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  “Your secretary?”

  He nodded, pushing the chair back under the table slowly. “She says if they hire her to do security, they’ll have to give her a badge and a gun, and she can arrest me anytime she feels like it if I make her work late.”

  She laughed in spite of herself. He’d gone far away for a minute there, and she’d felt uncomfortable.

  “Are you a bad boss?”

  “I’m temperamental.”

  It showed, but she wasn’t going to say so.

  “Thanks for the coffee and pie,” he said quietly.

  “You’re very welcome.”

  He turned and went down the hall. His back, she noted, was arrow-straight. He walked with a peculiar gait, a softness of step that was vaguely disquieting. He walked like a man who hunted.

  He got to the front steps and turned so suddenly that she went off balance and had to catch one of the porch posts to save herself.

  “Do you like pizza?” he asked abruptly.

  She was still reeling from his sudden stop. “Uh, yes.”

  “Friday night,” he persisted, dark eyes narrowed. “There’s a band. Do you dance?”

  “I do,” she said.

  “What will Judd do, if you go out with another man?”

  She was uneasy. “I...well, I don’t really know. I don’t think he’d mind,” she added. “It isn’t that sort of relationship.”

  “He may mind having you go out with me,” he said flatly. “He knows more about me than most people do around here.”

  She was shocked and intrigued. “Are you a bad man?”

  Something terrible flashed in his dark eyes. “I have been,” he said. “Not anymore.”

  Her face softened as she looked at him. She wondered if he realized how much his eyes gave away. There were nightmares in them.

  She let go of the post and moved a step closer to him. “We all have scars,” she said, understanding what Judd had been saying to her that day in the kitchen. “Some show, some don’t, but we all have them.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Mine are deep.”

  She began to smile. “Mine, too. But all of a sudden, I don’t mind them so much. They seem less conspicuous.”

  His broad chest rose and fell. He felt light. “Funny. So do mine.” He smiled.

  “The only place that serves pizza and beer and has a dance band is Shea’s Roadhouse and Bar, out on the Victoria road,” she told him. “Judd never goes there. I’m afraid he won’t like me going there.”

  “I’ll take care of you,” he told her.

  She sighed. “People have been taking care of me all my life, and I’ll be a grown woman in less than two months.” She studied his face. “I have to learn how to take care of myself.”

  “Funny you should mention it,” he said, and his eyes softened. “I wrote the book on self-defense for women.”

  “Not that kind of taking care,” she muttered.

  “I’ll teach you, just the same. Ever shot a gun?”

  “Judd taught me to shoot skeet,” she told him. “I’m hell on wheels with a .28 gauge. I have my own, a Browning.” She didn’t add that he hadn’t taken her shooting in years.

  He smiled, surprised. Many women were afraid of shotguns. “Imagine that!”

  “Do you shoot?”

  He gave her a look that reduced her height by three inches.

  “You’re a police officer. Of course, you shoot,” she muttered.

  “Eb Scott’s got a nice firing range. He lets us use it for practice. I’ll teach you how to shoot a pistol FBI style.”

  “Can you ride?” she asked.

  He hesitated. “I can. I don’t like to.”

  He was probably a city man, she guessed, and hadn’t had much to do with horses or ranching.

  “I don’t like pistols,” she confessed.

  He shrugged. “We can’t like everything.” He looked down at her with mingled emotions. “I suppose I really am too old for you.”

  Cash, who was four years older than Judd, thought she was too young. Maybe Judd did, too. That would explain, as nothing else did, the hesitation he showed in getting involved with her. It hurt.

  “On the other hand,” he murmured, misreading her look of disappointment, “what the hell. That movie star who’s a grandmother just married a man twenty-five.”

  Her eyes brightened and she grinned. “Are you proposing? After only two slices of apple pie? Gosh, imagine if I cooked you supper!”

  He burst out laughing. He hadn’t laughed like this in a long time. He felt as if all the cold, dead places inside him were warming.

  “Imagine,” he agreed, nodding. “Pizza, Friday night,” he added.

  “Pizza and beer,” she corrected.

  “Beer for me, soft drinks for you,” he said. “You’re not legal yet. You have to be twenty-one to drink beer in Texas.”

  “Okay, I’m easy—I’ll drink bourbon whisky instead,” she agreed.

  He gave her a sardonic look and went down the steps. He hesitated and looked up at her. “How many people know you’re married?”

  “A handful,” she said. “They also know that it’s a business arrangement. It won’t damage your reputation.”

  “I don’t have a reputation to damage anymore,” he replied. “I was thinking of yours.”

  Her face broke into a smile. “How nice of you!”

  “Nice.” He shook his head as he opened the door of the patrol car. Static was coming from the radio. “I can think of at least a dozen people who would roll on the floor laughing if they heard me called that.”

  Her dark eyes twinkled. “Hand over their numbers. I’ll phone them!”

  He grinned at her. “See you Friday. About five?”

  She nodded. “About five.”

  He drove off with a wave of his hand and Crissy went back into the kitchen, where Maude was standing by the sink looking worried.

  “What’s your problem?” Crissy asked her.

