by Diana Palmer
He put out his cigarette. “I’ll drop you off on my way to the bank.”
She smiled as he got up and slid his hand gently into hers. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d been happier, or when she’d felt closer to him. If only it would last, this lovely newness. Her fingers curled trustingly around his as she fell into step beside him.
Kate found herself watching the clock at work, despite the fact that she was doing some of the best work she’d ever produced. Her Alamo collection was taking shape beautifully. Mr. Rogers was delighted with her ideas for fabrics, and immediately got on the phone to one of the company’s fabric designers. This was the first time she’d had access to actual fabric design, and it was exciting.
Jason came into the canteen at eleven-thirty on the dot, but he wasn’t the same smiling man Kate had left that morning. He was tired and there were deeper lines in his face than usual. But he still dredged up a smile for her when she got her coffee and sandwich and sat down beside him.
“It didn’t go well, I gather?” she asked gently, smoothing her fingers over the back of his big, lean hand with fascinated delight.
He turned his hand and caught her fingers gently. “You read me too well,” he mused. He meant it, but oddly enough it didn’t bother him anymore. He didn’t mind having Kate know his secrets, because she loved him. But there was still one last hurdle. He hadn’t admitted how he felt, how obsessively he loved her. He couldn’t let her know just how vulnerable he was. His father had loved Nell Donavan, and she’d used that weakness against him. What if Kate someday did that to him?
She looked up and caught that strange expression. “Is my makeup smeared or something?” she teased softly.
“You look lovely. You always do, to me,” he replied, putting away his disturbing thoughts. “They turned me down, Kate.”
She tightened her grip on his hand. “I’m sorry. Is there an alternative?”
He laughed curtly. “Sure. There’s a public auction.”
Her heart seemed to stop beating. Despite what he’d said about not minding it, if it came down to choosing between losing the ranch or losing her, she knew what the Spur meant to him.
“Is that for certain, or just a possibility?”
“I can’t even pay the interest, unless I start selling off my breeding herd, Kate,” he replied. “And if I do that, then that’s the end of the Spur anyway. I’m going to fly out to Houston and talk to some people I know. Then I want to go to Oklahoma and up to Montana. It’s going to be a lot of traveling in the weeks before Christmas, but it’s necessary.”
She sighed. “Can’t I go with you?” she asked hopefully.
“I have to keep my mind on business for just a little while,” he said, smiling. “Okay?”
She laid her head against his shoulder briefly, mindful of amused, indulgent smiles around them. “Okay. When will you go?”
“As soon as I can get a flight,” he told her. “I’ll call you every night, but it may be three weeks before I get home. I’m sorry. It’s just that it might mean the difference if I can get some backers.”
She searched his dark eyes. “I told you that I’d give you what I have. I’ve got almost thirty thousand dollars saved….”
“No.” He put his fingers against her lips. That much would have been more than enough to give him the time he needed, but he couldn’t bend his pride enough to take help from a woman. Not even when she was his wife. “Can you walk out with me, or will we have an audience?”
“I can walk out with you and of course we’ll have an audience.”
He smiled, shaking his head. “Come on, then, we’ll sneak off in the car long enough to kiss each other stupid, and then I’ll leave.”
She found herself in the Mercedes with him, in the back row of the parking lot, too far away for anyone to get a decent look. He kissed her until her lips were swollen.
“God, that’s sweet,” he breathed against her lips. “I’m going to miss you like hell, baby doll.”
“I’ll miss you, too. You’ll really call me every night?”
“You’d better believe I will. You can have Mary come over and stay with you while I’m gone, if you want to.”
“Mama has a new group of friends and they have something to do every night of the week,” Kate sighed. “Sometimes I think she’s forgotten that she has a daughter, although I do see her here most days.”
“She’s letting you get settled down,” he murmured dryly. “I’ll bet she remembers her first months of marriage to your father.”
