Only You

by Peg Sutherland

  He paid for more grape juice and listened to stories about a hateful line supervisor at Weddington Textiles, a sorry so-and-so who couldn’t understand that women sometimes had perfectly valid reasons why they couldn’t clock in precisely on the button at 7:00 a.m. But from the corner of his eye, Trent watched Harper.

  She struck up a conversation with a grease monkey masquerading as a cowboy. She smiled for him and tossed her curls for him, but her eyes kept flickering in Trent’s direction. Trent pretended he didn’t notice.

  “Darlin’, are you payin’ even the least little bit of attention to me?”

  Trent focused on his companion. Looking her squarely in the eyes after being so close to Harper was an exercise in disappointment. She probably wasn’t ten years older than Harper, but the years had been hard on her. Too much peroxide, too many nights in smoky bars, too many free grape juice and vodkas, too, and all the paybacks that implied in a place like this. Trent fought back a sigh. Why had he gotten himself into this?

  The problem was, he liked women. Sincerely liked them. Blame it on all those Friday nights immersed in the problems of his mama and his aunts and their friends. But Trent thought most women got a raw deal, and he was always getting himself into things he ought to stay out of by trying, just for a moment or two, to make them think their lives weren’t so bad after all.

  He had to remember that buying them a drink and getting their hopes up wasn’t doing them any favors. Not when he had bigger plans than ending up in a trailer park up to his ears in debt for an above-ground pool.

  He downed his beer, cut his eyes fleetingly in the direction of Harper—Bronco Bill had his arm draped possessively around her shoulder—and said, “Truthfully, miss, I can’t seem to keep my mind off other things tonight.”

  That was another thing. Trent didn’t believe in lying to women. Fudging the truth when necessary, maybe, but out-and-out lying was something he tried to avoid.

  She patted his hand. “I knew it. You got all the earmarks of a broken heart, darlin’. Why don’t you tell old Sherri all about it?”

  Trent eased off his bar stool. “Sherri, you’re an angel. You deserve better tonight than listening to me cry in my beer.”

  It took another few minutes to extricate himself, and when he looked once again toward the end of the bar, Harper and her cowboy had disappeared.

  Trent cruised the bar, growing uneasy when he didn’t spot Harper or her new best friend. The joint had grown more raucous as the hour grew later, the crush of people making it hard to get around. Trent knew it would be easy to miss someone in such a crowd, but he also knew he wouldn’t have a bit of trouble finding Harper if she was still here. She drew him like a porch light drew bugs.

  He told himself if she’d left, it didn’t matter. He should let it go. Let her go. Wasn’t that part of the plan? To act as if he didn’t give a damn, to make her come to him?

  Still, he kept thinking of what could happen when a headstrong girl like Harper walked out of a place like The Stallion with a man she didn’t know. A man who thought he’d bought and paid for her with the price of a draft beer.

  Unable to ignore the uneasiness in the pit of his gut, Trent pushed his way to the door.

  Outside, Trent peered around the parking lot, checking out the collection of rattletrap pickups and souped-up jalopies, finally spotting a candy-apple red convertible on the dark edge of the lot.

  Harper’s friend had her backed up against the hood of the car, his body pressed against hers. The sight set Trent’s blood to boiling. It shouldn’t have. He knew what rich spoiled brats like Harper Weddington did when they went slumming. He wasn’t naive. Not by a long shot.

  Sticking to the shadows, he eased closer. Close enough to realize that Harper was leaning backward, pushing the man away. Trent tensed. Was this all part of her game? Or was it something uglier?

  “Stop it,” he heard her mutter, then heard her little squeal of protest as the man forced his lips to her face.

  Before Trent could react, he heard a thump and a grunt, followed by the man’s growled response. “Why, you little—”

  Trent sprang into action, grabbing the cowboy by his plaid shirt and yanking him back just as Harper jerked her knee upward in a strategically planned defense maneuver.

  Trent flung the cowboy aside. He stumbled against a nearby car, clenching his fists and glaring.

