by Diana Palmer
“How many people are we expecting, by the way?” he asked as he put on his Stetson.
“About forty,” she said. “Not an overwhelming number. Just some of my friends and some of King’s.” She grinned. “I’m making sure they’re compatible before I railroad him to the altar.”
He burst out laughing. She was incorrigible and definitely his child, with her keen business sense, he told himself.
“Do you reckon they’ll have a lot in common?”
She pursed her pretty lips. “Money and cattle,” she reminded him, “are always a good mix. Besides, King’s friends are almost all politicians. They pride themselves on finding things in common with potential voters.”
He winked. “Good thought.”
She waved and went to call Lettie about doing the cheese straws and the caterers to finalize the arrangements. She was a good hostess, and she enjoyed parties. It was a challenge to find compatible people and put them together in a hospitable atmosphere. So far, she’d done well. Now it was time to show King how organized she was.
The flowers and the caterer had just arrived when she went down the long hall to her room to dress. She was nibbling at a chicken wing on the way up, hoping that she wouldn’t starve. There was going to be an hors d’oeuvres table and a drinks bar, but no sit-down dinner. She’d decided that she’d rather dance than eat, and she’d hired a competent local band to play. They were in the ballroom now, tuning up, while Cass, the housekeeper, was watching some of the ranch’s lean, faintly disgusted cowboys set up chairs and clear back the furniture. They hated being used as inside labor and their accusing glances let her know it. But she grinned and they melted. Most of them were older hands who’d been with her father since she was a little girl. Like her father, they’d spoiled her, too.
She darted up the staircase, wild with excitement about the evening ahead. King didn’t come to the house often, only when her father wanted to talk business away from work, or occasionally for drinks with some of her father’s acquaintances. To have him come to a party was new and stimulating. Especially if it ended the way she planned. She had her sights well and truly set on the big rancher. Now she had to take aim.
Chapter 2
Tiffany’s evening gown was created by a San Antonio designer, who also happened to own a boutique in one of the larger malls there. Since Jacobsville was halfway between San Antonio and Victoria, it wasn’t too long a drive. Tiffany had fallen in love with the gown at first sight. The fact that it had cost every penny of her allowance hadn’t even slowed her down. It was simple, sophisticated, and just the thing to make King realize she was a woman. The low-cut bodice left the curve of her full breasts seductively bare and the diamanté straps were hardly any support at all. They looked as if they might give way any second, and that was the charm of the dress. Its silky white length fell softly to just the top of her oyster satin pumps with their rhinestone clips. She put her long hair in an elaborate hairdo, and pinned it with diamond hairpins. The small silk gardenia in a soft wave was a last-minute addition, and the effect was dynamite. She looked innocently seductive. Just right.
She was a little nervous as she made her way down the curve of the elegant, gray-carpeted staircase. Guests were already arriving, and most of these early ones were around King’s age. They were successful businessmen, politicians mostly, with exquisitely dressed wives and girlfriends on their arms. For just an instant, Tiffany felt young and uneasy. And then she pinned on her finishing-school smile and threw herself into the job of hostessing.
She pretended beautifully. No one knew that her slender legs were unsteady. In fact, a friend of one of the younger politicians, a bachelor clerk named Wyatt Corbin, took the smile for an invitation and stuck to her like glue. He was good-looking in a tall, gangly redheaded way, but he wasn’t very sophisticated. Even if he had been, Tiffany had her heart set on King, and she darted from group to group, trying to shake her admirer.
Unfortunately he was stubborn. He led her onto the dance floor and into a gay waltz, just as King came into the room.
Tiffany felt like screaming. King looked incredibly handsome in his dark evening clothes. His tuxedo emphasized his dark good looks, and the white of his silk shirt brought out his dark eyes and hair. He spared Tiffany an amused glance and turned to meet the onslaught of two unattached, beautiful older women. His secretary, Carla Stark, hadn’t been invited—Tiffany had been resolute about that. There was enough gossip about those two already, and Carla was unfair competition.
