Ice Man: Dawson Rutherford, our 100th Silhouette hero!

His scheme: Plan a mock engagement to help secure the land he so desperately needed.

Only one woman had the power to drive this seemingly heartless cowboy wild, and now he needed her to pose as his bride-to-be! A tempestuous night long ago had forced Dawson to abandon all hope of making Barrie his lawfully wedded wife, but there was not telling what sharing a spread with this hot-blooded woman would do to the man of ice…

Man of Ice

Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Also available from Diana Palmer

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CONTENTS

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Prologue

DAWSON Rutherford hesitated on the front steps of the Mercer home. As the butler held the carved wooden door open for him to enter, he was only absently aware of music and voices and the clink of ice in glasses. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so unsure of himself. Would she welcome him? He smiled with cold mockery. When had Barrie Bell, his stepsister, ever welcomed his presence in recent years? She’d loved him once. But he’d killed her feelings for him, as he’d fought to kill all the violent emotions she inspired in him since her mother had married his father.

He pushed a big, lean hand through his short, wavy gold hair, only barely disrupting its neatness. His pale green eyes were thoughtful as he stood there, elegant and dramatically handsome, drawing the gaze of women. But he had eyes for none of them. They called him the “ice man.” And it wasn’t because he came from a cold country.

Through the open door he could see her on the steps, her long, wavy black hair curling down her bare shoulders, sparkling in a silver dress. He was all she had left since both their parents had died, but she avoided him. He couldn’t blame her, now that he knew at last about the other casualty of his turbulent relationship with Barrie; one that he’d only just found out about recently.

He hesitated to go in there, to see her again, to talk to her. They’d argued at their last meeting over the same issue he was going to bring up now. But this time he needed it as an excuse to get her back to Sheridan, Wyoming. He had to undo five years of pain and heartache, to make up to her for what she’d endured. In order to do that he was going to have to face some private demons of his own, as well as the fear he’d taught her to feel. He didn’t look forward to it, but it was time to erase the past and start over. If they could…

One

THERE was a cardinal rule that people who gave parties never invited both Barrie Bell and her stepbrother, Dawson Rutherford, to the same social event. Since the two of them didn’t have a lot of mutual friends, and they lived in different states, it wasn’t often broken. But every rule had an exception, and tonight, Barrie discovered, was it.

She hadn’t really wanted to go out, but Martha and John Mercer, old friends of the Rutherfords who’d taken a interest in Barrie since their move to Tucson, insisted that she needed a diversion. She wasn’t teaching this summer, after all, and the part-time job that kept her bank account healthy had just ended abruptly. Barrie needed cheering up and Martha was giving a party that was guaranteed to accomplish it.

Actually it had. Barrie felt brighter than she had in some months. She was sequestered on the steps of the staircase in the hall with two admirers, one who was a bank executive and the other who played guitar with a jazz band. She was wearing a dress guaranteed to raise blood pressures, silver and clinging from its diamanté straps at her lightly tanned shoulders to her ankles, with a long, seductive slit up one side of the skirt. The color of her high heels matched the dress. She wore her long, wavy black hair loose, so that it reached almost to her waist. In her creamy-complexioned, oval face, bright green eyes shone with a happy glitter.

That was, they had been shining until she saw Dawson Rutherford come in the front door. Her sophisticated chatter had died abruptly and she withdrew into a shell, looking vulnerable and hunted.

Her two companions didn’t connect her stepbrother’s entrance with Barrie’s sudden change. Not, at least, until a few minutes later when he spotted her in the hall and, excusing himself to his hostess, came to find her with a drink in his hand.

Dawson was more than a match for any man present, physically. Some of them were spectacularly handsome, but Dawson was more so. He had wavy blond hair, cut conventionally short, a deep tan, chiseled, perfect facial features and deep-set pale green eyes at least two shades lighter than Barrie’s. He was tall and slender, but there were powerful muscles in that lithe body, which was kept fit from hours in the saddle. Dawson was a multimillionaire, yet being the boss didn’t keep him from helping out on the many ranches he owned. It was nothing unusual to find him cutting out calves for branding on the Wyoming ranches, or helping to drive cattle across the spinifex plains of the several-thousand-square-mile station in Australia’s Channel Country. He spent his leisure hours, which were very few, working with his Thoroughbred horses on the headquarters ranch in Sheridan, Wyoming, when he wasn’t buying and selling cattle all over the country.

He was an elegant man, from his hand-tooled leather boots to the expensive slacks and white silk turtleneck shirt he wore with a designer jacket. Everything about him, from his Rolex to the diamond horseshoe ring on his right hand, screamed wealth. And with the elegant good looks, there was a cold, calculating intelligence. Dawson spoke French and Spanish fluently, and he had a degree in business.

Barrie’s two companions seemed to shrink when he appeared beside them, a drink cradled in one big, lean hand. He didn’t drink often, and never to excess. He was the sort of man who never liked to lose control in any way. She’d seen him lose it just once. Perhaps that was why he hated her so, because she was the only one who ever had.

“Well, well, what was Martha thinking, I wonder, that rules were made to be broken?” Dawson asked her, his deep voice like velvet even though it carried above the noise.

“Martha invited me. She didn’t invite you,” Barrie said coldly. “I’m sure it was John. He’s laughing,” she added, her gaze going to Martha’s husband across the room.

Dawson followed her glance to his host and raised his glass. The shorter man raised his in acknowledgment and, catching Barrie’s furious glare, turned quickly away.

“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” Dawson continued, unabashed, his eyes going now to the two men beside her.

“Oh, this is Ted and that’s…what was your name?” she somewhat abruptly asked the second man.

“Bill,” he replied.

“This is my…stepbrother, Dawson Rutherford,” she continued.

Bill grinned and extended his hand. It was ignored, although Dawson nodded curtly in acknowledgment. The younger man cleared his throat and smiled sheepishly at Barrie, brandishing his glass. “Uh, I need a refill,” he said quickly, because Dawson’s eyes were narrowing and there was a distinct glitter in them.

“Me, too,” Ted added and, grinning apologetically at Barrie, took off.

Barrie glared after them. “Craven cowards,” she muttered.

“Does it take two men at once to keep you happy these days?” Dawson asked contemptuously. His cold gaze ran down her dress to the low neckline that displayed her pretty breasts to their best advantage.

She felt naked. She wouldn’t have dreamed of wearing clothing this revealing around Dawson normally. Only the fact that he’d come to the party unbeknownst to her gave him the opportunity to see her in this camouflage she adopted. But she wasn’t going to spoil her sophisticated image by letting him know that his intent regard disturbed her. “There’s safety in numbers,” she replied with a cool smile. “How are you, Dawson?”

“How do I look?” he countered.

“Prosperous,” she replied. She didn’t say anything else. Dawson had come to her apartment only a few months ago, trying to get her back to Sheridan to play chaperone to Leslie Holton, a widow and former actress who had a piece of land Dawson wanted. She’d refused and an argument had resulted, which led to them not speaking at all. She’d thought Dawson would never seek her out again after it. But here he was. And she could imagine that the widow was still in hot pursuit of him—or so her best friend Antonia Hayes Long had told her recently.

