Unlikely Lover (16 page)

She looked up unexpectedly and found a strange, haunting look on his dark face. “It’s an impasse, don’t you think?” she asked him. “You don’t want a wife, and I don’t want an unattached temporary lover. So all that’s really left is friendship.”

He clutched the hat tighter. “You’re making it sound cheap,” he said in a faintly dangerous tone. He didn’t like what she was saying.

“Isn’t it?” she persisted, rising to her feet. He still towered over her, but it gave her a bit of an advantage. “You’d get all the benefits of married life with none of the responsibility. And what would I get, Ward? A little notoriety as the boss’s mistress, and after you got tired of me, I’d be handed some expensive parting gift and left alone with my memories. No respectability, no self-respect, tons of guilt and loneliness. I think that’s a pretty poor bargain.”

“You little prude,” he said curtly. “What do you know about grown-up problems, you with your spotless conscience? It’s so easy, isn’t it, all black and white. You tease a man with your body until he’s crazy for it, you try to trap him into a marriage he doesn’t want, you take whatever you can get and walk out the door. What does the man have out of all that?”

His attitude shocked her. She hadn’t realized just how poisoned he was against the female sex until he made that bitter statement.

“Is that what she did to you?” she asked gently. “Did she tease you beyond endurance and then marry someone else because what you gave her wasn’t enough?”

His face grew harder than she’d ever seen it. He’d never talked about it, but she was forcing his hand.

“Yes,” he said curtly. “That’s precisely what she did. And if I’d been fool enough to marry her, she’d have cut my throat emotionally and financially, and she wouldn’t even have looked back to see if I was bleeding to death on her way to the bank!”

She moved closer to him, hating that hurt in his eyes, that disillusionment that had drawn his face muscles taut. “Shall I tell you what most women really want from marriage? They want the closeness of caring for one man all their lives. Looking after him, caring about him, doing little things for him, loving him…sharing good times and bad. A good marriage doesn’t have a lot to do with money, from what I’ve seen. But mutual trust and caring about each other makes all the difference. Money can’t buy those.”

He felt himself weakening and hated it. She was under his skin, all right, and it was getting worse all the time. He wanted her until he ached, and it didn’t stop with his body. She stirred him inside, in ways no other woman ever had. Except Caroline. Caroline. Would he ever forget?

“Pretty words,” he said bitterly, searching her eyes.

“Pretty ideals,” she corrected. “I still believe in those old virtues. And someday I’ll find a man who believes in them, too.”

“In some graveyard, maybe.”

“You are so cynical!” she accused, exasperated.

“I had good teachers,” he retorted, slamming his Stetson down on his head to cock it arrogantly over one eye. “Are you ready?”

“I’m ready,” she muttered, sounding every bit as bad-tempered as he did.

He took her bag in one hand and opened the apartment door with the other. She followed him out, locked the door with a sigh and put the key in her purse. Her life was so unpredictable these days. Just like the man beside her.

The commercial flight seemed longer than it actually was. Mari had found a few magazines to read at the huge Atlanta Hartsfield International Airport, and it was a good thing that she had because Ward pulled his hat over his eyes and folded his arms and he hadn’t said one word to her yet. The flight attendants were already serving their lunch, but Ward only glanced up, refusing food. Mari knew, as she nibbled at ham and cheese on a bun, that he had to be furious or sick. He never refused food for any other reason.

Mari was sorry that they’d quarreled. She shouldn’t have been because, if he was angry, at least he wouldn’t be making passes at her. But if he stayed angry, it was going to make working for him all that much harder, and she’d promised, God knew why, to do his secretarial work. Now she couldn’t imagine what had possessed her to agree. At the time it had seemed a wonderful idea. Of course, she’d had some crazy idea that he’d cared a little in order to come all that way to get her. Now it was beginning to seem as if he hated himself for the very thought. Mari was miserable. She should have said no. Then she remembered that she had, and that, ultimately, she had little choice in the matter.

She sighed over her food, glancing at him under the hat. “Aren’t you hungry?” she offered.

“If I was hungry, I’d be eating, wouldn’t I?” he muttered indistinctly.

She shrugged. “Then go right ahead and starve if you want to. I couldn’t care less.”

