Lone Star Winter

by Diana Palmer

  “Look,” he said quietly, “I’m not trying to make an enemy of you. I like Julie. Her father is a good man and he’s had some hard knocks lately. They really need my help, Libby. They haven’t got anybody else.”

  She could just imagine Julie crying prettily, lavishing praise on Jordan for being so useful, dressing up in her best—which was considerably better than Libby’s best—and making a play for him. She might be snippy and aggressive toward other women, but Julie Merrill was a practiced seducer. She knew how to wind men around her finger. She was young and beautiful and cultured and rich. She knew tricks that most men—even Jordan—wouldn’t be able to resist.

  “Why are you so attracted to her?” Libby wondered aloud.

  Jordan gave her an enigmatic look. “She’s mature,” he said without thinking. “She knows exactly what she wants and she goes after it wholeheartedly. Besides that, she’s a woman who could have anybody.”

  “And she wants you,” she said for him.

  He shrugged. “Yes. She does.”

  She studied his lean, hard face, surprising a curious rigidity there before he concealed it. “I suppose you’re flattered,” she murmured.

  “She draws every man’s eye when she walks into a room,” he said slowly. “She can play the piano like a professional. She speaks three languages. She’s been around the world several times. She’s dated some of the most famous actors in Hollywood. She’s even been presented to the queen in England.” He sighed. “Most men would have a hard time turning up their noses at a woman like that.”

  “In other words, she’s like a trophy.”

  He studied her arrogantly. “You could say that. But there’s something more, too. She needs me. She said everyone in town had turned their backs on her father. Calhoun Ballenger is drawing financial support from some of the richest families in town, the same people who promised Senator Merrill their support and then withdrew it. Julie was in tears when she told me how he’d been sold out by his best friends. Until I came along, he actually considered dropping out of the race.”

  And pigs fly, Libby thought privately, but she didn’t say it. The Merrills were dangling their celebrity in front of Jordan, a man who’d been shut out of high society even though he was now filthy rich. They were offering him entry into a closed community. All that and beautiful Julie, as well.

  “Did you hear what she said to me in Barbara’s Café?” she wondered aloud.

  “What do you mean?” he asked curiously.

  “You stood there and let her attack me, without saying a word.”

  He scowled. “I was talking to Brad Henry while we stood in line, about a bull he wanted to sell. I didn’t realize what was going on until Julie raised her voice. By then, Harley Fowler and several other men were making catcalls at her. I thought the best thing to do would be to get her outside before things escalated.”

  “Did you hear her accuse me of chasing you? Did you hear her warn me off you?”

  He cocked his head. “I heard that part,” he admitted. “She’s very possessive and more jealous of me than I realized. But I didn’t like having her insult you, if that’s what you mean,” he said quietly. “I told her so later. She said she’d apologize, but I thought it might come easier from me. She’s insecure, Libby. You wouldn’t think so, but she really takes things to heart.”

  A revelation a minute, Libby was thinking. Jordan actually believed what he was saying. Julie had really done a job on him.

  “She said that you wouldn’t waste your time on a nobody like me,” she persisted.

  “Women say things they don’t mean all the time.” He shrugged it off. “You take things to heart, too, Libby,” he added gently. “You’re still very young.”

  “You keep saying that,” she replied, exasperated. “How old do I have to be for you to think of me as an adult?”

  He moved closer, one lean hand going to her slender throat, slowly caressing it. “I’ve thought of you like that for a long time,” he said deeply. “But you’re an addiction I can’t afford. You said it yourself—you’re ambitious. You won’t be satisfied in a small town. Like the old-timers used to say, you want to go and see the elephant.”

  She was caught in his dark eyes, spellbound. She’d said that, yes, because of the way he’d behaved about Julie’s insults. She’d wanted to sting him. But she didn’t mean it. She wasn’t ambitious. All she wanted was Jordan. Her eyes were lost in his.

  “The elephant?” she parroted, her gaze on his hard mouth.

  “You want to see the world,” he translated. But he was moving closer as he said it and his head was bending, even against his will. This was stupid. He couldn’t afford to let himself be drawn into this sweet trap. Libby wanted a career. She was young and ambitious. He’d go in headfirst and she’d take off and leave him, just as Duke Wright’s young wife had left him in search of fame and fortune. He’d deliberately drawn back from Libby and let himself be vamped by Julie Merrill, to show this little firecracker that he hadn’t been serious about those kisses they’d exchanged. He wasn’t going to risk his heart on a gamble this big. Libby was in love with love. She was attracted to him. But that wasn’t love. She was too young to know the difference. He wasn’t. He’d grabbed at Julie the way a drowning man reaches for a life jacket. Libby didn’t know that. He couldn’t admit it.

  While he was thinking, he was parting her lips with his. He forgot where they were, who they were. He forgot the arguments and all the reasons he shouldn’t do this.

  “Libby,” he growled against her soft lips.

  She barely heard him. Her blood was singing in her veins like a throbbing chorus. Her arms went around his neck in a stranglehold. She pushed up against him, forcing into his mouth in urgency.

