The Cowboy and the Lady

“There you are.” He grinned, his eyes sweeping up and down her slender figure mischievously. “Going sailing?”

“Thought I might,” she returned lightly. “Care to swim alongside and fend off the sharks?”

He shook his head. “I suffer from acute cowardice, brought on by proximity to sharks. One of them was rumored to have eaten a great-aunt of mine.”

With a laugh like sunlight filtering into a yellow room, she walked past him into the spacious living room and found herself looking straight into Jace’s silvery eyes. That intense stare of his was disconcerting, and it did crazy things to her heart. She jerked her own gaze down to the carpet.

“Would you like some sherry?” he asked her tightly.

She shook her head, moving to Terry’s side like a kitten edging up to a tomcat for safety. “No, thanks.”

Terry put a thin arm around her shoulders affectionately. “She’s a caffeine addict,” he told Jace. “She doesn’t drink.”

Jace looked as if he wanted to crush his brandy snifter in his powerful brown fingers and grind it into the carpet. Amanda couldn’t remember ever seeing that particular look on his face before.

He turned away before she had time to analyze it. “Let’s go in. Mother will be down eventually.” He led the way into the dining room, and Amanda couldn’t help admire the fit of his brown suit with its attractive Western yoke, the way it emphasized his broad shoulders from the back. He was an attractive man. Too attractive.

Amanda was disconcerted to find herself seated close beside Jace, so close that her foot brushed his shiny brown leather boot under the table. She drew it back quickly, aware of his taut, irritated glance.

“Tell me why Duncan thinks we need an advertising agency,” Jace invited arrogantly, leaning back in his chair so that the buttons of his white silk shirt strained against the powerful muscles of his chest. The shirt was open at the throat, and there were shadows under its thinness, hinting at the covering of thick, dark hair over the bronzed flesh. Amanda remembered without wanting to how Jace looked without a shirt. She drew her eyes back to her spotless china plate as Mrs. Brown, Marguerite’s prize cook, ambled in with dishes of expertly prepared food. A dish containing thick chunks of breaded, fried cube steak and a big steaming bowl of thick milk gravy were set on the spotless white linen tablecloth, along with a platter of cat’s head biscuits, real butter, cabbage, a salad, asparagus tips in hollandaise sauce, a creamy fruit salad, homemade rolls and cottage fried potatoes. Amanda couldn’t remember when she’d been confronted by such a lavish selection of dishes, and she realized with a start how long it had been since she’d been able to afford to set a table like this.

She nibbled at each delicious spoonful as if it would be her last, savoring every bite, while Terry’s pleasant voice rambled on.

Marguerite joined them in the middle of Terry’s sales pitch, smiling all around as she sat in her accustomed place at the elegant table with its centerpiece of white daisies.

“I’m sorry to be late,” she said, “but I lost track of time. There’s a mystery theater on the local radio station, and I’m just hooked on it.”

“Detective stories,” Jace scoffed. “No wonder you leave your light on at night.”

Marguerite lifted her thin face proudly. “A lot of people use night-lights.”

“You use three lamps,” he commented. His gray eyes sparkled at her and he winked suddenly, smiling. Amanda, on the fringe of that smile, felt something warm kindle inside her. He was devastating when he used that inherent charm of his. No woman alive could have resisted it, but she’d only seen it once, a very long time ago. She dropped her eyes back to her plate and finished the last of her fruit salad with a sigh.

In the middle of Terry’s wrap-up, the phone rang and, seconds later, Jace was called away from the table.

Marguerite glared after him. “Once,” she muttered, “just once, to have an uninterrupted meal! If it isn’t some problem with the ranch that Bill Johnson, our manager, can’t handle, it’s a personnel problem at one of the companies, or some salesman wanting to interest him in a new tractor, or another rancher trying to sell him a bull, or a newspaper wanting information on a merger.” She glared into space. “Last week it was a magazine wanting to know if Jace was getting married. I told them yes,” she said with ill-concealed irritation, “and I can’t wait until someone shoves the article under his nose!”

Amanda laughed until tears ran down her cheeks. “Oh, how could you?”

“How could she what?” Jace asked, returning just in time to catch that last remark.

Amanda shook her head, dabbing at her eyes with her linen napkin while Marguerite’s thin face seemed to puff up indignantly.

“Another disaster?” Marguerite asked him as he sat back down. “The world goes to war if you finish one meal?”

Jace raised an eyebrow at her, sipping his coffee. “Would you like to take over?”

“I’d simply love it,” she told her son. “I’d sell everything.”

“And condemn Duncan and me to growing roses?” he teased.

She relented. “Well if we could just have one whole meal together, Jason…”

“How would you cope?” he teased. “It’s never happened.”

“And when your father was still alive, it was worse,” she admitted. She laughed. “I remember throwing his plate at him once when he went to talk to an attorney during dinner on Christmas Day.”

Jace smiled mockingly. “I remember what happened when he came back,” he reminded her, and Marguerite Whitehall blushed like a schoolgirl.

“Oh, by the way,” Marguerite began, “I—”

Before she could get the words out, Maria came in to announce that Tess was on the phone and wanted to speak to Jace.

Marguerite glared at him as he passed her on his way to the hall phone a second time. “Why don’t you have a special phone invented with a plate attached?” she asked nastily. “Or better, an edible phone, so you could eat and talk at the same time?”

Amanda’s solemn face dissolved into laughter. It had been this way with the Whitehalls forever. Marguerite had had this same argument with Jude.

The older woman shook her head, glancing toward Terry with a mischievous smile. “Would you like to explain the advertising business to me, Terry? I can’t give you the account, but I won’t rush off in the middle of your explanation to answer the phone.”

Terry laughed, lifting a homemade roll to his mouth. “No problem, Mrs. Whitehall. There’s plenty of time. We’ll be here a week, after all.”

During which, Amanda was thinking, you might get Jace to yourself for ten minutes. But she didn’t say it.

Later, everyone seemed to vanish. Jace went upstairs, and Marguerite carried Terry off to show him her collection of jade figurines, leaving Amanda alone in the living room.

She finished her after-dinner cup of coffee and put the saucer gingerly back down on the coffee table. Perhaps, she thought wildly, it might be a good idea to go up to her room. If Jace came downstairs before the others got back, she’d be stuck with him, and she didn’t want that headache. Being alone with Jace was one circumstance she’d never be prepared for.

She hurried out into the hall, but before she even made it to the staircase, she saw Jace coming down it. He’d added a brown-and-gold tie to the white silk shirt and brown suit, and he looked maddeningly elegant.

“Running?” he asked pointedly, his eyes narrow and cold as they studied her.

Chapter Four

She froze in the center of the entrance, staring at him helplessly. He made her nervous. He always had.

“I…was just going up to my room for a minute,” she faltered.

He came the rest of the way down without hesitation, his booted feet making soft thuds on the carpeted steps. He paused in front of her when he got to the bottom, towering over her, close enough that she could smell his woodsy cologne and the clean fragrance of his body.

“For what?” he asked with a mocking smile. “A handkerchief?”

“More like a shield and some armor,” she countered, hiding her nervousness behind humor.

He didn’t laugh. “You haven’t changed,” he observed. “Still the little clown.” His narrowed eyes slid down her body indifferently. “Why did you come back here?” he demanded abruptly, cold steel in his tone.

“Because Duncan insisted.”

He scowled down at her. “Why? You only work for Black.”