by Caro Carson
Money changed everything—except the compass points on the earth.
“There’s a small problem with your plan,” Patricia said. “If we’re watching the waves, we’re facing east. I do believe the sun sets in the west.”
“Annoying, isn’t it? There’s an obvious solution. We’ll turn our backs on the shore and watch the sunset over the town.”
That was exactly what they did. It wasn’t as romantic as either of them might have hoped. The buildings on the beach had been hit the hardest. The pink and orange sky was beautiful, but it was viewed over a tattered skyline. They had the apocalyptic scene all to themselves.
“You know, I didn’t plan to go riding off into the sunset any time soon, anyway,” Luke said. “Let’s look at the waves.”
As easily as that, Luke turned his back on the negative, and changed their plans. Patricia wished she could be as carefree.
He’d brought his uniform and radio in case there was a fire call. He’d have to drop her off and then meet the engine at the site, but Patricia soon learned that the thick fire uniform also made a good cushion for the bed of the borrowed pickup truck.
Luke made an even better cushion. She hadn’t objected when he’d pulled her into his lap. He lounged against the metal wall of the truck bed, facing the gentle waves of the ocean. She felt so safe, curled against his chest, head on his shoulder. It felt like nothing could hurt her when arms as strong as his were wrapped around her.
It was a lovely fantasy. The whole week had been a lovely fantasy. But just as the placid waves of the Gulf of Mexico could turn into the crashing danger of a hurricane, this was only the calm before her personal storm. She couldn’t delay it any longer. She had to say goodbye.
“We start breaking down tomorrow,” she said.
But Luke had spoken at the same moment. “I let you down today. I’m sorry for it.”
“You did?” She looked up at his face, his short hair tousled by the strong ocean breeze, his eyes a beautiful gray in the dwindling light. But his gaze was narrowed as he looked over the abandoned beach, and there was a serious set to his jaw.
“You were upset this morning, so upset that you came to find me. Then I found out that you were related to Daddy Cargill, and I came to find you for the wrong reasons. I asked you the wrong questions.”
Patricia tried to think back to exactly what had been said. “I don’t remember.”
Luke bent to kiss her lightly on the lips. “I asked you why you didn’t tell me you were a famous heiress. What I should have asked you is why don’t you want this week to end?”
It was just the opening she needed. I don’t want this week to end, because I’ll miss you forever. It seemed so strange to her that she should end it in his arms, feeling cared for, feeling safe. It would have been better to say goodbye this morning amid the noise of construction and the horrid smell of hot tar, to walk away as he scowled at her.
She had to say it now. “I’m going to miss you. Terribly. You’re a good man, in every way. You are very hard to say goodbye to.”
“Luckily for us, we don’t have to say goodbye.”
“This is our last night. We live in different worlds.”
“Patricia, we live in Austin. My ranch is about an hour out of town. I mean, sure, that’s a little inconvenient, but it’s hardly—”
“I can’t have you!” Her voice was loud in the metal truck bed. The fact that she’d nearly shouted at him made her feel disoriented. And then, once more, the cursed tears were blurring her vision.
There was no need to shout. Ever. She lowered her voice, but then it came out a whisper, which wasn’t right, either. “I can’t have you. We had our week, and I loved it. I loved it. But this is our last night, and that’s the way it has to be.”
“Or else...what will happen?”
“Daddy Cargill will make my life a living hell.”
If he’d been serious before, he was ten times that now. “What do you mean? Are you in danger?”
His entire body went on alert. The muscles holding her were suddenly charged, ready to take action.
“Not physically in danger, no. It’s being a Cargill. He makes it hell to be a Cargill. It’s hard to explain.”
“I want to hear it. Please.”
“You mean, what’s it like to be the daughter of Daddy Cargill?”
“No. What’s it like to be you?”
The facts were the facts. Whether she told Luke or not, it wouldn’t change anything. But just once, Patricia wanted somebody to know the truth. And so, safely tucked in Luke’s arms, she started talking. She told him about the money and the signatures, and how they weren’t a Cargill myth. She told him about the begging and the negotiating, day in and day out.
“When did you start dealing with this?”
“I was eighteen when I co-signed the first alimony check for my mother. She’s Wife Number One. Then I had to sign a check for Wife Number Two. I didn’t mind too much, because she’d brought a little girl from a previous marriage into the mix, and I’d kind of liked having another kid in the house. I figured little Becky deserved to go to college and have nice things, since my dad had cheated on her mom. It seemed fair.”
Patricia fell silent. She’d forgotten how painful it had been when Number Two and Becky had suddenly disappeared from her life. They’d gone from being part of her life to a check she signed quarterly.
Luke began rubbing her arm with slow, deep strokes. “Go on. I’m listening.”
“Fair or not, there was a lot of money going out, and nothing coming in. I started moving our investments around, changing the balance of high-risk stocks and low-yield securities. Daddy didn’t care, and the money started growing. Once I started managing the portfolio, though, it became apparent that if I was going to protect my inheritance, I needed to manage the mistresses, as well.
