“I told you I don’t like men.”
He turned her in circles until she was dizzy.
“Stop! I can’t think with you whirling me around like a weather vane in a storm.”
“That’s what I feel like. And the wind is blowing harder and harder.”
She pulled against his embrace. “Let me go.”
“You aren’t going to run back inside, are you?”
“No.”
“Promiser?”
“I’m not a coward or a foolish woman.”
He let her go reluctantly. “No, you’ve never been foolish. Sometimes I wish you were.”
“Why?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Probably not I don’t understand half of what you say.”
“I love you. It’s that simple.”
“But you’re a drifter.”
“Drifters can fall in love.”
“But what happens when you want to drift somewhere else?”
“You could come with me.”
“And if I didn’t?”
“Maybe I wouldn’t want to drift anymore.”
“You don’t even like me. I’m stubborn, opinionated, and I shoot better than you do.”
“I know, but I love you anyway.”
Drew could feel the panic closing in around her. Something truly peculiar was happening to her. She didn’t understand it, but she knew she didn’t like it.
“I thought you liked kissing me,” Cole said.
“Ί do.”
“Let’s do it again.”
“Now?”
“It seems like a good time.”
It seemed like a terrible time. Absolutely the worst. She couldn’t decide whether to stay or flee. Cole didn’t give her a chance to decide. He took her in his arms and kissed her with barely restrained passion.
His kiss didn’t feel the way it had the last time. She experienced none of the surprise of discovery, the delight in a newfound pleasure, the breaking down of a long-held taboo. Like a boulder that comes crashing down the mountain through your house, destroying everything in its path, this kiss shattered Drew’s notions about men and love. Like an avalanche, it knocked her flat, leaving her prostrate and defenseless.
She pushed away from Cole.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
She didn’t know what to tell him. She wasn’t sure she knew herself. “Everything,” she muttered.
“How can everything be wrong? You’ve got a rich aunt who wants to satisfy your every wish, you’re the star of the show, and you’ve got a perfect family. You’re a beautiful woman being kissed in the moonlight by a man who loves you.”
“I don’t want a rich aunt, I don’t want to be the star of the show, and I don’t want anybody to love me.”
But even as she spoke the words, she was aware of an ache in her heart. She had prepared herself to do without love, even convinced herself she didn’t want it, but it would be nice to have just a little bit. But then the realities of love and all that it would entail sprang to life in her imagination, banishing the newly budded wish for the chance to experience just a little of that sweet-tasting nectar.
“You just want your ranch and your perfect family.”
“My family’s not perfect.”
“Maybe not, but in your mind you’ve turned them into paragons. You’re safe from love because no man can measure up to the sum of so many.”
“That’s nonsense. Why should I do something as silly as create a man in my mind who doesn’t exist?”
“To protect you in case you were tempted to fall in love.”
“I’ve never fallen in love.”
“But you’ve been tempted.”
“No.”
“You’ve been tempted so much you’re scared you might give in. Are you afraid of being in love, of being loved?”
“I’m not afraid of anything.”
“Then why are you so afraid you might love me?”
“I’m not afraid. I could never love a drifter.”
Cole gripped her arms. “Drifters are just people looking for something to give their lives meaning. When they find it, they don’t want to drift any longer.”
Drew struggled to break his hold. “I don’t want to give anybody’s life meaning. I just want to be left alone.”
Cole’s grip tightened. He pulled her closer. “You can’t turn your back on love.”
“Yes, I can.”
“I don’t believe you. I think you want to love and be loved. You’ve just told yourself you don’t for so long, it’s hard to change your mind.”
Drew fought against his hold. “You may have succeeded in telling me how to run my act, but don’t you dare try to tell me how to think.”
“I don’t want you to think,” Cole said, slipping his arms around her. “I want you to feel.”
“I’m feeling, all right. I feel—”
He silenced her with a kiss that infuriated her at the same time it melted her bones. His body felt hard and tense against her. She could feel the heat of his passion, his anger, his… she didn’t want to know what he was feeling. She couldn’t handle her own feelings.
She wanted to push him away, deny that his kiss meant anything. Yet she felt her body sag against his, her arms go around his neck, her lips respond to the pressure of his mouth. Her whole being seemed to spring to life in a way that vitalized every part of her. She felt more than pleasure and curiosity in his kiss. She felt need, and that caused her to panic.
With a tremendous effort of willpower, she forced herself to break their kiss, to pull away from him. “Let me go.”
His hold on her didn’t loosen. Her panic threatened to become hysteria. “If you love me as you say you do, you’ll let me go this instant”
She thought for a moment he wasn’t going to respond. Then his arms fell to his sides and he stepped back.
“What are you going to do?” he asked.
“Go inside.”
“We’ve got to talk.”
“We have nothing to say,” Drew said, backing away. “I don’t know if you love me—or why you should love me if you do—but I don’t love you. I’m going back to my aunt. You’re not to come near me for the rest of the evening.”
“Drew—”
She half turned. “I won’t dance with you. I won’t even speak to you. I don’t want to be in love!”