  His arms swallowed her up whole. The kiss was slow, deep, hungry. It was invasive. Her whole body began to throb with delight. It began to swell. Their earlier kisses had been almost chaste. These were erotic. They were…narcotic.

  A soft little cry of pleasure went from her mouth into his and managed to penetrate the fog of desire she was drowning him in.

  He jerked back from her as if he’d been stung. He fought to keep his inner turmoil from showing, his weakness from being visible to her. His big hands caught her waist and pushed her firmly away.

  “I know,” she said breathlessly. “You think I’ve had snakebite on my lip and you were only trying to draw out the poison.”

  He burst out laughing in spite of himself.

  She swallowed hard and backed away another step. “Just think how Julie Merrill would react if she saw you kissing me.”

  That wiped the smile off his face. “That wasn’t a kiss,” he said.

  “No kidding?” She touched her swollen mouth ironically. “I’ll bet Julie could even give you lessons.”

  “Don’t talk about her like that,” he warned.

  “You think she’s honest and forthright, because you are,” she said, a little breathless. “You’re forgetting that her father is a career politician. They both know how to bend the truth without breaking it, how to influence public opinion.”

  “Politics is a science,” he retorted.

  “It can be a horrible corruption, as well,” she reminded him. “Calhoun Ballenger has taken a lot of heat from them, even a sexual harassment charge that had no basis in fact. Fortunately, people around here know better, and it backfired. It only made Senator Merrill look bad.”

  His eyes began to glitter. “That wasn’t fiction. The woman swore it happened.”

  “She was one of Julie’s cousins,” she said with disgust.

  He looked as if he hadn’t known that. He scowled, but he didn’t answer her.

  “Julie thinks my brother and I are so far beneath her that we aren’t even worth mentioning,” she continued, folding her arms over her chest. “She chooses her friends by their social status and bank accounts. Curt and I are losers in her book and she doesn’t think we’re fit to associate with you. She’ll find a way to pu
sh you right out of our lives.”

  “I don’t have social status, but I’m welcome in their home,” he said flatly.

  “There’s an election coming up, they don’t have enough money to win it, but you do. They’ll take your money and make you feel like an equal until you’re not needed anymore. Then you’ll be out on your ear. You don’t come from old money, Jordan, even if you’re rich now…”

  “You don’t know a damned thing about what I come from,” he snapped.

  The furious statement caught her off guard. She knew Jordan had made his own fortune, but he never spoke about his childhood. His mother worked as a housekeeper. Everybody knew it. He sounded as if he couldn’t bear to admit his people were only laborers.

  “I didn’t mean to be insulting,” she began slowly.

  “Hell! You’re doing your best to turn me against Julie. She said you would,” he added. “She said something else, too—that you’re involved with Harley Fowler.”

  She refused to react to that. “Harley’s sweet. He defended me when Julie was insulting me.”

  That was a sore spot, because Jordan hadn’t really heard what Julie was saying until it was too late. He didn’t like Harley, anyway.

  “Harley’s a nobody.”

  “Just like me,” she retorted. “I’d much rather have Harley than you, Jordan,” she added. “He may be just a working stiff, but he’s got more class than you’ll ever have, even if you hang out with the Merrills for the next fifty years!”

  That did it. He gave her a furious glare, spit out a word that would have insulted Satan himself and marched right out the door.

  “And stay out!” she called after it slammed.

  Kemp stuck his head out of his office door and stared at her. “Are you that same shy, introverted girl who came to work here last year?”

  She grinned at him through her heartbreak. “You’re rubbing off on me, Mr. Kemp,” she remarked.

  He laughed curtly and went back into his office.

  Later, Libby was miserable. They’d exhumed her father’s body and taken it up to the state crime lab in Austin for tests.

  Curt was furious when she told him that Jordan had been to her office to apologize for the Merrill girl.

  “As if she’d ever apologize to the likes of us,” he said angrily. “And Jordan just stood by and let her insult you in the café without saying a word!”

  She gaped at him. “How did you know that?”

  “Harley Fowler came by where I was working this morning to tell me about it. He figured, rightly, that you’d try to keep it to yourself.” He sank down into a chair. “I gave Jordan notice this afternoon. In two weeks, I’m out of there.”

  She grimaced. “But, Curt, where will you go?”

  “Right over to Duke Wright’s place,” he replied with a smile. “I already lined up a job and I’ll get a raise, to boot.”

  “That’s great,” she said, and meant it.

  “We’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.” He sighed. “It’s so much lately, isn’t it, sis? But we’ll survive. We will!”

  “I know that, Curt. I’m not worried.”

  But she was. She hated being enemies with Jordan, who was basically a kind and generous man. She was furious with the Merrills for coming between them for such a selfish reason. They only wanted Jordan’s money for the old man’s reelection campaign. They didn’t care about Jordan. But perhaps he was flattered to be included in such high society, to be asked to hang out with their friends and acquaintances.

  But Libby knew something about the people the Merrills associated with that, perhaps, Jordan didn’t. Many of them were addicts, either to liquor or drugs. They did nothing for the community; only for themselves. They wanted to know the right people, be seen in the right places, have money that showed when people looked. But to Libby, who loved her little house and little ranch, it seemed terribly artificial.

