DIANA PALMER
Winter Roses

Master storyteller Diana Palmer delights again

in March next year with

Iron Cowboy

A LONG, TALL TEXANS story,

only from Silhouette Desire™

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS late, and Ivy was going to miss her class. Rachel was the only person, except Ivy’s best friend, who even knew the number of Ivy’s frugal prepaid cell phone. The call had come just as she was going to her second college class of the day. The argument could have waited until the evening, but her older sister never thought of anyone’s convenience. Well, except her own, that was.

“Rachel, I’m going to be late,” Ivy pleaded into the phone. She pushed back a strand of long, pale blond hair. Her green eyes darkened with worry. “And we’ve got a test today!”

“I don’t care what you’ve got,” her older sister snapped. “You just listen to me. I want that check for Dad’s property, as soon as you can get the insurance company to issue it! I’ve got overdue bills and you’re whining about college classes. It’s a waste of money! Aunt Hettie should never have left you that savings account,” she added angrily. “It should have been mine, too. I’m the oldest.”

She was, and she’d taken everything she could get her hands on, anything she could pawn for ready cash. Ivy had barely been able to keep enough to pay the funeral bills when they came due. It was a stroke of luck that Aunt Hettie had liked her and had left her a small inheritance. Perhaps she’d realized that Ivy would be lucky if she was able to keep so much as a penny of their father’s few assets.

It was the same painful argument they’d had for a solid month, since their father had died of a stroke. Ivy had been left with finding a place to live while Rachel called daily to talk to the attorney who was probating the will. All she wanted was the money. She’d coaxed their father into changing his will, so that she got everything when he died.

Despite the fact that he paid her little attention, Ivy was still grieving. She’d taken care of their father while he was dying from the stroke. He’d thought that Rachel was an angel. All their lives, it had been Rachel who got all the allowances, all the inherited jewelry—which Rachel pawned immediately—all the attention. Ivy was left with housework and yardwork and cooking for the three of them. It hadn’t been much of a life. Her rare dates had been immediately captivated by Rachel, who took pleasure in stealing them away from her younger, plainer sister, only to drop them days later. When Rachel had opted to go to New York and break into theater, their father had actually put a lien on his small house to pay for an apartment for her. It had meant budgeting to the bone and no new dresses for Ivy. When she tried to protest the unequal treatment the sisters received, their father said that Ivy was just jealous and that Rachel needed more because she was beautiful but emotionally challenged.

Translated, that meant Rachel had no feelings for anyone except herself. But Rachel had convinced their father that she adored him, and she’d filled his ears with lies about Ivy, right up to accusing her of sneaking out at night to meet men and stealing from the garage where she worked two evenings a week keeping books. No protest was enough to convince him that Ivy was honest, and that she didn’t even attract many men. She never could keep a prospective boyfriend once they saw Rachel.

“If I can learn bookkeeping, I’ll have a way to support myself, Rachel,” Ivy said quietly.

“You could marry a rich man one day, I guess, if you could find a blind one,” Rachel conceded, and laughed at her little joke. “Although where you expect to find one in Jacobsville, Texas, is beyond me.”

“I’m not looking for a husband. I’m in school at our community vocational college,” Ivy reminded her.

“So you are. What a pitiful future you’re heading for.” Rachel paused to take an audible sip of her drink. “I’ve got two auditions tomorrow. One’s for the lead in a new play, right on Broadway. Jerry says I’m a shoo-in. He has influence with the director.”

Ivy wasn’t usually sarcastic, but Rachel was getting on her nerves. “I thought Jerry didn’t want you to work.”

There was a frigid pause on the other end of the line. “Jerry doesn’t mind it,” she said coolly. “He just likes me to stay in, so that he can take care of me.”

“He feeds you uppers and downers and crystal meth and charges you for the privilege, you mean,” Ivy replied quietly. She didn’t add that Rachel was beautiful and that Jerry probably used her as bait to catch new clients. He took her to party after party. She talked about acting, but it was only talk. She could barely remember her own name when she was on drugs, much less remember lines for a play. She drank to excess as well, just like Jerry.

“Jerry takes care of me. He knows all the best people in theater. He’s promised to introduce me to one of the angels who’s producing that new comedy. I’m going to make it to Broadway or die trying,” Rachel said curtly. “And if we’re going to argue, we might as well not even speak!”

“I’m not arguing…”

“You’re putting Jerry down, all the time!”

Ivy felt as if she were standing on a precipice, looking at the bottom of the world. “Have you really forgotten what Jerry did to me?” she asked, recalling the one visit Rachel had made home, just after their father died. It had been an overnight one, with the insufferable Jerry at her side. Rachel had signed papers to have their father cremated, placing his ashes in the grave with those of his late wife, the girls’ mother. It was rushed and unpleasant, with Ivy left grieving alone for a parent who’d never loved her, who’d treated her very badly. Ivy had a big, forgiving heart. Rachel did manage a sniff into a handkerchief at the graveside service. But her eyes weren’t either wet or red. It was an act, as it always was with her.

“What you said he did,” came the instant, caustic reply. “Jerry said he never gave you any sort of drugs!”

“Rachel!” she exclaimed, furious now, “I wouldn’t lie about something like that! I had a migraine and he switched my regular medicine with a powerful narcotic. When I saw what he was trying to give me, I threw them at him. He thought I was too sick to notice. He thought it would be funny if he could make me into an addict, just like you…!”

“Oh, grow up,” Rachel shouted. “I’m no addict! Everybody uses drugs! Even people in that little hick town where you live. How do you think I used to score before I moved to NewYork? There was always somebody dealing, and I knew where to find what I needed. You’re so naive, Ivy.”

“My brain still works,” she shot back.

“Watch your mouth, kid,” Rachel said angrily, “or I’ll see that you don’t get a penny of Dad’s estate.”

“Don’t worry, I never expected to get any of it,” Ivy said quietly. “You convinced Daddy that I was no good, so that he wouldn’t leave me anything.”

“You’ve got that pittance from Aunt Hettie,” Rachel repeated. “Even though I should have had it. I deserved it, having to live like white trash all those years when I was at home.”

“Rachel, if you got what you really deserved,” Ivy replied with a flash of bravado, “you’d be in federal prison.”

There was a muffled curse. “I have to go. Jerry’s back. Listen, you check with that lawyer and find out what’s the holdup. I can’t afford all these long-distance calls.”

“You never pay for them. You usually reverse the charges when you call me,” she was reminded.

“Just hurry up and get the paperwork through so you can send me my check. And don’t expect me to call you back until you’re ready to talk like an adult instead of a spoiled kid with a grudge!”

