by Diana Palmer
He was wearing work clothes. Jeans and boots, with wide, flaring leather chaps and a vest over his blue-patterned shirt, leather wristbands on the cuffs. A string hung out of the pocket, which would be the tobacco pouch he always carried, along with a small, flat packet of papers to roll cigarettes from. His forehead was oddly pale as he watched her, his wide-brimmed hat tossed carelessly onto an elegant Victorian wing chair. He lifted his square chin and stared at her with unblinking, unforgiving eyes, the very picture of a Texas cattleman with his weather-beaten face and unyielding pride and blatant arrogance.
She closed the door and moved forward. He didn't frighten her. He never had, really, although he towered over her like a lean, taciturn giant. He'd hardly smiled in the years she'd lived under his roof. She wondered if he ever had as a boy. She loved him. But love was something he didn't need. Love. And Lacy. He could do very well without either, and he'd proven it over the past eight lonely months.
"Hello, Cole," she said softly.
He lifted the smoking cigarette to thin, firm lips that held a faintly mocking smile. "Hello, yourself, kiddo. You look prosperous enough," he mused, his eyes narrow on her short dark hair in its bob, her face with its outrageously dark lip rouge, her blue eyes quiet and abnormally bright as she stood before him, very trendy in her soft gray dress that clung to her slender figure and displayed her long, elegant legs with scandalous efficiency.
She didn't avoid his stare. Her eyes wandered over his face like loving hands, seeing the new lines, the rough edges. He was twenty-eight now, but he'd aged in these months they'd been apart. The war had aged him. Marriage hadn't seemed to help.
"I'm doing very well, thanks," she said, trying to keep her voice light. It was hard to handle this meeting, with the memory of her abrupt departure—and the reason for it—still between them. He seemed unperturbed by it, but her knees felt weak. "What brings you to San Antonio in the middle of the night?"
"I've been trying to sell cattle. Winter's coming on. Feed's getting hard to come by." He studied her blatantly, but there was no feeling in his dark eyes. There was nothing at all.
She moved closer, inhaling the masculine smell of him, the scents of tobacco and leather that had become so familiar. She touched his sleeve gently, loving the warmth of him under it, only to have him jerk away from her and walk back toward the fireplace.
Her hand felt odd, extended like that. She pulled it back to her side with a wistful, bitter little smile. He still didn't like her to touch him, after all this time. He never had. He took, but he never gave. Lacy wasn't sure that he knew how to give.
"How is your mother?" she asked.
"She's fine."
"And Katy and Bennett?"
"My sister and brother are fine, too."
She studied his long, lean back, watching him stare at his likeness above the mantel. She'd had it painted soon after she'd left Spanish Flats, and it was his mirror image. Dark, brooding, with eyes that followed her everywhere she went. He was wearing work clothes in the portrait, with a red bandanna at his throat and a white Stetson atop his dark, straight hair. She loved the portrait. She loved the man.
"What's that in aid of?" he asked insolently, gesturing up at it. He turned, pinning her with his dark gaze. "For show? To let everyone know what a devoted little wife you are?"
She smiled sadly. "Are we going to have that argument again? I'm not suited to the ranch. You've been telling me that since the day I stepped on the place for the first time. I'm—how did you put it?—too genteel." That was a lie. She was well suited, and she loved it. Her eyes glared at him. "But we both know why I left Spanish Flats, Cole."
His eyes flashed, and a dark stain of color washed over his high cheekbones. He averted his eyes.
Oh, damn, Lacy thought miserably. My tongue will be the death of me. She laced her hands together. "Anyway, you never knew I was around," she said stiffly. "Your day-to-day indifference finally chased me away."
"What did you expect me to do?" he asked curtly. "Sit around and worship you? My ranch is in trouble, teetering on a precipice in this damned slow agricultural market. I'm too busy trying to support my family to dance attendance on a bored society girl." He stared at her with cold, dark eyes. "That lounge lizard who led me in here seems to think you're his private stock. Why?"
