by Janet Dailey
“No. And they paid in cash—two months in advance.” She smiled at his serious expression, inwardly pleased at his concern for her safety. A man’s protective instincts were strong, always wanting to shield those he cared about from harm. Sally poured a cup of coffee for herself and walked around the counter to sit on a stool, prompting Chase to do the same. “Tuesdays are always so slow,” she remarked, changing the subject. “What’s the latest on Ty and his girlfriend? He brought her in last Friday night. Everyone in three counties is speculating on the outcome of that romance.”
“I have the feeling he’s going to marry her.”
“You don’t sound very happy about it,” Sally observed. “She’s a gorgeous girl.”
“And used to a totally different way of living,” Chase added dryly.
“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. I’ve seen the wildest bachelors become tame and respectable once they’re married.”
“And some stay wild and irresponsible—the way your husband did,” he reminded her.
“What does Maggie think of her?”
There was a brief shrug. “Maggie is enjoying her company. All that woman talk about fashions and dinner parties and foreign places is something she’s missed. Even the ranch women around here are more apt to talk about Junior’s calf that he’s showing or the baby’s croup. Not very sophisticated topics.” There was a cynical curve to his mouth. “Maggie and Tkra get along very well.”
“That’s good. Maggie will be able to help Tara adjust to her new life—if she and Ty get married.” Sally chose to see the positive aspect.
“Let’s hope so.”
It was late afternoon when Chase arrived back at The Homestead. He went straight to the study and picked up the receiver of the desk phone, dialing a number.
“Hello, Potter. Chase Calder.”
“H’lo, Chase,” came the laconic reply. “What can I do for you?”
“I have a license number I want you to check out for me.” He gave it to him.
“Texas plates? It might take me some time,” the local sheriff warned in a slow voice. “What’s the problem? You aren’t havin’ trouble with rustlers again?”
“No. There’s a camping trailer parked outside of Sally’s. I want to know who owns it, where he works, and everything there is to know about his background.” He paused, then added, “And have your men make some extra patrols past her place at night after it closes. Call me as soon as you get a rundown on that license number.”
“Will do. By the way ... I won’t be runnin’ for election again. I’m gonna get me a fly rod and head for some of them trout streams. I’ve got a good boy name of Dobbins all lined up for the job. It’d be good if he had your support.”
“I’ll remember that, Potter.” He hung up the phone and turned around.
Maggie was standing in the doorway. “Were you talking to the sheriff?”
“Yes. There was something I needed him to check on.” His hesitation was slight, barely perceptible, coming from an unwillingness to communicate the nature of his inquiry.
“What is it? Is there trouble?” Maggie wasn’t satisfied with half an answer, nor with the bits and pieces of the phone conversation she’d overheard.
“No.” Smoothly he moved toward her. “I want to make sure there won’t be.”
He was deliberately being evasive, and she could only think of one reason why he’d do that. “Tell me, Chase,” she insisted, “does it have anything to do with Culley? Has he done something?”
“This has nothing to do with Culley,” he assured her. “There’s some strangers in town. They parked a trailer next to Sally’s and are using it as a kind of base of operations. The sheriff’s going to find out who they are and what they’re doing here. That’s all.”
Sally’s. There was a leadenness in her heart as she searched his craggy face. “When did you find this out?”
“I stopped by there this afternoon. When she told me about the men, I decided to have them checked out.” Chase eyed Maggie with a trace of irritation. “She does live alone above the caf6.” There was a shortness in his voice.
“I’m sure Sally Brogan can take care of herself. She doesn’t need you to protect her.” Maggie was stiff with jealousy. A man protected what he regarded as his own. A couple of times Maggie had wondered whether the ashes of his old affair with Sally had been stirred. “Excuse me. I have to check on dinner.” She made a retreat before she said something she might regret.
