by Diana Palmer
“I’m not a virgin anymore,” she said without thinking.
His face was quiet, expressionless as he looked down at her. “It’s a moot point. My body is dead, as far as sex is concerned. For both our sakes, let well enough alone. It’s too soon for experimenting.”
Before she could speak, he’d gone out the door, closing it behind him with a firm snap. Barrie lay back, turning what he’d said over in her mind.
He knew, finally, about the baby they’d lost. She didn’t know if she was sorry or glad, but it had been cathartic to have it all out in the open. He grieved for their child, at least, as she did. But he had nothing to give her, and she still loved him. It was a problem that had no easy resolution, and in the morning a new complication was due to present itself. She wondered how she was going to react to the widow Holton. It would be an interesting introduction, at the very least. Leslie Holton blew in the next morning like a redheaded tornado, driving a brand-new shiny black Jaguar. Peering through the lacy curtains in the living room when she drove up, Barrie couldn’t help thinking that the car suited her. Mrs. Holton was sleek and dangerous-looking, a powerhouse no less than the car she drove. She was wearing a black-and-white suit. Its starkness made her pale skin even paler and presented a backdrop for her fiery hair. Wickedly Barrie wondered how much of it came out of a bottle, because the widow was obviously over twenty-one. Way over.
She went out into the hall and met up with Dawson who had just come out of his study. There were dark circles under his eyes. He appeared worn, as if he hadn’t slept. He looked across at Barrie, and she realized that he hadn’t slept at all.
She moved toward him. Last night had calmed some old terrors, the way they’d talked had changed things in some subtle way. She stopped in front of him and looked up.
“You haven’t had any sleep,” she said gently.
His face hardened. “Don’t push your luck.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “Am I?”
“Looking at me like that is chancy.”
She smiled. “What will you do?” she chided.
Something equally reckless flared in his pale eyes. “Want to see?”
He moved forward with an economy of motion to scoop her up against his chest. He held her there, searching her eyes at point-blank range.
Her arms tightened around his strong neck and she looked back at him curiously. He’d wanted the baby, too. That knowledge had changed the way she envisioned him. Even though there was some residual fear of him in her, the memory of the grief she’d seen in his face last night tempered it.
“Doesn’t anybody hear the doorbell ringing?” Corlie muttered as she came out of the kitchen and suddenly spotted Dawson holding Barrie off the floor in his arms. “Well, excuse me.” She chuckled, sparing them a wicked glance as she went toward the front door.
Barrie started to speak but Dawson shook his head. “Don’t disillusion her,” he whispered. “Let her hope.”
Something in the way he said it made her look at him curiously. His pale eyes fell to her mouth and he hesitated.
“If you wanted to kiss me, you could,” she said boldly. “I mean, I wouldn’t scream or anything.”
“Cheeky brat,” he muttered, but he was still looking at her mouth.
“I can always tell when you’ve been on a trip to the station in Australia,” she whispered.
“Can you?” His head bent closer, his mouth threatening her soft lips. His arms contracted a little. Somewhere in the distance, a stringent voice was demanding that Corlie have someone get luggage out of the Jaguar.
“Yes,” she whispered at his lips. “You always come back using Aussie slang.”
He chuckled softly.
Barrie felt the vibration of his laughter all the way to her toes. It was the old magic, without the fear. She loved him. His arms were warm and strong and safe, and her hands clasped together behind his neck. She lifted herself closer to that hard, beautiful mouth and parted her lips.
“No self-preservation left, Barrie?” he whispered huskily. His own lips parted and moved down slowly. “Baby,” he breathed into her mouth. “Baby, baby…!”
The pressure became slow and soft and insistent. It began to deepen and she caught her breath, anticipating the hunger that she could already taste…
“Dawson!”
Their faces jerked apart. Dawson stared at the newcomer just for a moment with eyes that didn’t quite focus. “Leslie,” he said then. “Welcome to White Ridge.” He lowered Barrie gently to her feet and, keeping a possessive arm around her, held his hand out to Leslie.