The receiver slammed down in her ear. She folded it back up with quiet resignation. Rachel would never believe that Jerry, her knight in shining armor, was nothing more than a sick little social climbing drug dealer with a felony record who was holding her hostage to substance abuse. Ivy had tried for the past year to make her older sibling listen, but she couldn’t. The two of them had never been close, but since Rachel got mixed up with Jerry, and hooked on meth, she didn’t seem capable of reason anymore. In the old days, even when Rachel was being difficult, she did seem to have some small affection for her sister. That all changed when she was a junior in high school. Something had happened, Ivy had never known what, that turned her against Ivy and made a real enemy of her. Alcohol and drug use hadn’t helped Rachel’s already abrasive personality. It had been an actual relief for Ivy when her sister left for New York just days after the odd blowup. But it seemed that she could cause trouble long-distance, whenever she liked.

Ivy went down the hall quickly to her next class, without any real enthusiasm. She didn’t want to spend her life working for someone else, but she certainly didn’t want to go to New York and end up as Rachel’s maid and cook, as she had been before her sister left Jacobsville. Letting Rachel have their inheritance would be the easier solution to the problem. Anything was better than having to live with Rachel again; even having to put up with Merrie York’s brother, Stuart, in order to have one true friend.

It was Friday, and when she left the campus for home, riding with her fellow boarder, Lita Dawson, who taught at the vocational college, she felt better. She’d passed her English test, she was certain of it. But typing was getting her down. She couldn’t manage more than fifty words a minute to save her life. One of the male students typing with both index fingers could do it faster than Ivy could.

They pulled up in front of the boardinghouse where they both lived. Ivy felt absolutely drained. She’d had to leave her father’s house because she couldn’t even afford to pay the light bill. Besides, Rachel had signed papers to put the house on the market the same day she’d signed the probate papers at a local lawyer’s office. Since Ivy wasn’t old enough, at almost nineteen, to handle the legal affairs, Rachel had charmed the new, young attorney handling the probate and convinced him that Ivy needed looking after, preferably in a boardinghouse. Then she’d flown back to New York, leaving Ivy to dip into a great-aunt’s small legacy and a part-time job as a bookkeeper at a garage on Monday and Thursday evenings to pay for her board and the small student fee that Texas residents paid at the state technical and vocational college. Rachel hadn’t even asked if Ivy had enough to live on.

Merrie had tried to get Stuart to help Ivy fight Rachel’s claim on the bulk of the estate, but Ivy almost had hysterics when she offered. She’d rather have lived in a cardboard box by the side of the road than have Stuart take over her life. She didn’t want to tell her best friend that her brother terrified her. Merrie would have asked why. There were secrets in Ivy’s past that she shared with no one.

“I’m going to see my father this weekend.” Lita, dark-haired and eyed, smiled at the younger woman. “How about you?”

Ivy smiled. “If Merrie remembers, we’ll probably go window-shopping.” She sighed, smiling lazily. “I might see something I can daydream about owning,” she chuckled.

“One day some nice man is going to come along and treat you the way you deserve to be treated,” Lita said kindly. “You wait and see.”

Ivy knew better, but she only smiled. She wasn’t anxious to offer any man control of her life. She was through living in fear.

She went in the side door, glancing over to see if Mrs. Brown was home. The landlady must be grocery shopping, she decided. It was a Friday ritual. Ivy got to eat with Mrs. Brown and Lita Dawson, the other tenant, on the weekends. She and Lita took turns cooking and cleaning up the kitchen, to help elderly Mrs. Brown manage the extra work. It was nice, not having to drive into town to get a sandwich. The pizza place delivered, but Ivy was sick of pizza. She liked her small boardinghouse, and Lita was nice, if a little older than Ivy. Lita was newly divorced and missing her ex-husband to a terrible degree. She fell back on her degree and taught computer technology at the vocational college, and let Ivy ride back and forth with her for help with the gas money.

She’d no sooner put down her purse than the cell phone rang.

“It’s the weekend!” came a jolly, laughing voice. It was Merrie York, her best friend from high school.

“I noticed,” Ivy chuckled. “How’d you do on your tests?”

“I’m sure I passed something, but I’m not sure what. My biology final is approaching and lab work is killing me. I can’t make the microscope work!”

“You’re training to be a nurse, not a lab assistant,” Ivy pointed out.

“Come up here and tell that to my biology professor,” Merrie dared her. “Never mind, I’ll graduate even if I have to take every course three times.”

“That’s the spirit.”

“Come over and spend the weekend with me,” Merrie invited.

Ivy’s heart flipped over. “Thanks, but I have some things to do around here…”

“He’s in Oklahoma, settling a new group of cattle with a sale barn,” Merrie coaxed wryly.

Ivy hesitated. “Can you put that in writing and get it notarized?”

“He really likes you, deep inside.”

“He’s made an art of hiding his fondness for me,” Ivy shot back. “I love you, Merrie, but I don’t fancy being cannon fodder. It’s been a long week. Rachel and I had another argument today.”

“Long distance?”

“Exactly.”

“And over Sir Lancelot the drug lord.”

“You know me too well.”

Merrie laughed. “We’ve been friends since middle school,” she reminded Ivy.

“Yes, the debutante and the tomboy. What a pair we made.”

“You’re not quite the tomboy you used to be,” Merrie said.

“We conform when we have to. Why do you want me there this weekend?”

“For selfish reasons,” the other woman said mischievously. “I need a study partner and everybody else in my class has a social life.”

“I don’t want a social life,” Ivy said. “I want to make good grades and graduate and get a job that pays at least minimum wage.”

“Your folks left you a savings account and some stocks,” Merrie pointed out.

That was true, but Rachel had walked away with most of the money and all of the stocks.

“Your folks left you Stuart,” Ivy replied dryly.

“Don’t remind me!”

“Actually, I suppose it was the other way around, wasn’t it?” Ivy thought aloud. “Your folks left you to Stuart.”

“He’s a really great brother,” Merrie said gently. “And he likes most women…”

“He likes all women, except me,” Ivy countered. “I really couldn’t handle a weekend with Stuart right now. Not on top of being harassed by Rachel and final exams.”

“You’re a whiz at math,” her friend countered. “You hardly ever have to study.”

“Translation—I work math problems every day for four hours after class so that I can appear to be smart.”

Merrie laughed. “Come on over. Mrs. Rhodes is making homemade yeast rolls for supper, and we have all the pay per view channels. We can study and then watch that new adventure movie.”

Ivy was weakening. On weekends, it was mostly takeout at the boardinghouse. Ivy’s stomach rebelled at the thought of pizza or more sweet and sour chicken or tacos. “I could really use an edible meal that didn’t come in a box, I guess.”

“If I tell Mrs. Rhodes you’re coming, she’ll make you a cherry pie.”

“That does it. I’ll pack a nightgown and see you in thirty minutes, or as soon as I can get a cab.”

“I could come and get you.”

“No. Cabs are cheap in town. I’m not destitute,” she added proudly, although she practically was. The cab fare would have to come out of her snack money for the next week. She really did have to budget to the bone. But her pride wouldn’t let her accept Merrie’s offer.

