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  He cleared his throat. “Oh, no, ma’am, you don’t look at all goofy to me!”

  While he was defending himself, Hank came around the side of the house to see where the search party had disappeared to, and stopped when he saw Dana. “So there you are!” he began furiously, bare-headed and wild-eyed as he joined her. “Where in hell have you been? Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve caused?”

  She lifted her chin. “I’ve been to Houston. Since when is going to Houston a crime? And since when do I have to inform you of my whereabouts?”

  He snorted. “I’m a concerned neighbor.”

  “You’re a royal pain in the neck, and I left town to get away from you,” she snapped. “I don’t want to see you or talk to you!”

  He straightened his shoulders and his mouth compressed. “As long as you’re all right.”

  “You might apologize to poor Joe while you’re about it,” she added pointedly. “He was beside himself, thinking he was going to jail for doing away with me.”

  “I never said any such thing,” he muttered. He glanced at Joe. “He knows I didn’t think he’d done you in.”

  That was as close as he was likely to come to an apology, and Joe accepted it with less rancor than Dana would have.

  “Thanks for coming out,” Hank told the deputy and the others. “She was missing for two days and I didn’t know where she was. Anything could have happened.”

  “Oh, he knows that,” the city policeman, Matt Lovett, said with a grin, jerking his thumb at the deputy sheriff. “He and his wife had an argument and she drove off to her mother’s. On the way her car died. She left it on the river bridge and caught a ride into town to get a mechanic.”

  “Matt…!” the deputy grumbled.

  Matt held up a hand. “I’m just getting to the best part. He went after her and saw the car and thought she’d jumped off the bridge. By the time she got back with the mechanic, the civil defense boys were out there dragging the river.”

  “Well, she might have been in there,” the deputy defended himself, red-faced. He grinned at Hank. “And Miss Mobry might have been eaten by one of her young steers.”

  “Or carried off by aliens,” Matt mused, tongue in cheek. “That’s why our police force is always on the job, Miss Mobry, to offer protection to any citizen who needs it. I’d dearly love to protect you at a movie one night next week,” he added with twinkling green eyes. “Any night you like. A good movie and a nice big burger with fries.”

  Dana’s eyes were twinkling now, too.

  Hank stepped in between her and the policeman. “I think she’ll need some rest after today’s excitement, but I’m sure she appreciates the offer, Matt.”

  The words didn’t match the dark threat in his eyes. Matt had only been teasing, although if he’d really wanted to take Dana out, all the threats in the world wouldn’t have stopped him.

  “You’re probably right,” Matt agreed. He winked at Dana. “But the offer stands, just the same.”

  She smiled at him. He really was nice. “Thanks, Matt.”

  The law enforcement people said their farewells and went off to bigger tasks, leaving Dana and Joe and Hank standing aimlessly in the front yard.

  “I’ll get home now, Miss Mobry. So glad you’re all right,” Joe said again.

  “Thanks, Joe,” she replied. “I’m sorry for all the trouble you had.”

  “Not to worry.”

  He ambled off. Dana folded her arms over her breasts and glared furiously at Hank.

  He had his hands deep in his pockets. He looked more uncomfortable than she’d ever seen him.

  “Well, how was I to know you hadn’t done something desperate?” he wanted to know. “I said some harsh things to you.” He averted his eyes, because it disturbed him to remember what he’d said. In the few days Dana had been missing, he’d done a lot of remembering, mostly about how big a part of his life Dana was, and the long friendship he’d shared with her. He’d had no right to belittle the feelings she had for him. In fact, it had rocked his world when he realized how long he’d been deliberately ignoring them. He was torn between his lingering love for Betty and his confused feelings for Dana. It was an emotional crisis that he’d never had to face before. He knew he wasn’t handling it very well.

  Dana didn’t budge an inch. “I’ve already decided what I’m going to do, in case you had any lingering worries,” she told him coolly. “If you can find a loophole, a way for us to break the will, I’m going to sell the place and go back to school. I have catalogs coming from three colleges.”

