Texas Lily

by Patricia Rice

  Unimpressed, Lily waited until Serena had calmed to ask, "Who was it?"

  "I can't say for certain, but stay away from Ollie's friend Ricardo." There was no point in insulting Lily's intelligence with anything less than the truth. She needed to know who their enemies were, although Cade feared she wouldn't like the explanations.

  Lily had a dozen questions, but she had learned from Cade's taciturnity. Holding Serena curled in her lap, with Juanita murmuring Spanish imprecations behind them, Lily had the sense to hold her tongue until they were home.

  Roy, unfortunately, couldn't be counted on to do the same. At the first sign of the cabin he yelled and sent his pony into a gallop. By the time the wagon arrived in the yard, Travis and Ephraim were stumbling out of the cabin carrying every weapon that had come to hand, and their questions were curt and angry.

  "Roy, take your horse back to the barn and tell Abraham to come get the animals." Cade climbed out, took Serena, and helped Lily down. Travis had already rounded the wagon and lifted a still shaken Juanita from the back. He held the small maid briefly, as her legs seemed about to give out from under her, and then released her when she shook herself free.

  As Juanita fled to the safety of four walls, Travis confronted Lily and Cade. "Roy said you were attacked." He gave Lily a look of concern, but she was pulling her old woolen pelisse around herself and Serena and heading for the cabin to get out of the cold February wind.

  Cade shrugged his shoulders. Muttering, "De nada," he followed Lily. The shopping expedition he had hoped would lighten her heart had become an even greater wall between them.

  Lily took coffee from the fire and poured a mug for Cade and another for herself, lingering in the warmth as the men entered. She felt Cade's towering presence as he picked up the mug, but she couldn't turn to him in the company of others. She wasn't certain she should turn to him at all. She knew very little about this man she had taken for her husband. Others had warned her, but she had been entranced by a flute and a dance and a seductive touch. Now she and her family might have to pay for her foolishness.

  "Were you attacked or not?" Exasperated, Ephraim stamped into the cabin, setting the shotgun aside.

  "Rabbit hunters," Cade offered, sipping at his coffee.

  "Hogwash," Travis concluded, not putting his rifle down. "Juanita is shaking like a leaf. Roy can't get two words out in one direction, and Lily looks as if she's seen a ghost. You could at least offer her a chair, you know."

  "I know where the chairs are," Lily snapped. "I can look after myself."

  The challenge was thrown and Cade reluctantly took it up. Pulling a chair to the fire, he pushed Lily into it. She sank into it surprisingly easily, and Cade cursed his inadequacy when it came to gentlewomen. Lily was so strong that he managed to forget that she hadn't been brought up as he had been and that the child drew strength from her.

  "If they weren't rabbit hunters, then they only meant to scare us. There isn't a rifle made that could have reached us from that distance."

  Ephraim grunted and reached for the jug. "So you do have something to say. I was beginning to wonder."

  "I do, when anyone's willing to listen," Cade conceded. Still not looking directly at Lily, he rested his hand at her nape. She stiffened, but then relaxed as he did no more than knead the muscles there. He needed to know she was on his side. It had never been important to have someone with him before, but he wanted it now.

  "We're listening." Finally setting the rifle aside, Travis took a chair at the table and, resting his feet on another, sat back and waited expectantly.

  Cade hesitated. He had only speculation to go on. It seemed foolish to mention it, but remembering he needed to leave for Bexar shortly, he overcame his reluctance.

  "It could be nothing. It could have been rabbit hunters. If so, the hunter wore boots."

  That meant nothing to the two men who had just come from back East where boots were readily available. They stared at him expectantly.

  "Spanish boots, with heels." Cade emptied his mug and set it aside. Juanita filled it, and he realized she was listening as closely as the men. "I don't know any men around here who wear anything that expensive or hard to find."

