by Diana Palmer
The doctors agreed it was the shock. She wasn't aware of anything. Danny's treatment of her—and the circumstances of his death—had snapped her mind. She'd most likely have to be committed, they agreed, but first her family had to be told. That caused a real stir, because nobody knew where or who they were, and the victim's mother had to be sedated. She wasn't able to tell anyone anything. That left Blake Wardell, who was in jail for murder. Well, someone could be dispatched to the city jail to question him. Surely he knew where the girl's people lived.
All that took time. It would be hours before they knew anything.
Meanwhile, at Spanish Flats, Lacy and Marion were dressing for a gala party to which all the neighbors were invited.
Chapter Thirteen
(Spanish Flats Ranch had never looked so elegant, Lacy thought proudly as she surveyed her handiwork. Colorful Japanese lanterns adorned the wide, long porch and even the living room. The long buffet table in the dining room was decorated with fall foliage, its linen tablecloth pristine, set with food in silver trays. Lacy's best china was set out, along with a silver-and-crystal punch bowl and dainty crystal cups. Considering the number of friends and neighbors she'd invited, a buffet was the only possible way to serve. She hadn't enough tables and chairs to accommodate a sit-down affair.
The gramophone was set up in the living room and the rugs had been moved so that people could dance. It promised to be a gala evening. The house might be old, but it had class. Perhaps Ben's city friends wouldn't look down their noses. She prayed they wouldn't. Not that she was cowardly, but a scene would be terrible.
Lacy was wearing a Paris original silk dress with a soft V neckline. It draped seductively over her slender curves and fell in soft layers to her ankles—its length a concession to rural convention. Her gray shoes buckled, and she was wearing her aunt's diamond necklace and bracelet. She looked not only lovely, but expensive. That was deliberate—just in case Ben's intended thought she could look down her nose at the locals.
Marion's dress was dove-gray. The older woman's silver hair was pulled into a soft chignon, and she smiled as she spoke to the ranchers' wives who made up the serving line.
Even Cole was smartly dressed. Lacy's loving eyes clearly approved of his dark suit and string tie and pristine white shirt. He looked very elegant and quite sexy. She wondered if she dared tell him that.
Beside him, Turk was glowering at the need for "dressing up," even if he did look smart and handsome in his dark gray suit and conventional tie. His blond good looks were a foil for Cole's darkness.
"Just in case any gentleman guest looks too hard at you, Mrs. Whitehall, you might mention that I've just cleaned my pistol," Cole said dryly as she joined them.
She blushed; she hadn't seen him until now. He'd gone straight out to work before she awoke, and she was in the kitchen already dressed for the evening when he came home to scrub up.
Cole grinned at her expression. He felt a little embarrassed himself, but it wouldn't do to show it. Remembering the feel of Lacy in his arms the night before made him ripple with pleasure.
She smiled back, glancing at Turk. "You both look very nice," she murmured.
"We're not a patch on you, sugarplum," Cole said softly. "Maybe I'd better display that pistol..."
She moved close to him and tucked herself neatly under his shoulder with a confidence she'd never felt in their turbulent relationship until now. "Just keep me right here and you won't need to," she whispered, nuzzling her cheek against his chest.
His heart jumped. "I think I'll do that," he said.
Turk knew when he was superfluous. "I'll go out and check on the side of beef on the spit,"he volunteered. He hesitated. "I don't suppose Katy and her husband will be coming?"
"I thought it best not to invite them," Cole replied quietly. "Let me rephrase that," he added curtly. "Ben was disturbed that his fiancee and her father might think he was in the habit of associating with Chicago's criminal element."
Turk's face hardened. "I see. The fact that Katy's his sister made no difference?"
"Ben's very young," Lacy said, defending him gently. "He has yet to learn that wealth and position aren't everything."
She looked up at Cole as she spoke, and his eyed kindled with dark fires. Turk left, and they didn't even notice.
