Countess in Cowboy Boots

by Jodi O'Donnell

  “I’m not takin’ that chance. I mean, look at it from my side, like how I’m wonderin’ what it was you could’ve done that Laslo took away your tiara and managed to escape settling a big fat divorce settlement on you so you had no choice but to come back to Abysmal.”

  That did it. This time Lacey stuck her nose practically up against his. “Believe me, I had a choice, although if I’d known I’d have to deal with an interfering, domineering ring-tailed control freak like you, I would have settled anywhere but here!”

  “Yeah?” He looked clearly furious with that assessment of his personality. “Well, I was born in the dark, Cinderella, but it wasn’t yesterday.”

  “And stop calling me Cinderella!”

  She didn’t realize how vehement she’d sounded until her words were reverberating in the truck’s cab. Will studied her impassively.

  “But that’s what you are and always will be to Lee,” he said, “and to everyone else in this town.”

  His statement stunned her, because she was much afraid he was right. Stunned her, frustrated her—and made her mad.

  “Well, obviously if I can convince you I’m not,” she retorted, “then the two thousand, one hundred and fifty-six other people in Abysmal will follow suit and my work here is done!”

  There was another beat of silence and then, to her amazement, Will laughed, a short bark of mirth that clearly said she’d surprised him. It completely changed him, surprising her, too, as the forbidding aspect to his expression fell away, and she caught a rare glimpse of a side of Will Proffitt she’d wager few saw.

  For there, in the back of his eyes, she saw a flicker of something—respect?—which somehow eased that constricting band around her throat, ever so slightly.

  “Why do you dislike me so much, Will?” Lacey asked candidly. “Of course, you never were exactly friendly when Lee and I were seeing each other, but at least you had a civil word for me whenever we crossed paths. I’d just like to know what it was I did that put such a bad taste in your mouth about me that you’d hold it against me now.”

  At her question, his gray-eyed gaze shuttered again, and he frowned with such formidable thoroughness she wondered how she’d managed to make him drop that demeanor for even a second. Still, she waited, not knowing why his reply would be so important to her, only that it was.

  Yet when he spoke, it was not in answer to her question.

  “Lee’s happy, Lacey,” he said. “For the first time in a long time—I’d say first time since our father died when Lee was just a little kid of eight. He favors Daddy, meanin’ they’re both of a tender nature, not too good at ridin’ the highs and lows life hands out as a matter of course. And sensitive to a fault, givin’ the shirt off their backs to anyone who asks for it—and it’s been up to me to make sure they didn’t lose the ranch in the process.”

  His eyes turned grim. “And that’s the way it’ll stay, especially if no ex-countess puts notions into Lee’s head that he’s got a shot at

  rescuin’ her in some outdated code of cowboy honor out of a Louis L’Amour novel.”

  “For the tenth time, I’m not looking for a man to take care of me!” Lacey said.

  “That’s good, because neither of us Proffitts is in the business any longer of caterin’ to any female’s needs, unless she’s nursin’ a calf that’s going to bring us a considerable profit come market time!”

  Now he sounded almost defensive, and that’s when the glimmer of a suspicion hit her like the light reflecting off the chrome ram hood ornament. “What’s this all about, Will Proffitt? Is there something going on here I don’t know about? About Lee?” He’d certainly alluded to some problem with Lee, but then an impulse made her ask, “About you?”

  She obviously hit some kind of sore spot, for Will turned to stare out the windshield, again not answering her. And for the first time, relieved of that laser gaze, her own was able to examine his face for clues.

  Yet she didn’t; instead she found her eyes sketching the sweep of his lashes, the slope of his jawline—and the undeniably sensitive curve to his mouth.

  She’d never noticed it before, never been close enough to him to have gotten the chance to notice it. And it absolutely captivated her, so novel was the notion that Iron Will Proffitt might have a vulnerable side—just like the one he’d disparaged in his brother.

  Fascinated, Lacey found herself focusing on his mouth until another kind of vibration set itself off in her middle. For the first time, she understood how he’d had girls from one end of the Panhandle to the other vying for his attention those years ago.

  And now?

  Of its own volition, her gaze slid briefly to his left hand, resting on his knee. He wore no wedding ring. So he’d never married? Why? she wondered.

  Of course, he was Iron Will, a man who made General Patton look like a playground supervisor.

  But then there was that mouth. Her attention was drawn back to it, the full bow of his lower lip which dented in at the corners even when his mouth was in repose, neither frowning nor smiling, the last which she’d only seen him do once.

  And it had been in response to her.

  Lacey glanced up and to her utter mortification found Will’s gaze had marked the direction hers had taken. A long moment ticked by in which she saw another kind of flicker flare up in the back of those cool gray eyes, and she realized that somehow, whether she’d wanted to or not, she’d again gotten past that stony, impenetrable exterior of his.

  Then his eyebrows lifted in that singular expression of skepticism and he drawled, “Not lookin’ for a man, you say? Then why’s the needle on my lie detector jumping around like one of those seismographs during an eight-point-nine earthquake?”

