Connal

“Not the way you fill them out, little one,” he said quietly. His eyes made emphatic statements about that before he lifted them back up to capture hers.

“I’m overweight,” she got out.

“Really?” He pulled out a cigarette and lit it, but his eyes had hers in a stranglehold and he wouldn’t let her avert her gaze.

Her heart raged in her chest, beating painfully hard and fast. Her lips parted on a shaky breath and she realized that her hands were clutching her purse so hard that her nails were leaving marks in the soft leather.

He moved closer, just close enough to threaten her with the warm strength of his body. He was so much taller that she had to look up to see his eyes, but she couldn’t manage to tear her gaze away.

The back of his forefinger touched her cheek in a slow, devastating caress. “I thought you were a total innocent, little Pepi,” he said, his voice at least an octave deeper. “If that’s not the case, you could find yourself in over your head very quickly.”

Her lips parted. She was drowning in him, so intoxicated that she didn’t even mind the smell of calf and burned hide that clung to him. Her eyes fell to his hard mouth, to its thin chiseled lines, and she wanted it with a primitive hunger. It occurred to her that she could entice him into her bed, that she could sleep with him. They were legally married, even if he didn’t know it. She could seduce him. The delicious thought made her breath catch.

Then came the not-so-delicious thought of what would happen afterward. With the experience she was pretty sure he had, he might know that she was virginal, by her reactions if nothing else. Besides that, it might hurt, which would be a dead giveaway. And he didn’t know they were married. All sorts of complications could arise. No, she thought miserably, she couldn’t even have that consolation. Not even one night to hold in her memory. She had to keep him at arm’s length until she could decide how to tell him the truth and what to do about it.

She backed away a little, forcing a smile. “I really have to go,” she said huskily. “See you later.”

He muttered something under his breath and opened the door for her, his dark eyes accusing as they watched her go. She was getting under his skin. It made him angry that her body enticed him, that he was hungry for her. It made him angrier that she was apparently experienced. He didn’t want other hands touching her, especially the vet’s. She’d been his caretaker for so long now that he’d come to look upon her with the same passion a wine maker felt for his best vintage. But he’d thought she was virginal, and she’d as good as told him she wasn’t. That realization changed everything. He’d placed her carefully off limits for years, but if she wasn’t innocent, then he didn’t have to worry about his conscience. Odd, though, he thought as he watched her go, she could still blush prettily enough when he looked at her body. Maybe she wasn’t very experienced, despite the redheaded veterinarian’s attentions. C.C.’s black eyes narrowed. Brandon didn’t have his experience, so that gave him an edge. Yes, it did. He lifted the cigarette to his mouth and smiled faintly as he watched Pepi climb into her father’s old Lincoln and drive away.

Blissfully unaware of C.C.’s plotting, Pepi managed to get the car out of the driveway without hitting anything. Her hands on the steering wheel were still shaking from her unexpected confrontation. That was the first time that C.C. had ever made anything resembling a pass at her. Perhaps she should have been less emphatic about her experience—of which she didn’t have any. But she’d felt threatened by the way C.C. had looked at her, and her mind had shut down. For one long second she agonized over the thought that he might take her off the endangered species list and start pursuing her himself. But, no, he had Edie to satisfy those needs. He wouldn’t want an innocent like herself. And then she remembered that she’d told him she was no innocent. What would she do if he made a heavy pass at her? She loved him to distraction, but she didn’t dare let things go that far. If the worst came to pass and they were really married, she could get an annulment without much difficulty. But if she admitted him to her bed, it would mean getting a divorce, and that would take much longer. She couldn’t afford to give in to temptation, no matter how appealing it was….

* * *

The attorney’s office was located adjacent to a new shopping center that had just opened on the outskirts of town. She pulled into a parking spot in front of the adobe facade of the office building and took a deep breath. This wasn’t going to be very pleasant, she was afraid.

She went in and produced the document. The attorney took his time looking it over. He was bilingual, so the wording that had sent Pepi crazy trying to decipher with the help of a Spanish-English dictionary made perfect sense to him.

“It’s legal, I assure you,” he mused, handing it back. “Congratulations,” he added with a smile.

“He doesn’t know we’re married.” She groaned. She told him the particulars. “Doesn’t that mean anything, that he was intoxicated?”

“If he was sober enough to agree to be married, to initiate the ceremony and to sign his name to a legal certificate of marriage,” he said, “I’m afraid it is binding.”

“Then I’ll just have to get an annulment,” she said heavily.

“No problem,” he said, smiling again. “Just have him come in and sign—”

“He has to know about it!” she exclaimed, horrified.

“I’m afraid so,” he said. “Even if he did apparently get married without realizing it, there’s just no way the marriage can be dissolved without his consent.”

Pepi buried her face in her hands. “I can’t tell him. I just can’t!”

“You really have to,” he said. “There are all kinds of legal complications that this could create. If he’s a reasonable man, surely he’ll understand.”

“Oh, no, he won’t,” she said on a miserable sigh. “But you’re right. I do have to tell him. And I will,” she added, rising to shake his hand. She didn’t say when.

Pepi mentally flayed herself for not telling C.C. the truth when he’d demanded it. She’d only wanted to spare him embarrassment, and she hadn’t thought any damage would be done. Besides that, the thought of being his wife, just for a little while, was so sweet a temptation that she hadn’t been able to resist. Now she was stuck with the reality of her irresponsibility, and she didn’t know what she was going to do.

For a start, she avoided C.C. With roundup in full swing, and the men working from dawn until long after dark, that wasn’t too hard. She spent her own free time with Brandon, wishing secretly that she could feel for him what she felt for C.C. Brandon was so much fun, and they were compatible. It was just that there was no spark of awareness between them.

