LITMIR.BIZ

       Two

      IT WAS a boring Saturday. Barrie had already done the laundry and gone to the grocery store. She had a date, but she’d canceled it. Somehow, one more outing with a man she didn’t care about was more than she could bear. No one was ever going to measure up to Dawson, anyway, as much as she’d like to pretend it would happen. He owned her, as surely as he owned half a dozen ranches and a veritable fleet of cars, even if he didn’t want her.

      She’d given up hoping for miracles, and after last night, it was obvious that the dislike he’d had for her since her fifteenth birthday wasn’t going to diminish. Even her one memory of him as a lover was nothing she wanted to remember. He’d hurt her, and afterward, he’d accused her of being a wanton who’d teased him into seducing her. He could be kind to the people he liked, but he’d never liked Barrie or her mother. They’d been the outsiders, the interlopers, in the Rutherford family. Barrie’s mother had married his father, and Dawson had hated them both from the moment he laid eyes on them.

      Eleven years later, after the deaths of both their parents, nothing had changed except that Barrie had learned self-preservation. She’d avoided Dawson like the plague, until last night, when she’d betrayed everything to him in that burst of anger. She was embarrassed and ashamed this morning to have given herself away so completely. Her one hope was that he was already on his way back to Sheridan, and that she wouldn’t have to see him again until the incident was forgotten, until these newest wounds he’d inflicted were healed.

      She’d just finished mopping the kitchen floor in her bare feet and had put the mop out on the small balcony of her apartment to dry when the doorbell rang.

      It was almost lunchtime and she was hungry, having spent her morning working. She hoped it wasn’t the man she’d turned down for a date that evening, trying to convince her to change her mind.

      Her wavy black hair lay in disheveled glory down her back. It was her one good feature, along with her green eyes. Her mouth was shaped like a bow and her nose was straight, but she wasn’t conventionally pretty, although she had a magnificent figure. She was dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of worn jeans. Both garments had shrunk, emphasizing her perfect body. She didn’t have makeup on, but her eyes were bright and her cheeks were rosy from all her exertions.

      Without thinking, she opened the door and started to speak, when she realized who was standing there. It definitely wasn’t Phil, the salesman with whom she’d turned down a date.

      It was always the same when she came upon Dawson unawares. Her heart began to race, her breath stilled in her throat, her body burned as if she stood in a fire.

      Eyes two shades lighter green than her own looked back at her. Whatever he wore, he looked elegant. He was in designer jeans and a white shirt, with a patterned gray jacket worn loose over them. His feet were encased in hand-tooled gray leather boots and a creamy Stetson dangled from one hand.

      He looked her up and down without smiling, without expression. Nothing he felt ever was allowed to show, while Barrie’s face was as open as a child’s book to him.

      “What do you want?” she asked belligerently.

      An eyebrow jerked over amused green eyes. “A kind word. But I’ve given up asking for the impossible. Can I come in? Or,” he added, the smile fading, “isn’t it convenient?”

      She moved away from the door. “Check the bedroom if you like,” she said sarcastically.

      He searched her eyes. Once, he might have taken her up on it, just to irritate her. Not since last night, though. He hadn’t the heart to hurt her any more than he already had. He tossed his hat onto the counter and leaned against it to watch her close the door.

      “Have you decided whether or not you’ll come back to Sheridan?” he asked bluntly. “It’s only for a week. You’re on summer vacation, and John told me that you’d been laid off at your part-time job.” He looked at the counter and said with calculation, “Surely you can survive without your flock of admirers for that long.”

      She didn’t contradict him or fly off the handle. That was what he wanted. She made points with Dawson by remaining calm.

      “I don’t want to play chaperone for you, Dawson,” she said simply. “Get someone else.”

      “There isn’t anyone else, and you know it. I want that land. What I don’t want is to give Mrs. Holten any opportunities for blackmail. She’s a lady who’s used to getting what she wants.”

      “You’re evenly matched, then, aren’t you?” she replied.

      “I don’t have everything I want,” he countered. His eyes narrowed. “Corlie and Rodge will be in the house, too. They miss you.”

      She didn’t answer. She just looked at him, hating him and loving him while all the bad memories surfaced.

      “Your eyes are very expressive,” he said, searching them. There was so much pain behind the pretense, he thought sadly, and he’d caused it. “Such sad eyes, Barrie.”

      He sounded mysterious, broody. She sensed a change in him, some ripple of feeling that he concealed, covered up. His lean fingers toyed with the brim of his Stetson and he studied it while he spoke. “I bought you a horse.”

      She stared at him. “Why?”

      “I thought you might respond to a bribe,” he said carelessly. “He’s a quarter horse. A gelding.” He smiled with faint self-contempt. “Can you still ride?”

      “Yes.” She didn’t want to admit that it touched her to have Dawson buy her a present. Even a plastic necklace would have given her pleasure if he’d given it to her.

      His eyes lifted back to hers. “Well?”

      “You have Rodge and Corlie to play chaperone. You don’t need me.”

      His pale eyes held hers. “Yes, I do. More than you know.”

      She swallowed. “Look, Dawson, you know I don’t want to come back, and you know why. Let’s just leave it at that.”

      His eyes began to glitter. “It’s been five years,” he said coldly. “You can’t live in the past forever!”

      “The devil I can’t!” she snapped. Her eyes hated him. “I won’t forgive you,” she whispered, almost choking on the words. “I won’t ever, ever forgive you!”

      His gaze fell, and his jaw clenched. “I suppose I should have expected that. But hope springs eternal, don’t they say?” He picked up his hat and turned back to her.

      She hadn’t gotten herself under control at all. Her slender hands were clenched at her sides and her eyes blazed.

      He paused just in front of her. At close range, he was much taller than she was. And despite their past,

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