A night breeze fluttered the curtains at the bedroom window, then caught the lazy trail of smoke from Ty’s cigarette and sucked it toward the screened opening. The hoot of an owl night-hunting on the riverbanks drifted into the darkened room, lighted only by the silvery shine of a moon on the wane. The midnight hour held the night in stillness.
Unable to sleep, Ty sat in bed. Pillows stacked behind his shoulders and back propped him against the headboard. His thoughts drifted; he was troubled. There had been a subtle change in his attitude toward Tara these last three weeks. Her beauty still captivated him; he still wanted her. But something was missing. Sometimes he had the feeling he was seeing her more clearly now, but he didn’t know what that meant.
The faint scrape of a doorknob turning briefly aroused him; then he relaxed. It was probably Cat, stealing into his room to talk. She was something of a night creature, restlessly prowling or reading till all hours. Being ten years old was rough, he remembered, too old for childish games and too young for adult entertainment.
The door was pushed silently open. A shadow was thrown into the room with the rectangular patch of light from the upstairs hallway. Ty came to full alertness when a woman’s figure slipped into the room, clad in a shimmering ivory satin robe. Ty crushed the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray as he sat bolt upright. The bedcovers fell down around his hips, revealing his bare chest.
“Tara, what the hell are you doing here?” His voice was half-angry and half-stunned.
“I couldn’t sleep.” She glided toward the bed, the shimmering fabric rippling with her every movement, outlining her breasts and hips. “You couldn’t sleep either, could you?” The knowing sound in her voice ripened his awareness of her.
“You shouldn’t be here at this hour.” But he didn’t move as he watched her hands gracefully lift the skirt of her robe to set a knee on the bed.
The mattress dipped slightly under the weight centered on the point of her knee. The robe parted with a faint rustle, giving him a provocative glimpse of bare thigh; then the glistening ivory fabric came together again. Curling her body, she sat sideways on the bed and leaned an arm toward him.
“I kept thinking about us and I just had to see you,” Tara murmured.
“Suppose my parents heard you come in here.” All his protesting was done with words. The graceful sensuality of her body and the gripping beauty of her face were like drink to him, bringing back memories and making him heady with that old desire.
“I was very quiet. Nobody heard me.” She slid nearer to him and reclined on the pillows that were still dented with his imprint. She lay there, so inviting, that near smile on her lips. “Relax, Ty. We’ll just sit here and talk for a little while.”
“You’re crazy.” He looked at her, his features tightening. “It’s enough that we sleep under the same roof, but to have you in my bed—! Dammit, Tara, do you think I’m made of wood?”
Her soft, breathy laugh was like crystal pendants striking. “I hope not.”
It prodded him. “You’re getting out of this bed,” he growled, remembering too well the number of times she’d tormented him with her body, always denying him, always letting him reach for the damned string and pulling it away.
His arm hooked her waist, meaning to heave her to the side of the bed, back the way she’d come, but she wrapped her arms around his neck, Ty had never guessed she had such strength. Both fell heavily onto the mattress. The feel of her body beneath him was a hot iron; he tried to back off from it, but her tightly wound
arms wouldn’t let him get far.
“Do you still hate me so much, Ty? Must I be totally brazen and shameless?”
His body was arched above hers, muscles straining to keep it there despite the relentless pressure on his neck. He was still, searching her face pooled in moonlight, while he tried to fathom her meaning without reading into it something that wasn’t there.
“Say what you mean, Tara.”
“You want me, don’t you?” Her lips were open, her eyes on his mouth.
“I want you.” All the hunger and loneliness of being without her rose up inside him as he looked at her. “You’re asking to be raped,” Ty accused roughly. He pried an arm loose from his neck and peeled off of her to lie taut and rigid on the bed, trembling inside. She rolled onto her side, facing him. Her slim white hand glided across his bare chest, her fingers running into the curling hairs.
“Ty, my silly love. Must I do the raping, too?” Her lips ran over the bunched muscle in his shoulder.
