Friends and Lovers

“Thank you,” came the heartfelt reply. “Now which way do I go to get to Houston?”

After the tourists had driven away, John mounted his gelding, waiting for Madeline to follow suit. He lit a cigarette with steady fingers and led the way toward the barn where his prize bulls were quartered like royalty. They had their own air-conditioning as well as a heating system for winter.

“You scalawag, you,” Madeline muttered, trying to tease him out of his black mood.

He didn’t even spare her a glance. He was still furious, and she didn’t know how she was going to explain her own actions. How could she, when she didn’t understand them herself?

“John, what was your father like?” she asked suddenly.

He glanced at her as they rode along. “What brought that on?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ve never talked about him. I just…wondered.”

He took a draw on the cigarette and stared at the horizon. “He was rigid. Hard. Very disciplined and single-minded. He had nothing as a child, and he was determined to show the whole damned world that he was as capable of getting rich as anybody else. He was a career man in the Marines before he bought Big Sabine and started drilling for oil.” He laughed mirthlessly. “What he found didn’t amount to much at first, but we invested carefully, bought more land, and got lucky.”

“Your mother?” she asked carefully.

“She died when I was born.”

“Oh.” Madeline stared at the red coats of the bulls as they neared the barn. “The ranch was named for a battle, wasn’t it?” she murmured.

“The battle of Sabine Pass,” he agreed, “where my father was born. In 1863, Union troops tried to invade Texas through the pass. Two lieutenants named Richard Dowling and N.H. Smith defended the fort there with six cannon and forty-two men. That defense was so successful that Union troops never tried to invade through the pass again.”

“I’ll bet your father liked the odds when he heard the story, didn’t he?” she asked with a tiny smile.

“Impossible odds?” he mused. “Yes. That appealed to him, all right. The only thing that didn’t was fatherhood. He spent the first twenty years of my life blaming me for my mother’s death. It was just as well that he left me with my uncle while he was in the service.”

She studied his rigid profile wonderingly. She was curious about him in new ways; she wanted to know what forces had shaped him into the man he was.

He dismounted at the fence and hooked his boot on the lowest rung, leaning his arms over it to watch a huge Santa Gertrudis bull lumber along in his solitary pasture.

Madeline joined him by the fence, drawn by his strength and size, as she thought about the lonely young boy he must have been. She liked the closeness—perhaps, she told herself, because of the faint chill in the air. John radiated warmth at this range. Her eyes swept over him—from the long, powerful legs up to the broad leather belt around his lean waist, the massive chest and muscular arms. His forearms were dark with the same sprinkling of hair that covered the rest of his body, and there was a thin gold watch strapped over his wrist. He wore no rings at all and had beautiful hands—broad, tanned, with long fingers and a feathering of hair over their backs. The nails were flat, neatly trimmed and immaculate, despite the manual labor he did when at the ranch.

“Are you considering taking up art?” he asked with a lash in his voice. “You must have me memorized by now.”

She dragged her eyes back to the bull. “I was thinking,” she said shortly. “You just sort of got in the way.”

“Thinking about what?” he prodded. “Your next murder victim?”

It was the first sign of melting in the glacier he’d drawn around himself, and she met his look with a shy smile.

“Not quite,” she assured him. “Only the vile tools I’m going to need and the grisly details.”

He laughed softly, bending his head to light a cigarette. “Who’s going to get the ax this time?” he asked.

She peeked up at him. “I thought I’d kill off the detective-hero.”

“Your fans would hang you from the nearest tree,” he commented. He glanced down at her, his eyes taking in the long, waving disarray of her red gold hair in the early-morning light, the flush of her cheeks, the sparkle in her green eyes. They narrowed. “A more unlikely murderess…” he murmured.

She smiled pertly. “I’ve always loved detective fiction,” she said with a sigh. “Solving crimes. I wanted to be a policewoman, but I was too busy covering news.”

“Ever miss it?” he asked with genuine curiosity.

“Reporting, you mean?” She thought back to those days. It seemed so long ago, when she was sole reporter and photographer for a small-town weekly newspaper. “I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I’d give anything to go back to it. It was so uncomplicated, compared to what I do now, so cut and dried. I didn’t have to create the news, only report it.”

“I shouldn’t think it was so hard finding new ways to kill people,” he said with a teasing glance.

She laughed. “You’d be surprised. Competition is fierce, you know, and I’m the new kid on the block. I’ve got to be the best I can be, or I’ll go on unemployment in no time.”

“I liked The Grinding Tower,” he remarked.

“Thank you.”

He grinned. “The hero had some…familiar characteristics.”

