The Cowboy and the Lady

“We’ll talk to Duncan first,” Amanda promised her colleague. “He doesn’t bite.”

“He doesn’t always have Tess underfoot, either,” Marguerite said in a faintly goaded tone.

“Maybe Jace will relent and marry her someday,” Amanda suggested.

The older woman sighed. “I had hoped that you might be my daughter-in-law one day, Amanda.”

“Be grateful for small blessings,” came the smiling reply. “Duncan and I together would have driven you crazy.”

“I wasn’t thinking about my youngest,” Marguerite said with frightening candor, and the look she gave Amanda made her pulse race.

She looked away. “Jace won’t ever forgive me for that bull.”

“It was unavoidable. You didn’t ask the silly bull to crash through the fence.”

“Jace was so angry,” she recalled, shuddering. “I thought he was going to hit me.”

“I always thought he was angry for a quite different reason. Oh, damn,” Marguerite added with perfect enunciation when they turned into the long paved driveway that led to Casa Verde. “That’s Tess’s car,” she grumbled.

Amanda saw it, a little Ferrari parked in the circular space that curved around the fishpond and fountain in front of the two-storey mansion.

“At least you know where Jace is,” Amanda said lightly, although her pulse was doing double time.

“Yes, but I knew where he was when Gypsy was alive, and I liked Gypsy,” Marguerite said stubbornly.

“Who was Gypsy?” Terry asked the two women, who both had burst into laughter.

“Jace’s dog,” Amanda volunteered through her giggles.

Marguerite pulled up behind the small black car and cut the engine. The house was over a century old, but still solid and welcoming, retaining its homey atmosphere. To Amanda, who loved it and remembered it from childhood, it wasn’t a mansion or even a landmark. It was simply Duncan’s house.

“Duncan and I used to hang by our heels from those low limbs on the oak tree at the corner of the house,” Amanda told Terry as they walked up the azalea-lined path that led to the porch steps. “Duncan slipped and fell one day, and if Jace hadn’t caught him, his head would have been half its present size.”

“I shudder to think what might have happened,” Marguerite said and her patrician face went rigid. “You and Duncan were always restless, my dear. Duncan has the wanderlust still. It’s Jace who’s put down strong roots.”

Amanda’s fingers tightened on her purse. She didn’t like to think about Jace at all, but looking around that familiar porch brought back a bouquet of memories. And not all of them were pleasant.

“Your son said that we could take a look at the property tomorrow,” Terry remarked casually. “I thought I might spend this evening filling his brother in on the way we handle our accounts.”

“If you can get Jace to sit still long enough.” Marguerite laughed. “Ask Amanda, she’ll tell you how busy he is. I have to follow him around to ask him anything.”

“At least I can ride.” Terry laughed. “I suppose I could gallop along after him.”

“Not the way Jace rides,” Amanda said quietly.

Marguerite opened the front door and led her two guests inside the house. The entrance featured a highly polished heart of pine floor with an Oriental rug done in a predominantly red color scheme, and a marble-top table on which was placed an arrangement of elegant cut red roses from the massive rose garden that flanked the oval swimming pool behind the house.

A massive staircase with a red carpet protecting the steps led up to the second floor, and the dark oak bannister was smooth as glass with age and handling. The house gave Amanda goose pimples when she remembered some of the Westerners who were rumored to have enjoyed its hospitality. Legend had it that Uncle John Chisolm had once slept within its walls. The house had been restored, of course, and enlarged, but that bannister was the original one.

A maid came forward to take Amanda’s lightweight sweater, followed by a man who relieved Terry of the suitcases.

“Diego and Maria.” Marguerite introduced them only to Terry, because Amanda had recognized them. “The Lopezes. They’re our mainstays. Without them we’d be helpless.”

The mainstays grinned, bowed and went about making sure that the family wasn’t left helpless.

“We’ll have coffee and talk for a while,” Marguerite said, leading them into the huge, white-carpeted living room with its royal blue furniture and curtains, its antique oak tables and upholstered chairs. “Isn’t white ridiculous for a ranch carpet?” She laughed apologetically. “But even though I have to keep on replacing it, I can’t resist this color scheme. Do sit down while I let Maria know we’ll have our coffee in here. Jace must be down at the stables.”

