Lacy

He drew in a slow breath. “The war won’t last forever. And I’m not suicidal. No more tears.”

She managed a shaky smile. “Not until you leave, at least,” she promised.

His fingers traced her cheek tenderly. “I thought you were afraid of me, all these years. But it wasn’t fear, was it?” he asked, his jaw tightening as he looked at her. “You’ve loved me for a long time, and I never saw it.”

She nodded slowly. “I never meant you to know.”

“It’s just as well that I do, now,” he replied. He bent and brushed a slow, tender kiss over her lips. “Write to me,” he whispered. “I’ll come home, Lacy.”

“I’ll pray every night for you,” she replied. “Oh, Cole….”

“No more tears,” he said sternly when her eyes began to sparkle with them. “I can’t bear to see you cry.”

“Sorry.” She drew back from him, her heart in her face. “I’d better go, hadn’t I?”

“I’m afraid so.” His eyes swept over her one last time. “We’ll say our proper good-byes when I leave.”

“Our proper good-byes,” she agreed.

It had been the last time she’d seen him alone. He said a very formal good-bye to the family before a neighbor drove him to the train station. Lacy watched the Model T Ford drive away and she cried piteously, along with Marion and Katy, for the rest of the day.

Cole did write, but not to Lacy. He wrote to the family, and because there was no mention at all of what they’d shared in his bedroom, she didn’t write to him, either. Apparently he was eager to forget the intimacy. It was never referred to. His letters were full of airplanes and the beauty of France. He never spoke of the dogfights he participated in, but his name drifted back home to Texas in newspaper accounts of the air war, and along with several other Americans, he became known as an ace.

Katy grew wildly infatuated with the aces she read about—and especially with one they called Turk Sheridan, a blond Montana boy with nerves of steel who was considered the most daring of the fliers.

Late in 1918, as life droned on at the ranch, they received word that Cole had been wounded. Lacy almost went mad before they finally found out that he wasn’t critically ill, and that he would live. The letter came from Turk Sheridan, who added that he might come back with Cole to Texas after the war as the two men had become fast friends and Turk himself was a rancher.

Katy was over the moon about their prospective new lodger, but Lacy was worried about Cole. When his letters came again, they were in a different handwriting, and the tone of them was stiff and distant.

Cole came home soon after the armistice in 1919, with the big blond Turk in tow. Lacy went running to Cole, despite all her stubborn determination not to. When he put out his hands and almost pushed her away, his rejection total and all too public, Lacy felt something die inside her. There was no expression on Cole’s hard face, and nothing in his eyes. He was a different man.

He threw himself into the business of trying to get the ranch back on its feet, while Katy began a long and determined pursuit of Turk Sheridan, whose real name was Jude. Soon after the war, a wealthy great-aunt of Lacy’s died and left her an inheritance of monumental proportions. Lacy was grateful because it gave her some measure of independence, but it seemed to set her even further apart from Cole, who was foundering in hard financial times following the war.

They planted crops to supplement the cattle they raised, and Turk got his hands on an old biplane and used it to dust the crops with pesticides. It amazed everyone that not only did Cole refuse to go near it, he didn’t even care to discuss airplanes anymore. That shocked Lacy, who one day made the mistake of asking him why he’d lost his fascination with flying. His scalding reply had hurt her pride and her feelings, and she’d walked wide around him afterward.

About that time, young Ben developed a huge crush on Lacy. It was disturbing, because he was eighteen to her twenty-three and Lacy’s heart had always belonged to Cole, even if he didn’t want it. She let Ben down as gently as she could, but in revenge, he coaxed Lacy and Cole to a line cabin and locked them in, having had the foresight to also nail the shutters closed so that they couldn’t be forced from the inside.

Cole mistakenly thought Lacy had put Ben up to it, knowing how she felt about him, and Lacy shivered remembering the harsh, furious accusations he’d thrown at her all through the long night until some of the ranch hands rescued them the next morning. Lacy was compromised, and Cole was forced to marry her—not only to spare her reputation, but to save the family’s good name.

He’d been glad enough when she’d left. If that was so, then why, she wondered, did he want her to come back now? She didn’t dare think about it too much. With any luck, it wasn’t purely because of his family. There was a small possibility that he’d actually missed her.

She’d bluffed him into agreeing to her terms, to sharing a room. But remembering that night he’d stayed in her bed, she had faint misgivings about the wisdom of her actions. Despite her longing for a child and the depth of her love for him, she dreaded its physical expression. Well, she thought, that was a bridge she’d cross when she had to. Meanwhile, going home had a delight all its own. She was getting tired of the high life.

