Читать книгу Lacy - Diana Palmer - Страница 5

The party was getting noisier by the minute.

Lacy Jarrett Whitehall watched it with an air of total withdrawal. All that wild jazz, the kicky dancing, the bathtub gin flowing like water as it was passed from sloshing glass to teacup. She wasn’t really as much a participant as she was an onlooker. It made her feel alive to watch other people enjoying themselves. Lacy hadn’t felt alive in a long time.

Many of the neighbors were elderly people, and she suffered a pang of conscience at what, to them, must have seemed like licentious behavior. The Charleston was considered a vulgar dance by the older generation. Jazz, they said, was decadent. Ladies smoked in public and swore—and some actually wore their stockings rolled to just below the kneecap. They wore galoshes, unfastened, so that they flapped when they walked—hence the name given to the new generation: flappers. Shocking behavior to a society that had only since the war come out of the Victorian Age. The war had changed everything. Even now, four years after the armistice, people were still recovering from the horror of it. Some had never recovered. Some never would.

In the other room, laughing couples were dancing merrily to “Yes, We Have No Bananas” blaring from Lacy’s new radio. It was like having an orchestra right in the room, and she marveled a little at the modern devices that were becoming so commonplace. Not that any of these gay souls were contemplating the scientific advances of the early twenties. They were too busy drinking Lacy’s stealthily obtained, prohibition-special gin and eating the catered food. Money could almost buy absolution, she mused. The only thing it couldn’t get her was the man she wanted most.

She fingered her teacup of gin with a long, slender finger, its pink nail perfectly rounded. The color matched the dropped-waist frock she was wearing with its skirt at her knees. It would have shocked Marion Whitehall and the local ladies around Spanish Flats, she thought. Like her friends, she wore her hair in the current bobbed fashion. It was thick and dark and straight, and it curved toward her delicate facial features like leaves lifting to the sun. Under impossibly thick lashes, her pale, bluish gray eyes had a restlessness that was echoed in the soft, shifting movements of her tall, perfectly proportioned body. She was twenty-four, and looked twenty-one. Perhaps being away from Coleman had taken some of the age off her. She laughed bitterly as she coped with the thought. Her eyes closed on a wave of pain so sweeping that it counteracted the stiff taste of the gin. Coleman! Would she ever forget?

It had all been a joke, the whole thing. One of brother-in-law Ben’s practical jokes had compromised Lacy, after she’d been locked in a line cabin all night with Cole. Nothing had happened, except that Cole had given her hell, blaming her for it. But it was what people thought happened that counted. In big cities, the new morals and wild living that had followed World War I were all the rage. But down in Spanish Flats, Texas, a two-hour drive from San Antonio, things were still very straitlaced. And the Whitehalls, while not wealthy, were well known and much respected in the community. Marion Whitehall had been in hysterics about the potential disgrace, so Cole had spared his mother’s tender feelings by marrying Lacy. But not willingly.

Lacy had been taken in by Marion Whitehall eight years ago, after Lacy’s own parents died on the Lusitania when it was torpedoed by the Germans. Lacy’s mother and Cole’s had been best friends. Lacy’s one remaining relative, a wealthy great-aunt, had declared herself too elderly and set in her ways to take on a teenager. The Whitehalls’ invitation had been a godsend. Lacy had agreed, but mostly because it allowed her to be near Cole. She’d worshipped him since her wealthy family had moved to Spanish Flats from Georgia when Lacy had been just thirteen to be near her great-aunt Lucy and great-uncle Horace Jacobsen, who had retired from business after making a fortune in the railroad industry. Great-uncle Horace had, in fact, founded the town of Spanish Flats and named it for the Whitehall ranch, which had sheltered him in a time of desperate need. He and Lacy’s great-aunt had been a social force in San Antonio in those days, but it was Spanish Flats Ranch, not Great-uncle Horace’s towering Victorian mansion that had fascinated Lacy from the beginning—as did the tall cattleman on the ranch property. It had been love on first impact, even though Cole’s first words to her had been scathing when she’d ridden too close to one of his prize bulls and had almost gotten gored. That hadn’t put her off, though. If anything, his cold, quiet, authoritative manner had attracted her, challenged her, long before she knew who he was.

Coleman Whitehall was an enigma in so many ways. A loner, like his old Comanche grandfather who’d taken him over in his youth and showed him a vanished way of life and thought. But he’d been kind to Lacy for all that, and there were times when she’d glimpsed a different man, watching him with the cowboys. The somber, serious Cole she thought she knew was missing in the lean rancher who got up very early one morning, caught a rattlesnake, defanged it and put it in bed with a cowboy who’d played a nasty practical joke on him. The resulting pandemonium had left him almost collapsed with laughter, along with the other witnesses. It had shown her aside of Cole that she remembered now for its very elusiveness.

