Heather's Song

Heather scribbled “my coat.” She grimaced at the faint amusement in Cole’s eyes. She was superstitious about the ankle-length ermine coat Cole had given her for her eighteenth birthday. She never traveled without it.

“I’ll bring it,” he promised. “Anything else?”

“My purse,” she scribbled, “my old one—in the closet.”

He frowned.

“I keep my important papers in it,” she wrote, “and my money.”

His eyes narrowed. “You won’t need a bankroll to come home with.”

She sighed with irritation. If only she could talk. She wanted to tell him she didn’t need his handouts…but he read the emotion in her eyes and lifted his head in that arrogant way he had. She could have hit him.

“Can I do anything?” Gil asked, feeling left out.

“We can manage,” Cole said abruptly, sparing the man a glance.

“I’d like to visit Heather while she’s recuperating,” he persisted.

Cole turned around and stared right through him. “The last thing she’s going to need right now are visitors,” he said without even pretending courtesy.

Heather gaped at him. Cole had always been possessive, but now he was acting as though he owned her. Why couldn’t she have visitors?

“Heather needs peace and quiet to get over the trauma of the accident. She’ll heal quicker with family,” Cole added, “and I’m going to take them to Nassau for a week or so, anyway. She can call you when she’s back on her feet.”

Gil hesitated. It was the first time Heather had known him to be without a comeback.

“Get some rest, baby,” Cole told her, bending to brush his hard lips against her hair. “I’ll be here early, so don’t stay up too late with your boyfriend,” he added pointedly. “Good night, Austin,” he said, pinning the other man with his narrowed eyes.

Gil cleared his throat. “You’re right, she does look tired. Good night, little one,” he said, resisting the urge to kiss her before he left. Everett looked frankly dangerous. “Nice to have met you,” he added, pausing to smile at Heather. “I’ll be in touch.”

“Over my dead body,” Cole muttered when he’d gone, and Heather noticed that one lean hand had all but crushed the crown of his Stetson.

“Why don’t you like him?” she wrote on the pad, holding it up with a frown.

“He’s too old for you,” he shot right back.

“I like him,” she scribbled angrily.

But he didn’t even answer her. “Emma’s cooking your favorite dishes,” he said pleasantly enough. “She ran Mrs. Jones out of the kitchen to start getting everything ready. Mothers!”

She smiled involuntarily. Emma might only be her stepmother, but she was as dear to Heather as if there’d been a blood tie between them. She sighed and closed her eyes. Maybe she did need to be alone for a while. Maybe it would do her good to get away from everyone who might remind her of her career and the strangely unsatisfying life she’d made for herself in Houston.

She opened her eyes suddenly to find Cole watching her. She dropped her gaze quickly to the bedclothes, wondering at the way her pulse was misbehaving.

“Good night, baby,” he said curtly and was gone before she could get her pulse under control.

Chapter Two

The flight to Branntville took hardly any time at all, and Heather watched the flat barren landscape with eyes that remembered it in spring, when the bluebonnets were blooming along with the black-eyed Susans and the trees were a hundred different soft shades of green. She smiled at the memory, and Cole took his eyes away from the controls long enough to read the expression on her flushed face.

“And you were willing to give it all up to sing in a nightclub,” he scoffed. “Still think it was a good trade—clean air for smoky rooms?”

She tossed her hair impatiently and glared up at him.

A slow, lazy smile touched his chiseled mouth. “All right, Sunflower.” He chuckled, using his childhood nickname for her. “I get the message.”

She tore her gaze away from his. Cole had a dark charm that must be devastating when he wanted something from a woman, she mused, letting her eyes focus on the beautifully masculine hands at the controls of the twin-engine Cessna. They were long-fingered and dark, and they held the promise of great strength. His mouth, too, was strong, with a sensuality she was only now beginning to notice. The thought brought a slight frown to her face. Would he be a gentle lover? She flushed, vividly remembering the night last year when she saw him kiss Tessa at her birthday party, his mouth rough, not an inch of space between his hard-muscled body and Tessa’s…. The sight had been disturbing to Heather, although she didn’t know why. She carried the picture in her mind for days afterward: Tessa had been clinging to Cole like ivy, as if his kiss was everything she needed from life. No, she thought uneasily, Cole wouldn’t be gentle. He was a man of extremes, and she sensed that his passions were strong ones. He wouldn’t be satisfied with the brief, cool kisses she bestowed on Gil Austin.

