Praise for the reigning queen of romance
DIANA PALMER

“Nobody does it better.”

—New York Times bestselling author Linda Howard

“The popular Palmer has penned another winning novel, a perfect blend of romance and suspense.”

—Booklist on Lawman

“Palmer knows how to make the sparks fly…heartwarming.”

—Publishers Weekly on Renegade

“Sensual and suspenseful.”

—Booklist on Lawless

“Diana Palmer is a mesmerizing storyteller who captures the essence of what a romance should be.”

—Affaire de Coeur

“Nobody tops Diana Palmer when it comes to delivering pure, undiluted romance. I love her stories.”

—New York Times bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz

Also by Diana Palmer

Heartless

Fearless

Her Kind of Hero

Nora

Big Sky Winter

Man of the Hour

Trilby

Lawman

Lacy

Hard To Handle

Heart of Winter

Outsider

Night Fever

Before Sunrise

Lawless

Diamond Spur

Desperado

The Texas Ranger

Lord of the Desert

The Cowboy and the Lady

Most Wanted

Fit for a King

Paper Rose

Rage of Passion

Once in Paris

After the Music

Roomful of Roses

Champagne Girl

Passion Flower

Diamond Girl

Friends and Lovers

Cattleman’s Choice

Lady Love

The Rawhide Man

DIANA PALMER
Noelle

In memory of Ryan Patton Hendricks, whose light

still shines brightly in the hearts of all those who loved him.

Noelle

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Prologue

The street was wide and dusty—and because it was late in the afternoon, there was a lot of activity in the small town of Terrell, New Mexico Territory. Most of the buggies and wagons had stopped, however, to watch the developing confrontation in front of the adobe courthouse, where the circuit judge had just ruled against a group of small ranchers.

“You sold us out!” a raging-mad cowboy yelled at a tall, distinguished man in a dark, vested business suit. “You helped that land-hungry British son of Satan kick us off our land! What will we do come winter when we don’t have a place to live or food for our kids? Where will we go, now that you’ve taken our land away? It isn’t even as if Hughes needs it. By God, he owns half the county already!”

Jared Dunn, the tall, elegant man he was facing, watched him without blinking, without moving. His pale blue eyes were narrow and intent—dangerous—but the cowboy was too far away to see them.

“It was a fair trial,” the man said in a cultured accent, with just a trace of a drawl. “You had attorneys.”

“Not like you, Mr. New York City big-shot lawyer!” the man said, his expression turning ugly. He was wearing a sidearm. Many people did in 1902, although not in towns, most of which had regulations against firearms. But this little place was much as it had been in the late 1880s and the law was just getting a toehold here. This was still a territory, not a state.

The angry cowboy had come heeled, and Jared Dunn had anticipated he would. The sheriff of this town was a mild little man who was elected for his sunny personality, not his toughness, so he could expect no help from that quarter. In fact, the sheriff had conveniently vanished when the cowboy started yelling threats across the street.

The cowboy’s hand dropped lower, hovering over his gun butt.

“Don’t do it,” Jared warned, his voice deep and clear and ringing.

“Why? Are you afraid of guns, Mr. Big Shot?” the cowboy demanded, with a faint sneer. “Don’t you city boys know how to shoot?”

Slowly Jared unbuttoned his tailored jacket, and, without taking his eyes from his adversary, smoothed the jacket back…past a worn leather holster slung low across his lean hips. It contained a Colt .45 revolver with an equally worn black handle.

The way the revolver was worn would have been enough to warn most men. But even the smooth action of the hand sweeping back the jacket spoke for him. He stood very quietly, his posture elegant, deceptively relaxed, his eyes focused only on the cowboy.

“Ed, give it up,” one of the cowboy’s friends demanded. “You can’t shoot lawyers, more’s the pity. We’ll find some other land, and this time we’ll make sure the seller has legitimate deeds.”

“It’s my land. Deeds be damned! And I’m not getting off it because some rich man paid a city lawyer to take it away from me!” He began to crouch; his hand made a claw over the gun butt at his waist. “You draw or you die, fellow.”

“Just like old times,” Jared murmured to himself. His blue eyes narrowed, steady and unblinking, and he smiled coldly.

“Draw!” the cowboy yelled.

But Jared didn’t move. He simply stood there.

“Coward!”

Still Jared stood his ground, waiting. He’d learned that it wasn’t the man who was fastest who won this sort of fight—it was the man who took his time and placed his shot.

Suddenly the cowboy dug for his revolver. He managed to get it out, and he even got off a shot, but not before Jared’s bullet had smashed a bone in his gun arm. The concussion jerked his fingers and set off his pistol as he fell, crying out, to the dusty street.

The wild bullet hit Jared’s leg just above the kneecap, but he didn’t fall or cry out. His gaze unwavering from his adversary, he went slowly toward the cowboy’s prostrate, groaning form and stood over him, the smoking pistol still held level in his lean hand. His eyes, to the spectators, were frightening in their unblinking blue glitter.

“Are you finished, or do you want to try again?” he asked, without a breath of sympathy. His index finger was still on the trigger, the pistol aimed at the downed man. It was evident to everyone that if the cowboy had reached for the pistol lying near his uninjured side, Jared would have sent a second bullet right into the man without hesitation.

The white-faced cowboy looked up at death in a business suit. “Say,” he managed in a rough whisper, “don’t I know you?”

“I doubt it.”

The cowboy shuddered at the force of the pain. “But I do,” he insisted. “I saw you…in Dodge. I was in Dodge City, back in the…early 80s. There was a Texas gunman. Killed another gunman…Never saw his hand move, never even saw it coming, like just now…” He was barely conscious as loss of blood weakened him, while around him people were rushing in search of a doctor for the wounded men.

A dark-eyed man carrying a medical bag pushed his way through the crowd. He looked from Dunn’s bleeding leg to the red-splattered arm of the cowboy on the ground.

“It’s 1902,” he informed Dunn. “We’re supposed to be civilized now. Put that damned thing away!”

Dunn reholstered the gun with a smooth spin that wasn’t lost on the physician, but he didn’t back down.

“Shattered his gun arm, didn’t you?” He examined the cowboy and nodded to two of his companions. “Get him to my office.” He turned and looked pointedly at the lawyer’s bleeding leg, around which he was calmly tying a white handkerchief that quickly turned red. “You can come along, too. I thought you were a lawyer.”

“I am.”

“Not the way you handle that gun. Can you walk?”

“I’m only shot, not killed,” Jared said curtly. His blue eyes met the other man’s, still cold from the confrontation. “I’ve been shot before.”

“A lawyer should expect to be.”

“Ah. An anarchist, I presume.”

The doctor was motioning to the cowboy’s friends, somewhat subdued now, to bring him along. “No, I’m not an anarchist,” the doctor replied. “But I don’t believe a handful of men should own the world.”

“Believe it or not, neither do I.” Jared walked on his own, even when a sympathetic bystander offered him a hand. He looked neither right nor left, following the doctor and the victim into the office. It amused him when the man’s friends quickly withdrew into the waiting room with nervous glances in his direction. Over the years, that reaction had become familiar.

When he’d left Texas to practice law in New York ten years ago, he’d thought that the days of cold steel and hot lead were over forever. But most of his cases took him West. And the frontier might be closed these days, but there were plenty of men around who grew up in wild times and still thought a gun was the way to settle a dispute.

Shootings even occurred in such civilized places as Fort Worth, because he read about them in the local paper his grandmother sent to him in New York. There was an ordinance against weapons there, in Fort Worth, but apparently few people obeyed it, despite the city’s large police force. Here in Terrell, the sheriff wanted to be reelected, so he didn’t encourage unpopular gun control ordinances. Such a lawman wouldn’t have been tolerated back in Texas.

Jared sat down heavily in a chair while the doctor worked on the wounded cowboy, with some assistance from a younger man who worked with him.

His mind was on the case, not his wound. He’d learned in his wild young days to ignore pain. He was thirty-six now, and the lesson had stood him in good stead.

He’d been tricked into thinking that the landowner was the victim in this town. It was only at the end of the case that he’d realized how untrue that was. His loyalty was to his client, and he’d researched the deeds well enough to know that the small ranchers had no real claim on the land at all. That didn’t make him feel any better when the judge ruled that they must be evicted from homesteads where they’d planted crops and had cattle grazing for five years before the absentee rancher even knew they were on the place.

But there was no such thing as squatters’ rights under the law. The fact that they’d been sold the land by an unscrupulous speculator, without legal counsel, was beside the point. The seller had long since skipped and couldn’t be found.

“I said, let’s have a look at that leg,” the doctor repeated testily.

He looked up blankly and realized that he and the doctor were alone in the room, the assistant having helped the other wounded man, now bandaged, out into the embrace of his friends.

Jared climbed onto the table and watched as the doctor cut his pant leg to give him access to the wound. He examined it carefully, applying antiseptic before he probed it with a long instrument. He found the bullet and began to withdraw it. He glanced up to see if he was hurting his patient and found the man’s steely blue eyes as calm as if he’d been reading a newspaper.

“Tough character, aren’t you?” the doctor murmured when he’d withdrawn the bullet and tossed it into a metal pan.

“I grew up in wild times,” Jared said quietly.

“So did I.” He applied more antiseptic and began to bandage the wound. “You’ve got some damage there. No bones broken, but a few torn ligaments at the least. Try to stay off it as much as possible and have your own doctor take a look when you get home. I don’t think there will be any permanent damage, but you’ll have a hard time walking for a few weeks. Leave that bandage on until your own doctor sees the leg. You’ll have some fever. Have your doctor check it for infection when you get back to New York. Gangrene is still a very real possibility.”

“I’ll keep an eye on it.”

“Sorry about your trousers.”

Jared shrugged. “Fortunes of war.” His eyes fixed on the doctor’s face. “I’ll take care of both bills—for myself and the man I wounded. For two bits, I’d call out Hughes and make a clean sweep of this. He lied to me. I thought the trespassing had been recent.”

The doctor’s eyebrows went up. “You didn’t know that those men had homesteaded the land for five years?”

“Not until today.”

He whistled through his teeth.

Jared got to his feet and reached for his wallet. He peeled off several large bills and handed them to the doctor. “If you have any contact with the man I shot, tell him that he’s got a good case against the man who sold him the land. Anybody can be found. I know an ex-Pinkerton man who lives in Chicago—Matt Davis, by name.” He took a pencil and pad from his pocket, scribbled a name and an address. “He’s a good man, and he’s a sucker for a just cause. I’ve worked with him frequently over the past ten years.”

The doctor fingered the slip of paper. “Ed Barkley will be grateful. He’s not a bad man, but he lived on the border for years before he married and tried to settle down. Sank every penny he had into that land, and now he’s lost everything.” He shrugged and smiled faintly. “In the old days, there would have been quick justice, right or wrong. Civilization is hard work.”

Jared’s eyebrow quirked. “Tell me about it.”

He left the doctor’s office and started toward his hotel. He hadn’t taken off the gun belt.

The sheriff came toward him, clearing his throat. “I believe we should discuss this gunplay…”

Jared, in pain and furious that the official hadn’t even tried to do his duty, swept the jacket back again with cold, insolent challenge.

“By all means, let’s discuss it,” he invited curtly.

The sheriff, unlike Ed Barkley, knew what the angle of that holster and the worn butt meant. He cleared his throat again and smiled nervously.

“Self-defense, of course,” he muttered. “Sad thing, these bad-tempered men…Fair trial. You, uh, leaving town?”

“Yes.” Jared gave the man a cold glare. “Someone could have been killed out here today. You were elected to protect these townspeople, and you ran like a yellow dog. I’ve been in places in Texas where they’d have shot you down in the street for what you did today.”

“I was otherwise occupied at the time! And what do you know about being a lawman, a city feller like you?” the man asked.

Jared’s thin mouth tugged up at the corner, but his eyes were blazing. “More than you’ll have time to learn.”

He whipped the jacket back over his pistol and kept walking, the limp more pronounced with every step he took. But even with that impairment, he looked threatening.

