by Diana Palmer
“No butterflies in your stomach?” he taunted when he’d taken off his seat belt.
She shook her head. “You never put a foot wrong when the chips are down,” she remarked, without realizing that it might sound like praise.
His pale green eyes searched her face. She looked tired and worried. He wanted to touch her cheek, to bring the color back into her face, the light back into her eyes. But it might frighten her if he reached toward her now. He might have waited too late to build bridges. It was a sobering thought. So much had changed in his life in just the past two weeks, and all because of a chance meeting with an old buddy at a reunion and a leisurely discussion about Tucson, where the friend, a practicing physician, had worked five years earlier in a hospital emergency room.
Barrie noticed his scrutiny and frowned. “Is something wrong?”
“Just about everything, if you want to know,” he remarked absently, searching her eyes. “Life teaches hard lessons, little one.”
He hadn’t called her that, ever. She’d never heard him use such endearments to anyone in normal conversation. There was a new tenderness in the way he treated her, a poignant difference in his whole manner.
She didn’t understand it, and she didn’t trust it.
A movement caught his eye. “Here comes Rodge,” he murmured, nodding toward the ranch road, where a station wagon was hurtling toward the airstrip. “Ten to one he’s got Corlie with him.”
She smiled. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen them.”
“Not since my father’s funeral,” he agreed curtly. He left the cockpit and lowered the steps. He went down them first and waited to see if she needed help. But she’d worn sneakers and jeans, not high heels. She went down as if she were a mountain goat. She’d barely gotten onto the tarmac when the station wagon stopped and both doors opened. Corlie, small and wiry and gray-haired, held her arms out. Barrie ran into them, hungry for the older woman’s warm affection.
Beside her, Rodge shook Dawson’s hand and then waited his turn to give Barrie a hug. He was at least ten years older than Corlie, and still dark-headed with a few silver streaks. He was dark-eyed and lean. When he wasn’t managing the ranch in Dawson’s absence, he kept busy as Dawson’s secretary, making appointments and handling minor business problems.
The two of them had been with the Rutherfords for so long that they were more like family than paid help. Barrie clung to Corlie. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the woman.
“Child, you’ve lost weight,” Corlie accused. “Too many missed meals and too much fast food.”
“You can feed me while I’m here,” she said.
“How long are you staying?” Corlie wanted to know.
Before Barrie could answer her and spill the beans, Dawson caught her left hand and held it under Corlie’s nose. “This is the main reason she came back,” he said. “We’re engaged.”
“Oh, my goodness,” Corlie exclaimed before a shocked Barrie could utter a single word. The older woman’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s what Mr. Rutherford always prayed would happen, and me and Rodge, too,” she added, hugging Barrie all over again. “I can’t tell you how happy I am. Now maybe he’ll stop brooding so much and smile once in a while,” she added with a grimace at Dawson.
Barrie didn’t know what to say. She got lost in the enthusiasm of Rodge’s congratulations and Dawson’s intimidating presence. He must have had a reason for telling them about the false engagement, perhaps to set the stage for Mrs. Holton’s arrival. She could ask him later.
Meanwhile, it was exciting to look around and enjoy being back in Sheridan. The ranch wasn’t in town, of course, it was several miles outside the city limits. But it had been Dawson’s home when she came here, and she loved it because he did. So many memories had hurt her here. She wondered why it was so dear to her in spite of them.
She found herself installed in the backseat of the station wagon with Corlie while Dawson got in under the wheel and talked business with Rodge all the way up to the house.
The Rutherford home was Victorian. This house had been built at the turn of the century, and it replaced a much earlier structure that Dawson’s great-grandfather had built. There had been Rutherfords in Sheridan for three generations.
Barrie often wished that she knew as much about her own background as she knew about Dawson’s. Her father had died when she was ten, too young to be very curious about heritage. Then when her mother married George Rutherford, who had been widowed since Dawson was very young, she was so much in love with him that she had no time for her daughter. Dawson had been in the same boat. She’d learned a bit at a time that he and his father had a respectful but very strained relationship. George had expected a lot from his son, and affection was something he never gave to Dawson; at least, not visibly. It was as if there was a barrier between them. Her mother had caused the final rift, just by marrying George. Barrie had been caught in the middle and she became Dawson’s scapegoat for the new chaos of his life. George’s remarriage had shut Dawson out of his father’s life for good.
Barrie had tried to talk to Dawson about his mother once, but he’d verbally slapped her down, hard. After that, she’d made sure personal questions were kept out of their conversation. Even today, he didn’t like them. He was private, secretive, mysterious.
Rodge took her bags up to her old room on the second floor, and she looked around the hall, past the sliding doors that led to the living room on one side and the study on the other, down to the winding, carpeted staircase. Suspended above the hall was a huge crystal chandelier, its light reflected from a neat black-and-white tile floor. The interior of the house was elegant and faintly unexpected on a ranch.
“I’d forgotten how big it is,” Barrie mused.
“We used to do a lot of entertaining,” Corlie reminded her. She glared at Dawson. “Not anymore.”
“I’ll remember you said that,” he replied. “Perhaps we’ll throw a party for Mrs. Holton when she gets here.”