Mrs. Holton made an indignant sound. “Hello, Dawson,” she said impatiently. “My goodness, isn’t that your stepsister?”
“She was,” Dawson replied coolly. “Yesterday, she became my fiancée. We’re engaged.”
Mrs. Holton was clearly surprised. “But isn’t that against the law?”
“Barrie and I aren’t blood-related in any way,” he said. “My father married her mother.”
“Oh.” Leslie stared at Barrie, who grinned at her. “I’m glad to meet you, Miss Rutherford.”
“Bell,” Barrie corrected her, extending a hand. She was quivering inside, all raw nerves and excitement. “Barrie Bell.”
“I didn’t expect this,” Mrs. Holton said. She eyed Dawson carefully. “Of course, it’s very sudden, isn’t it?” She smiled with feline calculation. “In fact, I seem to remember hearing that the two of you didn’t even speak. When did that change?”
“Yesterday,” Dawson said, unperturbed. He looked down at Barrie. “It was sudden, all right. Like a bolt of lightning.” His eyes fell to her soft mouth as he said it, and she caught her breath at the surge of feeling the stare provoked.
Leslie Holton wasn’t blind, but she was determined.
“You do, uh, still want to discuss my tract of land near Bighorn?” she asked with a calculating smile.
“Of course,” Dawson replied, and he smiled back. “That was the purpose of your visit, wasn’t it?”
She shrugged a thin shoulder. “Well, yes, among other things. I do hope you’re going to show me around the ranch while I’m here. I’m very interested in livestock.”
“Barrie and I will be delighted, won’t we, baby?” he added with a glance at Barrie that made her toes curl.
She pressed close to his side, shocked at her surge of hunger to be near him. It was equally shocking to hear his faint breath and feel his arm tighten around her shoulders.
“Certainly,” she said. She smiled at Mrs. Holton, but she sounded, and felt, breathless.
“Corlie will show you to your room, and Rodge will bring your bags right up,” Dawson said. “I’ll be right back.” He let go of Barrie with a smile and went to call Rodge on the intercom.
“You teach, don’t you?” Mrs. Holton asked Barrie. “You must be on summer vacation.”
“Yes, I am. What do you do?” Barrie shot right back.
“Do? My dear, I’m rich,” Leslie said with hauteur.
“I don’t have to work for a living.” Her eyes narrowed with calculation. “And neither will you after you marry Dawson. Is that why you’re marrying him?”
“Of course,” she murmured wickedly. She glanced at Dawson, who was just coming out of the study again. “Dawson, you do know that I’m only marrying you for your money, don’t you?” she asked, raising her voice.
He chuckled. “Sure.”
Leslie was confused. She looked from one of them to the other. “What a very odd couple you are.”
“You have no idea,” Barrie murmured dryly.
“Amen,” he added.
“Well, I’ll just slip upstairs and rest for a few minutes, if you don’t mind,” Leslie said. “It’s been a long, tiring drive.” She paused in front of Dawson and smiled up at him seductively. “I might even soak in the hot tub for a little while. If you’d like to wash my back, you’re welcome,” she added teasingly.
Dawson didn’t reply. He just smiled.
&nbs
p; Leslie glowered at him, glanced at Barrie irritably and followed an impatient Corlie up the staircase.
Barrie moved closer to him. “Do we have hot water, or is it still subject to fits of temperament in the spring?”
“We have bucketsful of hot water,” he replied. “And a whirlpool bath in every bathroom.” He looked down at her. “One of them holds two people.”
She had mental images of being naked in it with Dawson, and her face paled. She withdrew from him without making a single move.
He tilted her chin up to his eyes. “I’m sorry. That could have been less crude.”
She sighed. “It’s early days yet,” she said apologetically.
“Very early days.” He pushed back her long, soft hair. “You let me kiss you,” he added quietly. “Was it all an act, for her benefit?” He jerked his head toward the staircase.
