Heartless

“I don’t scare you,” he said.

She laughed. “You used to.”

“Yes, when you first moved in with us,” he recalled affectionately. “I lured you out of your room with Lindt chocolates, one at a time. It took months. You always looked at me as if you expected horns and a tail to start growing out of me.”

“It wasn’t personal,” she chided. “Besides,” she added with a wicked grin, “after I got to know you, I got used to the horns.”

He made a face at her. But his eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You didn’t go out with a boy at all until I made an issue of it in your senior year of high school. You were asked to the prom, but you didn’t want to go. I insisted. I thought you were unnecessarily shy.”

“So I went with the first boy who asked me,” she reminded him venomously.

He grimaced. “Well, he seemed nice.”

“Did he, really?”

His dark eyes glittered. “I understand that his new front teeth look almost natural.”

She shivered even with the memory. Violence still upset her. But the boy had been drunk and insistent. He’d left bruises all over her in a futile attempt to disrobe her. Gracie had to call Jason on her cell phone. She’d locked herself in the boy’s car and he’d been crashing rocks into the passenger window trying to force her to open the door. Before he could break in, Jason skidded to a stop in front of the car and got out. Even now, so many years later, Gracie could still see the sudden fear on the boy’s face when he saw the furious tall man approaching him. Jason was elegant, and usually even-tempered, but he could move like a striking cobra when he was angry. The boy had been tall, too, and muscular—a football star. But he hadn’t lasted ten seconds with Jason. Those big fists had put him down in a heartbeat. The confrontation had made Gracie sick. Jason had saved her, though. And it wasn’t the only time he’d stepped between Gracie and trouble. There was a saying on the Rocking Spur ranch, that any cowboy who wanted a quick trip to the emergency room only had to say something unsavory about or to Gracie in front of Jason.

After he’d rescued her, that long-ago night, he’d driven her home in a tense silence. But when they got home and he realized how frightened she was, even of him, he calmed down at once and became her affectionate stepbrother.

Now, he was as familiar to her as the flower garden she was working in. But there was still that distance between them. Especially since he’d been spending even less time at the San Antonio mansion. He had a way of looking at her lately that was disturbing. He went broody sometimes, too, as if his life was disappointing him.

While she was thinking, she nipped the last overlapping limb of a rosebush away from the fall chrysanthemums, which were just starting to branch out. She smoothed over them with her hand, smiling, considering how beautiful they would be in a few months, all gold and bright as the cold weather moved in. Her bulbs would need to be dug and separated, but that could wait for cooler weather. She’d planted some new bulbs at the ranch, too, last autumn, but Jason’s big German shepherd had dug them up and eaten them. Fuming mad, she’d told Jason that the animal was a squirrel. No self-respecting dog would eat a helpless bulb. He’d almost bent over double laughing at her outrage. But he’d replaced the bulbs and even reluctantly loaned her one of his cowboys to help her replant them; one of his oldest and ugliest cowboys, at that. He went to great lengths to put distance between her and his ranch foreman, Grange.

“What are you thinking?” he asked.

She laughed self-consciously. “About Baker eating my bulbs last fall.”

He grinned. “He’s developed a taste for them. I had to put a fence around your flower bed.”

“A fence?” she wailed.

“A white picket fence,” he assured her. “Something aesthetic.”

She relaxed. “You’re nice.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “I am?”

She put down the trowel and stood up, brushing at the dirt on her sweatshirt. It only smeared. “Darn,” she muttered. “It will never come out.”

“Harcourt can get anything out. She has chemicals hidden in the pantry.”

She glanced at him and laughed delightedly. “Yes, but Dilly does the laundry.”

“Dilly has chemicals, too.”

She looked down at her feet. Her sneakers were caked in mud. “I’ll never get through the house in these,” she moaned. She slipped out of them, standing in her stained socks. “Oh, darn!”

“I need to teach you how to cuss,” he mused.

“You do it well enough for both of us, and in two languages,” she pointed out. His Spanish was elegant and fluent.

He chuckled. “So I do.”

“The ground is cold,” she said absently.

He stood, moved close and suddenly swung her up into his powerful arms as if she weighed nothing at all.