He went to his hotel, packed and checked out, and caught the next train east to St. Louis, where he could make connections to return to New York. People were still watching when the train pulled out of town. Imagine, a real gunfight right there in the street, two boys were remarking excitedly, and they’d seen it!

Chapter One

“Damn!”

The expletive resounded through the elegant law office. Alistair Brooks, the senior partner of the firm of Brooks and Dunn, looked up from the brief he was painstakingly writing by hand at his oak rolltop desk. “What?” he asked.

Jared Dunn threw down the letter he’d received from his grandmother in Fort Worth, Texas, with a flourish of his long, darkly tanned hand. “Damn,” he repeated under his breath, and sat brooding, his reading glasses perched on his straight, elegant nose—over eyes that could run the blue spectrum from sky blue all the way to gunmetal gray.

“A case?” Brooks asked absently.

“A letter from home,” Jared replied heavily. He sat back in his chair with his long legs crossed, a faint grimace accompanying the action. He favored the right leg a little, because the damage done by the bullet in Terrell was fresh enough to be painful. He’d been carefully checked by his own doctor, the wound rebandaged with directions to leave it alone until it healed. The fever had gone down in the few days he’d been back in New York, and if he felt pain or weakness from the wound, it didn’t show in the steely lines of his lean face.

“From Texas?” Brooks echoed.

“From Texas.” He couldn’t quite call it home, although it felt that way sometimes. He turned his swivel chair to face his partner across the elegant wood floor of the oak-furnished office, the long, narrow windows letting in light through sheer curtains. “I’ve been thinking about a move, Alistair. If I leave, Parkins would enjoy taking my place in the firm. He has a good background in criminal law, and he’s been in practice long enough to have gained an admirable reputation in legal circles.”

Brooks put down his ink pen with a heavy sigh. “It’s that land case in New Mexico Territory that’s depressed you,” he began.

“It’s more than that,” Jared replied. “I’m tired.” He ran a slender hand over his wavy black hair. There were threads of pure silver in it now, at his temples. He knew that new lines had been carved into his face by the pressures of his profession. “I’m tired of working on the wrong side of justice.”

Brooks’s eyebrows arched disapprovingly.

Jared shook his head. “Don’t misunderstand me. I love the practice of law. But I’ve just dispossessed families that should have had some sort of right to land they’d worked for five years and I feel sick about it. I seem to spend more time working for money than I do working for justice. I don’t like it. Cases that satisfied me when I was younger and more ambitious only make me uncomfortable now. I’m disillusioned with my life.”

“This sounds as if you’re working up to dissolving our partnership,” Brooks began.

Jared nodded. “That’s just what I’m doing. It’s been a good ten years since I began practicing law. I appreciate the boost that you gave my career, and the opportunity to practice in New York City. But I’m restless.”

Brooks’s dark eyes narrowed. “Would this sudden decision have more to do with that letter you’ve just read than the case in New Mexico Territory?” he asked shrewdly.

One corner of Jared’s thin mouth pulled down. “In fact, it does. My grandmother has taken in a penniless cousin of my stepbrother Andrew’s.”

“The family lives in Fort Worth, and you support them,” Brooks recalled.

Jared nodded. “My grandmother is my late mother’s only living relative. She’s important to me. Andrew…” He laughed coldly. “Andrew is family, however much I may disapprove of him.”

“He’s very young yet.”

“Serving in the Philippines during the war gave him an exaggerated view of his own importance,” Jared remarked. “He struts and postures to impress the ladies. And he spends money as if it were water,” he added irritably. “He’s been buying hats for the new houseguest, out of my grandmother’s housekeeping money. I have a feeling that it was Andrew’s idea to take her in.”

“And you don’t approve.”

“I’d like to know whom I’m supporting,” Jared replied. “And perhaps I need to become reacquainted with my own roots. I haven’t lived in Texas for a long time, but I think I’m homesick for it, Alistair.”

“You? Unthinkable.”

“It began when I took that case in Beaumont, representing the Culhanes in the oil field suit.” His blue eyes grew thoughtful. “I’d forgotten how it felt to be among Texans. They were West Texans, of course, from El Paso. I spent a little time on the border as a young man. My mother lived in Fort Worth with my stepfather until they died, and my grandmother and Andrew live there now. Although I’m partial to West Texas—”

“—Texas is Texas.”

Jared smiled. “Exactly.”

Alistair Brooks smoothed the polished wood of his chair. “If you must leave, then I’ll certainly consider Ned Parkins to replace you. Not that you can be replaced.” He smiled faintly. “I’ve known very few truly colorful personalities over the years.”

“I might be a great deal less colorful if people were more civilized in courtroom trials,” Jared replied.

“All the same, New York judges find your mystique fascinating. That often gives us an edge.”

“You’ll find another, I have no doubt. You’re an excellent attorney.”

“As you are. Well, make your plans and let me know when you want to go,” Alistair said sadly. “I’ll try to make your path as easy as I can.”

“You’ve been a good friend as well as a good partner,” Jared remarked. “I’ll miss the practice.”

He remembered those words as he sat in the passenger car of a westbound train a week later. He watched the prairie go slowly by, listened to the rhythmic puffing of the steam engine, watched the smoke and cinders flying past the windows as the click-clack of the metal wheels sang like a serenade.

“What a very barren land,” a woman with a British accent remarked to her seat companion.

“Yes, ma’am. But it won’t always be. Why, there’ll be great cities out here in a few years, just like back East.”

“I say, are there red Indians in these parts?”

“All the Indians are on reservations these days,” the man said. “Good thing, too, because the Kiowa and Comanche used to raid settlements hereabouts back in the sixties and seventies, and some people got killed in bad, bad ways. And there wasn’t only Indians. There were trail drives and cow towns like Dodge City and Ellsworth…”

The man’s voice droned on unheard as Jared’s thoughts went back to the 1880s. It had been a momentous time in the West. It had seen the Earp-Clanton brawl played out to national headlines in Tombstone, Arizona, in the fall of ’81. It had seen the last reprisal skirmishes in the Great Plains and Arizona, following the Custer debacle in Montana in ’76. It had seen the death of freedom for the Indian tribes of the West and Geronimo’s bid for independence—and subsequent capture by General Crook in Arizona. The last of the great cattle drives had played out with the devastating winter of ’86, which cost cattlemen over half their herds and all but destroyed ranching.

Simultaneously in 1890 came the frightful massacre of Indian women and children at Wounded Knee and the closing of the frontier. The old cow towns were gone. Gunfighters and frontier sheriffs, feathered war parties intent on scalping and the endless cavalry chase of Indians in search of old ways, all were vanished off the face of the earth.

Civilization was good, Jared reminded himself. Progress was being made to make life simpler, easier, healthier for a new generation of Americans. Social programs for city beautification and welfare relief, children’s rights and women’s right and succor for the downtrodden were gaining strength in even the smallest towns. People were trying to make life better for themselves, and that was better than the lawless old days.

But a wildness deep inside the man in the business suit quivered with memories of the smell of gunsmoke, the thick blackness of it stinging his eyes as he faced an adversary and watched townspeople scatter. He’d only been a boy then, in his late teens, fatherless, spoiling for a fight to prove that he was as good as any son of married parents. It certainly hadn’t been his poor mother’s fault that she was assaulted one dark evening in Dodge City, Kansas, by a man whose face she never saw. She had, after all, done the right thing—she’d kept her child and raised him and loved him, even through a second marriage to a Fort Worth businessman that saddled Jared with a stepbrother he never liked. His mother had died trying to save him from the wild life he was leading.

On her deathbed, as he visited her in Fort Worth—before she followed her beloved husband to the grave with the same cholera that had done him in—she’d gripped Jared’s hand tight in her small one and begged him to go back East to school. There was a little money, she said, just enough that she’d earned sewing and selling eggs. It would get him into school, and perhaps he could work for the rest of his tuition. He must promise her this, she begged, so that she would have the hope of his own salvation. For the road he was traveling would surely carry him to eternal damnation.

After the funeral, he’d taken her last words to heart. He’d left his young stepbrother, Andrew, in the care of their grieving grandmother and headed East.

He had a keen, analytical mind. He’d managed a scholarship with it, and graduated with honors from Harvard Law School. Then a college friend had helped him find work with a prominent law firm, that of Alistair Brooks, senior and junior. His particular interest had been criminal law, and he’d practiced it with great success over the past ten years, since his graduation from college. But along with his success had come problems, most of them with Andrew at the root. The boy had run wild in his teens; it had been left to his poor grandmother to cope. Jared had helped get him into the army just before the Spanish-American War broke out. Andrew had gone to the Philippines and discovered something he was good at—exaggeration. He made himself out to be a war hero and lived the part. He had a swagger and an arrogance that kept Jared in New York. He rarely went home because Andrew irritated him so. He rued the day his mother had married Daniel Paige and added his young son Andrew to the family.

Andrew had no idea of Jared’s past. Grandmother Dunn never spoke of it, or of Jared’s parentage. That was a life long ago, in Kansas, and had no bearing on the life Jared had made for himself. For all anyone in Fort Worth knew, Jared was a practicing attorney from New York City who did nothing more dangerous than lifting a pen to documents. He’d been quite fortunate that his infrequent contretemps with angry antagonists over points of law hadn’t made their way into the local paper; Jared tended to intimidate curious reporters, and most of his adversaries weren’t anxious to admit to their idiocy in pulling a gun on him. There had only been a handful of incidents, quickly forgotten, since he’d put up his gun in the ’80s. He was still a dead shot, and he practiced enough with the weapon to retain an edge when he needed one. But he hadn’t killed anyone in recent years.

His eyes narrowed as he thought about that wild, early life, and how reckless and thoughtless he’d been. His mother must have worried about his restlessness, the dark side of him that had grown to such proportions before her death. She had no idea who his father was, and she must have wondered about him. Jared had wondered, too, but there was no one in Dodge City who resembled him enough to cast any light on his lineage. Perhaps his father had been a drunken cowboy in town on a trail drive, or a soldier home from the war. It didn’t really matter, anyway, he told himself. Except that he’d like to have known.

He looked out the window at the bland expanse of grassland. News of this woman who’d been taken into his family disturbed him. He paid the bills for his grandmother, and, necessarily, Andrew. It would have been politic to ask if he minded another mouth to feed before they dumped this woman in his lap. He knew nothing about her, and he wondered if they did. It had apparently been Andrew’s idea to send for her; she was actually a distant cousin of his, which made her no relation at all to Jared.

He remembered so well the wording in his grandmother’s letter:

…Andrew feels that she would be so much better off with us than in Galveston, especially since it holds such terrifying memories for her. She would not go back there for all the world, but it appears that her uncle is insisting that she accompany him now that the city is rebuilt and he has work there again. While it has been a year and a half since the tragedy, the poor girl still has a terror of living so close to the sea again. I fear her uncle’s insistence has brought back nightmarish memories for her…

He wondered about the remark, about why she should be afraid of going to Galveston. There had been a devastating flood there in September of 1900. Had she been one of the survivors? He recalled that some five thousand souls had died that morning—in only a few minutes’ time—as the ocean swallowed up the little town. And didn’t he remember that his grandmother had written of Andrew visiting the Texas coast only recently? Connections began forming in his mind. He was willing to bet that this so-called cousin of Andrew’s was little more than a new girlfriend upon whom he was fixated. If that was the case, Jared had no intention of supporting her while his stepbrother courted her. She could be sent packing, and the sooner the better.

As the train plodded across the vast plains, he pictured the woman in his mind. Knowing Andrew, she would be pretty and experienced and good at getting her way. She would probably have a heart like a lump of coal and eyes that could count a wad of money from a distance. The more he thought about her the angrier he grew. His grandmother must be getting senile to even allow such a thing. That feisty little woman, who’d moved in with his stepbrother after he left for New York, had never been known for foolish behavior. Andrew must have pulled the wool over her eyes. He wouldn’t pull it over Jared’s.

The train pulled into the station late that night. He got off at the platform with only his valise and made arrangements to have his trunk delivered to his home the next morning. Although it was late, he was still able to find a free carriage to hire to take him around to the sprawling Victorian home, on a main street, where his grandmother and Andrew now lived.