She shook herself mentally. Her own thoughts were shocking her, so she turned her attention out the window and watched for the familiar white fences that marked the outlying boundaries of Big Spur.

Minutes later, the house came into view below, surrounded by tall pecan and oak trees. It was brick, its architecture reminiscent of an English manor house. A long driveway circled in front of the entrance, lined with dogwoods that bloomed in white profusion each spring and a myriad of flowering shrubs. In her mind’s eye, Heather could see the interior of the towering mansion, the main reception rooms all opening off the center hall with its delightful winding staircase and massive crystal chandelier. The interior rooms were spacious, and the den where Cole did his paperwork had a huge stone fireplace and a very striking Belgian area rug done in deep wine. There was a three-car garage, a tennis court, a swimming pool and a patio with masses of rose bushes. It was like something out of a storybook, or the Old South—which wasn’t at all surprising, since the Shaws had emigrated to East Texas from Georgia. Heather’s great-grandfather had built the house, back in the days of the great cattle drives, and it had had its share of famous and infamous guests. In fact, Branntville itself was located on the old Chisholm Trail, a fact that had always excited Heather as a child.

The house was technically Emma’s now, willed to her by Heather’s late father. Heather never begrudged her stepmother that bequeathal. Emma had loved her stepdaughter like her own child, and that love had been returned full measure. It hurt to remember that Heather’s own mother had been a rather cool person, all elegance and high fashion and very little emotion.

They were coming down now, Cole’s brown hands firm and confident on the controls as he eased the Cessna onto the family airstrip, nestled in the midst of thousands of acres of prime cattle land. Cole and her father had built the ranch up slowly over the years, investing their initially modest profits in new stock to improve their herd. Now, Cole had one of the finest ranches in Texas, a ranch that was famous for its blooded stock and champion bulls. Heather felt a sense of pride in her stepbrother. He had a keen business head, and he radiated power. He could make or break a politician in this part of the state, and he was an avid conservationist.

The plane touched down lightly on the runway and Cole taxied it to a stop near the silver side of the hangar and cut the engine. “Home,” he told her with a flash of pride in his silver eyes.

She smiled at him, the emotion she felt evident in her eyes, in the parting of her soft mouth. His gaze whipped down to her pink lips with a suddenness that was devastating in its effect on her pulse. She almost gasped at the newness of the look, and the surprise was in her eyes when his gaze shot back up to meet hers.

She turned quickly and tried to open the door, fumbling with it nervously.

“Something wrong, honey?” Cole asked in a strange tone. He leaned across her, his hard-muscled arm pressing against her breasts for an instant, his warm breath in her hair as he opened the door.

She scrambled out as if mad dogs were chasing her, and she thought she heard soft, amused laughter behind her as she reached the pavement.

One of the ranch hands had driven down to get them in the station wagon, and Heather was careful to get in the backseat before Cole could herd her into the front with him. Nothing showed on that impassive face, but she had the strangest feeling that he was amused by her. She could still see that unfamiliar look in his eyes, the darkness making them slate gray, the totally adult glitter something she’d never experienced. Cole had never treated her as anything except his younger sister. But there was nothing remotely filial about that look, and she remembered without wanting to that there was no blood relationship to protect her from Cole. Her innocence would be no match for his obvious experience, and if he could upset her like this just by looking at her, Heaven only knew what would happen if he touched her….

That thought sent a burst of wild excitement singing through her slender young body, and her face blushed as dusky as an autumn sunset. She kept her eyes down so that Cole wouldn’t notice—even though he was talking business with the ranch hand.

She’d never considered Cole in this light before. It was a little frightening. She’d watched him charm women with a sense of pride, feeling safe because she was his stepsister. She’d always been shielded from his devastating masculinity. But now she’d stepped out from behind that shield, and she was vulnerable for the first time. She felt like a fawn taking its first steps into a meadow, wondering what dangers lay beyond the quiet, dark glade.