“All right, Miss Independence. I’ll have Jack leave the gate open.”

It was a subtle and not arrogant reminder that the two women lived in different social strata. Merrie’s home was a sprawling brick mansion with a wrought-iron gate running up a bricked driveway. There was an armed guard, Jack, at the front gate, miles of electrified fence and two killer Dobermans who had the run of the property at night. If that didn’t deter trespassers, there were the ranch hands, half of whom were ex-military. Stuart was particular about the people who worked for him, because his home contained priceless inherited antiques. He also owned four herd sires who commanded incredible stud fees; straws of their semen sold for thousands of dollars each and were shipped all over the world.

“Should I wear body armor, or will Chayce recognize me?”

Chayce McLeod was the chief of security for York Properties, which Stuart headed. He’d worked for J.B. Hammock, but Stuart had offered him a bigger salary and fringe benefits. Chayce was worth it. He had a degree in management and he was a past master at handling men. There were plenty of them to handle on a spread this size. Most people didn’t know that Chayce was also an ex-federal agent. He was dishy, too, but Ivy was immune to him.

Stuart’s ranch, all twenty thousand acres of it, was only a part of an empire that spanned three states and included real estate, investments, feedlots and a ranching equipment company. Stuart and Merrie were very rich. But neither of them led a frantic social life. Stuart worked on the ranch, just as he had when he was in his teens—just as his father had until he died of a heart attack when Merrie was thirteen. Now, Stuart was thirty. Merrie, like Ivy, was only eighteen, almost nineteen. There were no other relatives. Their mother had died giving birth to Merrie.

Merrie sighed at the long pause. “Of course Chayce will recognize you. Ivy, you’re not in one of your moods again, are you?”

“My dad was a mechanic, Merrie,” she reminded her friend, “and my mother was a C.P.A. in a firm.”

“My grandfather was a gambler who got lucky down in the Caribbean,” Merrie retorted. “He was probably a closet pirate, and family legend says he was actually arrested for arms dealing when he was in his sixties. That’s where our money came from. It certainly didn’t come from hard work and honest living. Our parents instilled a vicious work ethic in both of us, as you may have noticed. We don’t just sit around sipping mint juleps and making remarks about the working class. Now will you just shut up and start packing?”

Ivy laughed. “Okay. I’ll see you shortly.”

“That’s my buddy.”

Ivy had to admit that neither Merrie nor Stuart could ever be accused of resting on the family fortune. Stuart was always working on the ranch, when he wasn’t flying to the family corporation’s board meetings or meeting with legislators on agricultural bills or giving workshops on new facets of the beef industry. He had a degree from Yale in business, and he spoke Spanish fluently. He was also the most handsome, sensuous, attractive man Ivy had ever known. It took a lot of work for her to pretend that he didn’t affect her. It was self-defense. Stuart preferred tall, beautiful, independent blondes, preferably rich ones. He was vocal about marriage, which he abhorred. His women came and went. Nobody lasted more than six months.

But Ivy was plain and soft-spoken, not really an executive sort of woman even if she’d been older than she was. She lived in a world far removed from Stuart’s, and his friends intimidated her. She didn’t know a certificate of deposit from a treasury bond, and her background didn’t include yearly trips to exotic places. She didn’t read literary fiction, listen to classical music, drive a luxury car or go shopping in boutiques. She lived a quiet life, working and studying hard to provide a future for herself. Merrie was in nursing school in San Antonio, where she lived in the dorm and drove a new Mercedes. The two only saw each other when Merrie came home for the occasional weekend. Ivy missed her.

That was why she took a chance and packed her bag. Merrie wouldn’t lie to her about Stuart being there, she knew. But he frequently turned up unexpectedly. It wasn’t surprising that he disliked Ivy. He’d known her sister, Rachel, before she went to New York. He was scathing about her lifestyle, which had been extremely modern even when she was still in high school. He thought Ivy was going to be just like her. Which proved that he didn’t know his sister’s best friend in the least.

Jack, the guard on the front gate at Merrie’s house, recognized Ivy in the local cab, and grinned at her. He waved the cab through without even asking for any identification. One hurdle successfully passed, she told herself.

Merrie was waiting for her at the front steps of the sprawling brick mansion. She ran down the steps and around to the back door of the cab, throwing her arms around Ivy the minute she opened the door and got out.

Ivy was medium height and slender, with long, straight, pale blond hair and green eyes. Merrie took after her brother—she was tall for a woman, and she had dark hair and light eyes. She towered over Ivy.

“I’m so glad you came,” Merrie said happily. “Sometimes the walls just close in on me when I’m here alone. The house is way too big for two people and a housekeeper.”

“Both of you will marry someday and fill it up with kids,” Ivy teased.

“Fat chance, in Stuart’s case,” Merrie chuckled. “Come on in. Where’s your bag?”

“In the boot…”

The Hispanic driver was already at the trunk, smiling as he lifted out Ivy’s bag and carried it all the way up to the porch for her. But before Ivy could reach into her purse, Merrie pressed a big bill into the driver’s hand and spoke to him in her own, elegant Spanish.

Ivy started to argue, but the cab was racing down the driveway and Merrie was halfway up the front steps.

“Don’t argue,” she told Ivy with a grin. “You know you can’t win.”

“I know,” the other woman sighed. “Thanks, Merrie, but…”

“But you’ve got about three dollars spare a week, and you’d do without lunch one day at school to pay for the cab,” came the quiet reply. “If you were in my place, you’d do it for me,” she added, and Ivy couldn’t argue. But it did hurt her pride.

“Listen,” Merrie added, “one day when you’re a fabulously rich owner of a bookkeeping firm, and driving a Rolls, you can pay me back. Okay?”

Ivy just laughed. “Listen, no C.P.A. ever got rich enough to own a Rolls,” came the dry reply. “But I really will pay you back.”

“Friends help friends,” Merrie said simply. “Come on in.”

The house was huge, really huge. The one thing that set rich people apart from poor people, Ivy pondered, was space. If you were wealthy, you could afford plenty of room in your house and a bathroom the size of a garage. You could also afford enough land to give you some privacy and a place to plant flowers and trees and have a fish pond…

“What are you brooding about now?” Merrie asked on the way up the staircase.

“Space,” Ivy murmured.

“Outer?”

“No. Personal space,” Ivy qualified the answer. “I was thinking that how much space you have depends on how much money you have. I’d love to have just a yard. And maybe a fish pond,” she added.

“You can feed our Chinese goldfish any time you want to,” the other girl offered.

Ivy didn’t reply. She noticed, not for the first time, how much Merrie resembled her older brother. They were both tall and slender, with jet-black hair. Merrie wore her hair long, but Stuart’s was short and conventionally cut. Her eyes, pale blue like Stuart’s, could take on a steely, dangerous quality when she was angry. Not that Merrie could hold a candle to Stuart in a temper. Ivy had seen grown men hide in the barn when he passed by. Stuart’s pale, deep-set eyes weren’t the only indication of bad temper. His walk was just as good a measure of ill humor. He usually glided like a runner. But when he was angry, his walk slowed. The slower the walk, the worse the temper.