He felt his age when he disembarked at the door, valise in hand. He hadn’t wired them to expect him. Sometimes, he’d reasoned, surprises were better.

He walked with a pronounced limp after the exercise his wounded leg had been forced to endure on the long passage from New York. His dark, wavy hair was covered by a bowler hat, tilted at a rakish angle. His vested navy blue suit was impeccable, if a little dusty, as were his hand-tooled black leather boots. He looked the very image of a city gentleman as he walked up the flower-bordered path to the porch.

Although it was dark, he could see that the elegant house was in good repair. Light poured in welcome from its long, tall windows, spilling onto the gray porch where a swing and settee and some rocking chairs with cushions sat. He had never lived in this house, but he’d visited it on occasion since he’d bought it for his grandmother to live in. He approved of the neat cushions on the chairs and the swing, with their wide ruffles in white eyelet. They gave the house a subdued elegance that went well with the exquisite gingerbread woodwork all around the eaves of the house.

He paused to open the screen door and use the brass door knocker, in the shape of a lion’s head. The noise provoked voices from inside.

“Ella, could you answer the front door please? Ella! Oh, bother! Where is Mrs. Pate?”

“Never mind, Mrs. Dunn. I’ll see who’s there.”

“Not you, Noelle. It is not fitting…”

The admonition in his grandmother’s soft voice trailed off as her instructions were apparently ignored. He got a glimpse of thick auburn hair in an upswept hairdo before the door opened and a lovely, oval face with thick-lashed green eyes looked up at him inquiringly.

His blue eyes narrowed so that even their color wasn’t revealed under the brim of his hat. His gaze swept over the woman, who was wearing a simple white blouse with a high, lacy neck and a dark skirt that reached to her ankles.

“What do you want?” she asked in a voice that, while pleasant, reeked of South Texas backcountry and contained a belligerence that immediately raised the hair at Jared’s nape.

He removed his hat out of inborn courtesy, leaning heavily on the cane. “I would like to see Mrs. Dunn,” he said coolly.

“It’s much too late for visitors,” she informed him. “You’ll have to come calling another time.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “My, aren’t you arrogant for a servant, madam,” he said, with biting sarcasm.

She flushed. “I’m no servant. I’m a member of the family.”

“Like hell you are!” he returned abruptly. His eyes were glittery now, steady, unblinking—dangerous.

She was taken aback by those eyes, as well as the curse, which was at such variance with the deep, soft tone of his voice. No gentleman used such language in a lady’s presence!

“Sir, whoever you are—” she began haughtily.

“Andrew should have made you aware of my identity,” he continued coldly. “Especially since I pay the bills here. Where’s my grandmother?”

Belatedly she realized to whom she was speaking. Andrew had mentioned his stepbrother, of course. He hadn’t mentioned that the man was Satan in a business suit. He was very good-looking, despite those gray hairs at his temples, but he was tall and intimidating, and his eyes were like blue steel…in a face about that yielding.

“You didn’t present your card,” she said, defending herself as she quickly opened the door for him.

“I hardly felt the need in my own house,” he returned irritably. His leg hurt and he was worn out.

She saw the cane then and noticed the taut lines around his thin mouth. “Oh…you’re crippled,” she blurted out.

Both eyebrows went up. “The delicacy of your observation leaves me speechless,” he said, with biting sarcasm.

She did blush then, partially from bad temper. He was tall, and she had to look a long way up to see his face. She didn’t like him at all, she decided, and she’d been foolish to feel sorry for him. Probably he’d gotten that bad leg kicking lame dogs…

“Mrs. Dunn is in the drawing room,” she said, and slammed the door.

“My valise is still outside,” he pointed out.

“Well, it can let itself in,” she informed him, and swept past him toward the drawing room.

He followed her, momentarily bereft of speech. For an indigent relative, the woman took a lot upon herself.

“Jared!” the little woman on the sofa exclaimed brightly, diverting him, and held her face up to be kissed. “My dear, what an excellent surprise! Are you passing through, or have you come to stay for a while?”

He looked at the auburn-haired woman across from him as he spoke to his grandmother. “Oh, I’ve come home,” he said, watching the expression change in the younger woman’s green eyes. “I decided that I needed a change of scene.”

“Well, I’m delighted to have you,” Mrs. Dunn said. “And I’m sure Andrew will be. He’s away for the week, on business, you know. He does sales work for a local brickmaking concern. He’s been in Galveston lately to take orders. That’s where he found our lovely Noelle.”

He glanced at the young woman. She was younger than he’d thought at first—probably not yet out of her teens.

“This is my grandson Jared, Noelle. And Jared, this is Andrew’s young cousin, Noelle Brown.”

Jared looked at her without speaking. “How did he chance to discover the relationship?” he asked finally.

“A mutual acquaintance pointed it out,” Noelle said. She clasped her hands together tightly at her waist.

“An observant one, no doubt, as you certainly share no surface traits with my stepbrother, who is blond and dark-eyed.”

“His mother was auburn-haired,” Mrs. Dunn pointed out, “and his mother’s people were Browns from Galveston. Naturally when he made mention of it, an acquaintance there told him of Noelle’s existence, and her sad plight.”

“I see.”

“Dear boy, what has happened to you?” she asked, nodding toward the cane.

He leaned on the cane a little heavily. “A slight accident.”

“Only that?” Noelle asked sweetly. “What a relief to know that you weren’t slammed in the leg with a fence post, sir.”

He cocked his head and stared at her pointedly. “You’re very plainspoken, Miss Brown.”

“I’ve had to be,” she replied. “I had four brothers, sir—none of whom ever made allowances for my lack of muscle.”

“Don’t expect me to make allowances for your youth,” he countered in a dangerously soft tone.

Her eyes went to the gray hair at his temples. “You may also expect that I’ll make none for your age.”

One dark eyebrow lifted. “My age?”

“Well, you’re quite old.”

He had to choke back a retort. Probably to a girl in her teens, he did seem elderly. He ignored her latest sally and turned back to his grandmother. “How have you been?” he asked, and his tone changed so drastically that Noelle was surprised.

Mrs. Dunn smiled warmly at him. “Quite well, my boy, for a lady of my years. And you look prosperous as well.”

“New York has been good to me.”

She looked at the leg. “Not altogether, apparently.”

He smiled. “This happened in New Mexico Territory. An accident.”

“Surely you weren’t thrown from a horse,” she began, such an accident being the first sort to occur to her.

Noelle looked at him as if she expected that a man in such an expensive suit, an attorney, moreover, who lived in a huge eastern city, wouldn’t know which end of a horse to get on.

“Horses are dangerous,” Jared replied, deliberately evasive. He was enjoying their young houseguest’s evident opinion of him. He could almost see the words in her green eyes: milksop; dude; layabout; dandy…

Her eyes met his and she cleared her throat, as if she’d spoken the words aloud. “Would you care for some refreshment, Mr. uh, Mr. Dunn?”

“Coffee would be welcome. I find travel by train so exhausting,” he said, with a mock yawn, deliberately assuming the facade of a tame city man.

Noelle turned quickly and left the room before she burst out laughing. If that was Andrew’s formidable stepbrother, she was in no immediate danger of being thrown out. Although, just at first, there had been something in those steely eyes, in the set of his head, in his stance, that had made her very uneasy. Probably she was being fanciful, she thought, and continued on to the kitchen.

“Now,” Mrs. Dunn said, when Noelle had closed the door and her footsteps could be heard going down the hall, “what happened?”

“I had a disagreement with an armed cowboy in a small community called Terrell,” he said, sitting down across from her. “My shot broke his arm, but a wild bullet got me in the leg. It still pains me a bit, but in a few weeks, I’ll be as good as new. So will he, fortunately,” he added grimly. “Maybe he’ll be more careful about who he pulls a gun on from now on.”

“Gunfights, in such a civilized age,” his grandmother said coolly. “For heaven’s sake, this is just what Edith wanted to avoid! It’s why she begged you to go East to school in the first place.”

“I have avoided it—mostly,” he said, dropping the cane idly by his side. “There are still uncivilized places…and men who reach for a gun before they look for a man with a badge. In court cases, tempers run hot.”

“That’s probably why you chose law as a profession,” Mrs. Dunn said curtly. “It’s a dangerous job.”

He smiled. “So it is, from time to time. I’m going to open an office here in Fort Worth. New York has lost its appeal for me.”

Her blue eyes, so like his own, softened. “Are you, truly, Jared? It would be such a joy to have you home all the time.”

“I’ve missed you, too,” he confessed.

She bit her lower lip. “No one knows about your past here,” she said gently. “I’ve never told anyone, least of all Andrew. But these scrapes you get into…What if any of your adversaries turn up in town?”

He chuckled. “What if they do? Gunplay is a thing of the past, except in saloons and during robberies. I’m hardly likely to find myself a target for young gunmen, except in dime novels,” he added dryly.

“Don’t remind me,” she muttered, recalling that he’d been featured in one with a lurid cover and six guns in both his hands—ridiculous, since he’d only ever worn one gun, even in his young and wild days.

“I’m a respectable attorney.”

“You’re a hard case,” Mrs. Dunn said shortly. “And neither of us is as respectable as we want people to think we are. Why, I was working in a saloon in Dodge when your mama had you. And now I belong to the Women’s Benevolent Society and the Temperance Union and the Ladies’ Sewing Circle and the prayer group. However would people look at me if they knew my real past?”

“The same as they look at you now, except with more fascination, you naughty woman,” he murmured dryly.

She laughed. “I hardly think so.” She shook her head. “Oh, Jared, how hard are the lessons we learn in youth. And all our indiscretions follow us like shadows into old age.”

He searched her tired, lined face with compassion. Her life had been a much harder one than his own, although he carried scars, too. Despite the fact that he’d never killed without reason, the violence of the past occasionally woke him in lurid detail, and he had to get up and pace the floor to subdue the nightmares.

“You have your own demons,” she said, recognizing the fleeting pain in his eyes.

“Don’t we all have them?” He sighed heavily. “What about our redheaded houseguest?” he added. “Tell me about her.”

“She’s very kind,” she said. “She can cook if she’s ever needed in the kitchen, and she doesn’t mind hard work.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

She grimaced. “She’s sweet on Andrew, and vice versa. He was attracted to her at once. When he found out her circumstances, he insisted that she come here. Her family died in the flood that hit Galveston in the fall of 1900, and she’s been living in Victoria with an elderly uncle. But he has the offer of a good job in Galveston and she was terrified to go back there. Perhaps the uncle wanted to be rid of her. So Andrew invited her to come and live with us.” She tucked a fold of her dress into place. “He knew you wouldn’t like it, but he said that he did contribute to the household accounts and he’d be responsible for her keep.”

“He contributes ten dollars a month,” Jared remarked. “The rest he spends on new boots and fine livery for his carriage.”

“Yes, I know. But his father was good to Edith.”

“And to you. I remember. Andrew is the cross we must bear for his father’s kindness.”

“That was unkind and uncharitable.”

“I’m not a kind man,” he reminded her, and for an instant, the old, wild look was in his eyes.

“I might agree if I didn’t know you so well. You’re kind to the people you love.”

“There were only ever two—you and my mother.”

She smiled gently. “You might find a woman who could love you and marry one day, Jared. You should have a family of your own. I won’t live forever.”

“Andrew will,” he muttered darkly. “And I expect to find myself responsible for him until I die.”

“Cynicism does not suit you.”

“I find that it sits heavily on me of late,” he returned, tapping the boot on the foot he’d crossed over his knee. “When I started practicing law, I wanted to be on the side of justice. But lately, more and more, I find myself on the side of money. I’m tired of helping the rich disinherit the poor. Ambition has paled for me in recent months. Now, I want to do some good.”

“I’m sure you already have. But you will find worthy people here in need of representation.”

“Yes. I think I will.” He narrowed one eye. “Is Andrew serious about Noelle?”

She grimaced. “Who can tell? Andrew is fickle. He was trying to court Amanda Doyle for a brief time…You remember her father, Jared—he has a big house in town and three daughters. He fought in the cavalry in the Indian Wars.”

