Lone Star Winter

“No, I didn’t love her,” he replied. “We were good together in bed and I was tired of living alone. So, I married her. I never expected it to last, but I wanted a child. God knows why, I assumed it was mine.”

“Why did she marry you if it wasn’t?”

“She liked having ten credit cards and driving a Jaguar,” he said.

That produced another frown.

“I was rich, Lisa,” he told her. “I still am.”

She pulled her coat tighter around her and stared out the window, not speaking. She was shocked and more uncertain about him than ever. He was such a complex person, so multifaceted that just when she thought she was getting to know him, he became a stranger all over again.

“Now what is it?” he asked impatiently.

“I hope you don’t think I agreed to come out with you…that I was eager to let you buy the ranch because…” She flushed and closed her mouth. She was so embarrassed that she wanted to go through the floor.

“If I’m rich, it’s because I know pure gold when I see it,” he said, casting her an amused glance. “Do you think I’ll assume that you’re a gold digger because you came out with me?”

“I kissed you back, too,” she said worriedly.

He sighed with pure pleasure and relaxed into the seat, smiling to himself. “Yes, you did.”

“But it was an accident,” she persisted. “I didn’t plan it…”

“That makes two of us.” He pulled up at the last streetlight before they left the city behind and turned to her. His eyes were narrow and very intent. “There are things in my past that are better left there. You’d never begin to understand the relationship I had with my wife, because you don’t think in terms of material gain. When I was your age, you were the sort of woman I’d run from.”

“Really? Why?” she asked.

He cocked an eyebrow and let his eyes run over her. “Because you told me once that you hadn’t slept with Walt before you married him, Lisa,” he drawled.

She glared at him. “I would have if I’d wanted to,” she said mutinously.

“But you didn’t.”

She threw up her hands, almost making a basketball of her small purse. She retrieved it from the dash and plopped it back into her lap.

“You’re the kind of woman that men marry,” he continued, unabashed. “You like children and small animals and it would never occur to you to be cruel to anyone. If you’d gotten involved with me while I was still in my former line of work, you wouldn’t have lasted a day with me.”

“I don’t suppose I would have,” she had to agree. She looked through the windshield, wondering why it hurt so much to have him tell her that. Surely she hadn’t been thinking in terms of the future just because of one passionate kiss? Of course, her whole body tensed remembering the pleasure of it, the exciting things he’d said…

“And you weren’t Walt’s usual date, either,” he said surprisingly. “He liked experience.”

She grimaced. “I found that out pretty quick. He said I was the most boring woman he’d ever gone to bed with. Except for our wedding night, and the night be fore he was killed, he slept in a separate bedroom.”

No wonder she was the way she was, he mused as the light changed and he sent the big vehicle speeding forward. She probably felt like a total failure as a woman. The child must have been some sort of consolation, because she certainly wanted it.

“I’ll bet you hate admitting that,” he said.

“Yes, I do. I felt inadequate, dull, boring,” she muttered. “He liked blondes, but not me.”

“He liked that parcel service driver plenty,” he recalled, his eyes narrowing. “You were pitching hay over the fence to the cows and he was flirting with her, right under your nose. I never wanted to hit a man more.”

Her lips parted on a quick breath. “You saw…that?”

“I saw it,” he said curtly. “That’s why I stopped by later and said something about the way you were pitching hay by yourself.”

She shifted in the seat. “He said they were old friends,” she replied. “I guess he really meant they were former lovers. He never treated me to that sort of charm and flirting. He really wanted Dad’s ranch. It was a pity I went with the deal.”

“It was his loss that he took you for granted,” he corrected. “You’re not inadequate. You proved that earlier tonight, in the parking lot.”

She cleared her throat. “An incident best forgotten.”

“Why?”

“Why?” She stared at him. “Walt’s only been dead two weeks, that’s why!”

He stopped at a four-way stop and turned in his seat on the deserted road to look at her. “Lisa,” he said quietly, “it wouldn’t have mattered even if he’d still been alive, and you know it. What happened was mutual and explosive.”

“It was a fluke…”

His hand reached out and his fingers traced her lower lip. She couldn’t even speak. “Would you like me to prove that it isn’t?” he asked quietly. “There are plenty of dirt roads between here and home, and the seats re cline all the way.”

“Cy Parks!”

“Best of all,” he mused, “we wouldn’t even have to worry about pregnancy, would we?”

Her face was scarlet; she knew it was. He was making her breathless with that torturous brush of his fingers, and she was vulnerable. She’d never really known desire until tonight, and she wished she could turn the clock back a day. Life was difficult enough without this new complication.

