by Quinn Wilder
He rose, turning the tables on her, concluding her interview.
He looked down at her, his eyes unreadable, a trace of a solemn smile toying at the edges of his wind-roughened lips. Slowly, he extended his hand.
For a moment, she only stared at it, afraid to take it. Afraid he might know something of her that she didn't want him to know.
Oh, for heaven's sake, she chided herself. She wasn't buying any silly cowboy corn pone. She struggled to her feet, in defiance of the deep blue eyes that told her it was all right to remain seated.
She extended her own hand to him, and he took it. Her hand disappeared, small and white, into the fold of his, large and brown. She felt a shocked sense of her own femininity. He shook her hand firmly. And it was true. Everything that he was, was in that handshake. It conveyed unwavering strength and compelling energy. In that handshake was a promise of something solid and reliable. And then instead of releasing her hand he held it for a moment, letting her feel the texture of his skin, the callused history written on his palms. Letting her feel the energy grow, until it tingled up her arm. This too was a message of a man who was as innately sensuous as he was strong.
She pulled her hand abruptly away from him, feeling singed, feeling the heat of that singe burning in her cheeks.
Without taking his eyes from her, he settled his cowboy hat over his dark hair, and tugged the brim low over his brow. She could not tell from his unwavering gaze if he felt the same sizzling intensity as she did.
"Well, Miss Copperthorne?"
She gasped. "Well, what?" she stammered.
A lazy, amused smile tugged at his lips. She was glad he didn't smile more. It made him even more dangerous, made him appear wickedly and carelessly sexy.
"Do we have a deal?"
Something in her warned her about making deals with devils, but in a flash the look in his eyes was
gone. They became hooded, faintly remote. He was just a man. They were just talking about a job.
"Yes, we have a deal," she said, her voice not nearly so strong or snappy as she would have liked. "Would Monday be all right? To start?"
He nodded.
"You can move your things into the stable any time."
He shrugged. "That won't be much of a job." He turned away, and then turned back. "Thanks for the coffee, Miss Copperthorne."
"Cade," she astounded herself by saying.
His eyes narrowed. "Cade," he repeated, rolling it off his lips thoughtfully. He nodded and turned and strode away, moving by the pool, cutting through the hedge.
In his stride and in the way he had said her name, she knew two things. He was not just a man. It was not just a job. Something bigger was happening, was bound to happen. There was passion here. Passion in the way she felt about jumping, and in the way he felt about horses. It was hard to work around something like that and not be affected by it. Look at her and Lionel. Of course, when it came right down to it, it was a mistake to try and transfer that passion to something else. Of course, when it came right down to it, though, passion was a hard one to tame, to keep in its proper compartments.
Suddenly she realized she was feeling something she hadn't felt for a long time: that edgy nervous feeling in the pit of her stomach that she felt before a big show. A combination of raw nerves and excitement, of fear and challenge. She looked at the place where Dace had disappeared through the
hedge, and she smiled. It was scary as hell, but dammit, it still felt good to be alive.
"I guess maybe I'll give it a shot with Miss Copperthorne's horse," Dace told Sloan casually, taking his saddle off the tack-room wall, slipping his fingers under the horn, and swinging it over his shoulder.
Sloan shrugged, wisely deciding not to make too much of it, but Dace didn't miss the satisfied look that gleamed briefly in his eye.
Dace sat for a long time out on the leaning porch of his small cabin. His land was three miles from Copperthorne's. The cabin was awful—hot, small, musty. No running water, or electricity. He'd lived here since the fire. Four years. The apartment over the stables would seem like a penthouse in comparison to how he was living now.
He supposed Sloan was right. It was time to reenter the land of the living.
He smoked one cigar, and then another, watching the setting sun, feeling its gold on his face.
He wondered why she called herself Cade when he personally thought Cadence was a far more suiting name. Feminine, strong. He sighed. He felt restless. He picked up a stick he'd been twirling, and brushed absently at the dust at his feet. A name formed.
He scowled down at it, and then, for a reason he didn't quite know, wrote his own name beneath it. He studied the two names for a long time, and then a light went on in his head.
'Til be damned," he said with disbelief. He tossed the stick into the night, looked incredulously once more at the names, and then impatiently erased them with a swipe of his foot.
CHAPTER FOUR
On Friday, Cade had watched, surreptitiously, as Dace moved a few things from the back of a dilapidated pickup truck into the apartment above the stable.
By Saturday, she knew the awful truth. She could not wait until Monday. If she did, they would have to spend Monday outfitting him, and couldn't actually start work until Tuesday. But if they outfitted him today...
She knew she was being ridiculous. Several times, she told herself just how ridiculous she was being, and forced herself to sit down with a book. Then she would gaze unseeingly at the pages for several minutes, and then her eyes would drift to the bedroom window, and then the next thing she knew she had levered herself up, and was back at that window, peeping out from behind the curtains, trying to discern if she could see him moving around above the stable. Ridiculous. But there was a knot of anxiety in her stomach. As if, if she waited until Monday, something might go wrong. He might change his mind. He might move back out of the stable as quickly as he'd moved in.