It was the unkindest cut of all, and thanks to this redheaded clown dancing with her, she’d lost her chance. She smiled sweetly at him and suddenly brought down her foot on his toe with perfect accuracy.
“Ouch!” he moaned, sucking in his breath.
“I’m so sorry, Wyatt,” Tiffany murmured, batting her eyelashes at him. “Did I step on your poor foot?”
“My fault, I moved the wrong way,” he drawled, forcing a smile. “You dance beautifully, Miss Blair.”
What a charming liar, she thought. She glanced at King, but he wasn’t even looking at her. He was talking and smiling at a devastating blonde, probably a politician’s daughter, who looked as if she’d just discovered the best present of all under a Christmas tree. No thanks to me, Tiffany thought miserably.
Well, two could play at ignoring, she thought, and turned the full effect of her green eyes on Wyatt. Well, happy birthday to me, she thought silently, and asked him about his job. It was assistant city clerk or some such thing, and he held forth about his duties for the rest of the waltz, and the one that followed.
King had moved to the sofa with the vivacious little blonde, where he looked as if he might set up housekeeping. Tiffany wanted to throw back her head and scream with outrage. Whose party was this, anyway, and which politician was that little blonde with? She began scanning the room for unattached older men.
“I guess I ought to dance with Becky, at least once,” Wyatt sighed after a minute. “She’s my cousin. I didn’t have anyone else to bring. Excuse me a second, will you?”
He left her and went straight toward the blonde who was dominating King. But if he expected the blonde to sacrifice that prize, he was sadly mistaken. They spoke in whispers, while King glanced past Wyatt at Tiffany with a mocking, worldly look. She turned her back and went to the punch bowl.
Wyatt was back in a minute. “She doesn’t mind being deserted,” he chuckled. “She’s found a cattle baron to try her wiles on. That’s Kingman Marshall over there, you know.”
Tiffany looked at him blankly. “Oh, is it?” she asked innocently, and tried not to show how furious she really was. Between Wyatt and his cousin, they’d ruined her birthday party.
“I wonder why he’s here?” he frowned.
She caught his hand. “Let’s dance,” she muttered, and dragged him back onto the dance floor.
For the rest of the evening, she monopolized Wyatt, ignoring King as pointedly as if she’d never seen him before and never cared to again. Let him flirt with other women at her party. Let him break her heart. He was never going to know it. She’d hold her chin up if it killed her. She smiled at Wyatt and flirted outrageously, the very life and soul of her party, right up to the minute when she cut the cake and asked Wyatt to help her serve it. King didn’t seem to notice or care that she ignored him. But her father was puzzled, staring at her incomprehensibly.
“This party is so boring,” Tiffany said an hour later, when she felt she couldn’t take another single minute of the blonde clinging to King on the dance floor. “Let’s go for a ride.”
Wyatt looked uncomfortable. “Well…I came in a truck,” he began.
“We’ll take my Jag.”
“You’ve got a Jaguar?”
She didn’t need to say another word. Without even a glance in King’s direction, she waved at her father and blew him a kiss, dragging Wyatt along behind her toward the front door. Not that he needed much coaxing. He seemed overwhelmed when she tossed him the keys and c
limbed into the passenger seat of the sleek red car.
“You mean, I can drive this?” he burst out.
“Sure. Go ahead. It’s insured. But I like to go fast, Wyatt,” she said. And for tonight, that was true. She was sick of the party, sick of King, sick of her life. She hurt in ways she’d never realized she could. She only wanted to get away, to escape.
He started the car and stood down on the accelerator. Tiffany had her window down, letting the breeze whip through her hair. She deliberately pulled out the diamond hairpins and tucked them into her purse, letting her long, black hair free and fly on the wind. The champagne she’d had to drink was beginning to take effect and was making her feel very good indeed. The speed of the elegant little car added to her false euphoria. Why, she didn’t care about King’s indifference. She didn’t care at all!
“What a car!” Wyatt breathed, wheeling it out onto the main road.
“Isn’t it, though?” she laughed. She leaned back and closed her eyes. She wouldn’t think about King. “Go faster, Wyatt, we’re positively crawling! I love speed, don’t you?”