He took a sip of his drink, but his eyes never left her face. “Corlie changes your bed every other day, hoping.”

Corlie was the housekeeper at Dawson’s Sheridan home. She and her husband, Rodge, had been in residence since long before Barrie’s mother had married Dawson’s father. They were two of her favorite people and she missed them. But not enough to go back, even for a visit. “I don’t belong in Sheridan,” she said firmly. “Tucson is home, now.”

“You don’t have a home any more than I do,” he shot back, his voice cold. “Our parents are dead. All we have left is each other.”

“Then I have nothing,” she said harshly, letting her eyes speak for her.

“You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you?” he demanded with a cold smile. And because the flat statement wounded him, he added deliberately, “Well, I hope you’re not still eating your heart out for me, baby.”

The accusation made her feel even more vulnerable. Her hands clenched in her lap. In the old days, Dawson had known too well how she felt about him. It was a weapon he’d used against her. She glared at him. “I wouldn’t waste my heart on you. And don’t call me baby!”

His eyes narrowed on her face and dropped to her mouth, lingering there. “I don’t use endearments, Barrie,” he reminded her. “Not in normal conversation. And we both remember the last time I used that one, don’t we?”

She wanted to crawl under the stairs and die. Her eyes closed. Memories assailed her. Dawson’s deep voice, husky with feeling and need and desire, whispering her name with each movement of his powerful body against hers, whispering, “Baby! Oh, God, baby, baby…!”

She made a hoarse sound and tried to get away, but he was too close. He sat down on the step below hers and settled back on his elbow, so that his arm imprisoned her between himself and the banister.

“Don’t run,” he chided. “You’re a big girl now. It’s all right to have sex with a man, Barrie. You won’t go to hell for it. Surely you know that by now, with your record.”

She looked at him with fear and humiliation. “My record?” she whispered.

“How many men have you had? Can’t you remember?”

Her eyes stared straight into his. She didn’t flinch, although she felt like it. “I can remember, Dawson,” she said with a forced smile. “I’ve had one. Only one.” She actually shivered.

Her reaction took some of the antagonism out of him. He just stared at her, his pale eyes unusually watchful.

She clasped her arms tightly over her breasts and her entire body went rigid from his proximity.

He moved back, just a couple of inches. She relaxed, but only a little. Her posture was still unnatural. He wanted to think she was acting this way deliberately, in an attempt to resurrect the old guilt. But it wasn’t an act. She looked at him with eyes that were vulnerable, but even if she cared as much as ever, she was afraid of him. And it showed.

The knowledge made him uncomfortable. More uncomfortable than he usually was. He’d taunted her with her feelings for him for years, until it was a habit he couldn’t break. He’d even done it the night he lost his head and destroyed her innocence. He’d behaved viciously to push away the guilt and the shame he felt at his loss of control.

He hadn’t meant to attack her tonight, of all times. Not after the argument he’d had with her months ago. He’d come to make peace. But the attempt had backfired. It was the way she was dressed, and the two eager young men sitting like worshipers at her feet, that had enraged him with jealousy. He hadn’t meant a word he said, but she wouldn’t know that. She was used to having him bait her. It didn’t make him feel like a man to punish her for his own sins; it made him sick. Especially now, with what he’d only just found out about the past, and what had happened to her because of him…

He averted his eyes to her folded arms. She looked like a whipped child. She’d adopted that posture after he’d seduced her. The image was burned indelibly into his brain. It still hurt, too.

“I only want to talk,” he said curtly. “You can relax.”

“What could we possibly have to say to each other?” she asked icily. “I wish I never had to see you again, Dawson!”

His eyes bit into hers. “Like hell you do.”

She couldn’t win an argument with him. It was better not to start one. “What do you want to talk about?”

His gaze went past her, to the living room, where people were laughing and drinking and talking. Happy, comfortable people. Not like the two on the staircase.

He shrugged and took another swallow from the glass before he faced her again. “What else? I want you to come home for a week or two.”

Her heart raced. She averted her gaze. “No!”

He’d expected that reaction. He was ready to debate it. “You’ll have plenty of chaperones,” he informed her. “Rodge and Corlie.” He paused deliberately. “And the widow Holton.”

She looked up. “Still?” she muttered sarcastically. “Why don’t you just marry her and be done with it?”

He deliberately ignored the sarcasm. “You know that she’s got a tract of land in Bighorn that I have to own. The only way she’ll discuss selling it to me is if I invite her to Sheridan for a few days.”

“I hear that she’s hanging around the ranch constantly,” she remarked.

“She visits regularly, but not overnight,” he said. “The only way I can clinch the land deal and get her to go away is to let her spend a few days at the ranch. I can’t do that without you.”

He didn’t look pleased about it. Odd. She’d heard from her best friend, Antonia Long, that the widow was lovely and eligible. She couldn’t understand why Dawson was avoiding her. It was common knowledge that she’d chased Powell Long, Antonia’s husband, and that she was casting acquisitive eyes at Dawson as well. Barrie had no right to be jealous, but she was. She didn’t look at him, because she didn’t want him to know for sure just how vulnerable she still was.

“You must like her if you’re willing to have her stay at the ranch,” she said. “Why do you keep plaguing me to come and play chaperone?”

His pale green eyes met hers. “I don’t want her in my bed. Is that blunt enough?”

She flushed. It wasn’t the sort of remark he was in the habit of making to her. They never discussed intimate things at all.

“You still blush like a virgin,” he said quietly.

Her eyes flashed. “And you’re the one man in the world who has reason to know that I’m not!” she said in a harsh, bitter undertone.

His expression wasn’t very readable. He averted his eyes to the carpet. After a minute he finished his drink. He reached through the banister to put the glass on the hall table beyond it.

She pulled her skirt aside as he reached past her. For an instant, his deeply tanned face was on an unnerving level with hers. She could see the tiny mole at the corner of his mouth, the faint dimple in his firm chin. His upper lip was thinner than the lower one, and she remembered with sorrow how those hard lips felt on her mouth. She’d grieved for him for so long. She’d never been able to stop loving him, despite the pain he’d caused her, despite his suspicions, his antagonism. She wondered sometimes if it would ever stop.

He turned sideways on the step, leaning back against the banister to cross his long legs in front of him. His boots were immaculate, as was the white silk shirt under his open dinner jacket. But, then, he made the most casual clothes look elegant. He was elegant.

“Why don’t you get married?” he asked suddenly.

Her eyebrows went up. “Why should I?”

His quiet gaze went over her body, down her full, firm breasts to her narrow hips and long legs. The side slit had fallen open in the position she was sitting, and all too much of her silk-clad leg was visible.

He watched her face very carefully as he spoke. “Because you’re twenty-six. In a few more years, it will be more difficult for you to have a child.”

A child…A child. The color drained out of her face, out of her eyes. She swallowed a surge of nausea as she remembered the wrenching pain, the fear as she phoned for an ambulance and was carried to the hospital. He didn’t know. He’d never know, because she wouldn’t tell him.