She bit her lower lip hard. She wanted to crawl back into her cocoon and forget what she’d been thinking. Cole was far too dangerous for a novice.

They were driving near the river now, and Heather remembered almost drowning there the first summer Cole and Emma lived at Big Spur. Cole had plucked her out of the water, a shivering little thirteen-year-old with big blue eyes. She’d been his possession since that day, and he’d treated her like one. He’d always had a hand in the major decisions of her life. Her parties, her friends, her travels had all been dictated by Cole, even before her father’s death. Her education at an exclusive Swiss girls’ school—which she’d hated—had been his idea, too. But when it came to singing, she’d managed to get her own way. Emma had stood by her, especially after a well-known promoter named Pete Howell had raved about her talent. Her first appearance at a local nightclub had led to several other offers, and engagement after engagement followed until the big break finally came—the two-week engagement, that she’d just been starting the night of the accident.

“…otherwise, it’s been going smoothly,” the ranch hand was saying. “Bill said to tell you he sure was sorry he didn’t get word to you about Miss Shaw. He got busy….”

“Which is no damned excuse at all,” Cole shot back, his silver eyes blazing. “By God, I’ll tear a strip off him for that!”

His hard, chiseled mouth made a thin line, and Heather was glad she couldn’t see his eyes from the backseat. There was a white-hot anger in his otherwise controlled voice. But then, everything about Cole was controlled. Mr. Cool, she used to call him behind his back. No matter how she tried, she never could rattle him. Her worst tempers only amused him. She’d worn herself out against the rock of his will without accomplishing anything. Her young adulthood had been full of rages. And Cole took them in stride, either ignoring her antics or putting an end to them with a well-placed look and a firm command. She’d never stood up to him until she wanted a career enough to throw caution to the winds. But without Emma’s careful pleading, she’d never have won. She’d never seen anyone match Cole. And she never expected to. She felt sorry for Bill, whoever he was. Cole could be utterly cruel.

* * *

They wound up the long driveway with its rows of dogwoods, bare now in the winter chill. The house was austerely elegant amid the dark skeletons of the huge oak and pecan trees. No sooner had the station wagon pulled up at the front steps than Emma Everett Shaw came running down them like a silver-haired whirlwind, her deep brown eyes shimmering with excitement, her arms opened wide in welcome.

Heather ran into those slender, outstretched arms like a baby rabbit into its hutch, the pitiful croak of a sob tearing out of her throat.

“My baby,” Emma cooed, nestling the tumble of waving platinum hair against her shoulder. “My poor baby, you’re safe now, you’re home, Emma’s here.”

That made her cry even more. How many times in her tragedy-torn young life had those words been whispered at her ear? How many tears had poured onto Emma’s thin shoulders? The older woman smelled of spices and flour instead of the expensive perfume she connected with her late mother.

Emma was unpretentious, taking her wealth and position for granted. She could charm beggars and kings alike, and Heather had seen her hide a twenty-dollar bill in a farm woman’s pocket when there was a money problem in the family that Emma knew about. She delighted in being sneaky about her contributions. No one knew exactly how much money she donated to charity, or in what incredible ways she went about her good works. Heather had known her to anonymously pay a monstrous hospital bill that some down-on-his-luck new father couldn’t manage without insurance, and then pretend to be surprised when some member of her garden club told her about it.

Heather cried even harder. Disloyal though it seemed to admit it, her own mother had never cared so much. And Heather loved Emma in a way she could never have loved the fragile, cold piece of porcelain her mother had been.

“That’s enough,” Cole said suddenly. He separated the two women and, holding Heather roughly by the arm, herded her up the stairs. “I don’t mind a few tears, but you can’t have hysterics on the front steps.”

Her bright, flaming eyes glared up at him violently, and she wanted to hit him. Behind them, Emma was moving quickly up the steps, muttering under her breath. Heather almost smiled. All her life, Emma had muttered at men—first at her husband, then at Heather’s father, and now at Cole. It was her own form of passive rebellion, and Heather couldn’t help being amused by it. Emma muttered with style.

Once they were in the house, Emma smiled gently at the tear-stained face of her stepdaughter. “Go upstairs and rest, sweetheart,” she said softly, “and I’ll bring you some hot chocolate. Would you like that?”