“Yes,” he said as an impression of a dignified old man flashed before his eyes. Like himself, Doyle had grown up in wild times, but his daughters had been protected from everything unpleasant and his wife was a socialite.

“But Miss Doyle would have nothing to do with Andrew,” his grandmother continued. “It was about that time that he went to Galveston and found Noelle.”

“And devastated her with his swagger, no doubt,” Jared murmured dryly.

“Dear boy, he does cut a dashing figure with his exaggerated war record and his blond good looks and his arrogance.”

“And his youth,” Jared added, chuckling. “Your houseguest seems to class me with the aged and infirm.”

“She knows nothing about you,” she reminded him. “And you seem to be encouraging her mistaken impression of your character.”

“Let it lie,” he said. “She seems to be no more than a bad-tempered child, but if she came here expecting someone to support her for the rest of her life, she’s going to be badly disappointed.”

His grandmother flushed. “I never thought of the imposition it would mean to you, bringing her here,” she said, embarrassed.

He held up a hand. “You were coerced,” he said simply. “I know Andrew, remember. But we know nothing of this girl. She could be anybody.”

“Andrew said that her uncle was well known, and the family was a respectable one,” she told him.

He didn’t want to know anything about the girl. She irritated him too much already.

“And it occurred to me that Andrew might have brought her here because he was considering marriage,” his grandmother added.

He didn’t like that. He laughed coldly. “Andrew isn’t ready to settle down,” he added deliberately, more for his own benefit than hers. He leaned back and rubbed gingerly at his sore leg.

“Do you intend asking her to leave?” Mrs. Dunn asked slowly.

“I might,” he replied. “It depends on what I learn about her. Let’s say that she’s here on suffrage until I make a decision.” He smiled at her. “I’d like to hear more about these new organizations springing up in Fort Worth, the ones you’ve been writing me about. What exactly is the Civic Betterment Project?”

Chapter Two

It rained on Jared’s first morning at home. He walked to the window of the dining room while he waited for the family housekeeper, Mrs. Ella Pate, to get breakfast on the table. Mrs. Pate did all the cooking and washing for the family. The elegant house was well kept and had all the most modern conveniences, including a very nice big bathroom with sound plumbing.

The tangles of pink roses on the bush outside the window were in glorious bloom, but they didn’t impress the man on the other side of the windowpane. He saw neither the silver droplets of rain sliding down the glass nor the roses. His eyes were on the past, which being in Fort Worth had brought back most painfully to his mind.

This house wasn’t the one that Jared’s mother had lived in with his stepfather; it was newer. But even if the house was different from the one his mother had died in, being with his grandmother had kindled painful memories of his late mother and the past. He hadn’t expected that.

“Aren’t the roses nice, Mr. Jared?” Mrs. Pate asked pleasantly. “Old Henry keeps the bushes in order for us, although Miss Brown likes to putter around out there—in men’s overalls—when he isn’t looking. She has the touch with vegetables, not to mention flowers.”

Mrs. Pate’s starchy comment about Noelle’s choice of clothing amused him. He could imagine how straitlaced Fort Worth would take to a young woman in men’s clothing working in full view of the street. He wondered what else she had the touch for, but he didn’t say a word. She came from poverty, and he still wasn’t certain if her reasons for being here didn’t have something to do with improving her own situation.

His grandmother came through the dining room doorway with Noelle just behind her.

“Good morning, Jared. Did you sleep well?” she asked brightly.

“Well enough.” He glanced at Noelle, who was helping his grandmother into the chair. Very solicitous, he thought, and wondered at once if she was putting on a show just for him.

“Thank you, dear,” Mrs. Dunn said. “Breakfast looks delicious, Ella.”

“I hope it tastes just as good,” Mrs. Pate said, with a grin.

“Let me have your cup, Jared, and I’ll fill it for you,” Mrs. Dunn offered.

He slid it over to her. His eyes met Noelle’s above the pot. She wasn’t looking at him. She was looking out the window at the rain and seemed lost in thought.

“Where are your thoughts, Miss Brown?” he asked.

She jerked her head around self-consciously. “I was wondering if Andrew would be home today.” She bit off any further explanation, angry because he made her feel like a schoolgirl.

“He said that he hoped to be back this evening,” Mrs. Dunn remarked. “He’ll be glad to see you, Jared.”

“Do you think so?” He creamed his coffee, leaving out sugar. “He wasn’t here when I passed through last year at Christmas.” That had irritated him, too—that his grandmother would have been alone at the holidays except for his impromptu visit.

“He was visiting some friends in Kansas City.” Mrs. Dunn refrained from mentioning that one of them was female. “Andrew’s job takes him away quite a lot.”

He sipped his coffee and then took the platters as his grandmother passed them to him, filling his plate with eggs, sausages, tomatoes, and biscuits. There was a mold of fresh butter on the pretty rose pattern of the scallop-edged English bone china saucer. Mrs. Pate bought fresh butter every week for the family. There was also a variety of preserves, jams and jellies that Mrs. Pate and Jared’s grandmother had made last summer and fall. He was especially fond of the creamy peach preserves and took two spoonfuls of it from the elegant silver dish.

“It won’t be long until we’ll have fresh vegetables,” Mrs. Dunn remarked. “The kitchen garden is growing nicely.”

“Indeed it is,” Noelle remarked absently. “I’ve covered the young tomato plants against the chill, to make sure they aren’t hurt by any unexpected frost.”

“Henry asked me why there was so little weeding to be done,” Mrs. Dunn remarked.

Noelle cleared her throat. She had to bite her tongue to keep from mentioning how heavily old Henry was hitting his whiskey bottle lately. She had found out accidentally, and she didn’t want to give Jared a worse opinion of her by running down his gardener. The family seemed to dote on the man. Noelle didn’t. She found his halfhearted gardening irritating. “I had some free time…”

“Mrs. Hardy down the block noticed you working in the garden in those overalls and mentioned it to me. It seems that her sense of proper ladylike behavior was ruffled.”

Noelle’s green eyes flashed. “I’m a countrywoman, Mrs. Dunn,” she murmured. “I’ve done everything from milking cows to scouring floors, and it’s hardly appropriate to wear a long dress in muddy ground.”

“Yes, but you must be more discreet here,” the older woman said worriedly. “Henry was employed to do the gardening, you know.”

Jared had to fight down laughter. His grandmother had been one of the world’s worst at taking jobs away from servants when she’d moved to Fort Worth with her daughter and that young woman’s new husband. It had taken her some time to learn the ways of polite society. He presumed she was hoping to spare Noelle some of the painful lessons she’d had to learn.

“I promise that I’ll try, Mrs. Dunn,” Noelle said respectfully, thinking all the while that she wasn’t giving up her gardening—or her overalls—no matter what.

Her tone was even, but she was mutinous. Jared knew it as he glanced at her, although he didn’t understand how he knew it.

“It’s for your own good that I say these things,” Mrs. Dunn assured her gently. “I don’t want you to have to learn the hard way. Wagging tongues and gossip can be very damaging indeed.”

Noelle sipped her coffee. “I’m not used to living in such a grand manner,” she commented.

“Grand manner?” Jared said sarcastically.

“A house with servants is grand to me, Mr. Dunn,” she returned, stung by his tone. Her complexion was just the least bit pale. She took her napkin from beneath her utensils belatedly, having noticed that everyone else had a spotless white linen napkin on their lap, not on the table. She spread it over her skirt and then peered at Mrs. Dunn’s hand to see how she held her silver fork.

Watching her, Jared was amused. She was willing to learn proper manners, but too proud to ask anyone to teach her.

“What did your father do for a living, Noelle?” he asked abruptly.

She finished a bite of eggs before she answered. “He was a carpenter.”

“As your uncle is, I understand.” He looked straight at her. “Why don’t you want to go back to Galveston?” he asked unexpectedly. “Are you afraid of water, Miss Brown? I understand that it was over a year and a half ago that the flood came, and the city fathers are constructing a seawall to prevent overwhelming tides in the future.”

Galveston. The sea. The flood. Her family…She had thought that the nightmarish memories were behind her for good. But her uncle had insisted that they return to Galveston, where they could live with his half brother and he could do some odd jobs to earn money as the rebuilding of the city continued. Noelle had been very upset at the thought of living in the city where her eyes had been filled with such horrible scenes of death…her family’s death. It made her uneasy to remember, and going back would mean having to face that horror every day of her life, every time she went to shop or to church.

There had never been anyone to whom she could describe what she’d seen. Even Andrew, whom she found attractive, quickly changed the subject when she wanted to discuss it—almost as if he were squeamish, a war hero who couldn’t talk about a disaster. She had needed to talk about it. She still did. Despite the amount of time that had passed, she could see the faces of her parents, distorted…

“Miss Brown?” Jared persisted. “It couldn’t be the flood that disturbs you, after so long a time. Do you have some hidden reason for not wanting to return to Galveston? Are you in trouble of some kind?”

Mrs. Dunn started to speak, but a quick wave of Jared’s hand stopped her. His intent pale blue eyes bit into Noelle’s as mercilessly as if he’d been in a courtroom. “Answer me,” he said evenly. “What do you have to hide? What is it about Galveston that made you fling yourself on the mercy of a distant relative rather than return there?”

She glared at Jared. “You make me sound like a criminal,” she said accusingly.

He leaned back in his chair and watched her with cold, calculating eyes. “Not at all. I just want to know why you’re content to live on my charity, rather than keeping house for your elderly uncle who, presumably, is going to suffer without your support.”

She felt her face heat with bad temper. She gripped the napkin tight in her lap and fought an urge to throw a glass of water over him. Why, the smug, sanctimonious reprobate! Who did he think he was?

She got to her feet, almost shaking with temper. “My uncle has a brother in Galveston who is married and has six daughters. I assure you, he won’t suffer from lack of attention. And if my presence here is so offensive to you, if you feel that I do nothing to earn my keep, then I’m quite content to leave!”

Tears stung her eyes. Jared’s accusations seemed to suffocate her as much as the nightmarish memories of Galveston. She flung the napkin on the table and lifted her skirts as she ran for the back porch.

It had been a long time since she’d cried. But Jared had infuriated her and cost her the control over her emotions that she prided herself on. She wept brokenly, so that it left her shaking, with tears running down her cheeks. She gripped the porch railing hard, trying to sniff back the wetness that threatened to escape her nose, feeling the rain mist in her face, hearing the ping of the droplets on the tin roof while she drowned in her own misery. She’d burned her bridges. She would have no place to go! Well, she wouldn’t go back to Galveston, even so. They couldn’t force her to—

“Here.”

She started as a lean, darkly tanned hand passed her an immaculate white linen handkerchief. She held it to her mouth and then her cheeks and eyes. “Thank you,” she said gruffly.

“My grandmother told me that you lost your entire family in the flood. I didn’t know that. And I didn’t realize that you were still so affected by it.”

She peeked up at him over the handkerchief and found an odd compassion in his eyes, replacing his earlier mockery. “Neither did I,” she confessed.

He knew about bad memories. He had enough of his own. “I’ve never been to Galveston,” he continued conversationally, “but I spoke with several people who were there just days after the flood. You saw your parents, afterward, didn’t you?” he added, because it was the only thing that made sense of her strong reaction to any discussion of the flood.

She nodded and tried to turn away.

He took her firmly by the upper arms and turned her back to face him. His narrow, insistent blue eyes bored into hers, so close that they filled the world, so intense that they made it impossible for her to move.

“Don’t hold it inside. Tell me,” he said firmly. “Tell me everything you remember.”

She was compelled to answer, needed to answer. The memories tumbled helplessly out of her mouth, and she couldn’t stop them. It was such a relief to speak of it, at last, to someone who would listen.

“They didn’t look human,” she whispered. She dabbed at her nose, wincing at the memory. “They were piled up, row upon row upon row of bodies, some so horrible…” She swallowed. “I felt so guilty, you see. I was in Victoria with Uncle. If I had been at home, I would have died with them. We went to town on Saturday, every Saturday, to shop. They would have been in town when it happened,” she told him, “my parents and my four brothers. It was midmorning and the flood came unexpectedly. They said a wall of water covered the entire city, drowning everyone in its path. They wouldn’t have known what happened…or so I was told. Over five thousand people died there in a space of minutes. Minutes!” She stopped to hold the cloth out in the rain, wetting it. Then she patted her face with the cool cloth and paused to choke down the nausea. “They were laid out on the street, and not together. At least they were found…in time…So that they could still be…identified.” Tears were hot in her eyes as she remembered the sight of her beloved family like that. She pressed the handkerchief to her mouth.