Ivy had learned early in her friendship with Merrie to see how fast Stuart was moving before she approached any room he was in. One memorable day when he’d lost a prize cattle dog to a coyote, she actually pleaded a migraine headache she didn’t have to avoid sitting at the supper table with him.

It was a nasty habit of his to be bitingly sarcastic to anyone within range when he was mad, especially if the object of his anger was out of reach.

Merrie led Ivy into the bedroom that adjoined hers and watched as Ivy opened the small bag and brought out a clean pair of jeans and a cotton T-shirt. She frowned. “No nightgown?”

Ivy winced. “Rachel upset me. I forgot.”

“No problem. You can borrow one of mine. It will drag the floor behind you like a train, of course, but it will fit most everywhere else.” Her eyes narrowed. “I suppose Rachel is after the money.”

Ivy nodded, looking down into her small bag. “She was good at convincing Daddy I didn’t deserve anything.”

“She told lies.”

Ivy nodded again. “But he believed her. Rachel could be so sweet and loving when she wanted something. He drank…” She stopped at once.

Merrie sat down on the bed and folded her hands in her lap. “I know he drank, Ivy,” she said gently. “Stuart had him investigated.”

Her eyes widened in disbelief. “What?”

Merrie bit her lower lip. “I can’t tell you why, so don’t even ask. Suffice it to say that it was an eye-opening experience.”

Ivy wondered how much information Stuart’s private detective had ferreted out about the private lives of the Conley family.

“We just knew that he drank,” Merrie said at once, when she saw her friend’s tortured expression. She patted Ivy’s hand. “Nobody has that perfect childhood they put in motion pictures, you know. Dad wanted Stuart to raise thoroughbreds to race in competition. It was something he’d never been able to do. He tried to force Stuart through agricultural college.” She laughed hollowly. “Nobody could force my brother to do anything, not even Dad.”

“Were they very much alike?” Ivy asked, because she’d only met the elder York a few times.

“No. Well, in one way they were,” she corrected. “Dad in a bad temper could cost us good hired men. Stuart cost us our best, and oldest, horse wrangler last week.”

“How?”

“He made a remark Stuart didn’t like when Stuart ran the Jaguar through the barn and into its back wall.”

CHAPTER TWO

IVY could hardly contain her amusement. Merrie’s brother was one of the most self-contained people she’d ever known. He never lost control of himself. “Stuart ran the Jag through the barn? The new Jaguar, the XJ?”

Merrie grimaced. “I’m afraid so. He was talking on his cell phone at the time.”

“About what, for heaven’s sake?”

“One of the managers at the Jacobsville sales barn mixed up the lot numbers and sold Stuart’s purebred cows, all of whom were pregnant by Big Blue, for the price of open heifers,” she added, the term “open heifer” denoting a two-year-old female who wasn’t pregnant. Big Blue was a champion Black Angus herd sire.

“That was an expensive mistake,” Ivy commented.

“And not only for us,” Merrie added, tongue-in-cheek. “Stuart took every cattle trailer we had and every one he could borrow, complete with drivers, went to the sale barn and brought back every single remaining bull or cow or calf he was offering for sale. Then he shipped them to another sale barn in Oklahoma by train. That’s why he’s in Oklahoma. He said this time, they’re going to be certain which lots they’re selling at which price, because he’s having it written on their hides in magic marker.”

Ivy just grinned. She knew Stuart would do no such thing, even if he felt like it.

“The local sale barn is never going to be the same,” Merrie added. “Stuart told them they’d be having snowball fights in hell before he sent another lot of cattle to them for an auction.”

“Your brother is not a forgiving person,” Ivy said quietly.

The other girl nodded. “But there’s a reason for the way he is, Ivy,” she said. “Our father expected Stuart to follow in his footsteps and become a professional athlete. Dad never made it out of semipro football, but he was certain that Stuart would. He started making him play football before he was even in grammar school. Stuart hated it,” she recalled sadly. “He deliberately missed practices, and when he did, Dad would go at him with a doubled-up belt. Stuart had bruises all over his back and legs, but it made him that much more determined to avoid sports. When he was thirteen, he dug his heels in and told Dad he was going into rodeo and that if the belt came out again, he was going to call Dallas Carson and have him arrested for beating him. Dallas,” she reminded Ivy, “was Hayes Carson’s father. He was our sheriff long before Hayes went into law enforcement. It was unusual for someone to be arrested for spanking a child twenty years ago, but Dallas would have done it. He loved Stuart like a son.”

It took Ivy a minute to answer. She knew more about corporal punishment than she was ever going to admit, even to Merrie. “I always liked Dallas. Hayes is hard-going sometimes. What did your father say to that?” she asked.

“He didn’t say anything. He got Stuart in the car and drove him to football practice. Five minutes after he left, Stuart hitched a ride to the Jacobsville rodeo arena and borrowed a horse for the junior bulldogging competition. He and his best friend, Martin, came in second place. Dad was livid. When Stuart put his trophy on the mantel, Dad smashed it with a fire poker. He never took the belt to Stuart again, but he browbeat him and demeaned him every chance he got. It wasn’t until Stuart went away to college that I stopped dreading the times we were home from school.”

Involuntarily, Ivy’s eyes went to the painting of Merrie and Stuart’s father that hung over the fireplace. Stuart resembled Jake York, but the older man had a stubborn jaw and a cruel glimmer in his pale blue eyes. Like Stuart, he’d been a tall man, lean and muscular. The children had been without a mother, who died giving birth to Merrie. Their mother’s sister had stayed with the family and cared for Merrie until she was in grammar school. She and the elder York had argued about his treatment of Stuart, which had ended in her departure. After that, tenderness and unconditional love were things the York kids read about. They learned nothing of them from their taciturn, demanding father. Stuart’s defiance only made him more bitter and ruthless.

“But your father built this ranch,” Ivy said. “Surely he had to like cattle.”

“He did. It was just that football was his whole life,” Merrie replied. “You might have noticed that you don’t ever see football games here. Stuart cuts off the television at the first mention of it.”

“I can see why.”

“Dad spent the time between football games running the ranch and his real estate company. He died of a heart attack when I was thirteen, sitting at the boardroom table. He had a violent argument with one of his directors about some proposed expansions that would have placed the company dangerously close to bankruptcy. He was a gambler. Stuart isn’t. He always calculates the odds before he makes any decision. He never has arguments with the board of directors.” She frowned. “Well, there was one. They insisted that he hire a pilot to fly him to business meetings.”

“Why?”

Merrie chuckled. “To stop him from driving himself to them. Didn’t I mention that this is his second new XJ in six months?”

