The Rawhide Man

“A proxy fight?” she asked dully.

“I have an enemy on my board of directors,” he said shortly, as if it irritated him to have to tell her even that much. “He’s shrewd and cunning, and he can sway votes. We’re almost even right now. I’ve got to have that block of shares you own or I’ll lose control of the corporation.”

“Can’t you find some other way to get them?” she asked bitterly.

He sighed. “I’ve got my attorneys working on it right now, going over your mother’s will with a fine-tooth comb. But they aren’t optimistic, and neither am I. She’s made sure that I can’t buy those shares from you. Under the terms of the will, you can’t give them to me, either. It looks as if the only way I can control them is to marry you.” He glanced sideways, his eyes hot and angry. “It would almost be worth losing the corporation,” he muttered, “to send you home.”

She drew in a weary breath. “The corporation is your problem. If you can find a way to get the stocks, well and good, but I’m not marrying you. I’d rather starve.”

“The feeling is mutual, but neither of us may have any choice.”

“I have,” she returned.

“Not with me,” he replied calmly. “Not a chance in hell. If it takes marriage, you’ll marry me.”

“I hate you!” she burst out, remembering graphically the humiliation she’d suffered from him. “Give me one good reason why I should even consider being tied to you?”

“Katy,” he said simply.

She leaned back against the seat, feeling utterly defeated, and closed her eyes. “You don’t want me around Katy, you’ve said so often enough. I’ll corrupt her.”

He lit a cigarette as he drove, staring ahead at the streetlit expanse of the sprawling city of San Antonio. “She needs a mother,” he said finally. “I’ve done some thinking about what you said at that reunion. I’m not agreeing that you were right,” he added with a glare. “But I’m willing to concede that you weren’t totally off base. She’s growing up tough. Maybe too tough. A softening influence wouldn’t be such a bad idea. And she likes you,” he growled, as if that was totally incomprehensible.

“I like her, too,” she said quietly, and let him chew on that. “But what are you offering me? You’d be getting control of my shares and a mother for Katy, but what would I get?”

His eyebrows went up. “What do you want? To sleep with me?” He let his eyes wander over her wildly flushed face. “I suppose I could force myself….”

“Damn you!” she burst out, hurt by the sarcastic way he’d said it.

He turned his attention back to the road. “Come on, wildcat, tell me what you want.”

She shifted restlessly. “Not to be forced into marrying you.”

“That’s a foregone conclusion.” He puffed away on his cigarette. “Tell you what, society girl. If worse comes to worst and we have to go through with it, I’ll maintain that antebellum disaster for you, and you and Katy can spend summers there.”

She turned her head and studied his unyielding profile. “You would?”

“I would.” And he meant it, she knew. When he gave his word, he kept it.

She pursed her lips. “We couldn’t just have a quick marriage and a quicker annulment? To satisfy the terms of the will?”

“What would that do to Katy?” he asked suddenly.

She drew in a slow breath and let it out. “Oh.”

“Yes, oh. She’s so damned excited about having you here, she’s half crazy,” he said. “I told her,” he added with a cold stare, “that you were coming out here so that we could decide whether or not we wanted to get married.”

“She’ll never believe you want to marry me,” she replied tersely.

“Won’t she?” A mocking smile curled his lips. “I told her I was nursing a secret passion for you and hoped to win you over.”

“You bas—!”

“Uh, uh, uh,” he cautioned. “None of those unladylike words, if you please. You’ll embarrass me.”

“Satan himself couldn’t do that,” she shot back. “Oh, Jude, let me go home,” she moaned. “I can’t fight you. I’m too tired.”

“Then stop trying. You won’t win.”

She laughed bitterly. “Don’t I know it?” She turned away and looked out the window at the flat horizon as they headed south out of San Antonio. Tears pricked at her eyes as she thought how far away from home she was. From her mother. A sob caught in her throat and tears burst from her eyes as the control she’d maintained so valiantly slipped and broke.

“My God, you don’t even cry like a normal woman,” he ground out. “Stop that!”

She shook her head and dabbed at the tears. “I loved her,” she managed shakily. “It’s only been two days, for God’s sake, Jude…!”

“Well, all the tears in the world won’t bring her back, will they?” he asked irritably. “And in the shape she was in, would you really want to?”

She shifted on the seat. He couldn’t understand grief, she supposed, never having felt it. His mother had died when he was an infant, and his father had never been demonstrative. He had been even more unapproachable than Jude, worlds harder. Which was saying a lot, because the Rawhide Man was like steel.

She dashed the tears away and took a deep breath. “I don’t want to live with a coldhearted statue like you,” she said. “You’re…you’re like rawhide.”

“But you’ll do it, if it comes to that. You’ll do it for Katy’s sake.” He turned onto the long road that led to the ranch.

“I’ll run away!” she said dramatically.

“I’ll come after you and bring you back,” he said carelessly.

“Jude!” she ground out, exasperated.

“Remember that summer when you were fifteen?” he recalled with a chuckle. “You went out into the brush with Jess Bowman, and I rode all night to find you. You were huddled up in his coat with a twisted ankle, and he was walking down the road trying to flag down a car.”

“I remember,” she said, shuddering. “You broke his nose.”

“I hit when I get mad,” he said. “He riled me plenty, leaving you out there alone at night with rattlers crawling and cougars on the loose.”

“He couldn’t have carried me,” she protested.

“I did,” he reminded her. “And I wasn’t as heavy in those days as I am now.”

No, he’d filled out and firmed up and he was devastating. All man. She remembered that brief walk in his hard arms, the strength and power of his frame as he strode along. It was the safest she’d ever felt in her life—and the most afraid.

“That was the summer after Elise died, before I got Katy away from her stepfather. The last summer, too, that you ever spent any length of time at the ranch,” he recalled. “That was when you started avoiding me.”

She felt her cheeks go hot at the memory. She’d felt something that long-ago night that had haunted her ever since. And because it had frightened her, she’d avoided the ranch whenever possible, except for flying visits to see Katy. And the family reunions, of course, which came frequently during the year. Not that they were really family, but because of the partnership of her father and his, she was always included and expected to take part.

“Why did you stay away?” he asked quietly. “We’ve had our disagreements over the years, God knows, but I’ve never hurt you.”

That was true enough. She stared down at her hands, folded in her lap. “I don’t know,” she lied.