  His face went rigid. “I thought you liked ranching.”

  She made an amused, bitter sound. “Hank, I can’t even use a fence tool. I can’t pull a calf without help from Joe or Ernie. I can feed livestock and treat wounds and check for diseases, but I can’t do heavy lifting and fix machinery. I don’t have the physical strength, and I’m running out of the financial means to hire it done.” She threw up her hands. “If I even tried to get a job at someone else’s ranch, with my lack of skills, they’d laugh at me. How in the world can I run a ranch?”

  “You can sell it to me and I’ll run it for you,” he said curtly. “You can rent the house and stay here.”

  “As what?” she persisted. “Caretaker? I want more than that from life.”

  “Such as?” he asked.

  “Never you mind,” she said evasively, because a ready answer didn’t present itself. “Did you talk to my lawyer?”

  “No.”

  “Then would you, please?”

  He stuck his hands into his pockets. “Listen, Dana, no court in Jacobsville is going to throw out that will on the grounds that your father was incompetent. His mind was as sound as mine, and he knew business inside out.”

  Her heart fell. “He might have been temporarily upset when he inserted that clause.”

  “Maybe he was,” he agreed. “Maybe he’d had some chest pain or a premonition. I’m sure he meant it as a way to make sure you weren’t left alone, with no support, after he was gone. But his reasons don’t matter. Either you marry me or we both stand to lose a hell of a lot of money.”

  “You don’t want to marry me,” she reminded him with painful pleasure. “You said so.”

  He drew in a long, weary breath and searched her wan little face. “God, I’m tired,” he said unexpectedly. “My life is upside down. I don’t know where I’m going, or why. No, Dana, I don’t want to marry you. That’s honest. But there’s a lot riding on that will.” He moved his shoulders, as if to ease their stiffness. “I’d rather wait a few weeks, at least until Betty’s visit is over. But there’s a time limit as well. A month after your father’s death, I believe, all the conditions of the will have to be fulfilled.”

  She nodded miserably.

  “In a way, it would suit me to be married right now,” he reflected solemnly. “I don’t want Betty to see how badly she hurt me, or how much I still want her. I might be tempted to try and break up her marriage, and that’s not the sort of man I want to be.”

  “What about her husband?”

  “Bob doesn’t care what she does,” he replied. “He’s totally indifferent to her these days, and he’s no longer a financial giant. I don’t think it would take too much effort to get her away from him. But she left me because he had more money, don’t you see?” he added pointedly. “My God, I can’t let myself be caught in that old trap again, regardless of what I feel for her!”

  She felt sorry for him. Imagine that. She linked her hands together over her stomach. “Then what do you want to do, Hank?” she asked quietly.

  “Get married. But only on paper,” he added deliberately, his dark eyes steady and full of meaning. “Despite the physical attraction I felt for you out in the pasture that day, I don’t want a physical relationship with you. Let’s get that clear at the outset. I want a document that gives you the right to sell me that land. In return, I’ll make sure the figure you receive is above market price, and I’ll put
you through college to boot.”

  It sounded fair enough to Dana, who was wrung out from the emotional stress. “And I get to stay here, in my own house,” she added.

  “No.”

  Her eyebrows shot up.

  “I’ll want you to stay up at the homeplace with me,” he replied, “as long as Betty and Bob are in town. Even though this is a legal marriage, I don’t want Betty to know that I’m only a paper husband.”

  “Oh, I see,” she replied. “You want us to pretend that it’s a normal arrangement.”

  “Exactly.”

  She didn’t want to agree. He’d hurt her feelings, made horrible remarks, insulted her and embarrassed her with today’s womanhunt. But she needed to be able to sell the ranch. It would be her escape from the emotional poverty of loving where there was no hope of reciprocation.

  “Okay,” she said after a minute. “Will we have to get a blood test and a license at the courthouse?”

