Diamond Spur

“Your mother would have missed you,” he said, glancing at her as they sped down the deserted road. “She isn’t half as capable as she makes out. She needs looking after.”

“Apparently you think I do, too,” she replied, feeling argumentative. “And that can’t go on, Jason. I’m a grown woman now, not a teenage girl.”

“You were pretty wise, for a teenager.” His eyes narrowed as he stared down the road. “I don’t guess you knew that time how dangerous it was to come that close to me when I’d been drinking.”

“Which was probably a good thing, or I’d never have had the nerve,” she recalled with a warm smile, studying him. “But you needed someone. Gene was too frightened of you to do any real good, and so was Sheila.”

“They remembered too well what happened when the old man got loaded,” he said, memories tautening his jaw. One corner of his mouth twisted mockingly. “He used to hit. The drunker he was, the harder he hit. I don’t drink often, or very much.” He shifted against the seat, his eyes narrow. “I guess I’ve always been afraid I might end up like him. And who knows, if you hadn’t come along at the right time, I might have.”

“Not you,” she said with conviction, her quiet eyes adoring his profile. “You’re not a cruel man.”

“Neither was he before he started drinking,” Jason said. He sighed. “You were lucky, honey. Your father never touched the stuff.”

“I was lucky in a lot of ways,” she agreed. “I still am.” She wondered if Jason knew that she’d heard about how his father had once extended his blind fury to Jason and Gene’s mother, that he’d beaten Nell Donavan once and only once, and that she’d vanished the next day, leaving her sons at his mercy. Probably he didn’t realize that Sheila had passed that bit of gossip on to Kate. He hardly ever talked about his childhood, even to her. It was a mark of affection he had for her that she knew anything about those dark days. Jason was a very private man. “I’ve never been really afraid of you,” she said absently, “even when you were drinking. That night, I never thought that you might harm me.”

He smiled at her. “You saw deep that night,” he said quietly. “Right through the anger to the pain. Most people never look past my temper, but you did.”

“I liked you, God knows why,” she said, smiling back. “And there wasn’t anybody else who seemed inclined to look after you after that blond sawmill got through with you.”

“She taught me a hard lesson,” he replied. “One I’ll never forget. In my way, I loved her.”

“One bad experience shouldn’t sour you for life,” she told him. “All women aren’t out for what they can get.”

“How would you know?” he asked bitterly. “You with your little girl crushes on movie stars and pinup boys? My God, the men you’ve dated weren’t even men in any real sense. They were geldings you could lead around by the nose,” he said shortly. “You haven’t even been intimate with a man, have you?”

Her face went stiff. Amazing, she thought angrily, that it was the twentieth century and she still couldn’t toss off sophisticated chatter with any credence. “How could I have managed that, with you and my mother bulldogging me at every turn and keeping me away from men who knew anything?” She turned in the seat, her green eyes accusing. “My goodness, after Baxter Hewett joined the Marines, all the local men decided you were too much competition and I’ve spent my evenings at home ever since!”

He lifted his cigarette to his mouth with a faintly surprised glance in her direction as they bumped along the ranch road. “I didn’t realize that.”

“Think how it looks, when you beat up men who try to seduce me,” she sighed.

“I don’t want other men seducing you,” he said without thinking. “Especially not a ladies’ man like Hewett.”

“Why not?” she burst out, exasperated.

“There’s a question.” He turned off onto a dirt road. “God, it’s dusty!” he muttered.

She spared the thick yellow dust a glance and turned her attention back to him. “Go ahead, avoid the question. That’s what you always do when you don’t want to talk about things.”

He lifted an eyebrow as he glanced at her. “Well, it works, doesn’t it?” he asked reasonably. “All right, if you want to know the truth, sexual freedom may be in vogue all over the world, but I’m an old-fashioned man. I believe God made women to have children and be the foundation of a family. To my mind, that doesn’t mix with easy virtue and high-pressured careers.”

She gaped at him. “You reactionary!” she accused. “You mean you think the little woman should stay at home, chained to a stove and slave to a man’s hungers?”

“What would you know about a man’s hungers, Kate?” he asked suddenly, his dark eyes cutting and intent as they met hers across the seat.

