Authors: Diana Palmer
She clasped her arms tightly over her breasts and her entire body went rigid from his proximity.
He moved back, just a couple of inches. She relaxed, but only a little. Her posture was still unnatural. He wanted to think she was acting this way deliberately, in an attempt to resurrect the old guilt. But it wasn’t an act. She looked at him with eyes that were vulnerable, but even if she cared as much as ever, she was afraid of him. And it showed.
The knowledge made him uncomfortable. More uncomfortable than he usually was. He’d taunted her with her feelings for him for years, until it was a habit he couldn’t break. He’d even done it the night he lost his head and destroyed her innocence. He’d behaved viciously to push away the guilt and the shame he felt at his loss of control.
He hadn’t meant to attack her tonight, of all times. Not after the argument he’d had with her months ago. He’d come to make peace. But the attempt had backfired. It was the way she was dressed, and the two eager young men sitting like worshipers at her feet, that had enraged him with jealousy. He hadn’t meant a word he said, but she wouldn’t know that. She was used to having him bait her. It didn’t make him feel like a man to punish her for his own sins; it made him sick. Especially now, with what he’d only just found out about the past, and what had happened to her because of him…
He averted his eyes to her folded arms. She looked like a whipped child. She’d adopted that posture after he’d seduced her. The image was burned indelibly into his brain. It still hurt, too.
“I only want to talk,” he said curtly. “You can relax.”
“What could we possibly have to say to each other?” she asked icily. “I wish I never had to see you again, Dawson!”
His eyes bit into hers. “Like hell you do.”
She couldn’t win an argument with him. It was better not to start one. “What do you want to talk about?”
His gaze went past her, to the living room, where people were laughing and drinking and talking. Happy, comfortable people. Not like the two on the staircase.
He shrugged and took another swallow from the glass before he faced her again. “What else? I want you to come home for a week or two.”
Her heart raced. She averted her gaze. “No!”
He’d expected that reaction. He was ready to debate it. “You’ll have plenty of chaperones,” he informed her. “Rodge and Corlie.” He paused deliberately. “And the widow Holton.”
She looked up. “Still?” she muttered sarcastically. “Why don’t you just marry her and be done with it?”
He deliberately ignored the sarcasm. “You know that she’s got a tract of land in Bighorn that I have to own. The only way she’ll discuss selling it to me is if I invite her to Sheridan for a few days.”
“I hear that she’s hanging around the ranch constantly,” she remarked.
“She visits regularly, but not overnight,” he said. “The only way I can clinch the land deal and get her to go away is to let her spend a few days at the ranch. I can’t do that without you.”
He didn’t look pleased about it. Odd. She’d heard from her best friend, Antonia Long, that the widow was lovely and eligible. She couldn’t understand why Dawson was avoiding her. It was common knowledge that she’d chased Powell Long, Antonia’s husband, and that she was casting acquisitive eyes at Dawson as well. Barrie had no right to be jealous, but she was. She didn’t look at him, because she didn’t want him to know for sure just how vulnerable she still was.
“You must like her if you’re willing to have her stay at the ranch,” she said. “Why do you keep plaguing me to come and play chaperone?”
His pale green eyes met hers. “I don’t want her in my bed. Is that blunt enough?”
She flushed. It wasn’t the sort of remark he was in the habit of making to her. They never discussed intimate things at all.
“You still blush like a virgin,” he said quietly.
Her eyes flashed. “And you’re the one man in the world who has reason to know that I’m not!” she said in a harsh, bitter undertone.
His expression wasn’t very readable. He averted his eyes to the carpet. After a minute he finished his drink. He reached through the banister to put the glass on the hall table beyond it.
She pulled her skirt aside as he reached past her. For an instant, his deeply tanned face was on an unnerving level with hers. She could see the tiny mole at the corner of his mouth, the faint dimple in his firm chin. His upper lip was thinner than the lower one, and she remembered with sorrow how those hard lips felt on her mouth. She’d grieved for him for so long. She’d never been able to stop loving him, despite the pain he’d caused her, despite his suspicions, his antagonism. She wondered sometimes if it would ever stop.