Despite his responsibilities at home, the lure of airplanes and battle had gotten to Cole. He’d learned to fly at a local barnstorming show, and had become fascinated with this new mode of transportation. The sinking of the Lusitania had brought his fighting blood up, and convinced him that America would inevitably be pulled into war. He’d kept up his practice at the airfield, even though his father’s death had stopped him from joining the group of pilots in the French Escadrille Americaine, which became the exclusive Lafayette Escadrille.

When America did enter the war in 1917, a neighboring rancher had taken responsibility for the ranch and womenfolk in his absence, keeping the land grabbers away with financial expertise. Meanwhile Lacy and Katy and Ben and Marion had watched the newspapers with mounting horror, reading the posted casualty lists with stopped breath, with sinking fear. But Coleman seemed invincible. It wasn’t until the year after the armistice, when he’d turned up back at the ranch after a few sparsely worded letters, an old flying buddy in tow, that they’d learned he’d been shot down by the Germans. He’d only written that he’d been wounded, not how. But apparently it hadn’t done him any lasting damage. He was the same taciturn, hard man he’d been before he’d gone to France.

Well, not quite the same. Lacy treasured the precious few memories she had of Cole’s tenderness, his warmth. He hadn’t always been cold—especially not the day he’d left to go to war. There had been times when he was so human, so caring. Now, there was a coldness that was alien, a toughness that perhaps the war had created. Not that the family had any real idea of what the war had been like for him on a personal basis; he never spoke of it.

Ben had been too young to fight. With Cole’s return, he’d followed after his big brother with wide, dark eyes, all questions and pleas to hear about it. But Coleman wouldn’t tell him a thing. So Ben hounded Jude Sheridan. Jude, whom Coleman called Turk, had been an ace pilot with twelve credited kills. He was an easygoing, too-handsome man with a quick temper and a physique that kept young Katy awake nights sighing over him. Turk had filled Ben’s ear with bloodcurdling tales—until Coleman had gotten tired of it and stopped Turk from encouraging his young brother.

That was about the same time that he’d had to stop Katy from tagging along after the tall, blond flyer who’d become his ranch foreman. Turk was good with horses, and he had a shocking reputation with women. But that was something Katy wasn’t going to find out, Cole had informed her coldly. Turk was his friend, not a potential conquest, and Katy had better remember it. Even now, Lacy could see the heartbreak on the slender, green-eyed girl’s face as Cole blasted her dreams away. He’d even gone so far as to threaten her with firing Turk altogether. So Katy had withdrawn—from her brother, from her family—and had gone wild with the new morality. She’d bought outrageous clothes; she began to use makeup. She went to parties in San Antonio and drank outlawed bathtub gin. And the more Coleman threatened her, the wilder she got.

About that time, Ben had turned his attention to Lacy. It had been embarrassing, because she was twenty-three and Ben only eighteen. Coleman teased him about it when he got wind of it, which only added to the frustration. One night, Ben lured Cole and Lacy to a line cabin and locked them in. He went home to bed, and by the time they were discovered the next morning, they were hopelessly compromised. So Coleman did the expected thing and married her. But he resented her, ignored her, put a wall between them that all her efforts hadn’t dented. He refused to let her close enough to give their marriage a chance.

There had been an attraction between them for a long time—a purely physical one on his part—that had found its first expression the day he’d left for the war. Despite the promise of that long-ago embrace, he hadn’t touched Lacy since he’d been home again, not until after the wedding. The tension between them had reached flash point after an argument in the barn. Cole had backed her up against the wall that rainy morning in the barn and had kissed her until her mouth was swollen and her body raging with unexpected passion. That night, he’d come to her room and, in the darkness, had taken her. But it had been quick, and painful, and she remembered the strength in his lean hands as he’d held her wrists beside her head, not even allowing her to touch him through the brief intimacy while his hard mouth smothered her cries of pain. He’d left her immediately, white-faced, while she cried like a hurt child, and he hadn’t touched her again. The next morning, he’d acted as if nothing at all had happened. If anything, he was harder and colder than before. Lacy couldn’t bear the thought of any more of his brutal passion and his indifference. She’d packed her bags and gone to San Antonio, to be a companion to her great-aunt Lucy, Great-uncle Horace’s widow. Shortly thereafter, the gentle old lady had died. Now Lacy had the house and plenty of money that she hadn’t even expected to inherit. But without Cole, she had nothing.

She still shuddered, thinking about the morning she’d left Spanish Flats. Marion had been hurt, Katy and Ben shocked. Coleman had been…Coleman. Revealing nothing. Eight months had passed without a word from him, without an apology. Lacy had hated him at first because of the pain he’d inflicted so coldly. But one of her married friends had explained intimacy to her, and now she understood a little. She’d been a virgin, so it wasn’t unexpected that her first time had been difficult. Perhaps Cole just hadn’t cared enough to be gentle with her. At any rate, if it happened again, it might be less traumatic, and she might get pregnant. She blushed softly, thinking of how wonderful it would be to have a child, even under these circumstances. She was so totally alone. She could never have Cole, but it would have been nice to have his child.