“No, he isn’t,” came a husky, bored voice from behind them in the hall, and Tess Anderson strolled into the room with her hands rammed deep in the pockets of her aqua knit skirt. Wearing a matching V-necked top, she looked like something out of a fashion show. Her black hair was loose and curling around her ears, her dark eyes snapping, her olive complexion absolutely stunning against the blood red lipstick she wore.

“Wow,” Terry managed in a bare whisper, his eyes bulging at the vision in the doorway.

Tess accepted the male adulation as her due, gazing at Terry’s thin, lackluster person dismissively. Her sharp eyes darted to Amanda, and she eyed the other girl’s smart but businesslike suit with distaste.

“Jace is out looking at a new harvester with Bill Johnson,” Tess said casually. “The old one they use on the bottoms broke down this morning.”

“Bogged down in the hay, I reckon,” Marguerite joked, knowing full well there wasn’t enough moisture to bog anything down. “Has he stopped swearing yet?”

Tess didn’t smile. “Naturally, it disturbed him. It’s a very expensive piece of equipment. He asked me to stop by and tell you he’d be late.”

“When has he ever been on time for a meal?” Marguerite asked curtly.

Tess turned away. “I’ve got to rush. Dad’s waiting for me. Some business about selling one of the developments.” She glanced back at Terry and Amanda. “I hear Duncan is thinking about hiring your agency to handle our Florida project. Dad and I want to be in on any discussions you have, naturally, since we do have a rather large sum invested.”

“Of course,” Terry said, reddening.

“We’ll be in touch. ‘Night, Marguerite,” she called back carelessly. Her high heels beat a quick tattoo on the wood floor. Then the door slammed shut behind her and there was a conspicuous silence in the room.

Marguerite’s dark eyes flashed fire. “And when did I give her permission to call me by my first name?”

Terry looked down at his shoes. “Snags,” he murmured. “I should have known it seemed too easy.”

“Don’t fret,” Amanda said cheerfully. “Mr. Anderson isn’t at all like his daughter.”

Terry brightened a little, but Marguerite was still muttering to herself as she left the room to tell Maria to bring coffee to the living room.

Maria brought the coffee on an enormous silver tray with an antique silver service and thin bone china cups in a burgundy and white pattern.

While Marguerite poured, Amanda studied the contents of the elegant display case against one wall. Inside, it was like a miniature museum of Western history. There was a .44 Navy Colt, a worn gunbelt that Jace’s great uncle had worn on trail drives, a Comanche knife in an aging buckskin sheath decorated with faded beads, some of which were missing, and other mementos of an age long past. There was an old family Bible that Jace’s people had brought all the way from Georgia by wagon train, and a Confederate pistol and officer’s hat. There was even a peace pipe.

“Never get tired of looking at it, do you?” Marguerite asked gently.

She turned with a smile. “Not ever.”

“Your people had a proud history, too,” Marguerite said. “Did you manage to hold on to any of those French chairs and silver?”

Amanda shook her head. “Only the small things, I’m afraid.” She sighed, feeling a great sense of loss. “There simply wasn’t any place to keep them, except in storage, and they were worth so much money…it took quite a lot to pay the bills,” she added sorrowfully.

Terry caught the look on her face and turned to Marguerite. “Tell me about the house,” he said, frowning interestedly.

That caught the older woman’s attention immediately, and an hour later she was still reciting tidbits from the past.

Amanda had been lulled into a sense of security, listening to her, and there was a quiet, wistful smile on her lovely face when the front door suddenly swung open. As she looked toward the doorway, she found her eyes caught and held by a pair almost the exact color of the antique silver service. Jace!

Chapter Three

Jason Everett Whitehall was the image of his late father. Tall and powerful, with eyes like polished silver in a darkly tanned face and a shock of coal-black hair, he would have drawn eyes anywhere. The patterned Western shirt he was wearing emphasized his broad shoulders just as the wellcut denim jeans hugged the lines of his muscular thighs and narrow hips. His expensive leather boots were dusty, but obviously meant for dress. The only disreputable note in his outfit was the worn black Stetson he held in his hand, just as battered now as it had been on Amanda’s last unforgettable visit.