  "But you know someone from somewhere else." Lily spoke softly, finally looking at him. The blue of her eyes was as wintry as the skies outside, but Cade didn't think the cold was for him. The murder he read there was more for the man who had endangered her family. Cade rested his hand on the chair back, not daring to touch her when all he longed to do was take her in his arms. It weakened a man to think that way, and he resisted.

  "There is a man who thinks he has reason to hate me. He has never tried to kill me before. I think the shots were just a warning, part of his plan. He stirs up trouble like winds breed storms." He didn't say the man might have shot Jim to make it look like an Indian attack when Cade was the most obvious Indian in the area. The strategy had worked well once before, but the explanation wouldn't make things better.

  "Who is the bastard? We'll find him and take care of him." Travis was practically on his feet before Cade shook his head and motioned him back.

  "You plan to talk him into behaving?" Cade asked wryly. Cade heard Lily's inelegant response to this insult, but Travis seemed to take it in stride. Sometimes he almost liked the slick-talking salesman. "We can't touch him. He's a Mexican who has gained some authority with Austin and the settlers. He is supposed to be working with the council."

  "Ricardo," Lily said softly.

  "Ricardo de Suela, he calls himself now, but he is not a de Suela. My father's first wife was a widow. He is her son."

  "So why does he hate you?" Growing interested now, Travis put his feet up again and smiled widely at Juanita as she refilled his cup and offered him a plate of corn pone.

  "He hated my mother. She refused to marry him, even after she returned to Bexar after leaving my father. It is a family matter. I do not wish to drag others into it. I only tell you to warn you. I must go into Bexar, and I would not leave you unprepared."

  Lily shoved back her chair and jumped to her feet, knocking the chair over as she glared at Cade. "Leave us? Some friend of yours shoots at my family and you talk about leaving? Do you plan to join those suicidal idiots at the Alamo?"

  "Lily..." Travis and her father both rose to their feet, but Lily only had eyes for Cade. He met her glare with the same stoic facade he had used the day they met.

  "There is something I must do there. I know nothing of white men's wars, but for a few hundred men to stand against an army of thousands is the work of either fools or great heroes. I cannot help them either way. My business takes me beyond those walls."

  "And I suppose I have no right to ask what that business is? I am only your wife, after all."

  "This is business between myself and one other man. I have already told you more than should be said."

  "How can you do this?" Lily whispered, so furious she did not dare speak louder.

  "I can do this because you do not need me here. You have told me yourself that you can stand on your own. You have a father and friends here. You will be safe with them."

  But would he be safe without her? Anguish tore through Lily as she met the implacable look in Cade's eyes. He wasn't going to give an inch. She hated him as much now as she had ever hated anyone.

  "You're right, I don't need you. I don't need anybody. The whole lot of you can go to Bexar. I'm going to take a nap."

  Lily walked out, leaving the room behind her crackling with unspoken emotions.

  Neither Ephraim nor Travis said anything as Cade took the back door toward the barn. The cabin was too small for all of them. Newlyweds ought to be allowed their spats in private. This, however, had the makings of something more than a lovers' quarrel.

  * * *

  Cade returned in time for supper, but Lily wasn't speaking to him. She had already fed the children and sent them off to bed. She helped set the food on the table, then filled her plate and took it to join Ju
anita at the fire.

  Ephraim and Travis raised a protest, but Cade said nothing. She was telling him he was treating her as a servant and not an equal. He did not know how to tell her that he felt it was the other way around, that he should be the one sitting by the fire. He had done nothing yet to earn his place at the table. But to earn it he had to leave her.

  When Ephraim and Travis gave him furious looks, Cade sighed and picked up his plate. Crossing to the fire, he set the plate down on the shelf he had just built and with a nod of his head sent a worried Juanita to his place at the table. Instead of sitting on Juanita's unstable stool, he sat cross-legged at Lily's feet and used the stool for a table.

  Lily tried to ignore him, but it was like trying to ignore a mountain sitting at her feet. Cade's black hair gleamed in the firelight, and she knew the fire was too warm for him when he rolled back his sleeves, and she could see the sheen of perspiration on his bronzed arms. It was his own fault. He had no one to blame but himself. She hadn't asked him to sit there.

