by Diana Palmer
She tried to get up, but his lean hand shot out and caught her forearm, anchoring her to the steps. He was too close. She could smell the exotic cologne he always wore, feel his breath, whiskey-scented, on her face.
“Stop running from me!” he growled.
His eyes met hers. They were relentless, intent.
“Let me go!” she raged.
His fingers only tightened. He made her feel like a hysterical idiot with that long, hard stare, but she couldn’t stop struggling.
He ended the unequal struggle by tugging slightly and she landed back on the steps with a faint thump. “Stop it,” he said firmly.
Her eyes flashed at him, her cheeks flushed.
He let go of her arm all at once. “At least you look alive again,” he remarked curtly. “And back to normal pretending to hate me.”
“I’m not pretending. I do hate you, Dawson,” she said, as if she was programmed to fight him, to deny any hint of caring in her voice.
“Then it shouldn’t affect you all that much to come home with me.”
“I won’t run interference for you with the widow. If you want that land so badly…”
“I can’t buy it if she won’t sell it,” he reminded her. “And she won’t sell it unless I entertain her.”
“It’s a low thing to do, to get a few acres of land.”
“Land with the only water on the Bighorn property,” he reminded her. “I had free access when her husband was alive. Now I buy the land or Powell Long will buy it and fence it off from my cattle. He hates me.”
“I know how he feels,” she said pointedly.
“Do you know what she’ll do if you’re not there?” he continued. “She’ll try to seduce me, sure as hell. She thinks no man can resist her. When I refuse her, she’ll take her land straight to Powell Long and make him a deal he can’t refuse. Your friendship with Antonia won’t stop him from fencing off that river, Barrie. Without water, we’ll lose the property and all the cattle on it. I’ll have to sell at a loss. Part of that particular ranch is your inheritance. You stand to lose even more than I do.”
“She wouldn’t,” she began.
“Don’t kid yourself,” he drawled. “She’s attracted to me. Or don’t you remember how that feels?” he added with deliberate sarcasm.
She flushed, but she glared at him. “I’m on vacation.”
“So what?”
“I don’t like Sheridan, I don’t like you, and I don’t want to spend my vacation with you!”
“Then don’t.”
She hit the banister helplessly. “Why should I care if I lose my inheritance? I’ve got a good job!”
“Why, indeed?”
But she was weakening. Her part-time job had fallen through. She was looking at having to do some uncomfortable budgeting, despite the good salary she made. It only stretched so far. Besides, she could imagine what a woman like Mrs. Holton would do to get her claws into Dawson. The widow could compromise him, if she didn’t do anything else. She could make up some lurid tale about him if he didn’t give out…and there was plenty of gossip already, about Dawson’s lack of interest in women. It didn’t bear thinking about, what that sort of gossip would do to Dawson’s pride. He’d suffered enough through the gossip about his poor father and Antonia Long, when there wasn’t one shred of truth to it. And in his younger days, his success with women was painfully obvious to a worshiping Barrie.
“For a few days, you said,” she began.
His eyebrows lifted. “You aren’t changing your mind!” he exclaimed with mock surprise.
“I’ll think about it,” she continued firmly.
He shrugged. “We should be able to live under the same roof for that long without it coming to bloodshed.”
“I don’t know about that.” She leaned against the banister. “And if I decide to go—which I haven’t yet—when she leaves, I leave, whether or not you’ve got your tract of land.”
He smiled faintly. There was something oddly calculating in his eyes. “Afraid to stay with me, alone?”
She didn’t have to answer him. Her eyes spoke for her.
“You don’t know how flattering that reluctance is these days,” he said, searching her eyes. “All the same, it’s misplaced. I don’t want you, Barrie,” he added with a mocking smile.
“You did, once,” she reminded him angrily.
