Lone Star Winter

“Lazy ones, apparently,” Cy said tightly. “Find them and put them all on notice. Lisa’s selling me the place. We’ll put on four new men to work this ranch and share chores with my own.”

“That’s a wise decision on her part,” Harley said. “She doesn’t seem to know much about the business end of cattle ranching.”

“Her father thought women weren’t smart enough to learn it,” Cy mused.

“What an idiot,” Harley replied. “My mother can brand cattle right along with the cowboys, and she keeps the books for Dad.”

“A lot of women are big-time ranchers, too,” Cy agreed. “But Lisa doesn’t really have the knack, or the love, for it. Cattle ranching is hard work even if you do.”

Harley nodded. “I’ll put her part-timers on notice and get the boys over here with a tractor and a combine to hay those fields and harvest the corn.”

“When you get that organized,” Cy said, “I want to know what you saw over at the honey warehouse last night.”

“Not much,” Harley had to admit. “And I got challenged on your land by a man with a rifle. Good thing there was a cow down in the pasture for me to show him,” he added with a grin. “I told him we had a problem with locoweed and offered to show him where it grew. He went back on his side of the fence and didn’t say another word.”

“That was a stroke of luck,” Cy remarked. “Because we don’t have any locoweed.”

“We do now,” Harley murmured. “I set out a couple of plants and netted them, just in case I get challenged again. Now that I have a legitimate reason to be out there, they won’t pay much attention to me. And if they go looking for locoweed,” he added with a mocking smile, “why, they’ll find it, won’t they?”

Cy smiled at the younger man. “You’re a treasure, Harley.”

“Glad you noticed, boss, and how about that raise?”

“Don’t push your luck,” came the dry reply. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Sure thing.”

Cy drove to the lawyer’s office the next morning to discuss the land buy. Blake Kemp was tall, thirtyish, with a gray streak in his black, wavy hair, and pale blue eyes. He was the terror of the Jacobsville court circuit, although he looked mild-mannered and intelligent. Deceptive, Cy mused, studying him, because Kemp had a bite like a rattlesnake in court.

“I’m going to buy the Monroe place,” Cy said without preamble. “Lisa can’t run it alone, and she hasn’t the capital to make improvements or even necessary maintenance.”

“Good decision on her part,” Blake told him. “And on yours. It’s good land, and it adjoins your property.” He pursed his chiseled lips. “Is that the only merger you’re contemplating?”

Cy’s eyes narrowed. “She’s only been widowed two weeks,” he pointed out.

Blake nodded. “I know that. But she’s going to have a hard time paying rent. She doesn’t even have a job anymore.”

Cy studied him evenly.

“Well, I guess I could use a receptionist,” he said. “Callie Kirby is my paralegal, and she can’t really handle the research and the phones at the same time. Besides, Lisa worked for a colleague of mine last year. She knows her way around a law office.”

“What happened to the brunette who works with Callie?” Cy asked.

“Gretchen’s gone off to Morocco with a girlfriend from Houston,” Blake said with a chuckle. “She spent the past few years nursing her mother through a fatal bout of cancer,” he added solemnly. “And then the first man who took a shine to her insurance money broke her young heart. She needed a change of scene, and she said she doesn’t want to work in a law office when she comes back. So there’s a job available, if Lisa wants it.”

“I’ll tell her. Thanks.”

He shrugged. “We all like Lisa. She’s had a rough deal, one way or another.”

“She has indeed. Now, about those appraisals…”

When Cy came to pick Lisa up for their trip to the opera, he was wearing a navy sports coat with dark slacks and a white shirt. His tie combined red and navy in a paisley print. He looked dignified and very handsome. Lisa was glad he hadn’t worn a dinner jacket, be cause she had nothing that dressy in her small wardrobe. The best she could find was a simple gray jersey dress with long sleeves and a skirt that fell to her calves. She covered it with her one luxury, a lightweight black microfiber coat that was warm against the unseasonably cool autumn winds. Her hair was in a neat, complicated braid and she wore more makeup than usual to disguise her dark-circled eyes. She slept badly or not at all lately, and not completely because she missed Walt. She was having some discomfort that concerned her. She knew that pregnancies could fail in the early weeks, and it bothered her. She really needed to talk to her doctor when she went for the next visit. It might be nothing, but she didn’t want to take any chances with her baby.

