Frankie perked to attention.
“Because of the drought and all, a lot of the smaller, struggling ranchers can’t afford to pay cowboys. So, some of the bigger ranchers thought volunteering to work for them would be a really valuable community service.”
“My aunt deliberately left that off! Because she knew—” Frankie chewed on her thumbnail. “Well, I’ll show her. I’ll just go over there right now and see about it.”
“What about the gift shop—”
“By the time Aunt Susie finds out I’m not working there, I’ll have put in my twenty hours. What will she be able to say?”
“Plenty—knowing her.”
“I should have a little fun out of this dumb debutante nonsense, now shouldn’t I?”
“Matt Dixon. I can’t work for Matt Dixon.”
“The sheriff emptied out the jail,” Louisa had explained. “Every other ranch has got more cowboys, if you want to call those rough customers that, than they can handle.”
“Dixon and I don’t like each other much.”
“Too bad. Dixon really needs the help. I heard through the grapevine he could lose his place, that Vince is pressuring him because Dixon hasn’t been making his payments. Remember how BoBo borrowed all that money—”
“Lose his ranch? Matt loves his ranch. He’s so proud, too.”
“Exactly. Be a good girl and go help that nice boy out. That’s what community service is all about.”
“I can’t work for him.”
“You’re as stubborn as he is.”
Reluctantly Frankie headed to the flower shop, only to accelerate when she saw Vince’s car parked in the hospital lot. Then she couldn’t believe it! She actually turned down the rutted lane two miles short of her uncle’s ranch that led over the low water bridge straight down to Matt’s place.
Nobody seemed to be around when she pulled up in front of his house. Used to be that when she snuck over, he’d always been waiting for her at the gate, an eager smile lighting up his handsome dark face.
She jumped out of her pickup and then shivered. Matt’s house looked dark and lost, set way back in the trees under all those grapevines. He hadn’t mowed around the house lately either. Probably hadn’t had the time. Or maybe last year, he’d mowed it just for her.
The grass was nearly waist-high, and it rustled in the warm wind as she walked toward the barn. But the air smelled sweet—just like it did at home.
But this wasn’t home. This was Matt’s place. She was crazy to come here.
Crazy.
And yet…
And yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Somehow it was the only part of this debutante nonsense that made the least bit of sense.
When she got near his barn, the stench of urine nearly stopped her cold. But once inside, the acrid smoke from a cigarette bothered her a lot more than the odor of unmucked stalls. Then she saw a cigarette glowing orange in the dark. A long, bony brown arm lifted it sullenly.
“Matt?”
The shadowy figure didn’t answer.
Her heart skittered, but she stood where she was. Slowly her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, and she recognized the boy she’d seen in Matt’s truck slumped on the floor beside a pitchfork he must have thrown down. The tip of the cigarette brightened again as he inhaled. She marched toward him and lunged for the cigarette before he could bring it to his lips again.
“What do you think you’re doing—smoking in a barn?”
“Sure beats shoveling manure.”
“Which is what you’re supposed to be doing, am I right?” She threw the cigarette down in disgust, carefully stomping it out.
“I’m not his slave.”
“Dixon’s?”
The boy nodded, scowling. “I don’t have to do what he says.”
“You’re from the jail, right?”
He slouched lower, his black hair dangling in a thick, greasy clump over his forehead.
“You want to go back there?”
“You gonna make me?”
“Maybe. Or…maybe I’ll volunteer to help you clean up this mess.”
“You from jail, too?”
“No. I’m a debutante.”
“The annual Lone Star County Debutante Ball,” he sneered.
“Believe me, it’s every bit as awful as a jail sentence.”
“So, what’s a rich debutante doing in Dixon’s lousy barn?”
The barn door rolled loudly. “Good question,” thundered a voice vibrating with violence from the other end of the barn.
When Matt strode toward her, the boy hopped up with his pitchfork and vanished into a stall.
