It was foolish, insane, but Lara couldn’t help flinching at the idea of Carson with other women. She had no hold on him, she never had, yet the thought of his big hands caressing someone else made Lara’s whole body clench in silent rejection. He hadn’t wanted her, but he wanted other women.
And he had taught her to want no other man.
Carson saw the tiny, betraying flicker of Lara’s eyelids when he mentioned other women. Surprise showed very briefly on his face, to be replaced by speculation. He watched her stiff back as Shadow walked through the gate. Before he could say anything, Lara kicked Shadow into a canter, leaving Carson alone with the gate and the grass and the soft wind blowing around him.
Lara left the last of the dinner dishes to dry in the old plastic drainer that sat on the counter. Although it was seven o’clock, there was a lot of light and warmth left in the countryside. Montana was far enough north to have long summer days and equally long winter nights. Lara had always enjoyed both the light and the darkness, for each season had its special moments for her, its unique excitement. As Lara dried her hands, she couldn’t help thinking that the house seemed unnaturally quiet. She was accustomed to living alone but not to being alone in the old family home. She still expected to see her grandfather out of the corner of her eye, his legs stretched out on the old ottoman and smoke curling around his face from the pipe the doctor had forbidden and Cheyenne couldn’t give up. She didn’t fight the tears that came suddenly to her eyes with the fresh realization that she would never see her grandfather again. She had known that coming back would be hard on her for a time. She also knew that occasional tears would help her to accept what could not be changed. There were so many good things to remember, so much of the past that deserved to be cherished and recorded. That was part of the reason she had come back to die ranch – to listen to the gentle ghosts of her childhood whispering to her, telling her about age and change and generations blending one into the other as naturally as summer blended into fall and winter into spring.
She might be alone, but she wasn’t isolated, cut off from the rest of humanity. She was a part of history, both that of her family and that of the state she lived in, as well as of the nation and the larger international community of the world. Through that shared history, she was connected to life in countless ways that were both subtle and profound.
Lara’s footsteps quickened as she went into the bedroom to change. The thought of being allowed to see the Black-ridge archives had been bubbling through her all afternoon like a hidden spring. She didn’t know what she would find. She did know that for a few hours she would live in another time, would see the land through the eyes of people long dead and would experience life in a new way. That was the endless fascination of studying history for her. History was her private time machine, letting her slide back through the years to share experiences and feelings and insights that would otherwise have been buried beneath the passing of generations.
It wasn’t the conquerors or kings who moved Lara’s mind and emotions. It was the ordinary people who worked and dreamed, cried and laughed and loved, bore children and finally died, leaving behind a legacy known only to the families who passed stories and more tangible mementos from hand to hand through the generations. It was those people Lara wanted to discover, those small histories she wanted to write, for they were the often unappreciated foundation upon which kings and conquerors and countries were built. For Lara, there was no excitement to equal the moment of discovery when a person long dead lived once again in her mind, teaching her the insights and dreams of another time.
“And if you stand around thinking about it any longer,” Lara told herself crisply, “you’re going to miss your chance to rummage through history tonight. This isn’t the city. Folks around here go to bed early and get up the same way.”
Her words drifted through the quiet house and dissipated in the larger silence of the land beyond.
“You’re going to have to get yourself a cat or a dog to talk to.”
Lara smiled wistfully to herself as she dressed. She loved animals, but the apartment where she lived didn’t allow pets. She had tried goldfish. It just wasn’t the same. There was life in a fish but no warmth, nothing to equal the gentle rasp of a hound’s tongue or the purring contentment of a cat curled in her lap.
A critical look in the old, spotted mirror told Lara that everything was buttoned, zipped and clean. She had been tempted to wear something tonight other than her standard ranch uniform of jeans, boots and cotton shirt. All that had prevented her was the certainty that Carson would think she had dressed up for him – and he would have been right. She had been a girl rather than a woman when he had dated her. She wouldn’t have minded wearing clothes that emphasized the difference four years had made in her body.
