No Angel's Grace

by Linda Winstead Jones

  “Isn’t that right, Dillon?”

  “What?” He lifted his head and looked across the table to her.

  “I said,” Grace repeated, “that I’ll be riding by myself in no time.”

  Dillon shook his head. “Not for a while. And I don’t want you to ever”—he emphasized his point with a piece of fork-speared beef wagged in her direction—“ever, ride out of sight of the house by yourself.”

  Grace raised her eyebrows slightly and glared at him, challenging him, perhaps, to a staring contest. He looked down at his plate again. “Why is that?”

  “It’s not safe,” Dillon said to his plate. “We don’t see much in the way of Indians anymore, but there’s still a few renegades around. And rustlers. And bandits like your friend Renzo,” he added with disgust.

  “Oh,” Grace said in a small voice, and Dillon was forced to look up.

  “Don’t worry. Billy or I will ride with you when you’re ready,” he tried to reassure her. She looked a little afraid, but as he watched her face that expression changed, and she was his confident, assured Grace once again.

  “Well, if you’re too busy maybe that nice Hartley can escort me.”

  Dillon said nothing, but he shook his head slightly. She was doing this on purpose, he was certain.

  “Of course,” she said sweetly, “I’d really rather that you ride with me.”

  He decided to change the subject. “You sure are dressed up fancy tonight. Special occasion?”

  It was Grace’s turn to stare at her food as she shrugged those pale shoulders. “No. I just felt like wearing my own clothes for a change.” She lifted her eyes to him. “Don’t you like it?”

  Dillon cracked a small smile. She was flirting with him. His obstinate, bullheaded, impulsive Grace was flirting with him. He liked it, but he didn’t know exactly how much he could take.

  “It’s a little fancy for the Double B,” he said kindly, studying the soft, draping material over her breasts, the white, tempting skin of her shoulders and neck. “But I do like it.”

  Grace smiled at him, and the beef he put into his mouth nearly stuck in his throat. Damn, she was beautiful, especially when she smiled like that.

  His eyes fell on the pearls at her throat. He had to change the subject. Again. How was he supposed to do the honorable thing and bide his time when she looked at him like that?

  “For a man who had financial troubles, your pa sure did buy you a lot of geegaws.”

  Grace laid a slender hand over the pearls. “These are not geegaws, Becket. And I didn’t get them from my father. My father never gave me anything, though he did send money whenever I asked, and paid the headmistress off when she threatened to send me home.”

  Dillon lifted his eyes to hers. He’d obviously touched a nerve with her. Her smile was gone, and that wary shield that had been so much a part of Grace when he’d first met her was back. And seemingly as strong as ever.

  “So you bought those for yourself?”

  Grace shook her head. “Of course not.”

  Dillon felt a curious sinking in his gut. “Your aunt?”

  Grace shook her head again, but said nothing.

  Dillon reached across the table and grabbed Grace’s wrist. His hand was over the pearl bracelet. “Where did you get these?”

  Grace sighed, but she didn’t try to pull her hand away from him. “They were gifts. From a…a friend.”

  “A friend,” Dillon said icily. “What was his name?”

  “I would really rather not—”

  “What was his name?” Dillon repeated, slowly and just a bit louder than the first time.

  Grace’s eyes flashed at him, daring him, before she answered. “His name was Francois.”

  Dillon released her hand. “A goddamn Frenchman?”

  Grace nodded.

  “What for, Grace?”

  Grace didn’t look away from him, but she refused to answer his angry question.

  “The necklace you wore at the Clanton stop…” Dillon paused, for a moment forgetting that Billy and Olivia watched him silently. “Another gift from Francois?”

  “No. That was a gift from Sir Richard,” Grace said coldly.

  Dillon leaned back in his chair. He couldn’t have resumed his meal or a normal conversation if his life had depended on it. “The pin that looks like a snake?”

  “Mikhail.”

  “The emerald bracelet?”

