To Love and Cherish

by Diana Palmer

  King looked down at her from his superior height with narrowed eyes. “You’re full of surprises,” he said absently. “Not the tame little lamb you appear to be, are you, Shelby? That part of you’s an act, and Danny doesn’t even realize it.”

  “An act?” she echoed blankly, looking up at him.

  “You’re a passionate woman,” he said flatly. “Your eyes are full of it. Your mouth…” His eyes dropped to it, tracing its softness. “You keep the passion well hidden, but it’s there, all the same.”

  She blushed, turning away. She didn’t even answer him.

  “Embarrassed?” he asked, moving closer to where they stood at the fence around the airport apron. “Why?”

  “I…I wish you wouldn’t….”

  “You run every time I mention intimate relationships,” he said quietly. “The last time, you ran away in the middle of the night and had the whole household in an uproar worrying about you.”

  She blushed even more, and her fingers clenched inward until the knuckles turned white. “What you said about me that night…it wasn’t true!” she whispered.

  “I don’t remember saying anything about you,” he replied frankly. “I invited you into my bed, you said ‘no’, and I left you standing on the stairs.”

  Her eyes closed on the memory. He’d looked at her that night as if she’d been a slave girl on auction, his eyes insolent and calculating. She hadn’t dared tell Danny what happened. After all, King was the brother he worshipped. She couldn’t tear down that image. But it was what King had said that hurt the most—“Your mother wouldn’t have said no,” he’d taunted sarcastically. “You won’t fool me with that virginal act, either, Shelby. I’ll bet you’ve given out a dozen times before tonight, so why not me?”

  But she’d refused him, and he’d never know how it had cut her, that cold-blooded proposition he’d made without even touching her. She could still almost hate him for it.

  There was a long, tight silence between them. “Anything could have happened to you that night, alone on the highway after midnight,” he said in a voice she didn’t recognize. “My God, how could you have been so stupid, Shelby?”

  “I only wanted to get away from you,” she said in a low voice. “I’d have walked through hell to get away from you that night.”

  A shadow passed across his face, but he didn’t answer her. He threw his half-smoked cigarette to the ground and crushed it under the heel of his dress boot. “I’ve had enough. Let’s go.”

  She followed him back to the car and got in beside him. The sense of comradeship that had lasted between them for such a short time was gone again; this time, perhaps for good.

  Four

  Shelby sat with Danny at lunch, eating barbecue under the Spanish moss beards of the towering live oaks. Across the way, at the table with Jim and Kate Brannt, Mary Kate Culhane was shooting poisonous glances in Shelby’s direction.

  “You’re not enjoying yourself,” Danny said gently. “Did King start on you again?”

  “Did King ever stop?” she asked with soft laughter. “I don’t know what possessed me to go with him to the air show, or why he asked me. We’re like soda and vinegar….”

  “Or fire and wind,” Danny teased. His green eyes probed hers. “Give it a chance, Shelby.”

  She frowned. “Give what a chance?”

  He looked vaguely uncomfortable and quickly changed the subject. “Did you enjoy the air show?”

  “Most of it, yes. Danny…?”

  “Please look lovingly at me,” he pleaded, darting a glance toward the other table. “Mary Kate is really turning on the charm. Don’t sacrifice me—!”

  “Oh, you crazy man,” she laughed. She laid a hand on his forearm. “Danny, I do like you.”

  He grinned. “I like you, too. Don’t let King upset you. He improves on closer acquaintance.”

  “You told me that two years ago, and it hasn’t happened yet,” she reminded him.

  “You haven’t gotten close enough yet.”

  Her eyes darkened. “I don’t want to,” she said fervently.

  “Are you afraid of him, Shelby?”

  She looked up. “Terrified!” she admitted. “Danny, don’t leave me alone with him again.”

  “Honey, I’m trying,” he laughed. “It’s just that Mary Kate keeps…”

  “You’re going to miss the river race,” King said, coming up beside them with a can of beer in one lean hand.

  “Can’t let that happen, can we?” Danny chuckled. He picked up their refuse and took it over to a nearby garbage can, leaving her with King.