“Maybe she does at that.” She touched his hard cheek. “Don’t flirt with other girls.”
“As if they’d even notice, if I did,” he chuckled. He traced her nose with his lips. “You’re the one I worry about, you sexy little woman. Keep those sultry eyes to yourself until I come home.”
She smiled lazily. “My sultry eyes and I will be right here, waiting. As if I’d waste myself on a lesser man,” she teased delightedly and was kissed roughly for her pains.
“You’re good for my ego,” he whispered.
“That works both ways. But I promise I’ll be good.”
And the promise lasted until two weeks later, when she got the first of her contract money for the new designs. She took an hour off from work and went to see Mr. Baker, the bank president of the San Frio People’s Bank, and gave him her entire savings to pay off the pending note on the Spur.
She swore him to secrecy, but she knew that Jason wouldn’t let it rest until he found out where the money had come from. She just hoped that he cared about her enough to unruffle eventually. She couldn’t let him lose the Spur.
Later, she went to the small house that Cherry and Gene were buying, a two-bedroom brick one just down the road a few miles from the Donavan place. Since Gene had a stake in the ranch, too, she felt obliged to tell him what she’d done.
“Jason will kill you,” Gene mused, adding to her own misgivings.
“Oh, I know,” Kate groaned. “But what else can I do? I can’t let him lose it!”
“Neither could I,” Gene agreed. “And if I had any savings, I’d already have thrown them into the kitty. I have prospects and a small trust, but I can’t touch it for another four years. Hell of a mess, isn’t it?”
“I’m glad Kate stepped in,” Cherry said as she brought in a tray with coffee and cookies on it. She didn’t look very pregnant yet, but she had the glow and the soft flush that told their own story. “Jason is your husband. He shouldn’t mind letting you help.”
“You don’t know Jason,” Gene told his petite wife. “He’s got the pride of a martyr. He’ll never let her do it.”
“He can’t stop me,” Kate reminded him. “It’s already done. But he can be so unbending sometimes. I wish he’d go and see your mother,” she added gently, meeting Gene’s quiet eyes.
He sighed. “If he doesn’t, within a month or two, I’m going to,” he said. “We’ve neither of us ever heard her side of it. We never really heard Dad’s, because he wouldn’t talk about her. But I think she’s entitled to a hearing, even if Jason doesn’t.”
“He may surprise you both someday by producing her,” Cherry said. “Maybe he’s curious, too.”
“If he is, he’s keeping it very quiet,” Gene said.
Kate studied the face that was like the shadow of her rugged husband’s. “Gene, do you hate her?”
He shrugged. “I don’t feel anything. I was too small when she left. I’m curious. I don’t think I hate her, although I could for what happened to Jason because she left. He protected me. But there was never anybody to protect Jason.”
Kate could have cried, thinking about that lonely boy that Jason had been. It was so painful that when Cherry began to talk about their plans for the baby, even that was a welcome change of subject. Kate still grieved for the baby she’d lost, but now there was at least the hope of another child. In fact, it might be more than hope, because her period was late and by the third week Jason was gone
she was feeling some vague nausea.
The time Jason was away was cheered only by the nightly calls, which he was careful to make after Sheila had gone to bed. Probably, Kate thought, to spare her blushes, because he talked to her like a lover, now. Conversation was laced with shared memories, and endearments, and lazy teasing. He was like a different man, so open and loving and warm that Kate was lulled into a sense of fantasy.
She had Red Barton drive her to the airport the day Jason got home. He looked tired, his powerful body a little sluggish as he moved through the milling tourists with his travel bag over one shoulder, his Stetson hiding his dark eyes, and his navy vest suit straining against hard muscle as he moved with lean grace.
He looked up as she approached him, and like magic, all the weariness left him. She ran to him, laughing, her green eyes full of love.
He dropped the bag and caught her up by the waist, swinging her up against him with pure delight in his smile.