When she moved onto him, his hands came up to push her off, then stayed to hold the silken weight of her body while she ate at his mouth, her teeth biting at his lip in a hotly playful kiss. He endured its tormenting fire that teased and wouldn’t satisfy, until he could take no more of the raw desire. He was made of flesh and blood.
With a twist of his body, he rolled her away and followed to pin her down, taking the satisfaction from her lips that she had withheld. She was all motion under him, restless and urgent. Her hands were in his hair, nails digging and flexing. Whispering sounds came from her throat, faint, sighing groans of pleasure and need.
He felt her skin against his, the satin robe coming apart and giving his body access to her nakedness. His hands made exploring contact with the rounded shapes of her body, territory he’d yearned to claim. Now it was being surrendered. The fevers heating him could not be dispelled to give him time to question her act.
Her breathing quickened under the caress of his hands. The rough texture of his callused skin was like sandpaper, leaving areas more sensitized than he’d found them. It was good what she was feeling, but the sensations had always been different with Ty. There was no need to hold back anymore. Her heart and her head were of one mind in this.
The pressure was building inside him, perspiration breaking out in little beads to dampen his skin. The hot desire pounding through his veins wanted no time wasted with preliminaries. There was a sane instant when Ty tried to consider the consequences of this moment and pulled back to discover if those vague doubts he’d had about Tara were important. But she clamped her legs around him.
“Ty, please.”
“No.”
“Ty!”
There was no seal of virginity to break. He was absorbed into her and she was all tight and warm around him. After that, it was mindless sensation driven by instinct that coupled them, forging chains that wouldn’t be so easy to break.
Her breathing was settled as she lay half over him, her slim body feeling heavy. “It was good, wasn’t it?” Her soft voice was thick and dreamy.
“Yes.” His hand absently rubbed her rounded hipbone while he stared at the pattern of shadows on the ceiling.
Her fingers ran over the cord in his neck. “You aren’t tense anymore,” she observed. “You’ve been doing too much thinking lately, complicating something that’s very simple. Now that edginess and tension are all gone. And it was so easy, too.”
Her body had taken it from him and given contentment. She had been confident she could erase the things that were troubling him, Ty realized. But there were other needs a man had—needs sex couldn’t satisfy. He stirred, uneasy.
“Ty, what are you thinking about?” she asked at his silence.
“Nothing,” he lied.
“It was what you wanted,” she reminded him.
“Yes.”
There was the game in it. He’d taken her, and now he was accountable for it. There was no forgetting what happened or turning aside from the consequences. When the hunger came to him, he’d want her again, and he knew it. Like a dog, he’d always return to the stoop where he’d last been fed.
The fact that she had come to him should have made a difference in her thinking. It had been as much her desire as it had been his. The blame should have been shared. But it was never that way with women—not women like Tara Lee Dyson.
This hadn’t been a casual act. She’d laid her hold on his conscience. He had bedded her; now he was expected to wed her.
He let the thought settle into him. It was what he had wanted all along. Tara was the prize, the success—and she had come to him.
“I suppose you’ll want the biggest, fanciest damned wedding Texas has ever seen,” he said dryly.
She laughed in her throat. “You guessed it, honey.” She leaned up to kiss him.
15
No amount of twisting enabled Jessy to reach the hook at the back of her dress. Frustration merely added to the irritability that she blamed on the early-morning August heat. It accumulated quickly in the upstairs bedrooms of the log home. She left her room and headed down the stairs. A whirring fan created a blessed stir of air in the living room, where her two teenaged brothers, Ben and Mike, were lounging in crisp new jeans and pearl-buttoned western shirts. Ben was painstakingly smoothing the creases in the crown of his good western hat. At the sound of her footsteps on the stairs, he looked up, then hit his brother.
“Would you look at Jessy?” His square face was split with a grin. “She’s got legs!”
“Is that what those two white things are?” Mike quickly picked up on the oddity of seeing their older sister in a dress, siding as always with his brother to rib her.
“They look a sight better than those hairy things you two have,” Jessy retorted.