That sounded like jealousy, and her heart jumped, but she kept her features calm. "George is my friend. He'd like to marry me."
"You've got a husband. Does he know?"
"No," she said carelessly. He was getting on her nerves now. She went to the decanter and poured herself a china cup of gin, lacing it with water. She turned back defiantly and sipped her gin, knowing he'd recognize the smell. He did; she saw it in his disapproving stare. She grinned at him impishly over the rim of the delicate china cup. "Why don't you go and tell him?"
"You should have already," he said, his voice deep and smooth.
"What for?" she asked innocently. "To make him jealous?"
She could see the control he was exercising, and it excited her. Pushing Cole had always excited her.
"Lead him on," he dared, "and I'll kill him."
Now that was pure possession, and it irritated her. He didn't want her, but he wasn't going to let anyone else have her. His flashing dark eyes were telling her so.
"You probably would, you wild man." She drew back, lifting her chin to glare up at him, unafraid. "Well, let me tell you something, Coleman Whitehall. It's a pleasant change to be admired and sought after by someone after being ignored by you!"
He stared at her with an odd expression. Almost amusement. "Where's that temper been all these years?" he taunted. "I've never seen it before."
"Oh, I've discovered lots of bad habits since I got away from you," she told him. "I've decided that I like being myself. Don't you like being disagreed with? God knows, everybody at the ranch is terrified of you!"
"Not you, I gather," he drawled, taking a last draw from his cigarette.
"Never me." She sipped some more gin, feeling reckless. "I'm doing great without you. I have a big, fancy house, and beautiful clothes, and lots of friends!"
He finished the cigarette and tossed it into the burning fireplace. The orange-and-yellow flames highlighted his bronzed skin, his sharp, well-defined features.
"The house and clothes don't suit you, and your friends stink," he said easily, standing erect with his hands on his slender hips. "You're getting as wild as Katy. I don't like it."
"Then do something about it," she challenged. "Make me stop, big man. You can do anything... Just ask Ben; he's your fan club."
He smiled ruefully. "Not since you left, he isn't. Even Taggart and Cherry stopped talking to me once you were gone."
"Nice of you to come right after me and take me home," she said sarcastically. "Eight months and not even a postcard."
"You're the one who wanted to go." His dark eyes searched her face quietly, and something flashed in them for an instant. "You're not happy, Lacy," he said quietly. "And that crowd in there isn't going to make you happy."
"What is, you?" she demanded. She felt like crying. She took another sip of gin and turned away from him, hurting like she never had. In the quiet, understated elegance of the enormous room, with its faint odor of lilacs, she felt as out of place as he looked. "Go away, Cole," she said heavily. "There was never any room for me in your life. You wouldn't even sleep with me—until that last night." She didn't see the expression that statement put on his face. "I decided to cut my losses and go back to the city, where I belonged. I thought you'd be pleased. After all, the marriage was forced on us."
His face hardened. "You might have talked to me before you left." He remembered how it had felt to watch her leave. She couldn't know that his pride had been shattered by that defection, even though it was justified. He'd done his best to drive her away, to make damned sure he didn't lose control again as he had that one night. The memory of the way he'd hurt her didn't sit well on his conscience.
&
nbsp; He might not have loved her, but he'd missed her. The color had gone out of his world when she'd left it. He stared at her now with an expression he was careful not to let her see. She was so lovely.
She deserved a man who'd be good to her, who'd take proper care
of her and give her a houseful of children... His eyes closed
briefly and he turned away. "But maybe it was just as well. We'd said it all already, hadn't we, honey?" he asked quietly.
"Yes, we had," she agreed. "I suppose we were just too different to make a successful marriage." She bit her lower lip and closed her eyes. That was a lie, too. But it would please him to have her admit what he already believed.
"Is he your lover?" he asked suddenly, nodding toward the closed door. "That limp-wristed lizard who showed me in here?"
"I don't have a lover, Cole," she said, lifting her eyes bravely to his. "I've never had anyone.. .except you."