He lifted the brim of the hat and glared at her. “Like hell you couldn’t,” he retorted. “You and your pristine little conscience would sting for months.”

“Not on your account,” she assured him as she finished the ham. “After all, you’re starving yourself. I haven’t done anything.”

“You’ve ruined my appetite,” he said curtly.

Her eyebrows arched. “How did I do that, pray tell? By mentioning the word marriage? Some people don’t mind getting married. I expect to do it myself one of these days. You see, I don’t have your blighted outlook. I think you get out of a relationship what you put into it.”

His green eyes narrowed, glittering. “And just what would you plan to put into one?”

“Love, laughter and a lot of pillow talk,” she said without hesitation. “I expect to be everything my husband will ever want, in and out of bed. So you just go right ahead and have affairs, Mr. Jessup, until you’re too old to be capable of it, and then you can live alone and count your money. I’ll let my grandchildren come and visit you from time to time.”

He seemed to swell all over with indignation. “I can get married any time I want to,” he said shortly. “Women hound me to death to marry them!”

Her mouth made a soft whistle. “Do tell? And here you are pushing forty and still single…”

“I’m pushing thirty-six, not forty!”

“What’s the difference?” she asked reasonably.

He opened his mouth to answer, glared fiercely at her and then jerked his hat down over his eyes with a muttered curse. He didn’t speak to her again until the plane landed in Texas.

“Are you going to ignore me the rest of the way?” Mari said finally when they were in the Chrysler just a few minutes outside of Ravine.

“I can’t carry on a civilized conversation without having you blow up at me,” he said gruffly.

“I thought it was the other way around.” She picked a piece of lint off her sleeve. “You’re the one doing all the growling, not me. I just said that I wanted to get married and have babies.”

“Will you stop saying that?” He shifted angrily in the seat. “I’ll get hives just thinking about it.”

“I don’t see why. They’ll be my babies, not yours.”

He was grinding his teeth together. He’d just realized something that he hadn’t considered. Cousin Bud was young and personable and hungry to settle down. He’d take one look at this sweet innocent and be hanging by his heels, trying to marry her. Bud wasn’t like Ward; he was carefree and his emotions were mostly on the surface. He didn’t have scars from Caroline, and he wasn’t afraid of love. In fact, he seemed to walk around in a perpetual state of it. And here was Ward, bringing him the perfect victim. The only woman Ward had ever wanted and hadn’t got. Bud might be the one…Suddenly he slammed on the brakes.

“What!” Mari burst out, gasping as she grasped the dash. “What is it?”

“Just a rabbit,” he muttered with a quick glance in her direction. “Sorry.”

She stared at him. She hadn’t seen any rabbit, and he sure was pale. What was wrong with him?

“Are you all right?” she asked cautiously, her voice soft with helpless concern.

It was the concern that got to him. He felt vulnerable with her. That evidence of her soft heart wound strands around him, binding him. He didn’t want marriage or ties or babies! But when he looked at her, he felt such sweet longings, such exquisite pleasure. It had nothing to do with sex or carefree lust. It was…disturbing.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “I’m all right.”

A little farther down the road he suddenly pulled into a shallow farm road that was little more than ruts in the grass. It went beyond a closed fence, through a pasture, toward a distant grove of trees.

“My grandfather’s place,” he said as he turned off the engine. “My father was born out there, where you see those trees. It was a one-room shack in those days, and my grandmother once fought off a Comanche raiding party with an old Enfield rifle while my grandfather was up in Kansas on a trail drive.”

He got out of the car and opened her door. “I know the owner,” he said when she was standing beside him. “He doesn’t mind if I come here. I like to see the old place sometimes.”

He didn’t ask if she wanted to. He just held out his big hand. Without hesitation she placed her slender one in it and felt tingly all over as his fingers closed warmly around it.

She felt small beside him as they walked. He opened and closed the gate, grinning at her curious stare.

“Any cattleman knows the value of a closed fence,” he remarked as he grasped her hand once more and began to walk along the damp ruts. It had rained recently and there were still patches of mud. “In the old days a rancher might very well shoot a greenhorn who left a gate open and let his cattle get out.”