Of course he did. And he didn’t need a second prompting. He put the accelerator peddle to the floor, and twelve cylinders jumped into play as the elegant vehicle shot forward like its sleek and dangerous namesake.
She laughed, silvery bells in the darkness, enjoying the unbridled speed, the fury of motion. Yes, this would blow away all the cobwebs, all the hurt, this would…!
The sound of sirens behind them brought her to her senses. She glanced over the seat and saw blue bubbles spinning around, atop a police car.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, where did he come from!” she gasped. “I never saw the car. They must parachute down from treetops,” she muttered, and then giggled at her own remark.
Wyatt slowed the car and pulled onto the shoulder, his face rapidly becoming the color of his hair. He glanced at Tiffany. “Gosh, I’m sorry. And on your birthday, too!”
“I don’t care. I told you to do it,” she reminded him.
A tall policeman came to the side of the car and watched Wyatt fumble to power the window down.
“Good God. Wyatt?” the officer gasped.
“That’s right, Bill,” Wyatt sighed, producing his driver’s license. “Tiffany Blair, this is Bill Harris. He’s one of our newest local policemen and a cousin of mine.”
“Nice to meet you, officer—although I wish it was under better circumstances,” Tiffany said with a weak smile. “I should get the ticket, not Wyatt. It’s my car, and I asked him to go faster.”
“I clocked you at eighty-five, you know,” he told Wyatt gently. “I sure do hate to do this, Wyatt. Mr. Clark is going to be pretty sore at you. He just had a mouthful to say about speeders.”
“The mayor hates me anyway,” Wyatt groaned.
“I won’t tell him you got a ticket if you don’t.” Bill grinned.
“Want to bet he’ll find out anyway? Just wait.”
“It’s all my fault,” Tiffany muttered. “And it’s my birthday…!”
A sleek, new black European sports car slid in behind the police car and came to a smooth, instant stop. A minute later, King got out and came along to join the small group.
“What’s the trouble, Bill?” he asked the policeman.
“They were speeding, Mr. Marshall,” the officer said. “I’ll have to give him a ticket. He was mortally flying.”
“I can guess why,” King mused, staring past Wyatt at a pale Tiffany.
“Nobody held a gun on me,” Wyatt said gently. “It’s my own fault. I could have refused.”
“The first lesson of responsibility,” King agreed. “Learning to say no. Come on, Tiffany. You’ve caused enough trouble for one night. I’ll drop you off on my way out.”
“I won’t go one step with you, King…!” she began furiously.
He went around to the passenger side of the Jag, opened the door, and tugged her out. His lean, steely fingers on her bare arm raised chills of excitement where they touched. “I don’t have time to argue. You’ve managed to get Wyatt in enough trouble.” He turned to Wyatt. “If you’ll bring the Jag back, I think your cousin is ready to leave. Sorry to spoil your evening.”
“It wasn’t spoiled at all, Mr. Marshall,” Wyatt said with a smile at Tiffany. “Except for the speeding ticket, I enjoyed every minute of it!”
“I did, too, Wyatt,” Tiffany said. “I…King, will you stop dragging me?”
“No. Good night, Wyatt. Bill.”
A chorus of good-nights broke the silence as King led an unwilling, sullen Tiffany back to his own leathertrimmed sports car. He helped her inside, got in under the wheel and started the powerful engine.
“I hate you, King,” she ground out as he pulled onto the highway.
“Which is no reason at all for making a criminal of Wyatt.”
She glared at him hotly through the darkness. “I did not make him a criminal! I only offered to let him drive the Jaguar.”
“And told him how fast to go?”
“He wasn’t complaining!”
He glanced sideways at her. Despite the rigid set of her body, and the temper on that lovely face, she excited him. One diamanté strap was halfway down a silky smooth arm, revealing more than a little of a tip-tilted breast. The silk fabric outlined every curve of her body, and he could smell the floral perfume that wafted around her like a seductive cloud. She put his teeth on edge, and it irritated him beyond all reason.