He avoided her eyes, looking over at the mantel. Absently his fingers reached for the Bull Durham pouch. He pulled out a tissue-thin paper with deft, quick fingers and dabbed tobacco in a thin line in the middle of it, rolling it and sealing it with a flick of his tongue. He struck a match on the bricks of the fireplace and bent his dark head to light the finished product. Deep, pungent smoke filled the room.
She toyed with the dainty lace-and-cotton handkerchief in her hands. "Why did you come here?"
He shrugged, his broad chest rising and falling heavily. He turned around and his dark eyes searched her pale ones. He noticed her flushed face and the faint mist in her eyes. His heavy brows came together. "Have you been drinking all night?" he asked curtly.
"Of course," she said, without subterfuge, and laughed defiantly. "Are you shocked? Or is it that you're still back in the Dark Ages, when ladies didn't do that sort of thing?"
"Decent women don't do that sort of thing," he told her, his voice unusually deep as he glared at her. "Or wear clothes like that," he added, nodding toward the expanse of leg below the knee-deep hem of her skirt with her rolled-down hose held up by lacy garters.
"Don't tell me you're shocked to see my legs, Cole," she taunted, lifting her chin as she smiled at him. "Of course, you never have seen my body, have you?" He looked frankly uncomfortable now, and she liked that. She liked making him uncomfortable. Her hands moved slowly down her body, and she watched his eyes follow the movement with satisfaction. "You can't even talk about sex, can you, Cole? It's something dark and sinful—and decent people only do it in the dark with the lights off—"
"Stop it!" he said shortly. He turned his back on her, smoking quietly, one hand touching the soft curve of a chair back. His breath seemed to come unsteadily. "Talking about.. .that.. .won't change what happened."
He almost sounded as if he regretted it. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he thought of it as a weakness. His upbringing had been rigid at best, and his Comanche grandfather had all but stolen him from his parents in those formative young years. He'd learned how to be a man years before age caught up with his conditioning, and tenderness hadn't been part of his education.
The music suddenly got louder, attracting his attention to the closed door. "Is this a regular thing now, these parties?"
"I suppose so," she confessed. "I can't stand my own company, Cole."
"I'm having some problems of my own." He sat down in the dainty wing chair, looking so out of place in it that Lacy almost smiled in spite of the gravity between them.
She perched on the edge of the velvet-covered blue sofa and folded her hands primly in her lap.
"The elegant Miss Jarrett," he murmured, studying her. "I had some exquisite dreams about you while I was in France."
That shocked her. He'd never talked about France. "Did you? I wrote you every day," she confessed shyly.
"And never mailed the letters," he said, with a faint smile. "Katy told me."
"I was afraid to. You were so reserved, and just because I was best friends with Katy and living in your house was no reason to think you'd welcome my letters. Even after the way we said goodbye," she added, with unfamiliar self-consciousness. "You never wrote just to me, after all."
He didn't tell her why. "I wouldn't have minded a letter or two. It got pretty bad over there," he said.
She glanced up and then down. "You were shot down, weren't you?"
"I got scratched up a little," he said curtly. "Listen, suppose you come back to Spanish Flats?"
Her heart leapt straight up. She stared at him, searched his dark eyes. He was a proud man. It must have taken a lot of soul-searching for him to come and ask that. "Why, Cole?"
"Mother.. .isn't well," he said after a minute. "Katy's being courted by some wild man from Chicago. Bennett's trying to run off to France to join Ernest Hemingway and that Lost Generation of writers." He ran a hand through his damp hair. "Lacy, they foreclosed on Johnson's place yesterday," he added, looking up with eyes as dark as his hair.
Her heart jumped. Spanish Flats was his life. "I still have the inheritance Great-aunt Lucy left me, and some from my parents," she said gently. "I could—"
"I don't want your damned money!" He got up, exploding in quiet rage. "I never did!"
"I know that, Cole," she said, trying to soothe him. She stood, too, standing close to his tall, lean body. She stared up at him. "But I'd give it to you, all the same."