She shifted restlessly. “What do you know about a woman’s heart?” she returned. “With an attitude like yours, you’ll never find a woman to marry.”

“Praise God,” he replied easily. “A wife is the last thing on earth I want.”

“Well, you’ll never get an heir for the Spur without one,” she returned.

He frowned thoughtfully through a thin veil of smoke. With a brief glance in the rearview mirror, he pulled off onto the grassy shoulder and cut off the engine. All around them was open land, and Kate noticed the familiar Diamond Spur logo on each gate. What Jason had was a small empire. It stretched practically into San Frio, and encompassed large tracts of bottom land up and down the Frio and small tributaries.

“I want to show you something.” He got out, moving around the Bronco to open the door and help her down from the high cab.

She was briefly close to him until he reached past her to shut the door. Then he leaned back against it, his long legs crossed, the cigarette dangling from one hand.

“Blalock Donavan had a cabin out there,” he said, nodding toward the flat plain that led to the Frio River. “The homestead burned down a month after he took possession, and he and some of the vaqueros put up a shanty just for him to sleep in. Soon after that, he married a Mexican girl and had seven kids in rapid succession. He built a house very much like the one I live in now, but the legend goes that he and the Mexican girl stood off a Comanche war party in that very cabin.”

“Where the mesquite stand is?” she asked, gesturing toward a thick grove of trees with long, feathery green fronds blowing in the wind.

“The very one. There’s a legend that she saw her patron saint standing beside the river, and he promised her that she and her husband would be spared. The name San Frio came loosely from it—San for Saint and Frio for the Frio River.” He glanced at her and grinned. “Even legends have some truth, but Blalock was a gambler and a realist. He wrote in his diary that it was rain as much as divine intervention that saved them.”

She leaned back against the Bronco’s door beside him, trying not to notice the powerful lines of his body, or the thick shadow of chest hair that peeked out at the unbuttoned neck of his shirt. “Rain?” she coaxed.

“Comanches lashed the arrowheads on their arrows with rawhide,” he explained. “When it rained, the humidity, so the story goes, made the rawhide relax.” His dark eyes twinkled down at her. “So the arrowheads had this tendency to fall off in wet weather, before they got to the intended victim.”

She laughed gently at the irony of it. Of course, those warriors surely had other weapons just as deadly, and they were fabulous horsemen and fighters. But it was one tiny Achilles’ heel in an otherwise terrifying memory, and she liked knowing that even those men had one.

“The things you never learn in history class,” she mused.

“They say that one of my ancestors was a Comanche,” he remarked. “A lot more were Spanish and Mexican.”

“I guess most of mine were Irish,” she sighed. She watched the horizon, fascinated with the broad reach of open land. “There can’t be a more beautiful place on earth than this,” she said suddenly.

“It’s that,” he agreed, smiling with faint possession and pride as he followed her gaze. He lifted the cigarette to his mouth. “From a few scraggly longhorns to this,” he mused. “It was a long road, Kate.”

“And a hard one,” she murmured. Her eyes lifted to his face, tracing the hard lines. “Your age tells on you sometimes.”

“I guess it does. I feel it more these days.” He turned his head and looked down at her, and without warning, the world narrowed to black eyes and green ones. Around them, the skies were growing dark, the thunder rumbling. The wind kindled like cool fire, whipping across Kate’s face as she met and wondered at the sudden lack of expression in Jason’s features, and the curious narrow glitter in his black eyes as his chin lifted slightly and his body stilled.

Lightning striking, Kate thought while she could. Her heart was as wild as the wind around them, her breath stuck like a cactus in her throat. Jason was looking at her in a way he never had, not in all the years she’d known him. Something in that look made her toes curl in her boots, making her body feel as if his hands had stroked it.

He shifted, the movement slow, easy, turning so that his side was against the Bronco. His right hand, holding the dead cigarette, rested on the open window. The other was suddenly at Kate’s neck, brushing stray wisps of long, dark hair, tracing an artery that was pounding crazily.

Jason was so close that she could smell the tobacco and leather scents that mingled with his spicy cologne. She could feel the warmth of his muscular body, the quiet threat of his masculinity. His dark eyes searched hers quietly with a new kind of curiosity. And then, all at once, they dropped to her soft bow of a mouth and lingered there with veiled intent.

