by Diana Palmer
The elegant old mansion with its bone-white walls and turret and gingerbread latticework was beautiful enough to have been featured in life-style magazines from time to time. It contained some priceless antiques both from early Texas and from England, because the first Hardeman had come over from London. The Hardemans were old money. Their fortune dated to an early cattle baron who made his fortune in the latter part of the nineteenth century during a blizzard that wiped out half the cattle ranches in the West. Actually, in the beginning, the family name had been Hartmond, but owing to the lack of formal education of their ancestor, the name was hopelessly misspelled on various documents until it became Hardeman.
Ethan looked like the portrait of that earlier Hardeman that graced the living-room mantel. They were probably much the same personality type, too, Arabella thought as she studied Ethan over the coffee he'd brought to the guest room for her. He was a forbidding-looking man with a cool, very formal manner that kept most people at arms' length.
"Thank you for letting me come here," she said.
He shrugged. "We've got plenty of room." He looked around the high ceiling of the room she'd been given. "This was my grandmother's bedroom," he mused. "Remember hearing Mother talk about her? She lived to be eighty and was something of a hell-raiser. She was a vamp or some such thing back during the twenties, and her mother was a died-in-the-wool suffragette. One of the bloomer girls, out campaigning for the vote for women."
"Good for her," Arabella laughed.
"She'd have liked you," he said, glancing down at her. "She had spirit, too."
She sipped her coffee. "Do I have spirit?" she mused. "I let my father lead me around by the nose my whole life, and I guess I'd still be doing it if it hadn't been for the accident." She glanced at the cast on her wrist, sighing as she juggled the coffee mug in one hand. "Ethan, what am I going to do? I won't even have a job, and Daddy always took care of the money."
"This is no time to start worrying about the future," he said firmly. "Concentrate on getting well."
"But—"
"I'll take care of everything," he interrupted. "Your father included."
She put the coffee mug down and lay back against the pillows. Her wrist was still uncomfortable and she was taking pain capsules fairly regularly. She felt slightly out of focus, and it was so nice to just lie there and let Ethan make all the decisions.
"Thank you, Ethan," she said and smiled up at him.
He didn't smile back. His eyes slid over her face in an exploration that set all her nerves tingling. "How long has it been since you've had any real rest?" he asked after a minute.
She shifted on the pillows. "I don't know. It seems like forever." She sighed. "There was never any time." Her stomach muscles clenched as she remembered the constant pressure, the practice that never stopped, the planes and motel rooms and concert halls and recording dates and expectant audiences. She felt her body going rigid with remembered stress as she recalled how she'd had to force herself more and more to go out on the stage, to keep her nerve from shattering at the sight of all those people.
"I suppose you'll miss the glamour," Ethan murmured.
"I suppose," she said absently and closed her eyes, missing the odd look that passed over his dark face.
"You'd better get some sleep. I'll check on you later."
The bed rose as he got up and left the room. She didn't even open her eyes. She was safe here. Safe from the specter of failure, safe from her father's long, disapproving face, safe from the cold whip of his eyes. She wondered if he was ever going to forgive her for failing him, and decided that he probably wouldn't. Tears slid down her cheeks. If only he could have loved her, just a bit, for what she was underneath her talent. He'd never seemed to love her.
Coreen sat with her for most of the day. Ethan's little mother was a holy terror when she was upset, but everyone loved her. She was the first person in the door when someone was sick or needed help, and the last to leave. She gave generously of her time and money, and none of her children had a bad word to say about her, even in adulthood. Well, except Ethan, and sometimes Arabella thought he did that just for amusement because he loved to watch his mother throw things in a temper.
