Denim And Lace

She looked up, defeated. “I guess you know, too, that we’re going to lose everything we have. I only hope we’ll have enough money to repay you and the other investors.”

“I didn’t come here to talk business,” he said quietly. “I came to see if I could do anything else to help.”

She had to fight tears. “No,” she said. “Heaven knows, you’ve already done more than your share, Cade.”

“You look tired,” he said, his dark eyes sweeping over her creamy skin now pale with fatigue. She had big brown eyes, a peaches-and-cream complexion and a body that made him ache every time he looked at it. She wasn’t pretty. Without makeup she was fairly plain. But Cade saw her with eyes that had known her most of her life, and they found her lovely. She didn’t know that. He’d made sure she didn’t know it. He had to.

He removed his hat, unloading snow onto the faded Oriental rug, onto his worn boots. “Mother and the boys send their condolences, too,” he added, and his eyes darkened as he looked down at her.

Bess misunderstood that dark appraisal. He looked at her as if he despised her. Probably he did, too, she thought miserably. She was her father’s daughter, and her father’s risky venture might have cost him his ranch. She knew he’d had to borrow heavily to scrape up the money to invest in her father’s venture. Why had he done it? she wondered. But, then, who could ever figure Cade?

“That’s very kind of them, considering what my father cost you all,” she replied.

A corner of his mouth curled up, and it wasn’t a kind smile. “We lost our shirts,” he said. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette and without bothering to ask if she minded, lit it. He let out a thick cloud of smoke, his eyes taking in her thinness, the unhealthy whiteness of her face. “But you know that already. Your mother is going to have a hell of a time adjusting.”

That was true. “She isn’t strong,” she said absently, lowering her eyes to his broad chest. Muscles rippled there when he breathed. He was powerfully built, for all his slimness. She’d seen him without a shirt, working in the fields in the summer, and the memory of it made her feel warm all over. With his shirt off, he was devastating. Bronzed muscle, covered with a thick, sexy wedge of hair that ran from his chest down to his lean stomach, into the belt at his jeans...

“She smothers you,” he returned, cutting into her shocking thoughts. “She always has. You’re twenty-three, but you act sixteen. She’ll never let you grow up. She needs somebody to lean on. Now that your father’s gone, you’ll be her prop. She’ll wear you down and bring you down, just as she did him.”

Her dark eyes flinched. “What do you know about my mother?” she demanded. “You hate her, God knows why...”

“Yes, I do,” he said without hesitation, and his black eyes pierced hers, glittering like flaming coals. “And God does know why. You don’t know what she really is, but you’ll find out someday. But it will be too late.”

“What can I do, Cade, walk out on her?” she cried. “How could I, when she’s just lost everything! I’m all she’s got.”

“And she’s all you’ll ever have,” he returned coldly. “Cold comfort in your old age. She’s a selfish, cruel little opportunist with an eye to the main chance and her own comfort. Given a choice between you and a luxurious lifestyle, she’d dump you like yesterday’s garbage.”

She wanted to hit him. He aroused the most violent sensations in her. He always had. She hated that cold look on his face, the devastating masculinity of him that put her back up even at a distance. But she kept her feelings to herself, especially her temper. “You don’t know either of us,” she said.

He moved a little closer, threatening her now with just the warmth of his body, his superior height. He looked down at her with an expression in his eyes that made her toes curl inside her shoes.

“I know what I need to know,” he said. He studied her face in the silence of the hall. “You’re very pale, little one,” he said then, his voice so soft that it didn’t even sound like Cade’s. “I’m sorry about your father. He was a good man. Just misguided and gullible. He didn’t force any of us to invest, you know. He was as badly fooled by the deal as we were.”

“Thank you,” she said huskily, fighting tears. “That’s a very tolerant attitude to take.” Her eyes searched his. “But it won’t save Lariat,” she said sadly, remembering Cade’s dreams for his family ranch. “Will it?”

“I’ll save Lariat,” he said, and at that moment he looked as if he could do anything. One eye narrowed as he studied her. “Don’t let Gussie own you,” he said suddenly. “You’re a woman, not her little girl. Start acting your age.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “How?”

“My God,” he said heavily. “Don’t you even know?”

His eyes dropped to her soft mouth. He stared at it intently, and he was standing so close to her that she could smell the leather of his vest, feel the warmth of him as his finger gently caressed her parted lips. The acrid smoke from his cigarette drifted past her nostrils, but it didn’t even register. His dark eyes were on hers, and she’d never seen them so close. He had lashes as thick as her own, and tiny lines beside his eyes. His nose had a small crook in it that was only visible this close, as if it had been broken. His mouth...oh, his mouth! she thought achingly, looking at its chiseled lines, already feeling the hardness of it. She’d wondered for years how it would feel to kiss him, to be close to him. But Cade was like the moon. This was the closest he’d ever come to her, except for that one time when he’d only meant to frighten her, and she didn’t even move for fear that he might move away. He might kiss her...!

