New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author DIANA PALMER serves up one of her most popular Texans—Jason Donavan—in a thrilling story destined to enthrall her many readers!

Texas rancher Jason Donavan is known for his temper, his brooding nature and his deep distrust of women. No one at the Diamond Spur ranch can stand his moods—except Kate Whittman. She might be young, but she knows Jason is the only man for her. Kate wants him more than anything, but he offers her only brotherly protection—until she discovers that Jason’s desire for her is as strong as hers for him.

Ever the gruff cowboy, Jason insists that commitment and love aren’t for him. So Kate pursues her own life, away from the man she loves. But just when it seems that her fairy tale is coming true, fate brings her back to Texas. To Jason. And to a dream that she’d almost abandoned…

Praise for the novels of New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author DIANA PALMER

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

—Booklist on Lawman

“Palmer demonstrates, yet again, why she’s the queen of desperado quests for justice and true love.”

—Publishers Weekly on Dangerous

“Readers will be moved by this tale of revenge and justice, grief and healing.”

—Booklist on Dangerous

“Palmer’s romance is a refreshing and suspenseful adventure. Her humor and drama-filled narrative shines as her tale spins and hints to future stories.”

—RT Book Reviews on Texas Born

“Lots of passion, thrills, and plenty of suspense… Protector is a top notch read!”

—Romance Reviews Today on Protector

“A delightful romance with interesting new characters and many familiar faces. It’s nice to have a hero who is not picture perfect in looks or instincts, and a heroine who accepts her privileged life yet is willing to work for the future she wants.”

—RT Book Reviews on Wyoming Tough

Diamond Spur

Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For Dean and Donna DeSoto and Doris and Ben McCord in San Antonio; for editors Claire Zion and Beth Lieberman in New York; for Pat in PA and Melinda in Lewisville, Texas; for my agent Maureen Walters of Curtis Brown Assoc. Ltd.; and last, but not least, for my husband, James, my son Blayne, daughter-in-law Christina, grandkids Selena and Donovan, my family and friends and my own very special category readers. God bless you all. —Susan Kyle (aka Diana Palmer) Habersham County, Georgia 2014

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

THERE WERE HUGE live oak trees sheltering the Donavan place from the south Texas heat. The impressive pale yellow Spanish-styled stucco house sat between barbed wire fences, far back off the ranch road at the end of a dusty, winding driveway. Kate Whittman was glad to be poking along on the old quarter horse Jason had given her instead of driving. It had been dry in this part of Frio County, Texas, for some weeks now, and the dust was much less noticeable on a slow-moving horse than in a car.

The Donavan driveway had never been paved. The ranch covered thousands of acres and spare cash always went into buying more cattle, not into modernizing roads. In these days of low cattle prices and overwhelming interest on ranch loans, it took a business mind like Jason Donavan’s to keep the wolf away from the door.

Her green eyes scanned the horizon. It was roundup time, Kate knew, and on an operation this size, the spread had to be broken down into sections. Each camp had its own crew and foreman, and Jason would be riding around from one to the other to keep an eye on things. During roundup, somebody always got hurt. While broken bones, burns, contusions, and abrasions were part of the usual demands of ranch work, herding cattle and branding always brought grief. This time the boss himself had run afoul of a maddened mama longhorn, and the ranch foreman had gone sneaking over to Kate’s house to fetch her. Any time Jason got hurt, they sent for Kate, because Jason Donavan wouldn’t let anybody else near him. He trusted Kate because she wasn’t afraid of his temper, and because she alone could manage him when that temper was at flash point.

Kate sighed wistfully, thinking about all the times she’d come down this winding driveway. She and Jason didn’t date; in fact he hardly seemed to notice her as a woman. But she’d been friends with his younger brother Gene, and with the housekeeper, Sheila, long before that odd kind of friendship developed between Jason and herself, born out of an equally odd confrontation one night when he’d been drinking. He didn’t let anyone very close, even Kate, but she was allowed privileges that no one else was. He was protective of her, in a rough sort of way; a kind of unrelated older brother. Of course, that wasn’t at all what Kate wanted from him. But it was as much as she could expect from a man who kept to himself the way he always did.

There was a lot of road between the open range with its spacious improved grazing land, green now that spring had arrived, and the house resting in its solitary nest of trees. In one pasture, cows with new calves were grazing. In another, young castrated bulls made up the steer crop. In still another, huge Santa Gertrudis bulls had been turned out with hearty longhorn-Santa Gertrudis crossbred cows for the third stage in Diamond Spur’s three-crossbreed breeding program. In still another pasture, purebred longhorn bulls had been introduced to the crop of two-year-old heifers for their first breeding. The longhorn papas would insure that the new mothers dropped small calves, insuring an easy delivery and less herd losses.

Kate smiled at the efficiency of it all. Jason was a wizard with cattle. His sprawling cow-calf commercial operation had a spotless reputation with its customers, and a large part of it was due to Jason’s personal interest in his ranch and the time he spent overseeing every part of its operation. He was always the first to try new techniques, to use better methods of production. That ability to change with the times, to bend to the demands of modern cattle marketing, had kept his Diamond Spur ranch solvent. When, several years back, other ranchers had turned to investing heavily in new land acquisitions, Jason was experimenting with artificial insemination and embryo transplants and innovative methods of nutritional supplementation.

Kate pushed back her long, dark brown braid and settled lower in the saddle. She grimaced as her jean-clad leg brushed over a nail peeking through the leather. She’d designed and decorated these jeans herself. She hoped they weren’t torn because they were part of a collection she hoped to sell to the manufacturing company where she worked. She really couldn’t afford any new denim. Things were in bad shape at the small place she shared with her mother, but she didn’t want Jason to know just how bad. Anyway, he didn’t need any more worry at the moment. The cattle industry was depressed, and even a man with Jason’s business sense could go broke. If he lived, she thought with black irritation, remembering how impossible he was about injuries. Jason never would go to a doctor with a cut. He’d try to treat it himself and the only way he’d have it seen about was if it got badly infected, or if Kate stuck her nose in. For Jason’s foreman Gabe to run off in the middle of a roundup hunting her, and risking the boss’s temper asking her to intervene, it must be pretty bad this time.

Nobody ever seemed to guess that she wasn’t as confident as she pretended to be with Jason. He intimidated her, too. After all, he was thirty—almost ten full years her senior. But she’d learned over the years to hide her uncertainty. Now her dark, slender eyebrows drew together as she wondered if he’d done some irreparable damage to his tough hide. He was male perfection itself, as most of the single women around San Frio would have agreed. It was a pity that he’d become such a dyed in the wool misogynist. She wondered how he’d ever get an heir for Diamond Spur with that attitude. And if anything happened to Jason, his younger brother Gene would never be strong enough to hold the family finances together.

The Diamond Spur had belonged to Jason Donavan since the death of his father, although Gene would inherit a good share of it. Old J.B. Donavan had drowned when the Frio River came down in flood one spring morning eight years ago. But the ranch’s name went back a lot longer than eight years. Back in 1873, a Civil War veteran named Blalock Donavan had chanced to sit in on a poker game in San Antonio. In a game that went on all night, and during which one man was killed for cheating, the young Confederate sergeant from Calhoun County, Georgia, won the last hand with a legendary straight diamond flush—and without any wild cards to make that impossible feat any more possible.

In the pot had been a total of one hundred Yankee dollars—and the deed to a broken down cattle ranch in Frio County, Texas. The ranch hadn’t had a name at the time. Everyone locally just called it the Bryan place. But Blalock Donavan had won it on a Royal Diamond Flush, with a silver spur in the kitty as his part of the ante. So the Diamond Spur it became. The Diamond Spur it remained. And a Donavan still owned it, 113 years later.

Kate’s pale green eyes softened as she saw the heavyset woman bending over a pan on the front porch. Diamond Spur was one of the richest cattle ranches in Texas, enabling Jason to drive a Mercedes and a new very classy black Bronco. The interior of the house was like an antique museum, with pieces from around the world. And Jason entertained on a lavish scale. In fact, Jason’s kitchen had every modern convenience, but his housekeeper, Sheila James, still did her own canning.

Sheila was an institution at the ranch. Rumor had it that she’d been madly in love with old J.B. Donavan, but that gentleman had no use for women after his Nell deserted him and his two sons. The old man took to strong drink and became a holy terror. They said even Sheila had grown afraid of him after that, but that she’d stayed on to look after the boys. She had character and an uncanny tolerance for people. She had a lot of perseverence, too, because old J.B. Donavan had been a hardcase with a mean temper. Jason still was, although Kate could reach him when no one else could. That was something of a joke locally, Kate knew, but nobody laughed about it in front of Jason.

Sheila looked up from the lazy rhythm of the front porch swing, her blue eyes sparkling as Kate came closer. “I sent Gabe after you. I hope you don’t mind,” she said apologetically. “I figured Jason would bleed to death and become an eyesore out there because his men would be too scared to bury him.”

She paused in the act of snapping green beans and stringing them, the shallow pan across the knees of her brilliant green and yellow checked housedress, her salt and pepper hair short and sweaty. She was fifty and looked it. Even Jason gave her a measure of respect, but Sheila was no match for his temper when it was aroused.

“Can’t you do anything with him?” Kate replied mischievously.

“Not without a loaded gun,” came the dry reply. “Gabe told me that Jason finally stopped the bleeding and bandaged himself, but the blood was still seeping through when he went out again. I’m afraid it needs stitches.”

“Well, I’ll see what I can do,” Kate promised. “Is he where Gabe left him, with the crew out on the Smith bottoms?”

“That’s what Gabe said. Thanks, Kate,” Sheila replied.

Kate smiled as she turned the horse. “Old-fashioned transportation, isn’t it?” She grinned. “But it’s a long walk, and Mom has the car at work, since it’s grocery store day.”

“And you wouldn’t ride over with Gabe because he’s sweet on you?” Sheila asked knowingly.

Kate, who was twenty and a little nervous about men because of an extremely sheltered background, nodded. Her father and mother had raised her in the same strict fashion they’d been raised. They were old-fashioned, church-going people. And even though her father was dead, her mother was still a stickler for morality and didn’t hesitate to ask Jason’s opinion of Kate’s infrequent dates. That rankled, too, but Kate’s mother, Mary, thought the sun rose and set on the man. Kate’s late father had been Jason’s foreman, and she sometimes thought that was one reason Jason seemed to feel responsible for her and Mary.

She drew her mind back to the present. “Gabe is a very nice man, but I want to be a fashion designer. I don’t want to get married for ages yet.”

Sheila nodded, thinking privately that Kate and Jason got along so well because both of them wanted their independence. Jason would probably never marry since that Maryland woman had thrown him over for a movie contract.

“Good luck,” she murmured. “He was already wound up and cussing when he went out the door this morning. Had some terrible things to say about what I did to his eggs.” She sniffed, snapping beans with renewed vengeance. “Nothing wrong with salsa and refried beans on top of them. Well, is there?” she asked Kate.

Kate knew how Sheila made salsa, and having tasted the extremely hot sauce once, she had every sympathy for Jason. “Why did you put salsa on them?”

“Because the minute his feet hit the floor, he started cussing because he couldn’t find where I put his jeans, and then he swore the detergent I used gave him an allergic reaction, he said there wasn’t enough cover on his bed...” Sheila’s thin lips flattened. “I guess I cause cancer, too, although he stopped short of accusing me of that!”

Kate shook her head, laughing softly. “You ought to short sheet his bed for him.”

“Oh, don’t you worry, I’ll get even,” Sheila replied. “He loves cherry pie. Hell will freeze over and shiver before he gets another one.”

That wasn’t quite true, of course. Jason would get hungry for that cherry pie and start flattering his housekeeper, and he’d have his cherry pie like a shot. He and Sheila had these blowups almost daily, and both forgot them just as frequently.

“Well, I’ll go try to patch him up so you can get your own back on him,” Kate offered.

“If you can get him back here, I’ve got some nasty antiseptic...!” the older woman called.

Kate shook her finger at Sheila and rode on. But once she was on the narrow, rutted path through the grass that led to the holding pens, she felt a little nervous. Jason in a temper wasn’t the most pleasant person to be around. Part of Kate was still a little afraid of him, although she wouldn’t admit it or show it. He was a very masculine man, and he didn’t bother to hide his faults; he just let them hang out for everyone to see. He’d never have made it as a diplomat.

Kate smoothed her hands down her jeans and fumbled to tuck the shirttail of her faded blue print blouse back into them. Down the road, a deep, drawling male voice called out orders with more than the usual amount of venom, rapid-fire Spanish reverting quickly to English and back again. Jason spoke both. Since most of the local ranch hands were of Mexican-American descent, being bilingual came as naturally as wearing boots around San Frio. Cattle bawled and dust was everywhere, with men on foot and men on horseback trying to keep some kind of mad order in all the confusion.

This rural part of south Texas hadn’t changed a lot since the Civil War. There was less native grassland because of the enormous amount of grazing that had been done back in the cattle era. These days ranchers who wanted good grass had to plant it, so the local Soil Conservation Service people were Johnny-on-the-spot with help for those who wanted it, as Jason had. But, too, there was a lot of scrub and more prickly pear and mesquite than anybody wanted. Despite the drawbacks, the open country was the same; wide and spread out and endless, with just a few scattered trees here and there to signal houses hidden from the sun. It was pioneer country. Cowboy country. And Kate, who’d been born next door to the Donavans, loved it with all her heart. Sitting astride the quarter horse with the wind blowing the grass down and teasing her shirt, she felt as free and unchained as the land itself.

She left her horse at the big makeshift corral and moved along on booted feet, tugging nervously at her long swath of hair. Her hair was a deep, rich brown, down to her waist when she didn’t braid it or put it up. She had a pretty oval face with wide-spaced green eyes under long lashes, and a straight nose and a bow mouth. It wasn’t a particularly beautiful face. It was thin and high-cheekboned. But Kate had a sweet personality and a kind of unabashed honesty that overshadowed her lack of beauty.

Just ahead, a large fenced area held a number of bawling calves and unhappy cows who were having their babies taken away for branding, tagging, and a disease check. There was a long chute down which calves were herded singly to a tilt tray that held the bovine head in a kind of vice while the rest of the protesting animal was branded, tagged, and vaccinated. A lot of ranchers had recently gone back to the old-time way of using a corral and doing each animal out in the open with ropes and cutting horses. But Jason liked this new technique and his men had it down to an art—they could usually tag, brand, and vaccinate an animal a minute.

Most of the victims were calves, but new bulls and replacement heifers had to be screened, too. They were given the same treatment, and many of them protested. Jason ran purebred longhorn cattle in this section of the ranch, so the horns on some of them were frankly dangerous if a cowboy let himself get backed into a corner. That was what Gabe had said Jason had done. Jason didn’t like mistakes. He didn’t make them himself, and he expected the same perfection in other people. So naturally he wasn’t admitting that he was badly hurt. That unforgiving attitude was a source of worry to Kate, who was afraid that someday she might make a slip and be crossed off his list of friends forever.

Jason was leaning against the chute, tall and powerful and darkly elegant in his unconscious pose, one worn boot hooked on the lowest board of the chute while he watched big blond Gabe drive a calf up it to be worked. But before Kate was halfway to him, his dark eyes had found her. He always seemed to see her before anyone else did.

She could see that he was favoring his right arm, resting it on his propped-up leg. He looked good in Western clothing. Faded jeans and a worn black Stetson, leather boots curled up and matted with dirt from long use and a dusty chambray shirt made him look like a handsome desperado.

He was handsome to Kate, anyway—even if his high-cheekboned face had overly craggy features and he wasn’t shy about speaking his mind. He was dark-eyed, dark-skinned, with a deceptively lithe build. Tall and powerfully muscled, Jason had one of those physiques seen so frequently on the screen and so rarely in real life. With the misshappen black Stetson pulled low over his eyes, he had that dangerous look. Kate came closer.

“I wondered why Gabe vanished all of a sudden,” he mused in a deep, south Texas drawl. His dark eyes cut upward to where his forearm was trying to look invisible. “My God, are we so hard up for help that we’re kidnapping seamstresses?”