She turned and ran back to the house. By the time she reached the steps to the porch, her heart was beating so fast she felt as if she couldn’t get a breath. She forced herself to stop for a moment. She took several deep breaths, then climbed the steps to the porch. Before going inside, she looked back. Cole hadn’t followed her. She told herself she was relieved.
Then why did she feel ready to cry?
Cole stood stock still, staring after Drew’s retreating figure, wondering how he could have been so stupid as to have gotten himself into this fix. He hadn’t known he loved Drew until the unguarded words came tumbling out of his mouth. He knew what she thought of men in general and men like him in particular. It would take a great deal of work just to prepare her mind for the idea of falling in love.
Yet he’d dragged her away from the party and out into the garden—a move guaranteed to make her an object of curiosity and possibly censure—and thrown the declaration at her from out of the blue. Then, when she reacted with shock and surprise, he wasn’t smart enough to back away and give her a chance to get used to the idea. No, he’d practically forced it down her throat, kept on pushing her into a corner until she broke and ran.
Any fool could have predicted what would happen. Why couldn’t he have seen it?
Because he was an idiot. The conflict between his duty and his emotions had robbed him of common sense. Now he was acting like a fool, desperate to convince Drew he really did love her, equally desperate to prove she wasn’t a robber. Trouble was, he’d made a total mess of the first, and hadn’t even started on the second. Some crackerjack undercover a
gent he’d turned out to be. If his boss could see him now, he’d surely yank him off the case.
He looked up at the light coming through the windows of the double salon. It seemed cheerful and inviting. It beckoned him to return to its friendly warmth. Only it wasn’t friendly. As a younger man, he hadn’t been able to reconcile his own goals with the empty social world his family valued so highly. He realized now he never would. He wouldn’t ignore his family, but as the years went by, it would become less and less a part of his life, until he would find it difficult to remember he had once lived in that world, content with his life and the people around him.
Then there was Drew. She represented the kind of life he wanted. She was strong, direct, honest, a woman who knew her own worth and didn’t need anyone or anything else to give her value in her own eyes. She stood on her own two feet, willing and anxious to earn whatever she wanted.
And he had driven her away.
He couldn’t believe he’d done anything so stupid. He’d always been considered the smartest of the agents, the one who could control a situation and solve problems by using his brain rather than a gun or his fists. Now, when he needed his brain more than ever, his feelings had taken over, making him act as foolishly as the most inept agent.
Okay, so he’d been stupid, acted foolishly, made a terrible mess. At least he’d accomplished one thing—no, two. He no longer doubted he loved Drew. That in itself was a tremendous relief. Secondly, he was absolutely positive she wasn’t guilty of the robberies, and he was going to prove it.
But before he could do either, he had to get himself under control. He’d spooked Drew. She’d be as nervous around him as a newborn colt. He would have to reassure her he wasn’t going to pressure her to love him. Neither was he going to force his love on her. It wouldn’t be easy. He wasn’t a man to deny himself what he wanted once he knew what it was, but he knew Drew was more important to him than anything else. If he didn’t manage to control his feelings, he might lose her forever.
If he didn’t solve these robberies, he might lose her anyway. His preoccupation with his feelings for her had kept him from exploring other possibilities. If Drew and her brothers weren’t the robbers, then who was? It had to be someone connected with the Wild West Show, someone using Drew’s presence as a cover. It was about time he started living up to his reputation as a clever agent rather than proving that, when in love, he could be as much of a fool as any other man.
“I can’t imagine why you’d do anything as foolish as leave the party with that man,” Drew’s aunt was saying to her as the carriage carried them back to her aunt’s hotel. “You could be ruined socially.”
“I don’t care about that,” Drew said, trying hard not to shout at her aunt. “I’ll never see any of those people again. It wouldn’t matter if I did. I don’t care what they think.”
She couldn’t think about strangers when her whole life felt as though it were falling to pieces around her. She didn’t understand it, she didn’t like it, and she was trying her best to keep it from happening.
“Drucilla, honey, I know you don’t like society. I don’t understand it, but you’ve told me so many times that I’ve got to believe you at least think you know what you’re talking about. But you may not always want to live on a ranch. If you make yourself notorious, society’s door could be closed to you forever.”
“How could going into the garden with Cole make me notorious?”
Why had she let him talk her into leaving the salon? She knew it would upset her aunt. She also knew the nosy witches at that party would make trouble. They didn’t like outsiders, even rich ones.
“A single woman should never disappear with a single man. Even if everyone knows nothing happened, you’ll get a reputation for being fast.”
She already had a reputation for being fast—with a gun. She was as slow as molasses in winter when it came to men. What had happened that was so terrible she felt as if she wanted to die? Cole had kissed her. True, it wasn’t as much fun as before, but that was probably because she was upset. It still sent delicious chills all through her, made her want to kiss him even harder, longer.
Then there was the fact that he loved her. She didn’t love him, and she had told him so. He didn’t like it, but he was a gentleman. Nothing bad had happened. It was over, done with, forgotten.