“Not bad at all,” Cy mused, watching her pull on the coat over her clinging dress. She had a pretty figure.

“Thank you,” she said, coloring a little. “You look nice, too.”

“I talked to my attorney about the property,” he said after he helped her into the utility vehicle and started the engine. “He’s contacted two appraisal firms. They’ll be out next week to see the ranch and give you an estimate.”

That worried her. She hated seeing the family ranch go out of the family, but what choice did she have? She smiled wanly. “Walt was planning a dynasty,” she recalled. “He talked about all sorts of improvements we could make, but when I mentioned having kids to inherit it, he went cold as ice.”

Cy glanced at her. “Not much point in working yourself to death just to have the empire go on the market the minute you’re in the ground.”

“That’s what I thought.” She turned her small purse over in her lap. “It’s just as well that you’ll have the ranch,” she added. “You’ll know how to make it prosper.”

“You’ll still be living there,” he pointed out. “I’ll be a damned good landlord, too.”

“Oh, I know that.” She stretched. “I’ll still have to get a job, though. I’ll want to put what I get for the ranch into a savings account, so the baby can go to college.”

She surprised him constantly. He’d thought she might want to brighten up the house, even buy herself a decent car. But she was thinking ahead, to the day when her child would need to continue his education.

“Nothing for you?” he asked.

“I’ve got everything I really need,” she said. “I don’t have expensive tastes—even if Walt did. Besides, I’ve got a little nest egg left over from some cattle Walt sold off before he…before he died.”

“I know of a job, if you want it.”

He distracted her, which was what she supposed he’d intended. “Really?”

“Kemp needs a receptionist,” he said. “Gretchen’s gone off to Morocco and she isn’t coming back to work for him. So now Callie Kirby’s up to her ears in work. Kemp said you’d be welcome.”

“What a nice man!” she exclaimed.

“Now there’s a word that doesn’t connect itself with Kemp.” He gave a soft laugh. “Or didn’t you know that people talk in whispers around him?”

“He doesn’t seem that bad.”

“He isn’t, to people he likes.” His eyes softened as they searched her averted face. “He’ll like you, Lisa Monroe. You’re good people.”

“Thanks. So are you.”

“Occasionally.”

She glanced in his direction and smiled. “It’s funny, isn’t it, the way we get along? I was scared to death of you when you first moved here. You were so remote and difficult to talk to. People said you made rattlesnakes look companionable by comparison.”

“I moved here not long after I buried my wife and son,” he replied, and memories clawed at his mind. “I hated the whole world.”

“Why did you move here?” she asked curiously.

He wasn’t surprised that she felt comfortable asking him questions. He wouldn’t have tolerated it from anyone else. But Lisa, already, was under his thick skin. “I needed someone to talk to, I guess,” he confessed. “Eb lived here, and he and I go back a long way. He’d never married, but he knew what it was to lose people. I could talk to him.”

“You can talk to me, too,” she pointed out. “I never tell what I know.”

He smiled at her. “Who would you tell it to?” he drawled. “You don’t have close friends, do you?”

She shrugged. “All my friends got married right out of high school. They’ve got kids of their own and, until fairly recently, I didn’t even date much. I’ve been the odd one out most of my life. Other girls wanted to talk about boys, and I wanted to talk about organic gardening. I love growing things.”

“We’ll have to lay out a big garden spot for you next spring. You can grow all sorts of stuff.”

“That would be nice. I’ve got a compost pile,” she added brightly. “It’s full of disgusting things that will produce terrific tomatoes next summer.”

“I like cattle, but I’m not much of a gardener.”

“It’s a lot of work, but you get lovely things to eat, and they aren’t poisoned by pesticides, either.” She glanced out at the long, flat dark horizon. “I guess you aren’t big on people who don’t like to use chemicals.”

“Haven’t you heard?” he chuckled. “I go to cattlemen’s association meetings with J. D. Langley and the Tremayne brothers.”

“Oh, my,” she said, because she’d heard about the uproar at some of those gatherings, where the Tremaynes had been in fistfights over pesticides and growth hormones. Their position against such things was legendary.