“I’m a designer, not a seamstress,” Kate pointed out pleasantly, smiling up at the tall man. “And if you don’t think I can throw a calf, stand back and watch me. My daddy was foreman of this outfit before Gabe was, and he taught me all I know.”

Jason’s dark eyes softened as they searched her creamy complexion, lingering on her thick, dark eyelashes. “I guess he did, but most of these calves outweigh you, honey,” he murmured dryly.

His casual endearment made her heart dance, but she kept Jason from seeing it. “Your arm’s bleeding,” she remarked, nodding toward the bloodstained sleeve.

“NO!” he exclaimed in mock surprise.

“You need to see a doctor,” she continued, unabashed.

“It would be too embarrassing for both of us if I bothered Dr. Harris over a little scratch like this,” he said reasonably.

“If you don’t, I’ll stand here all day and get heat stroke,” she sighed. “But just go ahead and step over me while you work. If you don’t bleed to death first,” she added darkly.

Gene would have laughed at that, but Jason didn’t crack a smile. Jason’s younger brother, Gene, was a live wire, ever since his marriage to Cherry Mather. But Jason had always been the quiet one, the deep one. He hardly ever smiled, except when Kate was around.

“I don’t have time,” he muttered.

“Yes, you do,” she said stubbornly. She put her hands on her hips and moved closer, staring doggedly up at him.

At close quarters, the effect he had on her nerves was dynamite. She’d always had a kind of crush on him, but suddenly it was being translated into something new and deliciously physical that attracted her and frightened her, all at once.

She didn’t know that her proximity was giving him some problems as well. Little Kate who’d always been like a little sister was beginning to make him nervous and irritable. He’d avoided her lately for that reason. Now here she was, getting on his nerves again, when he needed it least.

“I told you, my arm’s all right,” he said curtly, his voice more cutting than he meant it to be, because her unconscious posture was bothering him. Her firm young breasts were all too visible under the thin fabric of her shirt, and the tight belt she wore with those tailored jeans brought his dark eyes down over her tiny waist and full hips and long, graceful legs. That made him madder and he forced his eyes back up to hers.

But she wasn’t looking. She’d taken possession of his arm while his attention was diverted.

She unfastened the cuff and began to roll the sleeve up. “Go ahead and growl, I don’t mind.” Touching him even in this casual way made her tingle all over, so she resorted to humor to hide her reaction. Her green eyes danced up to his. “I’ll give you a peppermint stick if you let me drive you to the doctor, Jason.”

As usual, her light teasing knocked the fire off his temper. He gave in, chuckling in spite of himself as he watched her dark head bend. She was so full of fun, so unlike him. She bubbled through life, always finding the bright spots, while he brooded in the shadows. She’d always been able to make him laugh. Nobody else did, God knew. If he had a surefire weakness, Kate was it.

She drew the fabric carefully up his arm, noting first the terribly complicated black watch strapped in the dark hairs on his wrist, then his muscles as she uncovered a blood-soaked white handkerchief; linen, too, with the initials JED in one corner, for Jason Everett Donavan.

“If this is a little cut, I’m George Washington,” she muttered, grimacing as she moved the bandage aside to view the deep gash above his elbow. She looked up, searching his eyes. They were very Spanish, like part of his ancestry, and he had a way of looking at her that made her knees go weak.

“My, my, how you’ve changed, George,” he mused.

“It needs stitches,” she said. “It’s too deep to bandage.”

“It isn’t. But I’ll let you patch it up,” he sighed irritably.

“We’d have to go back to the house. And Sheila’s there,” she added, smiling mischievously. “Waiting, with a bottle of nasty antiseptic and just bristling with evil intent. Dr. Harris, on the other hand, is a kind man who wouldn’t hurt you. He’s the lesser of the two evils.”

“Damn it, a little blood won’t hurt me,” he countered, his dark eyes daring his very interested cowhands to say a word.

“Will gangrene hurt you?” she challenged, losing her patience as she was losing the argument. He could be so bullheaded! “Do you want to lose your arm because you’re too pigheaded to see a doctor?”

“You tell him, Miss Kate,” Red Barton agreed from his perch atop the fence. He was just out of his teens, a good cowboy with a tendency toward alcohol that would probably have kept him off any other ranch. But he’d saved Jason from a diamondback the same week he’d signed on at Diamond Spur, and he’d be there for life, if Kate knew her taciturn neighbor. Jason never forgot a favor.

“Gangrene’s a turrrrrible thing,” Barton continued. “First she gets red stripes running down, then green, then the whole thing starts to rot off...” He shuddered as his pale eyes widened and his hands gestured theatrically.

“Oh, shut up, Barton!” Jason shot at him. “I don’t need any advice from a man who almost lost his own damned foot to a mesquite thorn!”

Barton lifted his chin, “Well, at least I finally did go to a doctor, didn’t I, boss man?” he challenged.

“Sure,” Jason agreed. “Feet first, in an ambulance.”

“No need to rub it in,” the cowboy replied with a grin.

“All the more reason for you to go willingly, now,” Kate told Jason. “Think,” she said conspiratorially, “how your men would gloat if you had to be carried away.”

Jason looked quietly furious. In fact, he looked hunted. He glared at Barton, who looked like a cheshire cat, and then back at Kate, who stood just looking at him, her arms folded.

“I give up,” he said heavily.

“Don’t worry, boss, they’ll give you a bullet to bite on,” Barton called after him.

“Save one for yourself, and a gun to use it in, if that lot of calves isn’t done when I get back,” Jason snapped back. “Hey, Gabe!” he yelled to his foreman.

The big blond man turned with a hand to his ear.

“I’ll remember this!” Jason told him.

Gabe made him a bow guaranteed to incite any half-enraged man to violence. Jason’s eyes flashed and he took a step forward.

“He’s young, Jason.” Kate got between him and his quarry. “They’re all young.”

He looked down at her with smoldering eyes under his jutting, scowling brow. “So are you, cupcake,” he said.

“That’s right, old man,” she returned. Then she frowned a little. “Well, not too old,” she amended. “You’re just thirty. I guess you’ve got a few good years left.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “My God. Look who’s talking about age—a child of twenty.”

She glared at him. “Almost twenty-one,” she amended. “The same age as Gene.”

“Yes, Gene.” He spared his branding operation another wistful glance. “They’ll never get it done alone,” he muttered. “If only I could get Gene to hold up his end, I could show a profit. Damn it, why does he want to fool around with painting? He’s chasing rainbows, and on my time!”

“Gene isn’t a boy anymore, Jason,” she reminded him as they walked toward his big black Ford Bronco. “He’s a grown man, with a wife.”

“Some wife,” he said harshly. “Cherry couldn’t boil water, and her idea of married life is to watch soap operas and walk around with her hair in curlers.”

“She’s just eighteen,” she said.

“I tried so damned hard to get them to wait.” He opened the passenger door and helped her up into the high cab with a steely hand and closed it. Before she could get him to listen to her protests, he was under the wheel, managing very well with his right arm. With the bucket seats so close together, she was almost touching it, too. Kate was fascinated by the inside of this vehicle. It had power windows and cruise control, a stereo radio, tape deck, and two gearshifts—one for automatic drive and one for four-wheel drive. The old Ford that Kate shared with her mother was a straight shift with no frills, and by comparison, the Bronco was sheer luxury, right down to the comfortable fabric-covered seats.

“You aren’t fit to drive,” she complained.

“Nobody’s driving me anywhere, unless it’s to the cemetery one day,” he returned. He fumbled for a cigarette, but he couldn’t manage the wheel with his injured arm. “Damn.”

“I thought you’d quit,” she mused. She took the cigarette, lit it, and handed it to him, making a face at the tangy, unpleasant tobacco taste.

“I did,” he agreed with a faint grin. “I quit for a week, in fact. And I quit last month, too. I quit religiously about every third week.”

“Your ashtray looks like it,” she observed, watching him thump ashes over a pile of finished butts the size of a teacup upended. “How can you stand that mess?”

“If I clean it out, it will depress people who ride with me.”

She stared at him. “Come again?”

“Most of my men aren’t neat. If I start cleaning out ashtrays, they’ll think they have to do it, too. They’ll feel threatened and they’ll all quit, and I’ll have to handle roundup all by myself.”

He had a dry wit that few people ever experienced. Kate, sitting contentedly beside him, felt constant amazement that of all the people he knew, she was the only one who ever got this close. He seemed never to see her as a threat, which was more irritating to Kate the older she got. She was becoming a woman, and he didn’t even seem to notice.

Well, he did hate women, she had to admit. He didn’t date, or he hadn’t in the past few years. Not since that Eastern tenderfoot had come out to visit a neighbor and Jason had fallen head over heels in love with her. He’d been all set to propose, with the ring bought and everything, when she suddenly announced that she was off to Hollywood where she’d been offered a movie career. Jason had tried to talk her out of it, but she wouldn’t be budged. Men were a dime a dozen, she’d laughed at him. Movie contracts were thin on the ground. Sorry, sucker, in other words. And Jason had gone on a three-day drunk that had become legendary in local circles, all the more shocking because he never touched liquor in any form. That prejudice was a holdover from his childhood because J.B. Donavan’s drinking had brought violence down on his sons’ heads.

Although Kate had grown up next door, and her father had worked for the Donavans, Jason was so much older that she’d had very little contact with him. But Gene and Kate had gone to school together, and she often helped him with his grammar. He’d talked occasionally about their upbringing, and it had softened her toward Jason who one afternoon just after his almost-fiancée’s defection, had chanced to come growling out of his study, dead drunk. Jason’s unexpected appearance had first disturbed, then shocked Kate. She’d never seen him anything except cold sober and in complete control of himself. Until then.

“Little Miss English tutor,” he’d laughed coldly, those dark eyes frankly insulting as Gene had tried unsuccessfully to push him back into the study. “Is English all you’re teaching my brother in these cozy afternoon sessions?”

“Come on now, Jay,” Gene had coaxed, half a head shorter and not a fraction as strong as the jean-clad, unshaven man he was trying to budge. “Don’t pick on Kate.”

“I don’t want damned women cluttering up my house! Not even your women!” Jason had stormed, black eyes flashing, his lean sharp face as hard as marble. Stone.

But Kate knew the look of pain. She had an uncanny empathy for people who were hurt; she could see it through anger or bad temper or even drunkenness. Jason’s heart was broken, couldn’t Gene see how much he was hurting? It was like watching a poor, wounded animal trying to escape from a bullet.

Ignoring Gene’s frantic signs to go away, she went right up to Jason and took one of his lean, strong hands in hers. “Come on, Jason,” she said, her voice as soft as it was when she talked to the kittens at home. “You’re tired. You need to lie down.”

Gene’s pale, broad face winced as he waited for Jason to knock her down. But, amazingly, his brother’s sharp features relaxed. Through a haze of alcohol, Jason went with her like a lamb back into his study.

“How about getting Sheila to make a pot of coffee, Gene?” Kate asked him, nodding as her eyes told him to step on it.

“Sure. Right now.”

He was gone and Kate closed the door, coaxing Jason to the long leather lounger. She helped him down and sat beside him, her slender fingers gently stroking back his disheveled hair. He was beautiful, in a rough sort of way, she thought, her eyes going over his chiseled sharp features, the stubborn jutting chin, the beautifully carved mouth. He lay quietly, watching her with eyes that only half saw, black and intent.

“It’s only been a few months since Daddy died,” she said, keeping her voice low and soft. “He was my whole world, the only person who ever cared enough to let me be myself. He didn’t want me to marry money or be famous. He loved me just the way I was. At first,” she continued, because he was really listening, “I thought the pain would never stop. But day by day, little by little, I got through it. You will, too, Jason. One day, you won’t even remember what she looked like.”

He caught the soft fingers stroking his damp brow. “How old are you?” he asked unexpectedly.

She smiled. “Eighteen.”

“A very wise old eighteen, little girl,” he replied. His drawl was a little slurred, but his eyes never wavered from her face. “What the hell do you care if I mourn myself to death?”

“Jason, you’ve been awfully good to Mama and me since Daddy died,” she said gently. “And I guess nobody else looks deep enough to see how bad it’s hurting you....”

“I’m not hurting,” he interrupted curtly. “No damned woman is ever going to hurt me!”

She closed her fingers around his. “Of course not,” she agreed, soothing him back down. “You’re just worked to death. But you need time to get your life back in order. Why don’t you go away for a week or two? Gene says you never rest. A vacation would put the bloom back in your cheeks,” she said with a mischievous smile. “The vinegar back into your black heart....”

“Shut up or I’ll throw you out the front door,” he replied. But there was a faint glimmer in his eyes, and it didn’t sound like any serious threat. “God, you’re brave.”

“Somebody has to save you from yourself,” she sighed. “Alas, I guess I’ve been chosen. Now how about a nice bowl of razor blade soup and an ugly pill?”

He burst out laughing. Gene and Sheila came in the study door together with stunned amusement suddenly claiming their faces. And that had been the beginning of an odd and beautiful relationship. From that day on, Jason became Kate’s responsibility if he got sick, or hurt, or in a fight. He never touched liquor again, but he seemed to have a knack for accidents. Especially the past few months. This was the third time since winter began and ended that Kate had been summoned by someone to look after the big man. And he reciprocated in unexpected, and sometimes unwelcomed, ways.

She became the object of a rough kind of affectionate, almost brotherly overseeing. In fact, Jason had taken on a lot of responsibility that Kate hadn’t appreciated. Like helping Kate and her mother to buy their father’s property while he managed it for them. Like finding Mary, Kate’s mother, a job in the local textile factory. Like checking up on the infrequent dates Kate had and making sure those men didn’t take advantage of her. But Kate had managed to keep her temper, and her sense of humor, as she’d survived his first attempts at affection.

But when, a few months ago, she’d begun to notice Jason in a new way, he backed off, as if he sensed the almost imperceptible shift in her attitude toward him.

Not that it was blatant. Kate hadn’t realized it herself until a month or so ago. But Jason had suddenly left her to run her own life. Actually, he’d given up running it last year, although he’d protested when she wanted to study fashion design. There was a school in Atlanta that she’d favored, and Jason put his foot down hard. Her mother needed her, he said. Atlanta was just too far away. There were home study courses. He’d find her one. He had, despite her objections. Kate was almost through it now, studying at night.

She worked as a serger on the pants line at the manufacturing company where her mother sewed on the shirt line. It was interesting work, and Kate loved anything to do with the construction of clothes. But serging was becoming sporadic, and today there hadn’t been any work for her, so she was sent home by her floor lady.

“Why aren’t you at work?” Jason asked after a minute.

“They ran out of pants for me to serge,” she said. “They’ve got Mama doing repairs that were sent up from that Central American plant they opened last year.”

He glanced at her sideways. “Do you really like that job?”

“I like it.” She smiled at him. “I love the textile business.”

“And you’re still hell-bent on being some famous designer, I gather,” he said tersely.

“Why not? If you’re going to dream, dream big.” She eyed him. “You did.”

“I had more than the usual amount of drive,” he replied. He winced as he brought the cigarette to his mouth with his sore arm. “Damn, this thing hurts!”

“You should have let me drive,” she said.

“I’m not crippled.”

“You’re incorrigible, that’s what you are.”

“So you keep telling me.”

He shifted, and she caught the scents of leather and tobacco that clung to him. He hadn’t taken off his hat, and she noticed how battered the poor old black thing was.

“Don’t you ever buy new hats?” she asked unexpectedly.

“I’ve just gotten this one broken in,” he protested. “It takes years to get a hat just so.”

“You’ve worn that one since I was in grammar school.”

“That’s what I mean. It’s just getting comfortable.”

As the big vehicle rumbled over a country bridge, one of the few wooden ones left, Kate glanced down at the trickle of water below. Any day now, the rains would come and the rivers would fill up, and low places like this would become dangerous. Even the smallest dip could become a river with rain, because there was so little vegetation to contain the water.

“Look here, you aren’t giving Gabe any encouragement, are you?” he asked so suddenly that she jumped.