Heather’s blue eyes lit up. Hot chocolate had always soothed her; it was Emma’s answer to chicken soup. She nodded enthusiastically, pausing to throw a hostile glance in Cole’s general direction before she held on to the curved, polished wood of the bannister and moved slowly up the beige carpeted staircase to her old room.

She threw open the door and let her tired eyes drink in the sight of the delightfully pink room. The wallpaper was pale pink and matched the thick quilted coverlet and pillow shams on the double bed. There was a full-length mirror on the closet door, and a crystal lamp on the antique washstand against the wall. The carpeting was the same soft beige as in the rest of the house, and there was a wing chair upholstered in fabric that matched the wallpaper.

Heather settled herself on the window seat and looked out over the white-fenced ranch, ignoring Cole as he entered the room to place her bags on the floor before coming to stand beside her.

He followed her gaze to the sweep of land in its winter desolation. The red-coated cattle were massed at feed troughs where silage was taking the place of lush green grass in their diets. Paddocks near the barn sported handsome Appaloosa stallions and two white-coated fillies in separate pastures. Heather sighed, remembering what it was like to ride a horse out through the fields, to hear the lazy creak of saddle leather and to feel the spring breeze wafting in her loosened hair.

“When you’re a little stronger, I’ll take you riding,” Cole said suddenly, as if he’d looked into her mind. It was an uncanny habit he’d always had, one that never failed to stun her. “That is, if you haven’t forgotten how to ride.”

She glared at him, meeting the challenge in his polished silver eyes as she jerked her head deliberately from side to side.

A mocking smile touched his chiseled mouth. “I can almost see the words in your mind,” he mused, making her feel more child than woman.

She hit out at him unexpectedly. It was the only alternative to the scalding tirade she couldn’t produce—but it proved equally ineffective. He caught her wrist with his lean, powerful fingers and jerked her against him. His other hand tangled in the long, silken ribbon of her hair, subduing her effortlessly as he pulled her head back until her stunned eyes met his.

“Don’t tempt me,” he said quietly, his darkening gaze sweeping across her flushed face, taking in the creamy skin, the fullness of her mouth. “You’re not too big to spank, Sunflower.”

She struggled, but he only held her closer, mocking her with his lean, surprising strength. He’d never held her like this before, and she’d never fought with him physically. It was new, heady, to tempt Cole into violence.

She pushed against him and he ended the unequal struggle all too easily, jerking her ruthlessly closer against his hard body. His face was so close that she could feel his warm, smoky breath on her forehead.

“Still fighting me?” he growled. “When are you going to learn that if there’s any bending to be done between us, you’ll do it?”

She subsided against him, her eyes blazing, wide with fury. “I hate you!” she mouthed deliberately.

He chuckled softly. “No, you don’t,” he said, his glittering eyes narrow with amusement as he looked down at her. “You hate not being able to argue with me, but you don’t hate me. I’ll never let that happen, Heather.”

The shock of hearing her name on his lips brought a faint frown to her face. He rarely ever called her by name. It was as if he threw careless endearments at her to keep her at a distance.

He pushed the damp hair back from her face. “You’ll talk again,” he said in an uncommonly kind tone. “And you’ll sing, too, but you have to believe in yourself. Life is a challenge, Heather, not a gift. Nothing is handed to us without a little effort on our parts.”

But I did work, she tried to tell him, I did, even if I had the talent to begin with, I worked to polish it! But without her voice, only her eyes could speak for her.

He searched the blue, misty depths with a quiet intensity that fanned her pulse. In the sudden silence of the room, every emotion seemed magnified. He touched her mouth with a long finger and traced, very gently, every soft curve of it. His eyes followed the movement, very narrow, very intent….

Her lips parted involuntarily under that strange gaze, her breath rushed out in a soft sigh. When his eyes darted back up to hers, something in them made her want to tear away from him and run. She’d never before felt the electricity that was gathering between them now with all the intensity of a summer storm.

“Cole…” she whispered unthinkingly, the name coming to her lips with unconscious ease. She paused, startled at the sound of her own voice.

Cole smiled. “It’s taken you a long time, Heather,” he said quietly.

“For…what?” she mouthed, unwilling to trust herself to speak again.