He turned sideways on the step, leaning back against the banister to cross his long legs in front of him. His boots were immaculate, as was the white silk shirt under his open dinner jacket. But, then, he made the most casual clothes look elegant. He was elegant.
“Why don’t you get married?” he asked suddenly.
Her eyebrows went up. “Why should I?”
His quiet gaze went over her body, down her full, firm breasts to her narrow hips and long legs. The side slit had fallen open in the position she was sitting, and all too much of her silk-clad leg was visible.
He watched her face very carefully as he spoke. “Because you’re twenty-six. In a few more years, it will be more difficult for you to have a child.”
A child…A child.
The color drained out of her face, out of her eyes. She swallowed a surge of nausea as she remembered the wrenching pain, the fear as she phoned for an ambulance and was carried to the hospital. He didn’t know. He’d never know, because she wouldn’t tell him.
“I don’t want to marry anyone. Excuse me, I have to—”
She tried to get up, but his lean hand shot out and caught her forearm, anchoring her to the steps. He was too close. She could smell the exotic cologne he always wore, feel his breath, whiskey-scented, on her face.
“Stop running from me!” he growled.
His eyes met hers. They were relentless, intent.
“Let me go!” she raged.
His fingers only tightened. He made her feel like a hysterical idiot with that long, hard stare, but she couldn’t stop struggling.
He ended the unequal struggle by tugging slightly and she landed back on the steps with a faint thump. “Stop it,” he said firmly.
Her eyes flashed at him, her cheeks flushed.
He let go of her arm all at once. “At least you look alive again,” he remarked curtly. “And back to normal pretending to hate me.”
“I’m not pretending. I do hate you, Dawson,” she said, as if she was programmed to fight him, to deny any hint of caring in her voice.
“Then it shouldn’t affect you all that much to come home with me.”
“I won’t run interference for you with the widow. If you want that land so badly…”
“I can’t buy it if she won’t sell it,” he reminded her. “And she won’t sell it unless I entertain her.”
“It’s a low thing to do, to get a few acres of land.”
“Land with the only water on the Bighorn property,” he reminded her. “I had free access when her husband was alive. Now I buy the land or Powell Long will buy it and fence it off from my cattle. He hates me.”
“I know how he feels,” she said pointedly.
“Do you know what she’ll do if you’re not there?” he continued. “She’ll try to seduce me, sure as hell. She thinks no man can resist her. When I refuse her, she’ll take her land straight to Powell Long and make him a deal he can’t refuse. Your friendship with Antonia won’t stop him from fencing off that river, Barrie. Without water, we’ll lose the property and all the cattle on it. I’ll have to sell at a loss. Part of that particular ranch is your inheritance. You stand to lose even more than I do.”
“She wouldn’t,” she began.
“Don’t kid yourself,” he drawled. “She’s attracted to me. Or don’t you remember how that feels?” he added with deliberate sarcasm.
She flushed, but she glared at him. “I’m on vacation.”
“So what?”
“I don’t like Sheridan, I don’t like you, and I don’t want to spend my vacation with you!”
“Then don’t.”
She hit the banister helplessly. “Why should I care if I lose my inheritance? I’ve got a good job!”
“Why, indeed?”
But she was weakening. Her part-time job had fallen through. She was looking at having to do some uncomfortable budgeting, despite the good salary she made. It only stretched so far. Besides, she could imagine what a woman like Mrs. Holton would do to get her claws into Dawson. The widow could compromise him, if she didn’t do anything else. She could make up some lurid tale about him if he didn’t give out…and there was plenty of gossip already, about Dawson’s lack of interest in women. It didn’t bear thinking about, what that sort of gossip would do to Dawson’s pride. He’d suffered enough through the gossip about his poor father and Antonia Long, when there wasn’t one shred of truth to it. And in his younger days, his success with women was painfully obvious to a worshiping Barrie.
“For a few days, you said,” she began.
His eyebrows lifted. “You aren’t changing your mind!” he exclaimed with mock surprise.
“I’ll think about it,” she continued firmly.
He shrugged. “We should be able to live under the same roof for that long without it coming to bloodshed.”
“I don’t know about that.” She leaned against the banister. “And if I decide to go—which I haven’t yet—when she leaves, I leave, whether or not you’ve got your tract of land.”
