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  She looked up, puzzled by his phrasing. “You said you would.”

  He frowned slightly. “I don’t like making you cry,” he said bluntly. “Until now, I didn’t know that I could. It’s uncomfortable.”

  “I’ve had a long week,” she said evasively.

  “We both have. Come with me. No strings. You’ll have fun.”

  She hesitated, but only for a minute. “All right.”

  He reached down and curled her small hand into his big one. The contact was thrilling, exciting. She looked up into eyes that confused her.

  “Don’t think,” he said. “Come along.”

  He pulled her along with him, out of the bedroom, out the door. It was new to have Simon act possessively about her, to be tender with her. It hurt terribly, in a way, because now she knew exactly what she’d missed in her life. Simon would be all she’d ever need, but she cared too much to settle for a casual affair. Regardless of what he thought of her marriage to John, and she had no reason to believe that he’d changed his mind about it, she did believe in marriage. She didn’t want to be anyone’s one-night stand; not even Simon’s.

  The long drive down to Jacobsville wasn’t as harrowing as she’d expected it to be. Simon talked about politics and began asking pointed questions about an upcoming fundraiser.

  She wasn’t comfortable with the new relationship between them, so when he asked if she might like to help with some projects for the governor if he took on the attorney general’s job, she immediately suspected that he was using her helpless attraction to him to win her support.

  She looked down at the small white beaded evening bag in her lap. “If I have time,” she said, stalling.

  He glanced at her as they passed through the gaily decorated downtown section of Jacobsville, dressed like a Christmas tree for the holidays with bright colored lights and tinsel.

  “What else have you got to do lately?” he asked pointedly.

  She stared at her bag. “I might do another exhibit.”

  He didn’t ask again, but he looked thoughtful.

  The Hart ranch was impressive, sprawling for miles, with the white fence that surrounded the house and immediate grounds draped with green garlands and artificial poinsettias.

  “They haven’t done that before,” she commented as they went down the long paved driveway to the house.

  “Oh, they’ve made a number of improvements since Dorie married Corrigan last Christmas and moved into their new house next door to this one,” he explained.

  “Reluctant improvements, if I know Callaghan.”

  He chuckled. “Cag doesn’t go in much for frills.”

  “Is he still not eating pork?”

  He gave her a wry glance. “Not yet.”

  It was a family joke that the eldest bachelor brother wouldn’t touch any part of a pig since he’d seen the movie about the one that talked, a box office smash.

  “I can’t say that I blame him,” she murmured. “I saw the movie three times myself.”

  He chuckled. It was a rare sound these days and she glanced at him with a longing that she quickly concealed when his eyes darted toward her.

  He pulled up in front of the sprawling ranch house and got out, noting that Tira did the same without waiting for him to open her door. Her independent spirit irritated him at times, but he respected her for it.

  When she started up the steps ahead of him, he caught her hand and kept it in his as they reached the porch, where Corrigan and Dorie greeted them with warm hugs and smiles. Tira smiled automatically, so aware of Simon’s big hand in hers that she was almost floating.

  “You’re just in time,” Corrigan said. “Leopold spiked the punch and didn’t tell Tess, and she got the wrong side of Evan Tremayne’s tongue. She’s in the kitchen giving Leo hell and swearing that he’ll never get another biscuit.”

  “He must be in tears by now,” Simon mused.

  “He’s on his knees, in fact, groveling.” Corrigan grinned. “It suits him.”

  They went inside, where they met Evan and his wife, Anna, who was obviously and joyfully pregnant with their first child, and the Ballenger brothers, Calhoun and Justin, with their wives Abby and Shelby, all headed toward the front door together. They were all founding families in the area, with tremendous wealth and power locally. Tira knew of them, but it was the first time she’d met them face-to-face. It didn’t surprise her that the brothers had such contacts. They made friends despite their sometimes reclusive tendencies. All the same, the party looked as if it had only just started, and it puzzled her that these people were leaving so soon. They didn’t seem angry, but with those bland expressions, it was sometimes hard to tell if they were.

