by Diana Palmer
Faye didn't look up again. She looked.. .crushed.
He cursed roundly and went back to the car, cranking it viciously. He refused to think about anything except his marriage. Faye was truly in the past—starting now.
Faye watched him drive away with a long sigh. So long, pal, she thought with bitter humor. I hope you get all the money you want. But it won't be enough. It never is. She turned and went back inside.
BEN PULLED UP at the front door of Spanish Flats with anger smoldering inside him. He'd hurt Faye, his mother was dying, Cole and Lacy weren't even speaking today, and somehow he felt responsible for the cares of the whole world. Perhaps he was growing up, he thought bitterly.
He got out of the runabout and walked up onto the porch with a step slower than his usual one. Lacy was in the living room, but she came into the hall when she heard him. She looked as Victorian as Cole this afternoon, dressed in a very correct, high-necked, gray and white dress, not one of her short and fashionable ones. Her eyes were as icy cold as Cole's had ever been.
"Thank you very much for destroying my marriage—what there was of it," she said to him. "Cole was never meant to know. You promised you'd never tell him!"
He winced at the whip of her words. He'd always loved Lacy, even if she couldn't see him for dust. She could hurt him more than anyone else in the world.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "He accused me of marrying for money and said that only a weasel would live on a woman's wealth. I lost my temper and hit back."
Lacy felt faint. After that, to tell Cole that he'd been living on Lacy's money had been a cruelty beyond words. Her eyes closed and her face paled. "I see."
"He got even," he said huskily. "He told me about Mother with no preamble at all."
Lacy stared at him. "Do you care?" she asked. "You've cut Faye up like a Sunday chicken, you've ruined my marriage, you've decided that wealth and position are worth more than your family's pride or your self-respect. I can't imagine that you feel anything these days, Bennett."
"You're wrong," he said. "You're so wrong."
"Your mother is giving you an engagement party," she continued, unabashed. "It may be the last party she ever gives. You are coming to it, with your fiancee, if I have to have Cole and Turk drive up to San Antonio and bring you here roped and laid over a saddle. Do you understand me, Bennett? You are going to do this one thing for your mother. And there had better be no snide remarks about the way we live from your intended."
Ben went rigid with wounded pride. "Threats, Lacy?"
"Promises," she corrected. "Your fiancee isn't the only wealthy person in San Antonio." She smiled with cold intent. "In point of fact, I have twice her wealth and ten times her contacts among the right people." Her blue eyes narrowed with venomous fury, something that Ben had never been on the receiving end of before. "One word from me in the right ears, and your precious newspaper will lose enough advertisers to go under. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"
His breath drew in quickly. "You wouldn't."
"I would do anything for Marion and Cole," she replied.
"Not for me?" he asked, wounded.
"I'll tell you something, Bennett," she said quietly. "My youngest isn't going to be a spoiled brat whose selfishness extends to every single facet of his life. You exist for one person's pleasure—your own. You won't even give a thought to the lives you damage, the hurt you inflict, so long as you have what you want."
Ben colored. "That isn't true!"
"You cold-bloodedly seduced little Faye and then refused to have anything to do with her, after you'd ruined her reputation," she said. "You threw a family secret at Cole that destroyed what little happiness I'd managed to find here. You hesitated so long about answering Marion's letter concerning your engagement party that she convinced herself you were too ashamed of her to let your society fiancee set foot here."
His face stiffened as the words hit home. "I'm not ashamed of my mother," he choked.
"She thinks you are," Lacy replied. "That's why you're coming to the party."
"Cole won't let you pay for it—and he can't afford it," Ben muttered quietly.
"He agreed before you came along and hurt his pride. He won't go back on his word, even if he wants to. I'll finance the social event, and try to make sure that the house lives up to your expectations," she added, with cold sarcasm that stiffened him. "After that, I'm going back to San Antonio to live unless your mother is too frail for me to leave."
"What about Cole?" he asked.