He lit a cigarette that he didn’t even want, and abruptly put it out, remembering belatedly that he’d quit smoking just last week. And he was driving faster than he normally did. “I don’t know why in hell you invited me over here,” he said curtly, “if you planned to spend the whole evening with the damned city clerk.”
“Assistant city clerk,” she mumbled. She darted a glance at him and pressed a strand of long hair away from her mouth. He looked irritated. His face was harder than usual, and he was driving just as fast as Wyatt had been.
“Whatever the hell he is.”
“I didn’t realize you’d even noticed what I was doing, King,” she replied sweetly, “what with Wyatt’s pretty little cousin wrapped around you like a ribbon.”
His eyebrows arched. “Wrapped around me?”
“Wasn’t she?” she asked, averting her face. “Sorry. It seemed like it to me.”
He pulled the car onto the side of the road and turned toward her, letting the engine idle. The hand holding the steering wheel clenched, but his dark eyes were steady on hers; she could see them in the light from the instrument panel.
“Were you jealous, honey?” he taunted, in a tone she’d never heard him use. It was deep and smooth and low-pitched. It made her young body tingle in the oddest way.
“I thought you were supposed to be my guest, that’s all,” she faltered.
“That’s what I thought, too, until you started vamping Wyatt whats-his-name.”
His finger toyed with the diamanté strap that had fallen onto her arm. She reached to tug it up, but his lean, hard fingers were suddenly there, preventing her.
Her eyes levered up to meet his quizzically, and in the silence of the car, she could hear her own heartbeat, like a faint drum.
The lean forefinger traced the strap from back to front, softly brushing skin that had never known a man’s touch before. She stiffened a little, to feel it so lightly tracing the slope of her breast.
“They…they’ll miss us,” she said in a voice that sounded wildly high-pitched and frightened.
“Think so?”
He smiled slowly, because he was exciting her, and he liked it. He could see her breasts rising and falling with quick, jerky breaths. He could see her nipples peaking under that silky soft fabric. The pulse in her throat was quick, too, throbbing. She was coming-of-age tonight, in more ways than one.
He reached beside him and slowly, blatantly, turned off the engine before he turned back to Tiffany. There was a full moon, and the light
of it and the subdued light of the instrument panel gave him all the illumination he needed.
“King,” she whispered shakily.
“Don’t panic,” he said quietly. “It’s going to be delicious.”
She watched his hand move, as if she were paralyzed. It drew the strap even further off her arm, slowly, relentlessly, tugging until that side of her silky bodice fell to the hard tip of her nipple. And then he gave it a whisper of a push and it fell completely away, baring her pretty pink breast to eyes that had seen more than their share of women. But this was different. This was Tiffany, who was virginal and young and completely without experience.
That knowledge hardened his body. His lean fingers traced her collarbone, his eyes lifted to search her quiet, faintly shocked face. Her eyes were enormous. Probably this was all new to her, and perhaps a little frightening as well.
“You’re of age, now. It has to happen with someone,” he said.
“Then…I want it to happen…with you,” she whispered, her voice trembling, like her body.
His pulse jumped. His eyes darkened, glittered. “Do you? I wonder if you realize what you’re getting into,” he murmured. He bent toward her, noticing her sudden tension, her wide-eyed apprehension. He checked the slow movement, for an instant; long enough to whisper, “I won’t hurt you.”
She leaned back against the leather seat as he turned toward her, her body tautening, trembling a little. But it wasn’t fear that motivated her. As she met his smoldering eyes, she slowly arched her back, to let the rest of the bodice fall, and saw the male desire in his dark eyes as they looked down at what the movement had uncovered.
“Your breasts are exquisite,” he said absently, that tracing hand moving slowly, tenderly, down one tip-tilted slope, making her shudder. “Perfect.”
“They ache,” she whispered on a sob, her eyes half closed, in thrall to some physical paralysis that made her throb all over with exquisite sensations.
“I can do something about that,” he mused with a brief smile.
His forefinger found the very tip of one small breast and traced around it gently, watching it go even harder, feeling it shudder with the tiny consummation. He heard the faint gasp break from her lips and looked up at her face, at her wide, misty eyes.