“That would make a nice change,” Corlie said. She winked at Barrie. “But I expect she’s going to be something of a nuisance to a newly engaged couple. I’ll help run interference.”
She smiled and went off to make coffee.
“Oh, dear,” Barrie murmured, seeing more complications down the road.
Dawson shoved his hands into his pockets and searched her face. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It will all work out.”
“Will it?” She grimaced. “What if Mrs. Holton sees right through us?”
He moved a little closer, near enough that she could feel the warmth of his body. “Neither of us is used to touching or being touched,” he remarked when she stiffened. “That may be awkward.”
She remembered how he’d pushed away the woman at the party in Tucson. Barrie was afraid to come that close, but they were supposed to be engaged and it would look unnatural if they never touched each other.
“What are we going to do?” she asked miserably.
He sighed heavily. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. Slowly his hand went out, and he touched her long, wavy dark hair. His fingers were just a little awkward. “Maybe we’ll improve with some practice.”
She bit her lower lip. “I…hate being touched,” she whispered in a rough whisper.
He winced.
She lowered her eyes to his chest. “Didn’t you notice, at the party? I had two men at my feet, but did you see how much distance there was between us? It’s always like that. I don’t even dance anymore…!”
His hand withdrew from her hair and fell to his side. “God forgive me,” he said miserably. “I don’t think I can ever forgive myself.”
Her eyes came up, shocked. He’d never admitted guilt, or fault before. Something must have happened to change him. But what?
“We’ll have to spend some time together before she gets here,” he said slowly. “And get to know each other a little better. We might try holding hands. Just to get used to the feel of ea
ch other.”
Tentative. Like children on a first date. She wondered why she was being so whimsical, and smiled.
He smiled back. For the first time in recent memory, it was without malice or mockery.
“Antonia said that Mrs. Holton was very attractive,” she remarked.
“She is,” he agreed. “But she’s cold, Barrie. Not physically, but emotionally. She likes to possess men. I don’t think she’s capable of deep feelings, unless it’s for money. She’s very aggressive, single-minded. She’d have made a good corporate executive, except that she’s lazy.”
“Did her husband leave her well-fixed?” she asked curiously.
“No. That’s why she’s trying to find a man to keep her.”
She bristled. “She ought to go back to school and keep herself,” she said shortly.
He laughed softly. “That’s what you did,” he agreed. “You wouldn’t even take an allowance from George. Or from me.”
She flushed, averting her eyes. “The Rutherfords put me through college. That was more than enough.”
“Barrie, I never thought your mother married my father for his money,” he said, reading the painful thought in her mind. “She loved him, just as he loved her.”
“That wasn’t what you said.”
His eyes closed. “And you can’t forget, can you? I can’t blame you. I was so full of hatred and resentment that I lashed out constantly. You were the most easily reachable…and the most vulnerable.” His eyes opened again, cold with self-contempt. “You paid for every sin I accused your mother of committing.”
“And how you enjoyed making me pay,” she replied huskily.
He looked away, as if the pain in her eyes hurt him. “Yes, I did,” he confessed bluntly. “For a while. Then we went to the Riviera on holiday with George.”
She couldn’t think about that. She didn’t dare let herself think about it. She moved away from him. “I should unpack.”
“Don’t go,” he protested. “Corlie’s making coffee. She’ll probably have cake to go with it.”
She hesitated. Her big green eyes lifted to his, wary and uncertain.
His face hardened. “I won’t hurt you,” he said roughly. “I give you my word.”
He was old-fashioned that way. If he made a promise, he kept it. But why should he stop sniping at her now, and so suddenly? Her eyes mirrored all her uncertainties, all her doubts.
“What’s changed?” she asked miserably.
“I’ve changed,” he replied firmly.
“You suddenly woke up one morning and decided that you’d give up an eleven-year vendetta?”
He searched over her face with an enigmatic expression on his darkly tanned face. “No. I discovered how much I’d lost,” he said, his voice taut with some buried feeling. “Have you ever thought that sometimes our whole lives pivot on one decision? On a lost letter or a telephone call that doesn’t get made?”
“No, I don’t suppose I have, really,” she replied.
“We live and learn. And the lessons get more expensive with age.”
“You’re very reflective, lately,” she said, curious. A strand of hair fell over her eyes, and she pushed it back from her face. “I don’t think in all the time we’ve known each other that we’ve really talked, until the past day or so.”
“Yes. I know.” He sounded bitter. He turned away from her to lead the way into the spacious living room. It had changed since she’d lived on the Rutherford ranch. This was the very room where Dawson had so carelessly tossed the little silver mouse she’d given him to his date. But it wasn’t the same at all. The furniture was different, Victorian and sturdy in its look, but wonderful to sink into.
“This room doesn’t look like you at all,” she remarked as she perched herself in a delicate-looking wing chair that was surprisingly comfortable.
“It isn’t supposed to,” he replied. He sat down on the velvet-covered sofa. “I hired a decorator to do it.”
“What did you tell her, that you wanted to adopt someone’s grandmother and install her here?” she asked.