  When it came down to it, she hadn't asked him to marry her. He could take himself to San Antonio any time he liked and stay, for all she cared. It wasn't as if their marriage meant anything more than a name for the child and maybe an occasional tumble in bed.

  Lily knew pregnancy was the reason for the tears in her eyes. She was a practical woman and had done the practical thing by marrying the father of her child. She had no reason to expect more, and she shouldn't be surprised or disappointed when she didn't receive it.

  But the nights they had spent together in that bed had given her a different impression. Lily didn't have to stretch her imagination far to remember how it felt to lie beneath him, to feel the pulse of his body inside hers, to know the tensing of his muscles as he strained against her in the heat of passion. And then there was afterwards, when he held her and murmured against her ear and stroked her breasts and the place where their child grew. She wouldn't think about afterwards. That was what had given her the false notion that she meant something to him.

  Lily cleared her plate and quietly went about cleaning up. Juanita joined her, and they scraped food onto a plate to take out to the pigs, poured hot water into a bowl to clean the dishes, and silently did their women's work while the men at the table finished their coffee and darted furtive looks at Cade.

  When Lily went off to bed, they waited for Cade to follow. When he finally rose, they breathed mixed sighs of relief. When he walked out the back door, they looked at each other in puzzlement.

  Lily heard the window open, but she was already stripped to her drawers and chemise and didn’t have time to grab a robe and flee. She had shot the door latch to indicate her displeasure, but she hadn't expected that to deter Cade. Actually, she hadn't thought he would even bother to try. The window had never occurred to her.

  He stepped through as silently as the Indian he was. His silhouette filled the window, and the light of the candle flickered across his sharp features, shadowing his cheekbones into copper. Lily couldn't read the dark depth of his eyes as he crossed the room. She held her breath and tried to keep her gaze from the broad expanse of chest revealed by his untied shirt.

  He was large enough to do anything he liked with her.

  Chapter 24

  Cade gently began to unbraid Lily’s hair, pulling the silken strands through his fingers until they settled in a pale cascade over her shoulders and back.

  "I am coming back, Lily." Cade said, as he would to a skittish horse. He had grown up with animals as his only friends. He knew no other principles to apply.

  "Jim didn't." Lily set her brush down and pulled away. But there was nowhere she could go without walking out the door or over to the bed.

  "I am not Jim. I have been taking care of myself most of my life. What are you afraid of, Lily?"

  Her back stiffened. "Nothing. Go where you will."

  Cade didn't know what to do. He couldn't leave with this anger between them, but he didn't know how to alleviate it. He could wrestle a steer to the ground, track a man through open prairie, live in the wilderness with ease, but he didn't know how to talk to a woman.

  His hand dropped to his side. "There's some things a man has to do, Lily."

  She swung around and glared at him. "No, there are some things a man wants to do. It's his choice. There's a difference."

  She was a slender flame in the darkness. Cade wanted to touch the beauty of her, to know for certain that she was actually his to have and to hold, but flames burned. He kept his hands to himself.

  "I don't want to leave you, Lily. It would be much easier to stay here and hold you in my arms and let the world go by, for the present. But not for the future. It is our future I seek, Lily. I may not succeed. I may come back empty-handed. But I have to try. Lily, can you see that? I have to try."

  There was almost a plea in his voice. It seemed impossible to believe. His eyes were as dark and impenetrable as ever. The angular lines of his face revealed nothing. Without thought to what she did, Lily lifted her hand to touch the stony line of his jaw. It was warm and very, very human.

  Cade gave up the fight and jerked her into his arms. Just her touch shattered something inside of him, something that had held him immobile for too long. He did not know what it was to need someone. He did not want to know. But right this minute he needed her.

  Lily's arms slid around his neck, and Cade held her close, doing nothing more than feeling her breathing against him. "I don't want you to hate me, Lily."