He nodded. His hands went into his pockets and his broad shoulders shifted. “It was a long time ago,” he said stiffly. “I have other interests now. So do you. All I want is for you to run interference for me until I can get my hands on that property. Which is to your benefit, as well,” he added pointedly. “You inherited half the Bighorn property when George died. If we lose the water rights, the land is worthless. That means you inherit nothing. You’ll have to depend on your job until you retire.”
She knew that. The dividend she received from her share of cattle on the Bighorn ranch helped pay the bills.
“Oh, there you are, Dawson, dear!” a honied voice drawled behind him. “I’ve been looking just everywhere for you!” A slinky brunette, a good few years younger than Barrie, with a smile the size of a dinner plate latched onto Dawson’s big arm and pressed her ample, pretty chest against it. “I’d just love to dance with you!” she gushed, her eyes flirting outrageously with his.
Dawson went rigid. If Barrie hadn’t seen it for herself, she wouldn’t have believed it. With a face that might have been carved from stone, he released himself from the woman’s grasp and moved pointedly back from her.
“Excuse me. I’m talking to my stepsister,” he said curtly.
The woman was shocked at being snubbed. She was beautiful and quite obviously used to trapping men with that coquettish manner, and the handsomest man here looked at her as if she smelled bad.
She laughed a little nervously. “Of course. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. Later, perhaps, then?”
She turned and went quickly back into the living room.
Barrie was standing where she’d been throughout the terse exchange, leaning against the banister. Now she moved away from it and down the steps to stand just in front of Dawson. Her green eyes searched his quietly.
His jaw clenched. “I told you. I’m not in the market for a woman—not you or anyone else.”
Her teeth settled into her lower lip, an old habit that he’d once chided her about.
He apparently hadn’t forgotten. His forefinger tapped sharply at her upper lip. “Stop that. You’ll draw blood,” he accused.
She released the stinging flesh. “I didn’t realize,” she murmured. She sighed as she searched his hard face. “You loved women, in the old days,” she said with more bitterness than she knew. “They followed you around like bees on a honey trail.”
His face was hard. “I lost my taste for them.”
“But, why?”
“You don’t have the right to invade my privacy,” he said curtly.
She smiled sadly. “I never did. You were always so mysterious, so private. You never shared anything with me when I was younger. You were always impatient to get away from me.”
“Except once,” he replied shortly. “And see where that got us.”
She took a step toward the living room. “Yes.”
There was a silence, filled by merry voices and the clink of ice in glasses.
“If I ask you something, point-blank, will you answer me?” he asked abruptly.
She turned, her eyes wide, questioning. “That depends on what it is. If you won’t answer personal questions, I don’t see why I should.”
His eyes narrowed. “Perhaps not.”
She grimaced. “All right. What do you want to know?”
“I want to know,” he said quietly, “how many men you’ve really had since me.”
She almost gasped at the audacity of the question.
His eyes slid down her body and back up again, and they were still calculating, the way they’d been all evening. “You dress l
ike a femme fatale. I can’t remember the last time I saw you so uncovered. You flirt and tease, but it’s all show, it’s all on the surface.” He scowled. “Barrie…”
She flushed. “Stop looking into my mind! I hated it when I was in my teens and I hate it now!”
He nodded slowly. “It was always like that. I even knew what you were thinking. It was a rare kind of rapport. Somewhere along the way, we lost it.”
“You smothered it,” she said correcting. He smiled coolly. “I didn’t like having you inside my head.”
“Which works both ways,” she agreed.
He reached out and touched her cheek lightly, his fingers lingering against the silky soft skin. She didn’t move away. That was a first.
“Come here, Barrie,” he invited, and this time he didn’t smile. His eyes held hers, hypnotized her, beckoned her.
She felt her legs moving when she hadn’t meant to let them. She looked up at him with an expression that wasn’t even recognizable.
“Now,” he said softly, touching her mouth. “Tell me the truth.”
She started to clamp down on her lower lip, and his thumb prevented her. It smoothed over her soft lower lip, exploring under the surface, inside where the flesh was moist and vulnerable. She jerked back from him.