  “We’ll fly to Las Vegas and get married out there,” he told her. “As soon as we’ve completed the legal maneuvers and Betty is safely out of my hair, we’ll get a divorce there, which will be just as easy.”

  Easy marriage. Easy divorce. Dana, with her dreams of returned love and babies to raise, felt the pain of those words all the way through her heart.

  “An annulment will spare you any hint of scandal afterward,” he continued. “You can get your degree and find someone to spend your life with. Or part of it,” he added with a mocking smile. “I don’t think anybody has illusions about marriage lasting until death these days.”

  Her parents had divorced. Hank had divorced. But Dana had seen couples who’d stayed together and been in love for years. The Ballenger brothers with their happy marriages came instantly to mind.

  “I’m not that cynical,” she said after a minute. “And I think that children should have both parents while they’re growing up if it’s at all possible. Well,” she added, “as long as it isn’t a daily battleground.”

  “Was your family like that?” he asked gently.

  She nodded. “My mother hated my father. She said he had no ambition, no intelligence, and that he was as dull as dishwater. She wanted parties and holidays all the time. He just wanted to settle down with a good book and nibble cheese.”

  She smiled sadly, remembering him, and had to fight the easy tears that sprang so readily to her eyes.

  “Don’t cry,” he said shortly.

  She lifted her chin. “I wasn’t going to,” she said roughly. She remembered him holding her at her father’s funeral, murmuring comforting words softly at her ear. But he had little patience with emotion, as a rule.

  He took a deep breath. “I’ll set everything up and let you know when we’ll go,” he said.

  She wanted to argue, but the time had long passed for that. She nodded. He waited, but when she didn’t say anything else, he went back to his car, got in and drove away.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Las Vegas sat right in the middle of a desert. Dana had never been there, and the sight of it fascinated her. Not only was it like a neon city, but the glitter extended even to the people who worked at the night spots. Dana found the way women dressed on the streets fascinating and almost fell out the window of Hank’s hired luxury car trying to look at them. It wasn’t until he explained what they did for a living that she gave up her surveillance. It was interesting to find that what they did was legal and that they could even advertise their services.

  “Here we are,” he said gruffly, stopping at one of the all-night wedding chapels.

  It looked flashy, but then, so did the rest of them. Hank offered her an arm but she refused it, walking beside him with her purse tight in her hand. She was wearing a simple off-white suit. She didn’t have a veil or even a bouquet, and she felt their omission all the way to her toes. It was so very different from the way she’d envisioned her wedding day.

  Hank didn’t seem to notice or care. He dealt with the preliminaries, they signed a document, he produced a ring that she didn’t even know he’d bought. Five minutes later, they were officially married, ring, cool kiss and all. Dana looked up at her husband and felt nothing, not even sorrow. She seemed to be numb from head to toe.

  “Are we flying right back?” she asked as they got into the car once more.

  He glanced at her. She seemed devoid of emotion. It was her wedding day. He hadn’t given her a choice about her wedding ring. He hadn’t offered to buy her a bouquet. He hadn’t even asked if she wanted a church wedding, which could have been arranged. He’d been looking at the whole messy business from his own point of view. Dana had deserved something better than this icy, clinical joining.

  “We can stay at one of the theme hotels overnight, if you like, and take in a show.”

  She didn’t want to appear eager. The only show she’d ever seen was at a movie theater in Victoria.

  “Well,” she said hesitantly.

  “I’ll introduce you to the one-armed bandit,” he added, chuckling at her expression.

  “If you think we could,” she murmured, and that was as far as she was willing to commit herself. “But I didn’t pack anything for an overnight stay.”

  “No problem. The hotel has shops.”

  And it did. He outfitted her with a gown, a bag and everything in the way of toiletries that she needed. She noticed that he didn’t buy any pajamas, but she thought nothing of it. Surely they’d have separate rooms, anyway.

  But they didn’t. There were too many conventions in town, and they got the last suite the hotel had—one with a king-size bed and a short sofa.