It was such a good thing that she had Great-aunt Lucy’s inheritance. Added to the unexpectedly small inheritance her parents had left, it had made it possible for her to live in style and give extravagant parties. Coleman hated guests, and gaiety. Lacy could have done without them, too, if she’d had Coleman’s love. Even his affection. But she had nothing, except the contempt that had burned from his dark eyes every time he looked at her. She had money, and he was losing more of his by the day. That had been a point of contention between them from the very beginning. Cole had never gotten over the fact of her wealth…and his lack of it. It was an unexpected prejudice in a man who didn’t seem to have a bigoted bone in his lean body.

Lacy sipped her gin quietly, her eyes on the clock. Marion had written to say that Cole would be in San Antonio today, on business. She’d asked him to stop by and see Lacy while he was in town. Lovely Marion, always the matchmaker. But she didn’t know the real situation. There was nothing more hopeless than the relationship the way it was now. Even if Lacy had thought about asking Coleman for a divorce, as old-fashioned and proper as he was, she knew Cole would never agree to that. It had been his own principles, added to his mother’s horror of scandal, that had made him drag Lacy to the altar in the first place after the night in the line cabin, even though he hadn’t touched her. Apparently he was content for things to go on as they were; for Lacy to live in San Antonio, while he contented himself with business-as-usual at Spanish Flats. She laughed bitterly. All her young dreams of marriage and children and a husband to love and cherish her, and this was what she had. Twenty-four years old, and she felt fifty.

Children had been another problem. She’d worked up enough nerve to approach Coleman shortly after their marriage and ask him if he wanted them. She’d thought in her innocence that a child might make their relationship easier. His face had gone a horrible pale shade, and he’d said things to her that she still had trouble accepting. No, he’d told her, he didn’t want children. Not with a pampered little rich girl like Lacy. And after a few more insulting words, he’d stormed off in a black temper. She’d never had the nerve to ask him a second time. In her heart, she’d hoped that she might become pregnant after that uncomfortable night in his bed, but it hadn’t happened. Maybe it was just as well, because Cole would let no one close to him. She’d tried everything except being herself. It was hard to be herself around Cole, because he inhibited her so much. She wanted to play with him and tease him and make him laugh. She wanted to make him young, because he’d never been that. He’d been a man ever since she’d known him, a solitary, lonely figure with steel in his makeup—even at the age of nineteen—which he’d been when Lacy came to live with the Whitehalls.

In the other room, the radio was giving out New Orleans jazz, and the new Charleston dance was being demonstrated by two visitors whom Lacy didn’t know. There were a lot of people in the house that she didn’t know. What did it matter? They filled the empty rooms.

Lacy walked down the hall, her knee-length gray dress clinging softly to the slender lines of her body, down her hose-clad legs, to her buckled high heels. She felt restless again, hungry. She remembered the hardness of Cole’s mouth, the aching sweetness of his kiss that left her lips softly swollen. All that exquisite passion they’d shared the morning in the barn, and it had led to…that. She shivered. Surely women only allowed men such license with their bodies to get children.

Bess, one of her married friends, had told her that sex was the most exquisite experience in her life. “Mahhhhhvelous,” she’d said, laughing, her eyes full of the love she shared with her husband of five years. Lacy had been curious, despite her bad experience, to find out if intimacy could be pleasurable. But she wasn’t quite curious enough to let George Simon have what he’d been lusting after for the past few weeks. George was a sweet man, a good friend. But the thought of his greedy hands on her body was somehow offensive. It was a kind of sacrilege to think of letting anyone but Cole touch her that way.

What utter rot, she thought, with a harsh laugh. Ridiculous to moon over a man who didn’t love her. But worshipping him was such a habit. And she did. She loved everything about him, from the way he sat his horse to the arrogant tilt of his dark head, to the way his skin caught the light and burned like bronze. He wasn’t terribly good to look at, except to Lacy, but he had a masculinity that set her teeth on edge, that made her body go hot and throbbing. Just to touch him could make her tremble.

She sighed shakily as her gray eyes swept the hall. Would he come? Her heart pounded beneath her bodice. Just to see him, she thought, just to lay eyes on him once more, would be heaven. But it was already eleven o’clock, and Cole was usually in bed by nine so that he could be up at the crack of dawn. She turned back toward the living room with a heart like lead. No, he wasn’t coming tonight. It had been a foolish hope.