  “Listen, pal,” the cowboy said, “this is none of your business.”

  “That’s right!” Harper said huffily as she smoothed her skirt and brushed her short hair off her face.

  Trent gripped Harper’s arm and put on his best smile for the man with revenge in his eyes. “I just wanted to thank you for finding my baby sister. She’s always running off and stirring up trouble. You know, my daddy’s fit to be tied right now. He swore the next person who laid a hand on Susie here was going to spend the rest of his life behind bars.”

  Through narrowed eyes, the man looked from one to the other. “She’s jailbait?”

  Trent nodded. “Fourteen.”

  Harper tried to jerk her arm away, but he held fast. “Why, you—”

  “Her next birthday,” Trent added.

  In a matter of seconds, Trent and Harper were alone in the parking lot. He let go of her arm, but she was so clearly furious that he kept a careful eye on her knee. She backed against the door of her car and glowered at him.

  “I had everything under control,” she snapped.

  Trent chuckled. Now that he knew she was safe, he felt fine again.

  “Only if you were planning to change that ‘no’ to a ‘yes’ any minute,” he said.

  “Well, if I was, it’s none of your darn business.”

  He heard a tremble in her voice, a tremble she tried to hide with her anger, and he felt his good humor slip again. Harper Weddington wasn’t as tough as she liked to pretend, and somehow that troubled him. He didn’t want to start thinking of her the way he thought about other women. Women he liked because they, too, had gotten the short end of the stick too many times.

  This is Harper Weddington. The rich Harper Weddington, he reminded himself. She doesn’t need—or deserve—your sympathy.

  But she stood there with her arms wrapped tightly around herself, her dark hair atumble and shadows accentuating her pale, perfectly sculpted face. And Trent had trouble remembering she was everything he hated. That he planned to use her, the way the rich had always used the poor. Poetic justice, he thought they called it. But he saw the bruised look of those tender lips, which had settled into a pout that was as lovely as her smile, and found it hard to remain resolute.

  “How old are you, Miss Harper?”

  “Eighteen.” A slow grin overtook her pout. “My next birthday.”

  He laughed lightly.

  “So I don’t need a protector.” She moved a little closer, close enough to raise her leg and caress the inside of his thigh with her knee, reminding him of her earlier plan of attack. “I can protect myself. And I certainly don’t need a big brother.”

  Her knee drew dangerously close to the part of him that was vulnerable to her in more ways than one. He recalled again exactly how much trouble a girl like Harper could get herself into. Suddenly angry, he took her thigh in his hand and held her tightly against him.

  “You let yourself get picked up by guys like that, you drink their beer and follow them into the parking lot, you remember one thing,” he said. “They think you’re bought and paid for.”

  He ran his hand up her thigh, forcing himself to concentrate on his anxiety when she had been in danger and not on the silky feel of her warm flesh. But before he could stop himself, he’d slid his hand all the way up her thigh, stopping only when he cupped his palm over her heat.

  “They think they own this. And they won’t give a damn how rich your daddy is.”

  He expected her to cry out, to shove him away as she’d tried to shove away her cowboy. But she didn’t. She stared up at him with confused, glittering eyes.
And she moved against the palm of his hand with such subtlety he was certain it was involuntary.

  He jerked his hand away.

  They stared at each other in the darkness. Trent feared he might explode with a sudden, powerful longing. He tried to remind himself of all the reasons he didn’t really want her, the reasons he only had to pretend to want her. But his mind was empty of everything except the heat that still seared his palm and the soft glitter of longing in her dark, wide eyes.

  “Go home,” he said gruffly. “I’ll follow you.”

  She didn’t move.

  “Get in your car and get out of here before Bronco Bill comes back with his posse.”

  She put her hand on the car door then, moving in slow motion. He waited until she was behind the wheel and had the engine running. As he turned to walk away, she said, “I don’t belong to anybody. And I don’t need anybody’s help.”