  Grace was staring at him with rapidly mounting anger evident in her eyes and the set of her mouth. “The earl of—”

  She stopped speaking when Dillon shot to his feet and slapped his hand down on the table. His Grace. When had he begun to think of her as his Grace? The moment he had seen her? The night she had fallen asleep with her head against his shoulder? No wonder she had reacted so strongly when he’d asked her if she had any dresses that didn’t make her look like a high-priced whore.

  That’s exactly what she was.

  No decent woman would have accepted gifts like the ones she wore. They were expensive gifts for her favors. And he had been practically killing himself staying away from her until he was certain he could offer her marriage.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Grace asked sharply.

  “You didn’t answer my question,” he said evenly. “What did you do to earn all those fancy geegaws?”

  He saw it in her face, the dawning realization of what he believed. What he knew. She was angry, and hurt, and a little scared.

  “What did you do, Grace?” he repeated.

  “Come on, boss. Take it easy.”

  Dillon turned to Billy. “This doesn’t concern you, old man.”

  “What the hell did you do, Grace Cavanaugh?” he shouted across the table.

  The look that stole over Grace’s face as she stood wiped away the fear, and the hurt, and the anger. It was cold and calculating, pale and assured.

  “What do you think, Becket?” she asked with an icy smile. “Come on, you’re a big boy. Surely you can figure it out for yourself.”

  Dillon felt as if she’d kicked him in the chest. What had he expected her to say? Had he really expected her to deny it? He wouldn’t have believed her if she had.

  “I left school at seventeen, Becket. Five years ago. My father didn’t want me.” She caressed the pearls at her throat. “These men did.”

  There were unshed tears in her eyes, but she continued to stare at him. “I don’t care what you think of me.” She looked from one end of the table to the other, where Billy and Olivia sat silently. “I don’t care what any of you think!”

  With that she turned away haughtily and left Dillon with his rage.

  Grace ran up the stairs, her hand clutching the pearls at her throat. How could she have been so stupid? How could she have believed that Dillon Becket was different from any other man?

  She slammed the door to her room and threw herself onto the bed, and she let the tears fall. She cursed the tears as they fell, the tears she had refused to shed when she’d learned of her father’s death. The tears she had refused to shed all those nights in England, sleeping in some friend’s guest room, in a cold bed, wanting nothing more than to go home.

  But she had no home. She hadn’t had one then, and she didn’t have one now.

  The tears wouldn’t stop. She muffled her sobs into the quilt, but the tears wouldn’t stop.

  There had been a moment, when she’d looked across the table into Dillon’s angry face, when she’d wanted to tell him the truth. All of it. That none of those men had ever touched her heart the way he had. That she hadn’t believed she had a heart until she’d met him. That all she’d ever given those men was a brief kiss or two, and a coy promise of what might be.

  But he wouldn’t have believed her.

  It was late, and pitch black in her room before Grace’s eyes finally dried. She had a pounding headache, and an empty ache where her heart was supposed to be.

  It was all right, she assured herself. She’d never i
ntended to stay in Texas. Not really.

  Dillon watched Grace from the shadow of the barn, afraid to show himself. It had been more than a week since her revelation, and he hadn’t spoken to her since. He’d been eating supper with the hands—beans and bacon and tough biscuits damn near every night. But he still watched Grace whenever he got the chance.

  The anger that had consumed him was gone. Most of it, anyway. Grace was on her knees in Olivia’s garden, pulling weeds with a vengeance. Her anger hadn’t subsided at all. He’d been waiting. Waiting to see her smile just once before he could gather the courage to approach her, to talk to her again. But she looked as furious, still, as she had that night.

  Of course, she had reason to be. He never lost control like that. Never jumped to conclusions and made accusations. Well, he couldn’t say never. Not anymore.

  It didn’t matter what Grace had done before. That revelation had surprised him, as no one would ever describe Dillon Becket as a forgiving man. It simply didn’t matter what had happened before they met.

  She was here now, and he intended to see that she stayed. It couldn’t have been easy for her, growing up away from home and without a family to love her. His own family was gone, but he had such wonderful memories of them. Grace didn’t have even that.

