Champagne Girl

by Diana Palmer

  “He can do what he likes until you’re twenty-five,” Hal said.

  “Where is he?” Catherine demanded.

  “Down on the flats, checking to make sure the cattle were all moved before the rains came,” Betty said reluctantly. “He told Hal to get them moved before he left for Houston.”

  Hal didn’t reply. He looked disturbed and reached for his coffee cup.

  Catherine didn’t notice. She was fuming. She needed that allowance to set herself up in New York. She wouldn’t have any money until her first paycheck. And Matt knew it!

  “I’ll shoot him,” she muttered.

  “Now, darling, don’t be hasty,” Betty said, trying to soothe her.

  But Catherine was already on her way upstairs to change into jodhpurs and boots.

  Chapter Two

  The sunlight was wonderful after the thundering flood of late-summer rain the night before, but Catherine wasn’t paying the least attention to the beauty of the wide open land and grazing cattle or the distant enormity of the feedlot. Her narrowed green eyes were flashing, and the set of her slender body in the saddle was as rigid as her perfect mouth.

  She shivered a little in the early-morning chill. Autumn was coming on. Already the hardwoods were beginning to get crisp leaves on them. She searched the horizon for Matt, but he was nowhere to be seen. She could have screamed. There were times when being part of the Kincaid clan was an absolute torment, and this was one of them. She had a great future in New York in public relations. Why couldn’t Matt let her go after it? Of course, he didn’t know about the New York job offer, but what he’d done would prevent her from going anywhere without his approval. It was always like that. She made plans and Matt fouled them up. He’d done it for years, and nobody had ever stood up to him. Except Catherine, of course.

  This time he wasn’t having it all his own way. The fact that he was the chief stockholder in the Kincaid Corporation was irrelevant. Even the fact that she was madly in love with him was irrelevant. He wasn’t going to get away with telling her how to live her life.

  She spotted movement down on the soggy river flats, where a few red-coated, white-faced Herefords were mired in mud, and she smiled coldly. She saw only a couple of his men, and that was just as well; she didn’t really want an audience.

  Her heartbeats quickened as she coaxed the little mare into a canter and felt the breeze tossing her straight thick dark hair in the wind. She looked good in her jodhpurs and in her neat little blue-checked shirt that left her brown arms bare, but it hadn’t been for Matthew’s sake that she’d dressed so neatly. Matthew wouldn’t notice if she did a Lady Godiva unless she scared his precious cattle. He was immune to women, she thought. Freedom was an obsession with Matt. He’d said often enough that the woman hadn’t been born who could get him in front of a minister.

  Catherine had thought about that. She’d thought about making love to Matt, about feeling his hard sensuous mouth on her own. She’d daydreamed for years about it, about marrying him and living on Comanche Flats forever. But she’d learned over the years to keep her deeper longings to herself. Matt helped by ignoring her occasional stray glance that lingered too long and the quickening of her breath when he came close. She’d dated at college and had brought some of the boys home. To Betty’s frank astonishment, Matt had given them a thorough grilling, every one, and he’d set the rules about when Catherine had to be in. It was another of the domineering traits she’d once taken for granted and now resented bitterly. Matt would never want her the way a man wanted a woman. But he had control of her life, and he liked that.

  At last she saw him. He was kneeling to examine a hoof of one of the cows. His dark hair was concealed by the wide brim of his hat, and he looked almost like one of the cowboys in his faded denims and chambray shirt and worn boots. But when he stood up, all comparison ended. Matt had the kind of physique that turned up once in a blue moon outside motion pictures. His broad shoulders rippled with muscle, and his lithe body had a sensual rhythm that held women’s eyes when he moved. He was long and lean and darkly tanned, and he had eyes so black that they looked like coal. His nose had been broken once or twice and looked it, and his mouth had a perpetual mocking twist that could put Catherine’s back up in seconds. His cheekbones were high, a legacy of a Comanche ancestor, and he looked as if he needed a shave even when he didn’t because the shadow of his beard was so dark. But he was immaculate for a cattleman. His nails were always trimmed and clean, and he had an arrogant, regal carriage that made Catherine think of the highlander who had come to Texas so many years ago to found the Kincaid line.