“I wish you wouldn’t spend so much time with Hale,” her father said at supper one night near the end of the massive roundup, during one of his rare evenings at home.

“There, there, you’re just jealous because he’s getting all your apple pies while you’re out working,” she teased.

He sighed. “No, it’s not that at all. I want to see you in a happy marriage, girl. The kind your mother and I had. Hale’s a fine young man, but he’s too biddable. You’d be leading him around by the nose by the end of your first year together. You’re feisty, like your mother. You need a man who can stand up to you, a man you can’t dominate.”

Only one man came immediately to mind and she flushed, averting her eyes. “The one you’re thinking of is already spoken for,” she said tersely.

His eyes, so much like her own, searched her face. “Pepi, you’re old enough now to understand why men see women like Edie. He’s a man. He has…a man’s needs.”

She picked up her fork and looked at it, trying not to feel any more uncomfortable than she already did. “Edie is his business, as he once told me. We have no right to interfere in his private life.”

“She’s an odd choice for a ranch foreman, isn’t she?” he mused, still watching her like a hawk. “A city sophisticate, a divorcée, a woman used to wealth and position. Don’t you find it unexpected that she likes C.C.?”

“Not really. He’s quite sophisticated himself,” she reminded him. “He seems to fit in anywhere. Even at business conferences,” she added, recalling a conference the three of them had attended two years ago. She and her father had both been surprised at the sight of C.C. in a dinner jacket talking stocks and bonds and investments with a rancher over cocktails. It had been an eye-opening experience for Pepi.

“Yes, I remember,” her father agreed. “A mysterious man, C.C. He came out of nowhere, literally. I’ve never been able to find out anything about his background. But from time to time, things slip out. He’s not a man unused to wealth and position, and at times he makes me feel like a rank beginner in business. He can manipulate stocks with the best of them. It was his expertise that helped me put the ranch into the black. Not to mention those new techniques in cattle management that he bulldozed me into trying. Embryo transplants, artificial insemination, hormone implants…although he and I mutually decided to stop the hormone implants. There’s been a lot of negative talk about it among consumers.”

“Negative talk never stopped C.C.,” she said, chuckling.

“True enough, but he thinks like I do about it. If implants cut back beef consumption because people are afraid of the hormones, that cuts our profits.”

“I give up,” she said, holding up both hands. “Put away your shooting irons.”

“Sorry,” he murmured, and smiled back.

“Actually I agree with you,” she confessed. “I just like to hear you hold forth. I’m going dancing with Brandon on Friday night. Okay?”

He looked reluctant, but he didn’t argue. “Okay, as long as you remember that my birthday’s Saturday night and you’re going out with me.”

“Yes, sir. As if I could forget. Thirty-nine, isn’t it…?”

“Shut up and carve that apple pie,” he said, gesturing toward it.

“Whatever you say.”

She tried not to think about C.C. for the rest of the week, but it was impossible not to catch an occasional glimpse of him in the saddle, going from one corral to the next. He let the herd representatives ride in the Jeep—representatives from other ranches in the area checking brands to make sure that none of their cattle had crossed into Mathews territory. It was a common courtesy locally, because of the vast territory the ranches in south Texas covered. Her father ran over two thousand head of cattle, and when they threw calves, it took some effort to get them all branded, tattooed, ear-tagged and vaccinated each spring and fall. It was a dirty, hot, thankless chore that caused occasional would-be cowboys to quit and go back to working in textile plants and furniture shops. Cowboying, while romantic and glamorous to the unknowing, was low paying, backbreaking and prematurely aging as a profession. It meant living with the smell of cow chips, burning hide, leather and dirt—long hours in the saddle, long hours of fixing machinery and water pumps and vehicles and doctoring sick cattle. There was a television in the bunkhouse, but hardly ever any time to watch it except late on summer evenings. Ranch work was year-round with few lazy periods, because there was always something that needed doing.

The advantages of the job were freedom, freedom, and freedom. A man lived close to the earth. He had time to watch the skies and feel the urgent rhythm of life all around him. He lived as man perhaps was meant to live, without technology strangling his mind, without the smells and pressures of civilization to cripple his spirit. He was one with nature, with life itself. He didn’t answer to an alarm clock or some corporation’s image of what a businessman should be. He might not make a lot of money, he might risk life and limb daily, but he was as free as a modern man could get. If he did his job well and carefully, he had job security for all his life.

Pepi thought about that, and decided that it might not be such a bad thing after all, being a cowboy. But the title and job description, while it might fit C.C., sat oddly on his broad shoulders. He was much too sophisticated to look at home in dirty denims. It was easier now to picture him in a dinner jacket. All the same, he did look fantastic in the saddle, riding a horse as easily as if he’d been born on one. He was long and lean and graceful, even in a full gallop, and she’d seen him break a horse to saddle more than once. It was a treat to watch. He never hurt the horse’s spirit in the process, but once he was on its back, there was never any doubt about who the master was. He stuck like glue, his hard face taut with strain, his eyes glittering, his thin lips smiling savagely with the effort as he rode the animal to submission.

The picture stuck in Pepi’s mind, and brought with it disturbing sensations of another kind of conquest. She was no prude, and despite her innocence, she knew what men and woman did together in bed. But the sensation, the actual feelings they shared were alien to her. She wondered if C.C. would be like that in bed, if he’d have that same glittery look in his eyes, that same savage smile on his thin lips as he brought a woman to ecstasy under the driving force of his hard, sweat-glistened body…

She went scarlet. Fortunately there was nobody nearby to see her. She darted into the house and up the staircase to get dressed for her dinner date with Brandon.

They went to a restaurant in downtown El Paso, one famous in the area for the size of its steaks and for its view of the city at night from its fourteenth-floor location in a well-known hotel.