Ivy lifted her eyebrows. “What happened to the first one?”

“Slow traffic.”

“Come again?”

“He was in a hurry to a called meeting of the board of directors,” Merrie said. “There was a little old man driving a motor home about twenty miles an hour up a hill on a blind curve. Stuart tried to pass him. He almost made it, too,” she added. “Except that Hayes Carson was coming down the hill on the other side of the road in his squad car.”

“What happened?” Ivy prompted when Merrie sat silently.

“Stuart really is a good driver,” his sister asserted, “even if he makes insane decisions about where to pass. He spun the car around and stopped it neatly on the shoulder before Hayes got anywhere near him. But Hayes said he could have killed somebody and he wasn’t getting out of a ticket. The only way he got his license back was that he promised to go to traffic school and do public service.”

“That doesn’t sound like your brother.”

Merrie shrugged. “He did go to traffic school twice, and then he went to the sheriff’s department and showed Hayes Carson how to reorganize his department so that it operated more efficiently.”

“Did Hayes actually ask him to do that?”

“No. But Stuart argued that reorganizing the chaos in the sheriff’s department was a public service. Hayes didn’t agree. He went and talked to Judge Meacham himself. They gave Stuart his license back.”

“You said he didn’t hit anything with the car.”

“He didn’t. But while it was sitting on the side of the road, a cattle truck—one of his own, in fact—took the curve too fast and sideswiped it off the shoulder down a ten-foot ravine.”

“I don’t guess the driver works for you anymore,” Ivy mused.

“He does, but not as a driver,” Merrie said, laughing. “Considering how things could have gone, it was a lucky escape for everyone. It was a sturdy, well-built car, but those cattle trucks are heavy. It was a total loss.”

“Even if I could afford a car, I don’t think I want to learn how to drive,” Ivy commented. “It seems safer not to be on the highway when Stuart’s driving.”

“It is.”

They snacked on cheese and crackers and finger sandwiches and cookies, and sipped coffee in perfect peace for several minutes.

“Ivy, are you sure you’re cut out to be a public accountant?” Merrie asked after a minute.

Ivy laughed. “What brought that on?”

“I was just thinking about when we were still in high school,” she replied. “You had your heart set on singing opera.”

“And chance would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it?” Ivy asked with a patient smile. “The thing is, even if I had the money to study in New York, I don’t want to leave Jacobsville. So that sort of limits my options. Singing in the church choir does give me a chance to do what I love most.”

Merrie had to agree that this was true. “What you should really do is get married and have kids, and teach them how to sing,” she replied with a grin. “You’d be a natural. Little kids flock around you everywhere we go.”

“What a lovely idea,” she enthused. “Tell you what, you gather up about ten or twelve eligible bachelors, and I’ll pick out one I like.”

That set Merrie to laughing uproariously. “If we could do it that way, I might get married myself,” she confessed. “But I’d have to have a man who wasn’t afraid of Stuart. Talk about limited options…!”

“Hayes Carson isn’t scared of him,” Ivy pointed out. “You could marry him.”

“Hayes doesn’t want to get married. He says he likes his life uncluttered by emotional complications.”

“Lily-livered coward,” Ivy enunciated. “No guts.”

“Oh, he’s got guts. He just doesn’t think marriage works. His parents fought like tigers. His younger brother, Bobby, couldn’t take it, and he turned to drugs and overdosed. It had to affect Hayes, losing his only sibling like that.”

“He might fall in love one day.”

“So might my brother,” Merrie mused, “but if I were a betting woman, I wouldn’t bet on that any time soon.”

“Love is the great equalizer.”

“Love is a chemical reaction,” Merrie, the nursing student, said dryly. “It’s nothing more than a physical response to a sensory stimulus designed to encourage us to replicate our genes.”

“Oh, yuuuck!” Ivy groaned. “Merrie, that’s just gross!”

“It’s true—ask my anatomy professor,” Merrie defended.

“No, thank you. I’ll take my own warped view of it as a miracle, thanks.”

Merrie laughed, then she frowned. “Ivy, what are you eating?” she asked abruptly.

“This?” She held up a cookie from the huge snack platter that contained crackers, cheese, cakes, little finger sandwiches and cookies. Mrs. Rhodes loved to make hors d’oeuvres. “It’s a cookie.”

Merrie looked worried. “Ivy, it’s a chocolate cookie,” came the reply. “You know you’ll get a migraine if you eat them.”

“It’s only one cookie,” she defended herself.

“And there’s a low pressure weather system dumping rain on us, and you’ve had the stress of Rachel worrying you to death since your father’s funeral,” she replied. “Not to mention that your father’s only been dead for a few weeks. There’s always more than one trigger that sets off a migraine, even if you don’t realize what they are. Stuart gets them, too, you know, but it’s red wine or aged cheese that causes his.”

Ivy recalled one terrible attack that Stuart had after he’d closed a tricky big business deal. It had been the day after he’d attended a band concert at Ivy and Merrie’s school soon after the girls had become friends. They were both in band. It had been Ivy who’d suggested strong coffee and then a doctor for Stuart. He’d never realized that his terrible sick headaches were, in fact, migraines, much less that there were prescriptions for them that actually worked. Ivy had suffered from them all her life. Her mother and her mother’s father had also had migraine headaches. They tended to run in families. They ran in Stuart’s, too. Even though Merrie hadn’t had one, her father had suffered with them. So had an uncle.

“The doctor gave Stuart the preventative, after diagnosing the headache,” Merrie commented.

“I can’t take the preventative,” Ivy replied. “I have a heart defect, and the medication causes abnormal heart rhythms in me. I have to treat the symptoms instead of the disease.”

“I hope you brought your medicine.”

Ivy looked at the chocolate cookie and ruefully put the remainder down on her plate. “I forgot to get it refilled.” Translated, that meant that she couldn’t afford it anymore. There was one remedy that was sold over the counter. She took it in desperation, although it wasn’t as effective as the prescription medicines were.

“Stuart has pain medicine as well as the preventative,” Merrie said solemnly. “If you wake up in the night screaming in pain because of that cookie, we can handle it. Maybe when your father’s estate is settled, Rachel will leave you alone.”

Ivy shook her head. “Rachel won’t rest until she gets every penny. She convinced Dad that I was wilder than a white-tailed deer. He cut me out of his will.”

“He knew better,” Merrie said indignantly.

She laughed. “No, he didn’t.” Nor had he tried to find out. He drank to excess. Rachel encouraged him to do it. When he was drunk, she fed him lies about Ivy. The lies had terrible repercussions. That amused Rachel, who hated her prim younger sister. It made Ivy afraid every day of her life.

She pulled her mind from the past and forced a smile. “If having the estate will keep Rachel in NewYork, and out of my life, it will be worth it. I still have Aunt Hettie’s little dab of money. That, and my part-time job, will see me through school.”