She couldn’t drag her eyes away from him. They traced the hard lines of his face involuntarily, and she wondered now, as she had in her adolescence, if there was a trace of emotion in him. He seemed so completely removed from warmth or passion.

He was pleasant enough to Terry as he entered the room, shaking hands, making brief, polite work of the greetings.

“You know my junior partner, of course.” Terry grinned, gesturing toward Amanda on the sofa beside him.

“I know her,” Jace said in his deep, slow drawl, shooting her a hard glance that barely touched the slender curves of her body, curves that were only emphasized by the classical cut of her navy blue suit.

“We’re not going to have much time to talk tonight,” he told Terry without preamble. “I’ve got a long-standing date. But Duncan should be back tomorrow, and I’ll try to find a few minutes later in the week to go over the whole proposal with you. You can give me the basics over supper.”

“Fine!” Terry said. He was immediately charming and pleasant, and Amanda couldn’t repress an amused smile, watching him. He was so obvious when he was trying to curry favor.

“How’s your mother?” Jace asked Amanda curtly as he went to the bar to pour drinks.

Amanda felt her spine going rigid. “Very well, thanks,” she said.

“Who is she imposing on this month?” he continued casually.

“Jason!” Marguerite burst out, horrified. She turned to her guests. “Amanda, wouldn’t you like to freshen up? And, Terry, if you’ll come along, I’ll show you to your room at the same time.” She herded them out of the room quickly, shooting a furious glance at her impassive son on the way.

“I don’t know what in the world’s wrong with him,” Marguerite grumbled when she and Amanda were alone in the deliciously feminine blue wallpapered guest room. The pretty quilted blue bedspread was complemented by ruffled pillow shams and green plants grew lushly in attractive brass planters.

“He’s just being himself,” Amanda said with more humor than she felt. The words had hurt, as Jace meant them to. “I can’t remember a time in my life when he hasn’t cut at me.”

Marguerite looked into the warm brown eyes and smiled, too. “That’s my girl. Just ignore him.”

“Oh, how can I?” Amanda asked, dramatically batting her long eyelashes. “He’s so devastating, so masculine, so…manly.”

Marguerite giggled like a young girl. She sat down on the edge of the thick quilted coverlet on the bed and folded her hands primly in her lap while Amanda hung up her few, painstakingly chosen business clothes. “You’re the only woman I know who doesn’t chase him mercilessly,” she pointed out. “He’s considered quite a catch, you know.”

“If I caught him, I’d throw him right back,” Amanda said, unruffled. “He’s too aggressively masculine to suit me, too domineering. I’m a little afraid of him, I think,” she admitted honestly.

“Yes, I know,” the older woman replied kindly.

“Tess isn’t, though.” She sighed. “Maybe they deserve each other,” she added with a mean laugh.

“Tess! If he marries that girl, I will move to Australia and set up housekeeping in an opal mine!” Marguerite threatened.

“That bad?”

“My dear, the last time she helped Jace with a sale, she had Maria in tears and one of my daily maids quit without notice on the spot. As you saw today, she simply takes over, and Jace does nothing to stop her.”

“It is your house,” Amanda reminded her gently.

The thin shoulders rose and fell expressively. “I used to think so. Lately she’s talked about remodeling my kitchen.”

Amanda toyed with a button on one of the simple tailored blouses she was hanging in the closet. “Are they engaged?”

“I don’t know. Jace tells me nothing. I suppose if he decides to marry her, the first I’ll hear of it will be on the evening news!”

Amanda laughed softly. “I can’t imagine Jace married.”

“I can’t imagine Jace the way he’s been, period.” Marguerite stood up. “For months now he’s walked around scowling, half-hearing me, so busy I can’t get two words out of him. And even Tess—you know, sometimes I get the very definite impression that Tess is like a fly to him, but he’s just too busy to swat her.”

Amanda burst out laughing. The thought of the decorative brunette as a fly was totally incongruous. Tess, with her perfect makeup, flawless coiffures, and designer fashions would be horrified to hear them discussing her like this.

Marguerite smiled. “I’m glad you don’t take what Jace says to heart. Your mother is my best friend, and none of what he said is true.”

“But it is,” Amanda protested quietly. “We both know it, too. Mother is still living in the past. She won’t accept things the way they are.”

