"I’m not leaving, mama. Not as long as there’s a chance Wayne will change his mind.”
Her mother’s control shattered. She grabbed her by the shoulders and gently shook her. "Don’t you see what sort of man Wayne is? A man that can be bought . . . among other things!”
Stephanie twisted free. "And what kind of woman does that make you, mama? Tell me! Didn’t Stephen Rhodes buy you?” Her youthful face was rigid in rage. "How can you judge Wayne? Tell me, mama, how many men have you bedded with besides Stephen Rhodes and my father?”
Her mother’s hand lashed out, and she fell back on the mattress, the red imprint of the slap across one cheek. "And don’t you be judging me, Stephanie,” her mother said in a low, tight voice. "Only when you’ve walked in my shoes will you have that right.”
She rolled to one elbow. Tears stung her eyes. She reached out her hand toward her mother’s in a conciliatory gesture, though it was not yet an integral part of her proud character to ask forgiveness. "What was my father like, mama? You never said. Who was he — I have to know!”
"He was a man,” she said simply. "He possessed a courage that was tempered only by his gentle love. But who he was — I cannot tell you that. Not now. Maybe some day. Right now it is enough for me to play Stephen’s cat and mouse game. His new attitude of wait and watch . . . I must keep him from guessing the identity of your father.”
This match of wits Stephanie could understand. "Is my father still alive?”
"Aye. Though I’ve had no word of him for fourteen years, I would know otherwise if he weren’t. My soul would know if he had died in the depths of the copper pits.”
“The copper pits?
Her mother closed her eyes. Her voice dropped to a mere murmur. ‘There were days and nights when I thought she would not survive one more moment without him. But I did. I am still alive. No, change that, I still exist. Inside I have dried up to a withered, cold woman.. .as dead and rootless as the tumbleweed.”
Her mother opened those unusally colored eyes to stare intently at her. “The same must not happen to you! Obviously you wouldn’t want to visit with Rita and Inez for a few months, would you?”
She shook her head, and Rosemary said, "Then I propose you ride the camps like you used to as a child. It will at least keep you out of Stephen’s way for a while. And Cody will see to it the hands do not get out of line.”
* * * * *
She doubted if anyone ever knew the exact boundaries of Cambria in the early days when it was the DeVega Land Grant. The confusion as to the boundaries still existed in spite of the surveys made by civil engineers with the Land Department.
The Wild Cat Camp cabin where she and Cody wintered with several other wranglers lay below a spring that bubbled from a hillside five hundred feet away — at almost the exact point where four sections met. Over the years the spring had been claimed by different owners, each of whom had attempted to validate his claim by various cornerstones.
Within Stephanie’s memory the wandering cornerstone, a well-known marvel in the Territory, had made a circle around Wild Cat Springs. The cornerstone was a small mound of rocks with markings chiseled into the rough surface of one of them, like a cat’s claw. Hence the Wild Cat Camp, though by now the protection of the questionable boundary did not matter, since Stephen Rhodes had acquired it all in the course of the years.
Still, in Stephen’s absence the year before, Rosemary had decided at Cody’s advice to string barbwire. Few weeks had gone by that some Texas cattleman did not drive his herd to market in Colorado over the waterholes and buffalo grass of Cambria. Now with the boundaries fenced there was less chance of cows wandering and cattle rustling than on the open range. And Rosemary never questioned if the fencing happened to take in a few more acres than previously accounted for.
Stephanie tacked the last string of barbwire to the lone post and slumped down against it with a sigh. The post did little to protect her from the blustery February wind, but at that point she was too tired to care. She peeled the leather gauntlets from her chilled hands and looked at the raw spots where the barbs had pierced through the gloves to her skin.
What man would want a roughened woman as she was, she wondered ruefully. Skin tanned brown by the sun and wind; body honed with none of the opulent curves to entice. No, there was not a man, especially Wayne, who would find her desirable in her present condition. And at that moment she didn’t give a damn. She wanted only to rinse the dirt and grime away and crawl into her bunk. Thank God there was only one prickly hoop more to string that day.