She gasped at the strength in those powerful arms and clung to his neck, fearful of being dropped. She’d never liked being carried, although it was agonizingly stimulating when Jason did it. She felt shaky all over, being so close to him. This time, her body betrayed its fascination with him. She felt the whisper of his coffee-scented breath on her face as he shifted her. He smelled of faint, expensive cologne and soap, and muscles rippled in his chest. The ache that had begun to consume her became almost painful. Her mind filled with unfamiliar, dangerous thoughts. She should be still, she should pull back. She was thinking it even as she suddenly nestled closer to his warm strength and buried her face in his throat. She thought he shuddered, but that was doubtful. She’d never known a man in better control of himself.

“I know, you don’t like being picked up,” he said in a husky tone. He laughed softly. “But you can’t walk on the white carpet shoeless with dirty socks, pet,” he added. He curled her even closer, so that her small, firm breasts were crushed against warm, hard muscle. “Just lie still and think of England.”

She frowned as he carried her up the steps and into the house, shifting her weight for an instant to open the front door. He kicked it shut behind them and started for the stairs that led to the second floor of the huge mansion.

“England?” she asked, diverted.

He carried her up the staircase, smiling. “Think about it.”

“England.” She’d never been to England. Had she?

He stopped at the door to her room. His black eyes pierced into hers. He was much too close. She could feel his clean breath on her face. The feel of his arms under her, his warm strength so close to her, made her feel exhilarated and breathless. She didn’t want to move. She wanted him to hold her even closer.

“Those old movies, where women sacrifice themselves for the good of their country?” he prompted, still smiling. But his eyes were taunting, wise, hinting at things that Gracie knew nothing about.

“What old movies?” she asked absently. Her mind was on how fast her heart was beating.

“Never mind,” he said heavily. He put her down abruptly, looking frustrated.

“I don’t watch old movies, Jason,” she said, trying to placate him. “We don’t have any.”

“I’ll buy some old ones,” he muttered. “Maybe some documentary ones, too.”

“Documentaries? About what?” she asked blankly.

He started to speak, thought better of it and made a thin line of his lips. “Never mind. Don’t be too long.”

“I won’t.” She hesitated. “What shall I wear?” she added, wanting to soothe him because he liked it when she asked for his advice, and he seemed angry with her for some reason.

He paused. His eyes swept down her body with a strange slowness. “Wear the gold gown I brought you from Paris,” he said softly. “It suits you.”

“Isn’t it too dressy for a cocktail party?” she wondered.

He moved back to her. He was so tall, she thought, that her head only came up to his nose. He looked down into her puzzled eyes. “No,” he replied. He touched her damaged coiffure. “And let your hair down for once. Wear it long. For me.”

He made her feel warm and jittery. That was new. His voice was deep and slow, as soft as velvet. Her lips parted in anticipation as she stared into his eyes.

He lifted her chin with his thumb and forefinger. His thumb moved suddenly, dragging across her mouth in a rough caress that made her breath catch.

His large, black eyes suddenly narrowed, and his jaw clenched as he looked down into Gracie’s stunned gray eyes. “Yes,” he said quietly, as if she’d said something aloud. He let go of her, very slowly, and went down the staircase.

She watched him go, fascinated. Her fingers lifted to her sensitized mouth and touched it lightly. Her heart was beating so fast that she thought it might try to fly out of her chest. She couldn’t quite get her breath. Jason had touched her in a new way, a different way than he’d ever touched her before. She didn’t dare think about it too deeply. Not now. She turned quickly and went into her room.

THERE WERE A LOT OF people here tonight, she thought as she came down the long, curving staircase and surveyed the throng of well-dressed guests. It didn’t take much imagination to spot the computer company partners; they were wearing suits that didn’t quite fit and they looked out of place and uncomfortable.

Gracie, a veteran of social gatherings, understood their confusion. It had taken her a long time to adjust to luxury cars and designer clothing and parties like this. In many ways, she was more comfortable with Jason’s cowboys than this elegant mix of professionals and big money. But she was fairly certain that she looked presentable, in the clingy gold gown that covered all of one arm and left the opposite arm and shoulder enticingly bare. It fell to her ankles, but the back drooped in a flow of silky fabric to lie just over the base of her spine, leaving the honeysmooth skin bare. Her pale blond hair swung around her shoulders in soft profusion. With the gown she wore a gold necklace of interlocking rings, with matching earrings. She looked pretty, and much younger than her real age.