Only she couldn’t forget a single word Cole had spoken.
“You don’t have to worry about my reputation, Aunt Dorothea. I’ll disappear into Texas in a year or so, and everybody will forget about me.”
“Society is a small circle. There aren’t many rich people in the South since the war. You’re an heiress. Everybody will remember you.”
“I don’t want your money,” Drew said. “Give it to somebody else.”
“I don’t have any other relations except my husband’s Yankee cousins. And they have too much money already.”
“Then give it to charity. I’m going to earn everything I get.” Much to her surprise, the thought of owning her own ranch didn’t send her pulse racing as it usually did. The prospect of seeing her own brand on her own cows, of deciding when to start the roundup, of ramrodding her crew, of building her own house—none of these gave her the feeling of satisfaction or accomplishment she’d always had before.
“I don’t know what you’ll do with my money,” her aunt said, “but you’ll inherit it when I die.”
“Then I hope you live to be a hundred.”
“If I have to keep chasing you all over the country just to get to see you for a few days or hours, I probably won’t live to see my next birthday.”
“You shouldn’t see me at all. It always makes you unhappy.”
“I couldn’t stop seeing you even if I wanted to. I’d feel I had deserted your mother. I don’t know what I could have done, but I’ve always felt partly responsible for her death. Maybe if I’d encouraged her to confide in me before she met your father, she’d have told me what was bothering her. I don’t know that I could have helped her, but I could have tried.”
“Please, Aunt Dorothea, don’t feel guilty about my mother. You couldn’t have done anything to change things. Neither of my parents ever listened to advice.”
“When I think of how close you came to dying, it makes me want to shoot your father all over again.”
“Mama wanted to go west even more than Papa. They rebelled against all rules of society. I can’t remember seeing them happy except when they were spending money they didn’t have.” Maybe her parents’ disregard for money was the reason she was so determined to pay her own way, to avoid any kind of debt, financial or emotional.
She wondered if they had felt as miserable as she did now, if she had inherited her mother’s temperament and would be miserable for the rest of her life. No, she’d been happy with Jake and Isabelle. Her brothers irritated her from time to time, but that was to be expected in any family. And though she didn’t exactly like show business, she had enjoyed her time with the Wild West Show. It helped establish her independence, her ability to support herself. No man would ever expect her to stay home and look after his babies. She was going to do everything a man could do, and she was going to do it just as well.
That assertion didn’t give her much satisfaction either. Being one of the most successful ranchers in Texas suddenly seemed lonely and uninviting, and she knew who was to blame.
Cole Benton.
If he hadn’t opened his mouth about being in love with her, she wouldn’t be sunk in the corner of her seat, ignoring her aunt’s lecture on propriety and the role of women in society, watching her dream of a ranch of her own grow tarnished and uninviting, thinking about a grinning mouth, twinkling eyes, and strong arms. If he had just kept his mouth shut, she would have spent her last night with her aunt in relative peace and returned to the Wild West Show with a smile on her lips and a skip in her step.
Now she was miserable enough to give a grinning fool the blue megrims.
“I wish you weren�
�t leaving tomorrow. I’m going to miss you.”
“You could come to the show to see me off.”
“You know I can’t bear the thought of you being in that show.”
She wondered if Cole would be there. She’d gotten so used to him, she didn’t know if she could do her act without him. It certainly wouldn’t be nearly as exciting for the audience. Or for her.
She might as well admit that that was the problem with the ranch. It didn’t seem nearly so exciting without thinking of Cole being there with her. Only now did she realize that she’d gradually come to think of him as part of her life.
She wondered if he would go to her ranch with her. She wondered if she would have the courage to ask him.
“Where does your season start next year?” her aunt asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
No, she wouldn’t ask him. She couldn’t. It wouldn’t work.
Why not? Jake and Isabelle had made it work. So had Ward and Marina, Buck and Hannah, even Rose and George Randolph. If they could all manage to love each other, why couldn’t she and Cole?
Did she love Cole already?
No, but she liked him too much to consider never seeing him again. She liked being with him. Until tonight, she’d never fallen into a bad mood when she was with him. She had already admitted she liked his kisses, his strong arms holding her. She didn’t believe she was beautiful, but she liked to think he thought she was. She liked the pride he took in her achievement.
“Why don’t you spend the winter with me?”
“I have to go home. Jake and Isabelle are expecting me.”
Maybe she could fall in love if she gave herself a chance. There were a lot of men she liked and admired. She’d always assumed she didn’t want to have anything to do with a man, but now that she thought about it, she’d been surrounded by men for years, dozens of them. She was used to it.
She liked it. It was women she had no use for.
Did she want to have a man in her life, in her house… in her bed? The answer came fast and clear. Yes, and she wanted that man to be Cole.
“I’m sure they would understand. After all, I am your only living relative.”
“Isabelle wouldn’t. She still gets depressed when everyone can’t be home for Christmas.”
Drew (The Cowboys) Page 23