He frowned slightly as he studied her drawn, tearstained face. He’d seen death so often in his younger days that it didn’t really disturb him very much. His mother had slipped from life very peacefully, holding his hand. But Galveston had been a nightmare of corpses, they said, more than men saw even during wartime. He could only imagine how it would have been for a sensitive young woman to see her entire family lying dead on the street. Drowning victims of that sort were a nightmarish sight. It would have been even worse a few days later, as people had to be forced to gather the decomposing corpses…

He stuck his hands in his pockets and jingled his loose change as he watched her cope with her outpouring of emotion. He sensed that it was unusual for her to give in to tears, especially in front of strangers. He didn’t touch her. Some part of him wanted to, but he wouldn’t have appreciated a stranger’s attempt at comfort and he didn’t think she would, either.

She got herself back in control at last and wiped the traces of moisture from her eyes. They were red now, like her straight nose and her cheeks. “My uncle’s insistence on returning to Galveston resurrected all the memories. I thought that I’d put it behind me, but I was never able to talk about it. I thought Andrew would be the one person who could let me pour it all out, since he was in the war…but he wouldn’t listen to me. He actually seemed to go pale when I mentioned it. Of course, I must have imagined that.”

He knew that she hadn’t. Andrew had never seen raw death, Jared was certain of it, and the young man had a squeamish stomach. “Go on,” he coaxed.

The sound of the rain grew insistent on the roof. She sighed. “So there was no one else to tell. You accused me of running from something. You were right. I would rather die than go back to live in that city, with the memories of all the faces, the pitiful faces.” She stopped. “I’m sorry,” she said huskily.

“No, I’m sorry,” he replied at once. “I made some cruel remarks. My only excuse is that I didn’t know your entire family had died in the flood.”

The apology was unexpected. She lifted her eyes to his and searched them. “My uncle was down with his back when the flood came. I had gone up to Victoria to keep house and wait on him several weeks before the flood came. I would have gone home the following Monday. I felt so guilty that I hadn’t been with my family when they died.”

“That was God’s decision, surely?” he replied solemnly.

“You mean, that He spared me for a reason?”

He nodded.

She considered that silently. Her grief had made all her memories painful. He had forced her to face them, to face divine purposes as well. “Thank you for listening to me. Most people don’t like to hear of such horror.” She managed a faint smile for him. “And city men as a rule have no stomach at all for unpleasantness.” She frowned as she searched his eyes shyly. “It…did not disturb you too much, what I said?”

He had to stifle laughter. “No,” he said simply.

The twinkle in his eyes puzzled her. “I’m glad. Thank you for listening.”

“Life goes on,” he reminded her. “We do what we must.”

“Have you lost someone you loved?” she asked curiously.

His face closed up. “Most people have.”

He wouldn’t talk about himself. She hadn’t really expected it to be otherwise. He seemed very reticent, and he was an attorney, which meant that he had to be intelligent as well. She blew her nose on the cloth and gave in to the exhaustion that followed her outburst. “You’ve been kind,” she said reluctantly. She grimaced. “I’m…sorry that I was antagonistic. It was being told that I was living on charity—”

“Oh, hell,” he said irritably. “I didn’t mean it.”

She glanced at him. “You shouldn’t curse.”

He laughed. “It’s my house,” he pointed out “I can curse if I like.”

She started to argue, but thought better of it.

“My grandmother says that you do more than enough to earn your keep. Stay as long as you like. I must confess that I shouldn’t enjoy living in Galveston, even though I didn’t lose anyone in the flood.”

“Andrew was afraid that you wouldn’t want me here. He told me that you would probably make me leave. I suppose I was anticipating it when you arrived. It made me hostile toward you.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “My stepbrother knows very little about me,” he pointed out. “He was a boy when I left home, and my visits have been infrequent.”

“Andrew was good to me, although I realize that he brought me here without your permission. When he learned about my circumstances, he insisted,” she said, and her green eyes softened. “He’s quite dashing and very brave, and he impressed my uncle greatly.” She looked nervously at him. “He said that I could be a great help to your grandmother as a companion, to earn my keep. I have done my best to ease her path, and I’ve been helping Andrew with his correspondence and paperwork in the evenings. I can use a typewriter and a Dictaphone. Andrew taught me how.”

He was getting an interesting picture of his stepbrother’s benevolence. It wasn’t flattering to Andrew. Apparently Noelle was working for him as an unpaid secretary, in addition to running his grandmother’s errands. No doubt she was earning her keep, but it was Jared, not Andrew, who was paying the bills.

He frowned as the dampness on the porch began to make his leg ache. His hand was gripping the cane hard, and he grimaced as he used it to prop his sore leg.

“I’m sorry for the remarks I made about your handicap,” she added unexpectedly, nodding toward his injured appendage.

He lifted an eyebrow. “I’m not touchy about it,” he said.

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

“Would you believe that a horse threw me?” he drawled. It wasn’t the truth, but he wasn’t ready to impart that to anyone in the household just yet.

“Yes, of course,” she said. “The cane makes you look distinguished,” she added helpfully.

“Distinguished, or ancient?” he taunted.

“Mummies are ancient, not people,” she argued.

His lips turned up briefly. “Comforting, Miss Brown. Very comforting.”

An awkward silence fell over them while the rain increased its rhythmic pounding on the tin roof. “I must go and see if Mrs. Dunn needs anything. Thank you again,” she said sincerely.

“I had no intention of throwing you out on one day’s acquaintance,” he said before she left. “Andrew misjudged me. I’d do almost anything for my grandmother’s comfort. Any service you do her will please me.”

She smiled. “Thank you, then.” She continued on her way, ruff led but a little more at ease with him.

Later, when she told Mrs. Dunn about the unexpected compassion from Jared Dunn, the older woman was visibly surprised.

“Jared is a hard man,” Mrs. Dunn said. “He hasn’t had an easy life, and there’s a shell around him that no one in recent years has been able to breach. He cares for me, in his fashion, but he doesn’t like most people. He can be dangerous, and he makes a formidable adversary, especially in a court of law.”

“I hope that he never becomes mine,” Noelle said, with feeling.

Mrs. Dunn smiled at the very thought. “That’s hardly likely, my dear.”

Andrew arrived back at the house that evening, in a hired carriage with a driver to bring in his two bags and trunk. Noelle’s face lit up like a Christmas candle when she saw him, and she almost jumped out of her chair when he walked into the living room. But it was Mrs. Dunn, not Noelle, that he went to first. Noelle’s face fell. Jared, watching, found her adoration of his stepbrother oddly irritating.

“Grandmother, how wonderful to see you!” Andrew enthused as he embraced her. “I’ve been to Galveston and Victoria and even to Houston. I brought you a Paris hat—green velvet and feathers and fur. You’ll love it! And Noelle, I found a pretty little pearl pin for you—” He stopped as Jared moved into the lamplight. “Jared! Why…how nice to see you.”

“And you, Andrew,” Jared said, with a cool smile. “You look well.”

Indeed he did, in his fashionable suit and tie and hand-tooled lace-up shoes and bowler hat. Andrew was as tall as Jared, but a little less streamlined. He had a curling blond mustache that matched his shock of blond hair, with even features and dark eyes that twinkled. He was the epitome of a dashing ex-soldier, and women loved him. Noelle was no exception. Her face was flushed and eyes were bright with excitement as she greeted him.

“It’s lovely to have you back again, Andrew,” Noelle said breathlessly.

“It’s nice to be back.” He chuckled, reaching down to grasp her small hand and kiss it lazily. Her flush delighted him.

Jared could only imagine how he measured up against the younger man, with his gimpy leg and his lined face. But he wasn’t jealous of Andrew, who had the nature of a friendly puppy coupled with the shrewd craftiness of a coyote. He did know never to turn his back on the younger man, or trust him very far. Those were lessons that Noelle very obviously hadn’t learned yet. She looked like a ripe little peach hanging over a hungry boy’s head, and that continental bit of hand-kissing had flustered her visibly.

“How long are you staying, Jared?” Andrew asked, moving away from Noelle.

“For a long time. I’m moving my law practice down here from New York,” Jared replied, smiling at the shocked response. “This is my house, Andrew,” he added pointedly—in a tone that brooked no protests.

“Yes, of course it is. And you’re always welcome here,” Andrew said quickly. He laughed. The sound was nervous and too high. “I shall have to look to my laurels with such a famous trial lawyer around, drawing the attention of the ladies!”

Jared leaned heavily on the cane. “I have no interest in such attention, I assure you,” he said coldly, and his eyes flashed. “My prime interest is the practice of law.”

“I say, Jared, what happened to your leg?” he asked suddenly when his stepbrother moved forward and sank down into a wing chair by the empty fireplace.

“An accident,” Jared said firmly.

“I’m sorry. Will it heal?”

“Andrew, what a thoughtless question,” Mrs. Dunn chided. “Do sit down, dear boy, and tell us about your trip.”

“Oh, yes, do!” Noelle enthused.

He dropped elegantly to the sofa beside Mrs. Dunn and patted her hand affectionately. “I had a successful tour,” he said. “I met with some representatives of our sister company in Houston and I sold tons of bricks to businesses in Victoria. Perhaps soon there will be a market in Galveston. Progress on the seawall is moving along quite rapidly. Once finished, it certainly should forestall any further invasions of the sea. Forgive me, Noelle,” he added quickly.

She nodded and smiled. “It’s all right, Andrew,” she said in a husky, soft tone. And surprisingly, it was. Talking her grief out to Jared had made it bearable.

Andrew smiled his relief and plunged into the subject of the new construction, with the two women giving him their full attention. Jared just sat and listened. Andrew was smug and far too arrogant, but that didn’t seem to bother Noelle, who hung on his every word as if he were dispensing holy law. It made him irritable, and after a short time, he excused himself and went to bed.

“How long has he been here?” Andrew asked Mrs. Dunn when Jared was safely upstairs.

“For two days,” she replied. “He was tired of life in the big city and wanted to come home. He’s feeling his age, I think.”

“The poor old thing,” Noelle said, with genuine sympathy. “It must have been very difficult for him to get around in a big city like New York with such a handicap. Perhaps he will find a quieter life here.”

“I hope that he doesn’t interfere too much with our own lives,” Andrew muttered.

“You’re ungrateful, my boy,” Mrs. Dunn told him bluntly. “Jared paid for this house and everything in it, lest you forget.”

“I’m grateful for his gifts,” Andrew returned. “But he’s hardly a welcome addition to our household. I remember his earlier visits. He was always glowering, watching, somber. He’s a cold and intimidating presence.”

“He’s an attorney,” Mrs. Dunn replied. “It wouldn’t benefit him to be frivolous, Andrew.”

“Yes, well, when he establishes his practice, perhaps he won’t be around so much and things can go on as before.” He looked pointedly at Noelle and smiled warmly. “Because I have hardly had time to get to know my cousin Noelle. Now that I am excused from further travels out of town for a while, we can spend some time together.”

Noelle’s heart leapt into her throat and she beamed at him. “That would be lovely, Andrew.”

He leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs, covertly drinking in the fullness of her figure, the pretty lines of her face. She wasn’t the sort of woman he would marry, because she was much too countrified and simple for his taste, and she had no social background to speak of. But she would make a sweet little mistress. There was the minor complication of his stepbrother, but Jared would present no real problem. He was confident that he could seduce Noelle without difficulty. Afterward, well, he’d worry about that when the time came.

The soft mewling at the back door caught Noelle’s attention even above the rumble of thunder and the patter of hard rain when she was cleaning out the pantry a few days later. She wiped her hands on her white ruffled apron, grimacing at the smudges she left there, and went down the long, wide hall to the back door.