Finally, she could bear it no longer. She'd just go over there, and check out his mood, lay her anxieties to rest. Her mind made up, she snatched a potted plant off the night table beside her bed. What could be more natural than for her to bring him a little housewarming gift?
She'd actually forgotten all about those narrow steep stairs that led up to his place, but having come this far she found herself unable to turn back, and unable to humiliate herself by yelling up the stairs that she was here.
She nestled the potted plant safely in the crook of her arm, hooked her cane over her opposite forearm, grabbed the railing, took a deep breath and went up. She arrived at the top breathless, flushed and sweating. She had made more noise than a steam locomotive, but thankfully he had not opened the door to investigate.
Neither did he open the door when she knocked on it. Not to be thwarted at this point, she gave his door a couple of good hits with her cane.
And for some reason almost tumbled over backward with surprise when the door was flung open and he stood there, wearing only blue jeans, his chest naked and damp, his hair beaded with water.
He had a towel in his hand and he casually began roughing his hair with it. He looked at her inquiringly, not in the least self-conscious about his big, beautiful body—in fact, she suspected, rather enjoying her discomfort.
"I brought you this." She thrust the plant at him, and he reached for it with his free hand. Then both of them stood staring at the plant.
It registered with her that she'd brought him an African violet and that he looked absurd holding the dainty, dusty-looking purple plant against his naked chest. He didn't seem to know what to do with the plant ... or her. His gaze moved from the plant to her face just as she was trying to blot some of the sweat from her forehead with the back of
her sleeve. She dropped her arm abruptly, but he locked beyond her to the stairs, and comprehension of how much effort she had made to get here dawned, somewhat baffled, in his eyes.
"Could you hang on a second?" He motioned her to the couch. "I'll be right back." He loo
ked at the plant once more, then set it down on his kitchen counter.
Somewhere she heard a running tap being shut off. She looked around his apartment with the cautious interest of a Peeping Tom who was trying to glean some details about him. She was disappointed. The place was cheerful, sun streaming in the front and gable windows and reflecting off the hardwood floors. There were a few scatter-rugs, a nondescript calico sofa, a television, VCR, and stereo. All, if she recalled correctly, came with the place—the homyness had a decorator's hand in it. Dace had not added anything of his own. Not even a photograph. There was a bedroom off the living room and she craned her neck to see in. She wondered if there was a picture beside his bed...
"Thanks for the plant. My grandmother used to have one like it."
She jumped guiltily, then turned to look at him. His tone hinted that he found her friendly gesture slightly surprising and slightly suspect. But his face was impassive as he pulled a crisp cotton shirt over the bronzed perfection of his shoulders. He buttoned it, the hard deep plane of his chest, then the hard hollow of his stomach, disappearing from her view. He unselfconsciously tucked his shirttails into his jeans, and she realized she had been staring. Her eyes moved up to his face and he was watching
her with amusement, one side of his mouth quirked upward.
"You're welcome," she said stiltedly.
"I'd offer you something, but I haven't laid in any supplies yet. I was just on my way into town."
"Were you?" She couldn't believe her good fortune, even though she had to screw up her nerve to take advantage of it. "Do you think we could go together? I need to pick up a number of things at the equestrian shop."
He hesitated, and she read faint suspicion into his steady gaze.
She deliberately dropped her eyes. "I can't carry heavier items by myself."
It was the first time she'd used pity to her advantage, and she was rather pleased with the results. She sneaked a look at him, and saw he looked abashed by both his suspicion and his hesitation. Good. If he was ashamed of himself and feeling sorry for her, he wouldn't even think that the staff would offer to carry her purchases out for her, which of course they always did.
"While we're here," she said a little over an hour later, "we might as well pick up some things for you."
They were in a very posh riding shop called English Leather, and Dace had spared the briefest of glances to the riding attire, and now was looking at saddles. And the price tags on saddles. He lifted one that she knew to be particularly expensive and almost physically winced at its lightness.
He turned to her. "What?"
She gave him her brightest smile. "This is Daniel. He works here. He'll help you pick out some riding clothes."
Daniel stepped forward with a pair of cream-colored breeches. "Sir, these are our best riding pants," he said. "Slim-line, four-way stretch, reinforced "
"Would you excuse us a minute?" Dace asked grimly. He reached by Daniel and his hand bit into her shoulder. She found herself unceremoniously backed into a corner, blocked from Daniel's wide-eyed gaze by a set of huge shoulders.
"You want to tell me what's going on?" he hissed dangerously.
"Nothing," she said, widening her eyes to rounded innocence. "I just thought since we were here "
"Would you cut the garbage? This is why we're here, isn't it?"
"Of course not "
A hand flashed over her shoulder and thumped into the wall behind her, and he leaned his weight against it, making her feel trapped physically, as well as trapped by the angry sparks in his blue eyes.
"You'd better be straight with me, Cade—or I'll walk out that door and never come back. I'm not going to work with you if you're going to be sneaky and manipulative. I knew the minute you brought me that plant you were up to something." His voice was flat and hard.
"I was not! It was just a nice neighborly gesture "
"Like hell!"
"I am capable of such gestures, you know!"
