Man Of Ice

Dawson went toward it.

“Dawson, don’t you dare!” she called after him.

It didn’t even slow him down. He jerked open the door, to reveal a fairly good-looking young blond man with blue eyes and a pert grin.

“Hi!” he said pleasantly. “Barrie home?”

“She’s on her way out of state.”

The young man, Phil by name, noticed the glare he was getting and the smile began to waver. “Uh, is she a relative of yours?”

“My fiancée,” Dawson said, and his lips curled up in a threatening way.

“Fi…what?” Phil’s breath exploded.

Barrie eased around Dawson. “Hi, Phil!” she said gaily. “Sorry, but it only just happened. See?” She held out her ring finger. Dawson hadn’t budged. He was still standing there, glaring at Phil.

Phil backed up a step. “Uh, well, congratulations, I’m sure. I’ll, uh, see you around, then?”

“No,” Dawson replied for her.

Barrie moved in front of him. “Sure, Phil. Have a nice weekend. I’m sorry, okay?”

“Okay. Congratulations again,” he added, trying to make the best of an embarrassing situation. He shot one last glance at Dawson and returned down the hall the way he’d come, very quickly.

Dawson muttered something under his breath.

Barrie turned and glowered up at him. “That was unkind,” she said irritably. “He was a nice man. You scared him half to death!”

“You belong to me for the duration of our ‘engagement,’” he said tautly, searching her eyes. “I won’t take kindly to other men hanging around until I settle something about that tract of land.”

She drew in a sharp breath. “I promised to pretend to be engaged to you, Dawson,” she said uneasily. “That’s all. I don’t belong to you.”

His eyes narrowed even more, and there was an expression in them that she remembered from years past.

He looked as if he wanted to say more, but he hesitated. After a minute, he turned away.

“Are you coming with me now?” he asked shortly.

“I have to close up the apartment and pack…”

“Half an hour’s work. Well?”

She hesitated. It was like being snared in a net. She wasn’t sure that it was a good idea. If she’d had a day to think about it, she was certain that she wouldn’t do it.

“Maybe if we wait until Monday,” she ventured.

“No. If you have time to think, you won’t come. I’m not letting you off the hook. You promised,” he added.

She let out an angry breath. “I must be crazy.”

“Maybe I am, too,” he replied. His hands balled into fists in his pockets. “It was all I could think of on the spur of the moment. I didn’t plan to invite her. She invited herself, bag and baggage, in front of half a dozen people and in such a way that I couldn’t extricate myself without creating a lot more gossip.”

“There must be other women who would agree to pose as your fiancée,” she said.

He shook his head. “Not a one. Or didn’t the gossip filter down this far south, Barrie?” he added with bitter sarcasm. “Haven’t you heard? It would take a blowtorch, isn’t that what they say? Only they don’t know the truth of it. They think I’m suffering from a broken heart, doomed to desire the one woman I can’t have.”

“Are they right?” she asked, glancing at the ring on her finger.

“Sure,” he drawled sarcastically. “I’m dying for love of a woman I lost and I can’t make it with any other woman. Doesn’t it show?”

If it did, it was invisible. She laughed self-consciously. She’d known there were women in Dawson’s life for years, but she and Dawson had been enemies for a long time. She was the last person who’d know about a woman he’d given his heart to. Probably it had happened in the years since they’d returned from that holiday in France. God knew, she’d stayed out of his life ever since.

“Did she die?” she asked gently.

His chin lifted. “Maybe she did,” he replied. “What difference does it make?”

“None, I guess.” She studied his lean face, seeing new lines in it. His blond hair had a trace of silver, just barely visible, at his ears. “Dawson, you’re going gray,” she said softly.

“I’m thirty-five,” he reminded her.

“Thirty-six in September,” she added without thinking.

His eyes flashed. He was remembering, as she was, the birthdays when he’d gone out on the town with a succession of beautiful women each year. Once Barrie had tried to give him a present. It was nothing much, just a small silver mouse that she’d saved to buy for him. He’d looked at the present with disdain, and then he’d tossed it to the woman he was taking out that night, to let her enthuse over it. Barrie had never seen it again. She thought he’d probably given it to his date, because it was obvious that it meant nothing to him. His reaction had hurt her more than anything in her life ever did.