“That’s still no excuse for Jace to ridicule her,” Marguerite replied. “I’m going to have a talk with him about that.”

“If the way he looked at me was anything to go by, I think I’d feed him and get him drunk before I did that,” Amanda suggested.

“I’ve never seen him drunk,” came the soft reply. “Although, he came close to it once,” she added, throwing a pointed look at the younger woman before she turned away. “I’ll see you downstairs. Don’t feel that you have to change, or dress up. We’re still very informal.”

That was a blessing, Amanda thought later when she looked at her meager wardrobe. At one time, it would have boasted designer labels and fine silks and organzas with hand-embroidered hems. Now she had to limit spending to the necessities. With careful shopping and her own innate good taste, she had put together an attractive, if limited, wardrobe, concentrating on the clothes she needed for work. There wasn’t an evening gown in the lot. Oh, well, at least she wouldn’t need one of those.

* * *

She showered and slipped into a white pleated skirt with a pretty navy blue blouse and tied a white ruffled scarf at her throat to complete the simple but attractive-looking outfit. She tied her hair back with a piece of white ribbon, and slipped her hosed feet into a pair of dark blue sandals. Then with a quick spray of cologne and a touch of lipstick, she went downstairs.

Terry was the first person she saw, standing in the doorway of the living room with a brandy snifter in his hand.

“There you are.” He grinned, his eyes sweeping up and down her slender figure mischievously. “Going sailing?”

“Thought I might,” she returned lightly. “Care to swim alongside and fend off the sharks?”

He shook his head. “I suffer from acute cowardice, brought on by proximity to sharks. One of them was rumored to have eaten a great-aunt of mine.”

With a laugh like sunlight filtering into a yellow room, she walked past him into the spacious living room and found herself looking straight into Jace’s silvery eyes. That intense stare of his was disconcerting, and it did crazy things to her heart. She jerked her own gaze down to the carpet.

“Would you like some sherry?” he asked her tightly.

She shook her head, moving to Terry’s side like a kitten edging up to a tomcat for safety. “No, thanks.”

Terry put a thin arm around her shoulders affectionately. “She’s a caffeine addict,” he told Jace. “She doesn’t drink.”

Jace looked as if he wanted to crush his brandy snifter in his powerful brown fingers and grind it into the carpet. Amanda couldn’t remember ever seeing that particular look on his face before.

He turned away before she had time to analyze it. “Let’s go in. Mother will be down eventually.” He led the way into the dining room, and Amanda couldn’t help admire the fit of his brown suit with its attractive Western yoke, the way it emphasized his broad shoulders from the back. He was an attractive man. Too attractive.

Amanda was disconcerted to find herself seated close beside Jace, so close that her foot brushed his shiny brown leather boot under the table. She drew it back quickly, aware of his taut, irritated glance.

“Tell me why Duncan thinks we need an advertising agency,” Jace invited arrogantly, leaning back in his chair so that the buttons of his white silk shirt strained against the powerful muscles of his chest. The shirt was open at the throat, and there were shadows under its thinness, hinting at the covering of thick, dark hair over the bronzed flesh. Amanda remembered without wanting to how Jace looked without a shirt. She drew her eyes back to her spotless china plate as Mrs. Brown, Marguerite’s prize cook, ambled in with dishes of expertly prepared food. A dish containing thick chunks of breaded, fried cube steak and a big steaming bowl of thick milk gravy were set on the spotless white linen tablecloth, along with a platter of cat’s head biscuits, real butter, cabbage, a salad, asparagus tips in hollandaise sauce, a creamy fruit salad, homemade rolls and cottage fried potatoes. Amanda couldn’t remember when she’d been confronted by such a lavish selection of dishes, and she realized with a start how long it had been since she’d been able to afford to set a table like this.

She nibbled at each delicious spoonful as if it would be her last, savoring every bite, while Terry’s pleasant voice rambled on.

Marguerite joined them in the middle of Terry’s sales pitch, smiling all around as she sat in her accustomed place at the elegant table with its centerpiece of white daisies.

“I’m sorry to be late,” she said, “but I lost track of time. There’s a mystery theater on the local radio station, and I’m just hooked on it.”