“Outside,” Matt ordered as the pitchfork chinged across concrete.
Once they were out in the sunshine, Frankie felt safer somehow. He’d traded his town jeans for a soft, ragged pair that were faded to a shade that was nearly white. He wore a torn white T-shirt that was so tight it pulled across his massive torso. He seemed sculpted of solid brown muscle. All of a sudden it wasn’t so easy to look at him, at least not if she wanted to breathe normally.
“So, what are you doing here, rich girl?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Answer my question.”
“Community service. Like your felon back there in the stall.”
“Lee? He’s all of fourteen and in trouble with the law. No family. He hasn’t got a whole lot of other choices. You do.” He hesitated. “I don’t want you here.”
“You need the help.”
“I don’t need anybody’s help. Especially not yours. I’m doing just fine on my own, thank you very much.”
“Then why did Louisa say Vince…”
His golden eyes flashed. “Don’t you ever talk to Vince about me—understand?” His voice was rough.
“I wouldn’t.”
“’Cause you wouldn’t want him to know what you were to me once—is that it?”
“You can think that if you want.”
“I don’t want your pity. What’s between him and me has to do with my personal business—understand? I don’t want your pity…or your help. Or your charity, or whatever else you think this is.”
“I don’t pity you. Maybe I came here…as…as a friend. Friends help each other.”
“Friends? Us?” His gorgeous mouth curled. “Please.” He looked away.
It hurt that he rejected the idea of her friendship.
“Okay. Maybe it wouldn’t just be me helping you. Maybe you’d be helping me, too.” When he frowned, she rushed on before he could argue. “I have to do community service to be a deb. I’d rather do ranch work than sell flowers, okay? Even if it means putting up with you. Your ranch was the only one with a vacancy in the program. I wouldn’t have come here otherwise.”
“I didn’t sign up for any damn program.”
“Well, then what’s Lee doing here if you didn’t?”
He didn’t answer.
“Well, I’m here. Same as he is. And I’m staying whether you want me to or not.”
When he took a step toward her, she backed up involuntarily.
He grinned. “You think so, huh?”
“So, just give me something to do.”
“By God, maybe I will,” he rasped, edging forward. Next his large brown hand clamped down on her arm, and he yanked her closer.
“What are you doing?”
“A long time ago, I told you I wouldn’t touch you unless you started things up between us again. Well, you’re here, aren’t you, priming the old pump?”
“That’s not why I came, and you know it!”
“What if I don’t choose to believe you?”
He pulled her closer, snugging her body against a wall of hot male muscle encased in soft white cotton.
“Please, don’t,” she whispered raggedly.
“You’re begging me to kiss you. Every time you look at me, you eat me alive with your eyes.”
“I don’t.”
“How come you dropped out of
college and came home? Did you miss me?”
“No! I just didn’t like Vanderbilt. ’Cause I don’t know what I want to do with my life, and college is a waste of time until I figure that out.”
His fingers brushed a tendril out of her eyes. “I missed you. God, I missed you. I was glad you came home…even if you always avoided me.” She could feel him shaking and realized how much the admission had cost him.
“You avoided me, too.”
“You shouldn’t have come over here,” he said. “Not unless you want this.” He moved a hand slowly up her arm and caressed her neck.
“I don’t.”
The heat from his open palms sliding up her throat to cup her chin burned even before he lowered his lips to hers. “Well, maybe I do.”
“Quit acting like some caveman.”
“I don’t like how I feel and act when I’m around you any better than you do. But I can’t seem to help myself.”
“Neither can I…”
Her arms circled his neck, and she opened her mouth to his. When his tongue slid inside, her fingers curled into his thick golden hair.
His kisses were unhurried, yet his mouth and tongue caused intolerable waves of pleasure to wash through her. Soon she was so hot and tingly, she wanted more. So much more. She pressed her body tightly against his, mashing her breasts against his chest, rubbing her thighs into his.
