Lacy (29 page)

"Only a little." She closed her eyes.
"I love you so much," she said huskily. "So much that I'd die if
I lost you again!"

He shivered. His arm clenched, crushing her
against him. "Come here."

He drew her into the deserted hall and
maneuvered her back against the wall before he bent and kissed her until her
mouth was swollen and red and she could barely breathe.

"Take me to bed," she whispered
shakily against his lips.

"I hear a car," he whispered back, his
breathing as unsteady as her own. "We have guests arriving."

"I have a headache," she said.
"It's terrible. You have to put cold cloths on my forehead."

"Nice try," he said admiringly.
"But they'd want to come up and check on you, and that could be
embarrassing. We very nearly knocked the slats out this morning. As it is, the
bedsprings are very explicit."

"Cole!" she gasped, drawing back, her
eyes horrified. "Did someone hear?"

He grimaced. "No. But I shouldn't have
mentioned it, should I? Now you'll go all nervous worrying that they
will."

"It's.. .private," she said
uncertainly.

"Very, very private," he whispered,
rubbing the tip of his nose against hers. "I'll pull the mattress off on
the floor tonight."

"Will you?" she asked, still shy with
him and showing it.

His teeth nibbled gently at her lower lip.
"Yes. I never dreamed of so much happiness," he said deeply.

"Neither did I."

He framed her face in his big hands and kissed
her tenderly. "I'm sorry that I can't give you a baby," he whispered
sadly.

"I'm sorry, too," she said. "But
I won't be unhappy, Cole. I told you that nothing mattered more to me than
being your wife. The scars don't matter. Infertility doesn't matter." She
smiled softly. "I have no pride at all. I'd follow you crawling on my
knees, over broken glass, all the way to the ends of the earth."

His face stiffened. "I don't deserve
this," he said unsteadily. "Nothing I've done in my life merits
having you."

She reached up and kissed him. "The angels
love you, my dearest," she breathed. "So do I. Kiss me back. I like
it when you kiss me very hard!"

He had her up in his arms, kissing the life and
breath out of her, when Marion coughed audibly.

Cole put her down abruptly, and they both
flushed at the lift of Marion's eyebrows and her smile.

"Ben and his fiancee are here," she
told them demurely. "You had best wipe the lip rouge off before you come
in, Lacy," she added, with a laugh.

"Oh, it's.. .smeared, isn't it?" Lacy
said falteringly, digging for a handkerchief and her pocket mirror from her
small purse.

"Not yours, dear, " Marion teased,
glancing at her tall, flustered son.

Lacy looked at Cole and grinned wickedly. He was
covered in dark red smudges around his firm mouth. She grinned as she reached
up to wipe away the stains. He grinned, too, as the absurdity got through to
him.

They all went in together to find a nervous Ben
and a rather bored-looking brunette, along with a white-haired gentleman,
waiting impatiently.

"Here they are," Marion said,
introducing Lacy and Cole.

Jessica nodded at Lacy, but she went right up to
Cole and studied him with flirtatious interest. "So, you're Ben's older
brother," she murmured. "How
lovely
to meet you."

"Same here," Cole said, but he didn't
smile or show any particular interest. "Lacy and I have looked forward to
being introduced," he added, pulling Lacy close to him. "This is your
father?" he continued, glancing toward the older man.

"Randolph Bradley.' The other man nodded,
extending his hand to shake Cole's. His mustache twitched. "Sorry my wife
couldn't come, but she's in Europe just now."

"She detests life in the raw," Jessica
murmured. "How provincial it is out here in the sticks with all these
foul-smelling cows," she added, enjoying her feeling of utter superiority
in this rundown hovel. Ben's people were obviously hicks, and she was going to
make sure that she didn't have to suffer them too often. She and her father had
desperately needed Ben's journalistic talent, and she loved him in bed. But
this was trying, this provincial mingling.

Cole bristled at the insult, but Lacy punched
him in the ribs to keep him quiet and smiled sweetly. "I believe you
publish what's called a tabloid, Mr. Bradley."

"That's right," he said, smiling at
her. "I publish a newspaper. It's small, but we'll grow. Especially with
talent like your brother on staff."

"How many reporters do you have?" Lacy
asked.

"Only young Ben, as yet," Bradley
confessed. "He's a marvelous writer. Just what we needed."

You needed his name and heritage, Lacy thought
cynically, to open doors for you. But she didn't say it. Cole was spoiling for
a fight. For Marion's sake, and Ben's, she had to prevent him from starting
one. Ben was beaming, the insults Jessica had uttered going right over his
head. He was all but strutting in his fashionable clothing, with his elegant
fiancee at his side. Two neighbors arrived, and Ben turned with Cole to greet
them, introducing Randolph Bradley to the newcomers.

Lacy, left alone with Jessica, smiled politely.
"I like your dress, Miss Bradley." In fact, she did. It was long and
black, with lace insets, and she wore pearls with it. She was a little
overdressed, but perhaps that was intentional. It was more than obvious that
Miss Bradley was bent on showing the locals what high society looked like.
Inwardly Lacy was chuckling.

The compliment caught the other woman off-guard.
"Thank you," Jessica replied, with a haughty smile. "I found it
at one of the exclusive shops in New York." Her eyes ran over Lacy.
"You must sew," she added; although the fabric looked something like
silk, it couldn't be, she told herself. Silk on a rancher's wife was
ridiculous.

Lacy didn't twitch a muscle at the sweet insult.
"Yes," she said with a poised smile. "I make a great many of my
own clothes."