“Well, what a sweet surprise,” he murmured as he bent to her mouth. “Dessert already, and I haven’t even had lunch….”
She smiled under his hard, hungry mouth, clinging to him with loving abandon.
“I missed you,” he whispered. “The nights went on forever.”
“So did the days,” she whispered back. She sighed happily, her eyes lost in his. “Don’t go away again.”
“Not for fifty years, at least.” He kissed her again and then let her down, his dark gaze approving her neat black and white fitted suit. “Nice,” he murmured. “Did you make it?”
“I sure did. On my very own sewing machine at home. Maybe someday we’ll have a little girl, and I can make things for her,” she added, her voice soft with dreams. And he knew then that her fear of losing another baby was fading. She was looking ahead, not behind.
“I’d like that, too.” He touched her neat coiffure. “I’d like a son as well.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she teased.
He picked up his bag and took her arm. “Well, we’re not out of the woods by any long shot, but I’ve got enough backing to keep us running for six more months,” he said. “By that time, I think I’ll have my feedlot in operation and those new crossbreeds I’ve been breeding from Indian strains should be throwing calves.”
Kate’s heart froze. She hoped that she hadn’t jumped the gun by doing what he’d forbidden her to and bailing him out. A man’s pride was a delicate thing. Especially a man like Jason. She’d only been thinking of helping him, but he liked to stand on his own feet and do things his way. He might not see it as helping. He might actually see it as an attempt to take him over, to buy him.
She looked up at his dark face, and she almost told him. But he smiled, and bent, and brushed his mouth with exquisite tenderness over hers. Later, she thought. She’d tell him later.
“Welcome home, boss man,” Red Barton drawled as Jason and Kate got out to the ranch pickup truck.
Jason glared at him. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I drove Miss Kate,” Red replied. He raised his eyebrows at the unfamiliar sight of his taciturn boss with an arm around Miss Kate and a look on his face that even a blind man would have recognized as a frustrated desire to be alone with her. “Gosh, I’m sorry I didn’t bring the car. Then you two could have sat in the back seat and…talked,” he added with a meaningful smile. But the smile vanished when the look in Jason’s eyes made him immediately into a dignified cowboy. “Just get right in, Miss Kate, and I’ll have you two home in no time!” he said with exaggerated politeness.
Jason muttered as he tossed his bag in the boot and got in beside Kate. “I wish to God I understood the perverted sense of justice that makes me keep you around, Barton.”
“Well, boss, what it came right down to was that you either had to keep me or that rattlesnake I saved you from,” Red told him reasonably as he started the truck with a wry glance. “And we both know how you hate snakes.”
Jason actually grinned. But he didn’t let Barton see him do it.
That night was like the first time. He made love to her with such aching tenderness that she clung to him afterwards, trembling in the aftermath of a loving like none she’d experienced before.
He kissed her mouth, his dark eyes watching her in the swath of moonlight that filtered across the bed. “Happy?” he whispered.
“So happy,” she whispered back. She nuzzled her face against his damp, hairy chest, loving the abrasiveness of it against her body. “It gets better every time.”
“You make me whole,” he said quietly. “The world begins and ends with you, now.”
She kissed his throat. “And for me, it begins and ends with you. I never knew I could be so happy.”
“Tomorrow, suppose we go Christmas shopping?”
“Just the two of us?” she asked drowsily.
“Just the two of us. I’ll drive you into San Antonio and give you a credit card.”
“I already have one, thanks. Not with your credit line, I’ll bet,” she teased, “but I have a respectable one of my own.”
“You’re my wife,” he reminded her. “You have the right to my card.”
She stared to argue, but it was too sweet, this intimacy, to be shattered. “All right,” she whispered, remembering that compromise had to be the hallmark of any successful marriage. “You win.”
“I usually do,” he murmured wickedly, and rolled over against her. She started to push at his broad chest, but he caught her mouth, laughing, and in seconds, she was moaning. The sudden shift from humor to passion always startled her. She wanted him obsessively since the first time. She had no way of knowing if it was normal or not, but he seemed to share it. She closed her eyes and held him closer, and gave up trying to sort it out.