  On balance, Lacey considered, maybe it had just been a trick of the light that had made her think this man had even a smidgen of tenderness in his tough hide.

  She set her wrist on top of the steering wheel and pointed. “See that road out there? You can take it right out of town and never stop.”

  His silver eyes merely glinted in amusement as he obligingly opened the door and climbed out as she started the truck, ready to drive him there herself if she had to.

  “Y’know, you might be just what this sleepy town needs,” he said. “I know I’ll be on pins and needles wonderin’ what you’ll come up with for job skills. Successful yacht lounger? Expert bonbon eater and poodle petter?”

  “Well, you can bet I’ll come up with something, because if you think I’d ever let myself depend on any man again, you don’t know Lacey McCoy at all!”

  He looked at her through the open window, shaking his head.

  “Oh, you may not be America’s Cinderella any longer,” Will remarked, “but you’re sure as shootin’ the Queen of Denial.”

  “Right, and you just let me know when you want to get in touch with the real world and I’ll patch you through, because the age of overblown Texas cattle barons everybody kowtows to was over about a hundred years ago!”

  His eyebrows snapped abruptly together, telling her she’d scored the last point, but it didn’t help ease her annoyance as Lacey peeled away in a headline-making squeal of tires and smoking rubber.

  A block later she’d slowed down and a few blocks after found another place to park, this time so she could find that moment she so needed to regain her perspective.

  She killed the engine and concentrated on regulating her breathing. It helped. Then her gaze dropped to the seat beside her, where lay the local weekly.

  Ah yes, the good old Abysmal Times. She’d always wondered what brain trust had come up with that masthead, which seemed to suggest the newspaper contained such dire, gloomy reports on life in this West Texas town that only those with extreme intestinal fortitude should risk peeking inside.

  But then, the residents of Abysmal had long ago become inured to
the connotations of their town’s name. If anything, they took the attitude, with true Texan bravado, of someone who’s come late to the cattle auction and ends up with the sorriest cow on the yard, only to announce that runty, bowlegged, and big-toe-ugly stock was precisely what he was looking for this season. And he defied anyone to tell him he hadn’t gotten a good price, too.

  Lacey stared unseeingly at the print before her and realized only then that it was this combination of bred-in-the-bone pride, stubbornness, and God-given certitude which exactly characterized what she had come back hoping to rediscover within herself.

  Especially since returning to where and what she’d been was not an option.

  So had she made the proverbial Freudian slip with Will? Not that she was leading Lee on or that there was anything romantic happening between them, but that what she’d actually come back here looking for was a man to rescue her and take care of her, and had even been doing so all those years ago?

  Because it still seemed rather fantastic, even to her, that Nicolai Laslo had come along when he had and had seemed to fit perfectly with her vision of what Prince Charming should be like: handsome, compelling and interesting, but most of all interested in her in a way Lacey had to admit she’d longed for. Certainly, she’d taken the position overseas working as a nanny for the opportunity to see something of the world, but in her heart she had been looking for the special once-in-a-lifetime love which she’d somehow doubted would find her back here at home.

  And Nicolai had quite simply distracted her with the most convincing facsimile of it that money could buy, romancing her in a way guaranteed to win her heart and confirm what she had secretly wanted to believe all her life: little Lacey McCoy from Abysmal, Texas, deserved high romance with all the trimmings. Deserved that sense of being honored with the best of a man’s attention and respect and love. And if that had manifested itself in her being treated like a princess, then was she to blame for responding to Nicolai’s flattery and favors and grand gestures?

  She still cringed to think of how easily she’d fallen for such blandishments. How she had wanted to be swept off her feet. How she had wanted to be rescued and taken care of.

  So did she now? Because she couldn’t deny there was something of that nature in the look which had passed between her and Will Proffitt.

  Her heart gave an uneven beat as doubt crept up on her and Lacey felt herself reverting to old thought patterns—questioning her judgment, mistrusting the strength of instincts weakened from constantly being twisted and distorted.

  That desperateness squeezed at her throat. The feeling was like nothing else in the world; that of being forced to be someone besides herself, but also of not knowing who that person was. And not trusting her judgment as a result.

  Lacey felt the tears of sheer terror forming in the back of her throat and made herself take a deep breath. Take a moment to reorient herself. Take a gut check.

  And she came up with the answer: Will was wrong. She was not back to be rescued by any man. Moreover, she needn’t defend herself to that one. She was through with living her life that way. Because of that, she’d had no choice, really. Not if she wanted to save her sanity. Save herself. She was meant to do something with her life, and she’d specifically come back here to do it because she knew these people—how they thought, how their minds worked. How their stubbornness continued to wring a living out of this barren land. How they spoke forthrightly, if bluntly, with that God-given certitude which every Texan had learned chapter and verse at the knees of their elders which said their state was better than any other place on the face of the earth.

  And how they embodied that bred-in-the-bone pride at being from a little town with the absurd name of Abysmal, Texas.

  She’d been one of them once and would be again.

  On that thought, she gave the newspaper a snap and set it aside. Yes, she was made of sterner stuff than to throw in the towel—or should she say tiara—just yet. She wouldn’t let Will get to her.

