by Cindy Gerard
When she gazed down her patrician little nose and gave him that look again—the one that suggested she might have had a little silver bell in her possession at some point in her life and hadn’t been shy about using it—he reminded himself why he couldn’t find it adorable. Why he needed to find it reaffirming.
Still, another grin slipped past his guard. “Why yes, ma’am, I reckon you could say it is,” he allowed, pouring on the Texas drawl for her benefit.
He pulled to a stop in front of the ranch house and cut the motor. One look at her face and his smile disappeared. He’d been so busy convincing himself why he needed to keep his head on straight where Helena was concerned, he’d momentarily forgotten just how difficult this was for her.
She’d endured a devastating plane crash, she’d spent two painful months in the hospital recovering, and now she was stuck with him in a strange place, in a difficult situation, and she had yet to utter one word of complaint.
“You look exhausted,” he said, surveying the pale violet bruises of fatigue beneath her eyes. “Let’s get you inside and get you comfortable.”
Helena was too tired to even respond. And too overwhelmed with thoughts of the strange twist of fate that had landed her, quite literally, in Matthew Walker’s arms. She tried not to think about the effect those arms had on her. Of their powerful strength, of their heat. Of how easy it would be to become dependent on them.
She tried not to think about how wonderful it felt to be held by him. She definitely didn’t want to think about the swift, uncontrollable flash of jealousy she’d experienced when she’d thought he had a lover waiting for him.
Feeling her cheeks flush red, she forced herself to think, instead, about the drive out here and of what she’d seen so far of High Stakes. This was the Texas she had read about and imagined. Long stretches of endless, barren plains. Tumbleweed and sagebrush, gnarly-branched trees that Matthew had told her were mesquite. Cactus and oil derricks dotting the horizon for farther than the eye could see.
Amid all that stark and somehow barren beauty, Matthew’s home settled like a sparkling jewel upon a carpet of velvet green. Heavily influenced by Spanish architecture, the two-story adobe building that was the main house glittered like a golden crown in the midday sun. Several smaller outbuildings—at least two of them residences—and three large horse barns flanked the main house, forming a compact community of sorts.
She blinked, refocused her gaze on Matthew’s long, sure strides as he rounded the front of the vehicle then opened the passenger door. Without meeting her eyes, he released her seat belt.
“Ready?” he asked politely.
Too politely to suit her. It was as if he’d intentionally distanced himself. She wasn’t sure why his sudden formality upset her, but it did. So much so that she gave him that look again, the one that he seemed to find so amusing.
“Let’s see if I have mastered the local—dialect. One moo for yes, two for no, would that be correct?”
He gave her exactly the reaction she’d wanted. A slow, enchanting grin started at one corner of his mouth and spread like a sunrise across his very remarkable face. And when he topped it off with a low and husky, “Moo,” little rivers of heat trickled through her blood and sent a wild, tingling sensation chasing in their wake.
How very fascinating. After two months of feeling little but loneliness and pain, Matthew Walker had an infectious way of making her feel alive. It was exhilarating and a little frightening how easily he could make her forget, if even for a moment, what she’d been through, what she still faced.
“Has anyone ever suggested that you’ve got quite the sassy mouth on you for a countess?” he asked as she wrapped her arms around his neck and he lifted her carefully out of the vehicle.
“I keep trying to tell you. I’m not a countess. I’m the daughter of the countess. That merely makes me—”
“—one of the prettiest little heifers seen around these parts in a month of Sundays,” he drawled, his tongue so deep in his cheek she was surprised he hadn’t bitten it off.
She looked away so he couldn’t see her smile. Because really, she didn’t want to be so taken with him. But he was such a nice man, this Matthew Walker, she thought, as she nestled in his strong arms and he carried her toward the house. She’d thought as much many times since the night they’d met. And he was too handsome for his own good. Or hers.