He lifted an eyebrow. “In case you didn’t notice, the house is late Victorian. And I thought you liked Victorian furniture,” he added.
She shifted, running her hand along the arm of the chair. “I love it,” she confessed in a subdued tone. Questions poised on the tip of her tongue, and she almost asked them, but Corlie came in with a tray of cake and coffee, beaming.
“Just what the doctor ordered,” she said smugly, putting the tray on the big coffee table.
“Great huge coffee tables aren’t Victorian,” Barrie muttered.
“Sure they are. Victorians drank coffee,” Corlie argued.
“They drank tea,” she replied, “and out of dainty little china cups and saucers.”
“They also ate cucumber sandwiches,” Corlie returned. “Want a few?”
Barrie made a face. “I’ll be quiet about the coffee table if you won’t offer me those again.”
“It’s a deal. Call if you need anything else.” Corlie went out, closing the sliding doors behind her.
She helped herself to coffee and cake and so did he. As always he took his coffee black while Barrie put cream and sugar in hers.
“Antonia said that you’d been offered a job heading the math department at your high school next fall,” he remarked. “Are you going to take it?”
She looked up over the rim of her coffee cup. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I love teaching. But that job is mostly administrative. It would take away the time I had with my students, and plenty of them require extra tutoring.”
He searched her down-bent face. “You…like children, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes.” She toyed with her coffee cup, trying not to think about the child they’d made, the one she’d lost so many years ago.
He sat, waiting, hoping that she might finally decide to tell him her secrets. But the moment passed. She went right on eating cake and drinking coffee, and she didn’t make another remark. He was hesitant about bringing it up himself. They had a long way to go before she might feel comfortable talking about something so intimate and painful with him.
He changed the subject and conversation reverted to impersonal topics. He went into his study to make some phone calls and she went upstairs to unpack.
She wondered at the change in him, but she was still too raw from the past to let her guard down.
Supper was a cheerful affair, with Rodge and Corlie sitting at the table with Barrie and a taciturn Dawson. They talked. He listened. He seemed preoccupied, and he excused himself to work in the study. He didn’t come back, even when Barrie said good-night to Corlie and Rodge and went up to her old room to go to bed.
She lay awake for a long time. Being in the house again brought back memories, so many memories, of Dawson and his antagonism. Then, inevitably, her mind went to the Riviera….
It had been a beautiful summer day. Seagulls had dived and pitched above the white beach where Barrie sat on a big beach blanket and worried about her conservative appearance. Many people were nude. Most of the women were topless. Nobody seemed to pay the least attention, either.
Barrie wanted to sunbathe without white lines, but she was inhibited at twenty-one, and a little intimidated by Dawson in his white trunks. He was exquisite, and she couldn’t keep her eyes off him. A thick thatch of curly gold hair, darker than that on his head, covered his broad chest and narrowed down his flat stomach into his trunks. Long, elegantly powerful legs had the same tan as the rest of his body. She imagined that he normally sunbathed without any trunks at all, although she didn’t know for sure.
The path of her thoughts embarrassed her and she averted her eyes. But her hands toyed with the ties of her bikini top as she thought daringly how it would be to let it fall, to know that Dawson’s gaze was on her bare breasts. She shivered with just the thought of it, and wished she were sophisticated and chic like his usual companions, that she had the nerve just once to do so
mething outrageous and shocking.
She’d glanced at him in what might have seemed a coquettish way as her fingers toyed with the straps and she’d smiled nervously.
Dawson hadn’t realized how inhibited she was. He’d formed the idea that Barrie was a born flirt, that she collected men. He’d always seen her shy attempts at affection as deliberate coquetry, because it was the sort of game the sophisticated women he knew played.
So when Barrie had darted that curious glance at him, he’d thought she wanted him to coax her into taking off the top. And because she had a lovely young body, and he wanted very much to look at it, he’d played along.
“Go ahead,” he’d murmured in a deep, tender voice. “Untie it, Barrie. I want to look at you.”
She remembered looking into his eyes and seeing the lazy sensuality in them, the calculating narrowness of them.
“Why the hesitation?” he’d taunted. “You’re drawing attention because you’re being so damned conservative. None of the other women have any hang-ups about their bodies.”
He nodded toward two young women about Barrie’s age, dancing along the beach with only bikini bottoms covering their womanliness.
She bit her lip, hesitating, turned just sideways from him, toward the beach.
He’d been beside her, facing her on his knees, his lean hands resting on his muscular thighs. “Barrie?” he’d coaxed softly. And when she looked at him his voice softened and deepened. “Take it off.”
He hypnotized her with forbidden longings, with long-buried needs. Her hands fumbled with the single tie at the back of her neck and she loosened it. Her fingers reached around to the other single fastening under her shoulder blades. She looked into his pale green eyes, trembling with new sensations, flushing at the enormity of what she was doing. And she let the top fall away.
She remembered even now the feel of his eyes, the soft intake of his breath as he’d looked at her. She had high, firm, full breasts, pale pink, with darker pink crowns that went rigid under the impact of his level gaze.
She trembled helplessly as he looked his fill. There was a dark flush along his high cheekbones, and he made no pretence of not staring.
