The Cowboy and the Lady (14 page)

He moved with a slow, easy grace that was as much a part of him as that worn black Stetson pulled low on his forehead. She loved the very sight of him, but she turned away from it, hurting all over again at his insults, his rejection.

“All alone?” he asked curtly. “Where’s brother Duncan this morning?”

“At the office,” she said tightly.

“And the others?” he added, refusing to even speak Bea’s name.

“Gone to town shopping.” She glared at him. “And not to spend your money.”

He ignored that, watching the colt. “Not afraid of me, kitten?”

“Or of twenty like you,” she shot back, turning away, too proud to let her very real apprehension show.

She leaned over the stall gate and stared down at the colt, who was suckling his mother. The white mare stood with her ears pricked and alert, watching the humans closely.

Jace moved to the gate beside her, so close that his arm touched hers where it rested on the rough wood, and a sweet, reckless surge of delight filled her.

“Do you still show them?” she asked, hoping to change the subject.

“I don’t have time, honey,” he said, and his voice was no longer angry. “The Johnsons’ daughter enters one or two a year on the horse show circuit, and I’ve got a few trophies from bygone days, but most of my stock is at stud. I let Johnson handle the show circuit. All I do is take credit for the trophies.”

She feathered a glance at him, amazed at the humorous note in his voice. “Who shows you?” she asked lightly, surprising him.

He raised an eyebrow at her and shoved his hat back over his dark, unruly hair. “Daring, aren’t you?”

She shook back her silvery-blond hair until it drifted around her shoulders in a cloud. “I like to live dangerously once in a while,” she agreed.

He flicked her cheek with a lean finger. “Not on my land,” he cautioned. “I wouldn’t want to be responsible for you getting hurt.” He cut a hard gaze down at her, holding her eyes deliberately in a heady silence.

Her lips parted slightly from the shock of it, and his eyes caught the movement, darting to the soft pink mouth with unnerving quickness.

She fought down the longing to move closer to him, to feel his hard body against hers, to tempt his mouth into violence…having experienced the skill of that beautiful mouth, she was unbearably hungry for it. She tore her eyes away from his and struggled to control her quick, unsteady breathing.

“The, uh, the foal is lovely,” she said unsteadily.

He moved closer, coming up behind her to make retreat impossible, his muscular arms resting on the gate on either side of her to imprison her there. His body was warm, and she could feel its heat, smell the tangy cologne he used drifting down into her nostrils.

“Do…you have any more?” she continued when he didn’t answer her.

She felt his breath in her hair. “You smell of wildflowers,” he murmured sensuously.

“It’s my shampoo,” she whispered inanely.

He shifted, bringing her body into slight, maddening contact with his. She could feel his powerful legs touching hers, his broad chest at her shoulder blades.

“How many Arabians do you have now?” she asked in a high, unfamiliar voice.

“Enough,” he murmured, bending to nuzzle aside the hair at her neck and press his warm, open mouth to the quivering tender flesh he found under it.

“Jason!” she gasped involuntarily.

His chest rose and fell heavily against her back. His mouth moved up, nibbling at her ear, her temple. “God, your skin is soft,” he whispered huskily. “Like velvet. Satin.”

Her fingers gripped the gate convulsively while she fought for control and lost. Her throat felt as if there were rocks in it.

Even while she was protesting, her body was melting back against his, yielding instinctively.

His hands moved, gripping her tiny waist painfully.

“Oh, Jason, you mustn’t!” she managed in a hoarse plea. “Not after all the things you’ve said!” she accused, hating him for what he could do to her.

“I don’t give a damn what I said,” he growled in a haunted tone. “I want you so much, I ache with it!”

She struggled, but he whipped her around and pinned her against the gate with the carefully controlled weight of his body. His eyes burned down into hers, his face taut with longing.

Tears of intense emotion welled in the wide brown eyes that pleaded with him. Her soft hands pressed against the unyielding hardness of his chest.