  She didn’t have much but she was happy with her life. She enjoyed planting things and watching them grow. She liked teaching Vacation Bible School in the summer and working in the church nursery with little children. She liked cooking food to carry to bereaved families when relatives died. She liked helping out with church bazaars, donating time to the local soup kitchen. She didn’t put on airs, but people seemed to like her just the way she was.

  Certainly Harley Fowler did. He’d come over to see her the day after Julie’s attack in the café, to make sure she was all right. He’d asked her out to eat the following Saturday night.

  “Only to Shea’s,” he chuckled. “I just paid off a new transmission for my truck and I’m broke.”

  She’d grinned at him. “That’s okay. I’m broke, too!”

  He shook his head, his eyes sparkling as he looked down at her with appreciation. “Libby, you’re my kind of people.”

  “Thanks, Harley.”

  “Say, can you dance?”

  She blinked. “Well, I can do a two-step.”

  “That’s good enough.” He chuckled. “I’ve been taking these dance courses on the side.”

  “I know. I heard about the famous waltz with Janie Brewster at the Cattleman’s Ball last year.”

  He smiled sheepishly. “Well, now I’m working on the jitterbug and I hear that Shea’s live band can play that sort of thing.”

  “You can teach me to jitterbug, Harley,” she agreed at once. “I’d love to go dancing with you.”

  He looked odd. “Really?”

  She nodded and smiled. “Really.”

  “Then I’ll see you Saturday about six. We can eat there, too.”

  “Suits me. I’ll leave supper for Curt in the refrigerator. That was really nice of you to go to bat for him with your boss, Harley,” she added seriously. “Thanks.”

  He shrugged. “Mr. Parks wasn’t too pleased with the way Powell’s sucking up to the Merrills, either,” he said. “He knows things about them.”

  “So do I,” she replied. “But Jordan doesn’t take well-meant advice.”

  “His problem,” Harley said sharply.

  She nodded. “Yes, Harley. It’s his problem. I’ll see you Saturday!” she added, laughing.

  When she told Curt about the upcoming date, he seemed pleased. “It’s about time you went out and had some fun for a change.”

  “I like Harley a lot,” she told her brother.

  He searched her eyes knowingly. “But he’s not Jordan.”

  She turned away. “Jordan made his choice. I’m making mine.” She smiled philosophically. “I dare say we’ll both be happy!”

  Chapter Six

  Libby and Harley raised eyebrows at Shea’s Roadhouse and Bar with their impromptu rendition of the jitter bug. It was a full house, too, on a Saturday night. At least two of the Tremayne brothers were there with their wives, and Calhoun Ballenger and his wife, Abby, were sitting at a table nearby with Leo Hart and his wife, Janie.

  “I’m absolutely sure that Calhoun’s going to win the state senate seat,” Harley said in Libby’s ear when they were seated again, drinking iced tea and eating hamburgers. “It looks like he’s going to get some sup port from the Harts.”

  “Is Mr. Parks in his corner, too?” she asked.

  He nodded. “All the way. The political landscape has been changing steadily for the past few years, but old man Merrill just keeps going with his old agenda. He hasn’t got a clue what the voters want anymore. And, more important, he doesn’t control them through his powerful friends.”

  “You’d think his daughter would be forward thinking,” she pointed out.

  He didn’t say anything. But his face was eloquent.

  “Somebody said she was thinking of running for public office in Jacobsville,” she began.

  “No name identification,” Harley said at once. “You have to have it to win an office. Without it, all the money in the world won’t get you elected.”

  “You seem to know something about politics,” she commented.

  He averted his eyes. “Do I?”
he mused.

  Harley never talked about his family, or his past. He’d shown up at Cy Parks’s place one day and proved himself to be an exceptional cowboy, but nobody knew much about him. He’d gone on a gigantic drug bust with Jacobsville’s ex-mercenaries and he had a reputation for being a tough customer. But he was as mysterious in his way as the town’s police chief, Cash Grier.

  “Wouldn’t you just know they’d show up and spoil everything?” Harley said suddenly, glaring toward the door.

  Sure enough, there was Jordan Powell in an expensive Western-cut sports coat and Stetson and boots, escorting pretty Julie Merrill in a blue silk dress that looked simple and probably cost the earth.

  “Doesn’t she look expensive?” Harley mused.

  “She probably is,” Libby said, trying not to look and sound as hurt as she really was. It killed her to see Jordan there with that terrible woman.

  “She’s going to find out, pretty soon, that she’s the equivalent of three-day-old fish with this crowd,” Harley predicted coolly, watching her stick her nose up at the Ballengers as she passed them.

  “I just hope she doesn’t drag Jordan down with her,” Libby said softly. “He started out like us, Harley,” she added. “He was just a working cowboy with ambition.”

  Jordan seated Julie and shot a cool glance in Harley and Libby’s direction, without even acknowledging them. He sat down, placing his Stetson on a vacant chair and motioned a waiter.

  “Did you want something stronger to drink?” Harley asked her.

  She grinned at him. “I don’t have a head for liquor, Harley. I’d rather stick to iced tea, if you don’t mind.”