Lacy

He and Lacy had begun to enjoy a closer relationship, even if it was still tense and tentative. But the knowledge that he was going to war and might never come back had a devastating effect on Lacy’s pride. She burst into tears and was inconsolable. Even Cole, who’d misinterpreted her nervousness before, finally realized what her feelings for him were.

She passed by his room the morning he was dressing to leave—and was shocked when he dragged her inside and closed the door.

His shirt was completely unbuttoned down the front, hanging loose over his elegant dress slacks. He seemed taller, bigger, in disarray, and Lacy eyes went shyly over the expanse of tanned muscular chest with its thick, dark covering of body hair.

“You cried,” he said, without preamble, and his dark eyes held hers mercilessly.

There was little use in denying it. He saw too deeply. “I suppose you have to go?” she asked miserably.

“This is my country, Lacy,” he said simply. “It would be the essence of cowardice to refuse to fight for it.” His strong, brown hands held her upper arms firmly. “Haven’t you heard anything I’ve said about air power, about the edge it would give us on the Hun if we could assist the French Lafayette Escadrille in developing it?”

“Why the French?” she asked absently. The scent of him, the closeness of him, made her dizzy with pleasure. She only wanted to prolong it.

“Because the American air corps has no planes of its own,” he said simply. “We’ll be flying Nieuports and Sopwiths.”

“Flying is dangerous…” she began.

“Life is dangerous, Lacy,” he replied quietly. He looked at her soft mouth with its dark lip rouge. Absently he reached up and smudged it with his thumb, smiling as the bloodred color transferred itself from her lower lip to his skin. “Like being branded,” he teased. “I could use this war paint on my cattle.”

“It washes off,” Lacy pointed out.

“Does it?” He reached in his pocket for his handkerchief and, holding her firmly by the nape of her neck with his free hand, proceeded to wipe off every trace of it.

“Cole, don’t!” she protested, trying to turn her head.

“I’m not wearing that stain to the train station,” he replied, his mind on what he was doing, not what he was saying.

But Lacy went quite still, her wide eyes unblinking on his hard, dark face. “W—what?”

He smiled with faint indulgence as he finished his task and tossed the handkerchief into his dresser. “You heard me.” His gaze went over her soft oval face, from her short dark hair to her big blue eyes and down her straight little nose to the bow mouth he’d wiped clean. “This might have been unthinkable before. But I don’t know when I’ll come back again. Isn’t it permissible for a patriotic lad to be sent off with a kiss?”

Her fingers plucked nervously at the buttons of his shirt, tingling as they felt the warmth of his bare torso under them. “Of course,” she said, almost strangling.

His lean hands framed her face with an odd hesitancy and he moved closer, towering over her.

She could barely breathe. She’d dreamed of this moment for years, lived for it, hoped for it. Now it was happening, and she was self-conscious and shy and scared to death that she wouldn’t live up to his expectations.

“I…know nothing of kissing,” she confessed quickly.

She felt more than heard his breath catch, but the only sign he gave of having heard her was the jerky pressure of his hands increasing as he bent toward her.

“Practice makes perfect, don’t they say, Lacy?” he asked in an oddly husky tone, and his rough, coffee-scented mouth ground into hers without preamble or apology.

She gave in without a protest, yielding to his superior strength, to his growing hunger. She knew nothing, but he taught her, his mouth invading hers in the silence of the big, high-ceilinged room, his arms slowly enveloping her against the taut fitness of his tall body.

He lifted his head just briefly, to draw breath, and his dark, eyes met hers. She was dazed, weak, clinging to him while her parted, swollen lips invited again the madness he was teaching her.

“Don’t stop,” she whispered shamelessly.

“I’m not sure I could, in any case,” he whispered back. His head lowered again and this time his mouth was gentle, teasing, exploring hers with tenderness and lazy hunger that grew to anguished passion in no time at all.

She felt the wall at her back, cold and hard, and Cole’s heated body pressing her into it, in an intimacy that she’d never even dreamed. The contours of his flat stomach had changed quite suddenly; his mouth was hurting hers.

Frightened, her hands pressed frantically against the hair-roughened strength of his chest.

Cole drew back at once, his own eyes as shocked as hers at the barriers of decency he’d overstepped in his mindless desire. He stepped away from her, dark color overlaying his high cheekbones.