“Are these games really necessary?” he asked curtly. “I know what I do to you. I can feel it. Do you have to pretend? I don’t mind if you’re experienced, damn it—it doesn’t matter!”

She shoved against him furiously, only to find herself helpless in those hurting, powerful hands. “Let me go, Jason Whitehall!” she blurted out. “I’m not experienced, I’m not easy and I’m not pretending!”

His nostrils flared as he held her rigid body. “Do you expect me to believe that? My God, you were wild in my arms, as hungry for it as I was.”

“I don’t sleep around!” she exclaimed.

“Your mother does,” he returned fiercely.

She glared at him. “More of your unfounded slander, cowboy?”

His eyes glittered dangerously. “I found her in my father’s bedroom,” he fired back, contempt in every hard line of his face. “A month before he died. She was still married to that poor, cold fish of a father of yours.”

Her face went stone-white. It was unthinkable that Bea would have behaved like that with Jude Whitehall! He was lying, he had to be! But there wasn’t any trace of deception in his expression. He meant it!

“My mother?” she breathed incredulously.

“Your mother,” he returned coldly. “The only consolation was that no one knew—not Duncan, especially not my mother. But I did,” he added gruffly. “And every time I saw her, I wanted to wring her soft neck!”

She licked her lips, feeling their dryness with a sense of unreality. “It wasn’t because she snubbed you,” she whispered, knowing the truth now.

“No. It was because she was carrying on an affair with my father, and I couldn’t stop it. All I could do was try to protect my mother. I did that, but your mother took years off his life. She robbed us all.”

She lowered her eyelids wearily. It was the last straw. And she had never even suspected!

“And you think I’m like her,” she whispered. “That was why you assumed I was sleeping with Terry.”

“Something like that.” He laughed shortly. “You don’t think it was because I was jealous?”

She shook her head with a bitter little smile. “That would never occur to me.” She drew in a deep, ragged breath. “I’ll pack and leave today.”

His hands tightened, hurting. “Not yet. What about your precious account? Your
partner
won’t be pleased if you let it slip through your fingers.”

Her eyes flew open, tormented and hurting. “Why don’t you just shoot me?” she asked, tears in her eyes. “You’ve made life hell for me for so long…and Mother and her spending sprees…now you tell me…she was cheating on my father…oh, God, I wish I was dead!”

Panic-stricken, mad with wounded pride and betrayal, she broke away from him with a surge of maniacal strength, and ran outside. Catching sight of Jace’s horse tethered by the door, she vaulted into the saddle before he could stop her. Ignoring his curt command to rein in, she leaned forward, over the silky gray mane, and gave the spirited horse its head, blindly hanging on as they plunged into the nearby forest and kept going.

The animal reacted to its rider’s emotional upheaval by putting on a frantic burst of speed and going too close under a low-hanging limb. Amanda, with some inner warning, looked up through tear-blinded eyes, but she was too late to save herself. The limb came straight at her, and she felt the rough scrape of wood, the jar of impact, just before a numbness sent her plummeting down into a strange darkness.

Chapter Eight

D
uncan was sitting beside her when she opened her eyes to blazing sunlight, medical apparatus and a wicked headache.

“I won’t ask the obvious question,” she said weakly, and tried to smile. “But I would like to know who clubbed me.”

Duncan smiled back, pressing the slender hand lying on top of the crisp white hospital sheet. “A pecan limb, actually,” he said. “You didn’t duck.”

“I didn’t have time.” She felt her forehead and touched her throbbing brow, aware of painful bruising all over her body. “Have I been here long?”

“Overnight,” he replied. “Jace’s been pacing the halls like a madman, muttering and being generally abusive to every member of the hospital staff who came within snarling distance.”

Jace! It all came back. The argument, the accusation he’d made, her own shock at finding out, finally, the reason he hated her and Bea so much. Her dark eyes closed.

Duncan watched her closely, frowning slightly. “What did he say to you, Mandy?” he asked quietly.