  Tira looked around for Cag and Rey and just spotted them going through the swinging door of the kitchen. In the open doorway she caught a glimpse of Leopold on his knees in a prayerful stance with a thin young redhead standing over him looking outraged.

  Tira chuckled. Simon, having seen the same thing, laughed out loud.

  “This is too good to miss. Come on.” He nodded at other people he knew as they wove their way through the crowd and reached the kitchen.

  Stealthily Simon pushed open the door. The sight that met their eyes was pitiful. Leopold was still on his knees, with Cag verbally flaying him while Rey looked on approvingly.

  They glanced toward the door when Simon and Tira entered. Leopold actually blushed as he scrambled to his feet.

  Tess grimaced as she spotted Simon, one of the only two brothers who actively intimidated her. “I don’t care what they say, I’m quitting!” she told him despite her nervousness. “He—” she pointed at Leopold “—poured two bottles of vodka in my special tropical punch, and Evan Tremayne didn’t realize it was spiked until he’d had his second glass and fell over a chair.” She blushed. “He said terrible things to me! And he—” she pointed at Leopold again “—thought it was funny!”

  “Evan Tremayne falling over a chair would make most people in Jacobsville giggle,” Tira stated, “knowing how he hates alcohol.”

  “It gets worse,” Tess continued, brushing back a short strand of red hair, her blue eyes flashing. “Evan thought the punch was so good that he gave a glass of it to Justin Ballenger.”

  “Oh, God,” Simon groaned. “Two of the most fanatical teetotalers in the county.”

  “Justin got a guitar and started singing some Spanish song. Shelby dragged the guitar out of his hands just in time,” Tess explained. She put her face in her hands. “That was when Evan realized the punch was spiked and he said I should be strung up over the barn by my apron strings for doing such a nasty thing to your guests.”

  “I’ll speak to Evan.”

  “Not now, you won’t,” Tira mentioned. “We just met the Tremaynes going out the front door, along with both Ballenger brothers and their wives.”

  “Oh, God!” Leo groaned again.

  “I’ll phone him and apologize,” Rey promised. “I’ll call them all and apologize. You can’t leave!”

  “Yes, I can. I quit.” Tess had taken off her apron and thrown it at Leopold. “You’d better learn how to bake biscuits, is all I can say. They—” she pointed toward Cag and Rey “—will probably kill you when I leave, and I’m glad! I hope they throw you out in the corral and let the crows eat you! That would get rid of two evils, because the crows will die of food poisoning for sure!”

  She stormed through the door and Leopold groaned out loud. Cag’s quiet eyes followed her and his face tautened curiously.

  “Leo, how could you?” Rey asked, aghast.

  “It wasn’t two bottles of vodka,” he protested. “It was one. And I meant to give it to Tess, just to irritate her, but I got sidetracked and Evan and Justin…well, you know.” He brightened. “At least Calhoun didn’t get a taste of it!” he added, as if that made things all right. Calhoun, once a playboy, was as bad as his brother about liquor since his marriage.

  “He left, just the same. But you’ve got problems clos
er to home. You’d better go after her,” Simon pointed out.

  “And fast!” Rey said through his teeth, black eyes flashing.

  “Like a twister,” Cag added with narrowed eyes. “If she leaves, you’re going to get branded along with that stock I had shipped in today.”

  “I’m going, I’m going!” Leopold rushed out the back door after their housekeeper.

  “Isn’t she a little young for a housekeeper?” Simon asked his brothers. “She barely looks nineteen.”

  “She’s twenty-two,” Cag said. “Her dad was working for us when he dropped dead of a heart attack. There’s no family and she can cook.” His powerful shoulders lifted and fell. “It seemed an ideal solution. If we could just keep Leo away from her, things would be fine.”

  “Why does he have to torment the housekeepers all the time?” Rey asked miserably.

  “He’ll settle down one day,” Cag murmured. He looked distracted, and he was glaring toward the back door. “He’d better not upset her again. In fact, I think I’ll make sure he doesn’t.”