The next morning, she got up and dressed, puzzled by Jason’s absence. She didn’t know why he hadn’t waited for her. But when she got downstairs, and saw him, she had a premonition of disaster.
He whirled at her step, his face unmoving. He’d been to the post office, she knew by the stack of mail on the table. By the look on his face, the mail wasn’t all he’d found there.
“Mr. Baker was in the post office,” he began quietly. He studied her face as if he’d never seen it before. That tall, arrogant stance spelled trouble. He looked the way he had years ago, formidable and unbending.
“And what did the bank president have to say?” she prompted. She folded her arms closely over her breast.
“He said I didn’t have a thing to worry about, that the payment had been made. I asked him how, and he wouldn’t tell me. At least, he wouldn’t tell me immediately,” he added, with a narrowing of one eye that spoke volumes. “But I got it out of him, Kate.”
She let out the breath she’d been holding, pausing on the bottom step, nervous. “Now, Jason,” she began, “it’s my home, too….”
“To hell with that!” he said, his voice cutting like a whip, as knife-edged as the fury in his eyes. “I pay the bills around here! This is my ranch. You had no right to go behind my back and make me look like a damned kept man!”
She pursed her lips. It was hurt pride, that was all. He’d calm down. All she had to do was hold on until he got over it, until she could reason with him.
“I never meant to do that,” she said. She looked him right in the eye, spoke softly, and made no sudden moves. She’d read that advice in a book about how to ward off attack by man-eating guard dogs. Maybe it would work on unreasonable husbands, too.
“Whatever you meant to do, you’ve made me look like a damned fool in the eyes of the community,” he shot back. “My God, Kate, I’ve spent half my life trying to live down my father’s reputation and my mother’s desertion. And now, on top of all that, I’ve got to live down the fact that there’s a woman paying my bills!”
It was even worse than she thought. Well, maybe reason would work. So she moved down one more step and went close to him. “Jason, we’re married. My money is yours, too….”
&nbs
p; His pride hit him between the eyes, and he didn’t stop to choose his words. It all boiled over, all of the shame that had festered in him all the way home. “I won’t take money you earned by putting your career before your husband and child!”
She gaped at him. This wasn’t a reasonable man talking. This wild-eyed man wasn’t her Jason. That feverish accusation didn’t have a grain of truth in it, and he knew it. She was even pretty sure that he didn’t mean it. He was just taking out his wounded vanity on her in the best way he knew.
“My, we are in a snit, aren’t we?” she asked, refusing to let him push her into an argument over an issue that had already been settled. Once, she might have resorted to tears. But she’d learned a lot in the months they’d been married. She knew exactly what he was feeling, and she was sorry she’d caused it. He was going to hate himself later for the accusations he was spouting with such conviction right now.
“In a snit!” He took off his hat and slammed it onto the floor. His black eyes were blazing with fury. “My God, how could you do that to me? How could you go behind my back like that?!”
“It was safer than doing it in front of you,” she returned reasonably. “I couldn’t stand by and do nothing, and let you lose your birthright.”
“You could have let me handle it,” he said coldly. “You could have trusted me to do the right thing, instead of taking things into your own hands.”
“And challenging your control,” she replied, because that was what was giving him fits. He couldn’t stand losing control. She lifted her soft eyes to his. “I hurt your pride, and I’m sorry. I didn’t think about how it might look. I had the money and you needed it. I just wanted to help.”
“How? By killing my pride? I trusted you, and you betrayed me,” he shot back, almost shaking with fury. “You’re no better than my mother!”
She glared at him. “All right, then! I’ll take the money back….”
“It’s too late for that. You think you can wear the pants around here, do you? Okay, honey. You made the payment, you make the rest of the decisions. You run the damned place.”