Cole's tall, fit body was reacting violently to Lacy's nearness. He almost choked on desire for her. His eyes went to the bodice of her dress and he remembered vividly what was under it, how her skin smelled, how it tasted.
"Oh, don't," she pleaded shyly, blushing. "I'll swoon if you keep looking at me that way, and what will people think?"
"That Valentino's got nothing on me," he whispered, laughing at her scarlet flush. "Do I embarrass you?"
"Only a little." She closed her eyes. "I love you so much," she said huskily. "So much that I'd die if I lost you again!"
He shivered. His arm clenched, crushing her against him. "Come here."
He drew her into the deserted hall and maneuvered her back against the wall before he bent and kissed her until her mouth was swollen and red and she could barely breathe.
"Take me to bed," she whispered shakily against his lips.
"I hear a car," he whispered back, his breathing as unsteady as her own. "We have guests arriving."
"I have a headache," she said. "It's terrible. You have to put cold cloths on my forehead."
"Nice try," he said admiringly. "But they'd want to come up and check on you, and that could be embarrassing. We very nearly knocked the slats out this morning. As it is, the bedsprings are very explicit."
"Cole!" she gasped, drawing back, her eyes horrified. "Did someone hear?"
He grimaced. "No. But I shouldn't have mentioned it, should I? Now you'll go all nervous worrying that they will."
"It's.. .private," she said uncertainly.
"Very, very private," he whispered, rubbing the tip of his nose against hers. "I'll pull the mattress off on the floor tonight."
"Will you?" she asked, still shy with him and showing it.
His teeth nibbled gently at her lower lip. "Yes. I never dreamed of so much happiness," he said deeply.
"Neither did I."
He framed her face in his big hands and kissed her tenderly. "I'm sorry that I can't give you a baby," he whispered sadly.
"I'm sorry, too," she said. "But I won't be unhappy, Cole. I told you that nothing mattered more to me than being your wife. The scars don't matter. Infertility doesn't matter." She smiled softly. "I have no pride at all. I'd follow you crawling on my knees, over broken glass, all the way to the ends of the earth."
His face stiffened. "I don't deserve this," he said unsteadily. "Nothing I've done in my life merits having you."
She reached up and kissed him. "The angels love you, my dearest," she breathed. "So do I. Kiss me back. I like it when you kiss me very hard!"
He had her up in his arms, kissing the life and breath out of her, when Marion coughed audibly.
Cole put her down abruptly, and they both flushed at the lift of Marion's eyebrows and her smile.
"Ben and his fiancee are here," she told them demurely. "You had best wipe the lip rouge off before you come in, Lacy," she added, with a laugh.
"Oh, it's.. .smeared, isn't it?" Lacy said falteringly, digging for a handkerchief and her pocket mirror from her small purse.
"Not yours, dear, " Marion teased, glancing at her tall, flustered son.
Lacy looked at Cole and grinned wickedly. He was covered in dark red smudges around his firm mouth. She grinned as she reached up to wipe away the stains. He grinned, too, as the absurdity got through to him.
They all went in together to find a nervous Ben and a rather bored-looking brunette, along with a white-haired gentleman, waiting impatiently.
"Here they are," Marion said, introducing Lacy and Cole.
Jessica nodded at Lacy, but she went right up to Cole and studied him with flirtatious interest. "So, you're Ben's older brother," she
murmured. "How lovely to meet you."
"Same here," Cole said, but he didn't smile or show any particular interest. "Lacy and I have looked forward to being introduced," he added, pulling Lacy close to him. "This is your father?" he continued, glancing toward the older man.
"Randolph Bradley.' The other man nodded, extending his hand to shake Cole's. His mustache twitched. "Sorry my wife couldn't come, but she's in Europe just now."
"She detests life in the raw," Jessica murmured. "How provincial it is out here in the sticks with all these foul-smelling cows," she added, enjoying her feeling of utter superiority in this rundown hovel. Ben's people were obviously hicks, and she was going to make sure that she didn't have to suffer them too often. She and her father had desperately needed Ben's journalistic talent, and she loved him in bed. But this was trying, this provincial mingling.