“To wonder how it would feel if I took your mouth under mine,” he said.

Her cheeks flushed wildly with color as the words hit home. Suddenly everything was changed, upside down. She was being forced to admit something she’d submerged in her mind for ages—that she was aware of Cole as a man.

There was absolute stillness as two pairs of eyes met, asked questions, and waited for answers. Time hung, quivering, between them.

Chapter Three

Emma’s quick step in the hall outside broke the spell. Cole released Heather with reluctance, and she avoided his eyes as she stood quietly beside the window seat.

“Here I am,” Emma said with a smile, darting a quick look from her son to her stepdaughter. She didn’t mention the raw tension she felt in the room as she set down a tray on the bedside table. There was a steaming cup of hot chocolate and a slice of fresh cheesecake on the tray, and Heather suddenly realized how hungry she was.

She smiled and mouthed “thank you” at the older woman, who beamed.

“Don’t forget Tessa, dear,” Emma told her son as she sat down in the wing chair by the bed.

“As if I could,” he replied with a frankly sensual smile. Without even glancing in Heather’s direction, he turned and strode with catlike grace to the door. “I think Heather’s on the road to recovery. She was just able to say my name out loud,” he called over his shoulder before he closed the door behind him.

Tessa. Heather felt a queer emptiness as she recalled the other girl’s jet-black hair, swinging down to an impossibly narrow waist, and her black eyes that always kept the men jumping at parties. Tessa was the only daughter of a neighboring rancher, and as spoiled as a three-day-old dead fish. Anything she wanted, she got. And for years now, she’d wanted Cole.

“It’s Tessa’s birthday.” Emma was chattering as if Heather had been paying rapt attention. “Cole’s flying her to a concert in San Antonio. Poor dear, she’s spent weeks choosing just the right dress.”

Poor dear, indeed, Heather thought. Tessa would walk over Joan of Arc to get to Cole. And anything that threatened to take him away, even briefly, was in danger of attack. Heather’s last visit home had been ruined by Tessa’s jealousy. Somehow she’d managed to cheat Heather out of any time alone with Cole during the hectic three-day stopover between singing engagements.

Tessa was envious of the younger girl’s career, her clothes, her beauty. She took every opportunity to throw catty remarks at her—remarks that went over Cole’s head and far right of Emma’s forgiving nature. It was like being clawed to death by an invisible enemy with everyone watching. Tessa had always been Heather’s worst enemy. Now, at least, the younger girl knew how to protect herself. In the past, when Heather’s mother was alive, she’d been more vulnerable.

Tessa had six years’ advantage on the gangly child Heather had been, and in her late teens, she was unusually sophisticated for her age, just the kind of girl to appeal to a woman like Deidre Shaw. Tessa had spent more time at Big Spur than she had in her own home, and Heather had received nothing but the leftover crumbs of her mother’s affection. When Deidre Shaw succumbed to pneumonia, it was Tessa she called for to nurse her. And at the funeral a few short weeks later, Heather felt as distant from her mother in death as she had in life.

Two years later Emma Everett, recently widowed herself, agreed to marry Jed Shaw and take Heather under her wing. Their families had always been close because of Jed’s friendship with Big Jace Everett. With both Emma and Jed suffering the loneliness of bereavement, it seemed the most natural thing in the world for them to turn to each other. Emma and Cole were a part of Big Spur from the moment they moved in, and for the first time in her life Heather was surrounded by the warmth and affection she’d always longed for.

Cole! A tremor swept over her slender body. She’d always thought of him as her big brother. What if he did kiss her? That thought was new, and faintly shocking, as if it were forbidden to even consider any intimacy with him. But they weren’t blood kin; they weren’t related at all, even distantly. That made her vulnerable. It meant Cole could kiss her, touch her, and there was no reason for him to restrain himself. He could even make love to her….

Her face went scarlet. Surely her innocence would protect her—or would it? Despite the affection Cole had always felt for her, he was a man. And something she’d seen in his eyes today for the first time had convinced her that his attitude toward her had changed. Cole was the kind of man who wouldn’t accept limits. He was far too experienced to revert to adolescence for the sake of a woman, and Heather didn’t know how she was going to protect herself if he decided he wanted her.