"That's not a bad effort," Jessica
said critically. "There's just one thing, dear—if you don't mind a little
advice. Those rhinestones are a bit ostentatious. I know costume jewelry is all
the rage, but that's overdone. Real diamonds like that would be worth a king's
ransom. If you don't want anyone to know they're not real, it's best to wear
just a few stones at a time."

Lacy had to stop herself from falling on the
floor laughing. Her great-aunt's necklace
was
worth
a king's ransom, like the accompanying bracelet and earrings that went with
it. Her dress was a Paris original. Jessica obviously didn't expect to find
elegance on a ranch, and who was Lacy to disabuse her? The fact that her
great-uncle had been the richest railroad tycoon in south Texas was a secret
she was going to keep until she needed to make it known. Bragging about her
monied background was something she never did. For one thing, it would
embarrass Cole.

"How kind of you to point it out,"
Lacy said, with a vacant smile. "Well, you are rather living in the
outback here." Jessica shrugged. "One doesn't expect country women to
know very much about fashion."

"You're so right," Lacy agreed
pleasantly. Other guests began to arrive. Lacy and Jessica joined the others to
greet them, but Jessica was doing her best lady-of-the-manor impression. Her
double-edged comments about the house festered until Cole was rigid from
wounded pride. Lacy pushed him into the kitchen while Marion engaged the
Bradleys in conversation. Ben hadn't seemed to notice Jessica's manner. He was
beaming as neighbors enthused over his job and his fiancee, not knowing that
most of them were simply being polite because the Whitehalls were a respected
family in Spanish Flats.

Lacy tactfully pushed the kitchen door shut and
turned to Cole. "It will be all right," she told him, pushing back a
stray lock of dark hair from his forehead. "Don't scowl so; you'll
frighten people."

"Am I scowling? That icy little brunette is
about as welcome here as sin on a Sunday," he muttered. "Ben's making
the mistake of his life."

"Indeed he is," Lacy said. "But
it is his life, and you can't make decisions for him any more than you could
make them for Katy."

He searched her blue eyes and relaxed a little.
"My God, I got lucky," he said unexpectedly.

"Lucky?" she asked, puzzled.

He touched her throat lightly, watching her
color at even the light contact. "Getting you back," he said simply.
"I'm good with horses and cattle." He shrugged and smiled
good-naturedly. "Never had much use for women, or much luck with
them."

"You did with me."

"But I didn't know it, did I?"he
asked, with a quiet sigh. "Not until the day I left to go to war and you
let me kiss you. A revelation, that was—-and I didn't have time to follow up on
it. I had to leave you."

"I cried for days," she said.
"Then I read the papers and cringed, praying that I wouldn't see your name
among the missing or dead. When the letter came, saying that you were wounded
but alive and recovering, I thanked God for a solid hour for taking care of you
for me." She smiled. "I guess you hardly thought of me those long,
hard years."

He hesitated for just a second. "I never
showed you this, did I?"

He tugged on the gold chain dripping from his
vest watch pocket, took out his worn pocket watch with the gold finish and the
train embossing worn almost illegible by years of being handled. He opened the
back, and there was a small black-and-white snapshot of Lacy's face and a tiny
lock her of dark, fine hair.

She looked at it in disbelief. "How did
you... ?"

"I had Mother get it for me,"he said
softly, "when you were asleep. I swore her to secrecy. I wanted something
of you to take with me."

Tears welled in her eyes as she looked at him.
"Why did you pull back that day?" She asked brokenly. "If we'd
been intimate, I might have had your child!"

He took a ragged breath. "Don't you think I
know that? That I haven't tormented myself knowing it?" He closed the
watch and put it away as he struggled to compose himself. "But we weren't
married, and there was no time to get that way. How could I leave you here in
such a sordid mess—with the whole community gossiping about you, with your
honor in the dirt?"

"It wouldn't have been sordid," she
said quietly.

"Yes, it would've." He traced her lips
with an unsteady forefinger. "Honor and duty and responsibility were
drilled into me from my youth. To have compromised you, even for such reasons,
would have destroyed something priceless. You are my wife," he whispered.
"My most precious wife. You came to me in purity, without a whisper of
gossip or a stain of conjecture on your character. These wild times will leave
a trail of grief for the people who forgo morality for the lure of pleasure.
The taint of promiscuity will follow them until they die." He smiled at
her. "Our memories will be bright ones, worth remembering. I'll sit with
you in my lap in the rocking chair one day long from now, and we'll think back
on our lives with delight, not regret."

It was a long speech for Cole, who could
sometimes sit for an hour without saying a word. She hadn't realized how he
felt, that it was more than desire. But the watch told its own story, and it
touched her deeply.

She smiled at him, her eyes drowsy with pleasure
and happiness. "I hope we have a long time together, Cole," she said.

"So do I." He brushed his lips over
her forehead. "I'd like to kiss you, but that war paint comes off pretty
easily."

She laughed and stepped back, her blue eyes
twinkling. "I'll not wear it from now on if you'll kiss me a lot,"
she promised, peeking up at him.

He didn't smile. His face went rigid.

Her uncertainty lay vulnerable in her eyes as
the smile faded. She was sure she'd put her foot in her mouth.

"You set me on fire,"he breathed, and
his eyes glittered strangely.

Her lips parted softly on the held breath she
expelled. "I thought I'd embarrassed you. You looked very
uncomfortable."

He raised an eyebrow. "We're married. Why
don't you look down and see for yourself why I'm uncomfortable?"