Lacy’s swollen lips were parted as she struggled for breath and composure, staring up at him with embarrassed comprehension. He shuddered just slightly, and, Lacy’s eyes encountered with sudden and startled starkness the visible evidence of his loss of control. She blushed red and averted her eyes even as Cole turned away from her.

She didn’t know what to say, what to do. Her body felt oddly swollen and hot, and there was a tightness in her lower stomach that she’d never experienced. Her bodice felt far too tight. She tugged at the lace of her white midi blouse and searched for the right words.

“I beg your pardon, Lacy,” Cole said in a taut, all-too-formal tone, although he didn’t look at her. “I never meant that to happen.”

“It’s all right,” she replied huskily. “I—I should have protested.”

“You did. Too late,” he added, with faint dryness, as he turned toward her, back in command of his senses once more. His dark hair was disheveled, lying over his broad forehead, and there was still that faint color on his high cheekbones. His deep brown eyes held a light that was puzzling as they swept with new boldness over Lacy’s slender body and back up to her own vivid blue eyes.

“I—I should go,” she faltered.

“Yes, you should,” he agreed. “You’ll be compromised if any of the family find us alone like this in my bedroom.”

But she didn’t move. Neither did he.

His chest rose and fell deeply. “Come here,” he said softly, and opened his arms.

She went into them gracefully, and laid her hot cheek against his cool, damp chest, the thick hair tickling her skin. His heartbeat was deep and quick, like his breathing, but he held her with utter decorum, his arms protective rather than passionate.

“Wait for me,” he whispered into her ear.

“All my life,” she replied brokenly.

His arms contracted then, and he shivered with feeling. But after a few seconds, he put her away from him, searching her eyes with banked-down hunger.

“I love you,” she said unsteadily, damning pride and self-respect.

“Yes,” he said, his voice deep and quiet, his face giving nothing away. “Try to help Mother with Katy and Ben while I’m away. Stay close to the house. Don’t go out alone, ever.”

“I won’t.”

He drew in a slow breath. “The war won’t last forever. And I’m not suicidal. No more tears.”

She managed a shaky smile. “Not until you leave, at least,” she promised.

His fingers traced her cheek tenderly. “I thought you were afraid of me, all these years. But it wasn’t fear, was it?” he asked, his jaw tightening as he looked at her. “You’ve loved me for a long time, and I never saw it.”

She nodded slowly. “I never meant you to know.”

“It’s just as well that I do, now,” he replied. He bent and brushed a slow, tender kiss over her lips. “Write to me,” he whispered. “I’ll come home, Lacy.”

“I’ll pray every night for you,” she replied. “Oh, Cole….”

“No more tears,” he said sternly when her eyes began to sparkle with them. “I can’t bear to see you cry.”

“Sorry.” She drew back from him, her heart in her face. “I’d better go, hadn’t I?”

“I’m afraid so.” His eyes swept over her one last time. “We’ll say our proper good-byes when I leave.”

“Our proper good-byes,” she agreed.

It had been the last time she’d seen him alone. He said a very formal good-bye to the family before a neighbor drove him to the train station. Lacy watched the Model T Ford drive away and she cried piteously, along with Marion and Katy, for the rest of the day.

Cole did write, but not to Lacy. He wrote to the family, and because there was no mention at all of what they’d shared in his bedroom, she didn’t write to him, either. Apparently he was eager to forget the intimacy. It was never referred to. His letters were full of airplanes and the beauty of France. He never spoke of the dogfights he participated in, but his name drifted back home to Texas in newspaper accounts of the air war, and along with several other Americans, he became known as an ace.

Katy grew wildly infatuated with the aces she read about—and especially with one they called Turk Sheridan, a blond Montana boy with nerves of steel who was considered the most daring of the fliers.

Late in 1918, as life droned on at the ranch, they received word that Cole had been wounded. Lacy almost went mad before they finally found out that he wasn’t critically ill, and that he would live. The letter came from Turk Sheridan, who added that he might come back with Cole to Texas after the war as the two men had become fast friends and Turk himself was a rancher.

Katy was over the moon about their prospective new lodger, but Lacy was worried about Cole. When his letters came again, they were in a different handwriting, and the tone of them was stiff and distant.