"What about him?" she said, lifting her head proudly. "It's a pity you don't know what happened to him. If you had an ounce of compassion in your entire body, you'd probably drown yourself for the things you've said to him about the war over the years."
She turned on her heel and went back into the living room. This time, she closed the door behind her.
Ben went to his mother's room, feeling as if he'd been kicked. He went in and sat by the bed.
"Hello, dear," Marion said. "I didn't know you were here until noon. I slept, I suppose."
"It's good for you to rest," he said evasively.
"Coleman told you?" she asked.
He nodded, drawing in a wretched breath. "Oh, Mama," he groaned.
She held out her arms and drew him to her, rocking him gently, cooing above his head as she had when he was an infant. Her youngest. Her very favorite. Although she made sure the others didn't know, Bennett was her whole heart. It was going to hurt him much more than Cole and Katy when the time came. But meanwhile, at least she could comfort him. Her poor baby.
Later, when he was calm, she mentioned the party very hesitantly.
He felt guilty at what he'd said and thought as he saw the apprehension in her tired eyes.
"It's very kind of you to give us a party," he said. "We'll be very happy to come. I'm sure you'll like Jessica."
She smiled radiantly, and he was glad he'd agreed. But inwardly he was dreading it. Jessica wasn't all that likable, except to a man in bed. She was a snob and she had a cutting tongue. She could very easily savage his gentle mother, and if she found the house and furnishings shoddy, she wouldn't hesitate to say so.
That could have terrible repercussions. Cole wouldn't tolerate rudeness, and Lacy had made a threat that unsettled Ben greatly. She was, indeed, more well-to-do than Jessica and her father, and a newspaper ran on goodwill and generosity of its advertisers. Advertising kept the doors open. If Lacy influenced people to stop those ads—and give them to a rival paper—it wouldn't take long for Ben's journalistic career to become a thing of the past.
He'd have to cross that bridge when he came to it. Meanwhile it would be politic to get back to San Antonio before Cole came home. After the anguish he'd caused, it would be safer out of reach of Cole's tongue and Lacy's icy formality. Not to mention out of reach of Faye's soft arms. He felt terrible guilt about his seduction of her. She loved him, and he'd used her. Today had made it all worse, somehow. Making love to her had kindled something incredible inside him, something that Jessica couldn't give him in a hundred years. Jessica was hard and cold and mercenary, even as she was sexually exciting. Faye was vulnerable and gentle and loving, and what she gave him in bed made him spin from dizzy pleasure. But Jessica was rich and Faye wasn't. He had to keep that in mind. The problem was remembering it, and not Faye's voice whispering that she loved him more than her own life.
Cole came in very late. Marion was asleep, and Lacy was clearing away the dishes.
"Where's my brother?" he asked, having whipped himself into a furious temper. He'd come home with the express purpose of thrashing Ben to a bloody pulp.
"In San Antonio, I imagine," Lacy said coolly. "He borrowed the runabout. Marion said it was all right."
"She would. He's her favorite," Cole replied.
"You aren't supposed to know." She put the butter in the icebox and folded the linen cloth on the table. "Have you written Katy about Marion?"
"Yes."
She didn't ask anything else. He was obviously in no mood for conversation. Neither was she.
He watched her work, his eyes sad and irritated. She'd given him so much. He'd given her very little over the years, save his indifference and his lust and, reluctantly, his name. She'd saved the ranch from ruin, and he'd cursed her for it. But it was hard on his pride to work as fiercely as he did and still fall short of her wealth.
"I'll be leaving after the party, if Marion doesn't need me," Lacy said quietly.
His heart stopped beating. He didn't want that. God, he didn't want that! It would tear him apart to have to lose her twice.
"Unless Katy comes home, which is doubtful, there won't be anyone else to look after Mother," he said.
Lacy didn't flatter herself that he wanted her here. She was simply a convenience. "Very well. I'll stay.. .as long as I'm needed."
He hesitated. She knew everything there was to know about him now. It made him feel vulnerable, raw. "What I told you..."
