The Cowboy and the Lady (16 page)

The door opened again and Duncan strolled in, grinning. Amanda caught him around the neck the minute he came within range and hugged him wildly, through a mist of tears, barely noticing that Jace had followed him and was standing just inside the doorway, scowling.

“Oh, Duncan, you angel, what a wonderful thing to do,” she cried, sobbing and laughing all at once as she kissed his lean cheek, oblivious to the puzzled look on his face and the fury in Jace’s.

“Huh?” Duncan blinked.

“The flowers, silly.” She laughed, and her eyes danced as they had when she was still a girl, lighting up her sad, wan face like a torch so that she was exquisitely beautiful with her silver-blond hair cascading around her, and the thin green gown emphasizing her peaches-and-cream complexion and dark eyes. “They’re so beautiful. No one ever sent me flowers before, did you know? And I…what is it?” she asked as he continued to stare vacantly at her.

“I’m glad you like them, but I didn’t do it, darling,” he admitted sheepishly.

“Then who…?”

Jace turned and left the room before she could continue, and Amanda frowned after him. It couldn’t be…could it?

Her fingers trembled as she reached for the card and fumbled the envelope open.

“Must have been Terry…no, it couldn’t have been,” Duncan corrected, frowning, “because we thought it would save explanations if we didn’t bother him. And if Mother had done it, she’d have said something…”

Amanda was reading the card, tears welling suddenly in the eyes she closed on a pain that shuddered all through her body. The card fell lightly to the blue coverlet, like a frail white leaf loosened from its stem by a faint, cold breeze.

There was no message on the white card. Only a black, bold scrawl that was as familiar as her own, and a single four-letter name. “Jace.”

Chapter Nine

J
ace didn’t go near her for the rest of the day, and she knew that she’d hurt him. Despite his scorn for Beatrice Carson, it was clear that he was still vulnerable to her daughter. Had the flowers been a peace offering?

Duncan sat and played gin rummy with her all evening, winning hand after hand until she finally refused to play with him anymore out of sheer exasperation.

“Spoilsport,” he goaded. “It’s early yet. You’re going to force me to go out in search of other entertainment.”

“Don’t call me names, you cheating cardsharp,” she said in her best Western drawl. “I ought to call you out and plug you, stranger.”

“The marshal don’t like gunplay in this here town,” he replied narrow-eyed.

She tossed her hair. “A likely story. You, sir, are simply cowardly.”

“Yes, miss, I sho is!” He grinned.

She lay back against the pillows with a weary smile. “Thanks for keeping me company, Duncan. I do feel better now. In fact, I may even be able to get up in the morning.”

“Don’t push it.”

“I have to.” She studied her clasped hands. “I have to leave just as soon as I can,” she ground out. “I can’t take being around Jace much longer.”

“He won’t bite,” he promised her.

She smiled wanly. “Care to bet?”

He drew a deep breath. “Exactly what is going on? Can’t you tell me?”

She shook her head. “Private, I’m afraid.”

“That sounds ominous, like guns at ten paces or something,” he teased, and his brown eyes danced at her.

“I almost wish it was, but he’d have me outgunned on the first draw,” she admitted. “I can’t fight Jace and win. I don’t think anyone can.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“I am.”

“Getting sleepy?”

She shook her head. “Just worn out. I didn’t even mange to finish my supper, I was so tired.”

“You’ll be up raiding the kitchen before dawn, mark my words,” he scolded.

She laughed. “Maybe.”

* * *

Duncan’s prediction came true shortly after midnight, when she found that she couldn’t ignore her growling stomach an instant longer.

She slipped on her old robe and slippers and opened the door into the hall. She tiptoed past Jace’s darkened room, her heart shaking her briefly with its beat, and down the dimly lit stairs. Her feet made no noise at all on the carpet, and she found the kitchen without a slip and turned on the light.