The static from the CB radio was overloud drifting out the open window of the deserted cab, and Kate tried to concentrate on it, not on the very disturbing way Jason was looking at her. Any minute, everything she felt was going to start showing, and she couldn’t bear to have him know how vulnerable she was.

But he already did. His dark eyes had caught every single giveaway movement of her body—her swollen breasts, her quick breathing, the yielding softness of her eyes. He wasn’t all that experienced, and for the past few years he’d lived almost like a monk because of Melody’s painful defection. But Kate was even less experienced than he was, and everything she felt was visible.

It gave him an odd sensation to know that she was aroused by him. He wasn’t a handsome man. He was rich, and his wealth had given him opportunities with women even if he was still too bitter to accept them. But he couldn’t remember a time when a woman had wanted just him, craggy face, mean temper and all. Even the one woman he’d loved had only wanted what he could give her. But Kate was looking at him in a way that made his blood run hot, and he realized suddenly that if he tried to kiss her, she’d more than likely let him.

When he realized that, reason deserted him. It was a new experience, having Kate want him. Breathing just a little unsteadily, he reached behind her tilted head, loosening the ribbon that held her long braid in place. With deft, easy movements, he loosened her hair and his fingers smoothed it down her back, slowly bringing her even closer to him.

“There’s a storm...coming,” she remarked in a quick, breathless voice.

“A hell of a storm, Kate,” he breathed as his free hand slid to her waist and then around her, roughly pulling her closer so that the tips of her breasts came into sudden contact with his chest.

Kate felt electricity rustle through her body at the feel of him so close against her. Her hands went to his shirt instinctively and pressed there, feeling the cushy softness of his chest hair against hard, pulsating muscle. It was wildly arousing, and she couldn’t hide her sudden trembling.

The wind whipped through her hair and the dark skies over Jason’s head outlined the set of his jaw, the shadowy darkness of his eyes. “Jason?” she whispered in what was half question, half protest.

His gaze fell to her mouth while his lean fingers dug in and pulled her even closer. He was burning now, the cool wind making the fever bearable as he breathed in the scent of roses that clung to Kate’s soft body. All the reasons he shouldn’t let this happen fell away at the hunger that drew his head down. He wanted her. She wanted him. There was nothing in the world but Kate and her mouth, parted, softly tremulous, welcoming....

He tilted his head as it bent to hers, and he watched, fascinated, the way her mouth lifted for him, the way she caught her breath, the way her nails drew like tiny claws against his chest.

“The storm,” she breathed dizzily.

“Damn the storm!” he whispered roughly. “Oh, God, honey, open your mouth...”

She felt the first tentative touch of his hard, warm lips on her mouth. Just then the loud roar of an approaching vehicle shattered the spell as surely as the pitchfork of lightning that shot down on the horizon and shook the earth seconds later.

Kate actually jumped, her gasp mingling with the odd sound that burst from Jason’s lips simultaneously.

He stood erect, his breathing only a little rough as he glanced past her with eyes she couldn’t read. “It’s Gabe.”

“Oh.” She hoped that her confused frustration didn’t show, but it was too late for camouflage because Gabe was already out of the truck and even with them.

“Howdy, boss man,” he told Jason, grinning. He looked past him at Kate, and the grin grew wider. “Miss Kate. I hope you got sewed up proper, boss, because we have got trouble.”

Jason dropped the forgotten cigarette in his hand and quietly lit another one, giving himself time to recover before he answered Gabe. Damn his own vulnerability! “When haven’t we got trouble? And you have got more than most,” Jason said with a cold, level smile. “I know how Kate accidentally happened to ride over to the Bottoms....”

“No time for that now,” Gabe said quickly. “You know that black Angus bull of Mr. Henry Tanner’s that he put in the pasture next to our heifers in spite of all the threats you made?”

Jason’s chin lifted. He knew what was coming. “He jumped the fence?”

“He tore it down,” Gabe muttered. “He’s having the time of his life with our purebred Santa Gertrudis heifers.”

Jason murmured something that sounded obscene and murderous all at once. Without waiting for another word, he helped a still shaky Kate into the Bronco, climbed in on the other side, started it and shot off down the road.