“I don’t want to marry anyone. Excuse me, I have to—”

She tried to get up, but his lean hand shot out and caught her forearm, anchoring her to the steps. He was too close. She could smell the exotic cologne he always wore, feel his breath, whiskey-scented, on her face.

“Stop running from me!” he growled.

His eyes met hers. They were relentless, intent.

“Let me go!” she raged.

His fingers only tightened. He made her feel like a hysterical idiot with that long, hard stare, but she couldn’t stop struggling.

He ended the unequal struggle by tugging slightly and she landed back on the steps with a faint thump. “Stop it,” he said firmly.

Her eyes flashed at him, her cheeks flushed.

He let go of her arm all at once. “At least you look alive again,” he remarked curtly. “And back to normal pretending to hate me.”

“I’m not pretending. I do hate you, Dawson,” she said, as if she was programmed to fight him, to deny any hint of caring in her voice.

“Then it shouldn’t affect you all that much to come home with me.”

“I won’t run interference for you with the widow. If you want that land so badly…”

“I can’t buy it if she won’t sell it,” he reminded her. “And she won’t sell it unless I entertain her.”

“It’s a low thing to do, to get a few acres of land.”

“Land with the only water on the Bighorn property,” he reminded her. “I had free access when her husband was alive. Now I buy the land or Powell Long will buy it and fence it off from my cattle. He hates me.”

“I know how he feels,” she said pointedly.

“Do you know what she’ll do if you’re not there?” he continued. “She’ll try to seduce me, sure as hell. She thinks no man can resist her. When I refuse her, she’ll take her land straight to Powell Long and make him a deal he can’t refuse. Your friendship with Antonia won’t stop him from fencing off that river, Barrie. Without water, we’ll lose the property and all the cattle on it. I’ll have to sell at a loss. Part of that particular ranch is your inheritance. You stand to lose even more than I do.”

“She wouldn’t,” she began.

“Don’t kid yourself,” he drawled. “She’s attracted to me. Or don’t you remember how that feels?” he added with deliberate sarcasm.

She flushed, but she glared at him. “I’m on vacation.”

“So what?”

“I don’t like Sheridan, I don’t like you, and I don’t want to spend my vacation with you!”

“Then don’t.”

She hit the banister helplessly. “Why should I care if I lose my inheritance? I’ve got a good job!”

“Why, indeed?”

But she was weakening. Her part-time job had fallen through. She was looking at having to do some uncomfortable budgeting, despite the good salary she made. It only stretched so far. Besides, she could imagine what a woman like Mrs. Holton would do to get her claws into Dawson. The widow could compromise him, if she didn’t do anything else. She could make up some lurid tale about him if he didn’t give out…and there was plenty of gossip already, about Dawson’s lack of interest in women. It didn’t bear thinking about, what that sort of gossip would do to Dawson’s pride. He’d suffered enough through the gossip about his poor father and Antonia Long, when there wasn’t one shred of truth to it. And in his younger days, his success with women was painfully obvious to a worshiping Barrie.

“For a few days, you said,” she began.

His eyebrows lifted. “You aren’t changing your mind!” he exclaimed with mock surprise.

“I’ll think about it,” she continued firmly.

He shrugged. “We should be able to live under the same roof for that long without it coming to bloodshed.”

“I don’t know about that.” She leaned against the banister. “And if I decide to go—which I haven’t yet—when she leaves, I leave, whether or not you’ve got your tract of land.”

He smiled faintly. There was something oddly calculating in his eyes. “Afraid to stay with me, alone?”

She didn’t have to answer him. Her eyes spoke for her.

“You don’t know how flattering that reluctance is these days,” he said, searching her eyes. “All the same, it’s misplaced. I don’t want you, Barrie,” he added with a mocking smile.

“You did, once,” she reminded him angrily.

He nodded. His hands went into his pockets and his broad shoulders shifted. “It was a long time ago,” he said stiffly. “I have other interests now. So do you. All I want is for you to run interference for me until I can get my hands on that property. Which is to your benefit, as well,” he added pointedly. “You inherited half the Bighorn property when George died. If we lose the water rights, the land is worthless. That means you inherit nothing. You’ll have to depend on your job until you retire.”

She knew that. The dividend she received from her share of cattle on the Bighorn ranch helped pay the bills.

“Oh, there you are, Dawson, dear!” a honied voice drawled behind him. “I’ve been looking just everywhere for you!” A slinky brunette, a good few years younger than Barrie, with a smile the size of a dinner plate latched onto Dawson’s big arm and pressed her ample, pretty chest against it. “I’d just love to dance with you!” she gushed, her eyes flirting outrageously with his.

Dawson went rigid. If Barrie hadn’t seen it for herself, she wouldn’t have believed it. With a face that might have been carved from stone, he released himself from the woman’s grasp and moved pointedly back from her.

“Excuse me. I’m talking to my stepsister,” he said curtly.

The woman was shocked at being snubbed. She was beautiful and quite obviously used to trapping men with that coquettish manner, and the handsomest man here looked at her as if she smelled bad.

She laughed a little nervously. “Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Later, perhaps, then?”

She turned and went quickly back into the living room.

Barrie was standing where she’d been throughout the terse exchange, leaning against the banister. Now she moved away from it and down the steps to stand just in front of Dawson. Her green eyes searched his quietly.

His jaw clenched. “I told you. I’m not in the market for a woman—not you or anyone else.”

Her teeth settled into her lower lip, an old habit that he’d once chided her about.

He apparently hadn’t forgotten. His forefinger tapped sharply at her upper lip. “Stop that. You’ll draw blood,” he accused.

She released the stinging flesh. “I didn’t realize,” she murmured. She sighed as she searched his hard face. “You loved women, in the old days,” she said with more bitterness than she knew. “They followed you around like bees on a honey trail.”

His face was hard. “I lost my taste for them.”

“But, why?”

“You don’t have the right to invade my privacy,” he said curtly.

She smiled sadly. “I never did. You were always so mysterious, so private. You never shared anything with me when I was younger. You were always impatient to get away from me.”

“Except once,” he replied shortly. “And see where that got us.”

She took a step toward the living room. “Yes.”

There was a silence, filled by merry voices and the clink of ice in glasses.

“If I ask you something, point-blank, will you answer me?” he asked abruptly.

She turned, her eyes wide, questioning. “That depends on what it is. If you won’t answer personal questions, I don’t see why I should.”

His eyes narrowed. “Perhaps not.”

She grimaced. “All right. What do you want to know?”

“I want to know,” he said quietly, “how many men you’ve really had since me.”

She almost gasped at the audacity of the question.

His eyes slid down her body and back up again, and they were still calculating, the way they’d been all evening. “You dress like a femme fatale. I can’t remember the last time I saw you so uncovered. You flirt and tease, but it’s all show, it’s all on the surface.” He scowled. “Barrie…”

She flushed. “Stop looking into my mind! I hated it when I was in my teens and I hate it now!”