Which was wrong, of course. Not that it felt the least bit wrong.
Still, she balled her trembling hands into fists and drew them down from his neck and then around his wide shoulders until she felt his shoulder blades. Flattening her hands and splaying her fingertips, she shoved as hard as she could against his massive chest. Her strength was puny compared to his. It was like trying to budge a granite boulder. When he resisted, she realized he could do whatever he wanted to.
“There’s nothing to be so afraid of, darlin’—” His voice was husky, still aroused with desire. His tongue made another delicious foray inside her mouth.
“Oh, sweet heaven…”
Everything he did made her feel dizzy and helpless.
Even as her blood pulsed in an agony of need, she pushed harder. “We’ve got to stop this—now!”
He stiffened and slowly loosened his grip. Last of all he withdrew his mouth from hers and opened his long-lashed, golden eyes to meet hers.
White sunlight slashed across the knife-blade edge of his nose, across the carved planes of his proud, rugged face. Then he held up his hands in mock surrender and slowly backed away from her.
“Okay,” he muttered hoarsely. “Have it your way, darlin’.”
Gradually he banked the wild fires in his eyes. After a minute the only sign of his turbulent emotions was the savage ticking of that telltale muscle along his jawline.
She watched it jump as he stood there in the shade of his mesquite trees. A wind whispered across the grasses, and she shivered. A loose shutter banged. His ranch seemed so lonely. So did he. He was cutting her out of his life as deliberately as he cut out the rest of the world.
She wasn’t used to this sort of deliberate, self-inflicted solitude. At home the phone was always ringing. Aunt Susie was cooking, and the cowboys were constantly banging in and out of the house. The cook served tacos or beans or barbecue every weekday out in the cookhouse for lunch. Aunt Susie was always having other ranchers over for dinner parties at night. Then there were the shopping sprees to town on Saturdays and church on Sundays.
Matt said nothing. He was standing very still. He looked so alone—so lonely that her heart clutched. Sunlight flickered behind the trees. She dug her nails into her palms. Not that the pain brought her to her senses. Involuntarily, she took a fatal step toward him and stretched out to touch him.
“Go home…where you belong.” His voice was mild, but his lips were tight. “And don’t come back.”
“I could help you.”
“That’s not what I want you for. I want you like all those men wanted your mother…. Princess Heather.”
His words were like a blow out of the dark. Since she hadn’t seen them coming she couldn’t ward them off.
“I’m not like her! I’m not! I’m…I’m like my Aunt Susie!”
He laughed.
“I am!”
“Everybody knows you’re nothing like your silly Aunt Susie.”
Suddenly Frankie saw a homesick little girl watching her golden mother on a yacht with the purple mountains of Turkey misting against the horizon. Her bikini-clad mother had been laughing at her daughter as she sat down on a strange man’s lap and curled her body around his.
“I want to go home,” Frankie had said.
Next Frankie saw the stacks of postcards in her bureau drawer.
Monaco.
Darling—I guess you’ve read by now—I married the prince… Italy…last week. Ha! Sorry there wasn’t time to send for you. Ha!
Love,
Princess Heather.
P.S. Next summer when you visit me—you’ll love him. Ha! Give your horse a kiss for me. Ha!
There hadn’t been a next summer. Frankie hadn’t seen her mother since.
“My mother’s not like you think….”
But she was.
“She’s not like anybody thinks!” Frankie persisted.
“Then why does she make all the tabloids?”
“Because she’s so beautiful and admired…not just by men. She married a prince, didn’t she?”
“You’re running scared because you’re like her. I want to be your first man. Then you can run off like she did and chase counts and princes.”
First. The word cut as cruelly as a knife. As if she’d have many lovers. Counts? Princes? Was he out of his mind?
“I’m not what you think.”
“Well, you don’t belong here. Not on my place. Even if you aren’t like her, what could a deb like you know about ranch work?”
