Cactus Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (49 page)

      
The dress was a vibrant deep bronze that highlighted her unusual changeable hair color and flattered her golden, tanned complexion. Yes, the color was right. Her cheeks glowed and her green cat's eyes were sparkling. But the cut was scandalous! Her dainty curves had never been so blatantly on display. Well, almost never, she amended to herself with a flush, running her hands down the sleek lines of the skirt.

      
She had chosen satin for the gown. It was rich, lustrous, and very clinging, hugging her high, pert breasts, molding beneath them to accent her tiny waist, and then gently flaring to the tips of her matching high-heeled slippers. The sleeves were long and tapered at the wrists, emphasizing her fine bones and delicate hands. However, it was the shockingly low-cut neckline, dripping with delicate cream lace that was causing her to have second thoughts. The lace brushed the tips of her breasts, emphasizing the décolletage.

      
“Now if I was built like Tomasina Carver or Edith LeBeau, I'd be barking up the right tree...but I'm too little.” She placed her fingers gingerly around her small upthrust breasts and measured.

      
Just then Lena came into the room. “
Dios
! What a picture you make,” the maid said in awe, recalling the shy, awkward girl back at the ranch who had to work up her courage just to put on a simple peasant's dress. Was that only a few months ago? “You are perfect!”

      
“No,” Charlee said petulantly. “I'm too flat-chested to wear this. Try to sew some of the lace over the cleft here.”

      
Lena laughed. “If you have a cleft there—and you do—you have no reason to cover it up. A woman does not have to be a great cow with bulging udders to look good in a low-cut dress,” she finished, inspecting the fit of the gown with a critically appraising eye.

      
“But...”

      
“No buts,” Lena remonstrated, playfully slapping her hands away from the neckline. “You will be the most beautiful woman in San Antonio. Now, let me help you place the mantilla and combs properly.”

      
As she artfully set two beautiful ivory combs in the piled burnished masses of Charlee's hair, she chattered on. “Oh, I saw Lupe in the market yesterday. She had just spent two days at Bluebonnet cleaning for Don Diego.” Feeling Charlee stiffen, she hesitated a moment, then picked up the length of matching cream lace that would go over Charlee's hair, and began to attach it to the combs. “It seems,” she paused for effect, “everyone from the rancho will be in town today.”

      
“I'll be glad to see Asa and Weevils. It's been weeks. Lee just came back from some errand in Galveston yesterday,” Charlee said, purposely omitting the one name they were both thinking about.

      
“I am so glad you asked me to work for you,
Señorita
Charlee,” Lena burst out impulsively. “But I do so wish you and the
patrón
would marry and stop all this foolishness. That
bruja
is gone now, and there is no reason—”

      
“There are lots of reasons, but I don't want to talk about them, please, Lena.” Charlee's tone was gentle but final.

      
Sighing, Lena stood back and admired her handiwork. Well, if the
patrón
came to town and saw the little one looking like this, how could he resist her?

* * * *

      
All his friends had called Willis Elijah Wilcox Billy since he was a boy. Now at twenty-one, he felt himself a man grown and wished he could undo the nickname, but it stuck. The only one who called him Willis was his mother, Hannah.

      
Thinking of her, he winced. She was furious that he had been courting Charlee McAllister.

      
Well, he just didn't care, that was all, he averred to himself. It was high time he asserted his independence from Mama and Suzannah. Taking a deep breath, he swallowed hard, and his Adam's apple scraped on his stiff shirt collar. Nervously, he looked around the neat, cheerful parlor with its soft blue curtains and stout overstuffed chairs. Several tallow candles were lit, although the sun had not yet set. Walking over to the mirror, he slicked down his thatch of unruly russet hair for the hundredth time. A generous if rather weak mouth, wide-set blue eyes, and a prominent straight nose greeted his inspection. Yes, he was certainly presentable looking. His stocky frame was muscular and well proportioned. Then why was he so nervous every time he escorted Charlee anywhere?