But a tiny sigh worked its way out of her tight throat, and it seemed to break the spell. His head lifted, and there wasn’t a trace of expression on his dark face. He moved away from her, without a word. But he kept his back to her for a long moment, quietly smoking his cigarette. That long, intense scrutiny had his heart turning cartwheels, and it would never do to let Bess see how vulnerable she made him.

“We’ll pay you back somehow,” she said after a minute.

He turned, as if the statement made him angry. “Will you? How?”

“I’ll find a way. I’m not helpless, even if I am a mere woman in your eyes,” she added with a faint smile.

He looked as formidable as a cold marble statue. “Challenging me?” he asked in a softly dangerous tone. His dark eyes mocked her. “That’s been tried before, but go ahead if you feel lucky.”

She almost did. But those nearly black eyes had made men back down, and she was just a grieving shadow of a woman.

“Please thank your mother for her concern,” she said quietly. “I’m sure you have better things to do than bother with us.”

“Your father was my friend,” he said shortly. “I valued him, regardless of what happened.”

He turned toward the door without glancing at her.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said as he reached for the doorknob and pulled open the big front door with its huge silver knocker. “Don’t worry. We’ll work out something.”

Her eyes closed. She was sick all over. Just last week she’d been planning parties and helping her mother choose flowers for a coming-out party. And now their world was in shreds. Their wealth was gone, their friends had deserted them. They were at the mercy of the courts. Miss Samson of Spanish House was now just plain Bess.

“It’s a long way to fall,” Cade was saying. “From debutante balls to poverty. But sometimes it takes a fall to get us out of a rut. It can be a challenge and an opportunity, or it can be a disaster. That depends on you. Try to remember that it’s not life but our reactions to it that shape us.”

For Cade it was a long speech. She stared at him hungrily, wishing she had the right to cry in his arms. She needed someone to hold her until the pain stopped. Gussie hadn’t noticed that her own daughter was grieving, but Cade had. He noticed things about her that no one else on earth seemed to, but he was ice-cold when he was around her, as if he felt supremely indifferent toward her most of the time.

She smiled faintly, thinking how uncannily he could read her mind. Sleet was mixing with the snow, making a hissing sound.

“Thanks for the wise words. But I think I can live without money,” she said after a minute.

“Maybe you can,” he replied. “But can your mother?”

“She’ll cope,” she returned.

“Like hell she’ll cope.” He tugged the hat closer over his forehead and spared her one last sweeping appraisal. God, she looked tired! He could only imagine the demands Gussie was already making on her, and she was showing the pressure. “Get some rest. You look like a walking corpse.”

He was gone then, without another word. As if he cared if she became a corpse, she thought hysterically. She’d lived for years on the vague hope that he might look at her one day and see someone he could love. That was the biggest joke of all. If there was any love in Cade, it was for Lariat, the Braided L, which had been founded by a Hollister fresh from the Civil War. There was a lot of history in Lariat. In a way the Hollisters were more a founding family of Texas than the Samsons. The Samson fortune was only two generations old, and it had been a matter of chance, not brains, that old man Barker Samson from back East had bought telephone stock in the early days of that newfangled invention. But the Hollisters were still poor.

She went upstairs to see about Gussie. It was an unusual nickname for a woman named Geraldine, but her father had always called her mother that.

Gussie was stretched out on the elegant pink ruffled coverlet of her bed with a tissue under her equally pink nose. Thanks to face-lifts, annual visits to an exclusive health spa and meticulous dieting, and a platinum-blond rinse, Gussie looked more like Bess’s sister than her mother. She had always been a beauty, but age had lent her a maturity that gave her elegance, as well. She’d removed the satin robe, and underneath it she was wearing a frothy white negligee ensemble that made her huge dark eyes look even darker and her delicate skin paler.

“There you are, darling,” she said with a sob. “Has he gone?”

“Yes, he’s gone,” Bess said quietly.

Her mother’s face actually blanched. She averted her eyes. “He’s blamed me for years,” she murmured, still half in shock, “and it wasn’t even my fault, but he’d never believe me even if I told him the truth. I suppose we should be grateful that he hasn’t raided the stables to get his money back in kind. The horses will bring something...”

Here we go again, Bess thought. “You know he wouldn’t do that. He said we’ll work something out, after the funeral.”

“No one held a gun on him and made him invest a penny,” Gussie said savagely. “I hope he does lose everything! Maybe he’ll be less arrogant!”

“Cade would be arrogant in rags, and you know it,” Bess said softly. “We’ll have to sell the house, Mama.”

Gussie looked horrified. She sat straight up, her careful coiffure unwinding in a long bleached tangle. “Sell my house? Never!”