“Nothing,” she lied.

“Don’t lie to me,” he said without malice. “You’ve never done it before. He hurt you, didn’t he?”

“What happened was between Jace and me,” she told him. Her wan, drawn face made a smile for him. “I could just as easily have fallen off. I ran into a limb, that’s all.”

“He acts guilty as hell,” he said, studying her. “Like a hunted man. He’s been in and out of here six times already, just looking at you.”

“I’m not telling you anything, Duncan. You might as well give up.”

He sighed angrily. “Your mother will be by later,” he said finally, giving in, but with reluctance. “She was here earlier.”

“When can I go home?”

He shrugged. “They want to do some more tests.”

“I don’t need any more tests,” she said stiffly, already crumpling under visions of a mountainous hospital bill that her meagre insurance wouldn’t pay.

Duncan read her worried expression accurately. “Don’t start worrying about money,” he told her. “The bill is our responsibility.”

“The devil it is!” she burst out, sitting up so fast she almost fell off the bed. She pushed back her straggly hair, and her dark eyes burned. “Oh, no, Duncan, I’m not having Jason Whitehall throw another debt up to me.”

He caught on to that immediately. “What debt has he been throwing up to you?” he asked sharply.

She flushed, and averted her gaze to the venetian blinds letting slitted beams of sunlight into the cheery yellow room.

“How nice of you to come and visit me, Duncan,” she said sweetly. “When can I go home?” she asked again.

He sighed with exasperation. “I’ll ask the doctor, all right?”

“Tell him I said I’m leaving in the morning, and he can take his tests and…” she began.

“Now, now,” he said soothingly. He reached over and pushed the hair away from her forehead. “God, you’re going to have a bruise there!” he murmured.

“Purple, I hope,” she said lightly. “I’ve got a gorgeous cotton frock with purple flowers. It’ll be a perfect match.”

“You—” he grinned “—are incorrigible.”

“Oh, being slammed in the head by trees does wonders for me,” she agreed saucily, smiling up at him from her pillow.

He stuck his hands in the pockets of his beige trousers, shaking his dark head. “I wouldn’t recommend trying it too often,” he said. “You could have too much of a good thing.”

She lifted a hand to her forehead and winced. “You can say that again. How’s Jace’s horse, by the way?”

“Fine,” he replied. “Thanks to you. He didn’t hit his head.”

She started to answer him, but the door swung open and Jace walked in. He was still in a nasty temper. It showed in the hard lines of his face, his blazing darkened silver eyes. But he looked haggard, too, as if he hadn’t slept. His dark brown roll-neck sweater and cream-colored slacks looked rumpled, as well. And his hair was tousled, as if his hands had worried it.

Amanda stiffened involuntarily, looking vaguely like a small wild creature in a trap. Jace’s sharp gaze didn’t miss the expression that flitted across her pale features, and it tightened his jaw.

“How are you?” he asked curtly.

“Just dandy, thanks,” she said with bravado. She even smiled, although her eyes were like dead wood.

“The doctor said you had a close call,” he added quietly, ignoring Duncan. “If you’d been sitting a fraction of an inch higher in the saddle, you’d have broken your damned neck.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” she said in a ghostly voice, her lower lip trembling with the hurt she felt as she met his cold, unfeeling gaze.

He turned away, glaring at Duncan. “I thought you had a meeting with Donavan on that Garrison contract.”

Duncan bristled, one of the few times Amanda had ever seen him stand up to Jace. “The contract can damned well wait. Maybe you can turn off your emotions, but I can’t. I was worried about Amanda.”

“She looks spry enough to me,” he bit off.

“Easy words for the man who put her in the hospital!” Duncan threw at him.

Jace’s eyes exploded. He moved toward Duncan, checking himself immediately with that iron control that was part of him. His eyes shifted to Amanda, blaming, accusing, but she only lifted her chin and stared back at him.

“I put myself here, Duncan,” she said with quiet dignity. “Don’t blame your brother for that.”