She felt herself flushing as she recalled her detective: tall, broad-shouldered, with a mustache, a taste for Scotch whiskey and a habit of forcing his equipment to go more than the last mile. Yes, she’d patterned him after John, but she hadn’t expected…

“Want to sue me?” she asked with a shy glance.

“I’m too flattered to sue you.” He tilted his hat lower across his eyes. They narrowed, running down the length of her body and back up again. “The heroine sounded a little like you,” he remarked.

She met his eyes and felt her pulse leap wildly. She hadn’t realized that. “Did she?” she murmured.

The dark, intent look on his face made her nervous. “Why did you run away from me, just before those tourists showed up? Was it what I said about being without sleep? Did you think I’d spent the night with Melody?”

Her breath caught in her throat. How well he read her! She swallowed. “I…I just wanted to ride a little faster, that’s all.”

“Was it?” He reached out, tucking a careless finger into the V-neck of her blouse to tug her gently toward him. But he didn’t release his hold on her. That long, maddening finger slowly traced the beginning slope of her breasts under the thin fabric. She was suddenly and shyly aware that she wasn’t wearing a bra. And judging by the look on his dark, taut face, he’d just discovered that as well.

The effect of the light, disturbing caress was beginning to be very visible, especially to the silver eyes that dropped pointedly to the thrust of her high, small breasts against the thin cotton.

His eyes moved back up to capture hers, to watch the nervous excitement sparkle in them. She tried to back away from that tantalizing finger, but he slid a rough hand around to her back and caught her, forcing her slender body against the long, powerful lines of his own.

“Oh, no, you don’t, honey,” he murmured, and his hand spread out at her throat, so big that it almost covered the tops of her breasts in a contact that wasn’t really intimate but had the full effect of intimacy.

“John, what are you doing?” she squeaked, her fingers clutching at his big arms to push him away.

“What do you think I’m doing?” he growled. “I’m making a pass at you. What does it feel like?”

She gaped up at him, fascinated, frightened, her body trembling as if he’d stripped her and was stroking her naked skin. “You’ve never touched me…” she whispered.

“You’ve never wanted me to,” he reminded her. His hands slid down her body to her buttocks, pressing her hips into his in an intimacy that she should have protested, but didn’t—couldn’t. “Until last night.”

“I didn’t,” she protested weakly.

“You were so jealous of Melody, you could hardly see straight,” he accused tautly. His hands pressed her closer to his blatant masculinity. “As if you had a damned thing to be jealous of…come here!”

Even as he spoke he bent his head and for the first time she felt the hard, warm crush of his mouth over hers. The mustache tickled and his lips were roughly insistent, forcing her mouth to open, to admit the sharp, deep penetration of his tongue. She felt it teasing hers as his hands moved up, sliding under the blouse to caress the softness of her bare back.

She gasped and a long, shuddering moan slipped from her throat as her fingernails involuntarily dug into his big arms. He smelled of smoke and saddle leather and expensive cologne, and his big body was damp where she was riveted to it. It was incredible, to be making love in broad daylight, to be kissed so passionately, held so intimately, by John….

“Kiss me back,” he ground out against her trembling lips. “You wanted to touch me earlier, do it now. Stop holding back, damn it!”

The words were like a dash of cold water, penetrating the fiery mist of passion. She looked up into a face hard with passion, into silvery eyes that glittered with new, barely leashed hunger.

She shook her head as if to clear it. “No,” she whispered, disbelieving. Her mouth hurt from the hungry pressure of his, her knees felt like rubber. “No, we’re…just friends….”

He took her hand and pressed it, palm flat against the furious shudder of his heart, breathing heavily as he watched her face. “Feel what you do to me,” he growled, “what you’ve always done to me. Just friends? Like sweet hell, we are!”

“No!” She dragged herself out of his arms, her eyes as wild as her hair as she moved out of his reach and stood trying to catch her breath. “I won’t let it happen, I won’t!”

“It already has,” he said curtly. His eyes slid over her rigid body, up over the pointed tautness of her breasts, taking in the accelerated breathing that caused her chest to rise and fall unevenly.

With a cry of mingled shock and outrage, she turned and ran for her horse. This wasn’t happening, it couldn’t be, not with John; not with the only man she trusted. What he was offering was too sudden, too unexpected.

“Madeline!” he shot at her.

She was already astride the little mare, her eyes wild as she looked at him.

“It’s too late to run from it,” he said quietly, his gaze dark and steady.

“Oh, no, it isn’t,” she said in a choked voice. “I won’t see you again, John.”