Her pale eyes fixed on his dark, somber face. “What?”

His eyes held steady on the road as the burly vehicle shot down the long, level stretch of road that led into San Frio. “I don’t like the way he looks at you lately,” he added, glancing at her in a strange, possessive kind of way that even her inexperienced eye recognized. “And I sure as hell don’t like him coming over to the house when your mother isn’t there.”

She didn’t quite know how to handle what he was saying. She watched his averted face nervously, trying to measure the amount of feeling that had been in his terse statement. Her heart was going crazy. “He didn’t even get out of the truck,” she began.

“Gabe likes girls, and you’re filling out.” He didn’t look at her as he said it. He didn’t want her to see how disturbed he was at the thought of Gabe making a pass at her. “Don’t lead him on. He’s a good man and I’d hate to lose him. But, so help me, if he ever touched you, I’d kill him.”

Kate felt the ground go out from under her. She couldn’t even speak for the shock, she just stared at him. There had been a trace of violence in that threat, and the normal drawl had gone into eclipse as he spoke.

“Jason, didn’t you notice that I was riding Kip?” she asked after a minute, and the words came out roughly.

He frowned. “So?”

“Gabe came in the pickup,” she said. “I wouldn’t ride over to Diamond Spur with him. I know he thinks he’s interested in me. He’ll get over it. Last month it was little Betsy Weeks,” she added with a forced smile. “He’s a typical love ’em and leave ’em cowboy. He’s no threat.”

He glanced at her sideways. “Okay.”

“Anyway, I can handle my dates, thank you,” she said.

“I remember the last time you said that,” he replied with a faintly amused smile. “Do you?”

She hated that smile. Of course she remembered the last time, how could she forget? She’d defended to her mother the reputation of a boy she wanted to date, only to have to suffer the embarrassment of calling home from a pay phone in the middle of the night to be rescued. But Jason had come in Mary Whittman’s place, and Kate had never heard the end of it. In addition, Kate’s erstwhile date had sported a black eye for several days thereafter and subsequently joined the Marine Corps. It had all but ruined her social life. Local boys knew Jason, and since the incident, Kate had spent every weekend at home. There was nothing between her and Jason, but his attitude had created that impression. She wondered if he realized how people looked at his possessive attitude, or if he cared.

She glanced at him, frowning. He was possessive, all right. But was it only because they were friends, or was he feeling the same odd longings that were kindling inside her? She looked away nervously.

“Would you like to listen to some music?” she asked, her voice edgy and quick.

He glanced at her and smiled. “Okay, honey. End of discussion. Turn on whatever you like.”

What she liked was country-western, and that seemed to suit him very well. If his arm was hurting, he made sure it didn’t show. Kate sat back against the seat with a sigh, while turbulent sensations came and went in her taut body. She couldn’t even breathe properly. What if he noticed?

Things were getting totally out of hand. She felt almost uncomfortable this close to Jason, but in an exciting kind of way. She shifted, wondering at the remark he’d made about Gabe. Had it been just a joking statement, or had he meant it?

Well, he’d never so much as made a pass at her, and knowing how he felt about women, there was no future in mooning over him. She’d already realized that. But it was easier to tell herself he was off limits than it was to do anything about it. And what good would it do to drive herself crazy with doomed hope? She leaned back, closed her eyes, and listened to the rhythmic strains of the music as they drove toward town.

CHAPTER TWO

DR. HARRIS WAS a small, stout, bespectacled man in his fifties who knew Jason Donavan all too well. With a resigned smile, he put in fifteen stitches, injected Jason with a tetanus booster, and sent him home. Kate and the doctor exchanged speaking glances behind the tall rancher’s back and Dr. Harris grinned.

“See how easy that was?” Kate said as they reached the Bronco. “A few stitches and you’re back on the job.”

He didn’t bother to answer. He opened her door for her with exaggerated patience, closed it, and paused to light a cigarette on his way around the hood to his own side.

San Frio was a lazy little south Texas town with a pioneering history but not much of a present. It boasted a grocery store, a post office, a small clinic, a pharmacy, a weekly newspaper, a small textile company, a video and appliance sales and service store, and an enormous and prosperous feed store. It seemed to Kate to be more an outgrowth of the ranch than a town, however, since Jason had a resident veterinarian, blacksmith, mechanic, accounting firm, computer specialist, and other assorted employees who could do everything from artificial insemination of cows to complicated laboratory cultures on specimens from the cattle.

Huge oak trees lined the cracked, crumbling sidewalks that supported as many deserted buildings as occupied ones. The drugstore had the same overhead fans that had cooled Texas ranchers sixty years before, and there was a hitching post that Texas rangers had used as long ago as the 1890s.

“It never changes,” Kate said with a smile, watching two old men sit in cane-bottom chairs outside the grocery store, exchanging whittled pieces of wood. “If it lasts a hundred years, San Frio will still look like this.”

Jason closed his door and fastened his seat belt. “Thank God,” he said. “I’d hate like hell to see it turn into a city the size of San Antonio.”

“And what’s wrong with San Antonio?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” he replied. “Not one thing. I just like San Frio better. More elbow room. Fasten your seat belt.”

“We’re only going to the ranch....”

He looped an arm over the back of the seat and stared at her with pursed lips and a do-it-or-I’ll-sit-here-all-day look. After a minute of that stubborn, concentrated scrutiny, Kate reached for her seat belt.

“You intimidate people,” she muttered. “Look at old Mr. Davis watching you.”

He glanced amusedly toward the store where the stooped old man was grinning toward them. Jason raised a hand and so did the old man.

“My grandfather used to pal around with him,” Kate said. “He said Mr. Davis was a hell-raiser in his time. And look at him now, whittling.”

“At least he’s alive to do it,” he replied.

“My grandfather couldn’t whittle, but he used to braid rope out of horsehair,” Kate recalled. “He said it was hard on the hands, but it worked twice as well as that awful Mexican hemp to rope cattle.”

“The best ropes are made of nylon,” Jason replied. He started the jeep and reversed it. “After it’s properly seasoned, you can’t buy a better throwing rope.”

“You ought to know,” she mused. She studied his dark face, her eyes skimming over the sharp features, the straight nose. He had an elegance about him, although she decided he wasn’t handsome at all. In his city clothes, he could compete with the fanciest businessman.

He caught that silent scrutiny and cocked an eyebrow, looking rakish under the brim of his weatherbeaten hat. “Well, are you satisfied, now that I’ve been stitched and cross-stitched?”

“I guess.” She settled back against the seat as Jason roared out of town at his usual breakneck pace, bouncing her from seat to roof and down again. She grimaced. “At least you’ll heal properly now.”

“I’d have healed properly alone, thank you. God knows why everybody on the place thinks I’ll die if they don’t drag you over every time I scratch myself,” he muttered.

“Because to you everything short of disembowelment is a scratch,” she replied. “People do make mistakes from time to time, even you. It’s human.”

“That’s the one thing I’m not, cupcake,” he replied dryly. “Ask any one of my men during roundup, and they’ll tell you the same thing.”

He turned off the city road onto the long, sparsely settled ranch road that led eventually to the Diamond Spur. Clouds were gathering against the horizon, dark blue and threatening as they loomed over the gently rolling landscape.

“Those are rain clouds,” Jason remarked. “The weatherman was predicting some flash flooding this afternoon.” He scowled. “If the Frio runs out of her banks before we finish the bottoms, we may lose some cattle.”

“You and your blessed cattle,” she grumbled. “Don’t you ever think about anything else?”

“I can’t afford to,” he mused. “Ranchers are going bust all over. Don’t you read the market bulletin anymore?”

“Only when I can’t find a fashion magazine,” she returned.

“Speaking of which, how are you doing with that designing course?”

“I’m almost through it, thank you,” she sighed. “Although I still think I’d have done better at a regular design school.” She glared at him. “Thanks to you, I never made it out of Frio County.”

“Atlanta is too far away,” he replied imperturbably. “Besides, you’d get claustrophobia down in Georgia. Too many trees.”

“I like trees. I’d have made friends.”

“Your mother would have missed you,” he said, glancing at her as they sped down the deserted road. “She isn’t half as capable as she makes out. She needs looking after.”

“Apparently you think I do, too,” she replied, feeling argumentative. “And that can’t go on, Jason. I’m a grown woman now, not a teenage girl.”

“You were pretty wise, for a teenager.” His eyes narrowed as he stared down the road. “I don’t guess you knew that time how dangerous it was to come that close to me when I’d been drinking.”

“Which was probably a good thing, or I’d never have had the nerve,” she recalled with a warm smile, studying him. “But you needed someone. Gene was too frightened of you to do any real good, and so was Sheila.”

“They remembered too well what happened when the old man got loaded,” he said, memories tautening his jaw. One corner of his mouth twisted mockingly. “He used to hit. The drunker he was, the harder he hit. I don’t drink often, or very much.” He shifted against the seat, his eyes narrow. “I guess I’ve always been afraid I might end up like him. And who knows, if you hadn’t come along at the right time, I might have.”

“Not you,” she said with conviction, her quiet eyes adoring his profile. “You’re not a cruel man.”

“Neither was he before he started drinking,” Jason said. He sighed. “You were lucky, honey. Your father never touched the stuff.”

“I was lucky in a lot of ways,” she agreed. “I still am.” She wondered if Jason knew that she’d heard about how his father had once extended his blind fury to Jason and Gene’s mother, that he’d beaten Nell Donavan once and only once, and that she’d vanished the next day, leaving her sons at his mercy. Probably he didn’t realize that Sheila had passed that bit of gossip on to Kate. He hardly ever talked about his childhood, even to her. It was a mark of affection he had for her that she knew anything about those dark days. Jason was a very private man. “I’ve never been really afraid of you,” she said absently, “even when you were drinking. That night, I never thought that you might harm me.”

He smiled at her. “You saw deep that night,” he said quietly. “Right through the anger to the pain. Most people never look past my temper, but you did.”

“I liked you, God knows why,” she said, smiling back. “And there wasn’t anybody else who seemed inclined to look after you after that blond sawmill got through with you.”

“She taught me a hard lesson,” he replied. “One I’ll never forget. In my way, I loved her.”

“One bad experience shouldn’t sour you for life,” she told him. “All women aren’t out for what they can get.”

“How would you know?” he asked bitterly. “You with your little girl crushes on movie stars and pinup boys? My God, the men you’ve dated weren’t even men in any real sense. They were geldings you could lead around by the nose,” he said shortly. “You haven’t even been intimate with a man, have you?”

Her face went stiff. Amazing, she thought angrily, that it was the twentieth century and she still couldn’t toss off sophisticated chatter with any credence. “How could I have managed that, with you and my mother bulldogging me at every turn and keeping me away from men who knew anything?” She turned in the seat, her green eyes accusing. “My goodness, after Baxter Hewett joined the Marines, all the local men decided you were too much competition and I’ve spent my evenings at home ever since!”

He lifted his cigarette to his mouth with a faintly surprised glance in her direction as they bumped along the ranch road. “I didn’t realize that.”

“Think how it looks, when you beat up men who try to seduce me,” she sighed.

“I don’t want other men seducing you,” he said without thinking. “Especially not a ladies’ man like Hewett.”

“Why not?” she burst out, exasperated.

“There’s a question.” He turned off onto a dirt road. “God, it’s dusty!” he muttered.

She spared the thick yellow dust a glance and turned her attention back to him. “Go ahead, avoid the question. That’s what you always do when you don’t want to talk about things.”

He lifted an eyebrow as he glanced at her. “Well, it works, doesn’t it?” he asked reasonably. “All right, if you want to know the truth, sexual freedom may be in vogue all over the world, but I’m an old-fashioned man. I believe God made women to have children and be the foundation of a family. To my mind, that doesn’t mix with easy virtue and high-pressured careers.”

She gaped at him. “You reactionary!” she accused. “You mean you think the little woman should stay at home, chained to a stove and slave to a man’s hungers?”

“What would you know about a man’s hungers, Kate?” he asked suddenly, his dark eyes cutting and intent as they met hers across the seat.

She shifted restlessly. “What do you know about a woman’s heart?” she returned. “With an attitude like yours, you’ll never find a woman to marry.”

“Praise God,” he replied easily. “A wife is the last thing on earth I want.”

“Well, you’ll never get an heir for the Spur without one,” she returned.

He frowned thoughtfully through a thin veil of smoke. With a brief glance in the rearview mirror, he pulled off onto the grassy shoulder and cut off the engine. All around them was open land, and Kate noticed the familiar Diamond Spur logo on each gate. What Jason had was a small empire. It stretched practically into San Frio, and encompassed large tracts of bottom land up and down the Frio and small tributaries.

“I want to show you something.” He got out, moving around the Bronco to open the door and help her down from the high cab.

She was briefly close to him until he reached past her to shut the door. Then he leaned back against it, his long legs crossed, the cigarette dangling from one hand.

“Blalock Donavan had a cabin out there,” he said, nodding toward the flat plain that led to the Frio River. “The homestead burned down a month after he took possession, and he and some of the vaqueros put up a shanty just for him to sleep in. Soon after that, he married a Mexican girl and had seven kids in rapid succession. He built a house very much like the one I live in now, but the legend goes that he and the Mexican girl stood off a Comanche war party in that very cabin.”

“Where the mesquite stand is?” she asked, gesturing toward a thick grove of trees with long, feathery green fronds blowing in the wind.

“The very one. There’s a legend that she saw her patron saint standing beside the river, and he promised her that she and her husband would be spared. The name San Frio came loosely from it—San for Saint and Frio for the Frio River.” He glanced at her and grinned. “Even legends have some truth, but Blalock was a gambler and a realist. He wrote in his diary that it was rain as much as divine intervention that saved them.”

She leaned back against the Bronco’s door beside him, trying not to notice the powerful lines of his body, or the thick shadow of chest hair that peeked out at the unbuttoned neck of his shirt. “Rain?” she coaxed.

“Comanches lashed the arrowheads on their arrows with rawhide,” he explained. “When it rained, the humidity, so the story goes, made the rawhide relax.” His dark eyes twinkled down at her. “So the arrowheads had this tendency to fall off in wet weather, before they got to the intended victim.”

She laughed gently at the irony of it. Of course, those warriors surely had other weapons just as deadly, and they were fabulous horsemen and fighters. But it was one tiny Achilles’ heel in an otherwise terrifying memory, and she liked knowing that even those men had one.

“The things you never learn in history class,” she mused.

“They say that one of my ancestors was a Comanche,” he remarked. “A lot more were Spanish and Mexican.”

“I guess most of mine were Irish,” she sighed. She watched the horizon, fascinated with the broad reach of open land. “There can’t be a more beautiful place on earth than this,” she said suddenly.

“It’s that,” he agreed, smiling with faint possession and pride as he followed her gaze. He lifted the cigarette to his mouth. “From a few scraggly longhorns to this,” he mused. “It was a long road, Kate.”

“And a hard one,” she murmured. Her eyes lifted to his face, tracing the hard lines. “Your age tells on you sometimes.”

“I guess it does. I feel it more these days.” He turned his head and looked down at her, and without warning, the world narrowed to black eyes and green ones. Around them, the skies were growing dark, the thunder rumbling. The wind kindled like cool fire, whipping across Kate’s face as she met and wondered at the sudden lack of expression in Jason’s features, and the curious narrow glitter in his black eyes as his chin lifted slightly and his body stilled.

Lightning striking, Kate thought while she could. Her heart was as wild as the wind around them, her breath stuck like a cactus in her throat. Jason was looking at her in a way he never had, not in all the years she’d known him. Something in that look made her toes curl in her boots, making her body feel as if his hands had stroked it.

He shifted, the movement slow, easy, turning so that his side was against the Bronco. His right hand, holding the dead cigarette, rested on the open window. The other was suddenly at Kate’s neck, brushing stray wisps of long, dark hair, tracing an artery that was pounding crazily.