Arabella had seen the result of one memorable fight between mother and son, back during her teenage years when she was visiting Ethan's brother and sister with Mary. Arabella, Mary, Jan and Matt had been playing Monopoly on the living-room floor when Ethan and his mother got into it in the kitchen. The voices were loud and angry, and unfortunately for Ethan, his mother had been baking a cake when he provoked her. She threw a whole five-pound bag of flour at him, followed by an open jar of chocolate syrup. Arabella and Mary and Jan and Matt had seen Ethan walk by, covered from Stetson hat to booted feet in white flour and chocolate syrup, leaving a trail of both behind him on the wooden floor as he strode toward the staircase.
Arabella and the others had gaped at him, but one cold-eyed look in their direction dared them to open their mouths. Arabella had hidden behind the sofa and collapsed in silent laughter while the others struggled valiantly to keep straight faces. Ethan hadn't said a word, but Coreen had continued to fling angry insults after him from the kitchen doorway as he stomped upstairs to shower and change. For a long time afterward, Arabella had called him, "the chocolate ghost." But not to his face.
Coreen was just a little over five foot three, with the dark hair all her children had inherited, but hers was streaked with silver now. Only Ethan shared her gray eyes. Jan and Matt had dark blue eyes, like their late father.
"Do you remember when you threw the flour at Ethan?" Arabella asked, thinking aloud as she watched Coreen's deft fingers working a crochet hook through a growing black-and-red afghan.
Coreen looked up, her plump face brightening. "Oh, yes, I do," she said with a sigh. "He'd refused to sell that bay gelding you always liked to ride. One of my best friends wanted him, you see, and I knew you'd be away at music school in New York. He wasn't a working horse." She chuckled. "Ethan dug in his heels and then he gave me that smile. You know the one, when he knows he's won and he's daring you to do anything about it. I remember looking at the open flour sack." She cleared her throat and went back to work on the afghan. "The next thing I knew, Ethan was stomping down the hall leaving a trail of flour and chocolate syrup in his wake, and I had to clean it up." She shook her head. "I don't throw things very often these days. Only paper or baskets—and nothing messy.''
Arabella smiled at the gentle countenance, wishing deep in her heart that she'd had a mother like Coreen. Her own mother had been a quiet, gentle woman whom she barely remembered. She'd died in a wreck when Arabella was only six. Arabella didn't remember ever hearing her father talk about it, but she recalled that he'd become a different man after the funeral.
She twisted her fingers in the blue quilted coverlet. Her father had discovered by accident that Arabella had a natural talent for the piano, and he'd become obsessed with making her use it. He'd given up his job as a clerk in a law office, and he'd become a one-man public relations firm with his daughter as his only client.
"Don't brood, dear," Coreen said gently when she saw the growing anguish on Arabella's lovely face. "Life is easier when you accept things that happen to you and just deal with them as they crop up. Don't go searching for trouble."
Arabella looked up, shifting the cast with a wince because the break was still tender. They'd taken out the clamps that had held the surgical wound together before they put on the cast, but it still felt as if her arm had been through a meat grinder.
"I'm trying not to," she told Ethan's mother. "I thought my father might have called, at least, since they put me back together. Even if it was just to see if I had a chance of getting my career back."
"Being cynical suits my son. It doesn't suit you," Coreen said, glancing at her over the small reading glasses that she wore for close work. "Betty Ann is making a cherry cobbler for dessert."
"My fav
orite," Arabella groaned.
"Yes, I know, Ethan told us. He's trying to fatten you up.''
She frowned at the older woman. "Is Miriam really trying to come back to him?"
With a long-suffering sigh, Coreen laid the afghan and crochet hook over her knees. "I'm afraid so. It's the last thing in the world he needs, of course, after the way she cut up his pride."
"Maybe she still loves him," Arabella suggested.
Coreen cocked her head. "Do you know what I think? I think she's just lost her latest lover and he's left her pregnant. She'll try to lure Ethan into bed and convince him it's his child, so that he'll take her back.''
"You really should write books," Arabella said dryly. "That's a great plot."
Coreen made a face at her. "Don't laugh. I wouldn't put it past her. She isn't as pretty as she used to be. All that hard living and hard drinking have left their mark on her. One of my friends saw her on a cruise recently, and Miriam was pumping her for all sorts of information about Ethan—if he'd remarried or was keeping company with anyone."