  Hank stared at the bed ruefully. “Sorry,” he said. “But it’s this or sleep on the floor.”

  She cleared her throat. “We’re both adults. And it’s only a paper marriage,” she stammered.

  “So it is,” he mused, but his dark eyes had narrowed as they assessed her slender, perfect figure and he remembered the sight of her in the pasture with her blouse open and the feel of her breasts pressed hard into his bare chest.

  She glanced up, meeting that hot, intent stare. She flushed. “I’m not having sex with you, Hank,” she said shortly.

  His eyebrows went up. “Did I ask?” he drawled sarcastically. “Listen, honey, the streets are full of prime women, if I’m so inclined.”

  Her eyes blazed at him. “Don’t you dare!” she raged. “Don’t you dare, Hank!”

  He began to smile. “Well, well, aren’t we possessive already?”

  “That’s not the point. You made a vow. Until we have it undone, we’re married.” She stared at her shoes. “I wouldn’t go running to some gigolo on my wedding night.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t.” He moved closer, his hands finding her small waist, and brought her gently to him. His breath feathered her forehead. “I can hear you breathing,” he whispered. “Nervous?”

  She swallowed. “Well…yes…a little.”

  His lips brushed her hair. “There’s no need. It’s a big bed. If you don’t want anything to happen, it won’t.”

  She felt disappointed somehow. They were legally married. She loved him. Did he really not want her at all?

  He tilted her face up to his dark, curious eyes. “On the other hand,” he said softly, “if you want to know what it’s all about, I’ll teach you. There won’t be any consequences. And you’ll enjoy it.”

  She felt the words to the very tips of her toes. But she wasn’t going to be won over that easily, even if she did want him more than her next breath.

  “No dice, huh?” he mused after a minute. “Okay. Suppose we go downstairs and try our luck?”

  “Suits me,” she said, anxious to go anywhere away from that bed.

  * * *

  So they went the rounds in the casino and played everything from the one-armed bandits to blackjack. The glittery costumes of the dancers on stage fascinated Dana, like everything else about this fantasy city. She ate perfectly cooked steak, watched the shows, and generally ha
d a wonderful time while Hank treated her like a cherished date. In fact, that’s what it was. They’d never been out together in all the years they’d known each other. During that one evening they made up for lost time.

  They returned upstairs just after midnight. Dana had gone overboard with piña coladas, the one drink she could tolerate. But she’d underestimated the amount of rum the bartender put in them. She was weaving at the door, to Hank’s patent amusement.

  He slid the coded card into the slot and when the blinking green light indicated that it was unlocked, he opened the door.

  “Home again,” he murmured, standing aside to let her enter.

  She tugged up the strap of her black dress that had slipped off her shoulder. Like the rest of her abbreviated wardrobe, it was the result of the afternoon’s quick shopping trip. In addition to the knee-length cocktail dress and hose, she had a far too revealing black nightgown and no robe. She hoped Hank was agreeable to letting her undress in the dark.

  “You can have the bathroom first,” he invited. “I’ll listen to the news.”

  “Thanks.” She gathered her gown and underwear and went into the bathroom to shower.

  When she came out, Hank was sitting on the edge of the bed. He’d removed everything except his slacks. He got up, and she had to suppress a shiver of pleasure at the sight of him bare from the waist up. He had muscular arms and a sexy dark chest with a wedge of curling black hair running down it. His hair was mussed and down on his forehead. He looked rakish because he needed a shave.

  “Good thing I packed my razor,” he mused, holding up a small pouch that had been in the attaché case he always carried when he traveled. “I have to shave twice a day.” His dark eyes slid over her body in the abbreviated gown, lingering where her arms were crossed defensively over the thin fabric that didn’t quite cover her breasts from view. “We’re married,” he reminded her. “And I’ve seen most of you.”

  She cleared her throat. “Which side of the bed do you like?” she asked shyly.

  “The right, but I don’t mind either one. You can have first pick.”