by Janet Dailey
"Then maybe you shouldn't drink so much," she suggested stiffly.
"More lectures?" His tone was dryly sardonic. "This must be my morning for them. First mother, now you."
She recalled his voice raised in anger at Lillian before she had entered the dining room. "I'm sure Lillian was simply voicing her concern over the way you abused yourself with that liquor bottle last night."
"Oh, she wasn't lecturing me on drinking," Jock corrected her with harsh amusement. "She was accusing me of taking unfair advantage of a previous relationship with you."
Her nerves tingled at the static electricity that suddenly seemed to fill the air. Her gaze roamed the table, looking everywhere but at him. Trying to hide her sudden discomposure, Barbara took another sip of her coffee.
"Well, you are." She forced out a calm answer.
"You don't have to like it." His voice was low and tauntingly seductive. "But the way you respond tells me you do."
An insidious fire licked through her veins. It was impossible to deny his statement, especially when the husky caress of his voice was unnerving her. But Barbara couldn't permit the remark to stand unchallenged.
"People can like something that is no good for them," she defended herself, flicking him a wary look. "Letting you make love to me is a habit, a bad one. It's like lighting up a cigarette without wanting one. You are like a smoking habit to me. A smoker knows cigarettes are bad for his health, but it doesn't stop him from craving one. Only I'm kicking the habit, Jock. I may be suffering withdrawal symptoms, but I'll get over you."
His gaze roamed over her face, pensive and measuring. "Will you? I happen to be incurably addicted. You have me hooked, honey."
It was a heady thought, one that made her reel with the possibilities of tomorrow. But it was an illusion, a mirage. Jock sounded so convincing, but Barbara had evidence it wasn't true.
"Six months, Jock," she reminded him. "You went six months without me. And I can't see where you suffered any ill effects. You can get along without me just fine."
"What makes you think I have?" he challenged dryly.
"It's obvious, isn't it?" Barbara countered. He hadn't made a single attempt to contact her in all that time. He'd never be able to convince her that she meant as much to him as he was attempting to claim. "When we said goodbye, it was final. And I've got along without you very well. So did you. Let's keep it that way."
Her control was splintering. Barbara knew she had to escape before he came up with some new argument to undermine her poise. She pushed her chair away from the table.
"If you'll excuse me, I'm going out to the kitchen to persuade Antonia to fix me some breakfast."
"You aren't going to marry Todd," Jock announced.
Barbara paused at the door to the kitchen. "That is my decision to make, not yours."
"Then I'm going to do my damnedest to be certain you make the right one." His low threat followed her through the door.
DURING THE NEXT TWO DAYS Jock didn't make any overt attempt to carry out his threat. In fact, he seemed to make it a point to stay well clear of her. Barbara wondered whether he was engaging in psychological warfare, letting her fret and stew over what his next move might be. And she did a lot of mental pacing.
Sunday brought another visit to the rural church the family regularly attended. This time Jock went with them. Barbara found herself sandwiched between Jock and Todd, with Lillian sitting on the other side of Jock. The church pews were crowded, making contact with Jock impossible to avoid. Her shoulder was constantly rubbing against his until he finally lifted his arm to rest it behind her on the back of the pew. It was a faintly possessive action that disconcerted Barbara because it appeared to link her with him instead of Todd. Yet Jock rarely looked at her, although she stole several wary glances at his sculpted profile and inadvertently studied the hands that held the hymnbook.
By the time the service was over, her muscles were stiff from being held so tensely. As they filed out of the church, Jock walked with his mother and Barbara finally felt as if she'd been given some breathing room as she left on Todd's arm.
On the way to the car, Lillian asked, "Will you be here for Easter, Todd?"
"I'm afraid not," he answered over his shoulder. "You know that is the hotel's busy time."
"Yes. I thought, perhaps, because of Barbara, you might arrange to have the weekend off," she explained.
"It's a great idea, but it won't work." Todd opened the rear passenger door and helped Barbara into the backseat while Jock assisted his mother into the front passenger seat.