  There could be a whole new life for her here.

  He was so engrossed in her it took him a moment to realize that he wasn’t the only one watching. Two other men stood on the other side of the barn door. They would be clearly visible to Grace, were she to look up.

  “Ever seen anything so damn tempting?” Dillon recognized the whispering voice as Hartley’s. “Shit, I never figured watching a woman pull weeds would make my pecker hard, but dammit…”

  “You better watch your mouth,” Hartley’s companion warned nervously. “If the boss was to hear you…”

  “He ain’t here,” Hartley said bravely. “And I’ll tell you something else: she likes me. I knew it that day she asked me to teach her to ride. Hell, I’ll teach her to ride, all right. What do you think she’d do if I—” He stopped abruptly when Dillon’s hand at the back of his shirt cut off his wind.

  Dillon only glanced at the other hired hand, a tame kid who was particularly gentle with the horses. “Get out of here, Lonnie,” Dillon said softly, and Lonnie was gone before the sentence was finished.

  Hartley was choking, and Dillon loosened his grip slightly. “I could kill you,” Dillon said in the man’s ear. “It would be so quick you’d never make a sound. I could bury you in the south pasture and no one would ever find your sorry good-for-nothing carcass.”

  Hartley was still breathing raggedly, and his strong fingers clawed at Dillon’s hands.

  “You’ve got five minutes to get off this ranch,” Dillon said menacingly. “If I ever see you again, you’re dead.”

  Dillon released the cowhand, and Hartley spun to face him. “I didn’t mean nothing,” the man defended himself heatedly. “It was just talk. You can’t bring a woman who looks like that one out here and expect us not to…to look.”

  “You’ve got just over four minutes. If I was you, I wouldn’t waste any more time.”

  Hartley turned away from Dillon with a curse, and a couple of minutes later he was riding hell-bent away from the barn. Grace looked up from her chore briefly, then returned to her weeding.

  If she’d heard him coming she would have run for the house. She had no desire to face Dillon Becket, not ever again. She’d reminded herself all week, whenever she’d felt her resolve weakening, that the man had accused her without even asking…well, he had asked, but she had seen the truth on his face. He’d already made up his mind. No respectable woman would take jewelry from a man, and therefore she was not a respectable woman.

  And now he was before her, down on his haunches in the soft dirt. She glanced up briefly, was satisfied that he at least had the decency to look contrite, and then she returned to her work.

  “What do you want, Becket?” she snapped.

  “Still riled at me, I see,” he said calmly.

  Grace muttered under her breath. Riled was not the word.

  Sweat was pouring down her back and her face. Her sleeves were rolled up, and the skin of her forearms glistened. Sweat! She’d never perspired like this in all of her life.

  “I’m leaving,” she said as she yanked up an offensive weed. “I want to go back to New Orleans.”

  Dillon was silent, and when she glanced up she saw that he was unusually pensive—for a rude cowboy who was as sweat covered as she was.

  She grabbed another weed in her gloved hand, and Dillon’s hand flew out to stop her. Grace yanked, dislodging his hand and pulling up the nasty weed.

  “That’s an onion,” he said, taking the plant from her and gently placing it back in the soil. “Olivia loves her onions.”

  “When I get to New Orleans, I can assure you I will not be sitting in the sun pulling weeds, or churning butter, or milking cows.”

  “I don’t suppose you will be,” Dillon said calmly.

  Grace resumed her chore, hoping that Dillon would take the hint and go away. But he didn’t.

  “If you really want to go,” he said when he finally spoke, “I don’t reckon I can stop you. But you don’t have to leave.”

  Grace gave him a very unladylike snort of disgust. “Yes, I do.” She glared at him, trying to put all of her hate and disgust into her eyes. “This is hell, Becket. My father so wanted to punish me for being born that he sent me to hell.” She vented all of her frustration and anger. “Texas is hell and you’re the devil himself.”

  Dillon shifted his weight from one leg to the other. He seemed to be reflecting on her statement before he answered.