She allowed herself the luxury, though, of studying the dramatic lines of his profile as he concentrated on carrying her across an intricately laid flagstone walkway. His face was tanned and smoothly shaven, although the shadow of a heavy beard was noticeable on his lean cheeks and impossibly square jaw.
Dark brows perfectly showcased striking green eyes that had the most fascinating crinkles at their corners. The fine lines would have revealed his penchant for those quick, ready grins had she not already witnessed them firsthand.
Complementing the package were long, lean cheeks, deeply creased with the most amazing grooves that framed his mouth like parentheses when he smiled…as he so often did. His nose was blade-straight and bold, a mirror of his character that she was beginning to know, perhaps, a bit better than was wise.
This close, she could see the way his dark hair softly curled at his nape. This close, she could see the jump of his pulse just beneath his jaw, smell the scent of him the heat of the Texas sun had unleashed to send her senses reeling.
His was no sophisticated, designer fragrance manufactured to intimidate in the boardroom or entice in the bedroom. But he did entice, just by smelling like a man. Like honest sweat. Like Texas desert. Like a man who worked with horses and leather yet knew how to touch a woman’s heart with something as simple and as fanciful as a softly murmured, “Moo.”
He was nothing remotely like the men she was used to. Men so polished and pompous they wouldn’t know how to tease or take a joke if their title depended on it. Or men so inane and intent on advancing their social or financial position they reminded her of fluttery little drones hovering around the queen bee.
Matthew wouldn’t hover around any man. Or woman. And he couldn’t, she reminded herself with a grave certainty, be interested in her. Not now.
Once she could have turned his head.
Once when she was strong and whole.
Now, he was simply being kind.
And that knowledge was, perhaps, even more painful than the injuries that had yet to fully heal.
Four
“You couldn’t have picked up a phone?”
Eyes wide, her fatigue momentarily forgotten, Helena clung to Matthew’s neck and simply stared. He still held her in his arms just outside his front door, facing off with approximately four feet eleven inches of round, plump curves and snow-white hair. Age-spotted fists—one of them clutching a wooden spoon—propped on apron-covered hips, mustached upper lip puckered into a condemning scowl, the pint-sized Attila the Hun laid into over six feet of lean, muscled male as if she actually thought she could intimidate him.
Evidently, she could, Helena realized incredulously, if the flush spreading slowly upward from under the collar of Matthew’s white shirt was any indication. His reaction was fascinating—and utterly enchanting.
“Lois—” he warned reasonably, and hefted Helena a little higher in his arms.
“Don’t you take and Lois me, you inconsiderate little pup. A phone call. Was it too much to expect? You bring me home a countess and you couldn’t take and pick up that fancy portable phone and call? Nooo. I had to hear it from the neighbors. Well, at least that Hunt boy knows his manners and called to let me know you were on your way. Your poor momma. She would faint dead away with embarrassment if she heard about this. Dead away.”
“I’m sorry, Lois.”
“Sorry, he says.” With a quick jerk of her shoulders, she made a loud, snorting sound. “Why, I’ve a notion to take and put my spoon to your backside, Mister, and don’t you think for a minute I can’t still do it.”
“Lois,” he in
terrupted, interjecting a cautious, albeit pleading note of authority into his tone. “This is Lady Helena Reichard. She’s going to be our guest for a few days.”
Lois merely snorted again. “And what kind of heathens must she take and think we are? Letting her arrive unannounced. No room made ready for her.”
“There are half a dozen bedrooms in this house—surely we can find one that will work. That is, if you’ll ever let us in,” he enunciated pointedly.
With a disgruntled huff, Lois backed way from the door, then turned to Helena. She made a jerky, self-conscious little curtsey, a welcome smile in place.
“Lady Helena, please excuse Matthew’s unforgivable manners. He’s been taught better, he truly has. He’s a good boy at heart, but spoiled, I’m sorry to say and doesn’t know the proper way to take and treat a lady.”