Outside there was a tiny marmalade kitten with big blue eyes. She picked it up and laughed as it curled under her chin and began to purr.

As she started back down the hall, Andrew passed her on his way to the study. He paused, scowling. “Noelle, put that filthy thing out. We can’t have a cat in here. They’re nasty.”

She gaped at him. “But it’s a kitten. And it’s pouring outside.”

“I don’t care. I won’t have a cat in the house. I hate cats. I can’t stand the sight of them.” He kept walking.

She glared at his back. “Well, you don’t have to look at it, do you?” she asked under her breath.

She dried it on a soft cloth and tucked it against her bosom before she peered out the door to make sure Andrew wasn’t nearby, then made a dash for the kitchen.

In her mad rush to avoid detection, she cannoned straight into Jared and almost knocked him down.

He cursed sharply, leaning heavily on his cane as he grabbed the door for support, and the eyes he turned on Noelle made her stop short and hold her breath. She’d never seen such an expression on a man’s face. It made her think of guns…

A minute later she wondered if she’d imagined the look in his eyes. He snapped the door shut and looked at her, unblinking. “What have you got there?”

“It’s a kitten,” she said, holding it protectively as she recovered from the cold, merciless anger, now gone, in his blue eyes. But they were only a little less intimidating now. “Andrew told me to put it out. I won’t. It’s raining again, and this poor wretched little creature is thin and starved and homeless. If it goes, I go with it!” she said, with bravado.

He got his balance back with the cane and straightened. His cold blue eyes slid over the cat and lingered on the firm fullness of her bosom. She was just a girl, he reminded himself, and he was no stranger to a woman’s bed. But the pleasure he felt when he looked at her disturbed him.

His gaze lifted to collide with hers. “It will have to live in the kitchen,” he said. “Mrs. Pate can keep an eye on it for you.”

“I can keep it?” she asked, relieved.

“Yes.”

“But Andrew…”

“For God’s sake, it’s my house. If I say the cat can stay, it can stay.”

“There’s no need to be so unpleasant,” she pointed out. “It’s your leg, isn’t it?” she added then. “I expect the rain makes it ache more. You should sit down and rest it, Mr. Dunn. It can’t be doing you any good to walk around.”

His thin lips became even thinner and his eyes narrowed, too. “I’m not infirm.”

“It’s all right, you know. I didn’t mean to be offensive.”

“And stop talking to me as if I were in my dotage!”

Her eyebrows both lifted. “My, you are in a nasty temper, aren’t you?”

“Miss Brown!”

“One should never meet unkindness with unkindness,” she recited. “I’ll take the kitten to Mrs. Pate, then. May I tell Andrew that you gave it permission to stay, if he asks why I didn’t put it back outside?” she added, not wanting to offend Andrew but determined to help the kitten.

“Tell Andrew what the hell you like!”

“Sir!” She flushed. He didn’t apologize for his language or the whip in his voice. After a minute, she continued, “I don’t want to make him angry, but it’s such a very small kitten.” She looked up and met his searching eyes…and felt the ground move under her feet. It was a kind of look that she’d never experienced in her young life.

She wasn’t alone. Jared was feeling something similarly profound, but his reaction was typical of a man who wanted no part of entanglement.

“You may have nothing better to do than stand and chat, Miss Brown, but I have work waiting,” he said testily.

“Excuse me, then.” She moved aside and let him pass, noticing the ungainly gait and the strain on his face. “I could make you some tea—” she began, with compassion.

His head jerked around and the expression on his face put wings on her feet. Whoever said that people grew crotchety with age had been quite accurate, she thought. But at least he’d let her keep the kitten.

Andrew, when told of this decision, was less than pleased. He glared at Noelle.

“I told you to put the thing out, and yet you went to my stepbrother instead. That was underhanded, Noelle.”

“A cat will keep the mice down,” she said quickly.

“Mice?” He looked around irritably. “I had no idea…Keep the cat then. I detest mice even more than I detest cats!”

“Thank you, Andrew.”

He noticed her adoring glance and it took some of the sting out of Jared’s intervention. He moved closer to Noelle, a soft smile on his face. “You’re very pretty, little cousin,” he remarked. “Very pretty, indeed.”

She smiled affectionately. “And you are very handsome,” she replied, almost choking on the pleasure of having him pay her compliments.

“You’ve had little entertainment since you arrived. Would you like to go to a dance with me Friday night? It’s a charity affair, very elegant.”

“I’d love to go!” she said fervently.

“Then it’s a date,” he promised her. His hand touched a wisp of hair at her cheek, making her tremble with pleasure. He chuckled at her ready response and dropped his hand. “And I insist that you dance only with me.”

She sighed. “That’s a promise,” she said dreamily.

“Oh,” he added, “I left some handwritten orders on the desk in the study. You wouldn’t mind typing them for me, would you? I have to go out this evening…a dinner party.”

“Of course I’ll type them for you,” she said fervently, as if she’d walk on hot coals if he wanted her to.

Her devotion made him strut. “Thanks, Noelle,” he said, with a wink. “You’re a sweet thing.”

She walked on clouds all the way out of the room, her fingers brushing the cheek he’d touched. She knew her face must be flushed. Andrew was taking her to a dance!

Then as she gained the hall, it occurred to her that she had no dress grand enough to wear to a society dance. Most of her clothes had been at home in Galveston when the flood struck, and there had never been very many. Since then, she hadn’t had any money to buy fabric to sew new things, and her plain skirts and blouses would hardly do for a large social gathering. Andrew wouldn’t want to be seen with her in anything she had in her closet. He was impeccable in his attire and expected everyone around him to be equally elegant. He had, in fact, been pointedly critical of her few dresses. What he had to say about her overalls was better left unsaid, and she did her outdoor work when he was out of town.

But that wasn’t her only problem. Andrew watched her at the table when she ate, grimacing when she didn’t hold her fork right, when she forgot to put her napkin in her lap. Often he grimaced and she didn’t know why. She had no knowledge of proper table manners, although she tried to emulate the others at table. She wished she knew how a proper lady was supposed to behave.

Even if she had, it didn’t solve the problem of the dress. She didn’t have one that wouldn’t disgrace him. So she wouldn’t be able to go with him, after all. And it felt as if her heart would surely break.

Chapter Three

Andrew’s handwriting was atrocious, Noelle thought as she sat before the Remington typewriter at the big oak desk in the study, trying to make out the scrawls on pieces of paper as she typed up his brick orders. She was still slow, but at least her work was professional-looking. Her spelling skills were adequate, and actually much better than Andrew’s, she mused.

She was peering down at the pad and didn’t notice the door open until she heard the knock of Jared’s walking stick against it.

She looked up, startled. “Hello,” she said shyly.

He moved into the room, leaving the door open. “What are you doing?”

“Andrew’s orders needed typing up, and he was going to be out this evening,” she said, with a faint smile.

He didn’t smile back. “And I thought slave labor had been outlawed,” he drawled.

She stiffened in her chair, looking as starchy as her high ruffled collar. “I most certainly am not slave labor,” she said haughtily. “I’m doing Andrew a favor, that’s all.”

“How often do you do this favor for him?”

Every other night, but she wasn’t telling him that! “It’s little enough to do, since I’m not paying room and board.”

He leaned heavily on the stick. “You aren’t naive enough to think my stepbrother pays the bills?” he taunted.

She flushed to her hairline. It embarrassed her that she was living on Jared’s charity. And certainly she wasn’t doing his typing.

Her scarlet blush made him feel guilty. His lean hand shifted against the cane. “That wasn’t kind of me, was it?” he asked. “You earn your crust of bread.”

She brightened. “Thank you. I could…type for you, when you open your office, if you like,” she offered.

His eyebrows levered up. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. He would have an office, surely, but in New York, he and Alistair had employed a male secretary. He wasn’t certain that it was quite respectable to offer the job to Noelle. Or that he’d want her that close.

“We can discuss that some other time,” he said. He moved toward the desk, so that he could see her handiwork on the white sheet of paper. He took out his glasses case and perched his reading glasses on his nose. He leaned forward and frowned. “You’re very accurate,” he said.

She hadn’t seen him in his glasses before. They seemed to emphasize all his vulnerabilities. They softened her toward him even more. “You sound surprised that I can spell,” she said, with an impish grin.

“So it seems.” He reached down to pick up one of the forms, his arm brushing her shoulder. She stiffened, and his eyes narrowed. He didn’t like her reaction. “Are you afraid that I might contaminate you with my touch?” he asked. His smile was mocking as he met her startled green eyes. “My taste runs to women, not to little girls playing dress up.”

She was flustered. “Such a thought never crossed my mind,” she exclaimed breathlessly.

“Not even with Andrew?” he taunted.

“Andrew is different,” she said. He rattled her. She clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “He’s young and—and brave and kind. He’s very kind,” she repeated.

“Oh, certainly. He’s everything I’m not,” he said dryly, and took off his reading glasses with a quick, efficient movement of his hands.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You meant it.” He leaned heavily on the cane, his eyes biting into her averted face. It irritated him that she didn’t think of him in the same category as Andrew. He could remember women looking at him with fascination, awe, even fear. But Noelle was the first to see him with eyes of pity. He’d noticed it even more when he’d had on his glasses. He wondered if she’d pity the man he really was as much as she pitied the distorted persona.

She shifted delicately away from contact with his long legs. “You’re a good deal older than I am,” she said.

“I see,” he drawled. “I’m an elderly, crippled ruin who needs to be offered warm milk to help him sleep?”

She flushed. “Mr. Dunn!”

He laughed. “When I think of the old days, and how women looked at me then…” he said half to himself. “Perhaps I am old, and growing fanciful, because I can’t remember a time when I needed admiration from a marmalade kitten!”

She stood up, too close to him and too angry to care. “I’m not a kitten!”

He deliberately moved closer, threatening, taller and broader than he’d seemed on first acquaintance. At such close range, he towered over her slender form. He smelled of cologne and soap, and she was surprised that she didn’t find his nearness intolerable. He was too old, a cripple, citified…

Her eyes lifted and were swallowed whole by his. She couldn’t have imagined feeling frozen by a look, but he had her as helpless as if he’d roped her. She looked into those piercing pale blue eyes and couldn’t seem to stop looking, while her heart thrust into her throat and her legs seemed to tremble.

“Your face is red,” he remarked in a colorless voice. His lean, elegant hand moved to her face and slowly tucked a strand of her hair behind her small ear.

The touch was electric. Andrew’s similar contact had made her smile. Jared’s fingers made her blood race through her veins, made her mouth swell, made her eyes dilate. The contact ran through her like a lightning flash.

Jared, who knew women, watched her unexpected reaction with an almost clinical scrutiny. He smiled slowly to himself. So she thought she’d given her heart to Andrew, did she? Apparently she was untried and untouched. The thought galvanized him. His jaw clenched and his eyes looked briefly violent.

Noelle moved backward and dropped into her chair, retreating from him. His eyes were hypnotic, threatening. “Don’t…” she whispered.

“Don’t what?” he asked in a new tone, and without moving.

She swallowed. “I—I don’t know,” she faltered. “You—you looked as if you might strike me.”

He slid his eyes to the frantic, rhythmic ripple of the lace at her throat. “I haven’t ever raised my hand to a woman,” he said, placing the slightest emphasis on the last word.

Her fine auburn brows drew together. “Or to a man?” she asked absently, implying that he wasn’t a fighter at all.

His face closed up into an impassive mask that gave away nothing. “I noticed you watching my grandmother at table,” he said abruptly. “You don’t know proper table manners, do you?”

“How dare you!” Impulsively, her fingers closed over the big paperweight on the desk as she glared at him. “Don’t you make fun of me!”

The movement of her hand hadn’t gone unnoticed. “Or you’ll do what?” he challenged, smiling at her. His eyes danced with unholy glee. “Throw that at me? Go ahead,” he said, and the glitter in his eyes made him look like a different man.

She hesitated. There was something there, something that warned her not to underestimate him.

“What’s the matter?” he persisted. “No guts?”

She drew in her breath. “I’m not afraid of you.”

He took a step closer, and she moved the chair back a little farther.