“The little cruelties are the worst, aren’t they?” he asked, as if he could see the memory, and the pain, in her mind. “They add up over the years.”

She turned away. “Everyone goes through them,” she said indifferently.

“You had more than most,” he said bitterly. “I gave you hell every day of your young life.”

“How are we going to Sheridan?” she asked, trying to divert him.

He let out a long breath. “I brought the Learjet down with me.”

“It’s overcast.”

“I’m instrument rated. You know that. Are you afraid to fly with me?”

She turned. “No.”

His eyes, for an instant, were haunted. “At least there’s something about me that doesn’t frighten you,” he said heavily. “Go and pack, then. I’ll be back for you in two hours.”

He went out the door this time, leaving her to ponder on that last statement. But she couldn’t make any sense of it, although she spent her packing time trying to.

Three

IT WAS stormy and rain peppered the windscreen of the small jet as Dawson piloted it into his private airstrip at Sheridan. He never flinched nor seemed the least bit agitated at the violent storm they’d flown through just before he set the plane down. He was as controlled in the cockpit as he was behind the wheel of a car and everywhere else. When he’d been fighting the storm, Barrie had seen him smile.

“No butterflies in your stomach?” he taunted when he’d taken off his seat belt.

She shook her head. “You never put a foot wrong when the chips are down,” she remarked, without realizing that it might sound like praise.

His pale green eyes searched her face. She looked tired and worried. He wanted to touch her cheek, to bring the color back into her face, the light back into her eyes. But it might frighten her if he reached toward her now. He might have waited too late to build bridges. It was a sobering thought. So much had changed in his life in just the past two weeks, and all because of a chance meeting with an old buddy at a reunion and a leisurely discussion about Tucson, where the friend, a practicing physician, had worked five years earlier in a hospital emergency room.

Barrie noticed his scrutiny and frowned. “Is something wrong?”

“Just about everything, if you want to know,” he remarked absently, searching her eyes. “Life teaches hard lessons, little one.”

He hadn’t called her that, ever. She’d never heard him use such endearments to anyone in normal conversation. There was a new tenderness in the way he treated her, a poignant difference in his whole manner.

She didn’t understand it, and she didn’t trust it.

A movement caught his eye. “Here comes Rodge,” he murmured, nodding toward the ranch road, where a station wagon was hurtling toward the airstrip. “Ten to one he’s got Corlie with him.”

She smiled. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen them.”

“Not since my father’s funeral,” he agreed curtly. He left the cockpit and lowered the steps. He went down them first and waited to see if she needed help. But she’d worn sneakers and jeans, not high heels. She went down as if she were a mountain goat. She’d barely gotten onto the tarmac when the station wagon stopped and both doors opened. Corlie, small and wiry and gray-haired, held her arms out. Barrie ran into them, hungry for the older woman’s warm affection.

Beside her, Rodge shook Dawson’s hand and then waited his turn to give Barrie a hug. He was at least ten years older than Corlie, and still dark-headed with a few silver streaks. He was dark-eyed and lean. When he wasn’t managing the ranch in Dawson’s absence, he kept busy as Dawson’s secretary, making appointments and handling minor business problems.

The two of them had been with the Rutherfords for so long that they were more like family than paid help. Barrie clung to Corlie. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed the woman.

“Child, you’ve lost weight,” Corlie accused. “Too many missed meals and too much fast food.”

“You can feed me while I’m here,” she said.

“How long are you staying?” Corlie wanted to know.

Before Barrie could answer her and spill the beans, Dawson caught her left hand and held it under Corlie’s nose. “This is the main reason she came back,” he said. “We’re engaged.”

“Oh, my goodness,” Corlie exclaimed before a shocked Barrie could utter a single word. The older woman’s eyes filled with tears. “It’s what Mr. Rutherford always prayed would happen, and me and Rodge, too,” she added, hugging Barrie all over again. “I can’t tell you how happy I am. Now maybe he’ll stop brooding so much and smile once in a while,” she added with a grimace at Dawson.

Barrie didn’t know what to say. She got lost in the enthusiasm of Rodge’s congratulations and Dawson’s intimidating presence. He must have had a reason for telling them about the false engagement, perhaps to set the stage for Mrs. Holton’s arrival. She could ask him later.