She walked up to the skinny, freckle-faced redhead who seemed the dominant partner and smiled. “Do you have everything you need?” she asked him gently.

He looked down at her and flushed. “I, uh, well, I…that is…” he stammered.

His round-faced, dark-skinned partner cleared his throat. “We’re sort of out of place here,” he began.

Gracie put her arms through theirs and drew them along with her into the ballroom, where a small live band was playing, and guided them to the bar. “Nobody stands on ceremony here,” she explained pleasantly. “We’re just plain people, like everybody else.”

“Plain people with private jets and world-class soccer stars for friends,” the redheaded one murmured, looking around.

“Yes, but you’ll be in that same society one day yourselves,” she replied, smiling. “Jason says you’re both geniuses, that you’ve designed software that revolutionizes the gaming industry.”

They both stared at her. “You’re his sister,” the shorter one guessed.

“Well, his stepsister,” she said. “I’m Gracie Marsh.”

“I’m Fred Turnbill,” the round-faced one said. “He’s Jeremy Carswell. We’re Shadow Software.”

She shook hands with each of them in turn. “I’m very glad to meet you.”

“Your…stepbrother,” Fred said, nodding toward the tall, elegant man with a champagne flute in one hand, talking to a famous actor. “He’s very aggressive. We weren’t even interested in being acquired, but he just kept coming. He’s offered us creative control and executive positions and even stock bonuses.” He laughed nervously. “It’s hard to turn down a man like that.”

“I know what you mean,” she said.

“He seems very much at home here,” Fred sighed. “I guess he is, considering his financial status.”

She handed them flutes of champagne. “Listen,” she said confidentially, “he does what business requires of him. But you might have a different picture of him if you could see him throwing calves during roundup. And especially if you could see him ride.” Her gray eyes grew dreamy. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life than Jason on a running horse.”

They were both looking at her with curious expressions. “On a horse?” Fred murmured.

“Throwing calves?” Jeremy added.

She smiled, still staring at Jason. “He owns a Santa Gertrudis ranch down in Comanche Wells. When he isn’t managing acquisitions, he’s busy working cattle right alongside his men.”

“Well!” Fred exclaimed. “So he’s not just some greedy businessman trying to own the world.”

“Not on your life,” Gracie said softly. “He goes to extremes to be environmentally responsible. He won’t even use pesticides on the place.”

At that moment, Jason seemed to feel her gaze, because his head turned and black eyes lanced into hers across the width of the ballroom. Even at the distance, Gracie’s knees went weak and she seemed to stop breathing. It was the first time he’d ever looked at her like that. As if, she thought absently, he could eat her alive.

She dragged her eyes away from his with a small, nervous laugh. “He isn’t what he seems.”

Fred pursed his lips and exchanged glances with Jeremy. “That sort of puts a different complexion on things,” he said. “A man who gets out and works with his people isn’t the image we had of Mr. Pendleton. I guess we’re all victims of assumption.”

“You never assume anything with Jason,” she told them. “When God made him, He broke the mold. There isn’t another one like him in the world. When Jason gives his word, he keeps it, and he’s the most honest man I’ve ever known.”

Jeremy smiled down at her. “Well, you’ve sold us. I guess we’re about to join the corporation.”

“You’re about to join the family,” she corrected. “Jason believes in holiday bonuses and good benefit packages, and he looks out for his people.”

Jeremy lifted his glass. So did Fred. “Here’s to a prosperous future.”

Gracie raised hers, as well, and toasted them. “I’ll drink to that.”

She excused herself to go the rounds of the other guests. She noticed a few minutes later that Jason was talking to the two software executives and smiling. She chuckled. It wasn’t the first time she’d nudged a deal into completion. She was getting good at it.

Around midnight, she and Jason ended up together at the drinks table. Couples were out on the floor dancing to a lazy, romantic melody.

“Care to dance?” she asked with a grin.

He shook his head.

She wasn’t really surprised. He’d danced with several other women during the evening, including an elderly woman who came to the party alone. But he never danced with Gracie these days, no matter how hard she worked at convincing him to.