He nodded slowly. “It was always like that. I even knew what you were thinking. It was a rare kind of rapport. Somewhere along the way, we lost it.”

“You smothered it,” she said correcting. He smiled coolly. “I didn’t like having you inside my head.”

“Which works both ways,” she agreed.

He reached out and touched her cheek lightly, his fingers lingering against the silky soft skin. She didn’t move away. That was a first.

“Come here, Barrie,” he invited, and this time he didn’t smile. His eyes held hers, hypnotized her, beckoned her.

She felt her legs moving when she hadn’t meant to let them. She looked up at him with an expression that wasn’t even recognizable.

“Now,” he said softly, touching her mouth. “Tell me the truth.”

She started to clamp down on her lower lip, and his thumb prevented her. It smoothed over her soft lower lip, exploring under the surface, inside where the flesh was moist and vulnerable. She jerked back from him.

“Tell me.” His eyes were relentless. She couldn’t escape. He was too close.

“I…couldn’t, with anyone else,” she whispered huskily. “I was afraid.”

The years of bitterness, of blaming her for what he thought he’d made of her were based on a lie. All the guilt and shame when he heard about her followers, when he saw her with other men—he knew the truth now. He’d destroyed her as a woman. He’d crippled her sexually. And just because, like his father, he’d lost control of himself. He hadn’t known what she’d suffered until a week ago.

He couldn’t tell her that he’d wrangled this invitation from John because he needed an excuse to see her. He hadn’t realized in all the long years how badly he’d damaged her. Her camouflage had been so good. Now that he did know, it was unbelievably painful.

“Dear God,” he said under his breath.

His hand fell away from her cheek. He looked older, suddenly, and there was no mockery in his face now.

“Surprised?” she taunted unsteadily. “Shocked? You’ve always wanted to think the worst of me. Even that afternoon at the beach, before it…before it happened, you thought I just wanted to show off my body.”

He didn’t blink. His eyes searched hers. “The only eyes you wanted on your body were mine,” he said in a dead voice. “I knew it. I wouldn’t admit it, that’s all.”

She laughed coldly. “You said plenty,” she reminded him. “That I was a tramp, that I was so hot I couldn’t—”

His thumb stopped the words and his eyes closed briefly. “You might not realize it, but you aren’t the only one who paid dearly for what happened that night,” he said after a minute.

“Don’t tell me you were sorry, or that you felt guilty,” she chided. “You don’t have a heart, Dawson. I don’t think you’re even human!”

He laughed faintly. “I have doubts about that myself these days,” he said evenly.

She was shaking with fury, the past impinging on the present as she struggled with wounding memories. “I loved you!” she said brokenly.

“Dear God, don’t you think I know?!” he demanded, and his eyes, for that instant, were terrible to look into.

She went white, paper white. Beside her skirt, her hands clenched. She wanted to throw herself at him and hit him and kick him, to hurt him as he’d hurt her.

But slowly, as she remembered where they were, she forced herself to calm down. “This isn’t the time or the place.” She bit off the words. Her voice shook with emotion.

He stuck his hands into his pockets and looked down at her. “Come to Wyoming with me. It’s time you got it all out of your system. You’ve been hurt enough for something that was never your fault to begin with.”

The words were surprising. He was different, somehow, and she didn’t understand why. Even the antagonism when he saw her had been halfhearted, as if he was only sniping at her out of habit. Now, he wasn’t especially dangerous at all. But she didn’t, couldn’t, trust him. There had to be more to his determination to get her to Wyoming than as a chaperone.

“I’ll think about it,” she said shortly. “But I won’t decide tonight. I’m not sure I want to go back to Sheridan, even to save my inheritance.”

He started to argue, but the strain of the past few minutes had started to show in her face. He hated seeing the brightness gone from it. He shrugged. “All right. Think it over.”

She drew in a steadying breath and walked past him into the living room. And for the rest of the evening, she was the life and soul of the party. Not that Dawson noticed. A couple of minutes after she left him in the hall, he went out the door and drove back to his hotel. Alone.

Two

IT WAS a boring Saturday. Barrie had already done the laundry and gone to the grocery store. She had a date, but she’d canceled it. Somehow, one more outing with a man she didn’t care about was more than she could bear. No one was ever going to measure up to Dawson, anyway, as much as she’d like to pretend it would happen. He owned her, as surely as he owned half a dozen ranches and a veritable fleet of cars, even if he didn’t want her.

She’d given up hoping for miracles, and after last night, it was obvious that the dislike he’d had for her since her fifteenth birthday wasn’t going to diminish. Even her one memory of him as a lover was nothing she wanted to remember. He’d hurt her, and afterward, he’d accused her of being a wanton who’d teased him into seducing her. He could be kind to the people he liked, but he’d never liked Barrie or her mother. They’d been the outsiders, the interlopers, in the Rutherford family. Barrie’s mother had married his father, and Dawson had hated them both from the moment he laid eyes on them.

Eleven years later, after the deaths of both their parents, nothing had changed except that Barrie had learned self-preservation. She’d avoided Dawson like the plague, until last night, when she’d betrayed everything to him in that burst of anger. She was embarrassed and ashamed this morning to have given herself away so completely. Her one hope was that he was already on his way back to Sheridan, and that she wouldn’t have to see him again until the incident was forgotten, until these newest wounds he’d inflicted were healed.

She’d just finished mopping the kitchen floor in her bare feet and had put the mop out on the small balcony of her apartment to dry when the doorbell rang.

It was almost lunchtime and she was hungry, having spent her morning working. She hoped it wasn’t the man she’d turned down for a date that evening, trying to convince her to change her mind.

Her wavy black hair lay in disheveled glory down her back. It was her one good feature, along with her green eyes. Her mouth was shaped like a bow and her nose was straight, but she wasn’t conventionally pretty, although she had a magnificent figure. She was dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of worn jeans. Both garments had shrunk, emphasizing her perfect body. She didn’t have makeup on, but her eyes were bright and her cheeks were rosy from all her exertions.

Without thinking, she opened the door and started to speak, when she realized who was standing there. It definitely wasn’t Phil, the salesman with whom she’d turned down a date.

It was always the same when she came upon Dawson unawares. Her heart began to race, her breath stilled in her throat, her body burned as if she stood in a fire.

Eyes two shades lighter green than her own looked back at her. Whatever he wore, he looked elegant. He was in designer jeans and a white shirt, with a patterned gray jacket worn loose over them. His feet were encased in hand-tooled gray leather boots and a creamy Stetson dangled from one hand.

He looked her up and down without smiling, without expression. Nothing he felt ever was allowed to show, while Barrie’s face was as open as a child’s book to him.

“What do you want?” she asked belligerently.

An eyebrow jerked over amused green eyes. “A kind word. But I’ve given up asking for the impossible. Can I come in? Or,” he added, the smile fading, “isn’t it convenient?”

She moved away from the door. “Check the bedroom if you like,” she said sarcastically.

He searched her eyes. Once, he might have taken her up on it, just to irritate her. Not since last night, though. He hadn’t the heart to hurt her any more than he already had. He tossed his hat onto the counter and leaned against it to watch her close the door.