“It’s so unfair,” her friend lamented. “It’s never been like that here. Stuart split everything right down the middle between us. He said we were both Dad’s kids and one shouldn’t be favored over the other.”

Ivy frowned. “That sounds as if one was.”

She nodded. “In Dad’s will, Stuart got seventy-five percent. He couldn’t break the will, because Dad was always in his right mind. So he did the split himself, after the will was probated.” She smiled. “I know you don’t like him, but he’s a great brother.”

It wasn’t dislike. It was fear. Stuart in a temper was frightening to a woman whose whole young life had been spent trying to escape male violence. Well, it was a little more than fear, she had to admit. Stuart made her feel funny when she was around him. He made her nervous.

“He’s good to you,” Ivy conceded.

“He likes you,” she replied. “No, really, he does. He admires the way you work for your education. He was furious when Rachel jerked the house out from under you and left you homeless. He talked to the attorney. It was no use, of course. It takes a lot to break a will.”

It was surprising that Stuart would do anything for her. He always seemed to resent her presence in his house. He tolerated her because she was Merrie’s best friend, but he was never friendly. In fact, he stayed away from home when he knew Ivy was visiting.

“He’s probably afraid of my fatal charm,” Ivy murmured absently. “You know, fearful that he might succumb to my wiles.” She frowned. “What, exactly, are wiles anyway?”

“If I knew that, I’d probably have a boyfriend,” Merrie chuckled. “So it’s just as well I don’t. I’m going to get my nursing certificate before I get involved with any one man. Meanwhile, I’m playing the field like crazy. There’s a resident in our hospital that I adore. He takes me out once in a while, but it’s all very low-key.” She eyed Ivy curiously. “Any secret suitors in your life?”

Ivy shook her head. “I don’t ever want to get married,” she said quietly.

Merrie frowned. “Why not?”

“Nobody could live with me,” she said. “I snore.”

Merrie laughed. “You do not.”

“Anyway, I’m like you. I just want to graduate and get a real job.” She considered that. “I’ve dreamed of having my own money, of supporting myself. In a lot of ways, I led a sheltered life. Dad didn’t want to lose me, so he discouraged boys from coming around. I was valuable, free hired help. After all, Rachel couldn’t cook and she’d never have washed clothes or mopped floors.”

Merrie didn’t smile. She knew that was the truth. Ivy had been used her whole young life by the people who should have cherished her. She’d never pried, but she noticed that Ivy hardly ever talked about her father, except in a general way.

“You really do keep secrets, don’t you?” Merrie asked gently. She held up a hand when Ivy protested. “I won’t pry. But if you ever need to talk, I’m right here.”

“I know that.” She smiled back. “Thanks.”

“Now. How about a good movie on the pay channels? I was thinking about that fantasy film everyone’s raving about.” She named it.

Ivy beamed. “I really wanted to see that one, but it’s no fun going to the movies alone.”

“I’ll ask Mrs. Rhodes for some popcorn to go with it. In fact, she might like to watch it with us. She doesn’t have a social life.”

“She’s married, isn’t she?” Ivy probed gently.

“She was,” came the reply. “He was an engineer in the Army and he went overseas with his unit. He didn’t come back. They had no kids; it was just the two of them for almost twenty years.” She grimaced. “She came to us just after it happened, looking for a live-in job. She’d lost everything. He got a good salary and was career Army, so she hadn’t worked except as a temporary secretary all that time. When he was gone, she had to go through channels to apply for widow’s benefits, and the job market locally was flat. She came to work for us as a temporary thing, and just stayed. We all suited each other.”

“She’s very sweet.”

“She’s a nurturing person,” Merrie agreed. “She even gets away with nurturing Stuart. Nobody else would dare even try.”

Ivy wouldn’t have touched that line with a pole. She just nodded.

She was looking through the program guide on the wide-screen television when Merrie came in with a small, plump, smiling woman with short silver hair.

“Hi, Mrs. Rhodes,” Ivy said with a smile.

“Good to see you, Ivy. I’m making popcorn. What’s the movie?”

“We wanted to see the fantasy one,” Merrie explained.

“It’s wonderful,” came the surprising reply. “Yes, I went to the theater to see it, all by myself,” Mrs. Rhodes chuckled. “But I’d love to see it again, if you wouldn’t mind the company.”

“We’d love it,” Ivy said, and meant it.

“Then I’ll just run and get the popcorn out of the microwave,” the older woman told them.

“I’ll buy the movie,” Merrie replied, taking the remote from Ivy. “This is the one mechanical thing I’m really good at—pushing buttons!”

The movie was wonderful, but long before it was over, Ivy was seeing dancing colored lights before her eyes. Soon afterward, she lost the vision in one eye; in the center of it was only a ragged gray static like when a television channel went off the air temporarily. It was the unmistakable aura that came before the sick headaches.

She didn’t say a word about it to Merrie. She’d just go to bed and tough it out. She’d done that before. If she could get to sleep before the pain got bad, she could sleep it off most of the time.

She toughed it out until the movie ended, then she yawned and stood up. “Sorry, I’ve got to get to bed. I’m so sleepy!”

Merrie got up, too. “I could do with an early night myself. Mrs. Rhodes, will you close up?”

“Certainly, dear. Need anything else from the kitchen?”

“Could I have a bottle of water?” Ivy asked. “I always keep one by my bed at home.”

“I’ll bring it up to you,” Mrs. Rhodes promised. “Merrie?”

Merrie shook her head. “No, thanks, I keep diet sodas in my little fridge. I drink enough bottled water at school to float a boat!”

“You said you could lend me a nightgown?” Ivy asked when they were at the top of the staircase.

“Can and will. Come on.”

Merrie pulled a beautiful nightgown and robe out of her closet and presented it to Ivy. It was sheer, lacy, palest lemon and absolutely the most beautiful thing Ivy had ever seen. Her nightgowns were cheap cotton ones in whichever colors were on sale. She caught her breath just looking at it.

“It’s too expensive,” she protested.

“It isn’t. It was a gift and I hate it,” Merrie said honestly. “You know I never wear yellow. One of my roommates drew my name at Christmas and bought it for me. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it wasn’t my color, I hugged her and said thank you. Then I hung it in the closet.”

“I would have done the same,” Ivy had to admit. “Well, it’s beautiful.”

“It will look beautiful on you. Go on to bed. Sleep late. We won’t need to get up before noon if we don’t want to.”

“I never sleep past seven, even when I try,” Ivy said, smiling. “I always got up to make breakfast for Dad and Rachel, and then just for Dad after she left home.”

“Mrs. Rhodes will make you breakfast, whenever you want it,” Merrie said. “Sleep well.”

“You, too.”

Ivy went into the bedroom that adjoined Merrie’s. There was a bathroom between the guest room and Stuart’s room, but Ivy wasn’t worried about that. Stuart was out of town and she’d have the bathroom all to herself if she needed it. She probably would, if she couldn’t sleep off the headache. They made her violently ill.