  He nodded to the others and went after Leo and Tess.

  “He’s sweet on her,” Rey said when the door closed behind him. “Not that he’ll admit it. He thinks she’s too young, and she’s scared to death of him. She finds every sort of excuse to get out of the kitchen if he’s the first one down in the mornings. It’s sort of comical, in a way. I don’t guess she knows that she could bring him to his knees with a smile.”

  “She’s very young,” Tira commented.

  Rey glanced at her. “Yes, she is. Just what Cag needs, too, something to nurture. He’s always bringing home stray kittens and puppies…just like her.” He pointed to a small kitten curled up in a little bed in the corner of the kitchen. “She rescued the kitten from the highway. Cag bought the bed for it. They’re a match made in heaven, but Leo’s going to ruin everything. I think he’s sweet on her, too, and trying to cut Cag out before she notices how much time he spends watching her.”

  “This is not our problem,” Simon assured his brother. “But I’d send Leo off to cooking school if I were you. No woman is ever going to be stupid enough to marry him and if he learns to make biscuits, you can do without housekeepers.”

  “He made scrambled eggs one morning when Tess had to go to the eye doctor early to pick up her contacts,” Rey said. “The dogs wouldn’t even touch them!” He glared at Tira and Simon and shrugged. “Come on. We’ve still got a few guests who haven’t gone home. I’ll introduce you to them.”

  He led them into the other room and stopped suddenly, turning to look at them. “Wait a minute. Corrigan said you weren’t speaking to each other after that newspaper stupidity.”

  Simon still had Tira’s slender hand tight in his. “A slight misunderstanding. We made up. Didn’t we?” he asked, looking down at Tira with an expression that made her face turn red.

  Rey made a sound under his breath and quickly changed the subject.

  Corrigan and Dorie joined them at the punch bowl, which had been refilled and dealcoholized. Dorie looked almost as pregnant as Anna Tremayne had, and she was radiant. Not even the thin scar on her delicate cheek could detract from her beauty.

  “We’d almost given up hope,” she murmured, laughing up at her adoring husband. “And then, wham!”

  “We’re over the moon,” Corrigan said. The limp left over from his accident of years ago was much less noticeable now, he didn’t even require a cane.

  “I’m going to be an uncle,” Simon murmured. “I might like that. I saw a terrific set of “O” scale electric trains in a San Antonio toy store a few days ago. Kids love trains.”

  “That’s right, boys and girls alike,” Tira murmured, not mentioning that she’d bought that train set for herself.

  “Did you know that two of our local doctors, who are married to each other, have several layouts of them?” Corrigan murmured. “The doctors Coltrain. They invited kids from the local orphanage over for Christmas this year and have them set up and running. It’s something of a local legend.”

  “I like trains,” Simon said. “Remember that set Dad bought us?” he asked Corrigan.

  “Yeah.” The brothers shared a memory, not altogether a good one judging from their expression.

  “This isn’t spiked, anymore?” Tira asked, changing the subject as she stared at the punch bowl.

  “I swear,” Corrigan said, smiling affectionately at her. “Help yourself.”

  She did, filling one for Simon as well, and talk went to general subjects rather than personal ones.

  The local live cowboy band played a slow, lazy tune and Simon pulled Tira onto the dance floor, wrapping her up tight in his arms.

  The one with the prosthesis was a little uncomfortable and she moved imperceptibly.

  “Too tight?” Simon asked softly, and let up on the pressure. “Sorry. I’m used to the damned thing, but I still can’t quite judge how much pressure to use.”

  “It’s all right. It didn’t hurt.”

  He lifted his head and looked down into her eyes. “You’re the only woman who’s ever seen me without it,” he mused. “In the hospital, when it was a stump—”

  “You may have lost part of your arm, but you’re alive,” she interrupted. “If you hadn’t been found for another hour, nothing would have saved you. As it was, you’d lost almost too much blood.”

  “You stayed with me,” he recalled. “You made me fight. You made me live. I didn’t want to.”