''If you are, I haven't seen any evidence of it." His voice was a low, threatening rumble. "Come clean, Miss Copperthorne."
She sighed. And even felt a little ashamed of herself, mostly because she knew he was entirely justified in his anger. She had got him in here under false pretenses.
"I'm sorry," she managed. She seemed to be getting more practice than she wanted in being humble these days. She took a deep breath and decided to be entirely honest. "I started getting anxious. And I started to feel really excited about working on Monday. And then I realized we'd have to get you outfitted. And that it wasn't going to be easy to get you into a habit. Dace, I am sor "
"A what? It's not going to be easy to get me into a what!" he asked with soft thunder.
"A habit "
"A habit," he repeated ominously. "Nuns wear habits. Not cowboys. Not this cowboy. Not ever."
She found his ferocity totally intimidating. She wanted to duck under that well-muscled arm and run for cover from the accusation in his eyes. Instead, she lifted her chin a notch, and met his eyes dead-on.
It would, she decided, get things off on entirely the wrong foot if he thought she'd shrink up like a violet every time he used that lethally soft tone of voice on her.
"It's not that kind of habit. You needn't act as if I'm asking you to wear women's lingerie," she informed him stoutly. "A habit is just a kind of uniform for riding. It consists of a jacket and some breeches "
"Breeches/' he muttered. "Sure. And maybe a shirt with a little lace at the wrists. Thank heaven I don't have enough hair to put in a ponytail."
"Oh! You have the wrong idea, entirely!" She noticed it was a whole rack of breeches that had her hemmed in on the left. She snatched a pair off the rack and held them out to him. "See "
His arm came unglued from the wall and he backed away as though she were proffering a skunk.
"I'm not wearing those," he informed her, eyeing her like a wary animal.
"Surely you had realized you wouldn't be wearing jeans, Dace."
"Women think about what they're going to wear," he informed her caustically. "I hadn't given it a thought." He eyed the jodhpurs with disdain. "And I don't want to think about it now."
"This is an entirely different kind of riding, Dace," she said. She sensed his anger lessening, and she used a soothing tone, the kind she might use on Storm when he was riled. "Jeans would be awfully uncomfortable. They bunch at the knee. They don't stretch over " She stopped, an outrageous red burning hot up her neck toward her cheeks.
"Look, I guess maybe in the back of my head somewhere I knew I might have to wear something else if I ever go in a show or something, but not on my home ground. I'm not wearing any fancy pants around here."
"Nobody's going to see you, Dace," she crooned, thinking he was concerned about his cowhand friends giving him a hard time.
"You are," he said flatly.
She felt surprise jolt through her. Surely he didn't care what she thought about him? She realized the very idea made her feel warm inside.
"I happen to think there's nothing more masculine than a man in breeches," she reassured him huskily.
He eyed her narrowly, then sighed. ''Look, Cade, the truth of it is that the corrals aren't very far from the stables, and you probably can't begin to imagine the kind of comments some of those tough old cowpokes might make if they saw me in..." he waved a disdainful hand at the breeches she was holding ".. .those," he finished tersely.
It was the cowhands he was worried about. She was trying very hard to keep a straight face, but she lost the battle. A low chuckle slipped out, and when his face darkened warningly the chuckle dissolved into laughter. The more she tried to check it, the more it bubbled out.
"It's not funny," he told her, but she could see a grin tugging at his own mouth, and she laughed harder.
"Oh, give me those," he said finally, and snatched the riding breeches from her hands, and stood looking at her. Her laughter dried up in her throat, and she wiped hastily at a tear that had w
ashed down her cheek. His eyes were suddenly entirely without humor, intense and stripping on her face. There was something of shocked discovery in those eyes, and then a deep, licking fire of passion.
"You're a beautiful woman when you let go, Cade Copperthorne."
Cadence felt stunned. Her mind tried to tell her she was wrong, but, even as it did, she could feel
a fine tension roll along her spine, an anticipation brace her stomach. He was going to kiss her. Standing right here, in the middle of English Leather, with Daniel hovering with undisguised interest behind a nearby boot shelf, Dace Stanton was going to kiss her. She ordered herself to move away from him, but nature had commandeered her body, and instead of moving away she felt herself lean imperceptibly closer, felt her eyes closing and her lips parting
He leapt back, with much the same wariness that he had used when she'd held out the jodhpurs to him.
She straightened, humiliated, but saw no pity in his eyes, or censure, either. She saw confusion that seemed to match her own... and she saw that mysterious light still smoldered there.
She drew herself up haughtily. Well, that had been a near miss! As if she wanted to be kissed by somebody who had been practicing his charms since he'd been in the third grade! He'd probably told his pigtailed conquests back then that they were beautiful, too.
"Er— I'll try these on," he said, not taking his eyes from her face.
"Yes. All right."
He spun abruptly away from her, and almost bumped into Daniel. "Bring me a couple of pairs of these," he ordered crisply, and gave his size. He disappeared into a fitting room. She pushed her luck a little and had Daniel bring him in several pairs of riding boots to try as well.
He emerged, a while later, dressed once more in his crisp jeans and open-necked shirt. The expression on his face was remote. She didn't dare let