by Diana Palmer
He felt those soft gray eyes on his face, and his own gaze jerked down to meet them. She flushed and looked away.
He wondered what she’d been thinking to produce such a reaction. She couldn’t have possibly made it plainer that she felt no physical attraction to him, so why the wide-eyed stare? It puzzled him. So many things about her puzzled him. She was neat and attractively dressed, but those clothes would have suited a dowager far better than a young woman. While he didn’t encourage short skirts and low-cut blouses, Leslie was covered from head to toe; long dress, long sleeves, high neck buttoned right up to her throat.
“Need anything else?” Ed asked abruptly, hoping to ward off more trouble.
Matt’s powerful shoulders shrugged. “Not for the moment.” He glanced once more at Leslie. “Don’t forget those files I want updated.”
After he walked out, Ed stared after him for a minute, frowning. “What files?”
She explained it to him.
“But those are outdated,” Ed murmured thoughtfully. “And he never looks at them. I don’t understand why he has to have them corrected at all.”
She leaned forward. “Because it will irritate me and make me work harder!” she said in a stage whisper. “God forbid that I should have time to twiddle my thumbs.”
His eyebrows arched. “He isn’t vindictive.”
“That’s what you think.” She picked up the file Matt had left and grimaced as she put it back in the filing cabinet. “I’ll start on those when I’ve finished answering your mail. Do you suppose he wants me to stay over after work to do them? He’d have to pay me overtime.” She grinned impishly, a reminder of the woman she’d once been. “Wouldn’t that make his day?”
“Let me ask him,” Ed volunteered. “Just do your usual job for now.”
“Okay. Thanks, Ed.”
He shrugged. “What are friends for?” he murmured with a smile.
The office was a great place to work. Leslie had a ball watching the other women in the executive offices lie in wait for Matt. His secretary caught him trying to light a cigar out on the balcony, and she let him have it from behind a potted tree with the water pistol. He laid the cigar down on Bessie David’s desk and she “accidentally” dropped it into his half-full coffee cup that he’d set down next to it. He held it up, dripping, with an accusing look at Bessie.
“You told me to do it, sir,” Bessie reminded him.
He dropped the sodden cigar back in the coffee and left it behind. Leslie, having seen the whole thing, ducked into the rest room to laugh. It amazed her that Matt was so easygoing and friendly to his other employees. To Leslie, he was all bristle and venom. She wondered what he’d do if she let loose with a water pistol. She chuckled, imagining herself tearing up Main Street in Jacobsville ahead of a cursing Matt Caldwell. It was such a pity that she’d changed so much. Before tragedy had touched her young life, she would have been very attracted to the tall, lean cattleman.
A few days later, he came into Ed’s office dangling a cigar from his fingers. Leslie, despite her amusement at the antics of the other secretaries, didn’t say a word at the sight of the unlit cigar.
“I want to see the proposal the Cattlemen’s Association drafted about brucellosis testing.”
She stared at him. “Sir?”
He stared back. She was getting easier on his eyes, and he didn’t like his reactions to her. She was repulsed by him. He couldn’t get past that because it destroyed his pride. “Ed told me he had a copy of it,” he elaborated. “It came in the mail yesterday.”
“Okay.” She knew where the mail was kept. Ed tried to ignore it, leaving it in the In box until Leslie dumped it on his desk in front of him and refused to leave until he dealt with it. This usually happened at the end of the week, when it had piled up and over-flowed into the Out box.
She rummaged through the box and produced a thick letter from the Cattlemen’s Association, unopened. She carried it back through and handed it to Matt.
He’d been watching her walk with curious intensity. She was limping. He couldn’t see her legs, because she was wearing loose knit slacks with a tunic that flowed to her thighs as she walked. Very obviously, she wasn’t going to do anything to call attention to her figure.
“You’re limping,” he said. “Did you see a doctor after that fall you took at my ranch?”
“No need to,” she said at once. “It was only a bruise. I’m sore, that’s all.”