  “What do I do about an inner tube?” she asked him conversationally.

  “Forget it,” he bit off. His jaw tautened. “You’re not going to kill yourself in the river to prove anything.”

  “But, King…!”

  “Scratches on that perfect skin would put you out of work, wouldn’t they?” he asked with an uncanny insight.

  She glared down at her sandaled feet. “That seems to bother everybody more than it bothers me,” she said tightly. “I’m not made of glass. I don’t care if I get scratched.”

  “Nice try, honey,” he said with a cold smile. “But I’m not that dense. Save the act for Danny. He’s young enough to be taken in by it.”

  She started to argue, but what was the use? He’d never change his mind about her. She turned to Danny and slid her arm through his as he came back from emptying the trash. He smiled down at her.

  “Still want to get in the river?” he teased.

  “She’s not racing,” King said firmly, his dark eyes meeting his brother’s doggedly. “It’s too risky.”

  “Tell her, not me,” Danny laughed. “I’m not that much of a daredevil. Now, he is,” Danny told Shelby, jerking a thumb toward his elder brother. “He’d scare you to death in a canoe.”

  “I wonder,” King said narrowly, studying Shelby in earnest.

  “Oh, Danny!” Mary Kate called, moving forward to capture the arm Shelby didn’t have a claim on. “Would you get into the three-legged race with me? I don’t have a partner.” She made it sound like a federal offense.

  Danny looked at Shelby apologetically. “Do you mind?” he asked, but Mary Kate was already dragging him away.

  “I thought you were engaged to him?” King murmured, and there was a glimmer of amusement in his eyes. He drained the can of beer and tossed it into a nearby trash can.

  Shelby clasped her hands behind her, staring at the retreating couple and smiled wistfully at her only source of protection as it was shanghaied away. “A willful girl is Mary Kate Culhane,” she murmured. “You planned this, didn’t you, King?”

  “Hell, yes,” he admitted shamelessly. “Mary Kate has something to offer.”

  “Indeed she does,” Shelby agreed quietly. “A sixteen thousand acre ranch with a herd of purebred Santa Gertrudis cattle, oil rights, and three real estate companies. And all I have to offer,” she added in a subdued tone, “is a common background, a career that ends when I reach thirty or thereabout, and an infamous mother.” She turned away, feeling the hurt all the way to the bone, as if she’d really been promised in marriage to Danny, as if it were real.

  “Shelby,” he said quietly.

  She stopped, but she didn’t turn.

  “She loves him,” King said quietly. “You don’t. Not in a way you should to be considering marriage.”

  Did he really see that deep, she wondered incredulously. She swallowed. “How do you know what I feel?”

  “Last night when I came out of the living room, he was kissing you on the forehead,” he replied. “That told me all I needed to know.”

  She turned, meeting his solemn gaze. “I don’t understand.”

  “If you were engaged to me, there wouldn’t be any chaste little kisses on the forehead, Shelby,” he said tautly. “I’d take your mouth and have you begging me for more. And we wouldn’t be sleeping in separate bedrooms.”

  Her face flamed, but she didn�
�t take her eyes away. “You flatter yourself,” she said shakily.

  “I said ‘if,’ honey,” he reminded her coolly. “I wouldn’t take you with an oil well thrown in.”

  She turned away from him.

  “Running away?” he taunted. “Where to now?”

  “To get an inner tube,” she said through her teeth.

  “Oh, hell, no, you don’t!” he bit off. He moved forward, catching her arm in a steely, painful grasp and whirled her around so that he could see her mutinous young face.

  “Let go of me,” she said tightly. “You aren’t my keeper!”

  His eyes narrowed and became searching. “Did I hit a nerve, honey?”

  “Please don’t call me that,” she said, averting her eyes as she stiffened in his grasp. “You make it sound cheap.”

  His fingers tightened. “Aren’t you?”

  “Leave me alone,” she pleaded in a broken whisper, closing her eyes on the sight of that darkly tanned hand wrapped around her small wrist. “Please, King, can’t you just leave me alone!”

  “I wish to God I could,” he growled enigmatically. He let go of her wrist. “You’ll stay with me, young Shelby. I’ll be damned if I’m letting you near the water.”