  The Kincaids had been a political power in this part of the state at one time. Catherine had learned that from listening to Matt’s mother talk about Jackson Kincaid, her first husband. She was proud of Matt’s lineage and never let him forget it. The Kincaid Corporation, the remnant of a small empire, was Matt’s legacy. Evelyn had given shares in it to Great-Uncle Henry, combining both families’ interests. But it was Matt who held the power, and nobody forgot it.

  Matt’s sharp ears caught the sound of her mount’s hooves, and he whirled gracefully. His grim face and dark eyes brightened at the look on her face. He tilted his hat back and propped a boot against the oak tree behind him. He leaned back, watching her with an expression that made her want to hit him.

  “So there you are,” she muttered, fumbling her way out of the saddle.

  “Honey, you’ll never learn to be a good rider if you don’t listen when I try to teach you things. That’s no way to come down off a horse,” he said good-naturedly.

  “Don’t ‘honey’ me,” she said. She went right up to him, glaring at him, hating him, her small hands clenched at her back. “Mama told me what you’ve done. Now you listen to me, Matthew Kincaid. I just grew up, and you can stop trying to put me back in your hip pocket. I won’t fit! You gave me those shares when I turned eighteen, and you can’t take them away.”

  His narrow eyebrows arched. “Who, me?” he asked innocently. Still watching her with amusement, he pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it with maddening carelessness. “I didn’t take them away, I just had the interest you were drawing reinvested.” He grinned wider. “Look in the small print, Kit. I retained that right when I signed over the shares to you.”

  Her eyes lanced into him. “What am I going to do to pay my rent in New York, beg on street corners?”

  “I don’t remember any discussion about New York,” he returned at once.

  She hated that smile. She knew it all too well from years past. It meant he’d dug in his heels and there wouldn’t be any moving him. Well, she’d just see about that.

  “I’ve been offered a job with a very prestigious New York public relations firm,” she told him. “It wasn’t easy to get, and it was only because the father of one of my college friends works there that I was even considered. It’s a plum of a job, Matt. The salary—”

  “You’re only twenty-one,” he said, pursing his lips. “And New York is a wild place for a little country girl.”

  “I’m not little!”

  His eyes went pointedly to her small breasts, and he grinned. “No?”

  She let out a furious cry and aimed a kick at his shins with one hard-booted toe. He sidestepped with lightning grace, and she went down flat on her back in the wet grass and mud.

  He grinned at the shock on her face, then flashed a look at two of his men who were riding by with curious looks on their faces.

  “Better get up quick, honey, or Ben and Charlie there will think you’re trying to entice me into making love to you,” he said outrageously.

  “Matthew…Dane Kincaid…I hate you…!” she sputtered as she tried to get to her feet.

  He was trying to stop laughing, but without much success. His white teeth flashed and black eyes were alive in his swarthy face. He reached down to grab her wrist and jerked her to her feet. His strength was a little frightening. He looked lithe and limber, but he could have forced her to
her knees if he’d flexed his hand, and she knew it. Her angry eyes scanned his hard face, her fury kindling all over again at the traces of humor she saw lingering there. She drew back a hand, but it hovered in midair.

  “Hold it right there, honey,” he said, chuckling. “I don’t mind a little dirt, but if you connect with that muddy hand, I’ll hit you where it hurts most.”

  “I’ll tell Mama!” she threatened.

  “Betty would hold you still for me.”

  He loosed her wrist, and she rubbed it, surprised at the tingling sensation that lingered after his hard fingers had withdrawn.

  She tugged her long-tailed shirt out of her jodhpurs and used the hem of it to wipe off the mud. He stuck his hands on his lean hips and watched her with the infuriating superiority that clung to him like the faint mud stains on his shirt.

  She sighed. “I hate you, you know.”