Jason was so close that she could smell the tobacco and leather scents that mingled with his spicy cologne. She could feel the warmth of his muscular body, the quiet threat of his masculinity. His dark eyes searched hers quietly with a new kind of curiosity. And then, all at once, they dropped to her soft bow of a mouth and lingered there with veiled intent.

The static from the CB radio was overloud drifting out the open window of the deserted cab, and Kate tried to concentrate on it, not on the very disturbing way Jason was looking at her. Any minute, everything she felt was going to start showing, and she couldn’t bear to have him know how vulnerable she was.

But he already did. His dark eyes had caught every single giveaway movement of her body—her swollen breasts, her quick breathing, the yielding softness of her eyes. He wasn’t all that experienced, and for the past few years he’d lived almost like a monk because of Melody’s painful defection. But Kate was even less experienced than he was, and everything she felt was visible.

It gave him an odd sensation to know that she was aroused by him. He wasn’t a handsome man. He was rich, and his wealth had given him opportunities with women even if he was still too bitter to accept them. But he couldn’t remember a time when a woman had wanted just him, craggy face, mean temper and all. Even the one woman he’d loved had only wanted what he could give her. But Kate was looking at him in a way that made his blood run hot, and he realized suddenly that if he tried to kiss her, she’d more than likely let him.

When he realized that, reason deserted him. It was a new experience, having Kate want him. Breathing just a little unsteadily, he reached behind her tilted head, loosening the ribbon that held her long braid in place. With deft, easy movements, he loosened her hair and his fingers smoothed it down her back, slowly bringing her even closer to him.

“There’s a storm...coming,” she remarked in a quick, breathless voice.

“A hell of a storm, Kate,” he breathed as his free hand slid to her waist and then around her, roughly pulling her closer so that the tips of her breasts came into sudden contact with his chest.

Kate felt electricity rustle through her body at the feel of him so close against her. Her hands went to his shirt instinctively and pressed there, feeling the cushy softness of his chest hair against hard, pulsating muscle. It was wildly arousing, and she couldn’t hide her sudden trembling.

The wind whipped through her hair and the dark skies over Jason’s head outlined the set of his jaw, the shadowy darkness of his eyes. “Jason?” she whispered in what was half question, half protest.

His gaze fell to her mouth while his lean fingers dug in and pulled her even closer. He was burning now, the cool wind making the fever bearable as he breathed in the scent of roses that clung to Kate’s soft body. All the reasons he shouldn’t let this happen fell away at the hunger that drew his head down. He wanted her. She wanted him. There was nothing in the world but Kate and her mouth, parted, softly tremulous, welcoming....

He tilted his head as it bent to hers, and he watched, fascinated, the way her mouth lifted for him, the way she caught her breath, the way her nails drew like tiny claws against his chest.

“The storm,” she breathed dizzily.

“Damn the storm!” he whispered roughly. “Oh, God, honey, open your mouth...”

She felt the first tentative touch of his hard, warm lips on her mouth. Just then the loud roar of an approaching vehicle shattered the spell as surely as the pitchfork of lightning that shot down on the horizon and shook the earth seconds later.

Kate actually jumped, her gasp mingling with the odd sound that burst from Jason’s lips simultaneously.

He stood erect, his breathing only a little rough as he glanced past her with eyes she couldn’t read. “It’s Gabe.”

“Oh.” She hoped that her confused frustration didn’t show, but it was too late for camouflage because Gabe was already out of the truck and even with them.

“Howdy, boss man,” he told Jason, grinning. He looked past him at Kate, and the grin grew wider. “Miss Kate. I hope you got sewed up proper, boss, because we have got trouble.”

Jason dropped the forgotten cigarette in his hand and quietly lit another one, giving himself time to recover before he answered Gabe. Damn his own vulnerability! “When haven’t we got trouble? And you have got more than most,” Jason said with a cold, level smile. “I know how Kate accidentally happened to ride over to the Bottoms....”

“No time for that now,” Gabe said quickly. “You know that black Angus bull of Mr. Henry Tanner’s that he put in the pasture next to our heifers in spite of all the threats you made?”

Jason’s chin lifted. He knew what was coming. “He jumped the fence?”

“He tore it down,” Gabe muttered. “He’s having the time of his life with our purebred Santa Gertrudis heifers.”

Jason murmured something that sounded obscene and murderous all at once. Without waiting for another word, he helped a still shaky Kate into the Bronco, climbed in on the other side, started it and shot off down the road.

Kate was fumbling with her seat belt, and Jason thanked God for the intervention of the bull. Another few seconds and all his good intentions wouldn’t have spared her. He could see her mouth like a vivid color photograph, parted, waiting, hungry... He almost groaned out loud. He was going to have to keep his emotions under control from now on. His life suited him as it was.

God knew what would happen if he gave in to his unexpected hunger for her. The least of it would be the loss of the only friend he had, because Kate was most certainly that. And the worst would be an addiction that he couldn’t cure, except with commitment. Jason didn’t want to risk that twice. His one brush with commitment had left a bitter taste in his mouth. Kate was young and inconsistent and hell-bent on a career. She was a risk he couldn’t handle right now. He could fall in headfirst, but she wasn’t likely to. Not at her age.

He looked at Kate with a quiet, calculating intensity. “I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he said, his voice still too deep, too soft.

“Neither did I,” she managed unsteadily. She couldn’t think of another single thing to say. She felt tongue-tied and nervous and frustrated, still hungry for a kiss she’d wanted with desperate abandon.

Jason blew out a thin cloud of smoke, keeping his eyes on the road as they turned onto the long dirt track leading up to the Donavan house. “If you want the truth, I’ve been celibate for a long time,” he said bluntly, wanting to ward off trouble before it started. He looked at her deliberately and added, “I guess I need a weekend in the city.”

Murderous jealousy stabbed into Kate like a knife. She couldn’t even speak for it. Somehow she’d never thought of Jason in bed with another woman. Everybody knew there wasn’t a less likely playboy in the state, even if Jason was rich. But now she thought about it, and the mental pictures she saw were shocking and embarrassing and they hurt.

He glanced at her set expression as he pulled up in front of the barn, where she’d left her horse.

“What is it?” he asked.

She swallowed. “Nothing. I’d better get home and start supper.”

He caught her arm as she started to open the door. “You and I have never lied to each other,” he said quietly when she looked at him with visible reluctance. “It’s one reason we get along so well. Don’t hide your feelings from me.”

“This is different....” she blurted out.

“Tell me,” he persisted, his voice deep and slow and insistent.

Her lips parted as she met his level gaze. “I...don’t want to know.”

“About what?”

“About you. With other women.”

His breath came hard. He searched her eyes for a long, static moment. Everything around them vanished in the green mist of her eyes, the sound of her soft breathing. He’d meant to shock her, but now he didn’t like the flash of pain in those soft green eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said abruptly, turning her face aside. “I had no right to say such a thing.” Her eyes stung. “Let me go, Jason!”

“For God’s sake,” he burst out, exasperated. He didn’t understand his own confused feelings. Her reaction to his blunt statement had thrown him off balance. She’d believed him. She’d actually believed that bald-faced lie, and it had hurt her more than he’d ever expected.

She shook off his hand and jumped out of the Bronco. “Hi, Red, did you put Kip in the barn?” she called to the young cowhand who’d seen them off, because Kip hadn’t been at the holding pen when they’d driven past it. Even upset, she’d noticed that.

“Yes, ma’am, Miss Kate, I sure did.” He grinned. “I even mended your saddle for you. That nail must have been uncomfortable, even in jeans.”

“It was,” she confessed, avoiding Jason’s interested gaze. “Thanks, Red, I’ll remember you in my will.”

“In that case, I sure would love a Rolls Royce,” the younger man said. “And a house in Florida, on the bay. And a few bonds....”

“Oh, shut up,” she laughed. “If I had half those things, I’d do my best to live forever and I sure wouldn’t be riding around Texas on saddles with nails sticking through them.”

“Well, it was just a thought,” he said. “I’ll saddle your horse.”

She murmured a thank you and started to follow him into the well-lit confines of the mammoth barn, where several horses were quartered in tidy stalls off a wide aisle neat with pine shavings.

“You didn’t mention anything about your saddle being worn,” Jason said from behind her.

She could feel the warmth from his tall, well-muscled body and it made her legs go weak. She felt tingly from head to toe and deliberately moved away from the close contact. It was all too devastating a reminder of how close she’d been to him in the field, of the flash of passion that had almost but not quite ripped away the fabric of their casual relationship.

“You’ve got enough on your mind,” she said evasively.

“Kate, don’t run from me.”

The quiet fervor in that statement brought her head around. She looked up at him with soft, searching eyes. He seemed really concerned about her, regretful almost.

She smiled at him. “Okay.” She sighed. “I’m a little off balance, that’s all.”

“You might not believe it, but so am I.” His dark eyes narrowed and he glanced toward the horizon, where the storm clouds had passed over without depositing a drop of rain. “Anyway, honey, the storm’s gone. And there’s no damage.”

She looked up quietly, searching his black eyes. “That’s right, Jason,” she said. “No damage.”

He touched her loosened hair, reminding her blatantly of his part in its dishevelment. She made him feel fiercely male, bristling with protective instincts that he didn’t even know he had. She trembled at the faint touch, and he wanted to hold her, to comfort her, to keep her safe from any threat, even from himself.

“This time,” he added, his voice deep with shades of feeling, his eyes darkening. “That can’t happen again.”

She searched his face, feeling lost and alone already. “I didn’t do anything,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to....”

He actually grimaced. “For God’s sake, I know that,” he ground out. “Leave it, Kate. Nothing happened.” He turned away, dismissing it from his mind. “Red!”

Before she could speak, Red Barton came hotfooting in, leading Kip.

“Here you go, Miss Kate,” he said, handing her the reins. “Mind that you don’t go near the border over toward Tanner’s, there’s likely to be a turrrrrrible explosion in the near future.” He grinned, glancing at the boss.

Jason sighed heavily. “Barton, I don’t know why in hell I don’t fire you,” he said absently.

Red frowned. “Neither do I, boss. I’ve studied on it for months, and I still haven’t come up with a decent reason for you to keep me on. But I’ll keep trying, don’t you worry.” He grinned again and tipped his hat to Kate. “I’ll just move those heifers out of range of that lovesick bull, boss, while you explain to Mr. Tanner how many cuts of meat you expect to get out of him.”

Jason pursed his lips. “Now that,” he mused, “is a hell of a good idea. We haven’t thrown a barbecue after roundup in a long time, and Tanner’s bull looks like good beef to me.”

“Mr. Tanner’s purebred black Angus who placed at the national Angus show last November?” Kate asked incredulously. “The same one he paid a hundred thousand dollars for? That bull?”

“Where have you been for the past fifteen minutes?” Jason asked with colossal patience. “Didn’t you hear Gabe? Yes, that bull. He got in with my purebred Santa Gertrudis two-year-old heifers that I was about to breed to my purebred longhorn bulls, and God knows how many of them he’s managed to breed. We haven’t checked that section for several days, so God knows when he got in there or how many of them he’s bred already!”

“That’s sure going to be rough on them heifers,” Red mumbled. “That Angus bull had a birth weight of over a hundred and thirty pounds, as I recall.”

“Absolutely.” Jason’s lips made a thin line as he thought about it and got even madder. “And no bull with a birth weight of over a hundred pounds is considered safe to breed to a virgin cow. First-calf cows have it hard enough without the complication of an oversized sire. The least damaging thing is that my breeding program will be shot to hell, and that bull is going to pay for it. Or Tanner is. Or both. Where the hell is my rifle!”

“Oh, no.” Red grimaced as Jason whirled and stalked toward the house with his face set in hard lines that the cowboy and Kate both recognized.

“The Tanner place is five minutes away by truck,” Kate coaxed. “You could drive past there on your way to move those heifers, and mention that Jason has loaded his rifle.”

Red’s eyes popped. “I could get the hell beat out of me, too. You know the boss in a temper.”

“That’s why I think you should warn Mr. Tanner that he’s coming.”

Red sighed. “The things I do for the Diamond Spur.” He turned. “Okay. But I hope you’ll take me in to the doc afterwards.”

“I’ll sling you over Kip here and ride you the whole way all by myself,” she promised. “Hurry!”

He walked quickly toward the pickup truck. Kate, taking Kip’s reins, made a beeline for the house. Jason was already coming back out the front door with his Winchester under one arm and Sheila raging behind him.

“You’ll end up in prison, I tell you!” she bellowed, her hair standing practically on end. “You can’t go around solving problems with a loaded gun! Henry Tanner is an Easterner! He’s just learning about the beef business! He needs a helping hand, not blazing guns!”

He wasn’t even listening. He was walking with the hard, measured stride that meant trouble, his hat at a dangerous angle over his eyes. Kate, leading Kip, intercepted him.

“I won’t listen, so save your breath, Kate,” he said shortly.

“I didn’t say a word, Jason,” she replied innocently.

“Well, you needn’t,” he murmured. He stared at her. “You aren’t going to try and talk me out of it?”

“Not at all.” She smiled pleasantly. “I’ve never been to visit anyone in jail before. It sounds exciting.”

“I won’t go to jail.”

“If you shoot Mr. Tanner, you will.”

“I’m not going to shoot Mr. Tanner. I’m going to shoot his bull.”

“He’ll sue you.”

“He’s welcome, but his bull will still be dead.”

“Jason, you’ll be arrested.”

“His bull is trespassing,” he said. “Trespassing is against the law. I’m making a citizen’s arrest, which his bull will resist. Resisting arrest is also against the law. I will pass sentence and enforce it with a bullet. And you and the boys can have a nice steak.”

She lifted her eyebrows. “It will be the most expensive steak you’ve ever served.”

He grinned. “Nothing’s too good for my men.” He tipped his hat pleasantly and walked past her.

“You’ll rot in prison!” Sheila was yelling from the front porch, her apron waving in the breeze. “Kate, for God’s sake, stop him!”

“Sure. Have you got another gun and some bullets?” Kate asked.

Sheila threw up her hands and mumbled her way back into the house, slamming the door furiously.

Kate mounted Kip with a heavy sigh and rode back down the driveway, pushing the incident in the field to the back of her mind until she had enough time to deal with it.

She hoped Mr. Tanner had his bull insured. It was a pity he hadn’t listened when Jason asked him not to put that bull next to heifers in heat with only a double strand barbed wire fence between. It was Tanner’s fence, and Tanner was a retired department store manager who’d moved here from back East and decided to raise cattle in his retirement years. Jason had even offered to reinforce the fence and Mr. Tanner had refused to let him. Now he was going to pay the price.

Kate began to whistle as she turned Kip down the road toward home. It would be rather interesting to taste a purebred black Angus bull with a hundred thousand dollar price tag. She hoped Sheriff Gomez would let Jason have a plate of it in his jail cell.

CHAPTER THREE

KATE HAD JUST taken a taco casserole out of the oven and was putting the unmatched plates and cups and utensils on the supper table when her mother came in the door.

“Something smells good,” Mary Whittman sighed, as she kicked off her comfortable thick-soled shoes at the door. “Heavens, I’m tired. I can’t remember doing so many bundles in one day.”

“If you made production, you shouldn’t complain,” Kate grinned.

“I made over a hundred percent, in fact,” her mother replied, “so I expect I’ll get a better check this week than last. By the way, Mr. Rogers stopped me on the way out and said for you to come in tomorrow.”

“Have they got some serging for me?” she asked.

“They probably will have. We got some new cuts in today for the pants line. But what Mr. Rogers wants to see you about is those designs you left with him,” Mary said, her green eyes twinkling. “He’s been calling people all week to stop by and look at them. I think he’s made a decision.”

Kate stopped breathing. “You think they might be interested in using one?”

“Definitely. There’s been a rumor about a new line of sportswear, and he loves your Indian designs, especially those bold turquoise colors you’ve used,” Mary added. “It seems that one of the buyers found a market forecast that predicted blue was going to be big next year. And your styles went over in a big way. I’m just guessing, honey, and I don’t want to get your hopes up too high. But, I have a good feeling about this.”

“I hope you’re right. Oh, I hope you are,” Kate laughed. “Mama, I’d be over the moon if they used anything of mine!”