      
It must be love! His absentminded mooning was interrupted when a low feminine voice called to him from the parlor door.

      
“I’m ready, Billy.”

      
He turned and stood frozen in admiration, wide-eyed and enthralled, then let out a rush of breath and said hoarsely, “If you don't beat all. Charlee, you're so beautiful I can scarce believe my luck!”

      
She smiled as his bulging eyes raked her slim bronze figure, lingering on her cleavage. Then with a reddened blush, he met her eyes. When she offered her small hand, he kissed it gallantly and put it around his arm. They were off to the Johnsons' fandango.

      
Ernst and Sally Lou Johnson were relative newcomers to San Antonio. He was the owner of the second-largest mercantile in town and had just moved his family from Galveston to the dryer inland climate of San Antonio, where he was giving Simon Bainbridge sharp competition indeed. The Johnsons had built a large frame house with two stories, decorating it as if they were still residing in Georgia, from where Ernst had moved twenty years earlier. The grand ballroom would have done justice to many in Savannah, high-ceilinged and spacious with a polished plank floor and gleaming glass-paned windows.

      
If the decor was graciously southern, the entertainment was pure Texian raucous, loud and hearty. Out in the backyard a whole steer was turning on a spit, roasting to golden brown succulence, while the ever-favored pork was present as well, covered in a bed of the sizzling coals, steaming to mouth-watering tenderness. The pungent smells of chili pies and the sweet fragrance of crispy cornbread were added to the tantalizing aroma of the meat. Whiskey, sweet wines, and home-brewed beer flowed freely, while a brace of fiddlers warmed up their instruments with a fast reel.

      
Men and women dressed in their best finery danced, laughed, ate, and drank. Women with elaborate feathers in their hair and tightly cinched gowns sweated during the fast reels and waltzes, while men surreptitiously loosened stocks and shirt collars to breathe more freely between sets.

      
From the moment Charlee arrived on Billy's arm, she had been besieged with requests to dance. Men brought her refreshments, escorted her to the yard for fresh air, sought anything she desired. Several older men, one a bachelor from Goliad, the other a local widower, indicated an interest in seeing her again; but she decided the youthful adoration of inexperienced boys such as Billy was the safest choice. She would pick and choose her callers strictly for fun now. Time enough later—if ever—to think seriously about settling down. Then, maybe a rich older man, but one who'd be indulgent...

      
“Deep thoughts to wrinkle a pretty brow, Cat Eyes.” His rough gravel voice glided across the night air like a caress. Slade had been watching her reverie from behind a brace of poplars near the side veranda. When her current adoring young pup had left her side to fetch something for her, he quickly climbed up the stairs.

      
Caught in her rather mercenary fantasy, Charlee flushed and stared into Slade's glowing eyes. Lord, he looked splendid, the hard, chiseled planes and angles of his face lit in the torchlight from the yard. His firm, sensuous lips widened in a blinding white slash of a smile. He was dressed for the
Tejano
fiesta in the traditional Hispanic horseman's fanciest garb, tight black pants with flared legs and a short fitted bolero jacket that emphasized his broad shoulders and slim hips. The whole striking ensemble was trimmed with silver conchos and accented by the snowy white lawn shirt, opened to reveal a narrow expanse of golden chest hair. She had never seen him in black before. It made him seem exotic and foreign, hypnotically dangerous.

      
Charlee instinctively took a step back and said, “What are you doing here?” As she asked the question, she felt the heat of his eyes on her body, even noted the faint intake of breath as he took in her satiny curves at close range. A small, queer thrill began to tingle in widening ripples from somewhere deep inside her, radiating out to her fingertips.

      
“I came to celebrate the feast day, same as everyone else in San Antonio,” he said, reaching out one warm, callused hand and cupping it possessively around her shoulder, turning her to face him. “You've danced with every man and boy here tonight. Dance with me. Please?” He waited a moment while she struggled to catch her breath. “Or are you afraid to be in my arms, Charlee, afraid of yourself.”