“Were there really Indian raids around here?” she asked.

“Why, sure, honey,” he said, smiling down at her. “Comanche, mostly, and there were Mexican bandidos who raided the area, too. Cattle rustling was big business back then. It still is in some areas. Except now they do it with big trucks, and in the old days they had to drive the herd out of the country or use a running iron.”

She glanced up curiously. “What’s a running iron?”

“A branding iron with a curved tip,” he said. “It was used to alter brands so a man could claim another man’s cattle. Here.” He let go of her hand and found a stick and drew a couple of brands in the dirt, explaining how a running iron could be used to add an extra line or curve to an existing brand and change its shape entirely.

“That’s fascinating!” she said.

“It’s also illegal, but it happened quite a lot.” He put the stick down and stuck his hands in his pockets, smiling as he looked around at feathery mesquite and live oak trees and open pasture. “God, it’s pretty here,” he said. “Peaceful, rustic…I never get tired of the land. I guess it’s that damned Irish in my ancestry.” He glanced down. “My grandmother, now, says it’s British. But just between us, I don’t think O’Mara is a British name, and that was my great-grandmother’s maiden name.”

“Maybe your grandmother doesn’t like the Irish,” she suggested.

“Probably not since she was jilted by a dashing Irishman in the war.”

“Which war?” Mari asked cautiously.

“I’m afraid to ask,” he said conspiratorially. “I’m not quite sure just how old she is. Nobody knows.”

“How exciting,” she said with a laugh.

He watched her with a faint smile, fascinated by the change in her when she was with him. That pale, quiet woman in the bank bore no resemblance to this bright, beautiful one. He scowled, watching her wander through the wooded area where the old ramshackle ranch house sagged under the weight of age and rotting timbers and rusting tin. She made everything new and exciting, and the way she seemed to light up when he was near puzzled him, excited him. He wondered if she might care about him. Love him…

She whirled suddenly, her face illuminated with surprised delight. “Ward, look!”

There were pink roses by the steps. A profusion of vines bore pink roses in tight little clusters, and their perfume was everywhere.

“Aren’t they beautiful!” she enthused, bending to smell them. “What a heavenly aroma!”

“Legend has it that my father’s grandmother, Mrs. O’Mara, brought those very roses from Calhoun County, Georgia, and nursed them like babies until they took hold here. She carried them across the frontier in a pot. In a Conestoga wagon, and saved them from fire, flood, swollen river crossings, robbers, Indians and curious little children. And they’re still here. Like the land,” he mused, staring around with eyes full of pride. “The land will be here longer than any of us and very little changed despite our meddling.”

She smiled. “You sound just like a rancher.”

He turned. “I am a rancher.”

“Not an oilman?”

He shrugged. “I used to think oil was the most important thing in the world. Until I got plenty of it. Now I don’t know what’s the most important thing anymore. My whole life seems to be upside down lately.” He stared straight at her. “I was a happy man until you came along.”

“You were a vegetable until I came along,” she replied matter-of-factly. “You thought robbing people was all right.”

“Why, you little devil,” he said in a husky undertone, and his eyes went a glittering green. “You little devil!”

She laughed because there was as much mischief as threat in that look. She started running across the meadow, a picture in her full gray skirt and pretty pink blouse, with her dark hair gleaming in the sun. He ran after her in time to catch the colorful glimmer of something moving just in front of her in the grass.

“Mari!” he called out, his voice deep and cutting and full of authority. “Stop!”

She did, with one foot in midair, because he sounded so final. She didn’t look down. With her inborn terror of snakes, she knew instinctively what he was warning her about.

“Don’t move, baby,” he breathed, stopping himself just within reach of a fallen limb from one of the oaks. “Don’t move, don’t breathe. It’s all right. Just stand perfectly still….”

He moved with lightning speed picking up a heavy branch and swinging his arm down, slamming. There was a feverish rattling, like bacon sizzling in a pan, and then only a bloody, writhing, coiling mass on the ground.

She was numb with unexpressed terror, her eyes huge at the thing on the ground that, only seconds ago, could have taken her life. She started to speak, to tell him how grateful she was, when he caught her up in his arms and brought his hard mouth down bruisingly on hers.