“I don’t act that well.”
“Neither do I.” His gaze fell to her mouth. “If we make haste slowly, we may discover that things fall into place.”
“Things?”
He touched the very tip of her nose with his forefinger. “We might get rid of our scars.”
She was worried, and looked it. “I don’t know if I can—” she began uncertainly.
“That makes two of us,” he said interrupting her.
She grimaced. “Sorry.”
His chest rose and fell heavily. “One day at a time.”
“Okay.”
* * *
They took Leslie Holton riding that afternoon. She was surprisingly good on a horse, lithe and totally without fear. She seemed right at home on the ranch. If only she hadn’t been making eyes at Dawson, Barrie could have enjoyed her company.
But Leslie Holton wanted Dawson, and she was working on ways to get him. The sudden engagement was very strange and she knew for a fact that Dawson had a reputation for avoiding women altogether. She thought Barrie was helping him put on an act, and if it took her every minute of her time here, she was going to unmask them. If Dawson really was cold, Leslie was going to find out why before she left.
Five
UNAWARE of Leslie Holton’s plotting, Barrie was trying to concentrate on what Dawson was telling them about the history of the area they were riding through. But her eyes kept straying to the tall, proud way he rode, as if he were part of the horse. He looked good on horseback.
He looked good any way at all.
He caught her staring and smiled gently. Her heart skipped beats. He’d never been this way with her in all the time they’d known each other, and she couldn’t believe he was faking it. There was a new tenderness in his eyes. He didn’t talk to her in the old, mocking way. If she was different, so was he.
And through it all, there was an attraction that had its roots in the past. But Barrie was still afraid of intimacy with him. It was one thing to kiss him and hold hands with him. It was quite another to think of him in bed with her, demanding, insistent, totally out of control, hurting her…!
He glanced at her and saw that flash of fear, understood it without a word being spoken.
As Leslie rode ahead, he fell back beside Barrie. “Don’t brood on it,” he said seriously. “There’s no rush. Give it time.”
She sighed as she glanced toward him. “Reading my mind?”
“It isn’t that difficult,” he told her.
She toyed with the reins. “Time won’t help,” she said miserably. “I’m still afraid.”
“My God, what is there to be afraid of?” he asked shortly. “Didn’t you hear what I told you? I meant it. I can’t, Barrie. I can’t!”
She searched his eyes slowly. “You can’t with other women,” she corrected.
“I can’t with you, either,” he muttered. “Hell, don’t you think I’d know after last night?”
She glanced warily ahead where Leslie was riding. “Last night you were holding back,” she said.
“Yes, I was,” he admitted. “You’d just had a nightmare and you were terrified. I didn’t want to make it worse. But even this morning,” he said heavily, averting his eyes to the horizon. His broad shoulders rose and fell. He couldn’t bring himself to admit that even the hungry kiss he’d started to share with Barrie hadn’t been able to arouse him.
Barrie noticed his reticence and kept her silence. She glanced around at the budding trees. Spring was her favorite season, although it certainly came later to Wyoming than it did to Arizona, even if May was basically the same in both places. Closer than the budding trees, however, was the irritated way Leslie Holton was glaring back at them.
“We aren’t fooling her, you know,” she said suddenly, and lifted her eyes to search his. “She thinks we’re pretending.”
“Aren’t we?” he asked with a bitter laugh.
She supposed they were. Only it hadn’t felt like pretense that morning on her part.
“That was a bald-faced lie,” he murmured after a minute, and the saddle leather creaked as he reined in his horse and turned to look at her. His eyes were level and penetrating. “Suppose we try.”
She felt her eyes widen. “Try…?”
“What you suggested last night. Or have you already forgotten where you put my hand?” he asked outrageously.
“Dawson!”
“You should look shocked. That was how I felt.”
“That’s right,” she agreed, “pretend it was the first time a woman ever offered you any such thing!”