She put on the nightgown and looked at herself in the full-length mirror. She was surprised at how she looked in it. Her breasts were small, but high and firm, and the gown emphasized their perfection. It flowed down her narrow waist to her full hips and long, elegant legs. She’d never worn anything so flattering.

With her long blond hair and dark green eyes and silky, soft complexion, she looked like a fairy. She wasn’t pretty, but she wasn’t plain, either. She was slender and medium height, with a nice mouth and big eyes. Only one of the big eyes was seeing right now, though, and she needed sleep.

There was a soft knock at the door. She opened it, and there was Mrs. Rhodes with the water. “Dear, you’re very pale,” the older woman said, concerned. “Are you all right?”

Ivy sighed. “It was the chocolate. I’ve got a headache. I don’t want Merrie to know. She worries. I’ll just go to sleep, and I’ll be fine.”

Mrs. Rhodes wasn’t convinced. She’d seen Ivy have these headaches, and she’d seen Stuart suffer through them. “Have you got something to take?”

“In my purse,” Ivy lied. “I’ve got aspirin.”

“Well, if you need something stronger, you come wake me up, okay?” she asked gently. “Stuart keeps medicine for them. I know where to look.”

She smiled. “Thanks, Mrs. Rhodes. I really mean it.”

“You just get some sleep. Call if you need me. I’m just across the hall from Merrie.”

“I will. Thanks again.”

She dropped down on the queen-size bed and pulled the silken covers up over her. The room was a palace compared to her one-room apartment. Even the bathroom was larger than the room she lived in. Merrie took such wealth and luxury for granted, but Ivy didn’t. It was fascinating to her.

The pain was vicious. The headaches always settled in one eye, and they felt as if a knife were being pushed right through the pupil. Some people called them “head-bangers” because sufferers had been known to knock their heads against walls in an effort to cope with the pain. Ivy groaned quietly and pushed her fist against the eye that had gone blind. The sight had returned to it, and the pain came with it.

Volumes had been written on the vicious attacks. Comparing them to mild tension headaches was like comparing a hurricane to a spring breeze. Some people lost days of work every year to them. Others didn’t realize what sort of headaches they were and never consulted a doctor about them. Still others wound up in emergency rooms pleading for something to ease the pain. Hardly anything sold over the counter would even faze them. It usually took a prescription medicine to make them bearable. Ivy had never found anything that would stop the pain, regardless of its strength. The best she could hope for was that the pain would ease enough that she could endure it until it finally stopped.

Around midnight, the pain spawned nausea and she was violently sick. By that time, the pain was a throbbing, stabbing wave of agony.

She dabbed her mouth and eyes with a wet cloth and laid back down, trying again to sleep. But even though the nausea eased a little, the pain increased.

She would have to go and find Mrs. Rhodes. On the way, she’d stop in the bathroom long enough to wet the cloth again.

She opened the door, half out of her mind with pain, and walked right into a tall, muscular man wearing nothing except a pair of black silk pajama bottoms. Blue eyes bit into her green ones as she looked up, a long way up, into them.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Stuart York demanded with a scowl.

CHAPTER THREE

IVY hadn’t seen him in months. They didn’t travel in the same circles, and he was never at home when she was visiting Merrie. The sight of him so unexpectedly caused an odd breathlessness, an ache in the pit of her stomach.

He was watching her intently, and there was an odd glint in his pale blue eyes, as if she’d disappointed him. He rarely smiled. He certainly wasn’t doing it now. His wide, sexy mouth was thin with impatience. She couldn’t take her eyes off him. His chest was broad and muscular and thick with black, curling hair that narrowed on its way down his belly. The silk pajama bottoms clung lovingly to the hard muscles of his thighs. He was as sexy as any television hero. Even with his thick, straight black hair slightly tousled and his eyes red from lack of sleep, he was every woman’s dream.

“I was…looking for something,” she faltered.

“Me?” he drawled sarcastically, and he reached for her. “Rachel told me all about you before she left town. I didn’t believe her at first.” His eyes slid down her exquisite body in the revealing gown. “But it looks as though she was right about you all along.”

The feel of all that warm strength so close made her legs wobbly. There was the faint scent of soap and cologne that clung to his skin, and the way he was looking at her made it even worse. Over the years, she’d tried very hard not to notice Stuart. But close like this, her heart ran away with her. She felt sensations that made her uneasy, alien sensations that made her want things she didn’t understand. She couldn’t take her eyes off him, but he was misty in her vision. Her head was throbbing so madly that she couldn’t think. Which was unfortunate, because he misinterpreted her lack of protest.

A split second later, she was standing with her back against the cold wall with Stuart’s hard body pressing down against hers. His hands propped against the wall, pinning her, while his eyes took in the visible slope of her breasts in the wispy gown. He couldn’t seem to stop looking at her.

“I need…” she began weakly, trying to focus enough to ask for some aspirin, for anything that might make the headache ease.

“…me?” he taunted. His voice was deep and velvety soft, husky with emotion as his head bent. His pale eyes went to her parted lips. “Show me, honey.”

While she was working out that odd comment, his mouth was suddenly hard and insistent on her own. She stiffened with apprehension. She’d never been so close, so intimately close, to a man before. His mouth was demanding, twisting on hers as though he wanted more than he was getting.

She really should protest the way he was holding her, so that she felt every inch of muscle that pressed against her. But his mouth was erotic, masterful. She’d only been kissed a few times, mostly at parties, and never by a boy who knew much about intimacy. It had been her good fortune that she’d never felt violent attraction to a man who wouldn’t accept limits. But her luck had just run out, with Stuart. He knew what he was doing. His mouth eased and became coaxing, caressing. His teeth nipped tenderly at her lower lip, teasing it to move down so that he had access to the whole of her soft, warm mouth.

She shivered a little as passion grew inside her. She felt his bare chest under her hands, and she loved the warmth and strength of him so close. Her fingers burrowed through the thick hair that covered the hard muscle, making them tingle even as she felt the urgent response of his body to the soft caress. She let her lips part as he pressed harder against them and she moved, involuntarily, closer to the source of the sudden pleasure she was feeling.

It was like an invitation, and he took it. His hips ground into hers and she felt the sudden hardness of him against her with real fear. He groaned harshly. His body became even more insistent. He didn’t seem capable, at that moment, of stopping.

The throbbing delight she felt turned quickly to fear as his hands dropped to her hips and dragged them against the changing contours of his body with intent enough that even a virgin could feel his rising desire. Frightened by his headlong ardor, she pushed at his chest frantically, trying to drag her lips away from the hard, slow drugging pressure of his mouth.

He was reluctant to stop. He could feel his own body betraying his hunger for her. He couldn’t help it. She was exquisite to touch, and she tasted like sweet heaven. He couldn’t think past her body under him in the bed behind them. But finally the violence of her resistance got through to his foggy brain. He managed to lift his head just long enough to meet her eyes.