He drew in a long breath and lifted his hand back to the steering wheel. “God knows I want to,” he said shortly, “but you’d die of shock and never speak to me again afterward.”

“I…certainly…would,” she faltered, pushing her hair back unnecessarily just for something to do.

He shook his head. He’d known her such a short time, really, but she seemed to hold his attention even when he wasn’t with her. Every future event he thought of these days, he considered her part in. It was disturbing to know that he considered her part of his life already.

She fiddled with the top button on her coat. Her eyes were restless, moving from the dark horizon to the occasional lighted window flashing past as the utility vehicle picked up speed. What he’d said disturbed her, mostly because she knew it was true. She’d have gone anywhere with him, done anything with him. It made her guilty because she should be mourning Walt.

“Don’t brood,” Cy told her. “You’re safe. No more torrid interludes tonight, I promise.”

She fought a smile and lost. “You’re a terrible man.”

“You have no idea how terrible.” He paused to look both ways before he crossed a lonely intersection. “Harley’s fired your part-time hired hands, by the way.”

“He’s what?”

“Calm down. They were being paid for work they didn’t do. That’s economically disastrous.”

“But who’ll get in the hay and brand the calves…?” she worried.

“You didn’t hear the noise? Harley got the tractors out in your hay field early this morning. The haying’s done. The corn crop is next. I’m hiring on four new men. Harley will supervise them, and your place will live up to its promise.” He glanced at her. “You haven’t decided not to sell it have you?”

“I can’t afford to keep it,” she confessed. “I’m glad you don’t plan to build a subdivision on it or something. It’s been in my family for a hundred years. Dad loved it with all his heart. I love it, too, but I have no idea how to make it pay. I’d like to see it prosper.”

“I think I can promise you that it will.”

She smiled, content with just being next to him. He turned on the radio and soft country music filled the cab. After a few minutes, her eyes slid shut as all the sleep less nights caught up with her.

She was vaguely aware of being gently shaken. She didn’t want to be disturbed. She was warm and cozy and half-asleep.

“No,” she murmured drowsily. “Go away.”

“I have to,” came a deep, amused voice at her ear. “Or we’ll have a scandal we’ll never live down. Come on, imp. Bedtime.”

She felt herself tugged out of the seat and into a pair of warm, hard arms. She was floating, floating…

Cy didn’t wake her again. He took off her shoes, tossed the cover over her, put her glasses on the bedside table and left her on the bed in her nice dress and coat. He didn’t dare start removing things, considering his earlier passionate reaction to her. But he stood beside the bed, just watching her, enjoying the sight of her young face relaxed in sleep. He wondered how old she was. She never had told him.

He turned and went back out into the hall, pausing to check the lock on the back door in the kitchen before he went out the front one, locking it carefully behind him. He still wasn’t convinced that Lopez wouldn’t make a beeline for Lisa if he thought his men could get away with harming her. Cy was going to make sure that he didn’t.

He stopped by the bunkhouse to have a word with Nels before he went home and climbed into his own bed. He stared at himself in the bedroom mirror, his eyes narrow and cynical as he studied his lean, scarred face and equally scarred body. He was only thirty-five, as Lisa had already guessed, but he looked older. His eyes held the expression of a man who’d lived with death and survived it. He was wounded inside and out by the long, lonely, terrible years of the past. Lisa soothed the part of him that still ached, but she aroused a physical need that he’d almost forgotten he had. She was a special woman, and she needed him. It was new to be needed on a personal level. He thought about the child she was carrying and wondered if it would be a boy or girl. She’d need someone to help her raise it. He wanted to do that. He had nobody, and neither did she. They could become a family—for the child’s sake.

He turned off the lights and went to bed. But his dreams were restless and hot, and when he woke up the next morning, he felt as if he hadn’t slept at all.

Harley got the calves branded and the corn in the silo in quick order.

“You’ve got a knack for inspiring cowboys to work, Harley,” Cy told him one afternoon a few days later.

“I get out there and work with them, and make them ashamed of being lazy,” Harley told him with a grin. “Most of them can’t keep up with me.”

“I noticed.” Cy leaned back against the corral fence and stared at the younger man evenly, without blinking. “You were out near the warehouse last night. What did you see?”

“Three big trucks,” Harley said solemnly. “One had some odd stuff on the back. Looked like oil drums lashed together.”

That was disturbing. Cy knew that drug dealers threw portable bridges across rivers to let trucks full of their product drive to the other side. What Harvey was de scribing sounded like a makeshift pontoon bridge. Cy and the mercenaries he’d worked with had used them, too.

“Did you get a look at what was in the trucks?” he asked.