Chapter

Three

Katy Whitehall opened her eyes to a blinding whiteness. She groaned and turned over, shielding her eyelids from the sunlight coming in through the white curtains.

Her long dark hair lay in tangles around a white face, and huge green eyes opened, wincing. She tried to lift her head, groaned again, and fell back onto the pillows with a resigned sigh.

The door opened and Cassie came in, shaking her gray head, glowering down at the young woman as she put a cup of hot tea on the bedside table.

“Told you, I did,” she said in her deepest drawl, her black eyes accusing. “Told you that firewater would give you the devil’s own headache. Shameful, that’s what it is, coming in here in the wee hours of the morning. Mr. Cole would horsewhip you, was he here to see!”

“Well, he isn’t. He’s in San Antonio, selling cattle.” Katy dragged her slender body into a sitting position, her small breasts outlined under the pale fabric of her gown. She pushed back the weight of her hair and reached for the tea.

“Maybe he’s gone to see Miss Lacy, as well,” Cassie ventured, her hands on her broad hips.

Katy eyed her carefully. “Think so?”

“Well, miracles happen, don’t they?”

Katy forced a smile as she sipped the sweet tea. “So they say. Ben shouldn’t have done that to them,” she murmured.

“One joke too many,” Cassie agreed. “Left alone, they might have come to marriage all by themselves, for the right reasons.” Her dark face puckered as she pursed her lips. “He used to watch her, when she first came to live here,” she reminded Katy. “My man Jack Henry said he’d be mechanicing and he’d see Mr. Cole watching her like a chicken hawk, them dark eyes just fiery and full of longing.”

“You read too many of those outrageous novels,” Katy chided, giggling as the old woman shifted uncomfortably and averted her eyes. “You know very well that Cole’s immune to women. If he wasn’t, he’d have married long ago. He never was around girls very much. It was always business.”

“Had to be, didn’t it?” Cassie defended him. “After Mr. Bart died, weren’t nobody else to take care of his place. Ben were too young, and Miss Marion never had no business head.”

“Thank God Cole did, or we’d all be out looking for work.” Katy stretched, shuddering as the movement hurt her head. “I never should have had that third drink,” she moaned, holding her forehead in both hands.

“Mr. Turk had words with that young man who brung you home last night,” Cassie volunteered suddenly.

Katy’s heart jumped, but she didn’t look up immediately. Her big green eyes widened. “Turk did?”

Cassie smiled. Katy was only twenty-one; every single emotion showed on her face. Cassie had always known how she felt about Turk, but it wouldn’t do to encourage her. Cole wouldn’t stand for it. He’d already made that clear.

“Mr. Cole told him to watch out for you,” the old woman said.

Katy glowered. “I don’t need watching.”

“Yes, ma’am, you do,” came the hot reply. “Carousing all hours, drinking in public, cussing like a sailor…You’re shaming us all! Your poor mama won’t even go to her bridge club because she’s so afraid somebody will say something about you to her!”

The younger woman sat up straighter. “Well, Danny Marlone doesn’t think I shame him,” she replied, hiding her sudden vulnerability to her mother’s pride in blustering.

“He’s a gangster!” Cassie was off and running now, her eyes huge in her face. “Yes, he is—One of them Chicago mobsters, right down to that striped suit he wears and them fancy cigars he smokes and that big fedora! He’s not the man for you! He’s leading you off into hell!”

Katy sighed wearily. “Danny’s a nice man. He’s just a northerner, and that’s why you don’t like him. I like him a lot. He’s good to me. He buys me things,” she added, touching the diamond necklace he’d given her just last night. She smiled. “He’s very generous.”

Cassie’s eyes narrowed. “And what you giving him in return, girl?”

Katy actually blushed. “Not…that!” she burst out, sitting straighter and then groaning when it hurt her head. “I’m not sleeping with him!”

“Maybe he’ll expect you to, what with presents like that,” Cassie replied gruffly. She turned and went to the door. “Miss Marion has rode into Floresville with Mrs. Harrison to get her hair fixed, on account of Mr. Ben ain’t brought her runabout home yet. She say she be back about noon. Which it nearly is.”

She closed the door with a bang, and Katy glared at it. Danny was not a gangster. Not really. He might have done a few shady things, and he did run a speakeasy in the Windy City. But he was slick and Italian and handsome, and she liked being seen with him. She especially liked having Turk see her with him. Because she knew the foreman didn’t like it, and that made her blood sing.