“Have you decided whether or not you’ll come back to Sheridan?” he asked bluntly. “It’s only for a week. You’re on summer vacation, and John told me that you’d been laid off at your part-time job.” He looked at the counter and said with calculation, “Surely you can survive without your flock of admirers for that long.”

She didn’t contradict him or fly off the handle. That was what he wanted. She made points with Dawson by remaining calm.

“I don’t want to play chaperone for you, Dawson,” she said simply. “Get someone else.”

“There isn’t anyone else, and you know it. I want that land. What I don’t want is to give Mrs. Holten any opportunities for blackmail. She’s a lady who’s used to getting what she wants.”

“You’re evenly matched, then, aren’t you?” she replied.

“I don’t have everything I want,” he countered. His eyes narrowed. “Corlie and Rodge will be in the house, too. They miss you.”

She didn’t answer. She just looked at him, hating him and loving him while all the bad memories surfaced.

“Your eyes are very expressive,” he said, searching them. There was so much pain behind the pretense, he thought sadly, and he’d caused it. “Such sad eyes, Barrie.”

He sounded mysterious, broody. She sensed a change in him, some ripple of feeling that he concealed, covered up. His lean fingers toyed with the brim of his Stetson and he studied it while he spoke. “I bought you a horse.”

She stared at him. “Why?”

“I thought you might respond to a bribe,” he said carelessly. “He’s a quarter horse. A gelding.” He smiled with faint self-contempt. “Can you still ride?”

“Yes.” She didn’t want to admit that it touched her to have Dawson buy her a present. Even a plastic necklace would have given her pleasure if he’d given it to her.

His eyes lifted back to hers. “Well?”

“You have Rodge and Corlie to play chaperone. You don’t need me.”

His pale eyes held hers. “Yes, I do. More than you know.”

She swallowed. “Look, Dawson, you know I don’t want to come back, and you know why. Let’s just leave it at that.”

His eyes began to glitter. “It’s been five years,” he said coldly. “You can’t live in the past forever!”

“The devil I can’t!” she snapped. Her eyes hated him. “I won’t forgive you,” she whispered, almost choking on the words. “I won’t ever, ever forgive you!”

His gaze fell, and his jaw clenched. “I suppose I should have expected that. But hope springs eternal, don’t they say?” He picked up his hat and turned back to her.

She hadn’t gotten herself under control at all. Her slender hands were clenched at her sides and her eyes blazed.

He paused just in front of her. At close range, he was much taller than she was. And despite their past, his nearness disturbed her. She took a step backward.

“Do you think I don’t have scars of my own?” he asked quietly.

“Men made of ice don’t get scars,” she managed to say hoarsely.

He didn’t say another word. He turned and went toward the door. This wasn’t like Dawson. He was giving up without a fight; he didn’t even seem bent on insulting her. The very lack of retaliation was new and it disturbed her enough to call to him.

“What’s wrong?” she asked abruptly, even as he reached for the doorknob.

The question, intimating concern, stopped him in his tracks. He turned as if he didn’t really believe she’d asked that. “What?”

“I asked what was wrong,” she repeated. “You aren’t yourself.”

His hand tightened on the doorknob. “How the hell would you know whether I am or not?” he returned.

“You’re holding something back.”

He stood there breathing roughly, glaring at her. He shifted, restless, as highly strung as she remembered him. He was a little thinner these days, fine-drawn. His eyes narrowed on her face.

“Are you going to tell me?” she asked him.

“No,” he said after a minute. “It wouldn’t change anything. I don’t blame you for wanting to stay away.”

He was hiding something. She knew instinctively that he didn’t want to tell her. He seemed vulnerable. It shocked her into moving toward him. The action was so unexpected, so foreign, that it stilled his hand on the doorknob. Barrie hadn’t come toward him in five years.

She stopped an arm’s length away and looked up at him. “Come on, tell me,” she said gently. “You’re just like your father, everything has to be dragged out of you. Tell me, Dawson.”

He took a deep breath, hesitated, and then just told her.

She didn’t understand at first.

“You’re what?” she asked.

“I’m impotent!”

She just looked at him. So the gossips weren’t talking about a cold nature when they called him the “ice man.” They were talking about a loss of virility. She hadn’t really believed the rumors she’d heard about him.

“But…how…why?” she asked huskily.

“Who knows?” he asked irritably. “What difference does it make?” He took off his hat and ran a lean hand through his hair. “Mrs. Holton is a determined woman, and she thinks she’s God’s gift to manhood.” His face clenched and he averted it, as if it tormented him to tell her all of it. “I need that damn tract of land, but I have to let her come to Sheridan to talk to me about selling it. She wants me, and she’ll find out, if she pushes hard enough, that I’m…incapable. Right now it’s just gossip. But she’d make me the news item of the century. Who knows? Maybe that’s her real reason for wanting to come in the first place, to check out the gossip.”

Barrie was horrified. She moved back to the sofa and sat down, hard. Her face was drawn and pale, like his. It shocked her that he’d tell her such a thing, when she was his worst enemy. It was like offering an armed, angry man a bullet for his gun.

He saw her expression and grew angry. “Say something.”

“What could I possibly say?” she whispered.

“So you do have some idea of how devastating it is,” he murmured from a rigid face.

She folded her hands in her lap. “Then I’m to run interference for you? Will the threat of a sister stop her?”

“That isn’t how you’d come back to Sheridan.”

She lifted both eyebrows. “How, then?”

He fished a small velvet box out of his pocket and tossed it to her.

She frowned as she opened it. There were two rings inside, a perfect emerald in a Tiffany setting and a matching wedding band set with diamonds and emeralds.

She actually gasped, and dropped the box as if it were red-hot.

He didn’t react, although a shadow seemed to pass over his eyes. “Well, that’s a novel way of expressing your feelings,” he said sardonically.

“You can’t be serious!”

“Why can’t I?”

“We’re related,” she blurted out, flushing.

“Like hell we are. There isn’t one mutual relative between us.”

“People would talk.”

“People sure as hell would,” he agreed, “but not about my…condition.”

She understood now, as she hadn’t before, exactly what he wanted her to do. He wanted her to come back to Sheridan and pretend to be engaged to him, to stop all the gossip. Most especially, he wanted her there to run interference while Mrs. Holton was visiting, so that she wouldn’t find out the truth about him in a physical way while he tried to coax her into selling him that vital piece of land. He could kill two birds with one stone.

To think of Dawson as impotent was staggering. She couldn’t imagine what had caused it. Perhaps he’d fallen in love. There had been some talk of him mooning over a woman a few years ago, but no name was ever mentioned.

“How long ago did it happen?” she asked without thinking.

He turned and his green eyes were scorching. “That’s none of your business.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Well, excuse me! Exactly who’s doing whom the favor here?”

“It doesn’t give you the right to ask me intimate questions. And it isn’t as if you won’t benefit from getting her to sell me the land.”

She flushed and averted her face.

He rammed his hands into his pockets with an angry murmur. “Barrie, it hurts to talk about it,” he snapped.