Cole came home soon after the armistice in 1919, with the big blond Turk in tow. Lacy went running to Cole, despite all her stubborn determination not to. When he put out his hands and almost pushed her away, his rejection total and all too public, Lacy felt something die inside her. There was no expression on Cole’s hard face, and nothing in his eyes. He was a different man.

He threw himself into the business of trying to get the ranch back on its feet, while Katy began a long and determined pursuit of Turk Sheridan, whose real name was Jude. Soon after the war, a wealthy great-aunt of Lacy’s died and left her an inheritance of monumental proportions. Lacy was grateful because it gave her some measure of independence, but it seemed to set her even further apart from Cole, who was foundering in hard financial times following the war.

They planted crops to supplement the cattle they raised, and Turk got his hands on an old biplane and used it to dust the crops with pesticides. It amazed everyone that not only did Cole refuse to go near it, he didn’t even care to discuss airplanes anymore. That shocked Lacy, who one day made the mistake of asking him why he’d lost his fascination with flying. His scalding reply had hurt her pride and her feelings, and she’d walked wide around him afterward.

About that time, young Ben developed a huge crush on Lacy. It was disturbing, because he was eighteen to her twenty-three and Lacy’s heart had always belonged to Cole, even if he didn’t want it. She let Ben down as gently as she could, but in revenge, he coaxed Lacy and Cole to a line cabin and locked them in, having had the foresight to also nail the shutters closed so that they couldn’t be forced from the inside.

Cole mistakenly thought Lacy had put Ben up to it, knowing how she felt about him, and Lacy shivered remembering the harsh, furious accusations he’d thrown at her all through the long night until some of the ranch hands rescued them the next morning. Lacy was compromised, and Cole was forced to marry her—not only to spare her reputation, but to save the family’s good name.

He’d been glad enough when she’d left. If that was so, then why, she wondered, did he want her to come back now? She didn’t dare think about it too much. With any luck, it wasn’t purely because of his family. There was a small possibility that he’d actually missed her.

She’d bluffed him into agreeing to her terms, to sharing a room. But remembering that night he’d stayed in her bed, she had faint misgivings about the wisdom of her actions. Despite her longing for a child and the depth of her love for him, she dreaded its physical expression. Well, she thought, that was a bridge she’d cross when she had to. Meanwhile, going home had a delight all its own. She was getting tired of the high life.

Chapter

Three

Katy Whitehall opened her eyes to a blinding whiteness. She groaned and turned over, shielding her eyelids from the sunlight coming in through the white curtains.

Her long dark hair lay in tangles around a white face, and huge green eyes opened, wincing. She tried to lift her head, groaned again, and fell back onto the pillows with a resigned sigh.

The door opened and Cassie came in, shaking her gray head, glowering down at the young woman as she put a cup of hot tea on the bedside table.

“Told you, I did,” she said in her deepest drawl, her black eyes accusing. “Told you that firewater would give you the devil’s own headache. Shameful, that’s what it is, coming in here in the wee hours of the morning. Mr. Cole would horsewhip you, was he here to see!”

“Well, he isn’t. He’s in San Antonio, selling cattle.” Katy dragged her slender body into a sitting position, her small breasts outlined under the pale fabric of her gown. She pushed back the weight of her hair and reached for the tea.

“Maybe he’s gone to see Miss Lacy, as well,” Cassie ventured, her hands on her broad hips.

Katy eyed her carefully. “Think so?”

“Well, miracles happen, don’t they?”

Katy forced a smile as she sipped the sweet tea. “So they say. Ben shouldn’t have done that to them,” she murmured.

“One joke too many,” Cassie agreed. “Left alone, they might have come to marriage all by themselves, for the right reasons.” Her dark face puckered as she pursed her lips. “He used to watch her, when she first came to live here,” she reminded Katy. “My man Jack Henry said he’d be mechanicing and he’d see Mr. Cole watching her like a chicken hawk, them dark eyes just fiery and full of longing.”

“You read too many of those outrageous novels,” Katy chided, giggling as the old woman shifted uncomfortably and averted her eyes. “You know very well that Cole’s immune to women. If he wasn’t, he’d have married long ago. He never was around girls very much. It was always business.”

“Had to be, didn’t it?” Cassie defended him. “After Mr. Bart died, weren’t nobody else to take care of his place. Ben were too young, and Miss Marion never had no business head.”