Meanwhile, it was exciting to look around and enjoy being back in Sheridan. The ranch wasn’t in town, of course, it was several miles outside the city limits. But it had been Dawson’s home when she came here, and she loved it because he did. So many memories had hurt her here. She wondered why it was so dear to her in spite of them.

She found herself installed in the backseat of the station wagon with Corlie while Dawson got in under the wheel and talked business with Rodge all the way up to the house.

The Rutherford home was Victorian. This house had been built at the turn of the century, and it replaced a much earlier structure that Dawson’s great-grandfather had built. There had been Rutherfords in Sheridan for three generations.

Barrie often wished that she knew as much about her own background as she knew about Dawson’s. Her father had died when she was ten, too young to be very curious about heritage. Then when her mother married George Rutherford, who had been widowed since Dawson was very young, she was so much in love with him that she had no time for her daughter. Dawson had been in the same boat. She’d learned a bit at a time that he and his father had a respectful but very strained relationship. George had expected a lot from his son, and affection was something he never gave to Dawson; at least, not visibly. It was as if there was a barrier between them. Her mother had caused the final rift, just by marrying George. Barrie had been caught in the middle and she became Dawson’s scapegoat for the new chaos of his life. George’s remarriage had shut Dawson out of his father’s life for good.

Barrie had tried to talk to Dawson about his mother once, but he’d verbally slapped her down, hard. After that, she’d made sure personal questions were kept out of their conversation. Even today, he didn’t like them. He was private, secretive, mysterious.

Rodge took her bags up to her old room on the second floor, and she looked around the hall, past the sliding doors that led to the living room on one side and the study on the other, down to the winding, carpeted staircase. Suspended above the hall was a huge crystal chandelier, its light reflected from a neat black-and-white tile floor. The interior of the house was elegant and faintly unexpected on a ranch.

“I’d forgotten how big it is,” Barrie mused.

“We used to do a lot of entertaining,” Corlie reminded her. She glared at Dawson. “Not anymore.”

“I’ll remember you said that,” he replied. “Perhaps we’ll throw a party for Mrs. Holton when she gets here.”

“That would make a nice change,” Corlie said. She winked at Barrie. “But I expect she’s going to be something of a nuisance to a newly engaged couple. I’ll help run interference.”

She smiled and went off to make coffee.

“Oh, dear,” Barrie murmured, seeing more complications down the road.

Dawson shoved his hands into his pockets and searched her face. “Don’t worry,” he said. “It will all work out.”

“Will it?” She grimaced. “What if Mrs. Holton sees right through us?”

He moved a little closer, near enough that she could feel the warmth of his body. “Neither of us is used to touching or being touched,” he remarked when she stiffened. “That may be awkward.”

She remembered how he’d pushed away the woman at the party in Tucson. Barrie was afraid to come that close, but they were supposed to be engaged and it would look unnatural if they never touched each other.

“What are we going to do?” she asked miserably.

He sighed heavily. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. Slowly his hand went out, and he touched her long, wavy dark hair. His fingers were just a little awkward. “Maybe we’ll improve with some practice.”

She bit her lower lip. “I…hate being touched,” she whispered in a rough whisper.

He winced.

She lowered her eyes to his chest. “Didn’t you notice, at the party? I had two men at my feet, but did you see how much distance there was between us? It’s always like that. I don’t even dance anymore…!”

His hand withdrew from her hair and fell to his side. “God forgive me,” he said miserably. “I don’t think I can ever forgive myself.”

Her eyes came up, shocked. He’d never admitted guilt, or fault before. Something must have happened to change him. But what?

“We’ll have to spend some time together before she gets here,” he said slowly. “And get to know each other a little better. We might try holding hands. Just to get used to the feel of each other.”

Tentative. Like children on a first date. She wondered why she was being so whimsical, and smiled.

He smiled back. For the first time in recent memory, it was without malice or mockery.

“Antonia said that Mrs. Holton was very attractive,” she remarked.

“She is,” he agreed. “But she’s cold, Barrie. Not physically, but emotionally. She likes to possess men. I don’t think she’s capable of deep feelings, unless it’s for money. She’s very aggressive, single-minded. She’d have made a good corporate executive, except that she’s lazy.”

“Did her husband leave her well-fixed?” she asked curiously.

