LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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