“Wait’ll the boys get a load of Jessy,” Ben persisted with a wicked gleam.
“Wait’ll they get a load of that fuzz on your face that you call a beard,” she countered, accustomed to trading sibling insults.
Ben rubbed his chin defensively. “It’s filling out and starting to look pretty good.” But the new beard was sandy-colored and soft, which gave it a sparse appearance.
“Where’s Mom?” Jessy glanced toward the kitchen.
“I think she’s still getting ready,” Mike replied.
The bedroom downstairs belonged to her parents. Jessy went to it and knocked on the door. “It’s me. Can I come in?” Permission followed and Jessy entered, shutting the door behind her. Her mother was seated at an old-fashioned vanity table, wearing only a cotton slip trimmed with lace. The traces of gray in her hair only made its sandy color seem lighter. She leaned close to the mirror to apply her makeup and eyed Jessy’s reflection in it.
“I can’t fasten the top hook on my dress.” Jessy crossed to the vanity table.
“I like that dress on you.” Judy Niles looked at her daughter approvingly and returned her attention to the mirror. “I’m glad you decided to buy a new one for the party.”
“A party for the new Calder bride is a special occasion.” There was a faint edge to her voice.
“I wonder what she’s like.” She used a tissue to blot her lipstick.
“I wouldn’t ask a man to tell you. They can’t see past a pretty face.”
“Jessy, don’t you like her?” Her mother turned, surprised to hear that cynical note in Jessy’s voice.
“I don’t even know her. What does it matter anyway?” She sighed, trying to repress the impatience and irritation that pushed at her. She hurt inside. She didn’t want to go to this party and meet Ty’s incredibly beautiful bride face to face. All her life she’d been taught to stand up to unpleasant things, and pride wouldn’t permit her to run from this.
“You’ll never enjoy the party in that kind of mood,” her mother declared and rose to her feet, standing as tall as Jessy. Placing her hands on Jessy’s shoulders, she pushed her onto the bench. “Sit down and I’ll brush your hair.”
It had been a nightly routine
when she was a small child—her mother brushing and brushing her hair until it glistened and shone—and Jessy could feel as beautiful as a fairy princess for a little while. She closed her eyes and let the rhythmic strokes of the hairbrush soothe her troubled spirits.
After a few minutes her mother began smoothing and arranging, pushing her hair this way and that. “I always thought when I had a little girl that I’d be doing things like this for her, but I had you instead,” her mother joked. “You have nice eyes. You really should use some shadow.”
“I’d look painted,” Jessy replied, her eyes still closed. “Besides, I put on mascara.”
“Let me try something.” There was the rattle of her mother pawing through her makeup case. “Now keep your eyes closed.”
“It’s no use, Mom.” But Jessy patiently let her dab here and there with an applicator, then a soft puff on her cheeks.
“Now look.” A pair of hands turned Jessy’s face toward the mirror and she opened her eyes to view the results. “There’s an old saying,” her mother murmured. “’Ugly in the cradle, beautiful at the table.’”
Jessy stared at her reflection. The sun had streaked her hair to a glistening taffy color. It waved thick and full to frame her face. The makeup was barely noticeable, but her cheekbones stood out and her eyes seemed darker and more mysterious. The longer Jessy looked, the less she recognized herself. Just for a minute she was tempted—then she reached for a tissue to scrub it off.
“Jessy, you look lovely!” her mother protested.
“Mom, that’s not me,” she explained, somber and patient. “Would you please fasten my dress?”
The bedroom door opened and her father came in, frowning sharply. “Are you women still in here primping? We’re supposed to be there early so we can help get things set up.” “I just have to put my dress on” her mother replied.
There were so many hands to set up the tables and chairs and get the barbecue fires going that nobody missed Jessy when she wandered away. As always, she gravitated to the horse barns, where it was shadowed and dark, musty with hay smells and horse odors. It was quiet except for the stomp of a horse and the swish of a tail at a fly.