Marguerite’s kitchen was absolutely spotless—mosaic tile floors, done in the same blue-and-white motif as the bathrooms, looked recently polished, and the huge stove that Mrs. Brown used for baking was a blazing white. The big counters and huge oak cabinets were a cook’s dream. So was the long solid oak table used to prepare food on. There were two or three chairs scattered around, and frilly blue curtains at the darkened windows. Amanda thought idly that it would be a pleasure to work in.

The clean pots and pans cried to be used, so she opened the double-doored refrigerator, knowing her hostess wouldn’t mind if she made herself a snack. She pulled out eggs and a big ham, and took down some spices from the cabinet, proceeding quietly to make herself a huge, mouthwatering omelet. She was in the middle of cooking it when the back door suddenly swung open and Jace walked in.

She froze at the sight of him, and he didn’t look any less stunned to see her standing at the stove in her robe, her blond hair in a lovely tangle around her shoulders, hanging down to her waist in back.

He was wearing a suede jacket and his familiar black Stetson, jeans that were layered in dust, and old boots with scuffed toes. He didn’t look like a corporate executive. He looked the way Jason Whitehall used to look when she was a girl—like a cowboy struggling to carve an empire out of a few hundred head of cattle, a lot of sweat, and a generous amount of business sense.

“What are you doing out of bed?” he asked quietly, closing the door behind him.

“I was hungry,” she replied softly.

He glanced toward the pan she was holding on the burner.

“That smells like an omelet,” he said.

“It is.” She checked it to make sure it wasn’t burning.

“Ham and egg.”

“It smells delicious.”

She glanced at him. He looked hungry, too. And cold and tired. There were gray hairs at his temples that she’d barely noticed before, and new lines in his hard face. “Want some?” she asked gently.

“Got enough?” he countered.

She nodded. “I’ll make some coffee….”

“I’ll make it. Women never get it strong enough.” He shrugged out of his jacket to disclose a faded blue-patterned cotton shirt, and threw it onto an empty chair with his hat. He found the coffeepot and proceeded to fill it with apparent expertise while Amanda took up the omelet and put bread into the toaster.

“Butter,” she murmured, turning back toward the refrigerator.

“I’ll get it,” he said.

She took out the toast and laid it on one plate while she went to the cabinet to get a second one for him.

Jace leaned on the counter, but his silvery eyes followed her all around the kitchen, quiet and strange, tracing the slender lines of her body in the old blue terry-cloth robe.

She barely glanced at him as she came back with the plate and set it down on the counter. Her heart was doing acrobatics in her chest, but she tried to look calm, working with deft, efficient hands to divide the omelet, and giving him the lion’s share of it.

“Hold it,” he said, laying a quick hand on her wrist. “That’s more than half.”

His touch was warm and light, but she looked down at the lean, darkly tanned fingers with a sense of impending disaster, her face flushing at the emotions playing havoc inside her.

“I…wasn’t really that hungry,” she admitted. She glanced up at him shyly, and away again. “You…don’t look like you even had supper.”

He traced a rough pattern on the soft flesh of her wrist. “I didn’t.”

She moved away from him to put the pan in the sink, wondering at the strange mood he was in.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Only with me,” he said on a rough side. “I couldn’t sleep.”

She stared down at the soapy water in the frying pan. “I’m sorry about the flowers,” she whispered. “I didn’t realize…that you’d sent them.” Her eyes closed. “You’ve been so cruel.”

“Because I told you the truth about your mother?” he demanded. “Why not? You’re old enough.”

She turned, staring across into his blazing eyes. “Did you have to be so brutal about it?” she asked.

“There’s no other way with you,” he said quietly. “At least it gets your attention.”

Her lips parted. “I don’t understand.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “Of course not.”

Her eyes pleaded with him. “Jace, can’t you find it in your heart to forgive her?”

“Forgive her? She’s nothing but a slut!” he ground out. “Like her daughter,” he added coldly.

She drew in a harsh, hurt breath. “You think you know everything there is to know about me, don’t you?”