She should have realized that. A man’s ego was a surprisingly fragile thing, and if what she’d read and heard was correct, a large part of that ego had to do with his prowess in bed.

“But you could…you did…with me,” she blurted out.

He made a rough sound, almost a laugh. “Oh, yes.” He sounded bitter. “I did, didn’t I? I wish I could forget.”

That was surprising. He’d enjoyed what he did to her, or she certainly thought he had. In fact, he’d sounded as if the pleasure was…She shut out the forbidden thoughts firmly.

He bent and retrieved the jewelry box from the floor, balancing it on his palm.

“It’s a very pretty set,” she remarked tautly. “Did you just buy it?”

“I’ve had it for…a while.” He stared at the box and then shoved it back into his pocket before he looked at her. He didn’t ask. He just looked.

She didn’t want to go back to Sheridan. She’d learned last night and this morning that she was still vulnerable with him. But the thought of Dawson being made a laughingstock disturbed her. He had tremendous pride and she didn’t want that hurt. What if Mrs. Holton did find out about him and went back to Bighorn and spread it around? Dawson might have recourse at law, but what good would that do once the rumors started flying?

She remembered so well the agony her stepfather and Antonia Hayes had suffered over malicious gossip. Dawson must be remembering as well. There was really no way to answer suspicious looks and whispers. He seemed to have had a bad enough time from just the gossip. How would it be for him if everyone knew for certain that he wasn’t capable of having sex?

“Barrie?” he prompted curtly.

She sighed. “Only for a week, you said?” she asked, lifting her eyes to surprise a curious stillness in the expression on his lean, handsome face. “And nobody would know about the ‘engagement’ except Mrs. Holton?”

He studied his boots. “It might have to be in the local papers, to make it sound real.” He didn’t look at her. “I doubt it would reach as far as Tucson. Even if it did, we could always break the engagement. Later.”

This was all very strange and unexpected. She hadn’t really had time to think it through. She should hate him. She’d tried to, over the years. But it all came down to basics, and love didn’t die or wear out, no matter how viciously a heart was treated. She’d probably go to her grave with Dawson’s name on her lips, despite the lost baby he didn’t even know about, and the secret grief she’d endured.

“I need my mind examined,” she said absently.

“You’ll do it?”

She shrugged. “I’ll do it.”

He didn’t say anything for a minute. Then the box came out of his pocket. “You’ll have to wear this.”

He knelt just in front of her, where she sat on the sofa, and took out the engagement ring.

“But it might not fit…”

She stopped in midstatement as he slid the emerald gently onto her ring finger. It was a perfect fit, as if it had been measured exactly for it.

He didn’t say a word. He had her hand in his and, as she watched, he lifted it to his mouth and kissed the ring so tenderly that she stiffened.

He laughed coldly before he lifted his eyes to hers, and if there had been any expression in them, it was gone now. “We might as well do the thing properly, hadn’t we?” he asked mockingly, and got gracefully to his feet.

She didn’t reply. She still felt his warm mouth on her fingers, as if it were a brand. She looked down at the ring, thinking how perfect the emerald was. Such a flawless stone was easily worth the price of a diamond of equal size.

“Is it synthetic?” she asked absently.

“No. It’s not.”

She traced around it. “I love emeralds.”

“Do you?” he asked carefully.

She lifted her eyes back to his. “I’ll take good care of it. The woman you originally bought it for, didn’t she want it?” she asked.

His face closed up. “She didn’t want me,” he replied. “And it’s a good thing, considering the circumstances, isn’t it?”

He sounded angry. Bitter. Barrie couldn’t imagine any sane woman not wanting him. She did, emotionally if not physically. But her responses had been damaged, and he hadn’t been particularly kind to her in the aftermath of their one intimacy.

Her eyes on the emerald she asked, “Could you, with her?”

There was a cold pause. “Yes. But she’s no longer part of my life, or ever likely to be again.”

She recognized the brief flare of anger in his deep voice. “Sorry,” she said lightly. “I won’t ask any more questions.”

He turned away, his hands back in his pockets again. “I thought I might fly you up to Wyoming today, if you don’t have anything pressing. A date, perhaps.”

She stared at his back. It was strangely straight, almost rigid. “I had the offer of a date,” she admitted, “but I refused it. That’s who I thought you were. He said he wouldn’t take ‘no’ for an answer….”

Just as she said that, an insistent buzz came from the doorbell. It was repeated three times in quick succession.

Dawson went toward it.

“Dawson, don’t you dare!” she called after him.

It didn’t even slow him down. He jerked open the door, to reveal a fairly good-looking young blond man with blue eyes and a pert grin.

“Hi!” he said pleasantly. “Barrie home?”

“She’s on her way out of state.”

The young man, Phil by name, noticed the glare he was getting and the smile began to waver. “Uh, is she a relative of yours?”

“My fiancée,” Dawson said, and his lips curled up in a threatening way.

“Fi…what?” Phil’s breath exploded.

Barrie eased around Dawson. “Hi, Phil!” she said gaily. “Sorry, but it only just happened. See?” She held out her ring finger. Dawson hadn’t budged. He was still standing there, glaring at Phil.

Phil backed up a step. “Uh, well, congratulations, I’m sure. I’ll, uh, see you around, then?”

“No,” Dawson replied for her.

Barrie moved in front of him. “Sure, Phil. Have a nice weekend. I’m sorry, okay?”

“Okay. Congratulations again,” he added, trying to make the best of an embarrassing situation. He shot one last glance at Dawson and returned down the hall the way he’d come, very quickly.

Dawson muttered something under his breath.

Barrie turned and glowered up at him. “That was unkind,” she said irritably. “He was a nice man. You scared him half to death!”

“You belong to me for the duration of our ‘engagement,’” he said tautly, searching her eyes. “I won’t take kindly to other men hanging around until I settle something about that tract of land.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “I promised to pretend to be engaged to you, Dawson,” she said uneasily. “That’s all. I don’t belong to you.”

His eyes narrowed even more, and there was an expression in them that she remembered from years past.

He looked as if he wanted to say more, but he hesitated. After a minute, he turned away.

“Are you coming with me now?” he asked shortly.

“I have to close up the apartment and pack…”

“Half an hour’s work. Well?”

She hesitated. It was like being snared in a net. She wasn’t sure that it was a good idea. If she’d had a day to think about it, she was certain that she wouldn’t do it.

“Maybe if we wait until Monday,” she ventured.

“No. If you have time to think, you won’t come. I’m not letting you off the hook. You promised,” he added.

She let out an angry breath. “I must be crazy.”

“Maybe I am, too,” he replied. His hands balled into fists in his pockets. “It was all I could think of on the spur of the moment. I didn’t plan to invite her. She invited herself, bag and baggage, in front of half a dozen people and in such a way that I couldn’t extricate myself without creating a lot more gossip.”

“There must be other women who would agree to pose as your fiancée,” she said.