“Detective stories,” Jace scoffed. “No wonder you leave your light on at night.”

Marguerite lifted her thin face proudly. “A lot of people use night-lights.”

“You use three lamps,” he commented. His gray eyes sparkled at her and he winked suddenly, smiling. Amanda, on the fringe of that smile, felt something warm kindle inside her. He was devastating when he used that inherent charm of his. No woman alive could have resisted it, but she’d only seen it once, a very long time ago. She dropped her eyes back to her plate and finished the last of her fruit salad with a sigh.

In the middle of Terry’s wrap-up, the phone rang and, seconds later, Jace was called away from the table.

Marguerite glared after him. “Once,” she muttered, “just once, to have an uninterrupted meal! If it isn’t some problem with the ranch that Bill Johnson, our manager, can’t handle, it’s a personnel problem at one of the companies, or some salesman wanting to interest him in a new tractor, or another rancher trying to sell him a bull, or a newspaper wanting information on a merger.” She glared into space. “Last week it was a magazine wanting to know if Jace was getting married. I told them yes,” she said with ill-concealed irritation, “and I can’t wait until someone shoves the article under his nose!”

Amanda laughed until tears ran down her cheeks. “Oh, how could you?”

“How could she what?” Jace asked, returning just in time to catch that last remark.

Amanda shook her head, dabbing at her eyes with her linen napkin while Marguerite’s thin face seemed to puff up indignantly.

“Another disaster?” Marguerite asked him as he sat back down. “The world goes to war if you finish one meal?”

Jace raised an eyebrow at her, sipping his coffee. “Would you like to take over?”

“I’d simply love it,” she told her son. “I’d sell everything.”

“And condemn Duncan and me to growing roses?” he teased.

She relented. “Well if we could just have one whole meal together, Jason…”

“How would you cope?” he teased. “It’s never happened.”

“And when your father was still alive, it was worse,” she admitted. She laughed. “I remember throwing his plate at him once when he went to talk to an attorney during dinner on Christmas Day.”

Jace smiled mockingly. “I remember what happened when he came back,” he reminded her, and Marguerite Whitehall blushed like a schoolgirl.

“Oh, by the way,” Marguerite began, “I—”

Before she could get the words out, Maria came in to announce that Tess was on the phone and wanted to speak to Jace.

Marguerite glared at him as he passed her on his way to the hall phone a second time. “Why don’t you have a special phone invented with a plate attached?” she asked nastily. “Or better, an edible phone, so you could eat and talk at the same time?”

Amanda’s solemn face dissolved into laughter. It had been this way with the Whitehalls forever. Marguerite had had this same argument with Jude.

The older woman shook her head, glancing toward Terry with a mischievous smile. “Would you like to explain the advertising business to me, Terry? I can’t give you the account, but I won’t rush off in the middle of your explanation to answer the phone.”

Terry laughed, lifting a homemade roll to his mouth. “No problem, Mrs. Whitehall. There’s plenty of time. We’ll be here a week, after all.”

During which, Amanda was thinking, you might get Jace to yourself for ten minutes. But she didn’t say it.

Later, everyone seemed to vanish. Jace went upstairs, and Marguerite carried Terry off to show him her collection of jade figurines, leaving Amanda alone in the living room.

She finished her after-dinner cup of coffee and put the saucer gingerly back down on the coffee table. Perhaps, she thought wildly, it might be a good idea to go up to her room. If Jace came downstairs before the others got back, she’d be stuck with him, and she didn’t want that headache. Being alone with Jace was one circumstance she’d never be prepared for.

She hurried out into the hall, but before she even made it to the staircase, she saw Jace coming down it. He’d added a brown-and-gold tie to the white silk shirt and brown suit, and he looked maddeningly elegant.

“Running?” he asked pointedly, his eyes narrow and cold as they studied her.

Chapter Four

She froze in the center of the entrance, staring at him helplessly. He made her nervous. He always had.

“I…was just going up to my room for a minute,” she faltered.

He came the rest of the way down without hesitation, his booted feet making soft thuds on the carpeted steps. He paused in front of her when he got to the bottom, towering over her, close enough that she could smell his woodsy cologne and the clean fragrance of his body.

“For what?” he asked with a mocking smile. “A handkerchief?”