  She averted her eyes. “I know how much Melia meant to you, Simon. You don’t have to remind me.”

  Secrets, he thought. There were so many secrets that he kept, that she didn’t know about. Perhaps it kept the distance between them. It was time to shorten it.

  “Melia had an abortion.”

  She didn’t grasp what he was saying at first, and the lovely green eyes she lifted to his were curious. “What?”

  “I made her pregnant and she ended it, and never told me,” he said shortly. “She didn’t want to ruin her figure. Of course, she wasn’t positive that the baby was mine. It could have been by one of her other lovers.”

  She’d stopped dancing to stare up at him uncomprehendingly.

  “She told me, the night of the accident,” he continued. “That’s why I lost control of the car in a curve, in the rain, and I remember thinking in the split second before it crashed that I didn’t care to live with all my illusions dead.”

  “Illusions?” she echoed.

  “That my marriage was perfect,” he said. “That my beloved wife loved me equally, that she wanted my children and a lifetime with only me.” He laughed coldly. “I married a cheap, selfish woman whose only concern was living in luxury and notching her bedpost. It excited her that she had men and I didn’t know. She had them in my bed.” His voice choked with anger, and he looked over her head. His arm had unconsciously tightened around Tira, and this time she didn’t protest. She was shocked by what he was telling her. She’d thought, everyone had thought, that he’d buried his heart in Melia’s grave and had mourned her for years.

  “The child was what hurt the most,” he said stiffly. “I believed her when she said she thought she was sterile. It was a lie. Everything she said was a lie, and I was too besotted to realize it. She made a fool of me.”

  “I’m so sorry for all the pain you’ve been through.” Her eyes filled with tears. “It must have been awful.”

  He looked down at her, his eyes narrow and probing. “You were married to John when it happened. You came to the hospital every day. You held my hand, my good hand, and talked to me, forced me to get up, to try. I always felt that you left John because of me, and it made me feel guilty. I thought I’d broken up your marriage.”

  She dropped her gaze to his strong neck. “No,” she said tersely. “You didn’t break it up.”

  He curled her fingers into his and brought them to his chest, holding them there warmly. “Were you in love with him, at first?”

  “I
was attracted to him, very fond of him,” she confessed softly. “And I wanted, badly, to make our marriage work.” She shivered a little and he drew her closer. Her eyes closed. “I thought…I wasn’t woman enough.”

  His indrawn breath was audible. He knew the truth about her marriage now, but he hesitated to bring up a painful subject again when things were going so well for them. His lips moved down to her eyes and kissed the eyelids with breathless tenderness.

  “Don’t cry,” he said curtly. “You’re more than woman enough. Come closer, and I’ll prove it to you, right here.”

  “Simon…”

  His arm slid down, unobtrusively, and drew her hips firmly against his. He shuddered as the touch of her body produced an immediate, violent effect.

  She gasped, but he wouldn’t let her step back.

  “Do you feel how much I want you?” he whispered in her ear. “I’ve barely touched you and I’m capable.”

  “You’re a man…”

  “It doesn’t, it never has, happened that fast with anyone else,” he said through his teeth. “I want you so badly that it hurts like hell. Yes, Tira, you’re woman enough for any man. I’m sorry that your husband didn’t… No, that’s a lie.” He lifted his head and looked into her shocked eyes. “I’m glad he couldn’t have you.”

  The words went right over her head because she was so shocked at what he was saying. She stared at him in evident confusion and embarrassment, her eyes darting around to see if anyone was watching. Nobody was.

  “It doesn’t show. There’s no reason to be so tense.” His arm moved back up to her waist and loosened a little.

  She drew in steadying breaths, but she felt weak. Her head went to his chest and she made a plaintive little sound against it.

  His fingers contracted around hers. “We opened Pandora’s box together in your bedroom, on your bed,” he whispered at her ear. “We want each other, Tira.”

  She swallowed. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  She hesitated, but only for an instant. “I don’t have affairs, Simon.”