“More than that boy in the barn, that’s for sure! You let him stay! Why not me? I—I could supervise him. If…if it hadn’t been for me, he would’ve burned your dumb barn down!”
“Was he smoking again?”
She nodded.
“Thank—” Matt bit back his words of gratitude. “I don’t give a damn what you did! I know all I need to know about you. Bottom line—you’re rich and I’m poor. You went to Vanderbilt, and then dropped out…to find yourself. I’m still working my way through night school at A & M in Kingsville on school loans. Hell, half the time I’m so tired I fall asleep in class. I made a C–in my last course ’cause I never have time to study—” He raked his hands through his hair. “Hell, what am I telling you for? You don’t care.”
“Maybe I would, if you’d stop being such a proud crybaby and let me!”
He colored. The nerve in his jaw jumped so furiously, she grew afraid for him. “Go home,” he whispered.
“I—I came here today…because…because I—I stupidly wanted to be your friend!”
“What’s it gonna take for you to get it—that’s not what I want you for.”
“You…you go to hell, Matt Dixon!”
“Go home,” he said.
Fighting hot tears of shame and hurt, Frankie turned and ran.
Chapter 3
With flaming cheeks Frankie glared at her reflection in her bedroom mirror. But she didn’t see herself. She saw a tall cowboy with yellow hair and narrow, golden eyes.
I’m not the girl you think I am, Mr. Know-it-all Dixon! I’m not.
Frankie was sitting on the very edge of her dressing stool yanking a comb through her tangled curls.
“Ouch!”
Gingerly she pulled the comb loose from the snarl of hair and shook out a sticker burr into her trash can.
Her heart raced and her eyes flashed as her thoughts turned back to Matt. She hated it when a person made her so mad she couldn’t quit arguing with him in her head. Ever since Matt had run her off last week, he’d constantly popped into her mind. And always, she talked back to h
im big time.
She released a little rush of air and plucked a blade of grass out of her hair with an exasperated hand.
Why? Why couldn’t she put him behind her? Why couldn’t she stop trying to figure out how she could work for him instead of working at the gift shop?
Was he right about her, after all? Was she as man-crazy as her glamorous mother? Was she really a self-deluded, naïve wanton? Once she had sex, would she hop from man to man?
Just the thought of Matt thinking her so low had her trembling and itching to defend herself again.
She lifted her comb and shook it at her reflection.
“I’m not like her. I’m not,” she croaked again.
You’re doing it again.
For no reason at all she leaned down only to stare fixedly at the brass pull of her bottom drawer. One tentative fingertip on cool brass and she felt her control slipping. No sooner had she eased the drawer open an inch than her heart quickened in anxious little spurts.
Then the big leather-bound scrapbook resting on top of all the neat stacks of postcards stopped her cold.
“Courage,” she whispered. Blinking back tears, she lifted the heavy album onto her lap. She had to say a quick little prayer before she could open it. And when she did, she flipped the pages so fast, they became a blur.
Even so the memories inside the book were such an assault, she slammed it closed so fast that a snapshot flew out, fluttering to her feet. Leaning down she saw the dreaded image of a slim, gorgeous blonde in a strange man’s arms.
Her mother. No! She was Princess Heather now. Frankie didn’t know who the man was. After all, there had been so many.
Frankie stared out the window. A mockingbird was jabbering fiercely with a squirrel. She watched the frantic bird hop higher and higher up the pink branches of a crepe myrtle tree. She felt just as desperate. With a long sigh, Frankie retrieved the picture and laid it down on her bureau. Then she spent an excessive amount of time smoothing it out. When it was perfectly flat, her eyes clung to the young, smiling blonde.
When she’d been younger, Frankie had thought her mother was the most beautiful woman in the world. She’d seemed like a dream mother, the perfect, exquisite fairytale mother. Aunt Susie had always told her how much her mother loved her.
Lone Star Country Club: The Debutantes Page 20