  “Well, I may be a devil, but you’re no angel, Grace.”

  She threw a handful of dirt at him. She knew what he thought of her. Why had she ever believed that he was different from other men? Better?

  Dillon ignored the dirt and reached out for her hand. Grace yanked it away from him and fell back, landing on her backside in the soft dirt. To her mortification, Dillon Becket was smiling at her.

  “Come on.” This time he offered his hand instead of taking hers. “You look like you need a break.”

  Grace looked up at him. Dillon, with a rare smile on his face, was rising slowly with his hand extended to her, palm upward. And she laid her hand in his and allowed him to pull her to her feet.

  He pulled off her too-large gloves and dropped them into the dirt, and then he took her hand again. They walked away from the house, and he continued to hold her hand. He held it so lightly she knew she could withdraw it if she wanted to, but she didn’t.

  A light breeze cooled Grace’s sweat-covered face, and pushed back tendrils of black hair. She looked down at her borrowed dress. The skirt was covered with dirt, there at the knees where she’d been kneeling, and she knew there was dirt on her backside as well. The bodice of her calico dress was dampened with perspiration. They continued to walk, and walk, and walk, over hills that were little more than bumps in the ground, and over perfectly flat packed dirt.

  Finally she snapped at him, “This is your idea of a break? A blasted walking tour of your ranch?”

  “Almost there,” he said as he turned her toward a small rise.

  The sight before her as they crested the rise took her breath away. Bluebonnets. A field of them covered the ground and swayed in the whispering breeze.

  Dillon sat on the ground and drew her down beside him. He stared out over the field of blue and squinted his eyes, deepening his crow’s-feet. He kept her hand in his, and the pressure there gradually increased.

  “I’m sorry, Grace,” he said gruffly, and with the almost embarrassed tone of a man who never apologizes. “I flew off the handle, and I had no right.” He thumbed his hat back and finally turned his head to look at her. “I don’t blame you for wanting to leave, but I hope you won’t.”

  “Dillon Becket,” Grace said softly, her anger fading as sh
e watched his face. He was a man obviously not accustomed to admitting his mistakes. “I should hate you.”

  “Do you?”

  She shook her head. “No. I can’t.” She sighed.

  Dillon grinned at her and tossed his hat to the ground. “I knew it.” The sun glinted off his chestnut hair, gleaming red highlights kissed by the sun. He reached out and brushed the back of his hand across her cheek.

  “Sometimes I just don’t know what to think about you,” Grace admitted. “You infuriate me one minute, and then…” How could she admit that she was falling in love with him? She couldn’t.

  “And then…” he prompted.

  “And then you kiss me, or smile at me, and like a fool I forgive you anything.”

  In a heartbeat his face was close to hers, and then his lips were claiming hers. There was none of the tenderness she had come to expect from him, but a fierce and demanding possession that she welcomed. He held her tight, nestled her in his arms as he took her mouth.

  He pressed her backward into the grass, and Grace wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him to her. She wanted his weight against her, pressing against her, harder, hotter….

  Without warning, she pushed against him and shot up.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, his voice low as he ran a finger over her cheek.

  “I’m…I’m a mess,” Grace admitted, and she felt the heat rise in her cheeks. “I’m sitting here wearing a filthy borrowed dress, and my hair is all tangled, and I’m covered with sweat….”

  “I like you covered with sweat,” Dillon said huskily, and he leaned forward and kissed her throat, flicking his tongue slowly across the pulse there. “I like the way it tastes, and the way it feels.” He ran a finger along the back of her neck, making her shiver.

  “I’ve missed you,” he whispered, burying his face against her throat, scattering small, wild kisses against her skin. He unfastened the buttons at her neck, exposing the hollow at the base of her throat and giving that one spot his undivided attention.

  Grace felt as if she were melting, slowly, wondrously, beneath his touch. She wound her fingers through his hair and held him to her, until that was no longer enough. Her hands skimmed along his shoulders and his back, his strong arms and the hands that touched her.