Cole bristled at the insult, but Lacy punched him in the ribs to keep him quiet and smiled sweetly. "I believe you publish what's called a tabloid, Mr. Bradley."
"That's right," he said, smiling at her. "I publish a newspaper. It's small, but we'll grow. Especially with talent like your brother on staff."
"How many reporters do you have?" Lacy asked.
"Only young Ben, as yet," Bradley confessed. "He's a marvelous writer. Just what we needed."
You needed his name and heritage, Lacy thought cynically, to open doors for you. But she didn't say it. Cole was spoiling for a fight. For Marion's sake, and Ben's, she had to prevent him from starting one. Ben was beaming, the insults Jessica had uttered going right over his head. He was all but strutting in his fashionable clothing, with his elegant fiancee at his side. Two neighbors arrived, and Ben turned with Cole to greet them, introducing Randolph Bradley to the newcomers.
Lacy, left alone with Jessica, smiled politely. "I like your dress, Miss Bradley." In fact, she did. It was long and black, with lace insets, and she wore pearls with it. She was a little overdressed, but perhaps that was intentional. It was more than obvious that Miss Bradley was bent on showing the locals what high society looked like. Inwardly Lacy was chuckling.
The compliment caught the other woman off-guard. "Thank you," Jessica replied, with a haughty smile. "I found it at one of the exclusive shops in New York." Her eyes ran over Lacy. "You must sew," she added; although the fabric looked something like silk, it couldn't be, she told herself. Silk on a rancher's wife was ridiculous.
Lacy didn't twitch a muscle at the sweet insult. "Yes," she said with a poised smile. "I make a great many of my own clothes."
"That's not a bad effort," Jessica said critically. "There's just one thing, dear—if you don't mind a little advice. Those rhinestones are a bit ostentatious. I know costume jewelry is all the rage, but that's overdone. Real diamonds like that would be worth a king's ransom. If you don't want anyone to know they're not real, it's best to wear just a few stones at a time."
Lacy had to stop herself from falling on the floor laughing. Her great-aunt's necklace was worth a king's ransom, like the accompanying bracelet and earrings that went with it. Her dress was a Paris original. Jessica obviously didn't expect to find elegance on a ranch, and who was Lacy to disabuse her? The fact that her great-uncle had been the richest railroad tycoon in south Texas was a secret she was going to keep until she needed to make it known. Bragging about her monied background was something she never did. For one thing, it would embarrass Cole.
"How kind of you to point it out," Lacy said, with a vacant smile. "Well, you are rather living in the outback here." Jessica shrugged. "One doesn't expect country women to know very much about fashion."
"You're so right," Lacy agreed pleasantly. Other guests began to arrive. Lacy and Jessica joined the others to greet them, but Jessica was doing her best lady-of-the-manor impression. Her double-edged comments about the house festered until Cole was rigid from wounded pride. Lacy pushed him into the kitchen while Marion engaged the Bradleys in conversation. Ben hadn't seemed to notice Jessica's manner. He was beaming as neighbors enthused over his job and his fiancee, not knowing that most of them were simply being polite because the Whitehalls were a respected family in Spanish Flats.
Lacy tactfully pushed the kitchen door shut and turned to Cole. "It will be all right," she told him, pushing back a stray lock of dark hair from his forehead. "Don't scowl so; you'll frighten people."
"Am I scowling? That icy little brunette is about as welcome here as sin on a Sunday," he muttered. "Ben's making the mistake of his life."
"Indeed he is," Lacy said. "But it is his life, and you can't make decisions for him any more than you could make them for Katy."
He searched her blue eyes and relaxed a little. "My God, I got lucky," he said unexpectedly.
"Lucky?" she asked, puzzled.
He touched her throat lightly, watching her color at even the light contact. "Getting you back," he said simply. "I'm good with horses and cattle." He shrugged and smiled good-naturedly. "Never had much use for women, or much luck with them."
"You did with me."