He shook his head. “Not a one. Or didn’t the gossip filter down this far south, Barrie?” he added with bitter sarcasm. “Haven’t you heard? It would take a blowtorch, isn’t that what they say? Only they don’t know the truth of it. They think I’m suffering from a broken heart, doomed to desire the one woman I can’t have.”

“Are they right?” she asked, glancing at the ring on her finger.

“Sure,” he drawled sarcastically. “I’m dying for love of a woman I lost and I can’t make it with any other woman. Doesn’t it show?”

If it did, it was invisible. She laughed self-consciously. She’d known there were women in Dawson’s life for years, but she and Dawson had been enemies for a long time. She was the last person who’d know about a woman he’d given his heart to. Probably it had happened in the years since they’d returned from that holiday in France. God knew, she’d stayed out of his life ever since.

“Did she die?” she asked gently.

His chin lifted. “Maybe she did,” he replied. “What difference does it make?”

“None, I guess.” She studied his lean face, seeing new lines in it. His blond hair had a trace of silver, just barely visible, at his ears. “Dawson, you’re going gray,” she said softly.

“I’m thirty-five,” he reminded her.

“Thirty-six in September,” she added without thinking.

His eyes flashed. He was remembering, as she was, the birthdays when he’d gone out on the town with a succession of beautiful women each year. Once Barrie had tried to give him a present. It was nothing much, just a small silver mouse that she’d saved to buy for him. He’d looked at the present with disdain, and then he’d tossed it to the woman he was taking out that night, to let her enthuse over it. Barrie had never seen it again. She thought he’d probably given it to his date, because it was obvious that it meant nothing to him. His reaction had hurt her more than anything in her life ever did.

“The little cruelties are the worst, aren’t they?” he asked, as if he could see the memory, and the pain, in her mind. “They add up over the years.”

She turned away. “Everyone goes through them,” she said indifferently.

“You had more than most,” he said bitterly. “I gave you hell every day of your young life.”

“How are we going to Sheridan?” she asked, trying to divert him.

He let out a long breath. “I brought the Learjet down with me.”

“It’s overcast.”

“I’m instrument rated. You know that. Are you afraid to fly with me?”

She turned. “No.”

His eyes, for an instant, were haunted. “At least there’s something about me that doesn’t frighten you,” he said heavily. “Go and pack, then. I’ll be back for you in two hours.”

He went out the door this time, leaving her to ponder on that last statement. But she couldn’t make any sense of it, although she spent her packing time trying to.

Three

IT WAS stormy and rain peppered the windscreen of the small jet as Dawson piloted it into his private airstrip at Sheridan. He never flinched nor seemed the least bit agitated at the violent storm they’d flown through just before he set the plane down. He was as controlled in the cockpit as he was behind the wheel of a car and everywhere else. When he’d been fighting the storm, Barrie had seen him smile.

“No butterflies in your stomach?” he taunted when he’d taken off his seat belt.

She shook her head. “You never put a foot wrong when the chips are down,” she remarked, without realizing that it might sound like praise.

His pale green eyes searched her face. She looked tired and worried. He wanted to touch her cheek, to bring the color back into her face, the light back into her eyes. But it might frighten her if he reached toward her now. He might have waited too late to build bridges. It was a sobering thought. So much had changed in his life in just the past two weeks, and all because of a chance meeting with an old buddy at a reunion and a leisurely discussion about Tucson, where the friend, a practicing physician, had worked five years earlier in a hospital emergency room.

Barrie noticed his scrutiny and frowned. “Is something wrong?”

“Just about everything, if you want to know,” he remarked absently, searching her eyes. “Life teaches hard lessons, little one.”

He hadn’t called her that, ever. She’d never heard him use such endearments to anyone in normal conversation. There was a new tenderness in the way he treated her, a poignant difference in his whole manner.

She didn’t understand it, and she didn’t trust it.

A movement caught his eye. “Here comes Rodge,” he murmured, nodding toward the ranch road, where a station wagon was hurtling toward the airstrip. “Ten to one he’s got Corlie with him.”

She smiled. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen them.”

“Not since my father’s funeral,” he agreed curtly. He left the cockpit and lowered the steps. He went down them first and waited to see if she needed help. But she’d worn sneakers and jeans, not high heels. She went down as if she were a mountain goat. She’d barely gotten onto the tarmac when the station wagon stopped and both doors opened. Corlie, small and wiry and gray-haired, held her arms out. Barrie ran into them, hungry for the older woman’s warm affection.

Beside her, Rodge shook Dawson’s hand and then waited his turn to give Barrie a hug. He was at least ten years older than Corlie, and still dark-headed with a few silver streaks. He was dark-eyed and lean. When he wasn’t managing the ranch in Dawson’s absence, he kept busy as Dawson’s secretary, making appointments and handling minor business problems.

The two of them had been with the Rutherfords for so long that they were more like family than paid help. Barrie clung to Corlie. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the woman.

“Child, you’ve lost weight,” Corlie accused. “Too many missed meals and too much fast food.”

“You can feed me while I’m here,” she said.

“How long are you staying?” Corlie wanted to know.

Before Barrie could answer her and spill the beans, Dawson caught her left hand and held it under Corlie’s nose. “This is the main reason she came back,” he said. “We’re engaged.”

“Oh, my goodness,” Corlie exclaimed before a shocked Barrie could utter a single word. The older woman’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s what Mr. Rutherford always prayed would happen, and me and Rodge, too,” she added, hugging Barrie all over again. “I can’t tell you how happy I am. Now maybe he’ll stop brooding so much and smile once in a while,” she added with a grimace at Dawson.

Barrie didn’t know what to say. She got lost in the enthusiasm of Rodge’s congratulations and Dawson’s intimidating presence. He must have had a reason for telling them about the false engagement, perhaps to set the stage for Mrs. Holton’s arrival. She could ask him later.

Meanwhile, it was exciting to look around and enjoy being back in Sheridan. The ranch wasn’t in town, of course, it was several miles outside the city limits. But it had been Dawson’s home when she came here, and she loved it because he did. So many memories had hurt her here. She wondered why it was so dear to her in spite of them.

She found herself installed in the backseat of the station wagon with Corlie while Dawson got in under the wheel and talked business with Rodge all the way up to the house.

The Rutherford home was Victorian. This house had been built at the turn of the century, and it replaced a much earlier structure that Dawson’s great-grandfather had built. There had been Rutherfords in Sheridan for three generations.

Barrie often wished that she knew as much about her own background as she knew about Dawson’s. Her father had died when she was ten, too young to be very curious about heritage. Then when her mother married George Rutherford, who had been widowed since Dawson was very young, she was so much in love with him that she had no time for her daughter. Dawson had been in the same boat. She’d learned a bit at a time that he and his father had a respectful but very strained relationship. George had expected a lot from his son, and affection was something he never gave to Dawson; at least, not visibly. It was as if there was a barrier between them. Her mother had caused the final rift, just by marrying George. Barrie had been caught in the middle and she became Dawson’s scapegoat for the new chaos of his life. George’s remarriage had shut Dawson out of his father’s life for good.