“Tell me.” His eyes were relentless. She couldn’t escape. He was too close.
“I…couldn’t, with anyone else,” she whispered huskily. “I was afraid.”
The years of bitterness, of blaming her for what he thought he’d made of her were based on a lie. All the guilt and shame when he heard about her followers, when he saw her with other men—he knew the truth now. He’d destroyed her as a woman. He’d crippled her sexually. And just because, like his father, he’d lost control of himself. He hadn’t known what she’d suffered until a week ago.
He couldn’t tell her that he’d wrangled this invitation from John because he needed an excuse to see her. He hadn’t realized in all the long years how badly he’d damaged her. Her camouflage had been so good. Now that he did know, it was unbelievably painful.
“Dear God,” he said under his breath.
His hand fell away from her cheek. He looked older, suddenly, and there was no mockery in his face now.
“Surprised?” she taunted unsteadily. “Shocked? You’ve always wanted to think the worst of me. Even that afternoon at the beach, before it…before it happened, you thought I just wanted to show off my body.”
He didn’t blink. His eyes searched hers. “The only eyes you wanted on your body were mine,” he said in a dead voice. “I knew it. I wouldn’t admit it, that’s all.”
She laughed coldly. “You said plenty,” she reminded him. “That I was a tramp, that I was so hot I couldn’t—”
His thumb stopped the words and his eyes closed briefly. “You might not realize it, but you aren’t the only one who paid dearly for what happened that night,” he said after a minute.
“Don’t tell me you were sorry, or that you felt guilty,” she chided. “You don’t have a heart, Dawson. I don’t think you’re even human!”
He laughed faintly. “I have doubts about that myself these days,” he said evenly.
She was shaking with fury, the past impinging on the present as she struggled with wounding memories. “I loved you!” she said brokenly.
“Dear God, don’t you think I know?!” he demanded, and his eyes, for that instant, were terrible to look into.
She went white, paper white. Beside her skirt, her hands clenched. She wanted to throw herself at him and hit him and kick him, to hurt him as he’d hurt her.
But slowly, as she remembered where they were, she forced herself to calm down. “This isn’t the time or the place.” She bit off the words. Her voice shook with emotion.
He stuck his hands into his pockets and looked down at her. “Come to Wyoming with me. It’s time you got it all out of your system. You’ve been hurt enough for something that was never your fault to begin with.”
The words were surprising. He was different, somehow, and she didn’t understand why. Even the antagonism when he saw her had been halfhearted, as if he was only sniping at her out of habit. Now, he wasn’t especially dangerous at all. But she didn’t, couldn’t, trust him. There had to be more to his determination to get her to Wyoming than as a chaperone.
“I’ll think about it,” she said shortly. “But I won’t decide tonight. I’m not sure I want to go back to Sheridan, even to save my inheritance.”
He started to argue, but the strain of the past few minutes had started to show in her face. He hated seeing the brightness gone from it. He shrugged. “All right. Think it over.”
She drew in a steadying breath and walked past him into the living room. And for the rest of the evening, she was the life and soul of the party. Not that Dawson noticed. A couple of minutes after she left him in the hall, he went out the door and drove back to his hotel. Alone.
Two
IT WAS a boring Saturday. Barrie had already done the laundry and gone to the grocery store. She had a date, but she’d canceled it. Somehow, one more outing with a man she didn’t care about was more than she could bear. No one was ever going to measure up to Dawson, anyway, as much as she’d like to pretend it would happen. He owned her, as surely as he owned half a dozen ranches and a veritable fleet of cars, even if he didn’t want her.
She’d given up hoping for miracles, and after last night, it was obvious that the dislike he’d had for her since her fifteenth birthday wasn’t going to diminish. Even her one memory of him as a lover was nothing she wanted to remember. He’d hurt her, and afterward, he’d accused her of being a wanton who’d teased him into seducing her. He could be kind to the people he liked, but he’d never liked Barrie or her mother. They’d been the outsiders, the interlopers, in the Rutherford family. Barrie’s mother had married his father, and Dawson had hated them both from the moment he laid eyes on them.