“Thank God Cole did, or we’d all be out looking for work.” Katy stretched, shuddering as the movement hurt her head. “I never should have had that third drink,” she moaned, holding her forehead in both hands.

“Mr. Turk had words with that young man who brung you home last night,” Cassie volunteered suddenly.

Katy’s heart jumped, but she didn’t look up immediately. Her big green eyes widened. “Turk did?”

Cassie smiled. Katy was only twenty-one; every single emotion showed on her face. Cassie had always known how she felt about Turk, but it wouldn’t do to encourage her. Cole wouldn’t stand for it. He’d already made that clear.

“Mr. Cole told him to watch out for you,” the old woman said.

Katy glowered. “I don’t need watching.”

“Yes, ma’am, you do,” came the hot reply. “Carousing all hours, drinking in public, cussing like a sailor…You’re shaming us all! Your poor mama won’t even go to her bridge club because she’s so afraid somebody will say something about you to her!”

The younger woman sat up straighter. “Well, Danny Marlone doesn’t think I shame him,” she replied, hiding her sudden vulnerability to her mother’s pride in blustering.

“He’s a gangster!” Cassie was off and running now, her eyes huge in her face. “Yes, he is—One of them Chicago mobsters, right down to that striped suit he wears and them fancy cigars he smokes and that big fedora! He’s not the man for you! He’s leading you off into hell!”

Katy sighed wearily. “Danny’s a nice man. He’s just a northerner, and that’s why you don’t like him. I like him a lot. He’s good to me. He buys me things,” she added, touching the diamond necklace he’d given her just last night. She smiled. “He’s very generous.”

Cassie’s eyes narrowed. “And what you giving him in return, girl?”

Katy actually blushed. “Not…that!” she burst out, sitting straighter and then groaning when it hurt her head. “I’m not sleeping with him!”

“Maybe he’ll expect you to, what with presents like that,” Cassie replied gruffly. She turned and went to the door. “Miss Marion has rode into Floresville with Mrs. Harrison to get her hair fixed, on account of Mr. Ben ain’t brought her runabout home yet. She say she be back about noon. Which it nearly is.”

She closed the door with a bang, and Katy glared at it. Danny was not a gangster. Not really. He might have done a few shady things, and he did run a speakeasy in the Windy City. But he was slick and Italian and handsome, and she liked being seen with him. She especially liked having Turk see her with him. Because she knew the foreman didn’t like it, and that made her blood sing.

Damn Turk! she thought, dashing aside the covers, headache and all, to get to her feet. Damn him! Letting Cole order him around, heeding that warning to keep his hands off the boss’s sister! She’d gone right through the roof when Ben had told her that. He’d overheard a hot argument between Turk and Cole, with Cole coming out on top, as usual. Turk had added that he liked women, not little girls, and that he didn’t have any interest in young Katy in the first place! Oh, how that had cut. It had cut her young heart to shreds. She’d been avoiding Turk ever since, and when she’d gone to that party in San Antonio and met Danny Marlone, she’d encouraged him like crazy. For the first time, she’d used her femininity to attract a man. It didn’t help that she began to wonder if it might even work on Turk. It was too late now. Cole had seen to that.

Sometimes she hated her big brother’s tyranny. Cole had been like this as long as Katy could remember. Always in charge, always throwing out orders. Ben had worshipped him for a long time, although her baby brother was beginning to lose that enchantment as he aged. But Lacy…Oh, poor Lacy. The older woman would wear her poor heart out on Cole’s utter indifference, and Katy could have cried for her friend. Cole had been quieter since Lacy’d left. Almost lonely, if the iron man ever got lonely. At any rate, he was working himself to death. And when Marion had asked him to stop and see Lacy, he didn’t even protest. Maybe he missed her. Katy grinned impishly. That would be something—to have her indomitable older brother actually fall in love. Cassie could be right; he might feel something. But he had a lot of practice at hiding his emotions. Especially since the war.

She tugged on a blue polka-dotted little frock with a swingy skirt and puffy sleeves that gave her a baby-doll look. She left her hair long and tied it back with a bright blue ribbon. Not bad, she told her reflection in the mirror. Not bad at all. She lifted her hair. Maybe she’d have it cut, like Lacy’s. She liked Lacy’s hair. She liked Lacy.