Oh, hell! she thought. It could wait until tomorrow. She’d get back to the bunkhouse and maybe get in a hot bath before the others rode in. It seemed like months, though it had been only weeks since she’d last been up to the Castle and had a real bath in the white enameled steel bathtub. For now the wooden tub at the bunkhouse would have to serve. With more energy than she thought she had left she swung up on her piebald and struck out for the camp.
Set just above the stockpond and maze of corrals, the stone cabin was a welcome sight. A refuge from the cold. After toting two buckets of water from the tank, she rapidly shed her gauntlets and sheepskin jacket along with her woolen shirt, britches, and boots. Nude, she knelt before the caliche fireplace and fanned the morning’s banked embers.
While the water heated in the big Dutch kettle, she unbraided her hair and brushed the accumulated dust from it. At last the water was hot, and she poured it into the round tub. The tub was so small she had to stand to bathe, but it did not matter. With a sigh of rapture she stepped into the water, feeling its cleansing warmth as she held the sodden washrag to her breasts and let the water flow down the length of her body.
The door flew open and let in a gust of frigid air. "Shit, it’s colder than a witch’s — ” Cody broke off as he beheld her, all glistening and golden in the sheen of the leaping fire.
"Cody!” The name burst from her lips as her hands flew to shield her nakedness. The foreman turned his back, but not before she saw the desire that flickered like a flame in his eyes. In the three months she had ridden the camps with Cody, he had politely ignored her, speaking to her only when giving an order. The tension between the two of them had strained her presence with the other men as never before. She was no longer just one of the hands.
Each time she looked at Cody not only did she feel shame at her wanton response to his kiss the day he had brought her back from Las Vegas, but she felt an anger that she should want to feel the heat and weight of his body on hers again, to feel the searing touch of his hands, when she loved another man. What kind of woman did that make her? A woman like her mother who shared the bed of more than one man?
"I’m sorry,” she murmured to Cody’s back. "I didn’t expect anyone to return this soon.”
Three-quarters turned from her, he kept his gaze on the red flowering geranium plant in the old lard can that she had placed on the table the week before. Fishing out a thin piece of paper from the jappaned tin in his pocket, he sprinkled black flakes into the paper’s fold and began to roll it. "Billy and Clem are repairing the corral over at Coon’s Draw and will be late,” he said evenly. He shoved the tin back in his pocket and snapped a sulphur match across the door’s bar. "I’ll finish setting out the stock salt.” His hand went to the latch.
184
"Cody . . . could you pass me the blanket — there on the bunk?”
Only a fractional moment of silence followed. Then he turned to face her. In the fire’s flickering light his gray eyes blazed with an anger that she was unaccustomed to seeing in the man. "I’m too old for games, kid — and you are, too.”
Stephanie said nothing, confused by the conflicting emotions that bombarded her. Should she act naive and let the moment pass? Or brazen it out and discover just what it was that was so special about the act of intercourse? She had grown up on Cambria and had been initiated early into the mating of the animals. Was it so very different with humans?
Her eyes too
k in Cody’s tall, lean frame, hard and weathered as her own. The rawboned face. It had none of Wayne’s handsomeness. But the slate-hued eyes —t hey glowed, held her almost transfixed. "Pass me the blanket,” she whispered hoarsely.
"Do you know what you’re doing?” he demanded.
"Are you afraid of me, Cody Strahan?” It was a taunt to hide her growing fear. Her knees quivered like jelly. It was the hot bath that had enervated her, she told herself. Still, she marveled at her boldness as unflinchingly she faced the penetrating gaze that seemed to burn her like a branding iron. Challengingly her hands fell to her sides, displaying her firm, round breasts and triangular patch of red-brown curls.
He dropped the bar over the door’s latch, then jerked the blanket from the bunk. But when he faced her, his wrath was bridled. He wrapped the scratchy blanket about her rigid form, never taking his gaze from her large, dilated eyes. Sweeping her up into his arms, he crossed to the bunk and laid her on the fluffy wool mattress. For a moment he posed above her, then his gaze relinquished hers as he shucked his clothing.