  She almost sounded her old, flippant self. But Trent heard the soft plea beneath her words. He thought of turning south on the highway, heading in the opposite direction and never looking back. But he followed the taillights of the candy-apple red convertible and wondered what it would be like when he finally owned a woman like that himself.

  He ignored the tiny voice that said no man ever owned a woman like that.

  CHAPTER THREE

  TRENT WAS making her crazy.

  Harper wasn’t used to thinking about anybody but herself—unless, of course, she was steaming over something Sam had said or done. And it was driving her nuts to realize she couldn’t keep one arrogant farmhand out of her mind. She even started going home after school, finding reasons to be in the barn or the corral or anywhere else she thought he might be. She hated him for doing this to her.

  “So, how old are you?” she asked one day as she dangled her legs over the edge of the loft and watched him muck out the stalls. “I mean, you know how old I am.”

  It was as close as either of them had come to mentioning the night at The Stallion.

  “Twenty.” He grinned up at her. “On my last birthday.”

  “I guess I’m supposed to be impressed,” she said, returning the mockery in his smile. “A real grown-up.”

  “You don’t have to be impressed. But a little respect does seem to be in order.”

  She laughed. He made her laugh a lot, which was good because it took her mind off the way she’d felt that night when he touched her. She hated thinking about it. Every time she did the same thing happened: she grew hot and soft inside, as if she had simply melted away to nothing. She’d never felt quite that way before.

  “You have sisters?”

  “Nope.”

  “Brothers?”

  “Nope.”

  It was always like this. She dug for answers, he hid them. And the more he hid them, the more determined she became to get at them. Funny, she almost liked the game. After the way most guys fell all over themselves to get on her good side, Trent’s indifference was refreshing—and stimulating. “You’ve been disinherited, right?”

  He snipped open a bale of hay. “No, that’s your goal in life, not mine.”

  “Then tell me yours.”

  He gave her a funny look and quit smiling. “Nothing you could understand.”

  This wasn’t the first time he’d said something like that, something to remind her that she was too young or too rich to be a part of his world. To cover her pique at being dismissed so easily, she took a flying leap and landed in the middle of his neat pile of hay. She surfaced with a squeal, brushing hay out of her hair and eyes.

  “Try me,” she said. “You have to talk to somebody.”

  “I’ll talk to Nigel.”

  “Oh, pooh! Nigel’s an old goat.”

  He tried to hide his grin. “At least Nigel doesn’t come along behind me messing up my work.”

  “Okay. Then I’ll tell you my goal in life.” She jumped to her feet, grabbed a pitchfork and started rearranging the pile of hay she had scattered. “I want to get as far away from Weddington Farms as I can. I want to go where nobody knows who I am and nobody tells me what to do and people will like me just because, not because of who I am.”

  When she finished she saw that he was leaning against a beam, studying her with those crystal blue eyes. Just talking to him made her feel elated. She felt understood for the first time in her life, in a way that even Annie Kate had never understood her. She didn’t quite know why, but she knew that Trent was more like her than anyone else she’d ever met.

  He couldn’t see that yet. But he would.

  “Good luck,” he said, turning back to his work.

  She felt the bite of his dismissal. But she still couldn’t stay away.

  She saw him the next day, because she walked out to the creek after dinner. He’d said he went there sometimes, and sure enough, he was backed up against a scrawny pine, staring into space. She sauntered up and plopped down beside him.

  “Well, I know you have a mother,” she said without preamble. “Everybody has a mother.”

  He didn’t turn to look at her, didn’t even turn his eyes in her direction. “Yeah,” he said at last, so softly it was almost drowned in the chorus of crickets tuning up for dusk. “I got a mother.”

  “What’s she like?” She studied his face. She loved looking at the sharp angles of his face and trying to read what was behind them. Most boys were so transparent, you could read their every thought. Trent wasn’t like that. She supposed it was the difference between men and boys.

  “Never mind what she’s like,” he finally said.

  “Is that why you ran away? Because of her?”

