by Diana Palmer
“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 shift
ed 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.