Lillian turned to look at the couple sitting behind her. "Did you know, Barbara, that Florida was named after Easter?"
"No. I was under the impression it was the Spanish word for flower." She frowned at the information with slight astonishment.
"That's partially correct. When Jaun Ponce de Leon landed near St. Augustine, it was Easter, the time of the Feast of Flowers, or Pascua Florida as the Spanish called it."
"How interesting," Barbara murmured as Jock slid behind the wheel and turned the key in the ignition.
"Speaking of feasts," Todd inserted, "I hope Antonia has dinner ready for us."
"That's another way that you and I differ, Todd," Jock commented. Barbara glanced at the mirror in the center of the windshield and saw the reflection of Jock's eyes, tawny and slumberous like those of a noble beast. Her pulse skittered madly.
"How is that?" Todd asked.
"If I were sitting in the backseat with Barbara, I wouldn't be thinking about food." He shifted the car into gear and let his gaze swing to the front. Barbara went hot all over, remembering vividly the times his lips had devoured hers.
"Jock." The reprimand from Lillian was low and tinged with the embarrassment she felt for Barbara.
"Yes, mother, I'll shut up and be a good boy," he mocked with a cynical, slanting smile.
It was so useless, Barbara thought, averting her gaze to stare out the side window. She didn't have a single defense against his words, let alone a look or his touch. She had won a few minor skirmishes in the past, but the battle for her heart had been lost. Todd's hand closed over hers in silent reassurance. Barbara pushed the realization to the back of her mind, not wanting to make the decision it demanded.
"Swim this afternoon?" Todd suggested.
"All right," Barbara agreed with a nodding shrug of disinterest.
"How about you, J.R.? Want to join us?" he asked.
"Don't issue invitations to me, Todd, or I might take more than you planned. I'll make myself scarce this afternoon. You see, I trust you with Barbara," he told Todd. "But you are a damned fool if you trust her with me. That's a warning, Todd. You'll have to make up your own mind what you're going to do about it…if anything."
JOCK KEPT HIS WORD and left the house soon after Sunday dinner. The evening he spent in the den, busy with paperwork. He was absent from the house all day Monday. Although she didn't ask, Barbara guessed he was at the Crosstimber unit of the ranch where they were starting a cattle roundup.
Lillian, Todd and Barbara had gathered on the veranda, minus Jock, for predinner cocktails. As Todd walked to the drink cart to freshen his drink, Lillian glanced at her watch.
"I had better tell Antonia to postpone dinner another twenty minutes. If Jock isn't here by then, we'll eat without him," she sighed. "Excuse me."
"Of course." Barbara smiled absently as the woman moved toward the house doors.
"Would you like some more Coke?" Todd asked. "Or shall I add some rum to it?"
She glanced at her half-empty glass of lime and Coke. For some reason she hadn't wanted any addition of liquor to her drink that evening. A quenched thirst hadn't changed that feeling.
"More Coke only." Barbara handed him the glass to be refilled.
As he poured the soft drink, the ring of the telephone could be heard. Todd paused to listen. It stopped after the second ring and he finished filling her glass, adding a fresh twist of lime to float with the cubes
.
"Todd?" Lillian came to the paned doors as he returned the glass to Barbara. "It's long distance for you—your hotel manager. Some problem has come up."
"I'll take it in the den." He walked swiftly toward the door.
Alone, Barbara took her drink and wandered to the edge of the veranda. The slanted rays of the sun glinted off the surface of the swimming pool, while the fanning leaves of the potted palms around the deck swayed in a gentle breeze. Her gaze turned to the lawn, the Spanish oaks and the distant white stables beyond, unconsciously looking for Jock.
He came through the trees with long, slow strides. As her senses were heightened, Barbara felt his tiredness. When he came closer she saw it etched in his face, feathered out from his eyes and drawn around his mouth. Perspiration made the rugged denims and cotton shirt cling to his muscled frame, the material smeared with dirt here and there.