Stephanie had thought that when the moment came she would be sensuous, as seductive as the naked lady in the painting above the bar of one of Las Vegas’s saloons. But when Cody slid his long, whip-corded frame next to hers, she giggled. "You smell like a cow, Cody!”
But she liked his scent — a mixture of old leather, sweet tobacco, and pinon smoke. She tried to recall Wayne, the intoxicating scent of his cologne and pomade, but everything about Cody overpowered her. From his own husky laugh to the work-toughened hand that lay lightly on her hip.
He smiled. "I think a damned rutting bull would hit the mark.” His lips feathered across her temple. "Scared, kid?”
She nodded. "Yeah. I never figured to go about it like this, Cody. But I don’t want to change my mind,” she added quickly.
He laughed again, and the warm sound of it gentled her. "I don’t know of any other way,” he told her as she snuggled closer, laying her hand across his matted chest.
His gentle teasing relaxed her, and there was no fear, no stiffness, as his hands caressed the supple curves of her woman’s body, sliding down to entangle themselves in the mound of hair that was as downy as lamb’s fleece.
She gasped, and her eyes snapped open.
"It’s part of it,” he said gently as his tongue teased the bowlike line of her upper lip. "It’s part of loving.”
Her lips parted beneath the insistence of the tip of his tongue. For a moment she lay lax as it sought and captured hers, but a warm stirring in her belly rippled like suddenly disturbed pond water so that the very outermost parts of her were soon awash with the sensuous feeling. When he at last freed her, her body trembled with unquenched desire. "I didn’t know — ” she began.
"There’s a lot you don’t know,” he said huskily. "We’re just beginning.” But he had to smile as he caught her gaze lowering past his small, hard nipples nestled in the mat of curls. "Yes, I’m different—but that’s something you should know.” He took her hand, guiding it to him.
She forgot her embarrassment as her fingers traced with wonderment the beauty of the man’s physique. And when his breath sucked in at her own rhythmic caresses, she knew the great pleasure of giving.
His hand closed over hers. "Not yet. There’s time.” And he rolled away so that he could see the whole of her, watch the soft expression on her face give way to passion’s demand as his hands and lips made love to her. When he touched and kissed the softest, most hidden part of her body, her head lolled to one side and she moaned at the unbearable pleasure that racked her body.
At last when she lay quivering like a spent bowstring beneath his knowing fingers, he slid up and over her. Her eyes closed, her tangled lashes lying over her high cheekbones. Her body arched against his, seeking once again the love he was giving her, the love he had hidden for so many years.
Their passion mounted with the tempo of their lovemaking so that they both gasped as one at the incredible pleasure that exploded between them. "Look at me,” he demanded during the brief, sustained moment of ecstasy. "I love you, Stephanie Rhodes. I’ve loved you for a long, long time.”
CHAPTER 36
The attraction that crackled between Stephanie and Cody like summer lightning was obvious, though none of the cowhands dared mention the fact — not only out of respect for Stephanie but also from a healthy fear of Cody’s reaction.
And in concern for Stephanie’s reputation Cody was careful that the two of them were never again alone, usually sending Jack or Charley, two of the old-timers, out with Stephanie on the line ride. Obviously, Cody knew her mercurial nature and waited with watchful patience to see if her attraction for him was a thing of the moment, a substitute for Wayne, or if it held a deeper significance.
She wasn’t sure herself. This was all so new to her. Each, a first experience, and she was feeling her way.
The waning days of winter, marked by warm days and frosty nights, meant that soon the line riding would be over and it would be time to return to prepare for spring roundup. Spurred by this knowledge and driven by the more primitive instinct of mating that came with spring’s approach, she trailed him to an outlying water tank. He never looked up from where he knelt at the bank washing the grime from his face, but as he wrung the water from his bandana, he said, "You’re about as quiet as a riled buffalo, kid.”