Kate was fumbling with her seat belt, and Jason thanked God for the intervention of the bull. Another few seconds and all his good intentions wouldn’t have spared her. He could see her mouth like a vivid color photograph, parted, waiting, hungry... He almost groaned out loud. He was going to have to keep his emotions under control from now on. His life suited him as it was.

God knew what would happen if he gave in to his unexpected hunger for her. The least of it would be the loss of the only friend he had, because Kate was most certainly that. And the worst would be an addiction that he couldn’t cure, except with commitment. Jason didn’t want to risk that twice. His one brush with commitment had left a bitter taste in his mouth. Kate was young and inconsistent and hell-bent on a career. She was a risk he couldn’t handle right now. He could fall in headfirst, but she wasn’t likely to. Not at her age.

He looked at Kate with a quiet, calculating intensity. “I didn’t mean for that to happen,” he said, his voice still too deep, too soft.

“Neither did I,” she managed unsteadily. She couldn’t think of another single thing to say. She felt tongue-tied and nervous and frustrated, still hungry for a kiss she’d wanted with desperate abandon.

Jason blew out a thin cloud of smoke, keeping his eyes on the road as they turned onto the long dirt track leading up to the Donavan house. “If you want the truth, I’ve been celibate for a long time,” he said bluntly, wanting to ward off trouble before it started. He looked at her deliberately and added, “I guess I need a weekend in the city.”

Murderous jealousy stabbed into Kate like a knife. She couldn’t even speak for it. Somehow she’d never thought of Jason in bed with another woman. Everybody knew there wasn’t a less likely playboy in the state, even if Jason was rich. But now she thought about it, and the mental pictures she saw were shocking and embarrassing and they hurt.

He glanced at her set expression as he pulled up in front of the barn, where she’d left her horse.

“What is it?” he asked.

She swallowed. “Nothing. I’d better get home and start supper.”

He caught her arm as she started to open the door. “You and I have never lied to each other,” he said quietly when she looked at him with visible reluctance. “It’s one reason we get along so well. Don’t hide your feelings from me.”

“This is different....” she blurted out.

“Tell me,” he persisted, his voice deep and slow and insistent.

Her lips parted as she met his level gaze. “I...don’t want to know.”

“About what?”

“About you. With other women.”

His breath came hard. He searched her eyes for a long, static moment. Everything around them vanished in the green mist of her eyes, the sound of her soft breathing. He’d meant to shock her, but now he didn’t like the flash of pain in those soft green eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said abruptly, turning her face aside. “I had no right to say such a thing.” Her eyes stung. “Let me go, Jason!”

“For God’s sake,” he burst out, exasperated. He didn’t understand his own confused feelings. Her reaction to his blunt statement had thrown him off balance. She’d believed him. She’d actually believed that bald-faced lie, and it had hurt her more than he’d ever expected.

She shook off his hand and jumped out of the Bronco. “Hi, Red, did you put Kip in the barn?” she called to the young cowhand who’d seen them off, because Kip hadn’t been at the holding pen when they’d driven past it. Even upset, she’d noticed that.

“Yes, ma’am, Miss Kate, I sure did.” He grinned. “I even mended your saddle for you. That nail must have been uncomfortable, even in jeans.”

“It was,” she confessed, avoiding Jason’s interested gaze. “Thanks, Red, I’ll remember you in my will.”

“In that case, I sure would love a Rolls Royce,” the younger man said. “And a house in Florida, on the bay. And a few bonds....”

“Oh, shut up,” she laughed. “If I had half those things, I’d do my best to live forever and I sure wouldn’t be riding around Texas on saddles with nails sticking through them.”

“Well, it was just a thought,” he said. “I’ll saddle your horse.”

She murmured a thank you and started to follow him into the well-lit confines of the mammoth barn, where several horses were quartered in tidy stalls off a wide aisle neat with pine shavings.

“You didn’t mention anything about your saddle being worn,” Jason said from behind her.

She could feel the warmth from his tall, well-muscled body and it made her legs go weak. She felt tingly from head to toe and deliberately moved away from the close contact. It was all too devastating a reminder of how close she’d been to him in the field, of the flash of passion that had almost but not quite ripped away the fabric of their casual relationship.

“You’ve got enough on your mind,” she said evasively.

“Kate, don’t run from me.”