He smiled faintly. There was something oddly calculating in his eyes. “Afraid to stay with me, alone?”
She didn’t have to answer him. Her eyes spoke for her.
“You don’t know how flattering that reluctance is these days,” he said, searching her eyes. “All the same, it’s misplaced. I don’t want you, Barrie,” he added with a mocking smile.
“You did, once,” she reminded him angrily.
He nodded. His hands went into his pockets and his broad shoulders shifted. “It was a long time ago,” he said stiffly. “I have other interests now. So do you. All I want is for you to run interference for me until I can get my hands on that property. Which is to your benefit, as well,” he added pointedly. “You inherited half the Bighorn property when George died. If we lose the water rights, the land is worthless. That means you inherit nothing. You’ll have to depend on your job until you retire.”
She knew that. The dividend she received from her share of cattle on the Bighorn ranch helped pay the bills.
“Oh,
there
you are, Dawson, dear!” a honied voice drawled behind him. “I’ve been looking just everywhere for you!” A slinky brunette, a good few years younger than Barrie, with a smile the size of a dinner plate latched onto Dawson’s big arm and pressed her ample, pretty chest against it. “I’d just love to dance with you!” she gushed, her eyes flirting outrageously with his.
Dawson went rigid. If Barrie hadn’t seen it for herself, she wouldn’t have believed it. With a face that might have been carved from stone, he released himself from the woman’s grasp and moved pointedly back from her.
“Excuse me. I’m talking to my stepsister,” he said curtly.
The woman was shocked at being snubbed. She was beautiful and quite obviously used to trapping men with that coquettish manner, and the handsomest man here looked at her as if she smelled bad.
She laughed a little nervously. “Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Later, perhaps, then?”
She turned and went quickly back into the living room.
Barrie was standing where she’d been throughout the terse exchange, leaning against the banister. Now she moved away from it and down the steps to stand just in front of Dawson. Her green eyes searched his quietly.
His jaw clenched. “I told you. I’m not in the market for a woman—not you or anyone else.”
Her teeth settled into her lower lip, an old habit that he’d once chided her about.
He apparently hadn’t forgotten. His forefinger tapped sharply at her upper lip. “Stop that. You’ll draw blood,” he accused.
She released the stinging flesh. “I didn’t realize,” she murmured. She sighed as she searched his hard face. “You loved women, in the old days,” she said with more bitterness than she knew. “They followed you around like bees on a honey trail.”
His face was hard. “I lost my taste for them.”
“But, why?”
“You don’t have the right to invade my privacy,” he said curtly.
She smiled sadly. “I never did. You were always so mysterious, so private. You never shared anything with me when I was younger. You were always impatient to get away from me.”
“Except once,” he replied shortly. “And see where that got us.”
She took a step toward the living room. “Yes.”
There was a silence, filled by merry voices and the clink of ice in glasses.
“If I ask you something, point-blank, will you answer me?” he asked abruptly.
She turned, her eyes wide, questioning. “That depends on what it is. If you won’t answer personal questions, I don’t see why I should.”
His eyes narrowed. “Perhaps not.”
She grimaced. “All right. What do you want to know?”
“I want to know,” he said quietly, “how many men you’ve really had since me.”
She almost gasped at the audacity of the question.
His eyes slid down her body and back up again, and they were still calculating, the way they’d been all evening. “You dress like a femme fatale. I can’t remember the last time I saw you so uncovered. You flirt and tease, but it’s all show, it’s all on the surface.” He scowled. “Barrie…”
She flushed. “Stop looking into my mind! I hated it when I was in my teens and I hate it now!”
He nodded slowly. “It was always like that. I even knew what you were thinking. It was a rare kind of rapport. Somewhere along the way, we lost it.”
“You smothered it,” she said correcting. He smiled coolly. “I didn’t like having you inside my head.”
“Which works both ways,” she agreed.
He reached out and touched her cheek lightly, his fingers lingering against the silky soft skin. She didn’t move away. That was a first.
“Come here, Barrie,” he invited, and this time he didn’t smile. His eyes held hers, hypnotized her, beckoned her.