He managed a wistful smile. It had been a very long time since he’d been able to laugh about his body’s lack of interest in women. “I can’t,” he admitted.
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
He drew up one long leg and wrapped it around the pommel, straining his powerful muscles against the thick fabric of his designer jeans. He leaned against it to study her, pigtailed and wearing similar clothing, jeans and a loose shirt. “You don’t wear revealing clothes around me.”
She shrugged. “No. Because I don’t have to fight you off.”
He cocked an eyebrow inquiringly.
She grimaced. “Well, men come on to me all the time, and I don’t want any sort of physical relationship. So I flaunt my figure and flirt and talk about how much my family wants to see me get married and have a big family. You’d be amazed at how fast they find excuses to stop seeing me.”
He chuckled. “Suppose someday a man calls your bluff?”
“That hasn’t ever happened.”
“Hasn’t it?”
She realized what he meant, and her cheeks burned.
“I don’t suppose I even bothered to tell you that I’d never seen a body more perfect,” he continued quietly. “Barrie, undressed, you could pose for the Venus de Milo. I’m not sure that you wouldn’t make her jealous.”
She wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or a dig, because their relationship had shifted in the past two days.
“I mean it,” he explained, so that there wasn’t any doubt. “And if I were still the man I was five years ago, you’d need a dead bolt on your door.”
She searched his eyes. “I suppose at one time or another someone’s ventured the opinion that your problem is mental and not physical?”
“Sure. I know that already. The thing is,” he added with a faint smile, “how to cure it. And you seem to have a similar hang-up.”
She shrugged. “From the same source.”
“Yes, I know.”
She traced around her pommel. “The obvious solution…”
He swung his leg back down and straightened as Leslie, missing them, came back to find them. “I’m not capable,” he said shortly.
“I wasn’t offering,” she muttered. She glared toward Mrs. Holton. “Of course, she would, in a New York minute!”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe I should let her try,” he said cynically. “She probably knows tricks even I haven’t learned.”
“Dawson!”
He glanced at her, and he didn’t smile. “Jealous?”
She moved restl
essly in the saddle. “I…don’t know. Maybe.” She searched his face. “I wish I could offer you the same medicine she could. But you’d have to get me stinking drunk,” she said on a pained laugh. She averted her eyes. “I’d never forgive you if you did.”
“Did what? Get you stinking drunk?”
“No!” she said at once. “Do it…with her,” she explained.
His caught breath carried, but before he could reply, Leslie reined in beside them. “Aren’t you two coming along?” she drawled. “It’s lonely trying to explore a ranch this size on my own.”
“Sorry,” Dawson said, easing his horse into step beside hers. “We were discussing plans.”
“I have a few of my own,” Leslie murmured sweetly. “Want to hear them?”
Barrie fell back a little, glaring at them. But Dawson wasn’t having that. He stopped and motioned to her to catch up, with eyes that dared her to hesitate. Reluctantly she rode up beside him and kept pace, to Leslie’s irritation, all the way home.
* * *
She’d thought Dawson would forget what she’d said before Leslie interrupted them. But he didn’t. While Leslie was changing clothes before supper, Dawson caught Barrie by the hand and led her into his study that overlooked the cottonwood-lined river below.
He closed the door behind them and, as an afterthought, locked it.
She stood by the desk at the window, watching him warily. “I gather that you wanted to talk to me?” she asked defensively.
“Among other things.” He perched himself on the edge of the desk facing her, and searched her wary face. He folded his arms across his broad chest. “You kissed me back this morning,” he said. “You weren’t doing it in case Leslie was watching, either. You’ve buried everything you used to feel for me, but it’s still there. I want to try to dig it back up again.”
She studied her hands in her lap. It was tempting, because, despite everything that had happened, she loved Dawson. But the memories were too fresh even now, the pain too real. She couldn’t block out the years of sarcastic remarks, cutting words, that had wounded her so badly.