She went back to her guests, laughing, drinking more and more gin. The police made raids once in a while, but Lacy didn’t care if they came and found the gin. She might go to jail, and Coleman might come and bail her out. Then he might bring her home, and be so inflamed by smoldering passion that he’d do to her what Rudolph Valentino, as the sheik, had done to Agnes Ayres in that wildly passionate film The Sheik. Her heart ran away. She’d gone wild over that movie two years ago and had learned to do the tango soon after Valentino’s Blood and Sand film was released. But, of course, no one in her circle would do it like Valentino.

She took another sip of gin, lost in her thoughts. She jumped as a hand lightly touched her shoulder. She looked up, wide-spaced eyes huge in her face, and relaxed a little when she saw George Simon behind her.

“You startled me,” she said in her calm, very Southern drawl.

“Sorry,” he said, grinning. Well, his teeth were perfect, even if he was slightly balding and overweight. “I just thought you might like to know that you have a visitor.”

She frowned. It was midnight, and despite the fact that the huge Victorian house was overrun with people, it was unusual for anyone to come calling so late. And then she remembered. Cole!

“Male or female?” she asked nervously.

“Definitely male,” George said, without smiling. “He looks like the portrait over the living room mantel. That’s where I left him, staring at it.”

Lacy spilled the drink down the front of the stylishly wispy dress and mopped frantically at it with a handkerchief. “Oh, damn,” she said curtly. “Well, I’ll worry about that later. He’s in the living room?”

“Say, kid…You’re like flour in the face. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said. Everything, she thought as she turned and walked stiffly down the long hall, dimly lit by sconces, her wide-heeled shoes beating a dainty tattoo on the bare, polished wood floors as she walked.

She hesitated at the doorway, her eyes huge in her face, her hand poised on the doorknob. She knew already who was going to be waiting for her. She knew by George’s description, but even more by that smell, that pungent smoke that teased her nose even as she opened the door and saw him.

Coleman Whitehall spun on his booted heel with the precision of an athlete. Which he was, of course; ranch work demanded that kind of muscle. His dark eyes narrowed as he looked at Lacy, blazing out of a face like leather under hair as dark as her own. His skin was bronzed, a legacy from the Comanche grandfather who’d instilled pure steel in his makeup and taught him that emotion was a plague to be avoided at all costs.

He was wearing work clothes. Jeans and boots, with wide, flaring leather chaps and a vest over his blue-patterned shirt, leather wristbands on the cuffs. A string hung out of the pocket, which would be the tobacco pouch he always carried, along with a small, flat packet of papers to roll cigarettes from. His forehead was oddly pale as he watched her, his wide-brimmed hat tossed carelessly onto an elegant Victorian wing chair. He lifted his square chin and stared at her with unblinking, unforgiving eyes, the very picture of a Texas cattleman with his weather-beaten face and unyielding pride and blatant arrogance.

She closed the door and moved forward. He didn’t frighten her. He never had, really, although he towered over her like a lean, taciturn giant. He’d hardly smiled in the years she’d lived under his roof. She wondered if he ever had as a boy. She loved him. But love was something he didn’t need. Love. And Lacy. He could do very well without either, and he’d proven it over the past eight lonely months.

“Hello, Cole,” she said softly.

He lifted the smoking cigarette to thin, firm lips that held a faintly mocking smile. “Hello, yourself, kiddo. You look prosperous enough,” he mused, his eyes narrow on her short dark hair in its bob, her face with its outrageously dark lip rouge, her blue eyes quiet and abnormally bright as she stood before him, very trendy in her soft gray dress that clung to her slender figure and displayed her long, elegant legs with scandalous efficiency.

She didn’t avoid his stare. Her eyes wandered over his face like loving hands, seeing the new lines, the rough edges. He was twenty-eight now, but he’d aged in these months they’d been apart. The war had aged him. Marriage hadn’t seemed to help.

“I’m doing very well, thanks,” she said, trying to keep her voice light. It was hard to handle this meeting, with the memory of her abrupt departure—and the reason for it—still between them. He seemed unperturbed by it, but her knees felt weak. “What brings you to San Antonio in the middle of the night?”

“I’ve been trying to sell cattle. Winter’s coming on. Feed’s getting hard to come by.” He studied her blatantly, but there was no feeling in his dark eyes. There was nothing at all.

She moved closer, inhaling the masculine smell of him, the scents of tobacco and leather that had become so familiar. She touched his sleeve gently, loving the warmth of him under it, only to have him jerk away from her and walk back toward the fireplace.

Her hand felt odd, extended like that. She pulled it back to her side with a wistful, bitter little smile. He still didn’t like her to touch him, after all this time. He never had. He took, but he never gave. Lacy wasn’t sure that he knew how to give.

“How is your mother?” she asked.

“She’s fine.”

“And Katy and Bennett?”

“My sister and brother are fine, too.”