  “I overheard what he said. You just agreed to go out on a date.”

  “Yes. And your point is?”

  “You’re married, darlin’,” Maude reminded her. “Judd is not going to like this.”

  “Why should he mind?” she asked reasonably. “He’s said often enough that he doesn’t want me for keeps. It’s just a business arrangement.”

  Maude didn’t say a word. She was remembering the look on Judd’s face when she’d walked into the kitchen unexpectedly and found Crissy sitting on his lap. Crissy hadn’t noticed anything different, but she had. She turned back to her chores. Judd wasn’t going to like this.

  3

  Judd drove up in the yard Friday afternoon in his big black SUV, just an hour before Christabel was expecting Grier to pick her up. She was nervous. Worse, she was dressed to the teeth, and Judd noticed.

  She’d left her blond hair undone, and it flowed like golden silk down to her waist in back. She didn’t wear a lot of makeup, just powder and a light lipstick, but her eyes looked larger, a liquid brown that dominated her face and soft little chin. She was wearing a slinky black skirt with black high heels fastened around the ankle, displaying the sexy arch of her little feet. The black vee-necked blouse she had on was unusually tight, emphasizing her small, firm, rounded breasts in a way that made Judd ache in all the wrong places. A wide fringed black Spanish mantilla completed the outfit. It wasn’t expensive, and it was old, but it was sexy. He wasn’t used to seeing Christabel dressed like that. And suddenly he wondered why she was, and why she wouldn’t look him in the eye. He knew from long experience that she was hiding something.

  He propped a big booted foot on the bottom step of the porch and his narrow eyes fixed on her face.

  “All right, spill it,” he said te
rsely. “Why are you dressed like that, and why did you come running out the minute you heard me drive up? Are we going on a date, and you forgot to tell me?” he added.

  She lifted her eyes and glared at him. The sarcasm hurt. “Wouldn’t that be the day?” she asked with equal sarcasm. “As it happens, I’m going out dancing.”

  He didn’t react for several seconds. Then sudden anger hardened his lean face. “Dancing? With a man?”

  She straightened. “Yes. With a man.” Her smile was provoking in the extreme. “Go ahead, Judd, tell me you haven’t touched another woman since we married. Tell me you don’t date.”

  The expression on his face was impossible to read. He moved up the steps, towering over her. “Who is he? Some boy from school?”

  She realized with a start that what had seemed harmless and fun was becoming shameful and embarrassing. Her face colored.

  “Not a boy from school,” he guessed. His eyes narrowed again. “Are we going to play twenty questions? Tell me!” he said abruptly.

  “It’s Cash Grier,” she blurted out, disconcerted by the authority in his tone.

  Now he looked menacing as well as angry. “Grier is even older than I am, and he’s got a past I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy’s sister, much less you! You’re not leaving the house with a man like that!”

  Her self-confidence was wilting. She clutched her small purse to her chest. “I’m not running away with him,” she began, trying to recapture lost ground. “We’re going out for pizza and beer...”

  “You’re underage.”

  “I know that! I’m not drinking the beer, he is,” she muttered. “We’re going to dance and eat pizza.”

  His eyes slid over her very slowly. She felt as if he were stroking her bare skin and she felt wobbly on the unaccustomed high heels.

  “Where did you meet Grier?” he persisted.

  She threw up her hands and walked back into the house, leaving him to follow. Obviously, he wasn’t going to stop until he knew everything. She wondered what he meant about Cash’s past. Cash himself had hinted at something unpleasant.

  She tossed her purse and mantilla onto the big easy chair and perched herself on its wide arm, crossing her legs at the ankles. Odd, how intent his eyes were on them for a few seconds.

  “He came out here to talk to you about providing on-site security for the movie people,” she said. “You weren’t here, so I gave him coffee and pie and he asked me out.”

  He leaned against the doorjamb and stared at her from under the low-angled brim of his creamy Stetson. He looked elegant like that, and so sexy that she ached just looking at him. He had powerful long legs in nice-fitting jeans that did nothing to disguise the muscles in them. The .45 automatic he usually carried was in its new holster, replacing the revolver he’d used in the cowboy club shooting match. It sported the new maple handle and the Texas Ranger logo. His white shirt was taut against a muscular chest, a dark shadow under it giving hints about the thick curling dark hair that covered those hard muscles. The Texas Ranger star was on the pocket of that spotless white shirt. Usually he wore a jacket with it this time of year, but it was hot for early October. There was a faint line of perspiration on his top lip.

  “He isn’t taking you to Shea’s,” he said tautly.

  Her eyebrows arched. “Why not? Judd, I’m almost twenty-one,” she reminded him. “Most of my friends have been going there on Friday nights for years. It’s not a bad place. They just sell beer.”

  “They have fistfights. Once, there was a shooting out there.”

  “They’ve had two bouncers since Calhoun Ballenger almost wrecked the place protecting his wife, Abby, before they were married. That was years ago, Judd!”

  “The shooting was last year,” he pointed out.

  She sighed. “Cash is a police officer. He carries a gun. If anybody tries to shoot me, I’m sure he’ll shoot back.”