Unbidden came the thought that perhaps now he wouldn’t turn away from her. Perhaps now she was woman enough to hold his attention when he undressed her and looked at her.
Even as the thought came, Lara felt fear burst through her in a freezing wave. Never again would she be naked in front of a clothed man. Never again would she whimper with pleasure when a man’s mouth touched her breast. There was no pleasure in that kind of vulnerability, only pain.
Lara turned away from the mirror, frightened by the unexpected, dangerous female vanity that had wanted Carson to admire what he had once rejected so cruelly.
What she didn’t understand was just how womanly she looked despite her casual clothes. She had worn jeans for so many years that she didn’t realize how they emphasized the length of her legs, the tempting curves of her hips and the contrasting slenderness of her waist. The cotton blouse was soft, fitted and clung to her breasts like an ice-blue shadow. The windbreaker she had tossed over her shoulders was a vivid scarlet that brought out the natural color in her cheeks and made her hair shine like polished obsidian. Her lips, too, were red, and their wide bow hinted at both humor and passion. Despite her lack of fancy clothes, she was more than enough to make a man’s hands itch to follow her curves.
Lara had discovered long ago that a backpack was more practical for her than a briefcase and purse. The navy-blue pack was propped against the doorway in the living room, already stuffed with everything she might need for her research that night. She shrugged the straps into place and went through the door, closing but not locking it behind her. Because she had never looked in the mirror while wearing the backpack, she didn’t know that its straps snugged the blouse tight across her firm breasts, subtly revealing the sheer pink outlines of her bra and hinting at the deeper pink of her nipples. The button between her breasts strained at its fastening, allowing the puckered cloth above and below to reveal flashes of smooth flesh with each breath.
The slanting evening light turned the land to green and gold and ruddy bronze as Lara walked along the edge of the dirt road curving down into the big valley. She could have driven to the ranch house or ridden Shadow, but the mild evening fairly begged to be enjoyed on foot. One of her best memories of the time when her mother had been alive was of walking over the land with her in the evenings, when the earth itself lay hushed beneath the condensing weight of night. It was from her mother that Lara had learned the savage beauty of mountain thunderstorms. Even after her mother had died while hiking alone in an unexpected hailstorm, Lara had continued to walk the land during times when the wild wind blew, seeing lightning even through her closed eyelids and feeling thunder in the very marrow of her bones.
As Lara approached the old ranch house, her steps slowed. She had been in the big house eighteen times, once for every Christmas before she went away to school. It was not a unique tribute to her status as a bastard Blackridge. Every other child whose parents worked or lived on the ranch had also been invited to the Rocking B’s Christmas Day festivities. Santa – usually Cheyenne plus pillows, towels and the most unlikely white beard ever to grace lean cheeks – had handed out presents to squealing children in the shadow of a huge tree cut from
a forest high in the mountains.
Lara didn’t know when she had first looked at Lawrence Blackridge standing next to the tree and realized that he was her father. She did know that she had always instinctively avoided Sharon Blackridge, whose cold gray eyes were a fitting match for her tight-lipped smile.
That’s over now. Mrs. Blackridge is dead. When I knock on that door, I won’t have to pray that I’ll be able to avoid her. So relax. I’m an adult now, a scholar invited here to do a history of the Rocking B, not just someone’s bastard kid.
There was an assortment of ranch vehicles parked along the circular blacktop drive, including a flashy convertible that Lara didn’t recognize. Somehow it didn’t look like something Carson would have owned, which meant that the car probably belonged to one of the temporary hands the ranch hired every summer to help with branding, calving and rebuilding winter-ruined fences.
The ranch house was only a few decades old. Gossip said it had been built to amuse the Queen Bitch after she had discovered that she couldn’t have children. The house was big, well insulated and finished in a combination of native stone and lumber, which blended beautifully with the spectacular setting. The door knocker was a polished brass horseshoe turned upside down to hold good luck within its deep curve.