She turned, her eyes cool, her body poised. "Will go no further," she said instantly, misunderstanding his hesitant beginning. "I should have thought you'd know without asking."
His face went hard. "It wasn't a question. I owed you the truth, I suppose."
"Only the truth," she said angrily. "If you prefer to, why not think of the money as a gift to Katy and Marion and Ben? They were my family all those years since my own were lost at sea."
"Them, and not me?" he asked, trying not to show how painful it was that she didn't include him.
"You never wanted me around," she said, with dignity. "I was an embarrassment when I was trailing around after you, an encumbrance when you left for war, and an unwanted burden as a wife. I never was able to think of you as family, now more than ever."
His jaw tautened. "You wanted me."
She swallowed. "I loved you," she said, correcting him. "But love eventually dies... like a flower that has no place in the sun to warm itself." She lowered her eyes.
"Then you don't—" he hesitated "—love me?"
Her eyes went to the window. "I don't want to love you," she said, correcting him. "I imagine if I work at it quite hard, I'll accomplish it one day."
His eyes closed. "Lacy," he whispered huskily. "God, how did it ever come to this?"
She lifted her face and saw his tormented expression. "You'll only be getting what you wanted all along," she said tautly. "To be rid of me!" she cried, and turned to run out of the room.
"No!"
He caught her, whipping her into his arms, bent over her with anguished eyes in a face that was paper-white. "No!" he groaned, dragging in a harsh breath as he rocked her against him. "I—don't want to be rid of you," he managed unsteadily.
She felt as if time stopped all around them, spinning a web of sudden silence and hesitation. She became aware of Cole's breathing, quick and labored, of his hard pulse against her breasts. He smelled of leather and hemp and honest sweat, and at least he felt something for her. Or was it because of Marion that he was giving the impression that he did?
Chapter Eleven
Cole felt Lacy trembling and he felt bad, he seemed to never get on the right foot with her. He'd hurt her again. He didn't know what to do, what to say, to make things right.
"I won't leave Marion," Lacy said shakily. "This.. .isn't necessary. You don't have to pretend that you mind if I leave."
He lifted his head, looking down at her with hard, glittery eyes. "But I do mind. I always did."
"You didn't even write."
"What could I have said?" he asked quietly. "That I felt like some kind of animal after I'd finished with you, and you cried and.. .bled..." He let her go abruptly and moved away, anguish in every line of his body.
Lacy was startled by the action. "It was my first time," she said, hesitant to talk about something so intimate even with her own husband. "I had a married girlfriend in San Antonio, who... explained it to me. It's unpleasant for some women. I was simply unlucky."
"In more ways than one. If I'd been more experienced, it might have been easier for you." He leaned his shoulder against the wall, unable to look directly at her. "I couldn't take that again," he said heavily. "I didn't go after you because I thought you'd never want me to touch you, and I still wanted to." "You didn't say that."
His broad shoulders rose and fell. "How could I? You didn't know what I was, what the war had made me. You didn't know that I wasn't a whole man anymore."
"That isn't true," she said huskily. "You're more man than I've ever know in my life, and I loved you! If you'd been missing both your legs, it wouldn't have mattered—and even then you would have been a whole man!"
He risked a glance toward her, recognizing the truth in her eyes. He drew in a slow, unsteady breath. In his posture, in his working clothes, he looked like an old-time cowboy, right down to the battered Stetson and the stained leather chaps.
"There could only be the two of us," he began finally. "No children, ever. And in bed..." He turned his attention back out the darkened window, to the faint silhouette of the flat horizon. "In bed, it would still be uncomfortable and embarrassing."
"Why?"
"Because I don't know how," he said shortly, glaring at her. "Don't you remember?"
"Most people don't know how at first. They learn."
"Do they?" he scoffed. "If you ever saw me in the light, you'd run screaming for San Antonio," he said harshly. "You'd hate yourself for ever letting me touch you in the first place!"