She studied his long, lean back, watching him stare at his likeness above the mantel. She’d had it painted soon after she’d left Spanish Flats, and it was his mirror image. Dark, brooding, with eyes that followed her everywhere she went. He was wearing work clothes in the portrait, with a red bandanna at his throat and a white Stetson atop his dark, straight hair. She loved the portrait. She loved the man.

“What’s that in aid of?” he asked insolently, gesturing up at it. He turned, pinning her with his dark gaze. “For show? To let everyone know what a devoted little wife you are?”

She smiled sadly. “Are we going to have that argument again? I’m not suited to the ranch. You’ve been telling me that since the day I stepped on the place for the first time. I’m—how did you put it?—too genteel.” That was a lie. She was well suited, and she loved it. Her eyes glared at him. “But we both know why I left Spanish Flats, Cole.”

His eyes flashed, and a dark stain of color washed over his high cheekbones. He averted his eyes.

Oh, damn, Lacy thought miserably. My tongue will be the death of me. She laced her hands together. “Anyway, you never knew I was around,” she said stiffly. “Your day-to-day indifference finally chased me away.”

“What did you expect me to do?” he asked curtly. “Sit around and worship you? My ranch is in trouble, teetering on a precipice in this damned slow agricultural market. I’m too busy trying to support my family to dance attendance on a bored society girl.” He stared at her with cold, dark eyes. “That lounge lizard who led me in here seems to think you’re his private stock. Why?”

That sounded like jealousy, and her heart jumped, but she kept her features calm. “George is my friend. He’d like to marry me.”

“You’ve got a husband. Does he know?”

“No,” she said carelessly. He was getting on her nerves now. She went to the decanter and poured herself a china cup of gin, lacing it with water. She turned back defiantly and sipped her gin, knowing he’d recognize the smell. He did; she saw it in his disapproving stare. She grinned at him impishly over the rim of the delicate china cup. “Why don’t you go and tell him?”

“You should have already,” he said, his voice deep and smooth.

“What for?” she asked innocently. “To make him jealous?”

She could see the control he was exercising, and it excited her. Pushing Cole had always excited her.

“Lead him on,” he dared, “and I’ll kill him.”

Now that was pure possession, and it irritated her. He didn’t want her, but he wasn’t going to let anyone else have her. His flashing dark eyes were telling her so.

“You probably would, you wild man.” She drew back, lifting her chin to glare up at him, unafraid. “Well, let me tell you something, Coleman Whitehall. It’s a pleasant change to be admired and sought after by someone after being ignored by you!”

He stared at her with an odd expression. Almost amusement. “Where’s that temper been all these years?” he taunted. “I’ve never seen it before.”

“Oh, I’ve discovered lots of bad habits since I got away from you,” she told him. “I’ve decided that I like being myself. Don’t you like being disagreed with? God knows, everybody at the ranch is terrified of you!”

“Not you, I gather,” he drawled, taking a last draw from his cigarette.

“Never me.” She sipped some more gin, feeling reckless. “I’m doing great without you. I have a big, fancy house, and beautiful clothes, and lots of friends!”

He finished the cigarette and tossed it into the burning fireplace. The orange-and-yellow flames highlighted his bronzed skin, his sharp, well-defined features.

“The house and clothes don’t suit you, and your friends stink,” he said easily, standing erect with his hands on his slender hips. “You’re getting as wild as Katy. I don’t like it.”

“Then do something about it,” she challenged. “Make me stop, big man. You can do anything…Just ask Ben; he’s your fan club.”

He smiled ruefully. “Not since you left, he isn’t. Even Taggart and Cherry stopped talking to me once you were gone.”

“Nice of you to come right after me and take me home,” she said sarcastically. “Eight months and not even a postcard.”

“You’re the one who wanted to go.” His dark eyes searched her face quietly, and something flashed in them for an instant. “You’re not happy, Lacy,” he said quietly. “And that crowd in there isn’t going to make you happy.”

“What is, you?” she demanded. She felt like crying. She took another sip of gin and turned away from him, hurting like she never had. In the quiet, understated elegance of the enormous room, with its faint odor of lilacs, she felt as out of place as he looked. “Go away, Cole,” she said heavily. “There was never any room for me in your life. You wouldn’t even sleep with me—until that last night.” She didn’t see the expression that statement put on his face. “I decided to cut my losses and go back to the city, where I belonged. I thought you’d be pleased. After all, the marriage was forced on us.”

His face hardened. “You might have talked to me before you left.” He remembered how it had felt to watch her leave. She couldn’t know that his pride had been shattered by that defection, even though it was justified. He’d done his best to drive her away, to make damned sure he didn’t lose control again as he had that one night. The memory of the way he’d hurt her didn’t sit well on his conscience.