“Daddy was always buying his girlfriends a bracelet or a necklace or what have you. When he was ready to move on, I’d hear him say, ‘Take the bracelet with you, honey. It’s so you.’ It never made a woman happy. Not a single one, and the drama would start. But at this point, I was getting to be around the same age as the mistresses, so I asked myself—”
“How old were you for this?”
“This was when I was about twenty.”
Luke stopped his caress and held her tightly for a moment, like a reflex had made him squeeze her a bit. She stole a look at his profile again. He was still alert. Tense.
“I asked myself, what do girls my age really want?” Patricia tried for some levity. “Do you want to guess? Test your knowledge of young bimbos?”
He looked at her, and his eyes, for the first time that she could remember, looked sad. “I probably would get it wrong. There aren’t many twenty-year-old girls hanging around the JHR.”
Patricia knew that ranches were sometimes referred to by their brands. As cute as names like “the Rocking C” sounded, most ranch brands were a rancher’s initials.
“The JHR? Is that that ranch you work on?”
“Every day, unless Texas Rescue calls.”
“What does JHR stand for?”
“The James Hill Ranch.” He watched her as he said it.
“I don’t know if I’ve heard of that one in particular.” Patricia rolled the name over in her mind. “Is there a man named James Hill, or is it a corporate holding?”
“There’s a James or two, but the Hill is because the main buildings are built on a hill. It’s mostly a cattle operation, but there are two oil rigs on the property.”
“And as I’m a Cargill, you expect me to know all the ranches that have oil rigs.” Her family’s lore was common knowledge in Texas. Luke’s assumption shouldn’t have tasted so bitter.
“Wasn’t Daddy Cargill born on an oil rig?” She heard the amusement in his voice. The bitterness grew.
Luke rubbed her arm briskly. “There’s no insult intended. Just the opposite. You’re so sharp, Patricia. If Daddy Cargill can smell oil a mile away, then I
expect you can smell it two miles away.”
That was the story, all right. That was the reputation her father worked so hard to maintain. Lifestyle came with being a legend. He was welcomed everywhere, from horse races to the governor’s inaugural ball. He was the kind of man everyone wanted to believe had made Texas the great state it was, a self-made millionaire who could smell oil under the ground.
“He’s never discovered a drop of oil. He spent one day working on an oil rig because his grandfather made him. Then he threatened to never sign a check for his grandfather, and he never had to work another day in his life.”
She probably sounded like an awful person, trashing her own father like this. “The right answer is ‘cars,’ by the way. Twenty-year-old girls like cars. Not very expensive ones, either, which is lucky. A Mustang will do the trick.”
“Lucky. That’s what you call lucky? Where was your mother for all of this?”
“Oh, she stuck it out until I was old enough to go to boarding school. Then she moved to Argentina. She loves the polo ponies. Ironically, she and Wife Number Three move in the same circles.”
“At what age does an heiress go off to boarding school?”
“I was eleven. It’s hard when you are a pimply preteen and you know darned well that you sure as heck can’t smell oil. But when everyone thinks being near you gives them a certain cachet, you learn to play along. You pretend your life is charmed. You pretend you are an American princess.”
“And the next thing you know, you really are?”
“Something like that.”
He’d been caressing her arm and dropping kisses on her temple or her cheek, but now he shifted, setting her next to him and turning to look at her fully, face-to-face. “You really are an American princess, Patricia, but it doesn’t sound like a good life. If you are tired of it, you can decide to be something else now.”
He looked so confident. He sounded so certain.
“Like what else?”
“Like the well-loved woman of a cowboy like me.”
If only that were possible, because right now, in the bed of a truck parked on the edge of a dark ocean, she wanted nothing more in life than to be loved by a man like Luke. His words made her heart hurt. She could feel the contraction in her chest.
I still have tonight.
The strong, salty breeze made her eyes sting. Strands of her hair were pulled loose from their pins, whipping her cheeks.
You could be the well-loved woman...
Calmly, Luke tucked the strands of her hair behind her ear. “This wind is too much for that twisty thing you do with your hair.”
“It’s a chignon,” she said, sitting up straighter when she wanted to melt under his touch.
Luke raised an eyebrow at her term, or perhaps at her posture. One corner of his mouth lifted in a bit of a grin, as if she were still amusing despite the ugly tales she’d just told about her own family.
“When you go to school at Fayette,” she said severely, to counter his mockery, “it’s a chignon.”
“Take it down for me.”
She shivered.
Luke kissed her, gently, his mouth covering hers for a warm, summery moment. “Take it down for me.”
She moved to her knees. With trembling fingers, she lifted her hands and started pulling out pins. Each one fell to the truck bed with a metal ping, a little noise that sounded clearly over the sweep of the waves. When all the pins were gone, she shook her hair out, then turned her face into the wind.
“You are so very, very beautiful.”
Luke laid her down, the beige uniform thick and dry beneath her, and then he stretched out beside her. He propped himself on one elbow and smoothed her hair outward, fingertips touching the skin of her forehead and chin as he pushed her loose hair away. The sides of the truck bed shielded them from the wind, so her hair stayed where he smoothed it.
“I enjoy looking at you, too,” she said.
