LITMIR.BIZ

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of feeling that had been in his terse statement. Her heart was going crazy. “He didn’t even get out of the truck,” she began.

      “Gabe likes girls, and you’re filling out.” He didn’t look at her as he said it. He didn’t want her to see how disturbed he was at the thought of Gabe making a pass at her. “Don’t lead him on. He’s a good man and I’d hate to lose him. But, so help me, if he ever touched you, I’d kill him.”

      Kate felt the ground go out from under her. She couldn’t even speak for the shock, she just stared at him. There had been a trace of violence in that threat, and the normal drawl had gone into eclipse as he spoke.

      “Jason, didn’t you notice that I was riding Kip?” she asked after a minute, and the words came out roughly.

      He frowned. “So?”

      “Gabe came in the pickup,” she said. “I wouldn’t ride over to Diamond Spur with him. I know he thinks he’s interested in me. He’ll get over it. Last month it was little Betsy Weeks,” she added with a forced smile. “He’s a typical love ’em and leave ’em cowboy. He’s no threat.”

      He glanced at her sideways. “Okay.”

      “Anyway, I can handle my dates, thank you,” she said.

      “I remember the last time you said that,” he replied with a faintly amused smile. “Do you?”

      She hated that smile. Of course she remembered the last time, how could she forget? She’d defended to her mother the reputation of a boy she wanted to date, only to have to suffer the embarrassment of calling home from a pay phone in the middle of the night to be rescued. But Jason had come in Mary Whittman’s place, and Kate had never heard the end of it. In addition, Kate’s erstwhile date had sported a black eye for several days thereafter and subsequently joined the Marine Corps. It had all but ruined her social life. Local boys knew Jason, and since the incident, Kate had spent every weekend at home. There was nothing between her and Jason, but his attitude had created that impression. She wondered if he realized how people looked at his possessive attitude, or if he cared.

      She glanced at him, frowning. He was possessive, all right. But was it only because they were friends, or was he feeling the same odd longings that were kindling inside her? She looked away nervously.

      “Would you like to listen to some music?” she asked, her voice edgy and quick.

      He glanced at her and smiled. “Okay, honey. End of discussion. Turn on whatever you like.”

      What she liked was country-western, and that seemed to suit him very well. If his arm was hurting, he made sure it didn’t show. Kate sat back against the seat with a sigh, while turbulent sensations came and went in her taut body. She couldn’t even breathe properly. What if he noticed?

      Things were getting totally out of hand. She felt almost uncomfortable this close to Jason, but in an exciting kind of way. She shifted, wondering at the remark he’d made about Gabe. Had it been just a joking statement, or had he meant it?

      Well, he’d never so much as made a pass at her, and knowing how he felt about women, there was no future in mooning over him. She’d already realized that. But it was easier to tell herself he was off limits than it was to do anything about it. And what good would it do to drive herself crazy with doomed hope? She leaned back, closed her eyes, and listened to the rhythmic strains of the music as they drove toward town.

       CHAPTER TWO

      DR. HARRIS WAS a small, stout, bespectacled man in his fifties who knew Jason Donavan all too well. With a resigned smile, he put in fifteen stitches, injected Jason with a tetanus booster, and sent him home. Kate and the doctor exchanged speaking glances behind the tall rancher’s back and Dr. Harris grinned.

      “See how easy that was?” Kate said as they reached the Bronco. “A few stitches and you’re back on the job.”

      He didn’t bother to answer. He opened her door for her with exaggerated patience, closed it, and paused to light a cigarette on his way around the hood to his own side.

      San Frio was a lazy little south Texas town with a pioneering history but not much of a present. It boasted a grocery store, a post office, a small clinic, a pharmacy, a weekly newspaper, a small textile company, a video and appliance sales and service store, and an enormous and prosperous feed store. It seemed to Kate to be more an outgrowth of the ranch than a town, however, since Jason had a resident veterinarian, blacksmith, mechanic, accounting firm, computer specialist, and other assorted employees who could do everything from artificial insemination of cows to complicated laboratory cultures on specimens from the cattle.

      Huge oak trees lined the cracked, crumbling sidewalks that supported as many deserted buildings as occupied ones. The drugstore had the same overhead fans that had cooled Texas ranchers sixty years before, and there was a hitching post that Texas rangers had used as long ago as the 1890s.

      “It never changes,” Kate said with a smile, watching two old men sit in cane-bottom chairs outside the grocery store, exchanging whittled pieces of wood. “If it lasts a hundred years, San Frio will still look like this.”

      Jason closed his door and fastened his seat belt. “Thank God,” he said. “I’d hate like hell to see it turn into a city the size of San Antonio.”

      “And what’s wrong with San Antonio?” she demanded.

      “Nothing,” he replied. “Not one thing. I just like San Frio better. More elbow room. Fasten your seat belt.”

      “We’re only going to the ranch....”

      He looped an arm over the back of the seat and stared at her with pursed lips and a do-it-or-I’ll-sit-here-all-day look. After a minute of that stubborn, concentrated scrutiny, Kate reached for her seat belt.

      “You intimidate people,” she muttered. “Look at old Mr. Davis watching you.”

      He glanced amusedly toward the store where the stooped old man was grinning toward them. Jason raised a hand and so did the old man.

      “My grandfather used to pal around with him,” Kate said. “He said Mr. Davis was a hell-raiser in his time. And look at him now, whittling.”

      “At least he’s alive to do it,” he replied.

      “My grandfather couldn’t whittle, but he used to braid rope out of horsehair,” Kate recalled. “He said it was hard on the hands, but it worked twice as well as that awful Mexican hemp to rope cattle.”

      “The best ropes are made of nylon,” Jason replied. He started the jeep and reversed it. “After it’s properly seasoned, you can’t buy a better throwing rope.”

      “You ought to know,” she mused. She studied his dark face, her eyes skimming over the sharp features, the straight nose. He had an elegance about him, although she decided he wasn’t handsome at all. In his city clothes, he could compete with the fanciest businessman.

      He caught that silent scrutiny and cocked an eyebrow, looking rakish under the brim of his weatherbeaten hat. “Well, are you satisfied, now that I’ve been stitched and cross-stitched?”

      “I guess.” She settled back against the seat as Jason roared out of town at his usual breakneck pace, bouncing her from seat to roof and down again. She grimaced. “At least you’ll heal properly now.”

      “I’d have healed properly alone, thank you. God knows why everybody on the place thinks I’ll die if they don’t drag you over every time I scratch myself,” he muttered.

      “Because to you everything short of disembowelment is a scratch,” she replied. “People do make mistakes from time to time, even you. It’s human.”

      “That’s the one thing I’m not, cupcake,” he replied dryly. “Ask any one of my men during roundup, and they’ll tell you the same thing.”

      He turned off

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