When he saw her, his expression didn't change, nor did his pace. His direction was already carrying him to her and Jock didn't change it. Her blue eyes were hungry for the sight of him and Barbara couldn't take them away from him.
"We were about to give up on you," she said by way of a greeting.
As the distance lessened from feet to inches, she expected some kind of response from him, one of his usual mocking rejoinders. The last thing she anticipated was the hands that gripped her shoulders and pulled her forward while his mouth descended to seize her lips. Miraculously she avoided spilling the drink in her hand as she reeled under the branding ardor of his kiss. Of its own volition, her body strained closer to his, her back arching. She was engulfed in the heat of his body, overwhelmed by his earthy smell, heightened by perspiration and mingled with horse and leather.
Lingering, Jock mouthed her lips, seizing the lower one between his teeth and lovingly nibbling at it. His hand drifted down to her waist to keep her hips molded to his while his other hand slid up her arm to the drink she held.
"You don't know how many times I've imagined you waiting for me after a long, hard day, with a drink in your hand." Jock lifted his head, taking the glass from her unresisting fingers. "What's this? Rum and Coke?" Before she answered, he drank from it. Barbara became momentarily absorbed in the working of his throat as he swallowed and the moisture on his mouth when he took the glass away.
"Just Coke and lime," she told him after he'd already discovered it on his own.
"No rum tonight?" The sheer sexuality of his roaming look had Barbara searching for the breath she lost.
"No, I didn't feel like it." She was suddenly aware of how easily she had let herself be taken into his arms and surrender to the ravaging possession of his kiss. She had not even challenged his right to do it.
"Neither am I," Jock agreed. "I'm not in the mood for forgetting tonight."
As he drained the contents of her glass, Barbara extricated herself from his embrace. His mention of forgetting made her remember his comment about imagining her waiting for him. It irritated her into denouncing it.
"And don't try to fool me with your lies, Jock."
"My lies?" He lifted a bemused brow and walked to the drink cart to refill the glass.
"Yes, your lies," Barbara retorted. "About me waiting for you with a cold drink."
"What makes you think that is a lie?" Jock challenged smoothly, and fixed two glasses instead of one. "I did ask you to come here with me. Or had you forgotten?"
"I hadn't forgotten. I refused to come with you and I've never regretted that decision." She had nearly been crushed when he'd dropped her after a few short days together. She would never have endured the tearing agony if they had spent months together.
The veranda door opened and Todd walked out. "I guess I couldn't expect to have two full weeks without business intruding," he apologized to her.
"Was it serious?" Barbara asked and would have gone to his side except Jock was blocking her way with the fresh glass of lime and Coke.
"The chef walked out and the kitchen is in an uproar. It's nothing new. Claude does this about every two months." Todd's attitude dismissed it as a trifling matter. Glancing at Jock, he said, "We were just about to eat without you."
"So Barbara mentioned. Is this your drink?" Jock motioned to the one sitting on the drink cart.
"Yes." Todd walked over to get it. "Had a rough day, did you?"
"A long one," Jock conceded. "Do you and Barbara still want to come over to the Crosstimber unit tomorrow?"
"Sure." But he cast a questioning look at Barbara for her affirmation.
"Yes," she agreed.
"We'll leave in the morning at eight," Jock announced and arched a knowing glance at her. "Can you get up that early?"
"I can," she insisted with an irritated snap.
"Jock, you're home!" Lillian spotted him the instant she stepped onto the patio. "I've just had Antonia set dinner back twenty minutes."
"Good. I'll have time to shower and change first." Taking his glass, he started toward the doors. "If you'll all excuse me."
"Gladly," Lillian laughed. "You smell like a sweat factory."
"Be warned," Jock said to Todd and Barbara. "That's what it will be like tomorrow out there."
"I think we can take it," Todd assured him.
"That's right. I'd forgotten. You are going over to watch the roundup tomorrow, aren't you?" Lillian declared. "Jock is right. It's a hot, smelly job. But I think you'll find the operation interesting."