  “No you don’t, Kit.” He grinned. “You just want your own way. And this time, you’re not getting it. I’d never forgive myself if I turned you loose in that big city all alone, fresh out of college in Forth Worth.”

  “And that’s another sore spot,” she threw back at him, shivering a little in the cool air. “You hardly even let me go off to college. Not me, oh, no, I had to commute on weekends! It’s a wonder you didn’t come with me and hold my hand as I crossed streets!”

  “I did think about it,” he murmured dryly.

  “I’m grown up!”

  “Not yet,” he corrected. His eyes went down to her breasts and lingered there, where the hard tips were visible through her thin shirt, and he smiled slowly. “But you’re getting there.”

  She stared at him unblinkingly, surprised at the remark, at the way he was studying her breasts. Boys had looked at her that way when she wore swimsuits or low-cut blouses, but Matt never had. It shocked her that he’d even bothered to look. Perhaps it was just another way of getting back at her. She folded her arms over her breasts as a scarlet flush covered her cheeks. She avoided meeting his eyes.

  “Hey,” he commanded softly.

  “What?”

  “Look at me.”

  She forced her embarrassed eyes up, but he wasn’t teasing her. He looked faintly kind, for Matt.

  “If you want to practice public relations, I’ll put you to work,” he said. “You can publicize my foundation sale month after next.”

  “Matt, that’s not a job!”

  “It’s a job,” he said firmly. “A lot of work goes into that annual sale, and a lot depends on its being a success. I usually hire an outside agency to handle it, but since you’re here, you can do it. I’ll even let you design the brochure.” He eyed her closely. “That’s a challenge, honey. Show me how capable you are, and I’ll make you a present of an apartment in New York and find you another job to boot. I’ve got some contacts of my own.”

  She wavered. It was tempting. Very tempting. And if he hadn’t been trying to bend her to his will, she might have accepted his offer. But he was calling the shots, and if she made a success of the job, he’d probably find some way to make her keep working for him. She’d never get away.

  So, he wanted his sale publicized, did he? She smiled faintly. Okay. She’d do it. And in such a way that he’d be more than delighted to send her on her way.

  “Okay,” she agreed after a minute, her green eyes sparkling. “I’ll just take that dare.”

  “I’ll start you off tomorrow morning. Be at the office eight-thirty sharp,” he replied. “Now you’d better get home and change into something a little more decent, or Betty will come after me with a shotgun.”

  “I can just see you now, running for the border,” she returned dryly.

  He smiled wickedly. “This far away?” he said with a chuckle. “Hell, no, I’d drive.” He pulled his hat low over his eyes. “Hadn’t you better go home and change?”

  She knew when she was defeated. Green eyes glared up at him. “You’re just stifling me,” she ground out. “Smothering me! My gosh, you tie me to the house.

  You grill every man I date. You won’t let me go to New York and find my own way in life—Matt, I’m a grown woman,” she said, trying to reason with him. “You’re an old bachelor…!”

  His eyebrows lifted as he lit another cigarette. “Honey, I’m just thirty-one.”

  “And someday you’ll be fifty-one and all alone, and what will you do then?” she asked haughtily.

  He smiled slowly. “I guess I’ll start seducing kids your age.”

  She opened her mouth, started to speak, thought better of it and closed her mouth with a snap.

  “My, my, the fish aren’t biting today,” he said conversationally. Boldly, his dark eyes wandered slowly down the length of her slender body, assessing her; then suddenly they shot up to catch her eyes. She stared back, and the world narrowed to Matt’s face. Cows bellowed all around and cowboys whistled and called, moving them along, but she no longer noticed them. A wild tingling feeling raced through her body as she studied Matt. Never before had she looked at him so intently.

  He touched the cigarette to his chiseled mouth, breaking the spell. “No comeback, Kit?” he murmured dryly.

  She sighed. “I can’t fight you,” she muttered. “You just laugh at me.”

  “It’s less dangerous than doing what I’d like,” he returned, his dark eyes sparkling.

  “Try slinging me over your knee, cattle baron, and I’ll make you a legend in your own time with that brochure you want drawn up,” she threatened.