“Lois,” Matthew warned as he walked through the spacious foyer and into a graceful sunlit living area flanked by high arching windows and vaulted ceilings. “Do I need to remind you who—eeyow!” he yelped as the sharp rap of Lois’s wooden spoon connected soundly with his backside.
“Put her down before you drop her,” Lois commanded, her tone inviting no arguments. “Poor dear. Manhandled by the likes of a clumsy cowboy. And her a countess and all.”
“She’s not a countess,” he ground out as he carefully settled Helena on a cream-colored linen sofa. “She’s the daughter of a countess.”
“And so pale and pretty she is. You’re tired, aren’t you, dear? And probably thirsty. Matthew—take and fetch some iced tea for the countess. Sugar, dear?”
Helena blinked from Matthew to Lois and shook her head.
“Two spoons in mine, please,” Lois ordered. “And lots of ice.”
Helena watched, transfixed, as the glare Matt directed at Lois gave way to a slow shake of his head and a resigned grin.
“Yes, ma’am. Anything you say, ma’am. Right away, ma’am.” His gaze on Helena, he touched his fingers to his hat brim, rolled his eyes and headed out of the room.
Helena watched him go, then gingerly turned her attention back to Lois who had seated herself regally on a matching sofa that faced Helena across a low pine table.
“Now, dear,” Lois murmured with a warmth in her voice that was totally at odds with the irritation she’d shown Matthew, “take and tell me all about yourself.”
Moonlight danced across the bleached pine floor of the south-facing room that was her bedroom. The clean, classic lines of mission oak furniture filled the room, from the massive armoire to the king-size bed. Intricately woven rugs in sand and mauve and the softest blues and greens were scattered over the gleaming floor, draped over the bedside tables, hung stunningly as artwork on the oatmeal-colored walls.
Helena sat in an upholstered rocker at a wall of floor-to-ceiling windows, watching the shimmer of distant stars compete with the stark beauty of an ink-black heaven.
She’d never seen such a wide, spacious sky.
And she’d never felt smaller or more insignificant than she did in this vast Texas night. It was humbling. And unsettling.
Equally disconcerting was how, at this point in her life, she had ended up here. In this condition. In Matthew Walker’s home.
Tell me all about yourself.
Lois’s words came back to her as if she’d just spoken them. She’d been shocked by the question. No one but Lois had ever asked her to do that before. Everyone had always known who she was. Until two months ago, she’d thought she’d known who she was.
Tell me all about yourself.
To her utter horror, she’d looked blankly at Lois, and she hadn’t known what to say. She’d realized that although she had tried to deny it, the accident had had a profound effect on her life. She honestly didn’t know who she was anymore. In that stunning moment of discovery, she wondered if she ever had. She’d always been her daddy’s darling girl. She’d been the world’s beautiful Lady Helena. She didn’t know how to be anything else.
But wasn’t there more to her than that? Shouldn’t there be more?
As she sat alone reflecting, she realized that her life to date had been one series of obligatory performances after another. Her selection as a member of the Asterland delegation sent to Texas to smooth the politically troubled waters between Obersbourg and the United States that her cousin Ivan had riled, was just one in a line of many obligations she’d been called upon to fulfill.
And now, because of that fateful trip her life, as she’d known it, was changed forever.
She looked through the window at the darkness of night and the flat terrain beyond. Who would have conceived a simple diplomatic function would have brought her to this juncture in her life?
She was in Texas. Even more interesting, she was with Matthew Walker, a man she had found intriguing at first sight. A man she had despaired over leaving before getting to know him better. It seemed a twisted sort of irony that it was Matthew who had walked back into her life today. She had wanted to see him again—but not like this. Never like this.
A soft knock at the door brought her head around and her heart racing. Without conscious thought, she tucked her left hand into the folds of her borrowed robe. “Come in.”
When Matthew walked into the room, a little shiver of awareness rippled through her body. It was pointless to react to him this way. Before the accident, maybe. But not now. Along with certain thoughts she couldn’t control, however, neither could she control her reaction to him.