He might not have loved her, but he’d missed her. The color had gone out of his world when she’d left it. He stared at her now with an expression he was careful not to let her see. She was so lovely. She deserved a man who’d be good to her, who’d take proper care of her and give her a houseful of children…. His eyes closed briefly and he turned away. “But maybe it was just as well. We’d said it all already, hadn’t we, honey?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, we had,” she agreed. “I suppose we were just too different to make a successful marriage.” She bit her lower lip and closed her eyes. That was a lie, too. But it would please him to have her admit what he already believed.

“Is he your lover?” he asked suddenly, nodding toward the closed door. “That limp-wristed lizard who showed me in here?”

“I don’t have a lover, Cole,” she said, lifting her eyes bravely to his. “I’ve never had anyone…except you.”

He avoided her eyes, looking over at the mantel. Absently his fingers reached for the Bull Durham pouch. He pulled out a tissue-thin paper with deft, quick fingers and dabbed tobacco in a thin line in the middle of it, rolling it and sealing it with a flick of his tongue. He struck a match on the bricks of the fireplace and bent his dark head to light the finished product. Deep, pungent smoke filled the room.

She toyed with the dainty lace-and-cotton handkerchief in her hands. “Why did you come here?”

He shrugged, his broad chest rising and falling heavily. He turned around and his dark eyes searched her pale ones. He noticed her flushed face and the faint mist in her eyes. His heavy brows came together. “Have you been drinking all night?” he asked curtly.

“Of course,” she said, without subterfuge, and laughed defiantly. “Are you shocked? Or is it that you’re still back in the Dark Ages, when ladies didn’t do that sort of thing?”

“Decent women don’t do that sort of thing,” he told her, his voice unusually deep as he glared at her. “Or wear clothes like that,” he added, nodding toward the expanse of leg below the knee-deep hem of her skirt with her rolled-down hose held up by lacy garters.

“Don’t tell me you’re shocked to see my legs, Cole,” she taunted, lifting her chin as she smiled at him. “Of course, you never have seen my body, have you?” He looked frankly uncomfortable now, and she liked that. She liked making him uncomfortable. Her hands moved slowly down her body, and she watched his eyes follow the movement with satisfaction. “You can’t even talk about sex, can you, Cole? It’s something dark and sinful—and decent people only do it in the dark with the lights off—”

“Stop it!” he said shortly. He turned his back on her, smoking quietly, one hand touching the soft curve of a chair back. His breath seemed to come unsteadily. “Talking about…that…won’t change what happened.”

He almost sounded as if he regretted it. Perhaps he did. Perhaps he thought of it as a weakness. His upbringing had been rigid at best, and his Comanche grandfather had all but stolen him from his parents in those formative young years. He’d learned how to be a man years before age caught up with his conditioning, and tenderness hadn’t been part of his education.

The music suddenly got louder, attracting his attention to the closed door. “Is this a regular thing now, these parties?”

“I suppose so,” she confessed. “I can’t stand my own company, Cole.”

“I’m having some problems of my own.” He sat down in the dainty wing chair, looking so out of place in it that Lacy almost smiled in spite of the gravity between them.

She perched on the edge of the velvet-covered blue sofa and folded her hands primly in her lap.

“The elegant Miss Jarrett,” he murmured, studying her. “I had some exquisite dreams about you while I was in France.”

That shocked her. He’d never talked about France. “Did you? I wrote you every day,” she confessed shyly.

“And never mailed the letters,” he said, with a faint smile. “Katy told me.”

“I was afraid to. You were so reserved, and just because I was best friends with Katy and living in your house was no reason to think you’d welcome my letters. Even after the way we said good-bye,” she added, with unfamiliar self-consciousness. “You never wrote just to me, after all.”

He didn’t tell her why. “I wouldn’t have minded a letter or two. It got pretty bad over there,” he said.

She glanced up and then down. “You were shot down, weren’t you?”

“I got scratched up a little,” he said curtly. “Listen, suppose you come back to Spanish Flats?”

Her heart leapt straight up. She stared at him, searched his dark eyes. He was a proud man. It must have taken a lot of soul-searching for him to come and ask that. “Why, Cole?”

“Mother…isn’t well,” he said after a minute. “Katy’s being courted by some wild man from Chicago. Bennett’s trying to run off to France to join Ernest Hemingway and that Lost Generation of writers.” He ran a hand through his damp hair. “Lacy, they foreclosed on Johnson’s place yesterday,” he added, looking up with eyes as dark as his hair.

Her heart jumped. Spanish Flats was his life. “I still have the inheritance Great-aunt Lucy left me, and some from my parents,” she said gently. “I could—”

“I don’t want your damned money!” He got up, exploding in quiet rage. “I never did!”

“I know that, Cole,” she said, trying to soothe him. She stood, too, standing close to his tall, lean body. She stared up at him. “But I’d give it to you, all the same.”