"He wants me to keep company with him," Arabella mentioned, "to keep Miriam at bay."
"Is that what he told you?" Coreen smiled gently. "I suppose it's as good an excuse as any."
"What do you mean?" Arabella asked curiously.
Coreen shook her head. "That's for Ethan to tell you. Are you going to keep company with him?"
"It seems little enough to do for him, when he's kind enough to give me a roof over my head and turn the whole household upside down on my account," she said miserably. "I feel like an intruder."
"Nonsense," Coreen said easily. "We all enjoy having you here, and none of us wants Miriam to come back. Do play up to Ethan. It will turn Miriam green with envy and send her running."
"Is she going to stay here?" Arabella asked worriedly.
"Over my dead body," Ethan drawled from the doorway, staring across the room at Arabella.
"Hello, dear. Been rolling in the mud with the horses again?" Coreen asked pleasantly.
He did look that way, Arabella had to admit. He was wearing working gear—chambray shirt, thick denims, weathered old leather chaps, boots that no self-respecting street cowboy would have touched with a stick, and a hat that some horse had stepped on several times. His dark skin had a thin layer of dust on it, and his work gloves were grasped in one lean hand that didn't look much cleaner.
"I've been doctoring calves," he replied. "It's March," he reminded her. "Roundup is in full swing, and we're on the tail end of calving. Guess who's going to be nighthawking the prospective mamas this week?"
"Not Matt," Coreen groaned. "He'll leave home!"
"He needs to," Ethan said imperturbably. "He and Mary can't cuss each other without an audience around here. It's going to affect their marriage sooner or later."
"I know," Coreen said sadly. "I've done my best to persuade Matt that he can make it on his own. God knows, he can afford to build a house and furnish it on his income from those shares Bob left him."
"We're too good to him," Ethan pointed out. "We need to start refusing to speak to him and putting salt in his coffee."
"If you put salt in my coffee, I'd stuff the cup up your . . ." Coreen began hotly.
"Go ahead," Ethan said when she hesitated, his pale eyes sparkling. "Say it. You won't embarrass me."
"Oh, I'll drink to that," Coreen murmured. "You're too much my son to be embarrassed."
Arabella looked from one to the other. "You do favor each other," she said. "Your eyes are almost exactly the same shade."
"He's taller," Coreen remarked.
"Much taller, shrimp," he agreed, but he smiled when he said it.
Coreen glared at him. "Did you come up here for any particular reason, or do you just enjoy annoying me?"
"I came to ask Arabella if she wanted a cat."
Arabella gaped at him. "A what?"
"A cat," he repeated. "Bill Daniels is out front with a mother cat and four kittens that he's taking to the vet to be put down."
"Yes, I want a cat," Arabella said at once. "Five cats." She gnawed her lower lip. "God knows what my father will say when he finds out, though. He hates cats."
"Why not think about what you want for a change, instead of what your father wants?" Ethan asked curtly. "Or have you ever had your own way?"
"Once, he let me have chocolate ice cream when he told me to get vanilla," she replied.
"That isn't funny," Ethan said darkly.
"Sorry." She leaned back against the pillows. "I guess I've never tried to stand up to him." It was the truth. Even though she'd rebelled from time to time, her father's long-standing domination had made it difficult for her to assert herself. Incredible, when she thought nothing of standing up to Ethan. . .
"No time like the present. I'll tell Bill we'll keep the cats." He moved away from the doorjamb. "I've got to get back to work."
"Like that?" Coreen asked. "You'll embarrass your men. They won't want to admit they work for someone as filthy as you are."
"My men are even filthier than I am," he replied proudly. "Jealous because you're clean?"
Coreen moved her hand toward the trash basket, but Ethan just smiled and left the room.
"You wouldn't have thrown it at him, would you?" Arabella asked.