"But I didn't know it, did I?"he asked, with a quiet sigh. "Not until the day I left to go to war and you let me kiss you. A revelation, that was—-and I didn't have time to follow up on it. I had to leave you."
"I cried for days," she said. "Then I read the papers and cringed, praying that I wouldn't see your name among the missing or dead. When the letter came, saying that you were wounded but alive and recovering, I thanked God for a solid hour for taking care of you for me." She smiled. "I guess you hardly thought of me those long, hard years."
He hesitated for just a second. "I never showed you this, did I?"
He tugged on the gold chain dripping from his vest watch pocket, took out his worn pocket watch with the gold finish and the train embossing worn almost illegible by years of being handled. He opened the back, and there was a small black-and-white snapshot of Lacy's face and a tiny lock her of dark, fine hair.
She looked at it in disbelief. "How did you... ?"
"I had Mother get it for me,"he said softly, "when you were asleep. I swore her to secrecy. I wanted something of you to take with me."
Tears welled in her eyes as she looked at him. "Why did you pull back that day?" She asked brokenly. "If we'd been intimate, I might have had your child!"
He took a ragged breath. "Don't you think I know that? That I haven't tormented myself knowing it?" He closed the watch and put it away as he struggled to compose himself. "But we weren't married, and there was no time to get that way. How could I leave you here in such a sordid mess—with the whole community gossiping about you, with your honor in the dirt?"
"It wouldn't have been sordid," she said quietly.
"Yes, it would've." He traced her lips with an unsteady forefinger. "Honor and duty and responsibility were drilled into me from my youth. To have compromised you, even for such reasons, would have destroyed something priceless. You are my wife," he whispered. "My most precious wife. You came to me in purity, without a whisper of gossip or a stain of conjecture on your character. These wild times will leave a trail of grief for the people who forgo morality for the lure of pleasure. The taint of promiscuity will follow them until they die." He smiled at her. "Our memories will be bright ones, worth remembering. I'll sit with you in my lap in the rocking chair one day long from now, and we'll think back on our lives with delight, not regret."
It was a long speech for Cole, who could sometimes sit for an hour without saying a word. She hadn't realized how he felt, that it was more than desire. But the watch told its own story, and it touched her deeply.
She smiled at him, her eyes drowsy with pleasure and happiness. "I hope we have a long time together, Cole," she said.
"So do I." He brushed his lips over her forehead. "I'd like to kiss you, but that war paint comes off pretty easily."
She laughed and stepped back, her blue eyes twinkling. "I'll not wear it from now on if you'll kiss me a lot," she promised, peeking up at him.
He didn't sm
ile. His face went rigid.
Her uncertainty lay vulnerable in her eyes as the smile faded. She was sure she'd put her foot in her mouth.
"You set me on fire,"he breathed, and his eyes glittered strangely.
Her lips parted softly on the held breath she expelled. "I thought I'd embarrassed you. You looked very uncomfortable."
He raised an eyebrow. "We're married. Why don't you look down and see for yourself why I'm uncomfortable?"
She did it before she realized what he was inviting her to see, and she averted her eyes with a gasp.
"Short skirts,"he said with black humor. "Charleston music, lip rouge.. .I thought you were sophisticated."
"Not with you." She laughed at her own embarrassment. "We're married, but I still feel like a girl with you."
"Lacy, I hope you always do." He pushed back her hair. It was wavy from the curling iron and had a lovely black sheen. "I shouldn't tease you. I simply can't resist it."
"As long as it's only me that you tease.. .like that," she replied demurely.
"That's a safe assumption. I'm not comfortable with other women. I never have been." He linked her fingers with his and sighed. "Shall we go back out and brave the lions?" he invited. "I think I've recovered enough not to draw unwanted attention."
She didn't look this time, but she flushed. "Honestly, Cole," she murmured.
His fingers caressed hers. "It's all part of marriage,"he assured her.
"Don't let Jessica unsettle you," she cautioned. "If worse comes to worse, I have an ace in the hole that she doesn't know about."