It was the night. It was her memory of the way he’d held her in his arms—his scent that tugged at her senses and made her so keenly aware of him as a man—and of the woman she had once been.
He was strong and yet gentle, and the indulgence he’d shown Lois reaffirmed that he was also kind. All were qualities hard to resist in a man—were there a need to resist him.
As he stepped into the room, she searched his face for a sign that he might still feel this attraction, too—then fought an unreasonable disappointment when she saw only cordial concern as he walked toward her.
“Are you settled in?” he asked as he extended one of two glasses of deep red wine he’d brought with him.
Too aware of the tingling sensation when their fingers brushed, she murmured a soft, “Yes, thank you,” and became mesmerized by the contrast of the dark tan of his skin against the milky whiteness of his shirt.
He’d unbuttoned the top three buttons, rolled his sleeves to his elbows. Soft brown curls peeked from the open placket at his chest, dusted strong forearms heavily corded with sinew and deeply set veins.
At the Cattleman’s Club gala, he’d worn an ink-black Stetson with his western-cut tux. Today, his hat had been silver. The first time she’d seen him hatless was at dinner tonight. In a hat, he was stunning. Without one, he was devastating. He’d taken her breath away. Now here, in the soft light of the bedroom, he made her heart do strange, frantic things beneath her breast.
All those thick, brown curls were a little wild, a little unruly, much as she suspected the man could be if he ever let her see anything of himself but engaging charm and gentle teasing. On another man, those soft curls might have looked effeminate. He wasn’t another man. She was struck again by the realization that he was like no man she’d ever met.
At the moment, he looked contemplative and sober—and very tired—as he stood there, the silence stretching for so long she felt a need to fill it.
She drew a steadying breath. “What I’ve seen of High Stakes is wonderful, Matthew. And this room…it’s right out of a little European girl’s fantasy of the Wild West. Over all, it’s quite an adventure.”
His green eyes watched her, his expression unreadable and somehow disconcerting, as if he could see right through her. Right down to a fear that had settled marrow deep and that she tried to hide behind inane conversations and regal airs.
Feeling herself flush, she looked away, sipped, then savored her wine. “I can’t tell you how delicious this tastes after two months without so
much as the sight of a cool, chilled bottle.”
“I’m glad you approve.”
“I do. Very much.”
Another silence settled, one that would be too easy to get lost in, just as she could get lost in the color of his eyes.
“Lois, well, she’s quite—unusual, isn’t she?” she offered, not only to break the silence but because Lois intrigued her.
His features softened. “I did warn you.”
“Yes. Yes, you did. I wish she didn’t feel the need to curtsey. I’ve told her it’s absolutely unnecessary.”
“You can tell her anything you want,” he said, a smile in his voice, “but if Lois has it in her mind she’s going to do it, it’s going to happen. Necessary or not, she’ll play out her little fantasy her way. I haven’t seen her this excited since my sisters’ weddings.”
She tilted her head, studied him. “You’re very fond of her, aren’t you?”
“Have to be.” He swirled the wine, then arched a brow over the top of the glass. “She’d take and tan my hide if I wasn’t.”
She smiled into his laughing eyes and knew without doubt that if she was going to survive this episode with her heart intact, she needed some distance from all that charisma, all that sex appeal. Long term, her eventual move to the Hunts’ would help. Short term, she was in a little trouble. She couldn’t simply get up and walk away from him—not without drawing attention to her limp. Right or wrong, she felt a little too raw, a lot too sensitive to let him see her struggle that way.
“I think, perhaps, it’s more than that,” she said, choosing the option available at the moment and trying to focus on Lois.
He tugged on his ear. “Yeah. It’s more than that. She’s cantankerous and bossy and—”
“—and as bullheaded as oh, say, a Hereford?” she suggested making them both smile.
“Yeah,” he agreed, his voice low and warm and amused. “As bullheaded as that.”
She felt that damnable heat flush her cheeks again as he watched her with intimate eyes and an interest she couldn’t let herself believe.