“Well, don’t mention that I said anything to you. I overheard Mr. Rogers asking Gwen about some accessories.” She flopped down on the couch, her slender body slumping. Her thin, graying, dark hair was limp, and there were bits of cloth sticking to her brown stretch pants and her brown and green over blouse. The pants had come from a garage sale—Mary had brought them home, practically new, for two dollars. The blouse was one that the ladies at the plant had given her for her birthday last month. The shoes had come from a sale at a local department store; they were a little loose, but Mary’s feet stayed swollen after walking around on the plant’s concrete floors all day, so that was kind of a fringe benefit. She was no fashion plate, but she was decently covered and for a bargain price.

Mary had handed down that instinct for financial conservation to her daughter. Kate had learned to shop for the best fabrics at the lowest prices, and most of her apparel she made herself, even her jeans. She hand-embroidered each pair on the pockets and hems, and had more sewing than she could do for other people producing them after-hours. That was one reason she’d gone to Mr. Rogers with her designs in the first place. She was getting more orders than she could fill, and not only for jeans. And thank God for the sewing machine Jason had given her last Christmas because the old one she’d been using would never have stood the strain.

Kate’s original skirt and blouse designs produced even more income. But not enough to pay the bills, keep up a car, and buy food. Her salary and her mother’s combined barely did that, even with the spare money Kate made sewing.

“I’ll get rich,” Kate promised. “Then we can both give up working in the plant and you can parade around in mink and diamonds.”

“I’m allergic to fur and I don’t like diamonds.” Mary grinned. “Give me a new rod and reel and some bass flies instead.”

“I’ll give you a lake stocked with bass, too.”

Mary closed her eyes with a weary smile. “You’re a good daughter.”

“Yes, I know. Uh, did you come home by way of the Tanner place?”

“Every day.”

“Hear any shots?” Kate asked innocently as she took a pan of green beans off the stove and set them on a cold burner.

Mary sat up. “Shots? Why would I?”

“Mr. Tanner’s bull got in with Jason’s cows. He went over that way with his Winchester.”

The older woman leaned forward to light a cigarette, ignoring Kate’s disapproving gaze. “I’ll die of something one day,” she said before her daughter could protest. “Turn on the fan and it won’t bother you. Jason took a gun after Henry Tanner?”

“After the bull. It was on his land.” Kate pursed her lips. “We’ve been invited to a steak dinner. Guess who’s providing the steak.”

“Mr. Tanner, no doubt. Well, Jason’s attorneys have had a slack month, they need the business.”

“Mother!”

Mary studied her daughter curiously. “How do you know about all this?”

“Jason got hurt and they sent for me. I got him to the doctor and patched up, and the bull was discovered about the time I was getting ready to leave.” She shook her head as she poured iced tea into thick glasses, taking time to sip one so that it didn’t overflow. “Sheila was screaming her head off. It didn’t even slow him down.”

“That’s nothing new. Poor Sheila. Poor Mr. Tanner.” She stood up and stretched. “I wonder what Jason’s going to do when you go off to be a famous designer?” she wondered aloud. “I expect he’ll die from lack of medical care because everybody else around San Frio is scared to death of him.”

“You could take over for me,” Kate teased.

Mary’s eyes bulged. “Not me. I like living. I hope you didn’t put too much cumin in that taco casserole.”

“Only half a cup, isn’t that what you put?” Kate asked with a blank smile.

“If you poison me, I’ll tell Mr. Rogers to throw your designs out the window.”

“Okay, I’ll behave. Sit down and eat something. You’re going to blow away.”

“I’m a good size. I can walk through a harp sideways.”

Kate turned away to flip the switch on the old rusted table fan that her father had bought when she was just a baby. There was no money for a new one, not even a cheap new one. But money, Kate reasoned, had never made anybody happy by itself. She’d rather have her mother and friends like Jason any day than a bankroll.

“You’re very quiet tonight,” Mary remarked as they finished off the small casserole and homemade Mexican corn-bread Kate had cooked with it.

Kate linked her hands around her coffee cup. “Well, I’ve been thinking.”

“About what?”

About Jason, she could have said, and that he almost kissed her today. But that was a memory too precious to share, even with her mother.

Smiling, she tilted the cup and watched the ripples move with the overhead light that hung from the ceiling. The kitchen was worn, like the rest of the house. The walls needed painting. They were a dirty unpleasant yellow, and the gold and green linoleum on the sloping floor was torn in places and cracked in others. The stove was almost as old as Kate, and the sink had stains that nothing would get out. Faded yellow curtains hung over the windows, their miserable condition reflecting the stains on the ceiling where a leaking roof had left its mark before its haphazard repair. The house was falling apart, and there was no money for maintenance. Kate wondered sometimes what she and Mary would do if the roof fell in or the floor gave way. She’d seen some winged ants just yesterday. If they were termites, even now the house could be under a death sentence. The only new thing in the place was the new zigzag sewing machine that Jason had given her last Christmas, and it was the first thing she’d have saved if the house had caught fire.

“I said, what are you thinking about?” Mary prodded as she flicked an ash into the cracked glass ashtray with Phoenix, Arizona in faded letters in its gray-caked center.

Kate looked up. “About if the house is going to fall around our ears.”

Mary’s thin shoulders lifted and fell. “It’s lasted fifty years already. I guess it’s got a few more in it. And we can always cry on Jason’s shoulder if things get desperate. God bless him, he’ll do something.”

“We shouldn’t depend on him too much, Mama,” Kate said, her tone hesitant.

“Why not? He doesn’t mind, honey.”

“I mind.”

Mary grimaced. “Katy, pride won’t satisfy hunger or fix leaking roofs.”

“I know that.” She sipped coffee. “But it’s not right, to always be asking him for things.”

“Did something happen today? Did the two of you argue?” Mary probed.

Kate laughed nervously. “When have Jason and I ever argued?”

That seemed to be a relief to the older woman. She smiled. “Silly thought, wasn’t it? It amazes me, the things he’ll let you get away with.”

“Like taking him to the doctor?” Kate smiled back. “He likes me.”

“You like him, too, don’t you?”

“Stop digging, Sherlock Holmes,” the younger woman said firmly and got up to wash the supper dishes. “You won’t find romance. I’m not Jason’s type. He’ll want a society girl who can organize business dinners and act sophisticated for his rich friends. I’m just his late foreman’s daughter and he feels sorry for me.”

“Rich men have married poor girls before,” Mary said doggedly. A match between Kate and Jason was the dream of her life, and the source of the only arguments she and Kate ever had. Mary had been poor since childhood. She wanted a way out of the rut, at least for Kate.

“I don’t want to marry Jason,” Kate replied. She ran water in the sink. It wasn’t the whole truth, but she didn’t dare confess to Mary that she was madly in love with their rich neighbor and would give her left arm to live with him. There was some truth in what she’d said about Jason’s future bride, anyway—that he’d want a society girl. She’d never thought about Jason getting married, but inevitably, he would. He’d want an heir for the Diamond Spur. And, although it hurt to admit it, a poor girl like Kate would never fit into his world.

“If only we could afford some fancy clothes for you,” Mary moaned. “I’m sure he’d noticed you if you had pretty things to wear. Not that these things you sew yourself aren’t pretty,” she was quick to add. She was proud of her daughter’s accomplishments, but some nice store-bought things would catch a rich man’s eye even better.

Mary couldn’t know that Jason had noticed Kate. Her eyes went dreamy as she relived that unexpected and exciting interlude in the field, felt his arm around her, felt the warm and vibrant urging of his hard mouth, his body. She was aware of a new, nagging hunger that made her restless, and hoped that she could hide it from her mother. The last thing in the world she needed was to have her ambitious mother pushing her at Jason. He might be her best friend, but he’d already said that he didn’t want commitment. Her mother could easily cost her his company forever by making it look as if Kate were trying to trap him into marriage.

“How about some dessert?” Kate hedged. “I made an apple pie.”

“Well, aren’t you the smart one? I’d love a slice. Make that two slices, I feel like living dangerously.”

Kate grinned and got down two saucers to put the pie in. Thank goodness for her mother’s appetite. It saved her from a modern Spanish inquisition.

* * *

THE NEXT MORNING, Kate rode into San Frio with her mother. She was wearing one of the outfits she’d designed herself—a simple, loose, sky blue blouse with set-in cap sleeves with lots of embroidery in Indian patterns on the square yoke and bodice and sleeves, and an ankle-length full circle skirt of chambray that echoed the blouse’s embroidery around the hem. She finished the outfit with simple suede fringed boots in a powder blue and a matching bag. Jason had given her those for Christmas. They weren’t new, but they looked it because Kate kept them for special occasions. She’d put her hair in braids and added big blue bows to each one, and her own natural grace and carriage gave the outfit a charm all its own.

“You look delightful,” Mary sighed as she parked the battered old blue Ford Galaxy outside the neat offices of Clayborn Manufacturing Company. Clayborn was the south Texas division of a national manufacturing company with headquarters in New York City.

Kate sighed as they got out of the car. She slammed the door twice to get the lock to catch. “Stupid car,” she muttered. “I hate it.”

“It gets us around,” Mary replied. “And it’s a long walk from the house to here.”

“Walking is healthy,” came the short reply. Kate gnawed her lower lip as Mary opened the door marked “employees only,” and was met immediately by the sound of sewing machines running and steam surging through pipes into the pressing department. The colors of the current cut were echoed down the rows of seamstresses in the pants department. Kate waved to two of the girls she sat near and followed Mary down the aisle toward the front office.

The plant was large. It had a shirts line and a pants line, a training room, a huge cutting room and warehouse, a pressing department and quality control department and mechanics who were kept busy making the old machines produce. It smelled of fabric and machine oil and thread, pleasant smells that Kate had grown accustomed to since graduation from high school. She’d worked in the plant that long.

The canteen was empty as they passed it, the long tables spotless, the machines standing waiting for break time. The lady who worked seconds was busy packing them up in brown cartons, and the floor lady over the pressing department threw up a hand as Mary and Kate went by.

The main offices had a payroll department, personnel office, a receptionist and the plant manager’s office. The assistant plant manager shared space next door. The cutting room had its own office, far down the hall, where the cuts were processed and records were kept of the coming and going of cloth. There was a quality control supervisor, who shared space with the pressing room supervisor, a storeroom where sewing supplies were kept, and a huge warehouse from which finished goods were shipped. The plant engineer had his own office, too, where he did time and motion studies and helped oversee the seamstresses on the shirt line.

Bundle boys and girls wandered around the floor, carrying stacks of cut garment pieces called bundles to the various seamstresses as each section of garment was quickly and efficiently finished and passed along to the next person and the next step to its completion.

Keith Rogers, the plant manager, was the person Kate wanted to see this morning.

“Hello, Kate,” he greeted her in the doorway, adding a cheerful hello to Mary, who paused just long enough to kiss Kate’s cheek before vanishing into the pants line where she worked.

“Good morning, Mr. Rogers,” Kate said, sounding and feeling breathless. She twisted her bag nervously in her slender hands. “Mama said you had some news for me.”

“Indeed I do. Jessie, bring that letter in, will you?” he called to the slender blonde who handled the telephones. She smiled back and went to the filing cabinet beside her desk.

Kate stood in front of the desk. Jessie brought the letter, winked at Kate with twinkling green eyes, and went back out, closing the door behind her.

Mr. Rogers was tall and balding and wore glasses. He had a wife and three small children, and pictures of them adorned his desk. A diploma in textile engineering held pride of place on one wall, and an award for superior production caught the attention on another.

Mr. Rogers leaned back in his chair behind the desk with the letter in his hand. “I showed your designs to our regional vice president,” he explained to Kate, looking smug. “He felt just as I do about their potential. He went to the big boss, who also agreed. We want to contract with you to do a new line of women’s sportswear for our spring season.”

Kate was barely breathing. “Me?” she squeaked.

“You. These Indian designs are new and exciting, and our forecasters and buyers seem to share your feeling for blue and cream colors in the next year’s fashions. They also like this silhouette,” he added, picking up one of Kate’s sketches from the portfolio she’d left with him. It showed an outfit much like the one Kate had on, with a long full skirt and blouson top. “And denim looks strong for next year, too.”

He smiled at her fascination. She tried to speak, caught her breath, and tried again.

“Mr. Rogers, I’m just speechless,” she said finally.

“I’m glad you’re pleased. You’ve designed these with an eye to cost control, which pleases the money men, too. They’ll be easy to mass produce, they’ll be moderately priced, and we’ll show a good profit margin if they go well. Which,” he added, “we expect them to. Now. Sit down, Kate, and we’ll go over the details.”

She did sit. She needed to. He outlined the designs that Clayborn wanted to purchase, mentioning a price that to Kate sounded like a small fortune. And her first thought was that she and her mother would be able to afford a better car—maybe even one that was only eight years old or so, and that would seem new after driving the twenty-year-old Ford around for so long.

“Does that amount sound reasonable to you, Kate?” Mr. Rogers prodded.

“Yes, sir,” she agreed promptly. “Very reasonable.”

His smile broadened. “Okay. I’ll have the contracts drawn up. Can you finalize this new line by September, so that we can get it to our sales staff before fall market week in New York?”

“I’m sure I can,” she agreed, visualizing nights of sketching and sacrificed weekends. But this was building toward something. This time would be invested in her own future.

Kate gave him a list of the fabrics, accessories, and trim she wanted. He sent her down to the design room and settled her with the head designer. Sandy Mays, fortyish, seemed to be a capable and confident woman, generous with her praise of Kate’s new drawings. There was an assistant named Betsy Gaines and another named Pamela Barker, both of whom Kate knew from school. The head seamstress was Dessie Cagle, a middle-aged lady with silver hair and deft hands who could make anything she saw in the finer shops without a pattern. She could copy couture with incredible ease, and had been responsible, along with Sandy, for many of the company’s newer casual clothes. It was Betsy’s job to coordinate the trims—the buttons and laces, ribbons and belts and buckles that complemented the designed outfits. These were as important in their way as the actual silhouettes, and Kate paid deliberate attention to their use when she put together a new outfit.

The first day was spent getting used to the new location. Kate had a lot to learn about the routine of the sample room and the way things were done. This, Dessie and Sandy were happy to show her. They discussed the fashion business, contacts, buyers, fashion merchandising, and learned a lot about each other. By the time Kate went home, she felt as if she’d become another person. She had a new and vibrant attitude toward designing, replacing the vague anticipation of the years before.

“I’m going to be famous,” she told Mary over the supper table. “I can feel it. I’m going to design new lines for each season, and people are going to know my name by my label, you wait and see. I’ll make the company rich. I’ll make them proud of me.”

“I already am,” Mary said, her eyes sparkling. “Kate, you have to go and tell Jason.”

There was a thought. She turned away, so that her mother wouldn’t see the radiance of her face. “Can I borrow the car?”

“Sure. There’s enough gas to get you there and back, and then some,” her mother said dryly.

“Our very first luxury,” Kate called from the front hall, “is going to be our very own telephone!”

“I hear you!”

She rushed out the door, grabbing up her purse on the way, and was all the way to the old battered blue Ford before she realized that she didn’t have the keys. She went back to ask for them with a sheepish grin, then tore out the door again.

It started on the third try, made a loud roaring sound, and clanked when it was coaxed into low gear. She pulled out of the dirt driveway, careful not to scatter dirt in her haste, and bounced off toward the Diamond Spur with barely contained impatience and delight. If Jason wasn’t in jail, she knew he’d be pleased about her good fortune. She wondered if Mr. Tanner still had a bull and if not, whether he had pressed charges. Jason usually got his way, but there was always a first time.

CHAPTER FOUR

AS SHE DROVE up in front of the Donavan house Kate realized something. She had no girlfriends, unless she counted her mother. Her best friend, the only real friend she had, was Jason. It was ironic that she had no one else to share this milestone in her life with.

She smiled about that as she darted up the steps and knocked furiously at the big hand-carved oak door, ignoring the modern doorbell altogether.

Sheila opened it, her eyebrows arching. “What a nice surprise.”