Eleven years later, after the deaths of both their parents, nothing had changed except that Barrie had learned self-preservation. She’d avoided Dawson like the plague, until last night, when she’d betrayed everything to him in that burst of anger. She was embarrassed and ashamed this morning to have given herself away so completely. Her one hope was that he was already on his way back to Sheridan, and that she wouldn’t have to see him again until the incident was forgotten, until these newest wounds he’d inflicted were healed.
She’d just finished mopping the kitchen floor in her bare feet and had put the mop out on the small balcony of her apartment to dry when the doorbell rang.
It was almost lunchtime and she was hungry, having spent her morning working. She hoped it wasn’t the man she’d turned down for a date that evening, trying to convince her to change her mind.
Her wavy black hair lay in disheveled glory down her back. It was her one good feature, along with her green eyes. Her mouth was shaped like a bow and her nose was straight, but she wasn’t conventionally pretty, although she had a magnificent figure. She was dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of worn jeans. Both garments had shrunk, emphasizing her perfect body. She didn’t have makeup on, but her eyes were bright and her cheeks were rosy from all her exertions.
Without thinking, she opened the door and started to speak, when she realized who was standing there. It definitely wasn’t Phil, the salesman with whom she’d turned down a date.
It was always the same when she came upon Dawson unawares. Her heart began to race, her breath stilled in her throat, her body burned as if she stood in a fire.
Eyes two shades lighter green than her own looked back at her. Whatever he wore, he looked elegant. He was in designer jeans and a white shirt, with a patterned gray jacket worn loose over them. His feet were encased in hand-tooled gray leather boots and a creamy Stetson dangled from one hand.
He looked her up and down without smiling, without expression. Nothing he felt ever was allowed to show, while Barrie’s face was as open as a child’s book to him.
“What do you want?” she asked belligerently.
An eyebrow jerked over amused green eyes. “A kind word. But I’ve given up asking for the impossible. Can I come in? Or,” he added, the smile fading, “isn’t it convenient?”
She moved away from the door. “Check the bedroom if you like,” she said sarcastically.
He searched her eyes. Once, he might have taken her up on it, just to irritate her. Not since last night, though. He hadn’t the heart to hurt her any more than he already had. He tossed his hat onto the counter and leaned against it to watch her close the door.
“Have you decided whether or not you’ll come back to Sheridan?” he asked bluntly. “It’s only for a week. You’re on summer vacation, and John told me that you’d been laid off at your part-time job.” He looked at the counter and said with calculation, “Surely you can survive without your flock of admirers for that long.”
She didn’t contradict him or fly off the handle. That was what he wanted. She made points with Dawson by remaining calm.
“I don’t want to play chaperone for you, Dawson,” she said simply. “Get someone else.”
“There isn’t anyone else, and you know it. I want that land. What I don’t want is to give Mrs. Holten any opportunities for blackmail. She’s a lady who’s used to getting what she wants.”
“You’re evenly matched, then, aren’t you?” she replied.
“I don’t have everything I want,” he countered. His eyes narrowed. “Corlie and Rodge will be in the house, too. They miss you.”
She didn’t answer. She just looked at him, hating him and loving him while all the bad memories surfaced.
“Your eyes are very expressive,” he said, searching them. There was so much pain behind the pretense, he thought sadly, and he’d caused it. “Such sad eyes, Barrie.”
He sounded mysterious, broody. She sensed a change in him, some ripple of feeling that he concealed, covered up. His lean fingers toyed with the brim of his Stetson and he studied it while he spoke. “I bought you a horse.”
She stared at him. “Why?”
“I thought you might respond to a bribe,” he said carelessly. “He’s a quarter horse. A gelding.” He smiled with faint self-contempt. “Can you still ride?”