He picked up the receiver of the phone on her desk and pressed the intercom button. “Edna,” he said abruptly, “set Miss Murry up with Lou Coltrain as soon as possible. She took a spill from a horse at my place a few days ago and she’s still limping. I want her X-rayed.”
“No!” Leslie protested.
“Let her know when you’ve made the appointment. Thanks,” he told his secretary and hung up. His dark eyes met Leslie’s pale ones squarely. “You’re going,” he said flatly.
She hated doctors. Oh, how she hated them! The doctor at the emergency room in Houston, an older man retired from regular practice, had made her feel cheap and dirty as he examined her and made cold remarks about tramps who got men killed. She’d never gotten over the double trauma of her experience and that harsh lecture, despite the therapists’ attempts to soften the memory.
She clenched her teeth and glared at Matt. “I said I’m not hurt!”
“You work here. I’m the boss. You get examined. Period.”
She wanted to quit. She wished she could. She had no place else to go. Houston was out of the question. She was too afraid that she’d be up to her ears in reporters, despite her physical camouflage, the minute she set foot in the city.
She drew a sharp, angry breath.
Her attitude puzzled him. “Don’t you want to make sure the injury won’t make that limp permanent?” he asked suddenly.
She lifted her chin proudly. “Mr. Caldwell, I had an…accident…when I was seventeen and that leg suffered some bone damage.” She refused to think about how it had happened. “I’ll always have a slight limp, and it’s not from the horse throwing me.”
He didn’t seem to breathe for several seconds. “All the more reason for an examination,” he replied. “You like to live dangerously, I gather. You’ve got no business on a horse.”
“Ed said the horse was gentle. It was my fault I got thrown. I jerked the reins.”
His eyes narrowed. “Yes, I remember. You were trying to get away from me. Apparently you think I have something contagious.”
She could see the pride in his eyes that made him resent her. “It wasn’t that,” she said. She averted her gaze to the wall. “It’s just that I don’t like to be touched.”
“Ed touches you.”
She didn’t know how to tell him without telling him everything. She couldn’t bear having him know about her sordid past. She raised turbulent gray eyes to his dark ones. “I don’t like to be touched by strangers,” she amended quickly. “Ed and I have known each other for years,” she said finally. “It’s…different with him.”
His eyes narrowed. He searched over her thin face. “It must be,” he said flatly.
His mocking smile touched a nerve. “You’re like a steamroller, aren’t you?” she asked abruptly. “You assume that because you’re wealthy and powerful, there isn’t a woman alive who can resist you!”
He didn’t like that assumption. His eyes began to glitter. “You shouldn’t listen to gossip,” he said, his voice deadly quiet. “She was a spoiled little debutante who thought Daddy should be able to buy her any man she wanted. When she discovered that he couldn’t, she came to work for a friend of mine and spent a couple of weeks pursuing me around Jacobsville. I went home one night and found her piled up in my bed wearing a sheet and nothing else. I threw her out, but then she told everyone that I’d assaulted her. She had a field day with me in court until my housekeeper, Tolbert, was called to tell the truth about what happened. The fact that she lost the case should tell you what the jury
thought of her accusations.”
“The jury?” she asked huskily. Besides his problems with his mother, she hadn’t known about any incident in his past that might predispose him even further to distrusting women.
His thin lips drew up in a travesty of a smile. “She had me arrested and prosecuted for criminal assault,” he returned. “I became famous locally—the one black mark in an otherwise unremarkable past. She had the misfortune to try the same trick later on an oilman up in Houston. He called me to testify in his behalf. When he won the case, he had her prosecuted for fraud and extortion, and won. She went to jail.”
She felt sick. He’d had his own dealings with the press. She was sorry for him. It must have been a real ordeal after what he’d already suffered in his young life. It also explained why he wasn’t married. Marriage involved trust. She doubted he was capable of it any longer. Certainly it explained the hostility he showed toward Leslie. He might think she was pretending to be repulsed by him because she was playing some deep game for profit, perhaps with some public embarrassment in mind. He might even think she was setting him up for another assault charge.
