Friends and Lovers

“John!” she burst out, shocked. “I was just riding. I’ve done it before!”

His eyes bored into hers and suddenly the world spun crazily around her and the universe dissolved into a pair of steely gray eyes. Her hands were pressing unconsciously against the front of his denim shirt, where it was casually unbuttoned over his massive chest. She moved slightly, and her fingers came into sudden, staggering contact with hair and warm, damp flesh.

He flinched at the light contact, his eyes dilated, his heavy brows drew together.

Sensing something new, something vulnerable in him, she moved her hands deliberately, sensuously, under the edges of the shirt and ran them tentatively across his chest, her lips parting as she felt the tensing, the sudden thunder of his heart under them.

His eyes seemed to blaze down at her. His fingers tightened painfully on her shoulders, his body tensed. She’d never seen John out of control, she’d never seen him anything but in perfect command of himself. But he looked as if he were about to explode, and the dangerous game she was playing only excited her.

She moved closer, her eyes studying the contours of his mouth as her fingers grew bolder and her palms flattened against his powerful chest.

All at once he caught her wrists and jerked them away. “That’s enough,” he growled harshly. “What the hell’s gotten into you?”

While she was trying to figure that out, the sound of an approaching car diverted his scorching eyes from her face.

“Oh, hell, tourists,” he said curtly, glaring toward a big touring car with two women in the front seat.

He let Madeline go as the car stopped nearby and the elderly blonde at the wheel leaned out the window, smiling pleasantly.

“Howdy!” she called.

John’s mustache twitched. “Howdy,” he drawled back.

“Is this the way to Houston?” came the reply.

“Only if you plan to cut the road as you go,” John said pleasantly. “This is the Durango ranch.”

“It is?” The woman’s huge blue eyes got wider, matching the cornflowers on her printed blouse. She murmured something to the thinner woman beside her and leaned farther out the window. “This is Big John Durango’s ranch?” she persisted.

John grinned slyly. “Heard of him?”

“My goodness, yes! I retired from business this year, and I never miss my financial magazines. Why, when oil was making headlines, John Durango was a cover story! Imagine, a man that handsome being a tycoon as well!”

John looked sickeningly modest. He tilted his hat back on his head. “What kind of business were you in, ma’am?” he asked with characteristic curiosity.

“Corporate law,” the woman said, smiling.

“Tough profession,” he said.

“Not really. It just takes some study and a lot of practice.”

Catching her breath, Madeline wondered at his charm. The blond woman was staring at him intently. “Do you suppose we might actually get a glimpse of Mr. Durango as we head back toward the highway?” she asked, wide-eyed.

John pursed his lips. “Well, ma’am, he’s a hard man to hold still, if you know what I mean. Most likely he’s carousing in the pool with his women right now. He makes me do all the work while he lives up to his playboy reputation.”

Madeline had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from giggling out loud. John’s face was deadpan, wearing a look of pure disgust.

“You work here?” the blonde asked.

“Yes, ma’am, like a mule, and that man won’t even pay me the back wages he owes me.”

“You oughtn’t let him get away with it,” the woman told him. “I’d sue him.”

“Well, if I didn’t owe him so much money, I might do that,” John agreed.

“Owe…him money?” The tourist’s eyes widened. “For what?”

“Oh, little ticky things. Like rent on this here horse.”

The blonde looked horrified, and Madeline was digging her nails into her palms to keep from howling.

“He makes his men pay rent on their horses—’his’ horses—to work ‘his’ cattle?” the tourist burst out.

“Well, he don’t take in much money on the cattle, so he had to make it up somehow, I reckon,” John said with a shrug. “Of course, it’s not hard to see how he got so rich when you consider how much money we all owe him in gambling debts.”

“You all owe him gambling debts?”

“Well, yes, ma’am,” John continued in his slowest drawl. “You see, he gets us drunk every Friday night and suckers us into playing poker with him. I reckon I owe him less than the others, though. I’ve paid my bill down to where I only got twenty thousand dollars more to pay off.”

“Oh, my God,” the tourist gasped.

John shook his head good-naturedly. “Could be worse,” he assured her.

“I don’t see how!”

John was more than willing to tell her. “He could make me sleep in the bunkhouse with the boys. Got rattlers in there ten feet long, big around as my leg.” He slapped his broad, denim-encased thigh. “Never could find a gun powerful enough to kill them things, so what you have to do is make pets of them. But snakes just don’t take to me like they do to some of them other boys, so Big John lets me sleep in the big house.”

The blonde was beginning to look suspicious. “Snakes ten feet long? Is that what they call a Texas tall tale?”

“Oh, no, ma’am,” John assured her. “I only lie when Big John tells me to, like when the income tax people ask questions about his trips to Europe and the thirty dependents that he swears are his illegitimate children—youngest girl’s twenty, you know….”

The blond woman started to laugh. She kept on until tears were rolling down her cheeks, and her companion was giggling audibly. Madeline let go of her own self-control at last, doubling over with laughter.

“Thank you for the profile, Mr. Durango,” the tourist laughed at John, her eyes twinkling. “Next time I read a story about you in some magazine, I’ll be one of the privileged few who know what a scalawag you really are. Making your men rent their horses…!”

He chuckled. “I’ve thought about it sometimes,” he swore. He pulled out his wallet and handed her a card. “I can always use a good attorney,” he told her. “If retirement gets too tough, give me a call.” He winked at her. “You’re too damned young to retire, honey.”

Madeline could have kissed him when she saw the older woman’s face begin to glow.

“Thank you,” came the heartfelt reply. “Now which way do I go to get to Houston?”

After the tourists had driven away, John mounted his gelding, waiting for Madeline to follow suit. He lit a cigarette with steady fingers and led the way toward the barn where his prize bulls were quartered like royalty. They had their own air-conditioning as well as a heating system for winter.

“You scalawag, you,” Madeline muttered, trying to tease him out of his black mood.

He didn’t even spare her a glance. He was still furious, and she didn’t know how she was going to explain her own actions. How could she, when she didn’t understand them herself?

“John, what was your father like?” she asked suddenly.