Her thin brows drew together as she thought about her best friend in San Antonio. She’d visited Lacy once or twice in the past month, once to go to a party. Odd, it didn’t seem like Lacy to have a houseful of people and all that booze. Katy had always been the flashier of the two girls, always out for adventure and excitement, the wilder the better. It had been Lacy who was quiet and dry-witted, bubbly only with people who knew her well. That Lacy wouldn’t have liked wild parties. But Cole had changed her. His constant indifference and neglect had done something terrible to her friend. It had aged her. Ben and his stupid plotting! If only he’d stopped to think what he was doing. Locking them in a boarded-up line cabin that not even Cole’s fabulous strength could break them out of. She shook her head. Ben should have realized that Lacy wasn’t for him. And there was little Faye Cameron, who worshipped him from afar, hanging on his every word. But Ben had no time for that tomboyish child with her soft blond hair and big blue eyes, despite the fact that most of the boys on the ranch adored her. Ben thought her young and frivolous and not nearly sophisticated enough for a fledgling famous writer such as himself.

Well, poor little Faye would have to fight for her own ground; Katy didn’t have time. She was expecting Danny later in the day, and she knew he was going to ask her to go back to Chicago with him. She wasn’t sure what she was going to say. He had to leave the following morning. His business in San Antonio was over, and it hadn’t included an impromptu meeting with a young Texas lady at a local party that had led to a week of frantic dating.

What would Turk say if she agreed to go with Danny? The question intrigued her. She knew very well what her brother would say and do. And it would be prudent to leave before he returned from San Antonio if she wanted to go through with it. But first she wanted to see Turk. She wanted to see his face when she told him.

He was down at the corral, tossing out orders to a few cowhands on horseback. Katy’s green eyes adored his tall, muscular body as he stood with his back to her, his deep voice faintly raised as he spoke. His hair was blondish brown, sun-bleached and thick and straight. His face was handsome enough, with strong lines and a mouth she’d dreamed of kissing. He had big, rough-looking hands and equally big feet, and her heart went crazy just looking at him.

The cowboys turned their mounts and rode off. Turk stared after them, his wide-brimmed straw hat pushed to the back of his head, his jeans close-fitting, sensuously clinging to his long, powerful legs above booted feet.

“Hi, cowboy,” Katy drawled. At least her head hurt less, but her heart didn’t. It got bruised every time she looked at him.

He turned, one corner of his chiseled mouth tugging up at the sight of her in the revealing fabric of her dress. “Hello, tidbit. Going somewhere?”

“Just waiting for Danny.” She shrugged. “He’s taking me for a drive in his Alfa Romeo.”

The gray eyes darkened. He didn’t say anything, but the rigidity of his face spoke volumes. “Cole won’t like it.”

“Cole isn’t here,” she replied haughtily.

“For God’s sake, Katy! What’s gotten into you lately?” he demanded. “You’ve gone hog-wild, and at the worst possible time. Cole’s got enough worries, with foreclosures all over the place and your mother’s health failing.”

That was true. Despite her vivacity, her trips to the hairdresser, her forced cheeriness, Marion was growing thinner and weaker by the day. Katy didn’t like being reminded of it, and her chin lifted.

“Nothing I do will help Mother,” she told him. “She’s not been the same since Cole ran Lacy off.”

“He didn’t run her off,” he said curtly. “She left.”

“What was there to stay here for?” she demanded, exasperated. “When he wasn’t ignoring her, he was treating her like a rug. They didn’t even share a room! Cole never wanted to marry her; Ben forced him to.”

“Little Ben has a bad case of exalted ego,” Turk said, his eyes cold. “Someone needs to show him how to be less self-centered.”

“Faye’s trying,” she said mischievously. “Maybe if she chases him long enough, she’ll catch him.”

“They’re worlds apart,” he replied, his gaze wistful, as if he were talking about someone else. “Nothing in common except their birthplace. He’s a city boy, despite the fact that he grew up here. She’s a country girl.”

“Two worlds can merge.” She looked at her feet. “You were a city boy,” she said. It was blatant fishing, because she didn’t know that. She knew nothing about Turk except his real name and his war record.

“No,” he replied. “I was born in Montana. I grew up on a ranch down on the Yellowstone.”