There was a flicker of something in his dark eyes for just an instant. He reached out a lean hand, the one that wasn’t holding the cigarette, and drew his hard knuckles lightly down her creamy cheek, making her tingle all over. “Skin like a rose petal,” he murmured. “So lovely.”

Her full bow of a mouth parted as she sighed. She searched his eyes while time seemed to stop around them. She was a girl again, all shy and weak-kneed, worshipping Cole. Wanting him.

He saw that look and abruptly moved away again. Just like old times, Cole, she thought bitterly. She bit her lower lip until it hurt, trying to banish the other rejections from her mind. He didn’t want her to touch him. She’d have to get used to that.

“This was Mother’s idea,” he said tersely, smoking like a furnace. “She wants you to come home.”

“Marion, not you.” She nodded, sighing. “You don’t want me, do you, Cole? You never have.”

He stared up at the portrait without speaking. “You could come back with me on the train. Jack Henry is servicing my Ford, and Ben took Mother’s runabout yesterday and vanished with it. I caught the train instead.”

The music got louder again. Someone, probably someone tipsy, was playing with the radio knob.

“Why should I?” she asked, with what little pride she had left, shooting the question at him so sharply that it made him look at her. “What can Spanish Flats offer me that I can’t have right here?”

“Peace,” he said shortly, glaring at the music beyond the door. “These aren’t your kind of people.”

Her lips tugged into a smile. “No? What are my kind of people?”

He lifted an eyebrow at her. “Taggart and Cherry, of course,” he said.

Taggart and Cherry were two of the oldest ranch hands. Taggart had ridden with the James gang, back in the late 1800s, and Cherry had driven cattle up the Chisholm Trail with the big Texas outfits. They could tell stories, all right, and if they’d bathed more often than twice a month, they’d have been welcome in the house. Cole was careful to see that they sat on the porch when they came visiting, and that he was upwind of them.

She couldn’t help the grin. “It’s winter. You won’t have to worry about getting downwind.”

He smiled gently, traces of the younger Cole in his face for just a split second. Then he closed up again, like a clam. “Come home with me.”

She searched his eyes, hoping to find secrets there, but they were like a closed book. “You still haven’t told me what I’ll get if I come,” she repeated, the alcohol dimming her inhibitions, making her reckless for a change.

“What do you want?” he asked, with a mocking smile.

She gave it back. “Maybe I want you,” she said blatantly, the gin giving her a little reckless courage.

He didn’t say a word. His face hardened. His eyes went dark. “You hated it that night,” he said curtly. “You cried.”

“It hurt. It won’t again,” she said simply, airing her newly acquired knowledge. She lifted her chin stubbornly. “I’m twenty-four. This—” she gestured around her “—is what I have to look forward to in my old age. Loneliness and a few hangers-on, and some wild music and booze to dull the hurt. Well, if I’m going to grow old, I don’t want to do it alone.” She moved closer to him, her face quiet with pride. “I’ll go back with you. I’ll live with you. I’ll even pretend that we’re happy together, for appearances. But only if you stay in the same room with me, like a proper husband.” She hated making it an ultimatum, but she wanted a child. She might have to trick him into giving her one, or blackmail him into it, but she was determined.

He actually trembled. “What?” he sounded as if she’d astonished him.

“I want the appearance of normality, and no giggling family making fun of me because you make it so damned obvious that you don’t want me.”

“Stop cursing—” he shot back at her.

“I’ll curse if I feel like it,” she told him. “Cassie was forever making horrible remarks about your insistence on separate rooms, and so were Ben and Katy. Everyone knew you weren’t behaving like a husband. It was just one more humiliation to add to the humiliation of being treated like a stick of furniture! So, if I come back, those are my terms.”

He swallowed. His dark eyes touched every line, every curve of her face. For an instant, she could see him wavering. And then he closed up, all at once.

“I can’t be guided like a blind mule,” he told her bluntly, his stance threatening. “If you want to come, all right. But no conditions. You’ll have your old room, and you’ll sleep in it alone.”

“Would it be that hard for you to sleep with me?” she taunted. She slid her hands over her slender hips. “George wants to.”

His chest expanded roughly. “George can damned well go hang!”

“If you won’t, I’ll let him,” she threatened. Her eyes sparkled with the challenge. Let him sweat for a change. Let him wonder and worry. “I’ll stay right here, and—”

“Damn you!” His dark eyebrows seemed to meet in the middle as he glared at her. “Damn you, Lacy!”

“You can close your eyes and think of England,” she whispered mischievously, because this was fun. The idea of seducing Cole and making him enjoy it was the most delicious fun she’d had in eight long months. And if there was a little revenge mixed up in it, so what? The thought of luring him into her bed, of tempting and tantalizing him, was delightful, especially now that she knew it was unlikely to be painful a second time. Untold pleasures lay in store for both of them, if she could bluff him.