The first time Lara used the knocker, she was so hesitant that the sound barely reached her own ears. The second time the clean metallic cry carried throughout the house. As the door began to open, Lara’s heart wedged in her throat. She wanted to see history, not Carson Blackridge. When Yolanda’s wrinkled face and wide smile appeared in the opening, Lara was almost dizzy with relief. The smile she gave the cook was so brilliant that the woman blinked.
“Hi, Lara, you are even more pretty than your mama. Come in. Let me look at you.”
Lara walked inside and hugged the old woman who had been Cheyenne’s favorite card partner as well as the ranch housekeeper and cook who had always had a treat on hand for any child brave enough to sneak through the backyard and tap on the kitchen window. Yolanda had been on the ranch for as long as Lara could remember.
“Hello, Yolanda. You haven’t gotten a bit older. What’s your secret?”
“You are too young to know,” Yolanda said promptly, grinning and showing three gold teeth.
“Then I guess I’m just going to have to get old,” Lara said, laughing.
Yolanda smiled. “You have eaten dinner?”
“Yes.”
“Alone? At the homestead?”
She nodded.
Yolanda shook her head disapprovingly. “You must eat here from now on. It is not good to eat alone.”
For a moment Lara couldn’t believe what she had heard. More than any other single thing that had happened since she had come back, the invitation to dinner brought home to her the fact that Mrs. Blackridge was truly dead. Had she still been alive, Lara could have starved to death on the front porch before she would have received an invitation to eat inside with Sharon Blackridge.
Yolanda nodded as though she knew what Lara was thinking.
“Si,” she said. “It has changed now that the Queen – Mrs. Blackridge is dead. It is a big house for just one man. Carson, he is lonely, I think.”
Lara made a sound that could have meant anything or nothing. “Is he around now?”
“Si. He told me if you come to bring you right to the library.”
Yolanda’s face changed. “I think he will be glad to have some help with la huera. Ai, that one is as stubborn as a burro.”
From the kitchen came the sound of a strident buzzer. Yolanda muttered a few Spanish words under her breath. “The cake,” she explained. “It is ready.”
“Go ahead. I’ll wait.”
Yolanda shook her gray head vigorously. “The library,” she said, turning Lara and pointing her down the hall. “It is the room on the right. Go, go. He is waiting and so is my cake.”
For a moment longer Lara hesitated, watching Yolanda’s broad form vanish into the kitchen. Then she took a deep breath, squared her shoulders beneath the backpack and walked quickly through the living room. Everything looked strange to her, subtly out of place. She realized that it was the first time she had ever seen the room without a huge evergreen dominating the corner opposite the fireplace and holly wreaths burning greenly along the stone walls.
The library door was ajar. Lara knocked lightly on it, heard Carson’s growled “Come in” and pushed the door fully open, taking a step into the room. That step was as far as she got before she froze. Carson’s shirt was open to his waist, revealing a thick mat of dark, curling hair. Light from the room washed over him like a caress, igniting small fires in his golden eyes and bringing the powerful muscles of his chest into high relief. His hand was rubbing the back of his neck as though to relieve muscles tightened by fatigue – or desire. Too late Lara remembered that la huera meant “the blonde.” And that was just what the woman was, a tall, lushly built strawberry blonde who was reaching for Carson with manicured hands and pouting mouth. Her silk blouse was all but undone, showing the swell and sway of breasts unconfined by any bra. Carson was looking down at the smooth flesh being offered to him, and there was a sardonic curl to his hard mouth.
“What is it, Yolanda?” asked Carson, closing his eyes and rubbing his neck. “Does one of the hands need me?”
Lara couldn’t force an answer past her lips. The sight of Carson’s unbuttoned shirt had brought back an explosion of sensual memories she had kept buried for years, except in her uncontrollable, hotly twisting dreams – Carson stripping her clothes away with those big, warm hands and then bending down to her, his mouth caressing her breast until she thought she would die of the sweet fire bursting through her body.