He laughed, and she tried to laugh with him, but it might have sounded a bit like a sob. He kissed her, lightly, playfully, like it wasn’t the last day of summer camp, and they still had time.
But they didn’t.
Patricia reached for him, trying to tell him with her kiss and with her hands in his hair that she wanted him, all of him, before time ran out. Hands and mouths were not enough. She wanted to touch him, everywhere, anywhere she pleased.
She grabbed a fistful of his black T-shirt and pulled, jerking it free from his pants. When she tried to yank it over his head, he helped, sitting up to grab the hem and pulling it off over his head in one beautiful, masculine movement of muscle.
She exhaled at the sight, then sat up, eager to press herself against his bared skin. Her polo shirt was coarse and covered too much of her body, so she imitated him, grabbing the hem and pulling it over her head, leaving her bared except for her sports bra. She barely had time to shake the hair back from her face before he was on her, spreading his hands flat on her back and pressing her body into his. The sensation of skin meeting skin overrode her thoughts, making her melt.
They lay down again, together. Horizontal was where they both wanted to be, pressed together, kissing, kissing. Luke broke the kiss as he rolled to his back. Patricia rolled with him, lifting herself on one arm over him. Before she could start kissing him again, he pulled her bra’s shoulder strap down, the firm elastic pinning her arm against her side but freeing her breast.
His mouth was hot and moist, a sure sweep of tongue, a greedy taste of her body. Patricia knew she would not stop this. She wanted to make this memory, like he’d said they should. She’d take the passion now; she could have regrets in the morning.
Oh, she would have regrets.
Just a few days ago, when she’d been so happy to see him after the terrible fire, she’d been afraid he would stop. She’d hugged her knees as she sat on that bench, so afraid he wouldn’t touch her as she’d longed to be touched.
She wasn’t afraid anymore, because now he knew who she was. If she decided yes, you may, then men did not say no to Daddy Cargill’s daughter.
Luke shifted positions again as he laid her back and pulled her bra down further, freeing both breasts, sliding her arm out of the strap. He ran his hand gently over her body, making her arch her back, seeking more.
“Did you bring protection?” she whispered.
He hesitated, and she knew he had, just in case. Daddy Cargill’s daughter, what a prize. But he would be discreet, just like Marcel and the rest she’d so carefully chosen over the years. He wouldn’t brag after they’d gone their separate ways.
Luke held himself over her, studying her face in the starlight. “In a truck?” he asked. “On a beach?”
She knew what he was really asking. Are you sure?
She smiled at him. Yes, you may.
But as his mouth came down over hers, she said, “I won’t want to forget a thing.”
And then, she started to cry.
Chapter Seventeen
“I can’t make love to a woman who’s crying. Talk to me, darlin’.”
Luke watched Patricia’s expression closely. Her poker face was gone. Her hair was a pale blond tumble around her face, her throat tan in contrast, her eyes dark and huge as she stared up at him. She was exposed to him for once, her cool and haughty veneer gone as she lay beneath him, her naked breasts pressed beneath his chest.
She wiped her tears with a single swipe of her hand. “It’s nothing. The wind.”
Incredibly, she seemed to think she could hide from him, still, but he could read her like he’d never been able to read any other woman. She was aroused, but she was feeling desperate about more than just his body.
“It’s something. Tell me.”
“We’ve talked enough. I don’t want to talk. I want to make love to you.”
“That makes two of us.”
As she blinked up at him, more tears trickled from the corners of her eyes, rolling into her hair.
Sexual frustration com
bined with true concern. He shifted to the side, but her body, bare from the waist up, was too hard to ignore. He grabbed his T-shirt and bundled it over her. Maybe she’d feel more secure if she was less exposed. He didn’t know. She was complicated, but by God, he was into her. This was so much more than sex.
She pulled his shirt aside and pulled his head down for a kiss. “This will still be great,” she said, and then kissed him again, rebuilding their passion to where it had been a minute before. “It will still be great.”
“Even though...fill in the blank for me, Patricia.” The physical demands of his body clamored for him to forget it. Take what she offered. He commanded himself to control the need. “This will be great, even though what?”
She blinked up at him, perhaps surprised he wasn’t giving in to her seduction. “It’s just...”
Then she closed her eyes, and he looked at her dark lashes on her smooth skin as she whispered what sounded like a fervent wish. “It would have been so nice if you hadn’t known. Just once, to have a lover who didn’t know.”
He could feel her heartbreak. What must it be like to live as she did, always with her father’s legend over her head? Never knowing at age eleven or twenty or thirty-two if someone wanted to be with you because they liked you, or because they wanted a taste of that Cargill cachet.
He wished he had a blanket to cover her for this conversation, but since he didn’t, he interlocked his fingers with hers, and brought their joined hands to rest between their hearts, hiding her nudity with their arms. Cuddling. It wasn’t a word he ever used, but he sure didn’t mind having Patricia close.
“How soon you forget,” he said. “When I asked you if you’d known Quinn, didn’t I make it clear that nothing in your past mattered to me? Nothing changes the fact that I can’t stop thinking about you, every minute of the day.”
“Now that you know I have money, I bet that’s about a million times more true.”