He muttered something under his breath, finished his cigarette, and slammed it into the fireplace. “Damn you!” he repeated.

She moved around in front of him, making him look at her. “Why did you come to me that night if you didn’t want me?”

“I did…want you,” he bit off.

“And now you don’t?”

Oh, God. She was killing him by inches! His body felt like drawn cord. What she was demanding was impossible, but he couldn’t let her carry out her threat. The thought of Lacy with any other man cut his heart. He drew a deep breath. He couldn’t show weakness, not now.

Attack was the best defense. He lifted his face and glared down at her. “Sex is a weapon women use,” he said coldly. “My grandfather taught me to live without it.”

“Your grandfather almost succeeded in making a slab of stone out of you!” she shot back.

“Caring is a weakness,” he said shortly. “It’s a disease. I won’t be owned by any damned woman—much less a society girl from Georgia with a fat wallet!”

Her face blanched. Her fists clenched at her sides. So it was going to be war. All right. He was asking for it.

“Nevertheless,” she said tautly, “if you want me to come back, you’ll have to share a room with me. I’m not going to have the family laughing at me a second time. You don’t even have to touch me, Cole,” she conceded, hoping proximity might accomplish what blackmail couldn’t. “But you are going to have to share my room. If you want me back…” she added calculatingly. “And I think you need me—at least to help you cope with Katy. Don’t you?”

“Haven’t you any pride, woman?”

“No. I gave it up the day I married you,” she told him. “My pride, my self-respect, and my hopes of a rosy future. If you want me back, I’ll come. But on my terms.”

His eyes were fierce, black as coal. He drew in a slow, deep breath. “Your terms,” he said curtly. “Blackmail, you mean.”

He looked so formidable that she almost backed down. Then she remembered how she’d learned to treat George when he got out of hand. She wondered absently if it might work on stone?

She moved a little closer, coquettishly, and deliberately batted her long eyelashes at him. “Kiss me, you fool!” she said vampishly, lifting her face and parting her red lips.

He stared down at her through narrowed eyes and hoped like hell she wouldn’t notice the sudden thunder of his heartbeat at that innocent teasing. “Stop that,” he said irritably, giving nothing away. “All right,” he said, with a rough sigh, “we’ll share a room.”

“Finally, a chink in the stone!” She sighed, smiling wickedly, and he actually seemed to soften a little. Miracle of miracles! Had she accidentally hit on a way to get to him?

He scowled at her for another few seconds, half irritated, half intrigued by this new Lacy. He pursed his lips and almost smiled down at the picture she made. “I’ll pick you up in the morning at seven.” He glanced toward the hall. “You’d better send that pack of coyotes home.”

She curtsied. “Yes, Your Worship!”

“Lacy…” he said warningly.

“You’re so handsome when you’re mad,” she sighed.

The scowl got worse. He actually seemed to vibrate, and she felt a fever of pleasure that she could knock him off-balance. If he were vulnerable, there might be a little hope. Eight months, wasted; years wasted—and now she’d discovered the way to reach him!

“Good night,” he said firmly.

She gave him an impish little grin. “Wouldn’t you like to stay the night?”

“I would not,” he said shortly.

“Then enjoy your last night alone,” she said, with a gleam in her blue eyes. She turned and walked away, on legs that could hardly hold her. And she was laughing when she reached the room where the party was still in full swing.

But the man letting himself out the front door wasn’t laughing. He never should have agreed to her terms. He should have told her to take them and go to hell. Only he was so hungry for the sight of her that his mind had stopped working. It was probably all bluff on her part, about sleeping with that tall clown. But how could he risk it? By God, he’d beat the man to death if he so much as touched her!

The violence of his feelings disturbed him. She was just a woman, just Lacy, who’d been around so long she was like the flowers his mother always put on the hall table. But things had been different since that night with her. He hadn’t meant to touch her. The marriage had been forced; he’d been determined to find some way to drive her from the ranch without ever consummating it. And then he’d started kissing her, and one thing had led to another. He wasn’t sorry, except for hurting her. It had been magic. But it was too big a risk to repeat. How in hell was he going to share a room with her and keep his secret? In that intimacy, which he’d avoided for years even with his men, how could he keep her from finding out?

He’d lose her when she knew, he thought. That hadn’t bothered him at first, but he’d had too much time to think. He’d missed her. He’d wanted her. Avoiding her hadn’t worked. He’d tried that, eight months’ worth, and tonight was the first time he’d felt alive since she’d left him. He sighed. Well, he’d take it one day at a time. That was what Turk always said: Stop gulping life down in a swallow. So maybe he’d try that. As he left the house, the look in his eyes was as grim as rain, as hopeless as dead flowers on a grave.