  He knew that. He also knew things about Grier that he wasn’t comfortable disclosing. The man would take care of her, certainly, but Judd didn’t like the idea of Christabel going out with another man. It bothered him that it did. “It doesn’t look right.”

  Her eyes met his, and she felt the years of loneliness making a heavy place inside her. “I go to school, I do the books, I check up on the boys while they’re working, I ride fence lines and help dip and brand cattle and doctor sick ones,” she said. “I haven’t been to a dance since my sophomore year of high school, and I don’t guess I’ve had a real date yet. I’m lonely, Judd. What can it hurt to let me go out dancing? We’re only married on paper, anyway. You don’t want me. You said so.”

  He knew that. It didn’t help.

  She got up from the sofa and went to him. Even in high heels, he towered over her. She looked up into his turbulent dark eyes. “I’m only going out for one evening,” she pointed out. “Don’t make me feel like I’m committing adultery. You know me better than that.”

  He drew in a long breath. Involuntarily, his lean hand went to her loosened hair and he gathered a thick strand of it in his fingers, testing its silky softness. “I’ve never seen you dressed like this.”

  “I can’t go out with a man like Grier wearing jeans and a sweatshirt,” she said with a gamine smile.

  He frowned. “What do you mean, a man like Grier?”

  She lifted one shoulder, uneasy at the contact of his fingers that was making her whole body tingle, and trying to hide it. She could even feel the heat of his body this close, and smell the spicy oriental aftershave he liked to wear. “He’s a very mature, sophisticated sort of person. I didn’t want to embarrass him by showing up in my working gear.”

  He frowned. “I’ve never taken you anywhere,” he recalled.

  She blinked, disconcerted. “You saved my life,” she pointed out. “Saved the ranch. Kept us all going, looked out for me and Mama while she was alive. You’re still shouldering the bulk of the responsibility for running things around here. You didn’t need to start taking on responsibility for my entertainment as well, for heaven’s sake!”

  He frowned at the way she put it, as if everything he did for her was a chore, an obligation. She almost glowed when she smiled. She had a pert, sexy little figure, even if she didn’t know it. She had such warmth inside her that he always felt good when he was with her. Was Grier, with his cold, dark past, reacting similarly to the brightness in Christabel? Was he looking for a place to warm his cold heart?

  She’d agreed to go out with the man. Was she attracted to him? He, of all men, knew how very innocent she was. She’d considered her paper wedding vows binding. He doubted if she’d ever really kissed anyone, or been kissed, unless you could call that cool peck on the cheek he gave her in the probate judge’s office a kiss. He thought about Grier, a ladies’ man if there ever was one, kissing her passionately.

  “No,” he said involuntarily. “Hell, no!”

  “What?” she queried, puzzled by the look on his face.

  He moved, one of those lightning-fast motions that could even intimidate their cowboys. His lean hands framed her rounded face and tugged it up so that her dark eyes were meeting his at a proximity they’d never shared.

  “Not Grier,” he said huskily, his eyes falling to her parted, full lips. “Not the first time...”

  While she was trying to get enough breath to ask him what he was talking about, he bent his head. She felt the slow, easy brush of his hard mouth on her lips with real intent for the first time in their turbulent relationship.

  She gasped and stiffened.

  He lifted his head just enough to see the shock and puzzlement in her eyes. “Just so you don’t go overboard with the first man who kisses you, Christabel,” he whispered with unusual roughness in his voice. “I’m your husband. The first time...it should be me.”

  She opened her mouth to speak but he
bent his head again before she could. His lips crushed down over hers with a pressure that grew more intense, more demanding, by the second. She clutched at his arms to save herself from falling as sensation piled on sensation. She felt a surge of heat in her lower body, along with a sudden heavy throb that made her shiver. She wondered if he could feel it, while she could still think.

  His hands went to her waist and slid up and down, his thumbs brushing just under the soft underside of her breasts, in a lazy, arousing pattern that made her want to lift up toward them. She went up on tiptoe, pushing her mouth against his, opening her lips to his hungry demand. She felt a vibration against her lips, something like a muffled groan, just before his arms suddenly swallowed her and lifted her into the hard curve of his body.

  Her arms were around his neck now, holding on for dear life, while his mouth probed at hers and she felt his tongue suddenly go right inside it. She’d heard and read about deep kisses. None of that prepared her for the sensations she felt. She was trembling. She didn’t know why, and she couldn’t stop it. He was going to feel it any minute. She moaned in frustration at her own inability to control her reactions. Inexplicably, the moan made him stiffen. One lean hand went to her hips and gathered them in fiercely to the thrust of his body. There was something alien about the feel of him, something vaguely threatening. He pushed her closer and she gasped as she realized what was happening.

  He realized it at the same time and jerked away from her. He didn’t let her go at once. His eyes were blacker than usual as they pierced her own.

  Her mouth was swollen. Her eyes were shocked, stunned, dazed, delighted. She was shivering just slightly. Her breath came in husky little jerks. He looked down, at the bodice of her blouse, and saw hard little points.

  His eyes met hers again. His hands were almost bruising on her upper arms as he held her there. “That’s how easy it is,” he said tersely.