  One of his cynical chuckles escaped. “No, Miss Harper. Say, what kind of name is that for a girl, anyway?”

  She laughed and slid down to lie on her back and look up at the sky. “My mother’s name. She was Leandra Harper before they married. Of the Camden Harpers. She always says it that way, like it means something because they’ve been there since seventeen hundred-something. Big, hairy deal. But—”

  “But what?”

  She hesitated. “But that’s only my middle name.”

  He leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees. “It is? What’s your first name, then?”

  “You’ll laugh if I tell you.”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  She laughed. “Amanda.”

  “Amanda?”

  “Is that gross or what?”

  “No. I kind of like it. It sounds like you.”

  “It does not.”

  “Sure it does.” He affected the kind of old-money drawl she always heard at Harper family reunions. “Mandy, won’t you please accompany me to the cotillion?”

  “Oh, hush. Don’t you ever call me that again.” But she smiled. Somehow it didn’t bother her when Trent teased her. Not anymore.

  She found a way to see him every day. Even a few minutes in his company made life easier. Her mother’s coolness and Sam’s preoccupation with other things didn’t matter so much once she realized that somebody liked her company. And Trent did like her company. She saw it in his eyes, heard it in his voice when he teased her. Truly liked her, too. Not because she was rich, or because he hoped she might put out.

  Her classes zipped past in a blur of anticipation and remembered laughter. Harper even discovered she didn’t want to spend her time after school hot-rodding around with the losers she had once collected like prize seashells. Most of the time she went home, sat by the window in her room and did her homework with one eye on the lookout for Trent.

  Until Sam said something about it, Harper didn’t even realize how much things had changed.

  “I’m pleased to see you’re settling down,” he said one night at dinner.

  Harper looked up from her gilt-edged plate. She found his gray eyes trained on her and looked back to her plate.

  “I haven’t had a single report on you this entire week,” he said. “Floretha tells me you’ve been coming straight home from school every day, so I gues
s you’re not up to anything.”

  She took perverse pleasure in knowing that he would have a conniption fit if he heard the reason for her changing behavior. But not as much pleasure as she might once have had, for the thought occurred to her that Sam could run off Trent just as easily as he had run off Red Jannik.

  The notion chilled her. For the first time in her life, she didn’t want to flaunt her indiscretions under Sam’s nose.

  That was why Floretha’s words on Saturday morning cast such darkness over her spirits. She had been looking forward to the day, having suggested that Trent meet her for a long ride in the country after he finished his half day. But as she rummaged through the refrigerator for leftovers she could use for a picnic, the housekeeper fixed her with a piercing gaze from warm, chocolate eyes.

  “You keep on, you’re going to get that boy in trouble,” Floretha said.

  The words struck sharply at Harper’s heart, but she feigned innocence and unconcern.

  “And don’t give me that look you use on Mr. Sam. Floretha is no fool, girl. I may be nothing but a housekeeper, but I see things others don’t want to see.”

  Harper placed the covered bowl of fruit salad on the counter and turned to fling her arms around Floretha’s neck. The familiar comfort of those thin arms, the fragrance of honeysuckle dusting powder that she had associated with feelings of comfort and security since childhood, reminded her that her petty rebellions probably hurt this woman more more than they hurt her own parents.

  “Oh, Floretha, you’re not just a housekeeper,” she said, hanging on to the hug as if she would never let go. “You’re…you’re…”

  Floretha gave her a pat on the backside. “I know. I’m the one who wiped your nose and kept you from breaking every piece of crystal in the house.”

  They laughed and pulled back to look at each other. Harper knew Floretha was only a little older than her mother, but there was a lifetime of difference in the faces of the two women. Leandra was like one of her Chinese vases, smooth and flawless, with nothing to hint at how long it had been around. Nothing to invite a touch, either. Floretha, on the other hand, showed all the fine cracks and chips that came with years of being dragged down off the shelf to be handled, to be useful, to be part of somebody’s life.