She frowned. “You dance with other people.”

He glanced down at her. “I’m not dancing with you.”

She felt unsettled by the refusal. She didn’t understand why he was this way. She might be clumsy, but she did all right on the dance floor. She picked up a champagne flute and filled it.

“Don’t get your feelings hurt,” he said curtly. “I have reasons. Good ones. I just can’t discuss them.”

She moved her shoulder. “No problem,” she said, putting on her party smile.

He turned to face her, his jaw taut. His black eyes were oddly glittery as they met her wounded gray ones. “You look, but you don’t see, Gracie,” he said curtly.

She stared up at him miserably. “I don’t understand.”

He sighed. “That’s an understatement,” he said under his breath.

She sipped champagne. One of his lean, beautiful hands came up and took the flute from her fingers. He lifted it to his mouth, sipping the sparkling amber liquid from the exact spot her lips had touched, and he looked straight into her eyes while he did it.

The act was deliberate, sensual, provocative. Gracie’s lips parted on a rush of breath while he held her eyes in a bond she couldn’t break. She felt an explosion of sensation so intense that it left her speechless.

“Shocked, Gracie?” he wondered as he handed the flute back to her.

“I…don’t know.”

His fingers came up and traced a line from her flushed cheek to the corner of her lips. He stared at them intently. “You closed the account.”

“What…account?”

“The computer account. They’re in, thanks to you. I didn’t even have to introduce them to the soccer players.” His fingers trailed over her soft mouth. “Amazing, that gift you have for putting people at ease, making them feel as if they belong.”

“A gift,” she whispered, not really hearing him. What he was doing to her mouth was very erotic. She moved closer.

His head bent, so that what he was saying couldn’t be overheard. Her response to him was electrifying. He was on fire.

“Gracie,” he whispered, bending closer, “I can hear your heart beating.”

“Can…you?” Her eyes were on his firm, sensual mouth.

His lips parted as they hovered just above her own. His tall body corded at the enticement she presented, her hands going to his shirtfront and pressing there. His heart began to race. “What are you going to do if I bend an inch more, and put my mouth right over your lips?” he asked in a rough, sensual tone.

She wasn’t hearing him. She couldn’t hear anything. She could only see his mouth, filling her mind with images so sensual and sweet that her legs began to wobble under her. Her fingers contracted on his shirt. She felt thick hair and muscle under the crisp, clean fabric.

“I could bend you back over my arm and hold you so close that you couldn’t breathe unless I did,” he whispered gruffly. “Kiss you so hard that your mouth would be swollen from the intensity of it!”

She was on tiptoe, feeling the muscles clench even through the fine cloth of his dinner jacket as her small breasts pressed hard into his chest. Her mouth was lifted, pleading. She felt tight, hot, achy all over. She was trembling. She knew that he could see, and it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered, except that she wanted him to come closer, to kiss her until she felt on fire, until the sharp ache he was arousing was satisfied, until the backbreaking tension stopped racking her slender body…

“Jason,” she choked, tightening her grip on his shoulders.

“Hey, Jason,” came an exuberant voice from behind him, “could you explain to Ted here how that new computer software works? He wants to get in on our deal with those California techies you’re trying to assimilate.”

Jason stood erect, looking as if he’d been shot. He had to work, to control himself before he turned abruptly away from Gracie, to the businessman standing behind him, nursing a whiskey highball.

“Let’s find the inventors and get them to tell him,” Jason said, forcing a smile. “Come on.”

He didn’t look at Gracie. The businessman did, frowning at her odd expression, but he was feeling the liquor and passed off the little tête-à-tête he’d just witnessed as an aberration brought on by whiskey. Jason wasn’t likely to be kissing his stepsister in public, after all!

Chapter Three

JASON SEEMED AS RELIEVED as Gracie that they weren’t thrown together again. He didn’t seek her out or even look her way for the rest of the evening. He did say goodnight to her after the guests left, but in a curt and perfunctory way, as if the interlude earlier had embarrassed him. It had seemed like a deliberate attempt at seduction earlier, but it was beginning to feel more like an unwanted loss of control. He’d spoken to her in a way that changed their relationship. Perhaps he’d had one highball too many and was now counting his regrets, she thought.