“You will,” he said softly. “Because what we just had wasn’t enough—for either of us.”

With a muffled curse, she whirled the mare and urged her quickly into a gallop, the wind tearing through her hair. Never, she thought wildly, never, John Durango! She closed her eyes against the memory of his hard, expert mouth, against remembered pleasure. The horrible thing was that he was right, it hadn’t been enough….

Chapter Four

Madeline walked around in a daze for the rest of the morning, wondering at the lightning change in her relationship with John. She was confused by her own reaction to him, by the vague hungers he’d created. She thought she was frigid after her brief, disastrous relationship with Allen. She’d thought she was immune.

Allen. She hadn’t thought about him in a long time, but the hurt came back with diminished force as she sat over her electric typewriter looking at the splatters of rain that started to fall against the windowpanes.

It had happened over two years ago. She’d met Allen at a writer’s club meeting. He was an architect who dreamed of writing a novel and Madeline had encouraged him. He hadn’t sold his book idea—sadly, he didn’t have the talent to back up his ambition. But while Madeline had been trying to help him, she’d also been falling in love. And he’d encouraged her, promising happiness, promising forever. His ardor had been demanding, persistent. In the end, he’d worn her down.

The morning after she’d given in to him, she woke up with memories of more discomfort than pleasure but dreams of happier nights together. And then he’d dropped the bomb. He’d begun to tell her about his wife, about how trapped he was. There was a little boy. He begged her to forgive him, he must have been out of his mind, but he’d wanted her so much and he’d had no idea that she was a virgin….

She got up from the typewriter and walked aimlessly around the room. The memory of that day was the blackest in her life. She’d almost gone over the deep edge. She could remember being very calm about it, ushering Allen to the door, closing it quietly behind him without a word. She’d made herself a pot of coffee and had gone to the typewriter to work with a fury all the rest of the day. Then she’d had a few drinks and decided to go for a walk in the rain—in the middle of the night. She wound up at the opera, which was miles away, and couldn’t even remember how she’d gotten there. But she started across the street in the driving downpour. And suddenly there had been the scream of brakes. A tall, furiously angry man in dark evening clothes and a white dress Stetson had climbed out of the white Rolls Royce and proceeded to give her hell.

That had been her introduction to John Cameron Durango, who’d paused in the middle of his furious tirade to lift her gently into the front seat of the elegant car. He’d taken her home with him to the penthouse apartment where he stayed when he couldn’t get out to the ranch. John had given her dry clothes, plied her with good black coffee, walked her until her legs ached and put her to bed in his guest room. It was the beginning of a strange and beautiful friendship, and the instant rapport they’d established that night had never diminished. They’d found worlds of things they had in common, and had finally reached a point where he could start a sentence and she’d finish it. He seemed to actually read her mind.

She went over last night and this morning again and again, wondering at her own odd behavior at the party. She had been jealous of that little blonde, and because of it she’d flirted harder than usual with John.

Over the years she’d been curious about him more than once; she’d wondered how it would feel to be kissed by him. Now she knew. Oh, how she knew!

Her own hungers shocked her. She’d promised herself that she’d never let another man get as close as Allen had, that she’d never let herself be hurt again. But she knew she was never going to be able to keep John Durango at arm’s length. He was as bullheaded as she was, and years more experienced—thirty-nine to her twenty-seven. He, too, had loved and lost, though Madeline hadn’t known him when his wife Ellen died. Since then he’d been seen with a trail of women, except for the past year or so.

He’d been extremely selective recently, as if his playboy image had begun to bother him. The gossips had gone wild over that about-face, wondering if there was a special woman in his life. But John’s private life was exactly that, private, and he shared it with no one except Madeline. And there was a lot that he kept even from her. She’d been curious about his affairs with women, curious about his marriage, but she’d never asked. She wasn’t sure she would have liked the answers.

The phone rang suddenly, and she jumped. She ran to answer it, vaguely hoping that it might be John. Was he going to pursue her so quickly?

She grabbed the receiver with trembling hands, her heart slamming wildly in her chest as all kinds of pictures flashed across her mind.

“Hello?” she whispered.

A chuckle came over the line—a voice not as deep as John’s—and Madeline’s heart sank. “My goodness, who were you expecting?” Donald Durango laughed. “I’ll have to tell Cousin John that he’s got competition.”

“Oh, hi, Donald,” Madeline said, recovering quickly. “How are you this morning?”

“Just fine. You left so suddenly last night, I never got a chance to issue my invitation to supper tonight,” Donald said. “How about it? I’ll have Maisie fix pepper steak and peach cobbler,” he added temptingly.

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