“I enjoy a good fight,” he added. “I use bugs for pest control and organic fertilizer on my hay and corn and soybean crops.” He glanced her way. “Guess where I get the fertilizer?”

“Recycled grass, huh?” she asked, and waited for him to get the point.

He threw back his head and roared. “That’s one way of describing it.”

“I have some of that, too, and I use it in my garden. I think it works even better than the chemical ones.”

The subject of natural gardening and cattle raising supplied them with topics all the way to Houston, and Lisa thoroughly enjoyed herself. Here was a man who thought like she did. Walt had considered her organic approach akin to insanity.

The parking lot at the arts center was full. Cy managed to find one empty space about half a city block away.

“Now that’s a full house,” he remarked as he helped her down from the vehicle and repositioned her coat around her shoulders. “This thing sure is soft. Is it wool?” he asked, smoothing over it with his fingers.

“It’s a microfiber,” she told him. “It’s very soft and warm. The nights are pretty chilly lately, especially for south Texas.”

“The weather’s crazy everywhere.” He nudged a long, loose curl from her braided hair behind her ear, making her heart race with the almost sensual movement of his lean fingers. “I thought you might wear your hair loose.”

“It’s…difficult to keep in place when it’s windy,” she said, sounding and feeling breathless.

His fingers teased the curl and slowly dropped to her soft neck, tracing imaginary lines down it to her throat. He could feel her pulse go wild under his touch, hear the soft, broken whip of her breath at his chin. It had been far too long since he’d had anything warm and feminine this close to him. Restraints that had been kept in place with sheer will were crumbling just at the proximity. He moved a full step closer, so that her body was right up against him in the opening of her coat. His hands were both at the back of her neck now, caressing the silky skin below her nape.

“I haven’t touched a woman since my wife died,” he said in a faintly thick tone, his voice unusually deep in the silence. The distant sound of cars and horns and passing radios faded into the background.

She looked up, straight into his green eyes in the glow from a streetlight, and her heart raced. That look on his face was unfamiliar to her, despite her brief intimacy with her late husband. She had a feeling that Cy knew a lot more than her husband ever had about women.

Cy’s thumbs edged around to tease up and down her long, strained neck. Her vulnerability made him feel taller, more masculine than ever. He wanted to protect her, care for her, watch over her. These were new feelings. Before, his relationships to women had been very physical. Lisa made him hungry in a different way.

She parted her lips to speak and he put a thumb gently over them.

“It’s too soon,” he said, anticipating her protest. “Of course it is. But I’m starving to death for a woman’s soft mouth under my lips. Feel.” He drew one of her hands to his shirt under the jacket and pressed it hard against the thunderous beat of his heart.

She was more confused than ever. This was totally unfamiliar territory. Walt had never said anything so blatantly vulnerable to her, not even when they were most intimate.

His free hand went around her waist and drew her slowly closer, pressing her to him as his body reacted powerfully to the touch of her soft warmth. He lifted an eyebrow and smiled wickedly at her frozen expression.

“Why, Mrs. Monroe, you’re blushing,” he chided softly.

“You wicked man…!”

His nose brushed lazily against hers in a tender nuzzling. “I’ve probably forgotten more about women than Walt ever knew in the first place,” he said. “You don’t act like a woman who’s ever known satisfaction.”

That was so close to the truth that it hurt. She stiffened.

He lifted his head and searched her eyes. His own narrowed. He moved her lazily against him and felt her breath catch, felt her hands cling to his lapels as if she were drowning.

“Oh…no,” she choked as a surge of pure delight worked its way up her spine. She hated herself. Her husband was only buried two weeks ago…!

While she was thinking of ways to escape, and fighting her own hunger, Cy backed her very gently against the big utility vehicle and edged one of her long legs out of his way to bring them into more intimate contact.

“This is the most glorious thing a man and a woman can do together,” he murmured as his mouth lowered to hers. “He cheated you. I won’t. Open your mouth.”

Her lips parted on a shocked little gasp, and his mouth ground into them, parting them. He wasn’t hesitant or tentative. He demanded, devoured. His mouth was a weapon, feinting, thrusting, biting, and all the while her body rippled with a thousand stings of new pleasure as she clung hard to his strength. Sensations she’d never known piled one upon the other until a hoarse moan tore out of her strained throat and went up into his mouth.