      
The taunt was soft, caressing, but nonetheless, it steeled her nerves. “I scarcely need fear you, Jim Slade. Come, you'll have your dance.” She turned briskly, freeing her shoulder from the warm pressure of his hand; but he quickly caught up to her and slipped her arm through his, leading her to the large, crowded ballroom.

      
Just as they entered, the raucous stomp that had been playing ended and a slow, sentimental ballad wafted out on the warm night air. He held her much too closely, she knew, but she was powerless to stop him. They moved in perfect rhythm, their bodies seeming to melt into one another.

      
“People are staring,” she breathed against his neck, trying halfheartedly to pull away.

      
“Compared to our little bath in the fountain, I think we're souls of decorum now,” he whispered, relishing his hold on her. She smelled like wild honey and sweet clover. “You look like a beautiful Castilian lady in that mantilla.”

      
She stiffened in his arms. “But we both know I'm just plain Charlee McAllister from Missouri, not Spain, certainly not pedigreed.”

      
“Don't sell yourself short, Chastity Charlene. Quite a mouthful, that name, not plain at all.”

      
“You read Richard Lee's diary!”

      
“Lee brought it to me. It was evidence,” he replied evenly. Noting the sharpness in her voice; he maneuvered them to the door and whisked her out onto the veranda, near the place where he had first accosted her.

      
At once she turned on him with green eyes spitting. “Yes, evidence, all right. Evidence Tomasina was guilty of murder. What did you do, burn the diary, then help her escape justice?”

      
Looking around at the people standing on the porch and leaning against the railing, he said in a gravelly whisper, “This isn't the time or place for me to explain about Sina.” Guiding her away from the curious ears of the revelers, he tried to lead her down the back porch steps into a darkened portion of the yard.

      
But Charlee was having none of it. She stopped mulishly at the top of the steps and faced him. “There will never be a good time or place, will there, because nothing you could possibly say to me could make up for my brother's death going unpunished. I'm not a blue-blooded
criolla
and I don't want to be. You're looking for red raspberries in the choke-cherry patch,
Don Diego
.” Looking him up and down and taking in his elegantly tailored Mexican clothes, she said, “Go back to your
Tejanos
and leave me alone.”

      
He caught one slim wrist as she turned to flee, pulling her into his embrace. He was standing on the first step but she was still on the porch floor, causing her to look eye to eye with him. She saw the burning, compelling hunger of the male predator written all across his features.

      
“No...no, I won't—”

      
Her protest was muffled by his mouth, hot and insistent, slashing across hers, brushing, bruising, opening her lips and probing with his tongue. He pressed her full length to his body, holding her small heart-shaped face with one hand clamped behind her slender neck, stilling her struggles.

      
She pulled at his thick golden sideburns and writhed to get free for a moment. Then, abandoning the efforts as futile, she dug her long nails into his thick hair and pressed her body tightly to his in surrender.

      
He could sense her quivering assent even before she gave it, but when her sweet little tongue darted into his mouth and those delicate little hip bones rocked against his belly, he was blinded by passion, lost, as he reached down to scoop her into his arms and carry her home to Bluebonnet.

      
“What the devil do you think you're doing, Slade!” Billy Wilcox’s thin voice broke on the tall man's name, but he took a steadying breath and let his indignation build to give him courage. “Unhand this young lady. She's under my protection tonight.”

      
Jim was pulled from the sweet promise of Charlee's yielding body to confront her quivering escort. He shook his head to clear his drugged senses as the piping voice of the Wilcox boy persisted.

      
Charlee struggled free, mortified, as she realized how her passionate abandon must have looked to the group that was gathering around Billy.

      
“It seems to me I'm always being pestered by the boys you have hanging on your skirts, Charlee.” He released his grip on her, but stepped in front of her to challenge Wilcox. “You don't want to get hurt, Billy. Ask the little lady what happened to Paul Bainbridge a couple of months back. And he's a lot bigger than you.”