Harley shook his head. “The doors were closed and locked. I was afraid to risk trying to pick a lock, with all that hardware around. Those guys had Uzis.”

“I know,” Cy said without thinking.

Harley’s eyebrows went up, and he grinned in a fairly condescending way. “Do you now? Are you using Uzis to load cattle these days, boss?”

Cy realized what he’d said and chuckled. “I wasn’t listening. Sorry.”

“No problem. I noticed a couple of new faces over there,” he added. “Tough-looking men, and they weren’t wearing suits.”

“Get back out there tonight,” Cy told him. “And be very careful, Harley. I’ve got a bad feeling about this whole thing.” He didn’t add that he was worried about Lisa. He saw her every other day, and the paperwork had just been completed and signed, ready for the transfer of money and deeds. He wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Lopez had an informant in town who’d tell him that. It might prompt the drug lord to hasty action, if he thought Lisa was selling the ranch in order to move away. He couldn’t know that Cy planned to rent her the ranch house. He wouldn’t like having to search for her.

Knowing that bothered him, and he mentioned it to Lisa when he stopped by to see her the next day. Harley had seen yet another unfamiliar face on the ware house property, and he’d also seen flat after flat of jars being moved inside the structure. The drug dealers were getting ready to begin operations. Things would heat up very soon, or Cy missed his guess. He didn’t want Lisa in the middle of it.

“Have you got family you could visit out of state?” he asked without preamble as he joined her in the living room, where she had gas logs burning in the fire place.

She curled up on the sofa in her jeans and knit turtleneck white sweater and stared at him curiously. “I don’t have family anywhere,” she confessed. “Maybe a cousin or two up around Fort Worth, but I wouldn’t know where to look for them.”

He sighed heavily and leaned forward in the chair with his arms crossed over his knees. “All right,” he said, seeming to come to a decision. “If you leave the house from now on, I want to know first. If you can’t get me, you call Eb Scott.”

“Why?”

He knew she was going to ask that. He didn’t have a very logical reply. “I don’t know what Lopez is up to,” he said honestly. “He may have given up on ideas of targeting you. On the other hand, he may be lulling us into a false sense of security. I’d rather err on the side of caution.”

“That suits me,” she said agreeably.

“Do you have a phone by your bed?”

“Yes,” she said. “It makes me feel more secure.”

He stood up. “Don’t forget to keep your doors locked, even in the daytime, when you’re home alone.”

“I’m not, much,” she said without thinking. “Harley comes by every day to check on me, sometimes twice a day.”

His eyes narrowed. He didn’t like that, although he said, “Good for Harley.”

She caught a nuance of something in his tone. “Do you mind?” she asked deliberately. He’d been remote and she’d hardly seen him since the night of the opera. She wondered if he’d been avoiding her, and she concluded that he was. His manner now was standoffish and he seemed in a hurry to leave. She wanted to know if he was the least bit put out by Harley’s attentiveness.

“It’s your life,” he said nonchalantly, tilting his wide-brimmed hat over one eye. “He’s a steady young man with a good future.”

He couldn’t be thinking…or could he? She started to tell him that Harley was friendly, and that she had no romantic interest in him. But before she could, Cy was already on his way out the door.

She went after him, trying not to be undignified and run. She didn’t catch up to him until he was going down the steps.

“When do we close on the sale?” she asked, having no other excuse for following him.

He turned at the door of the utility vehicle. “The first of next week, Kemp said. It will take that long to get the paperwork filed.”

“Okay. You’ll phone me?”

“I will. Or Kemp will.”

That sounded less than friendly. She wrapped her arms around her chest and leaned against one of the posts that held up the long porch. “That’s fine, then,” she said with forced cheer. “Thanks.”

He opened the door and hesitated. “Are you in a rush to close?”

She shrugged. “Not really. I just wanted to know when I’d need to start paying rent. I was going to go see Mr. Kemp next week about that job.”

She thought he didn’t want her around, and that was so far from the truth that it might as well have been in orbit. But he didn’t want to rush her, frighten her. Hell, he didn’t know what he wanted anymore.

“I’ll see you Monday,” he said, and got into the vehicle without another word. He didn’t even look back as he drove away.

Lisa stared after him with her heart around her ankles. So much for her theory that he was attracted to her. She supposed that he’d had second thoughts. It might be just as well. He was mourning his son, whom he’d obviously loved even if it wasn’t his own child, and she was a recent widow expecting a child of her own. She’d been spinning daydreams and it was time to stop and face reality. Cy wasn’t her future even if she’d hoped he was hers. She turned and went back into the lonely house, pausing to close and lock the door behind her.

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