Another minute and he knew he wouldn’t be able to pull back at all. He had her hips pinned with his, and his body ached for satisfaction.

With a rough curse he dragged his head up and moved away from her. She looked at him with dazed eyes in a flushed face, her mouth swollen from his kisses, her body shivering with new knowledge.

He drew himself up to his full height. His eyes glittered like green diamonds in a face like stone. He had to fight to get a normal breath of air into his lungs.

She tried to speak, but she couldn’t manage even a whimper. Her body was still flying, soaring, trembling with little shivers of pleasure that made her knees weak.

He reached out and caught her small hand in one of his big ones, linking their fingers. “We’d better go in side,” he said quietly.

“Yes.” She let him pull her away from the truck and lead her toward the arts center. She was amazed that she could walk at all.

Chapter Four

Turandot was beautiful. Lisa cried when the tenor sang “Nessun Dorma,” one of her favorite arias. The sets were elegant, colorful, the Chinese costumes glittery and resembling fantasy more than reality. The dragon was a masterpiece of sound and fury and color. All in all, it was a magnificent production, and Puccini’s glorious music brought it alive. Lisa had never seen an opera except on the public broadcasting television channel. She knew that she’d never forget this for as long as she lived, and every time she remembered it, she’d re member Cy sitting beside her in the dark.

Meanwhile, Cy was cursing himself silently for what had happened in the parking lot. It was months too soon for that. She was a pregnant, newly widowed woman and he’d let his emotions get out of control. His jaw tautened as he remembered the silky feel of her in his arms. He wanted to take care of her, and it looked as though she was going to need protection after all—from him.

Somehow he was going to have to get them back on a simple friendly footing. It wouldn’t be easy. He had no idea how she felt about what had happened. She sat quietly beside him, obviously enjoying the opera. She even smiled at him from time to time. But if she was angry, it didn’t show. He remembered her soft moan, her clinging arms. No, he thought, she’d gone in headfirst, too, just as he had. But he had regrets and he suspected that she did, as well. He had to draw back before he put the delicate new feeling between them at risk. Lisa was off-limits in any physical way, and he was going to have to remember that.

Lisa saw his scowl and wondered if he had regrets about what had happened. Men got lonely, she knew, and he was a very masculine sort of man to whom women were no mystery. He was probably wondering how to tell her that it wasn’t about her a few minutes ago, that any woman would have produced that reaction in a hungry man.

She would save him the trouble, she decided, the minute they started home. He’d already done so much for her. She couldn’t expect him to take over where Walt had left off; not that Walt had ever really felt passion for her. Walt had enjoyed her, she supposed, but there hadn’t been any sizzling attraction between them. It shamed her to admit that what she’d felt in the parking lot with Cy had been infinitely more pleasurable than anything she’d ever done with her late husband. She didn’t dare think about how it would be if they were truly intimate…

Her hand jerked in Cy’s as the final curtain fell and the applause roared. She clapped automatically, but made sure that both her hands were tight on her purse when they started to leave.

“It’s a beautiful opera,” she remarked as he escorted her to the exit.

“Yes, it is,” he agreed pleasantly. “I’ve seen it in a dozen different cities, but I still enjoy it.”

“I guess you’ve been to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City?” she mused wistfully.

“Several times,” he agreed.

She imagined him there, with some beautiful woman in an expensive evening gown and wrapped in furs. It wasn’t far to imagine them going into a dark room together, where the coat and the evening gown were discarded. She swallowed hard and tried not to think about that.

He could feel tension radiating from her. She was clinging so hard to that tiny purse that she was leaving the indentations of her nails in the soft leather.

When they reached the Expedition, he opened the door for her, but held her back when she started to climb inside.

“I’m sorry about what happened earlier,” he said gently. “I’ve made you uncomfortable.”

Her wide eyes met his. “I thought I’d made you uncomfortable,” she blurted out.

They stood just looking at each other until his lean face went harder than ever with the effort not to give in to the hunger she kindled in him.