“I’ll bet,” Kate laughed. “Well, is he in jail or not?”

The older woman grimaced. “He belongs there, all right. But Mr. Tanner decided that it would be easier to reinforce his fence and move that bull to another pasture after Jason explained the situation to him.”

“I wish I’d been a bug on the fence,” Kate said with a mischievous grin.

“Me, too,” Sheila whispered. She nodded her grizzled head toward the hall. “He’s in there with Gene and Cherry having supper. Go sit down and I’ll get you a dish.”

“Oh, I’ve already eaten....”

“The dish,” Sheila explained patiently, dragging her inside, “is for peach cobbler. I made one tonight.”

“My favorite!” Kate enthused.

“Fancy that,” came the tongue-in-cheek reply. “I didn’t know, of course, having only made it for you about a hundred times over the past few years.”

Kate laughed delightedly. “What would I do without you?”

“Starve, most likely, if you weren’t such a good little cook yourself. And I’ll pat myself on the back for teaching you how, too, because your sweet mama is the best seamstress and the worst cook I ever knew.”

Kate started to argue, and then closed her mouth. “I thought hamburgers were supposed to be black and crunchy,” she said under her breath.

Gene and Cherry were whispering when Kate walked into the elaborate dining room. Jason was sitting quietly at the head of the table, impressive in pale slacks and a tailored gray shirt open at the throat. He was tapping his silver fork against the tablecloth, lost in thought, brooding if that scowl was anything to go by.

He looked up suddenly, as if he sensed Kate, and the scowl was still there. But something new kindled in his eyes, something born of their tempestuous interlude the day before. He was aware of her now, and she was just beginning to realize it. Her heart raced as his dark, very Spanish-looking eyes went over her like hands tracing every curve and line of her slender body.

“Did somebody die?” he asked politely. “I haven’t seen you dressed like that since the last time you went to church with us.”

Kate curtsied to cover her nervousness. “Do you like it? I made it myself.”

“It’s beautiful,” Cherry sighed, propping her head on her hands to stare dreamily at the long full skirt and blouson top with its sky blue colors and detailed embroidery. “Gosh, Kate, you ought to open a boutique.”

Kate could have hugged her. Cherry was petite and blonde and blue-eyed, always smiling, always enthusiastic. She encouraged Gene to be himself, to do what pleased him instead of what pleased big brother. But she did it in such an open, sweet way that Jason had become less antagonistic toward her. She was just eighteen now, and to Kate she seemed very young, despite the fact that there was less than three years between them.

“I’ll second that,” Gene chuckled. He was thinner than Jason, a little shorter. He had lighter hair and dark eyes, but his features were more even and attractive than his older brother’s. Jason had the business sense and the steel will, but Gene was the male beauty of the family and had always seemed to have girls hanging all over him.

Kate wondered sometimes if that wasn’t why she preferred Jason—he wasn’t a ladies’ man by anybody’s measure, although she was sure that he wasn’t naive. He’d had her trembling with need in no time at all. Not that he needed vast experience to accomplish that, when Kate thought the sun rose and set on him.

“Jason would loan you the money to go into business for yourself, wouldn’t you, Jay?” Gene asked him with the careless certainty of youth.

“Careers are the ruin of good women everywhere,” he commented dryly, leaning back in his chair with his hands behind his head. The posture outlined the powerful muscles of his chest and stomach, and it made Kate tingle to touch him. That must have showed, because his slow smile was knowing and faintly predatory. “A woman’s place is three steps behind her man.”

Kate stared at him, and even though it sounded like teasing, it took some of the joy out of her surprise. His mother’s betrayal had warped his attitude toward marriage, and his one-time fiancée’s defection to Hollywood had compounded the prejudice.

“Not this woman,” Kate told him as she sat down beside him at the table. “I think a woman’s place is at a man’s side.”

“Here we go again,” Gene muttered to Cherry, who giggled.

“Women shouldn’t have careers,” Jason repeated, his dark eyes level and somber. “Not unless they never plan to settle down.”

“I plan to settle down one day,” she said unexpectedly. “And have a home of my own, and children. And a career. I’m going to be a designer.”

“Without any help from me,” he returned blandly. “I’ll be damned if I’ll start you on the road to women’s liberation.”

Her eyes flashed. It wasn’t the first time she and Jason had argued about the traditional place of a man and a woman in society, but it was the first time it had mattered.

“I’m on the way already,” she shot back, “and without any need to go to you for help, thank God. I’ve just agreed to sign a contract with Clayborn to design a new line of leisure wear.”

“Congratulations! Kate, that’s grand!” Cherry gushed.

“I knew you could do it,” Gene chuckled.

“What’s this? A career designing clothes?” Sheila asked from the doorway, all eyes. “Great! Design something for heavyset women, the moderately priced stuff I can afford makes me look like a tub of lard.”

“Don’t say it,” Cherry gritted as Gene started to say something. “Not until after we get our peach cobbler, for heaven’s sake!”

Gene looked as if he might burst. Sheila glared at him out of gimlet eyes, the bowl of cobbler held protectively against her waist, her head cocked threateningly.

“I’ll throw it out,” she promised the young man.

Gene sighed. “I love peach cobbler.” He grinned. “Sheila, you ravishing beauty, you, how about a taste of that exquisite dessert you concoct with such style and sensuality?” He wiggled his eyebrows.

Sheila curtsied, almost falling over. “Why, thank you, kind sir, would you like to eat it or wear it?”

“I’ll eat it, thanks, and I swear,” he stood, hand over his heart, “I’ll never make another sarcastic remark about your size.”

Sheila nodded curtly. “See that you don’t. Here.”

She set the deliciously browned dessert on the table and laid a serving spoon beside it. “Kate goes first, since we’re celebrating.”

“Well, I won’t argue with that.” Gene grinned. “She’s earned it. When did you find out?”

“This morning,” she replied, digging with the serving spoon through the sugar-sprinkled crust to the sweet smell of sugary peach and dumpling beneath. She filled her dish, aware of Jason’s dark glare on her averted features. It was difficult to keep her hands from trembling as she began to sample the dish.

“It’s wonderful,” she told Sheila, who beamed and went back into the kitchen.

Gene got up and did an impression of the ample-hipped housekeeper waddling away, only to turn and find the object of his demonstration scowling at him from the doorway.

He cleared his throat and sat down quickly. “I lost a button, I was looking for it.”

Sheila glared at him. “Ha, ha. You just hold your breath until I cook you that vanilla pound cake you keep begging for.”

“I’ll repent!” He ran into the kitchen after her and the door closed behind them.

“Disgusting, watching him grovel.” Cherry grinned. She grabbed the cobbler. “Maybe if I hurry, I can finish his part and mine before he gets back.”

“Evil girl,” Kate accused. She glanced at Jason, who hadn’t said a single word through all the wordplay. He didn’t seem to hear what was going on around him. In fact, he didn’t. He was still hearing Kate rave about her career. He’d never realized how ambitious she was. It bothered him because he didn’t like to think of losing her to the big city and high fashion. And that was vaguely surprising. He’d been fighting the memory of her soft mouth for a whole day without success, and that hadn’t helped his temper.

“Don’t you want any cobbler?” Kate asked him.

“I’ve lost my appetite.” He lit a cigarette, daring anyone to object, and leaned forward to stare at Kate while she tried to eat her cobbler. “What will it mean, this job?”

“More money to start with. And I’ll get to do a lot of traveling once the designs are finished and we have samples made up,” she told him. “I’ll go to New York for market week this October and talk to the buyers and salesmen, and if my designs sell well, I’ll get to do another collection. All with my own name on it. I may even get to go to Europe to look at styles before I start on my next designs.”

Jason stared at her quietly. That wouldn’t suit Kate. She was meant for a kitchen and a house of her own, for children. Not this house, of course, not his children. He didn’t want any kind of permanent relationship even with Kate. He frowned. She’d meet all kinds of men in a job like that, predatory men. He didn’t like to think about some suave stranger seducing her.

“You’re too damned green for a sophisticated job like that,” he said aloud, shocking her.

She gaped at him, her fork poised in mid-air. So did Cherry. “What?!” Kate asked, torn between exasperation and laughter.

He crossed his long legs and took a heavy draw from his cigarette. In the overhead light, his dark straight hair seemed to have black highlights. “You’ll get in trouble back East, with no one to look out for you.”

“Well, you’ll probably bleed to death while I’m gone,” she shot back, “since nobody else can convince you that blood poisoning is dangerous.”

“I’ve been looking out for myself just fine.”

“Oh, of course,” she agreed. “Ripping your arm open, trying to shoot people...how’s the bull, by the way?”

His jaw tautened. “The bull is alive, through no fault of mine. I had to sell six cows to Tanner because his bull bred them. Luckily, I had plenty of replacement heifers this time.”

“How do you know his bull bred them?” Cherry asked innocently.

Jason looked suddenly hunted, his whole expression set and uncomfortable.

“Go ahead,” Kate dared him. “Tell her.” She knew about the new system of dyes that were used to show a stockman when a cow had been bred, but Cherry had never taken much interest in the cattle. Like Gene, she was more fascinated by art.

Jason took a sharp breath and stood up. “You tell her,” he said to Kate, his tone deep and cutting. “I’ve got better things to do.”

“You might congratulate me on my new job,” Kate said quietly.

He searched her green eyes curiously, his eyes narrowing on her oval face in its frame of dark, softly loosened hair. “I can’t do that. I think you’re making one hell of a big mistake.”

“You didn’t think so when I wanted to take the course in fashion design!” she argued.

“That was just something to help you sew better at the plant, or so I thought. I didn’t realize that San Frio was going to get too small to hold you.”

She stuck her chin up in the air and stared at him, refusing to be told how to live her life. “You’re just jealous because you can’t sew a dress, Jason,” she replied, resorting to teasing to keep from blowing up at him again.

“Oh, hell.” He turned on his heel and walked away without another word or a backward glance.

Kate smothered a grin, sharing a wink with Cherry, who was about to burst with mischief. Jason would come to his senses and then they’d talk about it. For now, he had to get used to the idea, and Kate knew very well how to skirt his moods. She’d had almost three years of practice.

“I never used to believe Gene when he talked about how well you managed to get along with Jason,” Cherry grinned. “But I’m beginning to see the light. My gosh, he takes a lot from you, doesn’t he?”

“From time to time,” Kate agreed with a sigh. “I wish he could understand that women aren’t property anymore. He doesn’t like them very much, you know.”

“It’s hard to miss,” Cherry murmured dryly. “All the same, I guess he’ll marry a woman someday, as long as she’s socially acceptable and doesn’t mind giving him an heir.”

Cherry couldn’t have known how much that supposition hurt Kate, even though she’d already faced it.

“I guess he will,” Kate replied, going quiet. She finished her cobbler and poured herself a cup of coffee from the carafe. She took it black, hardly tasting it as she lifted it to her mouth.

Cherry smiled. “I thought he was going to pass out when you dared him to tell me about those bred cattle.” The younger girl frowned. “How do you tell that a cow’s been bred?”

Kate told her absently, and Cherry just shook her head. “I can’t imagine a man being a rancher who’s too old-fashioned to talk about breeding in mixed company,” Cherry remarked.

Kate bit back a defensive comment. She couldn’t help it that she felt defensive about Jason. Despite her proud defense, she liked a few of his old-fashioned attitudes. In the modern world, where rough language and frank discussions were a matter of course, it was sometimes refreshing to be treated like a lady. Not that Jason cared much who was around when he lost his temper, she mused, but he’d never let Kate near his cows and heifers at breeding time or expose her to cattle that were being put down because of illness. Apparently he thought women were too delicate for that kind of thing.

She’d asked him once why he didn’t want her around the breeding stock, just in passing. He’d said something that had puzzled her at the time—that he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea about it because the cows would sound as if they were in pain and he didn’t want her to be frightened of a natural process. Now that she was older, and had been exposed to at least one racy motion picture, she began to understand what he’d meant. Passion was violent, if what she’d seen was any indication, and on the screen at least, women looked and sounded as if they were being killed. Kate had wondered a time or two if she’d ever sound like that, but she’d never felt passion with the few hometown boys who’d taken her out. She’d only felt that kind of fiery heat with Jason, the day before, and it was still new and a little unnerving.

“Jay just rattled the windows in the front room slamming out the door,” Gene remarked as he rejoined them with another saucer of cobbler. He grinned knowingly at Cherry as she guiltily gulped down the last bite of his after having finished her own.

“It was my fault, I guess,” Kate confessed. “I got a little overheated about his opinion of a woman’s place. Honest to goodness, I think sometimes that he doesn’t know what century this is.”

“You know why, though,” Gene said gently. “You of all people know why.”

Kate sighed. “Yes. But I was so excited about my break,” she smiled. “I wanted to share it.”

“He’ll storm around the barn for a while and then he’ll be all right,” Gene assured her. “Just drink your coffee, Kate, and remember that even the nastiest storm rains out eventually.”

“After it gets through rumbling,” she agreed, and sipped her coffee.

She stayed a few minutes longer, telling them about the new chores she had at the plant and what she was going to work around in her designs. Then, depressed by Jason’s sustained absence, she told them good-bye, waved to Sheila, and went out the front door to go home.

It was a glorious spring night. The sky was clear and the breeze was warm, and the stars looked close enough to touch. There was a whisper of jasmine in the air from the thick bushes at the front steps and at the corner of the house, lilac was just blooming. Kate sighed, smelling it, her eyes on the long horizon. Somewhere cattle were lowing softly, and she thought about the trail drives of the last century, when cowboys would sing to the cattle to calm them.

“Leaving already?”

She stiffened at the unexpected sound of Jason’s voice from the porch. She turned to find him sitting in the porch swing, barely silhouetted in the light from the nearby window. The orange tip of a smoking cigarette waved in his hand as he pushed the swing into motion. Its soft creaking sound was oddly comforting, but Jason’s presence made Kate feel nervous.

She lifted her chin. “Are we still speaking?”

“If you’re through reading me sermons on the modern woman, we are,” he said shortly.

“I might as well be, for all the good it’s done me,” she sighed, and smiled at him, because it was hard to fight with Jason. She understood him all too well, most of the time.

He got out of the swing lazily and strode toward her. Seconds later, he towered over her. The soft light coming out of the window lay on the floor in abstract patterns at her feet.

“I hate fighting with you,” she remarked to break the silence.

“Then don’t do it,” he said lazily, and managed to smile.

But as he smiled, he stared. He hadn’t really come face to face with her career until tonight, and now that he had, he was concerned. He knew that she couldn’t stay a girl forever. But he’d opened up with Kate in ways he couldn’t with even his own brother. He could talk to her. Somehow in the past few years he’d come to think of her as his own, and now she wanted to go away and leave him.

His eyes narrowed as they searched her face and then down her slender, exquisite body. Just lately his affection for her had become physical. He’d told himself that he hadn’t noticed her blossoming figure, but he had. Ever since that sweet interlude by the Bronco when he’d come within a hair of kissing the breath out of her, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. And that wouldn’t do. He couldn’t give her a physical hold on him. He didn’t want commitment with anybody just yet, much less with a girl like Kate who was years younger than he was, and a world apart from him in experience and maturity. She wouldn’t fit into his world. Even if she could, he didn’t want to let her.

But letting go was hard. “Do you even realize what a change it will be, if you get what you think you want?” he said after a minute. “You’ll be thrown into a world you’ve never experienced,” he said.

“It isn’t so different from mine,” she defended.

He lifted his chin, staring down his straight nose at her. “You’re a poor little girl from rural Texas, Kathryn,” he said shortly. “You don’t even know how to speak the language.”

“And I guess you do?” she challenged.

He looked at her half angrily. “Of course I do,” he said shortly. “I’m worth a small fortune. I’ve been moving in monied circles for years.”

Her face went blood red. She’d never considered the differences between herself and Jason as much in her life as she had in the past two days. She knew he was a rich man and she was a poor woman, but she’d never really noticed it before.