He laughed with pure pleasure and halted his advance, leaning heavily on the cane. “You intrigue me, Miss Brown,” he murmured. “I can’t say that I’ve ever met anyone quite like you.”

“I can’t believe that,” she returned, relaxing a little now that she’d put some distance between them. “New York City must be full of women.”

“Certainly,” he said agreeably. “Elegant, sophisticated women with beautiful clothes and excellent manners and sparkling conversation.”

“Everything that I am not,” she said quietly, echoing his own earlier words.

“You lack the advantages of wealth,” he corrected. His practiced eye ran over her assessingly. “But you have potential. In fact, you have a grace of carriage already. You simply don’t have social graces. That isn’t your fault.”

“How comforting to know it,” she said, stung by the knowledge that he thought her lacking. She was already unsettled because she couldn’t accept Andrew’s invitation to the dance.

“You misunderstand me. You’re young enough to learn,” he said.

“And who’s going to teach me?” she asked belligerently.

“Andrew?” he suggested dryly.

She flushed. “I couldn’t possibly ask Andrew; it would be too humiliating to admit to him that I’m a social moron, even if he already knows it.”

He cocked his head and his narrow blue eyes stared at her. “Andrew’s opinion means a great deal to you, doesn’t it, Miss Brown?”

“Well, yes. It was he who brought me here and gave me a home,” she replied.

“That’s the only reason?” he probed.

“He’s everything a man should be,” she said finally, twisting a piece of paper in her hands. “I’m sorry if you don’t approve of my admiration for him. I know that my background is nothing special.”

He glared at her. “Your background is nothing to me,” he said shortly. “Your character is all that concerns me.”

“You don’t think I have character,” she accused. “You think I’m after Andrew because he has money, don’t you?”

He chuckled softly. “At first, yes—I did think you might be an opportunist. But you improve on closer acquaintance. I don’t think you have a larcenous bone in your body. You aren’t the type.”

She eyed him with open curiosity. “You’d know the type, wouldn’t you?”

His eyes became intent. “What do you mean?”

“You’re a lawyer,” she replied simply. “You must have defended many men who were guilty of their crimes.”

“Not knowingly,” he pointed out. “I have too much respect for the law to dirty my hands helping felons to break it. Although there are plenty of people who consider themselves qualified to be judge and jury,” he added.

“You’re talking about the lynchings, aren’t you? There are a lot of them these days.” She put the twisted paper in her hands on the desk and pushed it away. “It’s a shame that many accused people don’t have a chance at a trial.”

“That will change one day,” he replied.

“I hope so.” She searched his blue eyes curiously. “Why did you decide to come home after so long in New York?” she asked bluntly. “Was it because you thought I was trying to cheat Andrew out of his inheritance?”

Her plainspoken nature amused him. He smiled indulgently and perched himself on the corner of the desk, looking down at her from far too close. “Yes, I think it was,” he replied, with equal forthrightness. “But I was tired of practicing pocketbook law, too. The last case if handled was a property dispute. My client was in the wrong, but I didn’t find it out until the verdict was handed down and there was some”—he paused—“unpleasantness.”

“Someone tried to beat you up?” she asked, wide-eyed.

He almost told her. Surprisingly, he wanted to. But he shrugged. “Something like that,” he said, and passed it off.

“You don’t like being wrong, do you?” she asked him.

He laughed, annoyed. “I rarely am.”

“How conceited,” she shot back, but she smiled.

“I know the law.” He corrected her faulty impression. “I’ve been in practice for ten years.”

“That’s what Andrew said.”

He wondered what else his stepbrother had told her about him. Nothing good, he was certain. Andrew didn’t like him, and the younger man was apparently taken with Noelle. He wouldn’t like an older rival.

“Andrew and I are very different,” he pointed out.

“Yes, I know. He’s much younger than you, isn’t he?”

His jaw tautened. “Not that much younger,” he said irritably.

“It’s very odd, you know,” she said thoughtfully, studying him, “that you look so much older than he does. Shouldn’t it be the opposite? I mean, he was in the war and you’ve spent years sitting in a courtroom. One would think that a soldier, a man who dealt in death, would look older than a well-dressed lawyer who never had to face more than an occasional verbal threat.”

His eyes dropped to her long-fingered, elegant hands folded on the desk. She had no idea what his life had been like. She was right, but she didn’t know the truth. He’d lived more in his lifetime than Andrew ever would.

“I haven’t offended you, have I?” she asked worriedly. “I sometimes speak without thinking.”

His eyes shot back up to catch hers. He smiled slowly. “You’re not afraid of me. I’m glad. I don’t pull my punches, and I won’t expect you to. Our association should prove to be an interesting one, with a basis of such honesty.” He eased off the edge of the desk and got to his feet. He leaned heavily on the cane, wincing.

“It’s an old injury, isn’t it?” she asked, standing up, and continued before he could reply. “You must have had a hard time getting around in a big city like New York. It’s less crowded here.”

She’d gone to open the door for him, and he gave her a glare that disconcerted her with its cold fury.

He reached over, grasped the door’s edge, and slammed it. The noise made her jump. His expression was even more threatening than the loud noise.

“I don’t need doors opened for me, a rocking chair to rest in, warm milk to help me sleep, or solicitous exaggerations from a woman who sees me as a cripple!”

She gaped at him. “I thought no such thing about you! I would have opened the door for anyone who—who…” She flushed.

“Anyone who was crippled, isn’t that what you meant to say? Spit it out, then.”

“All right,” she said furiously. “I’d open a door for anyone who was crippled. There! Does it make you happy to have embarrassed me so? Would you rather I pretended that there’s nothing wrong with you, when I can plainly see that it hurts you just to stand up?”

He drew in a sharp, angry breath. He leaned ever more heavily on the cane, aware of her slenderness and his superior height as he loomed over her. The injury was temporary. Wouldn’t she faint if he told her how he’d acquired it! His eyes gleamed as he debated with himself about doing exactly that.

“I’m sure that a bad leg doesn’t have anything at all to do with practicing law, and your grandmother says there isn’t anyone at all who’s better at it than you are,” she continued, unabashed. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, but I like doing things for you.”

Both eyebrows shot up in surprise. She’d colored just faintly when she’d said that, and it touched him as few things had in years past. He searched her green eyes far longer than he meant to, and he could see her heartbeat change in the small artery on the side of her throat, where the lace fluttered.

“I mean, I like being of help,” she said quickly.

It wasn’t quick enough, though. He allowed himself to savor it for a few seconds. Then he laughed at his own assumptions. Her opinion of him certainly precluded any romantic feelings.

“I can open my own doors, nevertheless,” he said quietly.

“Very well, Mr. Dunn.”

He gave her one last glance, and, with an irritated sound, he opened the door again and went out.

Andrew came in later and peered into the study; Noelle had just finished with the last report. She was putting a hand to her aching back, but she smiled when she saw him.

“I’ve just finished,” she said.

“What a sweetheart you are, Noelle,” Andrew said as he picked up the reports and looked through them. “A bit off the lines,” he remarked carelessly, “but they’ll do, I suppose.”

Hours of work, and they’d ‘do’? She glared at him. “I spent the entire evening in here,” she began.

“Yes, and don’t think I don’t appreciate it. Now about tomorrow night—”

“I can’t go to the dance with you. Thank you all the same for asking me,” she said abruptly.

He searched her eyes and then shrugged. “I’m sorry. Another time perhaps?”

“Perhaps.”

He chuckled and bent to kiss her on the cheek. “You’re a goose,” he accused gently. “I wouldn’t have asked for anything you didn’t want to give me.”

“But that’s not why,” she said, horrified that he had a totally wrong idea of the reason behind her refusal.

He waved her away. “It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it. I’ll ask you again,” he drawled softly. “Sleep well, Noelle.”

He yawned as he strolled back out of the room, still not knowing why she’d refused.

Noelle was upset by his lack of interest about her reasons. His stepbrother would have had the information out of her no matter what it took. She wondered why it irritated her so much that Andrew had been so careless about it. She put up the typewriter, angry that she’d even permitted herself to think about what Jared would have done, and went halfheartedly up to her room.

Chapter Four

Noelle was a little relieved that she’d refused Andrew’s invitation to the dance, because she had another problem besides the lack of an appropriate gown to wear. She’d never learned to dance. Her father, a carpenter like her uncle, but also a lay minister, despised dancing and other “sinful pleasures of the flesh,” and refused to allow Noelle to attend such functions. She couldn’t dance at all.

She was also very unworldly. She’d lived in a house that was little more than a shack, first with her own family and then with her elderly uncle. She’d never experienced indoor plumbing, washing machines, newfangled refrigerators with removable ice trays, or a gas stove, electric lights, and a telephone until she came to live in Fort Worth with Andrew’s people. She was keenly aware of her limitations. And probably, so was he.

Andrew hadn’t been surprised by her gentle refusal to accompany him, and he hadn’t wondered why. In fact, he’d regretted his impulsive invitation as soon as he’d made it. Noelle was very attractive, but she was hardly his idea of a cultured companion for a very public evening. Although her speech was passable, she still seemed ignorant of even basic table manners and was uncomfortable among educated, sophisticated people.

He promptly invited Jennifer Beale to be his companion for the evening. Jennifer was a debutante who lived outside town with her father—in a Victorian home even more elegant than the one that Jared had ordered built for his grandmother two years ago. She was beautiful and wealthy and cultured—all the things that poor Noelle was not. He’d met Jennifer by chance at a local dry goods store and had found her shyness and her beauty enchanting. Since then, he’d made a point of finding out her daily routine, and he made certain that he was somewhere nearby on her trips to town.

She seemed to like him. He certainly liked her. Her father was rich, but he’d started out with nothing. He wouldn’t look down on Andrew for not being wealthy. Although the family had started out in the highest echelons of society, Andrew’s father had lost the family fortune, and Andrew had found himself dependent on his unpleasant stepbrother for his comfort. He hadn’t wanted to go to work, because no male member of his family had ever had to go out to work for a living. But last year, Jared had put his foot down and insisted that Andrew start contributing to his own support.

The job at the brick works had been easily obtained, since the owner had been his father’s best friend. But Andrew was surprised to find that the job was challenging and that he seemed to do it rather well. He was apparently a born salesman. He wondered if his father would quite approve of his only son becoming a salaried worker, but it no longer mattered. He enjoyed his job, except for the paperwork. However, Noelle was around to take that off his hands, and he was left with only the pleasantest part of the job—enticing people to buy bricks. He was making a good salary, and his family name made him an asset, because often people would trade with him on the basis of it. The Paige name had also appealed to Jennifer, he thought, because it retained some of its former glory. There were even connections to European royalty, which didn’t hurt socially. Mrs. Dunn, Jared’s grandmother, was also well respected, but nobody knew anything about the Dunns, since they weren’t from Texas. Funny, Andrew thought, how little he really knew about his stepmother and her mother—or about Jared.

If Andrew was impressed with his own background, Terrance Beale wasn’t. But Jennifer was entranced, especially by Andrew’s tales of his heroism in the Spanish-American War. That had been the key to unlock her heart, and Andrew had set about moving in on it. But she was a sheltered, very innocent girl, and it had bothered Andrew that he wasn’t even allowed to hold her hand. He was a man who enjoyed an occasional night in a woman’s arms; abstinence was painful. There was no way he could go to one of the local brothels without it getting back to Mr. Beale, who knew people everywhere. But Noelle was right under his own roof, and fascinated by him, and he wanted her. The fly in that ointment was Jared, who, instead of turning a blind, indifferent eye had suddenly developed a personal interest in the girl.

Well, he couldn’t be everywhere, Andrew thought irritably. Sooner or later, he’d have Noelle, with or without Jared’s approval. Meanwhile, having Miss Beale’s affection—and the promise of her father’s money (she was, after all, an only child) one day—brightened his outlook immeasurably.

The family kept a carriage and a horse at the local livery for use on special occasions. Andrew was forced to ask Jared’s permission to use it, now that Jared was in residence. It rankled.

Jared agreed, because he had no engagement of his own that evening. “Are you taking Miss Brown?” Jared asked pointedly.