“You poor man,” she said huskily, wincing as she saw the pain in his eyes. “I know you’re lonely, Cy, that you just needed someone to hold for a few minutes. It’s all right. I didn’t read anything into it.”

His eyes closed on a wave of pain that hit him like a bat. She reached up and pulled his face down to her lips. She kissed him tenderly, kissed his eyes, his nose, his cheek, his chin, with brief undemanding little brushes of her mouth that comforted in the most exquisite way.

He took a ragged breath and his lean hands captured her shoulders, tightening there when he lifted his face away from her warm mouth. “Don’t do that,” he said tersely.

“Why not?” she asked.

“I don’t need comforting!” he said curtly.

She moved back a step. He looked as if she’d done something outrageous, when she’d only meant to be kind. It irritated her that he had to be antagonistic about it. “Oh, I see,” she said, staring up at him. “Is this how it goes? ‘Men are tough, little woman,’” she drawled, deepening her voice and her drawl, “‘we can eat live snakes and chew through barbed wire. We don’t want women fussin’ over us!’” She grinned up at him deliberately.

He glared at her, his eyes glittering.

She raised her eyebrows. “Want me to apologize? Okay. I’m very sorry,” she added.

His broad chest rose and fell heavily. “I want you to quit while you’re ahead,” he said in a tight voice.

She stared at him without guile. “I don’t understand.”

“Don’t you?” His smile was full of mockery and he was seeing a succession of women from his wild days who liked to tease and run away, but not too far away. His lean hands tightened on her shoulders as his eyes slid down her body. “Your husband didn’t tell you what teasing does to a man?”

“Teasing…?” Her eyes widened. “Was I?” she asked, and seemed not to know.

That fascinated expression was real. He did scowl then. “What you were doing…it arouses me,” he said bluntly.

“You’re kidding!”

He wanted to be angry. He couldn’t manage it. She did look so surprised…. He dropped his hands, laughing in wholesale defeat. “Get in the damned truck.”

He half lifted her in and closed the door on her barely formed question.

She was strapped in when he pulled himself up under the steering wheel, closed the door and reached for his seat belt.

“You were kidding,” she persisted.

He looked right into her eyes. “I wasn’t.” He frowned quizzically. “Don’t you know anything about men?”

“I was married for two months,” she pointed out.

“To a eunuch, apparently,” he said bluntly as he cranked the vehicle and pulled out of the parking lot and into traffic. “I am pregnant,” she stated haughtily.

He spared her an amused glance. “Pregnant and practically untouched,” he replied.

She sighed, turning her attention to the city lights as he wound south through Houston to the long highway that would take them home to Jacobsville. “I guess it shows, huh?” she asked.

He didn’t say anything for half a block or so. “Did you want him?”

“At first,” she said. Her eyes sought his. “But not like I wanted you in the parking lot,” she said honestly. “Not ever like that.”

A flash of ruddy color touched his cheekbones. He was shocked at her honesty.

“Sorry, again,” she murmured, looking away. “I guess I haven’t learned restraint, either,” she added.

He let out a long breath. “You take some getting used to,” he remarked.

“Why?”

His eyes met hers briefly before they went back to the highway. Rain was beginning to mist the windshield. He turned on the wipers. “I don’t expect honesty from a woman,” he said curtly.

She frowned. “But surely your wife was honest.”

“Why do you think so?”

“It’s obvious that you loved your little boy,” she began.

His laugh had the coldest ring to it that she’d ever heard. “She wanted an abortion. I threatened to take away her credit cards and she gave in and had him.”

“That must have been a difficult time for you,” she said softly.

“It was.” His jaw clenched. “She was surprised that I wanted her baby.”

“Hers, and not yours?” she ventured.

“Hers by one of her lovers,” he said bitterly. “She didn’t really know which one.”

There was an abrupt silence on the other side of the truck. He glanced at her frozen features with curiosity. “What sort of marriage do you think I had? I was a mercenary. The women you meet in that profession aren’t the sort who sing in church choirs.”

“How did you know I sang in the choir?” she asked, diverted.

He laughed, shaking his head. “I didn’t, but it figures. You’re her exact opposite.”

She was still trying to understand what he was saying. “You didn’t love her?”