“Maybe you think that I’m like that,” she said after a minute, studying him quietly. “But I’m not.”
“Then why act like I’m going to attack you whenever I come within five feet of you?” he asked coldly.
She studied her fingers on the desk before her, their short fingernails neatly trimmed, with a coat of colorless sheen. Nothing flashy, she thought, and that was true of her life lately. She didn’t have an answer for him.
“Is Ed your lover?” he persisted coldly.
She didn’t flinch. “Ask him.”
He rolled the unlit cigar in his long fingers as he watched her. “You are one enormous puzzle,” he mused.
“Not really. I’m very ordinary.” She looked up. “I don’t like doctors, especially male ones…”
“Lou’s a woman,” he replied. “She and her husband are both physicians. They have a little boy.”
“Oh.” A woman. That would make things easier. But she didn’t want to be examined. They could probably tell from X rays how breaks occurred, and she didn’t know if she could trust a local doctor not to talk about it.
“It isn’t up to you,” he said suddenly. “You work for me. You had an accident on my ranch.” He smiled mirthlessly. “I have to cover my bets. You might decide later on to file suit for medical benefits.”
She searched his eyes. She couldn’t really blame him for feeling like that. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll let her examine me.”
“No comment?”
She shrugged. “Mr. Caldwell, I work hard for my paycheck. I always have. You don’t know me, so I don’t blame you for expecting the worst. But I don’t want a free ride through life.”
One of his eyebrows jerked. “I’ve heard that one before.”
She smiled sadly. “I suppose you have.” She touched her keyboard absently. “This Dr. Coltrain, is she the company doctor?”
“Yes.”
She gnawed on her lower lip. “What she finds out, it is confidential, isn’t it?” she added worriedly, looking up at him.
He didn’t reply for a minute. The hand dangling the cigar twirled it around. “Yes,” he said. “It’s confidential. You’re making me curious, Miss Murry. Do you have secrets?”
“We all have secrets,” she said solemnly. “Some are darker than others.”
He flicked a thumbnail against the cigar. “What’s yours? Did you shoot your lover?”
She didn’t dare show a reaction to that. Her face felt as if it would crack if she moved.
He stuck the cigar in his pocket. “Edna will let you know when you’re to go see Lou,” he said abruptly, with a glance at his watch. He held up the letter. “Tell Ed I’ve got this. I’ll talk to him about it later.”
“Yes, sir.”
He resisted the impulse to look back at her. The more he discovered about his newest employee, the more intrigued he became. She made him restless. He wished he knew why.
There was no way to get out of the doctor’s appointment. Leslie spoke briefly with Dr. Coltrain before she was sent to the hospital for a set of X rays. An hour later, she was back in Lou’s office, watching the older woman pore somberly over the films against a lighted board on the wall.
Lou looked worried when she examined the X ray of the leg. “There’s no damage from the fall, except for some bruising,” she concluded. Her dark eyes met Leslie’s squarely. “These old breaks aren’t consistent with a fall, however.”
Leslie ground her teeth together. She didn’t say anything.
Lou moved back around her desk and sat down, indicating that Leslie should sit in the chair in front of the desk after she got off the examining table.
“You don’t want to talk about it,” Lou said gently. “I won’t press you. You do know that the bones weren’t properly set at the time, don’t you? The improper alignment is unfortunate, because that limp isn’t going to go away. I really should send you to an orthopedic surgeon.”
“You can send me,” Leslie replied, “but I won’t go.”
Lou rested her folded hands on her desk over the calendar blotter with its scribbled surface. “You don’t know me well enough to confide in me. You’ll learn, after you’ve been in Jacobsville a while, that I can be trusted. I don’t talk about my patients to anyone, not even my husband. Matt won’t hear anything from me.”
Leslie remained silent. It was impossible to go over it again with a stranger. It had been hard enough to elaborate on her past to the therapist, who’d been shocked, to put it mildly.
The older woman sighed. “All right, I won’t pressure you. But if you ever need anyone to talk to, I’ll be here.”