  “Afraid I might win?” she taunted, darting a tremulous glance in his direction as he fell into step beside her.

  He glanced down at her with an unreadable expression in his dark eyes. “I just might be,” he said quietly.

  Danny hadn’t come downstairs when Shelby got to the breakfast table the next morning, earlier than the rest of the family. King was still there, just folding his morning paper as he finished the last of his coffee and reached for the pot to refill it.

  He looked up as she froze in the doorway.

  “Don’t start backing up, baby,” he remarked softly. “It’s too late now.”

  She moved to the table and sat down gingerly, feeling every muscle in her body tense as he stared at her, at the picture she made in her white blouse and slacks, complementing her darkness. He was wearing work clothes this morning; blue denim that was expensively cut, but still had the look of utility. His shirt was open halfway down the front and his bronzed chest was damp, as if he’d already been outside in the heat.

  “Danny’s not up yet?” he asked casually.

  “I don’t know,” she murmured, reaching for the cup of coffee he poured and handed to her. An impish smile touched her mouth as she took the china cup and saucer in hand. “I think he’s recuperating from Mary Kate Culhane.”

  He actually laughed, a sound so rare it brought her curious eyes up to meet his.

  “Maybe he is.” He tossed down the rest of his coffee. “Want to come watch us brand cattle, city lady?”

  She gaped at him. “Could I?” she asked incredulously.

  “Not in that gear,” he replied, frowning at her white clothes. “You’ll need jeans and thick socks, boots, and a blouse that won’t show dirt. And,” he added darkly, “Danny’s permission, if you can get it.”

  “Danny won’t mind,” she said without thinking.

  “I’d mind if you belonged to me,” he said flatly. “I’d mind like hell.”

  “You aren’t Danny,” she reminded him softly. “If you mean it, I’ll go and change.”

  He glanced at the wide leather band that held his watch in place. “I mean it for the next twenty minutes. After that, I’m gone.”

  “I’ll be ready,” she promised. She dug into her breakfast with an appetite that would have done credit to an athlete after a 20 mile hike.

  She met him at the corral, neatly dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a yellow tank top, without makeup, her eyes sparkling.

  He frowned down at her. “Just like a cowgirl,” he murmured. “And still no makeup. Don’t I rate it, or do you really prefer to go without it?”

  She dropped her eyes. “I don’t have any reason to try and attract your attention, King,” she reminded him. “And even if I did, I don’t like pretentiousness.”

  “God, what a word!” he chuckled.

  “I told you before I didn’t like artificial things,” she replied as she followed him to the horse he’d saddled for her—a young Appaloosa filly.

  “Neither do I, honey, but you’ll have to do more than go without makeup to convince me.”

  “Why bother?” she asked quietly. “You enjoy believing the worst.”

  He raised an eyebrow and stood looking down at her as he lifted the filly’s reins to the pommel of the saddle. “You might change my mind if you worked at it,” he said in a low, deep voice that sent shivers down her spine.

  She stared at him, her heart almost shaking her with its pounding as she met the look in those dark, deep-set eyes.

  “Don’t panic,” he said softly, and a thin smile touched his hard mouth. “You’re safe enough—for the moment.”

  He put her up on the filly and mounted his own black stallion gracefully, reining in alongside her as they rode out. She couldn’t manage to look at him just yet. That curious look in his eyes had drained her of courage.

  “Where did you get the hat?” he asked after a minute, his eyes flicking to the brown suede hat sitting jauntily atop her ebony hair.

  “Your mother loaned it to me,” she murmured. She glanced at him. “I thought roundup and all was left to the ranch manager,” she murmured, desperate to find a safe topic of conversation.

  “Jim Deyton runs things when Dad and I are away,” he agreed, narrowing his eyes as he watched cattle grazing in the distance. “And I’ve got a man who takes care of the purebred stock full time.”

  “One man to do nothing but that?” she exclaimed.

  He glanced at her and a pale smile touched his hard mouth. “You don’t know much about cattle, do you, honey? How much do you think that seed bull of mine is worth—the Santa Gertrudis?”