  “No you won’t.” He threw down the cigarette and ground it out. “We’re buddies, remember?”

  “We used to be. Then you started being so horrible to me,” she reminded him. She dusted off her stained jodhpurs. “God knows what I’ll tell Mama about the way I look,” she added, giving him a mischievous glance.

  “Tell her you tried to seduce me,” he suggested with a wicked grin.

  “That’ll be the day,” she said darkly, turning back toward her horse.

  “Don’t you think you could?” he teased.

  She mounted, feeling odd at the suggestion, and glanced down at him. “Actually,” she told him, “I don’t know how.”

  “No experience?” he asked mockingly, but there was a serious note in his deep, drawling voice.

  “I’ve been saving myself for you, didn’t you know?”

  He laughed softly. “Have you?”

  It was new and heady to flirt openly with Matt. She’d never done it before. She wrapped the reins gently around one hand and stilled the nervous little mare, patting her neck as she talked softly to her. Her amused eyes met Matt’s. “Better lock your door at night.”

  His dark eyes twinkled with new lights. “I do. I’ve been terrified of you since you graduated from high school.”

  “Have you really?” She grinned. “I did notice all the women you gathered around you to protect yourself from me.”

  He didn’t smile. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully.

  “Your suitors have been conspicuous by their absence the past few months,” he remarked.

  She lifted her shoulders. “Jack gave me up in the early summer,” she said. “He was afraid you’d kill him if he tried anything with me. He even said so.”

  He looked toward the cowboys, who were starting to drive cattle through a nearby opening in the fence. “I’ve got work to do, honey.”

  “Conference over.” She sighed. “You never talk to me.”

  He looked up, and something in his black eyes made her nervous. “I may do that—sooner than you think, little Kit.” His gaze grew piercing, searching. “After all, you’re straining at the bonds for the first time. You’ll fly away if I’m not careful.”

  “I’m not a bird, you know,” she said pleasantly.

  “More of a tadpole,” he murmured.

  “You call me a frog again, and I’ll tell Hal and Jerry,” she threatened.

  “Tadpole, not frog. Go ahead and tell them,” he challenged, smiling. “Remember me, Kit?
I’m the black sheep.”

  “Some black sheep. You’re the one with the brains and the strong back,” she had to admit, softening as she looked down at him. His face was creased with harsh lines that neither of his brothers had. It was always Matt who’d had the lion’s share of the responsibility. Hal did what he pleased, and Jerry did what he could, but he didn’t have Matt’s business sense and was intelligent enough to admit it.

  “Was I asking for a vote of confidence?” he asked with mock astonishment.

  “You never would. But you’ve got mine,” she said with a soft smile.

  He seemed to tauten at the softness in her voice. “Risky, Kit, looking at me that way,” he said with a faint smile. “I might go crazy right here.”

  “You, go crazy over a woman?” she asked with a laugh. “That’ll be the day. Anyway, it would take someone with experience and pizzazz. I’m just your pesky stepcousin.”

  “You’re a beauty, young Catherine,” he returned, and seemed to really mean it. She colored gently at the masculine appreciation in the look he gave her. “Quality, all the way.”

  “You’re not bad yourself, cowboy,” she murmured demurely. “I have to go home and change. I thought I’d go see a movie later.”

  “Did you? What kind of movie?”

  “There’s one of those very adult shows at the drive-in,” she confided. “I thought I’d take Hal and educate him.”

  His face went hard all at once, and the sudden eclipse of humor surprised her. “No,” he said quietly. “Not Hal. If you go to any drive-ins, I’ll take you. And not tonight. I’ve got a date already. I’ll take you Friday.”

  It was like sticking her finger in an electric socket. She simply stared at him. “What?”

  “I said I’ll take you to the movies Friday, Kit,” he replied, and grinned at her. “I’m not letting you corrupt Hal. Besides, he’s too young for you.”

  She burst out laughing. She must have imagined his sudden anger, she told herself. Matt had only been teasing all along.