, Bess. You don’t turn me on. It won’t be a marriage in that respect.”

“Thank God,” she muttered, opening the door with her back to him so he couldn’t see her hot cheeks.

“I can’t imagine you blazing with passion,” he said thoughtfully. “Some women are born cold, I expect.”

She closed the door sharply behind her and went to her room before he could see the tears that refused to be held at bay any longer.

* * *

Two days later Bess and Katy made a trip into San Antonio. Joske’s, where Jude had set up an account, was one of the biggest department stores in town, crammed full of delicious clothes and accessories. Bess, determined to make the best of the situation, threw herself into trying to decide what she wanted. Katy looked bored with the whole thing, and wanted to stay out in the parking lot across the street with Bandy, who’d been volunteered to drive them to town.

“But I have to have help,” Bess had protested. “It’s partly your wedding, too. After all, you’re going to be bridesmaid.”

That had caught the young girl’s interest momentarily, but after Bess had worked her way through half the dress department, Katy was getting restless.

One of the salesladies finally suggested a dress with a Mexican flavor, a gauzy white creation with hand-crocheted lace around the neck and the short puffy sleeves and around the bottom. It was like a peasant dress, but exquisite. Perfect. When Bess tried it on and posed for Katy, the young girl caught her breath.

“Blondes sure look good in white,” Katy said with a smile. “Gosh, you’re pretty, Bess!”

“Thank you, darling. Now,” she said, “next we’ve got to find something for you.”

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