“No. That’s why she’s trying to find a man to keep her.”

She bristled. “She ought to go back to school and keep herself,” she said shortly.

He laughed softly. “That’s what you did,” he agreed. “You wouldn’t even take an allowance from George. Or from me.”

She flushed, averting her eyes. “The Rutherfords put me through college. That was more than enough.”

“Barrie, I never thought your mother married my father for his money,” he said, reading the painful thought in her mind. “She loved him, just as he loved her.”

“That wasn’t what you said.”

His eyes closed. “And you can’t forget, can you? I can’t blame you. I was so full of hatred and resentment that I lashed out constantly. You were the most easily reachable…and the most vulnerable.” His eyes opened again, cold with self-contempt. “You paid for every sin I accused your mother of committing.”

“And how you enjoyed making me pay,” she replied huskily.

He looked away, as if the pain in her eyes hurt him. “Yes, I did,” he confessed bluntly. “For a while. Then we went to the Riviera on holiday with George.”

She couldn’t think about that. She didn’t dare let herself think about it. She moved away from him. “I should unpack.”

“Don’t go,” he protested. “Corlie’s making coffee. She’ll probably have cake to go with it.”

She hesitated. Her big green eyes lifted to his, wary and uncertain.

His face hardened. “I won’t hurt you,” he said roughly. “I give you my word.”

He was old-fashioned that way. If he made a promise, he kept it. But why should he stop sniping at her now, and so suddenly? Her eyes mirrored all her uncertainties, all her doubts.

“What’s changed?” she asked miserably.

“I’ve changed,” he replied firmly.

“You suddenly woke up one morning and decided that you’d give up an eleven-year vendetta?”

He searched over her face with an enigmatic expression on his darkly tanned face. “No. I discovered how much I’d lost,” he said, his voice taut with some buried feeling. “Have you ever thought that sometimes our whole lives pivot on one decision? On a lost letter or a telephone call that doesn’t get made?”

“No, I don’t suppose I have, really,” she replied.

“We live and learn. And the lessons get more expensive with age.”

“You’re very reflective, lately,” she said, curious. A strand of hair fell over her eyes, and she pushed it back from her face. “I don’t think in all the time we’ve known each other that we’ve really talked, until the past day or so.”

“Yes. I know.” He sounded bitter. He turned away from her to lead the way into the spacious living room. It had changed since she’d lived on the Rutherford ranch. This was the very room where Dawson had so carelessly tossed the little silver mouse she’d given him to his date. But it wasn’t the same at all. The furniture was different, Victorian and sturdy in its look, but wonderful to sink into.

“This room doesn’t look like you at all,” she remarked as she perched herself in a delicate-looking wing chair that was surprisingly comfortable.

“It isn’t supposed to,” he replied. He sat down on the velvet-covered sofa. “I hired a decorator to do it.”

“What did you tell her, that you wanted to adopt someone’s grandmother and install her here?” she asked.

He lifted an eyebrow. “In case you didn’t notice, the house is late Victorian. And I thought you liked Victorian furniture,” he added.

She shifted, running her hand along the arm of the chair. “I love it,” she confessed in a subdued tone. Questions poised on the tip of her tongue, and she almost asked them, but Corlie came in with a tray of cake and coffee, beaming.

“Just what the doctor ordered,” she said smugly, putting the tray on the big coffee table.

“Great huge coffee tables aren’t Victorian,” Barrie muttered.

“Sure they are. Victorians drank coffee,” Corlie argued.

“They drank tea,” she replied, “and out of dainty little china cups and saucers.”

“They also ate cucumber sandwiches,” Corlie returned. “Want a few?”

Barrie made a face. “I’ll be quiet about the coffee table if you won’t offer me those again.”

“It’s a deal. Call if you need anything else.” Corlie went out, closing the sliding doors behind her.

She helped herself to coffee and cake and so did he. As always he took his coffee black while Barrie put cream and sugar in hers.

“Antonia said that you’d been offered a job heading the math department at your high school next fall,” he remarked. “Are you going to take it?”

She looked up over the rim of her coffee cup. “I don’t know,” she replied. “I love teaching. But that job is mostly administrative. It would take away the time I had with my students, and plenty of them require extra tutoring.”

He searched her down-bent face. “You…like children, don’t you?”

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