Barrie had tried to talk to Dawson about his mother once, but he’d verbally slapped her down, hard. After that, she’d made sure personal questions were kept out of their conversation. Even today, he didn’t like them. He was private, secretive, mysterious.

Rodge took her bags up to her old room on the second floor, and she looked around the hall, past the sliding doors that led to the living room on one side and the study on the other, down to the winding, carpeted staircase. Suspended above the hall was a huge crystal chandelier, its light reflected from a neat black-and-white tile floor. The interior of the house was elegant and faintly unexpected on a ranch.

“I’d forgotten how big it is,” Barrie mused.

“We used to do a lot of entertaining,” Corlie reminded her. She glared at Dawson. “Not anymore.”

“I’ll remember you said that,” he replied. “Perhaps we’ll throw a party for Mrs. Holton when she gets here.”

“That would make a nice change,” Corlie said. She winked at Barrie. “But I expect she’s going to be something of a nuisance to a newly engaged couple. I’ll help run interference.”

She smiled and went off to make coffee.

“Oh, dear,” Barrie murmured, seeing more complications down the road.

Dawson shoved his hands into his pockets and searched her face. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It will all work out.”

“Will it?” She grimaced. “What if Mrs. Holton sees right through us?”

He moved a little closer, near enough that she could feel the warmth of his body. “Neither of us is used to touching or being touched,” he remarked when she stiffened. “That may be awkward.”

She remembered how he’d pushed away the woman at the party in Tucson. Barrie was afraid to come that close, but they were supposed to be engaged and it would look unnatural if they never touched each other.

“What are we going to do?” she asked miserably.

He sighed heavily. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. Slowly his hand went out, and he touched her long, wavy dark hair. His fingers were just a little awkward. “Maybe we’ll improve with some practice.”

She bit her lower lip. “I…hate being touched,” she whispered in a rough whisper.

He winced.

She lowered her eyes to his chest. “Didn’t you notice, at the party? I had two men at my feet, but did you see how much distance there was between us? It’s always like that. I don’t even dance anymore…!”

His hand withdrew from her hair and fell to his side. “God forgive me,” he said miserably. “I don’t think I can ever forgive myself.”

Her eyes came up, shocked. He’d never admitted guilt, or fault before. Something must have happened to change him. But what?

“We’ll have to spend some time together before she gets here,” he said slowly. “And get to know each other a little better. We might try holding hands. Just to get used to the feel of each other.”

Tentative. Like children on a first date. She wondered why she was being so whimsical, and smiled.

He smiled back. For the first time in recent memory, it was without malice or mockery.

“Antonia said that Mrs. Holton was very attractive,” she remarked.

“She is,” he agreed. “But she’s cold, Barrie. Not physically, but emotionally. She likes to possess men. I don’t think she’s capable of deep feelings, unless it’s for money. She’s very aggressive, single-minded. She’d have made a good corporate executive, except that she’s lazy.”

“Did her husband leave her well-fixed?” she asked curiously.

“No. That’s why she’s trying to find a man to keep her.”

She bristled. “She ought to go back to school and keep herself,” she said shortly.

He laughed softly. “That’s what you did,” he agreed. “You wouldn’t even take an allowance from George. Or from me.”

She flushed, averting her eyes. “The Rutherfords put me through college. That was more than enough.”

“Barrie, I never thought your mother married my father for his money,” he said, reading the painful thought in her mind. “She loved him, just as he loved her.”

“That wasn’t what you said.”

His eyes closed. “And you can’t forget, can you? I can’t blame you. I was so full of hatred and resentment that I lashed out constantly. You were the most easily reachable…and the most vulnerable.” His eyes opened again, cold with self-contempt. “You paid for every sin I accused your mother of committing.”

“And how you enjoyed making me pay,” she replied huskily.

He looked away, as if the pain in her eyes hurt him. “Yes, I did,” he confessed bluntly. “For a while. Then we went to the Riviera on holiday with George.”

She couldn’t think about that. She didn’t dare let herself think about it. She moved away from him. “I should unpack.”

“Don’t go,” he protested. “Corlie’s making coffee. She’ll probably have cake to go with it.”

She hesitated. Her big green eyes lifted to his, wary and uncertain.

His face hardened. “I won’t hurt you,” he said roughly. “I give you my word.”

He was old-fashioned that way. If he made a promise, he kept it. But why should he stop sniping at her now, and so suddenly? Her eyes mirrored all her uncertainties, all her doubts.

“What’s changed?” she asked miserably.

“I’ve changed,” he replied firmly.

“You suddenly woke up one morning and decided that you’d give up an eleven-year vendetta?”

He searched over her face with an enigmatic expression on his darkly tanned face. “No. I discovered how much I’d lost,” he said, his voice taut with some buried feeling. “Have you ever thought that sometimes our whole lives pivot on one decision? On a lost letter or a telephone call that doesn’t get made?”

“No, I don’t suppose I have, really,” she replied.

“We live and learn. And the lessons get more expensive with age.”

“You’re very reflective, lately,” she said, curious. A strand of hair fell over her eyes, and she pushed it back from her face. “I don’t think in all the time we’ve known each other that we’ve really talked, until the past day or so.”

“Yes. I know.” He sounded bitter. He turned away from her to lead the way into the spacious living room. It had changed since she’d lived on the Rutherford ranch. This was the very room where Dawson had so carelessly tossed the little silver mouse she’d given him to his date. But it wasn’t the same at all. The furniture was different, Victorian and sturdy in its look, but wonderful to sink into.

“This room doesn’t look like you at all,” she remarked as she perched herself in a delicate-looking wing chair that was surprisingly comfortable.

“It isn’t supposed to,” he replied. He sat down on the velvet-covered sofa. “I hired a decorator to do it.”

“What did you tell her, that you wanted to adopt someone’s grandmother and install her here?” she asked.

He lifted an eyebrow. “In case you didn’t notice, the house is late Victorian. And I thought you liked Victorian furniture,” he added.

She shifted, running her hand along the arm of the chair. “I love it,” she confessed in a subdued tone. Questions poised on the tip of her tongue, and she almost asked them, but Corlie came in with a tray of cake and coffee, beaming.

“Just what the doctor ordered,” she said smugly, putting the tray on the big coffee table.

“Great huge coffee tables aren’t Victorian,” Barrie muttered.

“Sure they are. Victorians drank coffee,” Corlie argued.

“They drank tea,” she replied, “and out of dainty little china cups and saucers.”

“They also ate cucumber sandwiches,” Corlie returned. “Want a few?”

Barrie made a face. “I’ll be quiet about the coffee table if you won’t offer me those again.”

“It’s a deal. Call if you need anything else.” Corlie went out, closing the sliding doors behind her.

She helped herself to coffee and cake and so did he. As always he took his coffee black while Barrie put cream and sugar in hers.

“Antonia said that you’d been offered a job heading the math department at your high school next fall,” he remarked. “Are you going to take it?”

She looked up over the rim of her coffee cup. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I love teaching. But that job is mostly administrative. It would take away the time I had with my students, and plenty of them require extra tutoring.”

He searched her down-bent face. “You…like children, don’t you?”

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