"Why not?" Coreen asked. "It doesn't do to let men get the upper hand, Bella. Especially not Ethan," she added, looking at Arabella thoughtfully. "You've learned that much, I see. Ethan is a good man, a strong man. But that's all the more reason to stand up to him. He wants his own way, and he won't give an inch."
"Maybe that was one reason he and Miriam couldn't make a go of it."
"That, and her wild ways. One man just wasn't enough for her," Coreen replied.
"I can't imagine anyone going from Ethan to someone else," Arabella said. "He's unique."
"I think so, even if he is my son." Coreen picked up her afghan and her crochet hook. "How do you feel about him, Bella?"
"I'm very grateful to him for what he's done for
me," she said evasively. "He's always been like a big
brother—"
"You don't have to pretend," Coreen said gently. "I'm perceptive, even if I don't look it." She lowered her eyes to her crocheting. "He made the mistake of his life by letting you get away. I'm sorry for both of you that it didn't work out."
Arabella studied the coverlet under her nervous hands. "It's just as well that it didn't," she replied. "I have a career that I hope to go back to. Ethan. . .well, maybe he and Miriam will patch things up."
"God forbid," Coreen muttered. She sighed wearily. "Life goes on. But I'm glad Ethan brought you home with him, Bella." She looked up. "He isn't a carefree man, and he takes on too much responsibility sometimes. He's forgotten how to play. But he changes when he's with you. It makes me happy to see how different he is when you're around. You always could make him smile."
Arabella thought about that long after Coreen had gone downstairs to help Betty Ann in the kitchen. Ethan did smile more with her than he did with other people. He always had. She'd noticed it, but it surprised her that his mother had.
For two days, Arabella was confined to bed against her will. Doctor's orders, they told her, because she'd been concussed and badly bruised in the wreck. But on the third day, the sun came out and the temperature was unnaturally high that afternoon for early March. She got downstairs by herself, a little wobbly from her enforced leisure, and sat down in the porch swing.
Coreen had gone to a ladies' circle meeting and Mary was shopping, so there was no one to tell her she couldn't go outside. Mary had helped her dress that morning in a snap-front, full denim skirt and a long-sleeved blue sweatshirt. She'd tied her hair back with a blue velvet ribbon. She looked elegant even in such casual attire, and the touch of makeup she'd used made her look more alive. Not that anyone would be around to notice.
And that was where she was mistaken. The pickup truck pulled into the yard and Ethan go
t out of it, pausing on the steps when he saw her sitting in the swing.
"Who the hell told you to get out of bed?" he demanded.
"I'm tired of staying in bed," she replied. Her heart went wild just at the sight of him. He was wearing faded jeans and a chambray shirt with a beat-up, tan Stetson, and his boots were muddy as he joined her on the porch. "I only had a little concussion, and my hand isn't hurting. It's such a beautiful day," she added hopefully.
"So it is." He lit a cigarette and leaned against the post, his pale eyes lancing over her. "I checked with your uncle this morning."
"Did you?" She watched him curiously.
"Your father left Dallas for New York this morning." His eyes narrowed. "Do you know why?"
She grimaced. "The bank account, I guess. If there's anything in it."
"There's something in it," he said pleasantly enough. "But he won't get to it. I had my attorney slap an injunction on your father, and the bank has orders not to release a penny to him. That's where I've been."
"Ethan!"
"It was that or have him get you by the purse strings," he said quietly. "When you're back on your feet again, you can play twenty questions with him. Right now, you're here to get well, not to have yourself left penniless by your mercenary father."
"Do I have much?" she asked, dreading the answer, because her father had enjoyed a luxurious lifestyle.
"You have twenty-five thousand," he replied. "Not a fortune, but it will keep you if it's invested properly."
She stared at his muscular arms, remembering the strength of them. "I didn't think ahead," she said. "I let him put the money in a joint account because he said it was the best way. I guess I owe you my livelihood, don't I?" she added with a smile.