  She blinked, “Oh, probably at least a thousand dollars,” she said.

  “Try a quarter of a million.”

  “Dollars?!” she choked.

  “Dollars. We own sixty-two percent of him. Brownland Farms owns the other thirty-eight percent.”

  She sighed heavily. “My gosh, I didn’t realize one bull was worth all that much money.”

  “That particular bull damned well is. He’s sired six champions, and he came from a foundation herd sale on the ranch a few counties over.” He glanced at her. “I imagine you know the one?”

  “Anybody who knows Texas knows that one,” she admitted. “Even if they don’t know cattle.”

  “You could learn. You already like the ranch, don’t you, city lady?”

  She nodded, casting her eyes around at the gently rolling countryside, the shadows of trees on the long horizon. “It’s so peaceful here.”

  “It’s that, all right. And there’s plenty of elbow room. I like walking around without running into things,” he said.

  “But you do occasionally spend time in the city,” she reminded him.

  “I have to. This ranch is a corporation, not an empire. And we have other holdings as well—oil, real estate…I’m a business executive more than a cattleman.”

  “You just prefer cattle.”

  “That’s a fact, honey. I like them better than people most of the time,” he added with a taunting smile.

  “You don’t have to rub it in,” she said quietly, nudging her mount into a canter.

  He grabbed the bridle and brought her up short, his eyes boring into hers. “I didn’t mean you. Stop bristling at me, Shelby, I wasn’t making fun of you.”

  She flushed. “You do most of the time.”

  He scowled. “Do I?” he asked, and there was genuine curiosity in his tone.

  “I know you don’t like me,” she replied, clutching the leather-covered pommel for dear life, “and you don’t think I’m good enough for Danny, but couldn’t you just…”

  “Hold it right there,” he said grimly. “Who the hell said I don’t think you’re good enough for my brother?”

/>   “It’s the way you treat me, as if…”

  “I don’t want you to marry him, that’s so,” he admitted. “But your background doesn’t have a damned thing to do with it. You’re a world away from Danny. You don’t even like the same things. My God, he wouldn’t go near a river, and you like to shoot the white water. He only looks reckless, but you are. You like bucking the odds. I can see it now. Danny would be home watching television while you were out hang-gliding down some mountain. You’ve got nothing in common except that you like each other. Hell, Shelby, Danny doesn’t even like children, had you thought about that?”

  “No,” she said honestly, not bothering to tell him she hadn’t because it didn’t matter since she wasn’t really marrying Danny.

  “Do you want children?” he asked.

  She stared at him, and the words came out without volition. “Oh, yes,” she said softly. There was an intensity in King’s eyes that she couldn’t understand. “Do you?” she asked without knowing why.

  He nodded, his face somber. His eyes swept over her slowly, appraisingly. “You’re not built for babies.”

  “That doesn’t mean I couldn’t have them.”

  “No,” he agreed. “A woman who isn’t afraid of white water wouldn’t be afraid of childbirth. But would you take to life on a cattle ranch? It’s damned lonely here. There aren’t any nightclubs or boutiques.”

  “Do I need them?” she asked wistfully.

  “You tell me. You’re a model.”

  “Yes, I am,” she agreed dully. “A walking, talking eight by ten glossy.”

  He scowled at her, but he didn’t pursue it. “Let’s get moving, honey, I’ve got a long day ahead.”

  He hurried her around the corrals where the branding and vetting of cattle was being done, as if he was suddenly anxious to get rid of her. It all became a maze of dust and heat and bawling cattle and burning hide. He took her back to the ranch house after a whirlwind tour of the cattle operation and left her with barely a word.

  She spent the rest of the afternoon with the elder Brannts, trying her best not to appear concerned that Danny had gone off with Mary Kate Culhane for the day. Strange, she thought, how Danny was pointedly calling attention to his attraction for Mary Kate and his lack of real interest in Shelby. Especially since the fake engagement had been his idea. Shelby couldn’t begin to fathom his reasoning. Neither could King, apparently. When he was told at the supper table that Danny was having supper with the Culhanes, he speared a glance at Shelby, threw down his napkin and left the room.