She watched the way his thick, leather-brown hair curled at the nape of his neck and knew the wild desire to run her fingers through it again, to kiss the tanned, corded neck once more. Just watching Cody’s movements made her weak with a passion that continued to amaze her. She wondered if she was like one of the wanton women that the cowhands often joked about, the kind of women who lived in the barrio districts of Las Vegas and Santa Fe.
How could she want one man so much and continue to love another, one who obviously cared nothing for her? She knew she was a fool . . . and knew there was nothing she could do about it. Since her childhood Wayne had been a fever in her blood as much as gold fevered a prospector.
"Why don’t you ever take me seriously, Cody?” she asked as she dismounted and looped her piebald’s reins about the wooden rungs of the dilapidated windmill. "Cody!” she said desperately when he did not answer her. "I don’t want to go back!”
Cody rose and knotted the damp bandana about his neck.
"You can’t hide out forever, Stephanie. Sooner or later you’re gonna have to face what you’re running from.”
She wrinkled her nose in frustration and began to fan herself with her hat. "If I go back, papa — Stephen — will start in again about me marrying Hubbard. And I won’t do it!” She sounded convincing, but both knew that she was evading the issue.
Still he said nothing. He swung up into the saddle. "I promised your mother I’d bring you back when spring roundup began. By that time hopefully your Englishman will have lost interest. Besides,” he said, looking down into the inky depths of her eyes, "I’m leaving soon — after the branding is over.”
She clutched his bridle. "What do you mean you’re leaving?”
"I’ve been running, too, kid. For too long. It’s time I started making my own life again.”
She stuttered, not knowing what to say. "But you’ve always been — I thought you were happy here.”
He eyed her, his lids narrowing to slits. "Happiness isn’t guaranteed,” he began and was saved an explanation by an inborn sixth sense that responded to a presence before she ever heard the tell-tale movement of other horses through the tall grass.
"What is it?” she asked as he rapidly drew the Spencer carbine from the saddle scabbard and shouldered it. Her untrained ear still heard nothing. But within seconds three horsemen appeared on the next rise. Stephanie gasped. "Satana!”
"I’ve been waiting for the coyote to show his face!”
"You knew he was around?”
"I never thought he’d go for the story about your death,” he replied as he watched the three horsemen slowly
approach. "Came back to see for himself, I guess.”
Satana raised his hand, halting his party within yards of her and Cody. His lank hair hung about his shoulders. His buckskins were black with grease. Only the charcoal-black eyes seemed alive in the cruel face that was the color of dead leaves. Stephanie repressed a shudder as her mind tried to recall something from the past.
"Your spirit I see has not left the earth,” he told her with a smirk.
Cody matched his smile. "She didn’t wish to marry one who runs with the dogs, Satana.”
Satana’s hand slid to the knife at his waist. The other two went for their outdated flintlock rifles, and Cody said, "It would give me great pleasure to kill you.”
"Paren!” Satana said, nodding to the two warriors to halt. He looked back to her. Lust gleamed in his eyes. Lust for the unobtainable. The white woman. But surely he could not miss the loathing in her eyes. “I remember you as a child,” he addressed her. “A child with hair the color of the sacred fire. I remembered how your mother had jerked you from me, as if I were something unclean.” He did not take his eyes from Stephanie, though his next words were obviously directly toward Cody. "I will come for her, white man. And when I do, I will take your hair with me for her to mourn over.”
He dug into his pony’s flanks and wheeled about, and Cody said, "You’re going back home, kid.”
* * * * *
Rosemary fingered the embossed invitation before passing it to Stephanie. "We do not have to go. We can take that trip to Ireland you’ve been putting off. Stephen would never dare deny you the trip, not with your great-uncle ill as he is.” With the arrival of her aunt’s letter informing her of Lord Gallagher’s stroke, all hope that he might be able to call in Stephen’s notes was temporarily suspended. And if he died, what then? Rosemary wondered as the seeds of panic sprang to life within her. All hold over Stephen would be gone.
"Gracias," she told Consuela, taking the cup of hot chocolate the woman handed her. She took a sip and looked at her daughter over the cup’s rim. "Well, shall we go to Ireland?”
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