There was a flicker of something in his dark eyes for just an instant. He reached out a lean hand, the one that wasn't holding the cigarette, and drew his hard knuckles lightly down her creamy cheek, making her tingle all over. "Skin like a rose petal," he murmured. "So lovely."
Her full bow of a mouth parted as she sighed. She searched his eyes while time seemed to stop around them. She was a girl again, all shy and weak-kneed, worshipping Cole. Wanting him.
He saw that look and abruptly moved away again. Just like old times, Cole, she thought bitterly. She bit her lower lip until it hurt, trying to banish the other rejections from her mind. He didn't want her to touch him. She'd have to get used to that.
"This was Mother's idea,"he said tersely, smoking like a furnace. "She wants you to come home."
"Marion, not you." She nodded, sighing. "You don't want me, do you, Cole? You never have."
He stared up at the portrait without speaking. "You could come back with me on the train. Jack Henry is servicing my Ford, and
Ben took Mother's runabout yesterday and vanished with it. I caught the train instead."
The music got louder again. Someone, probably someone tipsy, was playing with the radio knob.
"Why should I?" she asked, with what little pride she had left, shooting the question at him so sharply that it made him look at her. "What can Spanish Flats offer me that I can't have right here?"
"Peace," he said shortly, glaring at the music beyond the door. "These aren't your kind of people."
Her lips tugged into a smile. "No? What are my kind of people?"
He lifted an eyebrow at her. "Taggart and Cherry, of course," he said.
Taggart and Cherry were two of the oldest ranch hands. Taggart had ridden with the James gang, back in the late 1800s, and Cherry had driven cattle up the Chisholm Trail with the big Texas outfits. They could tell stories, all right, and if they'd bathed more often than twice a month, they'd have been welcome in the house. Cole was careful to see that they sat on the porch when they came visiting, and that he was upwind of them.
She couldn't help the grin. "It's winter. You won't have to worry about getting downwind."
He smiled gently, traces of the younger Cole in his face for just a split second. Then he closed up again, like a clam. "Come home with me."
She searched his eyes, hoping to find secrets there, but they were like a closed book. "You still haven't told me what I'll get if I come," she repeated, the alcohol dimming her inhibitions, making her reckless for a change.
"What do you want?" he asked, with a mocking smile.
She gave it back. "Maybe I want you," she said blatantl
y, the gin giving her a little reckless courage.
He didn't say a word. His face hardened. His eyes went dark. "You hated it that night," he said curtly. "You cried."
"It hurt. It won't again," she said simply, airing her newly acquired knowledge. She lifted her chin stubbornly. "I'm twenty-four. This—" she gestured around her "—is what I have to look forward to in my old age. Loneliness and a few hangers-on, and some wild music and booze to dull the hurt. Well, if I'm going to grow old, I don't want to do it alone." She moved closer to him, her face quiet with pride. "I'll go back with you. I'll live with you. I'll even pretend that we're happy together, for appearances. But only if you stay in the same room with me, like a proper husband." She hated making it an ultimatum, but she wanted a child. She might have to trick him into giving her one, or blackmail him into it, but she was determined.
He actually trembled. "What?" he sounded as if she'd astonished him.
"I want the appearance of normality, and no giggling family making fun of me because you make it so damned obvious that you don't want me."
"Stop cursing—" he shot back at her.
"I'll curse if I feel like it," she told him. "Cassie was forever making horrible remarks about your insistence on separate rooms, and so were Ben and Katy. Everyone knew you weren't behaving like a husband. It was just one more humiliation to add to the humiliation of being treated like a stick of furniture! So, if I come back, those are my terms."
He swallowed. His dark eyes touched every line, every curve of her face. For an instant, she could see him wavering. And then he closed up, all at once.
"I can't be guided like a blind mule," he told her bluntly, his stance threatening. "If you want to come, all right. But no conditions. You'll have your old room, and you'll sleep in it alone."
"Would it be that hard for you to sleep with me?" she taunted. She slid her hands over her slender hips. "George wants to."