  "I don't." She rested her head against his shoulder. "I was angry. And afraid. I'm afraid of you, Cade. I'm afraid of what you do to me. I'm afraid of what you are. I'm afraid of what I don't know."

  He could understand those emotions, but he couldn't admit it. He ought to just carry her to bed and end this foolishness, but she had touched something inside of him that he hadn't known existed, and bed wasn't enough any longer. Caressing her back with one large hand, Cade asked, "What do I need to do to show you, Lily? Show me what you want."

  "It isn't that easy. There has to be trust. We don't know each other well enough to trust." Lily had lain awake most of the previous night discovering these things. When she had married Jim she had been too young to do anything else but trust an older man as she would her father. She was older now and wiser, and she trusted far less easily. And Cade didn't trust at all.

  Cade pressed his cheek against her hair and drank in the fragile scent of her. She was light in his arms, with the suppleness of a willow wand. She had the same kind of inner strength, the kind that might bend but would never break. He knew he had chosen wisely, but he did not know how to make her see him in the same light.

  "I would not have given you Serena and my child if I did not trust you, Lily. I do not know how to make you trust me. It will not be easy with men like Ollie whispering words of hate in your ears."

  "You would have married Maria if she would have taken Serena off your hands. You'll start sounding like Travis if you're not careful, Cade." Lily jerked free from his arms and strode to the window, staring out at the rainy night and remembering the day she had come across Cade and Maria fighting in the street.

  "Where in hell did you get that idea?" Growing angry at this resistance, Cade came up behind her, refusing to let her get away with this.

  "I heard the two of you fighting the day before you were to come out to the ranch. You offered her a home and respectability. You knew you couldn't take the job without someone to take care of Serena. She refused you."

  "She was keeping Serena in town. I wanted her here at the ranch. I offered Maria a home and a way out of the life she was living. I didn't offer to marry her. Maybe that was what made her mad. I think it was more a matter of her finding life out here with only one man too boring to consider."

  Lily took a deep breath and stared at the cabin just visible from this corner of the room. It could have been worse. Maria could have been living out there now. She felt Cade standing behind her, knew his massive solidit
y and his gentle hands. She couldn't fault him for what he had done in the past. She had known there were other women. She wasn't precisely an innocent herself. They had to go forward from here.

  "I'm trying to move ahead, Cade," she whispered to the window. "I didn't want to marry again. I didn't want another man taking away my choices. But it's happening all over again, and I don't like it. Can you understand that, Cade? Can you understand how I feel?"

  His hands captured her shoulders and pulled her around. His face loomed over hers as he spoke. "Give us time, Lily. We can make it work. Living without anyone else is an awful lonely business."

  He didn't give her time to argue. Closing his mouth over hers, he drew the sweetness of her response with his tongue, found an answering eagerness in the swell of her breast, and carried her to the bed.

  Before they slept, Lily felt Cade's hand slide to her side and test her growing roundness. Sleepily, she murmured, "He is larger than Roy at this stage, I think. I am getting fat already."

  "You'll never be fat. You are beautiful. I want to hold both of you." Cade adjusted her so she lay contentedly against his side.

  He had called her beautiful. No one had ever called her that before. Smiling, Lily finally drifted off to sleep.

  Cade lay awake a long time later, learning what it felt like to have another person in his life, making certain that what he meant to do would not in any way harm what they had between them. It couldn't. What he had to do was too important. Lily would have to understand that.

  * * *

  Lily didn't understand it at all when Cade rode out the next day despite an icy downpour, but she held her tongue. He had called her beautiful and told her he trusted her, and like the young fool she once had been, she had believed him. Since there wasn't anything she could say to stop him, she might as well take what consolation she could.

  The cotton would be wet and moldy and not worth picking after the downpour. Cade had given the men their orders for the length of time he would be gone. At this time of year there wasn't much they could do beyond mend harness and watch over the cattle. A norther could catch the herd out on the prairie and freeze them if they weren't kept somewhere protected. Newborn calves could die or be carried off by wolves. The men were experienced enough to know what needed to be done.