When he saw the fear, he began to doubt for the first time what Rachel had said about her little sister. If this was the permissive behavior that had been described to him, it was unlikely that she’d had many boyfriends. On the contrary, she looked as if she was scared to death of what came next.

“No,” she choked huskily, her eyes bright with feeling, pleading with his. “Please don’t.”

For just an instant, his hands tightened on her waist. But her gasp and stiffening posture told its own story. Promiscuous? This little icicle? Just on the strength of her response, he would have bet his life on her innocence.

As his head began to clear, anger began to smolder in his chest. He’d lost his self-control. He’d betrayed his hunger for her. He couldn’t pretend that he hadn’t felt desire while he was kissing her. She’d felt his momentary weakness. His own raging desire had betrayed him, with this innocent child-woman who was only eighteen years old. Eighteen!

Anger and shame and guilt overwhelmed him. He pushed her away from him roughly, his eyes blazing as he looked down at her body in the revealing nightgown. Despite everything, he still wanted her, desperately.

“What did you expect, when you go looking for a man, in the middle of the night, dressed like that!?” He emphasized her attire with one big hand.

Shivering, her arms crossed over her breasts. She swayed, putting a hand up to her eye. She’d forgotten the headache for a few seconds while he’d been kissing her, but it came back now with a fury. She leaned back against the wall for support. Stronger than shame, than anger, was pain, stabbing into her right eye like a heated poker.

Her face was white and contorted. It began to occur to him that she was unwell. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked belatedly.

“Migraine,” she whispered huskily. “I was looking for aspirin.”

He made a rough sound in his throat. “Aspirin, for a migraine,” he scoffed. He bent suddenly, swung her up into his arms and strode back into his bedroom with her. The feel of her softness in his arms was intoxicating. She was as light as a feather. He noticed that she wasn’t protesting the contact. In fact, her cheek was against his bare chest and he could hear her breathing change, despite the pain he knew she was feeling. “You’ll get something stronger than aspirin to stop the pain, but not before I’ve checked with your doctor. Sit.” He put her down on the bed and went to the dresser to pick up his cell phone.

“It’s Dr. Lou Coltrain,” she began.

He ignored her. He knew who her doctor was. “Lou? Sorry to bother you so late. Ivy Conley’s spending the weekend with Merrie, and she’s got a migraine. Can she take what you give me for it?”

There was a pause, during which he stared at Ivy, trying not to look at her the way he felt like looking. She was beautifully formed. But her age tortured him. She was too young for him. He was thirty, to her eighteen. He didn’t dare touch her again. In order to keep his distance, he was going to have to hurt her. He didn’t want to, but she was looking at him in a different way already. The kiss had been very much a shared pleasure until he’d turned up the heat and frightened her.

A minute later he shifted, listened, nodded. “Okay. Yes, I’ll send her in to the clinic tomorrow if she isn’t better by morning. Thanks.”

He hung up. “She said that you can have half the dose I take,” he said, pulling a prescription bottle from his top drawer and shaking out one pill. He poured water from a carafe into a crystal glass and handed her the pill and the glass. “Take it. If you’re not better in the morning, you’ll need to go to her clinic and be seen.”

“Could you stop glaring at me?” she asked through the pain.

“You aren’t the only one who’s got a pain,” he said bluntly. “Take it!”

She flushed, but she put the pill in her mouth and swallowed it down with two big sips of water.

He took the glass from her, helped her up from the bed and marched her back through the bathroom to her own room. He guided her down onto the bed.

“I didn’t know you’d be home,” she defended herself. “Merrie promised you wouldn’t. I didn’t expect to walk into the bathroom and run into you.”

“That goes double for me. I didn’t know you were on the place,” he added curtly. “My sister has a convenient memory.”

In other words, she hadn’t told him Ivy was here. Ivy wondered if her friend knew he was due back home. It would have been a dirty trick to play, and Merrie was bigger than that. So maybe she hadn’t known.

“Thank you for the pill,” she said tautly.

He let out a harsh breath. “You’re welcome. Go to bed.”

She slid the covers back and eased under them, wincing as the movement bumped the pain up another notch.

“And don’t read anything romantic into what just happened,” he added bluntly. “Most men are vulnerable at night, when temptation walks in the door scantily clad.”

“I didn’t know…!”

He held up a hand. “All right. I’ll take your word for it.” His eyes narrowed. “Your sister fed me a pack of lies about you. Why?”

“Why were you even talking to her about me?” she countered. “You always said you couldn’t stand her, even when you were in the same class in high school.”

“She phoned me when your father died.”

“Ah, yes,” she said, closing her eyes. “She didn’t want to take any chances that you might come down on my side of the fence during the probate of the will.” She laughed coldly. “I could have told her that would never happen.”

“She thought you might ask Merrie for help.”

She opened her eyes. The pain was throbbing. She could see her heartbeat in her own eyes. “She would have. Not me. I can stand on my own two feet.”

“Yes,” he said slowly, studying her pale face. “You’ve done remarkably well.”

That was high praise, coming from him. She looked up into his lean face and wondered how it would have felt if she hadn’t pulled back. Warm color surged into her cheeks.

“Stop that,” he muttered. “I won’t be an object of desire to some daydreaming teenager.”

His tone wasn’t hostile. It was more amused than angry. Her eyebrows arched. “Are you sure?” she asked, returning the banter. “Because I have to have somebody to cut my teeth on. Just think, I could fall into bad company and become a lost sheep, and it would all be your fault, because you wouldn’t let me obsess over you.”

At first he thought she was being sarcastic. Then he saw the twinkle in those pretty green eyes.

“You’re too young to be obsessing over a mature man. Go pick on a boy your own age.”

“That’s the problem,” she pointed out, pushing her hand against her throbbing eye. “Boys my own age are just boys.”

“All men started out that way.”

“I guess so.” She groaned. “Could you please hit me in the head with a hammer? Maybe it would take my mind off the pain.”

“It takes pills a long time to work, doesn’t it?” he asked. He moved to sit beside her on the coverlet. “Want a cold wet cloth?”

“I’d die before I’d ask you to go and get one.”

He laughed shortly. But he got up, went into the bathroom and was back a minute later with a damp washcloth. He pressed it over her eyes. “Does it help?”

She held it there and sighed. “Yes. Thank you.”

“I have to have heat,” he replied conversationally. “I can’t bear cold when my head’s throbbing.”

“I remember.”

“Where did you get the chocolate, Ivy?” he asked after a minute.

She grimaced. He really did know too much about her. “There was a cookie this afternoon. I didn’t realize it was chocolate until I’d eaten half of it. Merrie warned me.”

“I can eat ten chocolate bars and they don’t faze me.”

“That’s because chocolate isn’t one of your triggers. But Merrie says you won’t drink red wine.”

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