But she hadn’t died. Not in fire. She had frozen to death when he had turned away from her nakedness as though it repelled him. Would he turn away from the blonde at the last instant as he did with me?
Lara looked at the woman’s exposed breasts and open, shining lips. The blonde didn’t look like a woman who expected rejection. She looked like a woman who knew very well how to please the man smiling down at her. The thought made Lara shudder as sweat broke in a clammy wave over her skin. A soft, choked sound came from her throat.
Carson’s eyes opened as he spun swiftly and saw Lara standing in the doorway, her eyes blank, her hand raised as though to push something away.
“I’m – I’m sorry,” Lara stammered. “Yolanda told me to – she said you – “
“No problem,” Carson said dryly. “Susanna just stopped by to see if I needed company. I don’t so she’s on her way home.” He rubbed his neck and moved his head to ease the tight, aching muscles.
“Coffee?” he asked Lara, ignoring Susanna and gesturing with his free hand toward a tray sitting on his desk.
“Let me, darling,” Susanna said, standing on tiptoe to knead Carson’s shoulders. “I know just where those old headaches tie you in itty-bitty knots.”
Lara turned away before she saw Carson pull Susanna’s hands from his body with a gesture that shouted of impatience.
“I’ll – maybe tomorrow, or – “ Lara gave up trying to talk coherently while her mind was reeling. She spun and all but ran toward the living room. She was halfway there when she heard Carson calling her name. She didn’t even hesitate. Yolanda came rushing out of the kitchen as Lara reached the living room.
“You are leaving so soon?”
“Carson’s – busy.”
Lara’s pale face told Yolanda that she should have been the one to open the library door. “Ai, that damned hueral She was after him again, no?”
“She was after him, yes. And she caught him.”
Yolanda realized that, short of wrestling Lara for the door handle, she couldn’t prevent her from leaving. “Go to the bunkhouse,”
Yolanda said quickly. “The hands, they are all hoping to talk with you. They tell me so just toni
ght. Go. You will see.”
Lara bolted through the open door just as she heard Carson call her name again. She kept going without looking back.
“Damn!” snarled Carson as he stood in the hallway, frowning fiercely, his open shirt flapping in the breeze from the front door.
“Ai, no wonder the little one runs,” Yolanda said, closing the door and throwing up her hands. “That is no way to win a wife, senor!”
Carson turned toward Yolanda. “What the hell – “
“I am old, senor, but not deaf or stupid. I hear the old man and his wife yelling at night. I know that he wanted what was only right and just for his blood child. I know that he wanted to see grandchildren from his own body inherit the Rocking B.” Yolanda grunted. “And how can that happen but to have Lara Chandler become your wife, verdad? It is a thing much to be desired.”
“Is that what you told Lara?” asked Carson, his voice low, deadly. Yolanda lifted her hands to the ceiling and called upon God in torrents of Spanish.
“Answer me!” snarled Carson.
Hie old woman muttered and dropped her hands. “I am not a cow to be stupid about such things. I said nothing to the little one of what I know. The heart of a girl is not moved by what is necessary or right. It is moved only by love.” Yolanda shrugged. “Or the appearance of love, ver-dadl Ni modo. It does not matter. Once los ninos arrive, a girl loses her foolishness and takes her man for what he is – an animal made by God in one of his weaker moments.” Yolanda glared at Carson. “But she is not yet big with your child, hombre. Walk softly, and whisper sweet things to her. And get rid of that huera cow!”
Carson’s lips twitched, and then he threw back his head and laughed. Yolanda tried to continue glaring but couldn’t. She laughed, too, shaking her head. She had raised Carson as much as his mother had. He could always get around Yolanda, and he knew it.
“All right, I’ll whisper sweet nothings,” Carson said, smiling. Then his smile faded, and his expression became as hard as the stone mountains. “But you be damn sure you don’t say anything to Lara about Larry’s last wishes, comprendesl I mean it, Yolanda. Stay the hell out of this.”
Sweet Wind, Wild Wind Page 3