“All I need to know,” he agreed.

“How wonderful to never make a mistake, to never be wrong!” she cast at him.

He turned and caught her blazing eyes with his own. “I make mistakes,” he corrected quietly. “I made my biggest one with you.”

“How, by not shooting me instead of the bull?” she choked.

“By not taking you into my bed when you were sixteen,” he said quietly, and there was no mockery, no teasing light in his eyes now.

Her face went blood red. “As if I’d have gone!” she cried.

“I could have had you the other night,” he reminded her, his eyes narrowing. “You were a great deal more vulnerable than that when you were sixteen, and you wanted me even more than you do now.”

“That’s a lie!” she gasped, outraged.

“The only difference,” he continued coldly, “is that it wasn’t permissible back then, when the Whitehalls were still just middle class. Now that the shoe’s on the other foot, it’s perfectly all right for you to want me. Even to give in to me. And why not—it wouldn’t be the first time.”

Her fingers clenched on the handle on the pan in the sink, and she felt pain as she gripped it.

“I’d rather take poison,” she breathed.

One corner of his chiseled mouth went up. “Really?” His eyes swept down over her slender body. “So would I. You can arouse me when you try, but then, so could anything in skirts. One body’s the same as another to a hungry man.”

“Go to hell!” she burst out.

“I’ve been there,” he told her. “I don’t recommend it. Come and eat your omelet, Amanda, before it gets cold. These coy little performances are beginning to wear on my temper.”

He took the plates to the table. Amanda let go of the pan and started blindly toward the dining room, her face stark white, her heart shaking her with its anguished beat. All she wanted from life at that moment was to escape from him.

But he wasn’t about to let her escape that easily. He reached out and caught her wrist in a steely grasp, halting her in place.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said in a dangerous undertone. “I said sit down.”

She licked her dry lips nervously and sat down at the table in the seat he indicated. But she only stared at the omelet through her tears, feeling so sick she was afraid to take a bite of it.

Jace laid down his fork and moved his chair close to hers.

“Amanda?”

There was a foreign softness to his deep voice. It was the final undoing. A sob broke from her throat and let the dam of tears overflow down her cheeks until her slender body was shaking helplessly with them.

“For God’s sake, don’t!” he growled.

“Please…let me go to bed,” she pleaded brokenly. “Please…!”

“Oh, hell.” He pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket and mopped up her tears, and all the anger and spite seemed to go out of him at once. “Here, eat your omelet,” he said gently, as if he was speaking to a small child. “Come on. Let me see you taste yours first.”

“Why?” she sniffled, looking up at him through tear-spiked lashes.

“I hear that you’ve been threatening to make me a bowl of buttered toadstools,” he mused, and a faint smile eased the rigid lines of his face. “I’d hate to think you laced this omelet with them.”

She smiled involuntarily, and her face lit up. He watched the change in her, fascinated.

“I wouldn’t poison you,” she whispered.

“Wouldn’t you, honey?” he asked gently. His fingers reached out to touch, very lightly, the tracks of tears on her flushed cheeks. “Not even with all the provocation I’ve given you?”

She studied his darkly tanned face solemnly. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

Her eyes fell to the deep yellow omelet with its cubes of pink ham on her plate. “About what…my mother did.”

He drew in a sharp breath. “Eat your omelet.”

She stared across at his impassive face as he turned his attention to his own plate.

“Not bad,” he murmured after a taste. “When did you learn to cook?”

“When we moved to San Antonio,” she said, picking up her fork to speak a chunk of omelet. “I didn’t have much choice. Mother couldn’t cook at all, and we couldn’t afford to eat out.” She smiled as she chewed and swallowed the fluffy mouthful. “The first time I tried to fry squash I cut it up raw into the pan and didn’t put a drop of oil in it. You could smell it all over the building.”

He glanced at her, and one corner of his mouth went up. “You didn’t eat that night, I gather.”