Andrew was glad, given that angry stare, that he could deny it. “No. She refused, and I have to admit that I’m a bit relieved,” he added. “She has no social sense, you know, and she dresses like a serving woman. Her one saving grace is that delightful body. She’s very well formed, don’t you agree?” He smiled.

Jared’s eyes narrowed. “I haven’t paid that much attention to her body. I’ll remind you that she’s a guest in our home,” he said sternly. “I expect you to treat her with courtesy and respect.”

Andrew was surprised by Jared’s protective attitude, but he tried not to show it. “Why of course. But Jared, you must have noticed that she’s hardly the sort of woman a man wants to be seen with in public.” He laughed. “She’s very uncultured. She can’t even hold a fork properly.”

Jared’s unspeaking stance rattled him. In the end, he rushed out with hardly a goodbye.

Jared watched him go with mixed emotions. It had been a long time since any woman’s honor had mattered to him. He thought back to his one tragic love affair with cold cynicism. Hadn’t he learned how treacherous women were by now? But the thought of seeing Noelle ridiculed was bad enough—without worrying if Andrew would seduce her and throw her aside. It made him angry.

It certainly seemed as if Andrew had seduction in mind. His remarks about Noelle had been frankly personal. And it was all too obvious that Noelle found the younger man fascinating. She was inexperienced and smitten, a combination that would work very well in Andrew’s favor. Well, if Noelle was endangered by Andrew because she was uncultured, it was time to think about correcting that flaw. There was one appropriate way, but it was going to be up to Jared to implement it. He cursed himself for having to interfere, but as he’d said, the girl was under his protection.

Andrew had complicated his life enough in the past. Now here he was, putting more obstacles in Jared’s path. He’d expected his homecoming to Fort Worth to be uncomplicated. He should have known better. Nothing in his life had ever been uncomplicated, least of all where women were concerned.

The night of the dance arrived and Andrew left before the rest of the family sat down to the supper table. He wanted to avoid Jared, whose black looks were making him uncomfortable. But when Andrew was ushered into the house to escort Miss Beale out to the carriage, he got a look as black as Jared’s.

Beale was a self-made man who’d risen to prominence because of a knack for investing his meager savings into profitable ventures. He’d invested in a million-to-one shot that a prospector would find oil in East Texas. His small stake had made him rich when the prospector hit one of the deepest wells at Spindletop. He had money to burn.

But Terrance Beale, who was a widower, considered his elegant blond, blue-eyed only daughter his greatest asset; he didn’t want her head turned by fortune hunters. He numbered Andrew among them. He didn’t like Andrew and made no secret of it. He made Andrew nervous.

Beale, a lean and dark-faced man, glared at Andrew without speaking.

“I’ll have her home by a reasonable hour, I assure you, sir,” Andrew said politely.

“You’d better,” Beale, a man of few words, replied. He had eyes that were steely and cold.

Andrew thought absently that he’d hate to make a real enemy of the man.

“Now, Papa,” Jennifer Beale chided gently as she joined them, beautiful in her lacy black dress and scarf. “Andrew will take excellent care of me. Don’t worry so.”

The older man seemed to relax. He smiled and beamed at his daughter, then bent to kiss her soft cheek. “Have a good time.”

“Yes, I will. I’ll see you later, Papa.”

She took Andrew’s arm and squeezed it comfortingly. “I’ve so looked forward to tonight, Andrew,” she added, smiling up at him. “It’s going to be great fun!”

“Certainly it is,” he agreed. She made him feel lordly. Her eyes were as soft as Noelle’s, looking up at him from a face that would have graced an art gallery.

Terrance Beale watched them go, his eyes narrowed. He couldn’t keep the girl in a glass bottle, but he hated seeing her throw herself away on that tame city boy. She deserved better.

He stuck his hands in his pockets and wandered out to the barn. He had a sick foal and he was worried about it.

Brian Clark, a middle-aged black man with a twisted hand, smiled at him as he approached. Clark had appeared out of the dark one November morning carrying a saddle over one dusty shoulder. He’d asked for a job, and Beale, sizing him up in one long glance, had given it without question. He’d never asked where Clark came from, or why he was on foot. In spite of his handicap, Clark was good with horses and he could gentle the meanest of them. Beale had put him to work taming the remuda to a saddle, and he’d never regretted his snap decision. Clark was kind to Jennifer, too, going out of his way to make sure that her horses were the best kept in the stable.

“How is he?” Beale asked.

The other man ran a lean hand over his short curly hair. There were threads of gray in it, but that scarred face wasn’t as old as the eyes in it were. He glanced at Beale without the subservient attitude that some of his race wore like a garment. Clark was surprisingly well educated, and he had the bearing of a man who’d wielded authority. He was an odd man altogether, but Beale had always respected him.

“The foal is worse,” Clark replied. “He needs more than my poor efforts for a cure. I think you should call the veterinarian.”

Beale nodded. “I’ll have Ben Tatum come out first thing tomorrow. Will that be soon enough?”

Clark nodded. “I’ll sit up with him tonight.”

Beale bent and touched the soft coat of the foal, noting its labored breathing. “You know a lot about horses, Clark.”

“Yes, sir, I do,” Clark replied, with a faint smile.

Beale straightened, eyeing the other man. “Wouldn’t care to tell me how, would you?” he asked, with a gleam in his eyes.

Clark chuckled. “You know I wouldn’t, Mr. Beale.”

“Guess I do, after six years,” came the dry reply. “Keep an eye on him. If he gets worse, come get me.”

“I’ll do that, Mr. Beale.”

Beale nodded. He smiled to himself as he left the barn. He was the only man he’d ever heard Clark address as “sir” or “mister.” Despite the insults he sometimes got from temporary cowboys who hired on for roundup, Clark had an innate dignity that kept him out of brawls. He kept his temper when Beale lost his own. Once Beale had knocked a mean cowboy down for cursing the black man, who’d taken a quirt away from him. Clark had chided Beale for his lack of control, and then laughed at the other man’s outraged expression. They got along well, despite the disparity in their backgrounds. It occurred to Beale that if his foreman ever quit, he’d probably give the job to Clark. The man had the makings of a first-rate boss. Nobody questioned his orders about the remuda. Not even the white cowboys. Well…most of them, anyway. There were a few who didn’t like Clark, especially one bullying middle-aged wrangler named Garmon. He was from Mississippi and he hated blacks. He made remarks that Beale would have decked him for, but Clark simply ignored them. Maybe that was the best way to handle it. Beale tended to be too hot-tempered. He’d led a wild life on the border in his youth, before a pretty young Eastern girl had captured his heart and made him human. He smiled, remembering Allison, Jennifer’s mother.

He whistled softly through his teeth as he walked back toward the elegant house, thinking how far he’d come from the adobe shanty where he’d been born fifty-five years past. His life had been a hard one, but he’d overcome obstacles that other men had fallen behind. He was proud of his accomplishments. Most of all, he was proud of Jennifer. What a tragedy that her mother had been killed years ago, and had missed seeing what an elegant beauty their daughter had become. His eyes shifted to a lone grave on a small rise, protected by a wrought-iron fence. He put flowers on the grave twice a week. Sometimes he just went over there and sat, talking to Allison as if she were still alive. It helped get him through rough times. He’d go tomorrow, he thought, and tell her about this Andrew person. He was sure that she’d be as irritated at Jennifer’s poor choice of suitors as he was himself.

Andrew didn’t relax until he and Jennifer were safely ensconced in the carriage and on their way to the restaurant, where they would have supper before they went on to the dance.

“How lucky I am to have such a pretty companion for the evening,” he said, smiling. “Thank you for coming with me.”

“It’s my pleasure,” she said shyly. She laughed. “Papa is so possessive of me, did you notice? Don’t pay him any mind, Andrew. He’s just old-fashioned—and he worries about me, especially since Mama died.”

“Any man with such a beautiful daughter would worry,” Andrew said gently. He searched her eyes hungrily. “Jennifer, I’ve never met anyone like you.”

“Nor I, anyone like you,” she replied. “When we met at the dry goods store, it was as if I’d known you all my life.”

“If you hadn’t spent the past few years in Europe, you would have.” He chuckled. “My family has been here for two generations. The first Paige came over from England. He was the second son of a duke, but he inherited nothing. He made his own fortune here. How incredible that we’re only just meeting.”

She didn’t tell him that her father would never have sanctioned such an association. He didn’t like Andrew, and he hadn’t liked Andrew’s wealthy father, either. He didn’t like men who were born with all the advantages and did nothing with them. Andrew had been content to lay about and go into and out of three colleges before he finally took a job—having been forced into it by his stepbrother, gossip said—and went to work. Her father considered Andrew a shiftless layabout, leeching on his stepbrother. Jennifer saw him as a man of vision with great potential. It would only take a caring woman to incite him to great acts, she thought romantically, filled with thoughts of idealistic delight. She smiled at him, lost in dreams.

Andrew smiled back. She made him feel that he could accomplish anything. He still couldn’t believe his good fortune in having her accept his invitation to dinner and the dance. God willing, it wouldn’t be the last time he escorted her of an evening.

If Andrew was having a good time, Noelle wasn’t. She was very quiet at supper, avoiding Jared’s curious eyes. She excused herself directly after they ate and went to her room, where she remained for the rest of the night.

The next morning, her withdrawn expression and unusual detachment during breakfast drew more attention from an unexpected quarter. Jared stopped her as she was helping Mrs. Pate clear the table after his grandmother had retired to the drawing room to read.

“You’re as unhappy this morning as you were at supper last evening. Why?” he asked bluntly, although he already knew the answer.

She was surprised at the question, and at his perception, but she answered readily enough. “Andrew invited me to the dance last night and I had to refuse him.”

“Why?”

She gave him a harsh glare. “Because I had nothing to wear. And even if I had a dress, I”—she cleared her throat—“I can’t dance.”

Both eyebrows lifted. “Why?” he said again.

“My father considered dancing sinful,” she said haughtily.

He smiled faintly. “Probably it is, but even a saint could hardly find anything objectionable about a man’s gloved hand on a woman’s waist over several layers of fabric.”

She flushed. “Nevertheless…”

“He took Miss Beale instead.”

“I know that!”

“Your temper is showing, Miss Brown,” he said wryly.

“You irritate me, Mr. Dunn. Indeed you do!”

He looked down his elegant nose at her. “You have a singular lack of tact. You dress poorly. You have no idea how to behave at table or even in a small gathering of socialites. You’re far too outspoken and high tempered and impatient.”

She opened her mouth to rage at him, but he held up a lean hand.

“But you have a certain potential,” he continued. “Elegance and a soft heart, and a pleasant way of speaking. It might be possible to…remake you.”

“Sir?”

“Remake you.” He walked around her slowly, leaning heavily on the cane. “With the proper clothes, and some lessons in social behavior, you should do well in polite company.”

“Sir, I can’t afford the proper clothes, and I know nothing of social—”

He waved away her objections. “Money is no problem, Miss Brown. I like a challenge.”

“Why should you want to do this for me?” she asked.

He shrugged. “I haven’t decided where in town I want to open my practice. I’m having a holiday. But I’m bored, Miss Brown. You present a temporary distraction that will occupy my mind and my free time.”

“Andrew would realize…”

“He would not, unless you tell him,” he replied. He pursed his lips as he studied her. “It would do Andrew good to have his lack of foresight pointed out to him. He doesn’t consider possibilities.”

The excitement she felt bubbled up into her eyes. “He might find me attractive, if I were more like the ladies of his acquaintance.”

God forbid, Jared was thinking. But he didn’t say it. He wanted to take Andrew down a peg. He didn’t want to hurt Noelle in the process. On the other hand, he might be saving her from a fate worse than death. While Andrew wouldn’t hesitate to seduce a woman he considered socially inferior, he’d think twice about giving offense to a woman of culture.

Noelle was nothing to him. But he didn’t want to see her hurt, even if she did have a low opinion of him as a man. That was vaguely amusing. He wondered how she would have reacted to him as he had been, before he began to study law. Andrew hid it well, but even now he was intimidated by his stepbrother—and without knowing anything of the past.

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