Leslie looked up. “Thank you,” she said sincerely.
“You’re not Matt’s favorite person, are you?” Lou asked abruptly.
Leslie laughed without mirth. “No, I’m not. I think he’ll find a way to fire me eventually. He doesn’t like women much.”
“Matt likes everybody as a rule,” Lou said. “And he’s always being pursued by women. They love him. He’s kind to people he likes. He offered to marry Kitty Carson when she quit working for Dr. Drew Morris. She didn’t do it, of course, she was crazy for Drew and vice versa. They’re happily married now.” She hesitated, but Leslie didn’t speak. “He’s a dish—rich, handsome, sexy, and usually the easiest man on earth to get along with.”
“He’s a bulldozer,” Leslie said flatly. “He can’t seem to talk to people unless he’s standing on them.” She folded her arms over her chest and looked uncomfortable.
So that’s it, Lou thought, wondering if the young woman realized what her body language was giving away. Lou knew instantly that someone had caused those breaks in the younger woman’s leg; very probably a man. She had reason to know.
“You don’t like people to touch you,” Lou said.
Leslie shifted in the chair. “No.”
Lou’s perceptive eyes went over the concealing garments Leslie wore, but she didn’t say another word. She stood up, smiling gently. “There’s no damage from the recent fall,” she said gently. “But come back if the pain gets any worse.”
Leslie frowned. “How did you know I was in pain?”
“Matt said you winced every time you got out of your chair.”
Leslie’s heart skipped. “I didn’t realize he noticed.”
“He’s perceptive.”
Lou prescribed an over-the-counter medication to take for the pain and advised her to come back if she didn’t improve. Leslie agreed and went out of the office in an absentminded stupor, wondering what else Matt Caldwell had learned from her just by observation. It was a little unnerving.
When she went back to the office, it wasn’t ten minutes before Matt was standing in the doorway.
“Well?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she assured him. “Just a few bruises. And believe me, I have no intention of suing y
ou.”
He didn’t react visibly. “Plenty have.” He was irritated. Lou wouldn’t tell him anything, except that his new employee was as closemouthed as a clam. He knew that already.
“Tell Ed I’ll be out of the office for a couple of days,” he said.
“Yes, sir.”
He gave her a last look, turned and walked back out. It wasn’t until Matt was out of sight that Leslie began to relax.
Chapter Three
The nightmares came back that night. Leslie had even expected them, because of the visit to Dr. Lou Coltrain and the hospital’s X-ray department. Having to wear high heeled shoes to work hadn’t done her damaged leg any good, either. Along with the nightmare that left her sweating and panting, her leg was killing her. She went to the bathroom and downed two aspirin, hoping they were going to do the trick. She decided that she was going to have to give up fashion and wear flats again.
Matt noticed, of course, when he returned to the office three days later. His eyes narrowed as he watched her walk across the floor of her small office.
“Lou could give you something to take for the pain,” he said abruptly.
She glanced at him as she pulled a file out of the metal cabinet. “Yes, she could, Mr. Caldwell, but do you really want a comatose secretary in Ed’s office? Painkillers put me to sleep.”
“Pain makes for inefficiency.”
She nodded. “I know that. I have a bottle of aspirin in my purse,” she assured him. “And the pain isn’t so bad that I can’t remember how to spell. It’s just a few bruises. They’ll heal. Dr. Coltrain said so.”
He stared at her through narrowed, cold eyes. “You shouldn’t be limping after a week. I want you to see Lou again…”
“I’ve limped for six years, Mr. Caldwell,” she said serenely. Her eyes kindled. “If you don’t like the limp, perhaps you shouldn’t stand and watch me walk.”
His eyebrows arched. “Can’t the doctors do anything to correct it?”
She glared at him. “I hate doctors!”
The vehemence of her statement took him aback. She meant it, too. Her face flushed, her eyes sparkled with temper. It was such a difference from her usual expression that he found himself captivated. When she was animated, she was pretty.