"Rubbish!" she shot back, furious with him. "You're scarred. So what? You can walk and work and your brain is still in good order. As for a child..." She swallowed, because it hurt that there wouldn't be one. "It's very possible that I'm barren, did you consider that? Some women never conceive. I might have been one of them."
Hope, like a tiny candle in the darkness, was beginning to kindle deep inside him. He leaned back against the wall, his knee bending as he propped back on the high, slanted heel of one boot, the spur jingling faintly.
"It was good the other afternoon at the corral—when you came to ask me about Ben's party," he admitted.
She blushed. "Very good," she said huskily.
He hesitated. "It would always be in the dark," he said slowly. "And I don't know if I could bear having you touch me where I was burned, either."
"It hurts you?" she asked, concerned.
"No. It.. .the skin is different. Thinner, very smooth in patches." He almost choked on the words. "I'm damaged."
Her heart almost broke at the look on his face, at the odd, rare vulnerability. She breathed very slowly. "If I were burned like that, would you not want to touch me?"
His eyebrows lifted. "What?"
"If I were.. .damaged as you are, would you find me repulsive?" "Of course not," he replied.
She smiled. She didn't say anything. She simply stood and looked at him, until the message got through and he realized what she was saying.
He let out a ragged breath. "I see."
"No, I don't think you do—not just yet," she replied. "But given time, you might. I do very much like the idea of getting to know each other before we become intimate again," she continued.
"So do I." He began to smile. "And for the time being, I'll stay in the guest room. We can share the bathroom between.. .although not at the same time," he added when she blushed.
She nodded. Her eyes searched his. "I know it hurts your pride that I paid for things while you were away. You might remember that your parents took me in and supported me when my own died, so it was more a repayment of a debt." His face went hard, and she added, "But if you like, I'll let you pay me back when the ranch is solvent again. As it will be," she added, with conviction. "I've never for a minute doubted that you'll make a go of it. Even Turk says you've got few equals when it comes to breeding superior bloodlines."
He smiled at her with his eyes. "He should know. He had a hell of a good ranch up in Montana." He sighed. "He misses Katy. He hasn't been the same since
she left. I thought I was doing the right thing for her, keeping them apart. Now, I'm not so certain."
"Perhaps he didn't know how he felt about Katy until it was too late," she ventured.
Cole was watching her hungrily. He nodded, his eyes narrow and thoughtful. "Perhaps not. Sometimes a woman comes up on a man's blind side. He can't see her until she's gone."
She moved a little closer to him, and looked up at his face. "Did you.. .miss me?"
"Oh , yes," he said, searching her eyes. "In France, you were all I thought about. After I crashed, I had nightmares about coming home and having you scream when you saw me." His face hardened. "That was why I took the pistol—"
"I don't care what you look like!" she burst out. "All I wanted was for you to come home alive, Cole. In any condition at all!"
He swallowed. She made him feel humble.
"That was why you didn't want to marry me," she said, suddenly certain as she looked up at him. "You thought I wouldn't want you."
"I lacked the confidence to risk it," he replied. "Ben forced us into it, and I was terrified. I tried to keep intimacy out of it, even then, but we started kissing each other out in the barn.. .and my own need of you defeated me. By the time I got home that night, a loaded gun wouldn't have slowed me down." He touched her cheek. "It was.. .so good,"he said roughly. "So good! I didn't know a damned thing about women except what I'd heard in the Air Service. I thought you were enjoying it, too. Then it was over, and you cried. When I saw why, I wanted to blow my brains out." He drew her forehead to his chest and held her loosely, his cheek on her dark hair.
"It won't ever be that bad again," she said gently.
He framed her face in his big hands. "You might be happier with someone else," he said, still unconvinced.
"I'd have to learn how to stop loving you first," she said simply.
He smiled. It made him warm inside when she said that. He'd never really been able to let himself love anyone except his mother and siblings. Love was a risk, because it made one vulnerable. But he could love Lacy. Oh, yes, he thought as he bent his head toward her, he could love her!