But Jason never drank whiskey. He drank white wines or champagne, and precious little even of that. When he’d been close to her, she didn’t recall smelling any liquor on his breath at all. So Gracie didn’t know what to think. She was mortified that she’d given away her helpless attraction to him, something she’d never wanted him to see. It would be like making promises she couldn’t keep. But it was Jason’s behavior that unsettled her.

She went up to her bedroom and actually locked the door. She was still reeling from the shock Jason had given her before they were interrupted; not from his actions, but from her own response to them.

She had…wanted him. Actually wanted him. It was the first time in her adult life that she’d felt physical desire. She’d thought for a long time that she was simply undersexed, that she didn’t feel desire at all. Now her body was awake and she was in anguish at the things she’d just learned about herself. She wasn’t impervious to men. Not anymore. She was vulnerable. And Jason knew it.

Her mother’s warnings echoed in her tired mind as she put on a long cotton gown and climbed into her canopied bed, huddling under the spotless white covers and hand-embroidered sheets. She stared at the canopy fabric over her head in the light of her bedside lamp, trembling from the impact of Jason’s soft teasing. She knew that she’d never be able to forget that hunger in his eyes, in his touch. He was a stranger in this respect, a man she didn’t know at all. Had he meant to go that far? Or had he really lost control of himself? It wasn’t like him to be so forward with any woman in public, least of all Gracie.

It was becoming clear why beautiful women hung around him like satellites. It wasn’t his money at all. It was the man, the sensuous, tender man, who drew their attention. Gracie was curious about his changed attitude to her. She was also curious about why he’d refused to dance with her. It hadn’t been the first time. For over two years, now, he’d avoided any close physical contact with her. What had happened to change that, in the space of a day?

No, she thought. No, it wasn’t just today. He’d been different when they went to the cattle auction, too. It was the way he looked at her. It was almost predatory. He was like a big cat straining at the leash. If he broke it, what would he be like? A small part of her ached to find out. But the bigger part was afraid, even of Jason, in that way.

She tossed and turned all night, longing to see Jason again and dreading it at the same time. How could she ever be herself with him again after what had happened?

SHE DRAGGED HERSELF DOWNSTAIRS the next morning without makeup, with her hair in a ponytail, wearing old jeans and a long cotton shirt and sneakers. She wanted to look as little like a siren as possible. Just in case Jason was still prowling.

But it was a wasted camouflage because he wasn’t at the breakfast table when she went in and sat down. She noticed as she unfolded her napkin and went to pour coffee in her china cup from the carafe that only one place was set.

Mrs. Harcourt came in with a small platter of meats and eggs.

“Isn’t Jason here?” she asked the housekeeper.

“No, dear, he took off like a hurricane this morning, before I got the biscuits in the oven,” she said, frowning. “Tense as a pulled rope he was, and out of sorts. Took off in that big car like a posse was on his tail.” She whistled. “No wonder they call them Jaguars. It sounded like a wounded wildcat when he went down the driveway.”

Translated, that meant he was angry. He tended to take his temper out on the highway, a flaw that had resulted in a good number of traffic citations. He didn’t drive recklessly, but he drove too fast.

She ladled eggs onto her plate slowly. She didn’t know which was stronger—relief or disappointment. It was really only postponing the reckoning. Certainly they couldn’t go back to their old relationship after what had happened between them.

“You’re very glum this morning,” Mrs. Harcourt said gently, her dark eyes smiling as she moved dishes of food closer to Gracie. “Bad party?”

“What? Oh, no, not really,” she replied, sighing. “It was just long and loud.” She smiled. “I’m not really a party person.”

“Neither is Jason,” Mrs. Harcourt said quietly. “He’d rather live on his ranch and just be a cowboy.”

“How did he come into that ranch?” Gracie asked suddenly.

Mrs. Harcourt looked oddly unsettled, but her face quickly lost its confused expression. “He bought it from my family,” she said surprisingly. “It was my grandfather’s place. Not that it was in very good shape,” she added. “I was afraid it would go for subdivisions or a shopping mall.” She smiled. “I’m so glad it didn’t.”