The quiet fervor in that statement brought her head around. She looked up at him with soft, searching eyes. He seemed really concerned about her, regretful almost.

She smiled at him. “Okay.” She sighed. “I’m a little off balance, that’s all.”

“You might not believe it, but so am I.” His dark eyes narrowed and he glanced toward the horizon, where the storm clouds had passed over without depositing a drop of rain. “Anyway, honey, the storm’s gone. And there’s no damage.”

She looked up quietly, searching his black eyes. “That’s right, Jason,” she said. “No damage.”

He touched her loosened hair, reminding her blatantly of his part in its dishevelment. She made him feel fiercely male, bristling with protective instincts that he didn’t even know he had. She trembled at the faint touch, and he wanted to hold her, to comfort her, to keep her safe from any threat, even from himself.

“This time,” he added, his voice deep with shades of feeling, his eyes darkening. “That can’t happen again.”

She searched his face, feeling lost and alone already. “I didn’t do anything,” she whispered. “I didn’t mean to....”

He actually grimaced. “For God’s sake, I know that,” he ground out. “Leave it, Kate. Nothing happened.” He turned away, dismissing it from his mind. “Red!”

Before she could speak, Red Barton came hotfooting in, leading Kip.

“Here you go, Miss Kate,” he said, handing her the reins. “Mind that you don’t go near the border over toward Tanner’s, there’s likely to be a turrrrrrible explosion in the near future.” He grinned, glancing at the boss.

Jason sighed heavily. “Barton, I don’t know why in hell I don’t fire you,” he said absently.

Red frowned. “Neither do I, boss. I’ve studied on it for months, and I still haven’t come up with a decent reason for you to keep me on. But I’ll keep trying, don’t you worry.” He grinned again and tipped his hat to Kate. “I’ll just move those heifers out of range of that lovesick bull, boss, while you explain to Mr. Tanner how many cuts of meat you expect to get out of him.”

Jason pursed his lips. “Now that,” he mused, “is a hell of a good idea. We haven’t thrown a barbecue after roundup in a long time, and Tanner’s bull looks like good beef to me.”

“Mr. Tanner’s purebred black Angus who placed at the national Angus show last November?” Kate asked incredulously. “The same one he paid a hundred thousand dollars for? That bull?”

“Where have you been for the past fifteen minutes?” Jason asked with colossal patience. “Didn’t you hear Gabe? Yes, that bull. He got in with my purebred Santa Gertrudis two-year-old heifers that I was about to breed to my purebred longhorn bulls, and God knows how many of them he’s managed to breed. We haven’t checked that section for several days, so God knows when he got in there or how many of them he’s bred already!”

“That’s sure going to be rough on them heifers,” Red mumbled. “That Angus bull had a birth weight of over a hundred and thirty pounds, as I recall.”

“Absolutely.” Jason’s lips made a thin line as he thought about it and got even madder. “And no bull with a birth weight of over a hundred pounds is considered safe to breed to a virgin cow. First-calf cows have it hard enough without the complication of an oversized sire. The least damaging thing is that my breeding program will be shot to hell, and that bull is going to pay for it. Or Tanner is. Or both. Where the hell is my rifle!”

“Oh, no.” Red grimaced as Jason whirled and stalked toward the house with his face set in hard lines that the cowboy and Kate both recognized.

“The Tanner place is five minutes away by truck,” Kate coaxed. “You could drive past there on your way to move those heifers, and mention that Jason has loaded his rifle.”

Red’s eyes popped. “I could get the hell beat out of me, too. You know the boss in a temper.”

“That’s why I think you should warn Mr. Tanner that he’s coming.”

Red sighed. “The things I do for the Diamond Spur.” He turned. “Okay. But I hope you’ll take me in to the doc afterwards.”

“I’ll sling you over Kip here and ride you the whole way all by myself,” she promised. “Hurry!”

He walked quickly toward the pickup truck. Kate, taking Kip’s reins, made a beeline for the house. Jason was already coming back out the front door with his Winchester under one arm and Sheila raging behind him.

“You’ll end up in prison, I tell you!” she bellowed, her hair standing practically on end. “You can’t go around solving problems with a loaded gun! Henry Tanner is an Easterner! He’s just learning about the beef business! He needs a helping hand, not blazing guns!”