“You like to go barefooted and groom horses,” he said on a slow breath. “The people you’ll be associating with in New York will be city sophisticates. You won’t understand the discussions they have, or know the people they talk about, or be knowledgeable about the customs they’ll take for granted. You’ve got a Texas drawl that will stand out, and an innocence that some city man will do his best to relieve you of. If you aren’t careful, you’ll end up a broken flower, used up.”

She glared up at him. “What a glowing character reference,” she said, almost choking on her own pride. “I’m poor white trash, is that how you think of me after all these years?”

Her voice broke and she turned away furiously. But he was one step behind her. Without bothering to worry about consequences, he reached for her hungrily, locking her in his arms. He held fast, her tearstained cheek against his broad chest.

“I don’t want you hurt,” he said curtly. His mouth brushed her forehead, his lean hand smoothed her hair away from her face. “You’d be on your own in the city, with nobody to protect you, and you’re so damned innocent, honey.”

“And who’s to blame for that?” she demanded, hitting at his broad chest.

He took a slow breath. “All right, if you want to put it that way, I guess some of the blame is mine,” he admitted. He nuzzled her dark hair with his cheek. “I’ve tried to help Mary keep you out of trouble, and maybe I’ve gone overboard. It’s just that it’s hard to let go,” he admitted finally, breathing in the scent of her.

She’d hoped for something more. And that was foolish because she knew better than most people how much Jason avoided involvement. He had almost a fear of it, and knowing his past, she couldn’t really blame him. He couldn’t trust anybody that far, not even Kate.

“You’ll have to let go one day,” she reminded him.

“I guess so.” He spoke absently into her soft hair. “But you’re the closest thing to a friend I’ve got,” he added, the words slow and gentle. “I’ll miss having you around.”

“I won’t be going away forever,” she laughed, because he sounded so fatalistic. “Just for an occasional week.”

“That’s what you think now,” he said quietly. “That isn’t how it will be. Business tends to overshadow everything else, after a while. I’ve given everything in me to the Diamond Spur in recent years. It’s become my life. Be careful that designing doesn’t obsess you the same way.”

“It won’t,” she said. She drew back enough that she could smile up into his concerned face. “And if you’d relax a little now and again, maybe you wouldn’t have those gray hairs.”

“I can’t relax,” he returned. “The cattle industry has been in a slump for the past few years. Until market prices edge up, the Spur is hanging by a thread.”

“You could delegate once in a while.”

“Maybe I could, if Gene would hold up his end of the work,” he returned. He studied her quietly. “You never seemed so ambitious, Kate. You used to talk endlessly about getting married.”

“Well, I’ve changed my mind now,” she said, holding back the fact that she’d changed her mind because she knew she’d never change his about marriage.

He sighed, watching her. With her hair loose around her shoulders and that silky blouse she was wearing, she looked seductive. When she moved her breasts danced with erotic subtlety, and he was sure that she wasn’t wearing anything to support them. That made it even worse, thinking about what her full young breasts looked like under their sensuous covering. He even felt vaguely guilty to be considering Kate in that light, when she’d been off limits for years.

“It’s strange to argue like this with you,” she said finally, smiling faintly. “We’ve been friends for a long time now. We get along better than any two people I know. And yet in the past two days, all we’ve done is disagree. It’s...it’s uncomfortable.”

“This is the first time you’ve really gone against me,” he replied.

“I’ve never wanted anything this badly before,” she replied. And it was true, she’d never fought him. How odd to suddenly wake up and find that she’d allowed herself to be dominated by him for years. Her eyes searched his dark face. “You won’t change my mind, Jason. I’m going to do what pleases me, even if it doesn’t please you.”

His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t speak. It was frankly arousing to argue with her. His body made a sudden and emphatic statement about what it wanted, and he moved restlessly, trying to convince it that she wasn’t fair game.

“I’ll drive you home,” he said abruptly.

“I have the car,” she reminded him reluctantly. His nearness was already working on her, and she wanted the delight of being alone with him, even if it was just for a few minutes on the way home. Remembering the way he’d looked at her and touched her the day before still made her burn with untried longings.

“That’s just as well,” he said after a minute. He lifted the cigarette again to his chiseled lips. “I’m in a strange mood tonight.”

“I don’t understand.”

His chin lifted and he scowled at her. “Don’t you? Are you going to pretend that nothing happened yesterday?” he challenged, driven by mingled desire and frustration to lash out at her.

She remembered, but she didn’t want to. Jason aroused her, excited her, and she was uncertain of his motives. He’d always been possessive of her, but lately he was taking it to new heights. She felt that if she let him, he’d smother her.

“Nothing did happen, really,” she faltered.

He moved closer, his whole posture threatening. She could smell his cologne and the scent of leather that clung to his soft Western shirt. Her breath stifled in her throat.

“And nothing’s different between us?” he persisted.

She could hardly breathe at all. His fingers were on her hair, lightly touching it. “No,” she whispered.

“Then it shouldn’t bother you if I have women.”

She bit her lower lip until her teeth almost broke the skin. The image of that was unbearable. “No,” she agreed. “It shouldn’t.”

He flicked the cigarette off the porch while the silence closed in around them. He tilted her chin up and searched her eyes in the dim light from the windows.

Her mouth, faintly pink and just a little tremulous, looked delicious. He wondered idly if anyone had even kissed her properly. God, he wanted to do that!

Kate watched, shocked, as his dark head suddenly bent toward her. She could feel his warm, smoky breath on her parted lips and her own breath came jerkily.

“Don’t pull away from me,” he whispered deeply as his head tilted, his fingers touching her cheek. His nose nuzzled against hers and his mouth brushed the corner of hers, then drew lightly over the full softness of her parted lips. “I won’t hurt you,” he breathed against her mouth just as his covered it.

The sensation was explosive. His mouth was hard and warm and faintly hungry. He teased her lips until she went weak in the knees and her heart began to slam at her rib cage. Her eyes, half open, a little frightened, searched his curiously when he drew back to look at her.

“You taste of coffee,” he said deeply. She’d never heard that pitch in his voice before, that sensual note. It was exciting and new.

“You...you taste of cigarette smoke,” she whispered back, trying to smile. But she didn’t know how to play sophisticated games, and she was out of her depth with him.

He seemed to know that. His lean hands came up to frame her face and he bent again. “Open your mouth this time,” he breathed as his lips nudged hers apart. “Deep kisses are an acquired taste, but I think I can make you want mine.”

She moaned at the way he said it, at the velvet of his deep voice, at the aching hunger his caressing lips aroused in her body. She let him push her lips apart with his, admitting the slow, tender penetration of his tongue. She felt his tongue touching hers, fencing with it, and her body began to tremble.

One of Jason’s hands went behind her head, to support it. The other traced her cheek, her soft throat while he deepened the kiss. His mouth was expert. Warm and hard and knowing, and she could hear his rough breathing mingled with hers in the silence of the porch. Instinctively she tried to move closer to him, wanting his strength to support her sudden weakness.

His mouth lifted a second later, pressing roughly against the side of her neck. He slid his arms around her and enveloped her against him, but when she pressed even closer and felt the sudden changed contours of his body, he gently eased his hips back to prevent the contact.

She wanted to ask him if it embarrassed him to have her know he was aroused, but she was too shy to put it into words. She’d heard girls at school talk about men getting this way. She knew what caused it, and her head swam to think that, at her age, she could have that effect on Jason.

He was having his own effect on her as well. She couldn’t seem to stop trembling, and his arms tightened, shifting her soft breasts against his hard chest. She could feel the muscle right through the soft material of her blouse. He had to know that she wasn’t wearing a bra by now, and that made her nervous. She tugged gently against his hard arms, but he wouldn’t let go.

“Don’t fight me,” he murmured at her ear as his head lifted. “I won’t take advantage of it.”

“Of...what?” she faltered, trying to save her pride.

“Of the fact that you’re bare under that blouse, Kate,” he said. He lifted his head and looked down at her with an odd kind of patient indulgence, but there was a glitter in his dark eyes that made her heart skip beats. “That I can feel how soft you are, lying on my chest.”

Her face went blood red. She dropped her eyes to the steady rise and fall of his chest. She felt inadequate. Years too young.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of,” he murmured. He scowled, gently tracing her mouth with a lean forefinger, feeling its instant shy response. “I told you I was in a strange mood. I should have sent you on home before this happened.”

“Are you sorry that it did?” she asked shyly, and her eyes were wide and soft and still hungry when they met his.

“Are you hell-bent on becoming famous?” he countered.

“I just want to see how far I can go,” she told him. “No, I don’t want to be famous. I just want to use my talent.”

“New York is a long way from Texas.”

“So you keep telling me. Jason, I won’t change.”

“You will,” he said quietly. He studied her young face quietly. “But I’m not going to have you seduced by some Ivy Leaguer with a line a mile long. I don’t want you treated like an appetizer.”

“You’re very possessive lately,” she said, but it flattered her that he cared, that he didn’t want anything to happen to her.

“Of course I’m possessive. I owe you my life a time or two.” He sighed roughly. “I don’t want a man to...hurt you,” he said finally, and his dark eyes were troubled. “Inevitably, if you move in those circles, you’re going to meet some experienced men, and you won’t know how to handle them. You could get drunk one time too many in the wrong company, or you could be flattered too much by a man’s attentions. And the first time, if a man isn’t damned gentle....” He stopped, frowning as he searched for the right words. “I don’t want you used.”

She smiled, because she knew what he was trying to say. It delighted her that he had trouble saying it when most men were permissive and worldly and blunt. He wasn’t a virgin, she was sure, but he wasn’t all that experienced, either. She dropped her eyes to his chest. “I promise I won’t jump into bed with the first man who asks me, Jason.” She stared at his chest. “Anyway, I don’t like it when men touch me. Except that I’ve always wondered what it would be like...if you did.”

He felt the ground go out from under him. Until the past two days he’d never thought of Kate as a woman, and now he couldn’t think of her any other way. Her mouth was sweet and responsive and he wanted it again. He wanted to put his hands under that silky blouse and touch her bare breasts, to see if they were really as soft as they felt lying against his chest. He wanted to drag her hips back against his and make her feel the strength of the arousal he hadn’t wanted her to know about.

“Don’t make jokes,” he said tersely.

Her face felt warm, but it wasn’t the time for subterfuge. “I’m not,” she said honestly. “If I ever...well, if I wanted anyone, I mean...” She was as bad as he was about this, she thought, almost laughing at her own inefficiency. “I can’t imagine being that intimate with someone I’ve only just met,” she murmured. “It would have to be someone I knew very well.”

“Like me?” he prompted quietly.

Her body tingled. She couldn’t quite meet his eyes. “Yes.”

“If I’d let you,” he said after a minute, trying to lessen some of the tension that was building between them and playing hell with his good intentions, not to mention his agonized body.

She glanced up to find a faint, rather forced amusement in those dark eyes. “Oh, so it’s that way, is it?” she took him up, delighted at the new familiarity they were sharing so unexpectedly. “I’d have to seduce you, I gather?”

“Damned straight,” he returned. “I’m not one of those fast city boys. You won’t get me into bed without a fight.”

She laughed, her eyes sparkling, her face radiant. “Well, I never.”

“I know,” he mused.

She hit his chest with a small, playful fist. “Tease.”

“Flirt.”

She stared up at him with pleasure and adoration written all over her. “If you’re going to play hard to get, I’ll just go home.”

“That might be wise,” he sighed. He dragged a cigarette from his pocket with fingers he had to force to be steady, and lit it. “You’re getting me all stirred up.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Well, you started it.”

“I guess I did.” He touched her cheek gently. “Are you sorry?”

She shook her head. “If we’re making confessions, I’ve wondered for a long time what it would feel like if you kissed me.”

His chest swelled. “I’ve wondered the same thing about you, just lately.”

She smiled with aching pleasure. “I thought you were mad at me when you came out here.”

“I think I was.” He drew from his cigarette, and said, “I just don’t want to lose you.”

“And I’ve already told you, I’m just going to a few fashion shows, that’s all. I’m not going to have my head turned by fancy living.”

“It’s easy to say, isn’t it?” he asked with faint cynicism. “I grew up poor, honey. I remember what it was like when we started making money here. But that’s something you’re going to have to find out for yourself, I guess.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” she said softly.

“It will. Kiss me good night and go home. Want me to follow you in the Bronco to make sure you get there all right?”

She was still staggering from his request. Her wide eyes welded to his, she couldn’t be bothered to worry about getting home.

“Kiss you good night?” she whispered.

“Don’t you want to?” he whispered back, bending. “This kind of thing can get addictive, especially when it feels this sweet. Come on. Open that soft little mouth and fit it to mine, Katy,” he murmured as his face came closer.

She obeyed him, trembling as she felt the moist warmth of his lips so close against her own. She parted her lips and nudged them up against his, and moaned when he returned the caress with biting hunger. The sound worked on his blood like fire. He looped an arm around her shoulders and brought her roughly against his chest while the pressure of his mouth pushed her head back onto his muscular arm. Time hung like the stars while they fed on each other, and it was a long time before Jason could manage to drag himself away.

Jason’s eyes were almost frightening with their hot glitter as they searched Kate’s. “You and your damned soft breasts are giving me hell,” he breathed shakily. “Next time, wear a bra, unless you want to watch me strip you to the waist out of sheer frustration.”

Her mouth opened on a gasp and he bent long enough to crush his own over it for an instant. Then he let her go and moved back a step. She tried to stop shaking.

“Jason!” she exclaimed.

“I’m not made of solid rock,” he reminded her. His eyes went to her blouson, where the sharp tips of her breasts were straining against the thin fabric. “God, that excites me,” he said roughly.

She blinked, because in some ways, her education was a little faulty. “What?”

He sighed wearily. “Kate...this.” He brushed the back of his hand softly over her breast, and she jerked back on an inverted breath. “Didn’t you know that a woman’s body shows arousal that way?” he asked her gently.

“I do now, thanks,” she fumbled, wrapping her arms around herself in a flurry of embarrassment.

“Stop that,” he scolded gently. “Remember who I am, Kate.”

“I’m trying,” she replied lightly, her eyes fascinated with him and this new and sudden intimacy. But she moved her arms. Odd, how her body tingled when he looked at her breasts. For one wild instant, she thought about what he’d threatened, about stripping her to the waist and looking at her there....

“Why the wild blush?” he asked, his voice deep and velvety. He kissed her closed eyelids. “If you want to experiment, I’ll let you do it with me. At least you’ll be safe that way.”

“Oh, Jason,” she moaned, “I feel so strange...!”

“And so threatened. And there’s no need.” He pressed his mouth to her forehead. “I’m going to take exquisite care of you. Now go home before things get out of hand. Lovemaking is one thing, but sex is something else again.” He lifted his head and searched her eyes. “I won’t let you sleep with me, Kate. Virginity is something you should save for marriage.”

“Nobody else does,” she replied.

“Bull,” he shot back. “That’s another myth. It’s the fashion to be sexually liberated these days, but it’s damned dangerous, too. And I don’t mean just because girls can get pregnant. It’s because there are so many things you can catch that can kill you, or at the very least make you untouchable. You understand me?”

“Is that why you don’t run around?” she asked, her eyes curious.

“It’s one of many reasons I don’t,” he admitted. His eyes drew slowly over her face. “Even a man has to be careful these days. I’d cut off my arm before I’d expose you to any kind of disease.”

“And that’s the only reason you don’t want me to sleep with other men?” she coaxed.

His face hardened. “I feel the same way about that as you seem to feel about thinking of me in bed with other women.”

Her eyes fell. “Oh.”

“Kate, I’m getting in over my head here, and I need a cold shower like hell. So will you please go home?”

She smiled at the way he said it, delighted at the way he was reacting to her, and at the new relationship they were heading for. “Okay.”

“Drive carefully.”

“I will.”

She peeked at him, but he seemed remote now, unapproachable. With a faint grin, she turned and started toward the steps.

“I’ll be in Montana looking at Beefmaster bulls for a few days next week,” he said unexpectedly. “And at the end of the month, I’ll be headed for Australia. I’ll bring you back something pretty from there.”