  Yet in discovering that she could get past that iron guard and glimpse the warmth within, Lacey realized Will Proffitt had done just that.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WILL PROFFITT STEPPED INTO the cool interior of the Abysmal State Bank, pausing just inside the door to remove his hat and to try to brush at least one layer of West Texas dust off the thighs of his jeans.

  Recalling his conversation with Lee last night and the resulting one with Lacey this morning, Will felt his temper hitch up a couple of notches.

  He still wasn’t quite to believing she really hadn’t heard from someone how the news of her engagement eight years ago had nearly destroyed Lee. Or before that how he’d told it around town that as soon as she finished her year-long work visa in Europe, the two of them were the ones going to be married.

  Not that Will actually thought his brother and Lacey had had that kind of understanding—Lee was Lee, after all—but she had to have had an inkling of how Lee felt about her, enough at least to break her news to him personally!

  But no, Lee had learned of Lacey’s engagement to Count Nicolai Laslo the way practically the whole world had heard about it, when she’d been dubbed America’s Cinderella in that media circus to end all media circuses.

  Of course, he hadn’t paid much attention to it at the time. He’d been too busy looking for Lee, who’d dealt with the humiliation by disappearing for two weeks.

  The muscles along the yoke of Will’s shoulder blades tensed at the thought of it. He was of half a mind to relate the incident to Lacey to show her just how much she’d lacked for any kind of human charity, only no way would he hurt his brother that way. Besides, it struck him that if Lacey didn’t know about Lee carrying on like a lovesick fool for her, then chances were she wouldn’t know of the occasion a number of years after that of Will’s own public humiliation when his bride of a year had up and divorced him.

  It was just as well the comings and goings of this little jerkwater town on the tail end of Texas held no interest for Lacey McCoy once she’d left it to become the Countess Laslo. Just as well she didn’t know how miserable the Proffitt men were at picking their women and holding on to them.

  On that thought, Will headed purposefully toward the back of the building, where beyond the thigh-high wood rail were the offices housing the bank’s managers.

  “Good morning, Mr. Proffitt,” Matt Boyle’s assistant chirped in her best school-teacher manner.

  “’Lo there, Missy. Thought I’d drop by for a chat with Matt, if he’s not tied up.”

  “You’re in luck, Mr. Proffitt. He’s free right now, although I know he’d make time in his schedule for you if he weren’t.”

  “Do tell,” Will said mildly. Through the plate glass behind her, he could see Matt sitting with his snakeskin boots propped on a corner of his desk, idly clipping his nails.

  Will would have liked not to come to Matt, but he was the senior loan officer for the bank, so Will was obliged to deal with him when it came to handling matters having to do with the tack and feed, which was what he was here for.

  “I’ll just go on in, if that’s all right, Missy,” Will murmured, brushing past her to enter Matt’s office.

  “How do, Matt,” he boomed in his best Foghorn Leghorn impression. He stifled a grin as the younger man’s boots came off the desk and hit the floor. The nail clippers made a ching as they fell then skittered between two file cabinets.

  “Why, Will Proffitt!” Matt said, recovering with a spate of joviality that went with his ex-linebacker-gone-to-seed build. “What a pleasure! Yessir, it sure is!”

  Will made no reply. For some reason he was suddenly annoyed. He sat without invitation and got directly to the point.

  “You know those transfer of ownership papers I was having you draw up on the tack and feed?” he said.

  “They’re right here.” Mat
t shuffled through a stack on his desk and came up with a file. He smiled nervously. “Can you believe I was just about to give you a call to see when I could bring them out to the ranch for you and Lee to look at them?”

  “Yes, well—” Will scratched the bridge of his nose with the edge of his hat brim

  “—that’s what I wanted to tell you. There’s no rush on them. Take your time.”

  “But they’re all in order. Really.”

  “No doubt there’s some details that might benefit from a double check,” Will said with heavy emphasis.

  “Oh, but it’s just a simple transfer of ownership. I’ve been over the numbers and the wording myself and everything looks great. All we lack is finishing up,” Matt joked. He must have caught the drift of some of Will’s growing annoyance, for he added on a stutter, “Th-that is, once the documents meet with your approval, of course.”

  “Of course.” Will tried again. “I’m not questionin’ your abilities, Matt. I’m just thinking there’s no harm in bein’ thorough and not rushing the deal, so to speak.”

  Matt’s florid face became even more flushed. “I don’t mean to argue with you, Will, but I told Lee just last night when I saw him at the café that the papers were near to being ready to sign. And I’ll see him again tonight at darts league. What’m I going to say to him?”

  Will sighed. Could the boy really be this obtuse?

  “I want you to sit on the matter for a while, Matt,” he said. “And I don’t want Lee to know. Got that?”

  Comprehension was slow to dawn on the younger man but it finally did. “Oh!”

  Will reasoned he ought to offer at least some explanation. “Let’s just say there’s a couple of things Lee and I need to hash out before I’m ready to turn the tack and feed over to him.”

  “Sure, sure. You can count on my complete discretion,” Matt assured him. “Just let me know what else I can do to help, Will.”