While she was speaking, Jock entered the house. Barbara wasn't certain that it would be wise to see Jock in his environment. It might feed tomorrow's memories. But it was too late. She was committed to go and she didn't want to explain to Todd why she was getting cold feet at the idea.
Chapter Nine
A FEW MINUTES after eight o'clock, Barbara walked out of the house with Todd. She started across the courtyard, expecting to see Jock waiting with their horses. Instead a pickup truck and horse trailer were parked in the driveway. Inside the horse van, she could see three saddled horses.
"Aren't we riding the horses there?" she asked Todd.
"No. It's too far. Half the time would be spent riding there. It's easier and quicker to track the horses where they are needed and ride from that point," he explained.
"I guess I'm forgetting how large this ranch is," Barbara admitted.
When they approached the truck, Jock didn't bother to get out. His arm was resting atop the open window of the track, his other hand on the steering wheel. His alert gaze ran over Barbara, noting the hat she had borrowed from Lillian.
"Awake?" he asked on a faintly taunting note.
"Wide awake," she insisted.
If she wasn't before, she certainly was now as she realized she would be expected to sit in the middle between the two men. The cab of the pickup was not all that wide. There wasn't a chance she could avoid contact with Jock.
Todd opened the door to the passenger side of the truck and stepped aside for her to climb in. "Would you mind if I sat by the window?" Barbara asked.
"Don't you think it's safe to sit beside me?" Jock taunted before Todd could answer.
"Isn't it safe for me to sit on the outside? Or do you drive so recklessly that the door might pop open and I'll be thrown out?" she countered.
"She has you there, J.R.!" Todd laughed.
"It doesn't matter to me where either one of you sits, but you'd better make up your minds. We aren't going to sit here all day." He turned the ignition key and the engine rumbled to life.
"You can sit by the window and benefit from all the fresh air," Todd volunteered and climbed into the cab, sliding to the middle of the seat.
"Thanks." Barbara hopped in beside him, barely slamming the door shut before Jock put the truck in forward gear.
A ways from the house, Jock turned onto one of the many dirt roads that crisscrossed the ranch, interconnecting the vast sections. Of necessity, he drove at a moderate speed because of the horses in the trailer he pulled behind the truck. The only breeze was generated by the
draft the truck made slicing through the still, muggy air. The noise of the engine and the draft blowing in the opened windows of the cab kept conversation at a minimum, and Barbara didn't take part in what there was of it.
Forty minutes from the house, they approached a place where other trucks and trailers were parked on a wide spot in the road. Jock slowed the truck and maneuvered it and the trailer among the others. Despite all the vehicles, there was no one around as Barbara climbed out of the cab, followed by Todd. Beyond the barbed-wire fence and its gate was a long meadow of tail grass, but there wasn't a sign of a horse and rider or a cow.
Barbara walked to the back of the trailer where Jock was unloading the horses. "Where is everyone?"
"Out there." With a nod of his head, he gestured toward the field as he backed the blaze-faced chestnut out of the van, tossing the reins to Barbara. "They've been here since a little after daybreak. We'll catch up with them."
After checking the cinch, Barbara mounted, sitting astride her horse while Todd stepped into the saddle on his bay. Jock was the last to mount after closing the tailgate of the trailer. The big gray horse sidled up to the fence gate and tossed its head eagerly as Jock unlatched the gate and gave it a push. Barbara and Todd rode their horses through and waited until he had shut it.
With an open field before them, the horses needed no second urging to break into a canter. The trucks and trailers soon became distant objects on the horizon, scarcely discernible. It seemed to Barbara that they were shedding the cloak of the present and riding into the past where the creak of saddle leather and the thud of horses' hooves dominated the world.
The land rolled and dipped, undulating like a sea of grass. Here and there, trees poked at the blue sky with a thicker cluster of woods ahead. A distinctive cracking sound could be heard, a sound like a whip. Barbara smiled, guessing they soon would be joining the cowboys, a speculation she wouldn't have been able to make without the information Jock had given her about the bull whips some of the men carried. When Jock angled toward the sound, she knew she was right.