“You’re doing a lot of traveling,” she said quietly. “Will you be in Australia long?” she asked, sounding miserable because she was.

He wished he wasn’t going all of a sudden. He studied her face. “I know a man up in the Northern Territory who’s experimenting with some new Indian cattle, crossbreeding them with shorthorns. I’ve been invited to spend a month over there getting familiar with the operation. It’s something I’m interested in trying here, so I’ve accepted, and Gene’s going to run things while I’m away, despite the fact that I had to browbeat him into it. I can’t spare the time, but I need to see about expanding the operation.”

“A whole month away?” she murmured, trying not to let him see how disappointed she felt.

“Yes. But not for a few weeks yet.” He smiled. “Don’t borrow things to brood about. Live one day at a time.”

“That’s easy to say,” she sighed.

“You’ll get the hang of it.” He put a fresh cigarette in his mouth and lit it. “Watch your speed.”

She nodded. One last glance at his face was all she got before Jason turned and went back to the swing to sit down. When she pulled out of the driveway, he was still sitting there. By the time she got home, she wondered if she might have dreamed the whole interlude. But her mouth was swollen from his kisses and her breasts ached from the gentle crush of his chest. Kate walked in feeling on air, and only barely managed to camouflage her budding emotions from her mother’s eagle eye. She didn’t want to share her secret just yet. She didn’t want Mary to know what had happened. But life had suddenly taken on new meaning, and she felt alive as she never had before.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE FIRST TWO outfits that Kate designed had been cut, and sewn, and Dessie Cagle had them sitting on a mannequin the next day in the sample room when Kate got to work.

Dessie beamed at her, and the designer, Sandy, laughed at the expression on her face.

“There you go,” Sandy mused, one hand on her ample hip. Her salt-and-pepper hair was elegantly coiffed, and she wore a simple blue pantsuit. “What do you think? The first samples with the Kathryn of Texas label.”

“Almost,” Dessie added. “The labels were supposed to come by UPS, but they’re late.”

Kate sighed over the sky blue and cream combinations, a heavy silver-toned concho belt linking the bottom to its blouson top. “Imagine,” she shook her head, astonished. “That’s all mine.”

“Well, not quite,” Sandy said slowly. “Kate, there are a couple of changes in the darts, because of production time. I hope you don’t mind,” she added, and she showed Kate the minor alterations.

“Oh, that’s no problem,” Kate said, and meant it. “Mr. Rogers had said already that there might have to be a change here and there. We learned compromise in design school,” she grinned. “I don’t do these in concrete.”

“Thank God, she’s not going to be a prima donna,” Sandy gushed, dancing Dessie around the room. She glanced at Kate with a rueful smile. “Our last new designer lasted one week. She’d designed us a skirt with eight set-in pockets and sixteen belt loops. We had to alter the design, and we even tried to compromise because it would have cost more to make it than we could have sold it for. Our little designer raised the roof, threatened to sue us individually and collectively, and in her fury overturned a buggy of scraps on one of the quality control ladies.” She shook her head. “I don’t guess you heard about it out on the floor?”

Kate pursed her lips. “Actually, we all knew about it, and I decided then and there that if I ever sold a design I’d bite off my tongue before I’d argue about production changes. Am I still loved?”

Sandy hugged her warmly. “Of course you are! Now. How are you coming with that new slant bodice on your blouson...?”

Kate pulled out her sketchbook and laid it on the desk to show her boss. But while she was talking, her eyes kept darting to the outfit on the mannequin. Kathryn of Texas. Now she had a label. And she was going to make it one to be proud of.

Mary had lunch with her in the canteen, and spent most of the half hour groaning over the repairs they had to get through. Some of the cuts were farmed out to a division of the company in the Caribbean, where labor was less expensive. But when they came back in, some of them didn’t make it through quality control and had to be taken through the sewing line again.

“Those repairs are never going to stop,” Mary sighed as she finished her ham sandwich and washed it down with a swallow of canteen coffee in a Styrofoam cup. She rested her tired arms on the polished yellow finish of the long table they were sharing with a few other scattered sewing hands. “I think my body is growing to my machine.”

“God forbid,” Kate laughed. “There, there, I’ll get rich and support you.”

“Promises, promises.” Mary stretched, looking older than ever in the orange slacks and patterned matching top she’d made. Orange really wasn’t her mother’s color, but Kate hadn’t been able to talk her out of the fabric she’d made them from.

“You’d look good in white,” Kate told her mother.

“Sure. Covered with lint in camouflage and khaki shades and smeared with machine oil,” her mother agreed dryly. “Any other helpful comments you care to make?”

“Why don’t you make eyes at that new mechanic,” came the quick comment. “He’s about your age and dashing....”

“And the only thing he’s ever said to me was, ‘Hand me my screwdriver.’ No, thanks. He’s got a wart on his nose.”

“Maybe he was a frog and somebody kissed him,” Kate suggested.

Mary gave her a hard glare. “I have to work over today,” she said. “Do you want to wait for me or get a ride home?”

“I want to wait until the truck comes in from Dallas and see if it’s got my buttons and lace,” Kate told her. “They’re a day late already. I need to check them against the fabric and make sure they look the way I want them to.”

“You picky designers,” Mary chided as she got up. “You’ll be standing in a retail store, complaining about the way they stick on the price tags.”

“Oh, to design clothes so fancy that they wouldn’t have price tags,” Kate sighed.

Mary just grimaced and left her there. Kate sipped her coffee, her eyes going blankly out the window at the blue skies. She wondered if Jason was still out with the men, and decided that probably he was. Roundup seemed to go on forever. Tempers got worse as it went along and she didn’t imagine that she was going to see him for several days. That was vaguely worrying, because he’d be going to Montana next week, and it was already Thursday. Her mind went back to the way he’d kissed her. She smiled, going off into a daydream where she was a famous designer and Jason was her husband, and he was accompanying her to a grand show in New York during one of the market weeks. She’d glitter, and he’d be so proud of her. She’d be hailed on the street in her famous finery, and Jason would accompany her to parties....

She blinked. Jason wouldn’t be at any of those parties for the simple reason that he didn’t approve of her designing aspirations. He still thought a woman belonged in the bedroom or the kitchen, and he wasn’t likely to change overnight.

A part of her mind kept asking why she was mooning over a man who wouldn’t want her the way she wanted to be, and who would expect his wife to stay home, have babies, and help entertain his business guests. She couldn’t face those limits, so she ignored them. At the moment, all she could think about was the sweet savagery of his mouth and the unexpected pleasure of loving him. If the lovely dream only lasted for a few days, until she came to her senses, she was going to enjoy it while it did. He was right. It was better to live for the moment rather than worry about the future. Because for her and Jason there was no future.

She and Mary were getting ready to leave the house the next morning when Jason unexpectedly showed up at the back door with a basket of beans.

“Sheila sent them,” he told Mary, putting them on the counter in their wicker container. “She thought the two of you might like some fresh ones, and she tucked in a bag of frozen ham hocks to cook them with.”

“The darling,” Mary enthused. “Thank her for us. Would you like a biscuit and some coffee?”

“I’d like that, thanks.” He grinned as he glanced toward the doorway where Kate suddenly appeared, breathlessly plaiting her hair with a blue ribbon that complemented her denim skirt and blue dotted Swiss short-sleeved blouse.

“Oh!” Kate exclaimed, stopping short. Her hands froze in midair for a second and her face colored. He was in working gear, jeans and a chambray shirt carelessly unbuttoned at the throat, with a blue bandanna tied at his neck and that battered black Stetson on his head. His spurs jingled on boots too worn to be decent. But he looked very masculine and unbearably handsome to Kate’s adoring eyes. She smiled at him unexpectedly, and he held her eyes until she had to drag them away.

“I’ll get the coffee,” Mary murmured, turning away to get another cup with a knowing smile.

Kate finished tying her braid and sat down at the table where biscuits sat on one platter and bacon and sausage on another. They hadn’t bothered with eggs because neither of them cared for them.

“If you want an egg, I’ll cook you one,” Kate offered as Jason sat down beside her.

“No, thanks, honey, I’ve had breakfast once already, about five this morning.” His leg brushed hers and he smiled at her nervous reaction. “I like the ribbon.”

“Thank you.” She glanced into his dark eyes and shivers of sensation ran through her body. It was exciting to look at him, all of a sudden. She felt the magic like electricity as he searched her soft eyes.

“How’s roundup going?” Mary asked when she came back with the coffee and broke the spell.

“Oh, not so bad,” Jason told her. He took a biscuit and filled it with bacon that was crisp and browned just right. “We had one busted leg, two broken ribs, a crushed foot, and fifteen stitches in a leg. Other than that, I guess it’s going fine.”

Kate grimaced. “Well, at least it wasn’t your fifteen stiches,” she said. She creamed her coffee and offered him the faded little cream pitcher that once had boasted a patch of strawberries on one side. Now there was little more than a faded leaf and a few unrecognizable dots of red where it had been.

Jason’s lean, dark hand took it from hers and didn’t let go for several seconds. Kate could hardly breathe. His touch ignited her like fire. She looked at his somber face, feeling the hunger in him like a living thing because it was echoed in her own body.

She remembered how hungrily they’d kissed two nights ago, and her eyes fell to his hard mouth with frank delight. He saw it, and his lips parted. She looked up again, catching the same need in his dark, narrowing eyes.

Neither of them moved. Life seemed to be locked in slow motion for a space of seconds while their eyes said things their mouths couldn’t. Jason abruptly poured cream in his coffee and asked Mary about selling off a few head of the cattle he oversaw for her on the boundary of his own property.

“Go ahead and do what you think best, Jason,” Mary said without argument. “You know I’ve no head for business. If we sell now, will we get enough to make the next mortgage payment?”

“With some to spare,” he told her. “The market’s up just temporarily. This is a good time to get rid of the culls.”

“Are you selling some of yours?” Kate asked, just to show him that she wasn’t too tongue-tied to talk.

“I’ve got a few dry cows and some open ones I’m going to sell off,” he agreed.

“Pitiful,” Kate murmured over her biscuit. “Getting rid of a poor little cow because she isn’t expecting.”

“I can’t afford to keep poor little cows who aren’t expecting,” he returned with a faint smile. “In a cow-calf operation, calves pay the bills. If mama doesn’t earn her keep, off she goes into somebody’s frying pan.”

“He’s a cannibal,” Kate told Mary with a straight face.

“He’s a businessman,” Mary argued.

“Same difference,” Kate returned, grinning impishly at Jason.

He laughed, the sound deep and pleasant in the silence of the cheerful little kitchen. “It takes a cannibal to make money these days,” he admitted. He ate his biscuit and sipped his black coffee. “Well, Gene’s trying to convince me to back him in an art show. He needs up-front money for supplies. Damn, those paints are expensive!”

“I know,” Kate said gently. “But he’s good, Jason. He’s really good.”

He drained the thick white mug, one of the new ones Kate had bought, and put it down on the red-checkered oilcloth that adorned the table. “Kate, there are a lot of good artists in the world. But it takes a great one to make any money. And most of them,” he added somberly, “die poor. He’s got Cherry to support, and someday there’ll be children. He needs to think about them, not about his own pipe dreams. Dreams won’t put bread on the table, or clothe children. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to support him into old age. He’s going to have to start pulling his weight around the Spur.”

Kate wanted to argue, but Jason looked dug-in, and she didn’t want to start something else. It was Gene’s problem, after all, not hers. If he wanted to live his own life, he was going to have to fight Jason himself. Kate didn’t envy him that challenge, either. Jason was a formidable enemy.

“How’s your arm?” Kate asked.

He flexed it, rippling the muscle under the nice fit of the fabric. “Fine,” he said. “I haven’t had a problem with it.” He glared at her. “And I would have healed just fine without being dragged to the doctor.”

“I do realize that, Jason,” Kate said sincerely. “And I promise the next time Gabe begs me to look at your torn and bleeding body, I’ll put a sack over my head and hold my ears shut.”

He pursed his lips, and his dark eyes twinkled. “Would you, really?” he asked. His voice had a new softness when he spoke, his face was more relaxed than Kate had ever seen it.

She sighed, studying him. “I guess not, since you’re the only friend I’ve got.”

“I’ll put the dishes in the sink,” Mary murmured, glancing delightedly from one to the other of them. As she puttered around the kitchen, Kate got to her feet. Kate hadn’t expected Jason to stand up at the same time. She overbalanced and he caught her waist to steady her.

Standing so close to him, her nerves were unsettled, and it showed. She had to force her breath in and out, but she couldn’t stop the rustle of it through her lips.

He stared at her mouth until she thought she’d go crazy if he didn’t bend those few inches and take it. She swallowed, her tongue going unsteadily to her dry lips, and he made a sound under his breath and almost pushed her away.

“I’ve got to get back to work,” he said curtly. “I left calves scattered all over hell and gone.”

“Thanks again for the beans,” Mary said. She glanced at him thoughtfully. “Would you like to come over for supper and sample them?”

He lifted his eyebrows. “Who’s cooking, you or Kate?”

Mary glared at him. “Why, you horrible man, and I was going to bake you a cake, too.”

He tweaked Mary’s chin and bent to kiss her cheek. “You’re a great cook. I apologize.”

“Kate’s cooking, anyway,” Mary muttered. She shook her head, laughing. “You horrible man,” she said again and started toward the hall. “I’ll get our purses, Kate, you can lock the back door after Jason.”

“Yes, Mama,” Kate agreed.

The silence in the room when she left it was deafening. Jason stared at her with all the barriers down. There was no teasing banter now to disguise the desire in his hard face.

He moved toward her, tucking a hand under her soft chin to lift it. “Do you want my mouth as much as I want yours?” he asked under his breath.

Her lips parted. “Oh, yes...!” she moaned.

He bent and roughly opened her lips with his, teasing them in a silence that vibrated with tension. He lifted his mouth and brushed it lazily back and forth across hers, feeling the trembling start.

He bit her lower lip softly. “Do that to me.”

She did, and both his lean hands came up to frame her face, to hold it steady while his dark eyes blazed into hers for an instant.

“Now let’s stop playing and do it for real,” he whispered gruffly, and bent with fierce purpose in his mouth.

Her heart was going crazy when she felt that tentative searching, but before she had time to react to it, her mother’s footsteps echoed toward the kitchen door.

“Oh, damn,” Kate whimpered under her breath. Jason stood erect on legs that felt weak and looked down at her with black frustration in a face like stone.

“I wanted it, too,” he said quietly. “Tonight, I’ll give you that kiss, Kate. I’ll give it to you with interest...!”

Mary walked in with Kate’s purse. “About six suit you, Jason?” she asked the taciturn man who was already at the back door, with his lean hand on the doorknob.

“Six suits me fine,” he said, and grinned at them.

“See you then,” Kate said lightly.

Neither of them fooled Mary, who saw beneath the teasing tones to the intense tension she’d interrupted. “Don’t fall off your horse,” she told Jason.

“Hold your breath,” he returned. “My God, a man can’t walk in the door around here without getting insulted.”

“We only insult people we like,” Kate assured him. Her eyes traced his face lovingly. She was still shaking with hunger for the kiss she’d wanted so much.

“Good thing I’m not on the bad side of you, then,” he chuckled. He winked at them and went out, leaving Kate to lock it behind him.

“Jason’s a character,” Mary laughed, shaking her head.

“He’s a nice man,” Kate agreed without looking at her mother, and she smiled. “Shall we go?”

Nice, Mary thought as they left the house, was a word no sane woman would use when referring to Jason Donavan. She knew suddenly, and with almost tangible delight, that something was going on between Jason and Kate. Now if she could just help things along, she might not have to worry about Kate’s future after all.

Kate, blissfully unaware of her mother’s plotting, was thinking dreamily of the evening ahead, already tasting Jason’s mouth on her own. She’d put the future out of her mind altogether. All she wanted now was as much of Jason’s company as she could get, and whatever feeling there was in him for her. She was in love with him, and because of that, she decided, she’d give him whatever he asked of her. Even if that meant eventually getting out of his life altogether.

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