Rawhide and Lace Read online

  “I don’t have rats in the barn,” he said absently.

  “Why not?”

  “My king snake lives in there. He eats them.”

  She swallowed. “I take back my offer to sleep in the barn.”

  “It’s just an old king snake. He wouldn’t hurt you.”

  “Fear of snakes runs in my family,” she told him. “I think my great-grandfather was eaten by one. He was a war correspondent. He disappeared in the jungles of South America, and his skeleton was found years later, they said, lying inside the skeleton of a monstrous python.”

  “A grisly end, all right,” he agreed. “But king snakes don’t eat people.”

  “That’s what you say.” She grimaced as she moved. “Damn these exercises! They get worse every day.”

  “You’ll work the kinks out in a week or so. It will get easier, believe me.”

  “Why do I have to keep this up?” she groaned. “I’ll never be able to model again, especially if I’m married.”

  He stared at her. “Won’t you? Why not?”

  “You’d let me work?” she asked, surprised.

  “You’re a human being, not my unpaid slave,” he replied. “I don’t believe in shackling a woman to the stove and keeping her pregnant. You’re free to do whatever you want, except sleep with other men.”

  “I wouldn’t want to do that,” she said.

  He laughed shortly. “No, I guess not. It must have been a pretty big disappointment.” He turned back toward the door, lighting another cigarette as he went.

  She gaped at him until she realized what he’d meant. Without giving herself time to think, she reached behind the easy chair, picked up one of his boots, and hurled it after him. It hit the wall instead of him, but it got his attention.

  He stared at it as if he’d just found a dead fish on the carpet. He picked it up, looked at it, and turned to face Erin.

  “Did you throw a boot at me?”

  “Of course I did.”

  “Did you mean to hit the wall?”

  “No,” she said calmly. “I was aiming for your head.”

  “You could use a little practice,” he observed.

  “Not really. As big as your feet are, I could aim at a wall and still hit you if I tried hard enough.”

  He glared at her. “I do not have big feet.”

  “Neither do ducks.”

  He came back toward her, holding the boot, and the look in his eyes wasn’t all that friendly.

  She scrambled to her feet, grimacing and hobbling as she tried to get behind a barrier, any barrier. “No, go away!” she cried. “I’m crippled!”

  “Not yet,” he muttered, “but it’s a distinct possibility.”

  “Ty! You wouldn’t hit me!”

  “Wouldn’t I?” He grabbed her roughly around the waist, lifting her. “Now how brave do you feel?” he asked.

  She shifted in his tight hold. “Put me down and I’ll tell you.”

  “Stop squirming or you’ll get put down the hard way.” He looked into her eyes from an unnerving proximity. “Were your eyes always that shade of green?”

  “I guess so.”

  “They look like leaves in early spring,” he murmured, “just after the dew glazes them.”

  “Yours are like silver when you get mad,” she told him. “And your eyelashes are almost as long as mine.”

  His eyes left hers, traveling slowly down to her mouth and lingering there. “Even thin as a rail and half dead, you’re beautiful.”

  “I’m not, but thank you for saying so.” She felt his breath, and her body reacted violently to his nearness. “I like the way your mouth feels when you kiss me,” she said, half under her breath. “It’s very hard and a little rough, and…” She moaned under the warm crush of his lips, stiffening, arching up against his hard chest, her arms clasping his neck violently.

  If he was rough, so was she. She loved the feel of his muscular body, the male scent of him. Her mouth opened to taste more of his, and she moaned again as he took full advantage of that vulnerability.

  He began to tremble, and she felt a twinge of guilt for inciting him. He didn’t want her this way, and she shouldn’t have thrown him off balance. But it was exciting to know she had such power over him.

  She forced her throbbing body to be still, and her mouth gentled under his. Her fingers stroked his cheek, his hair, soothing him, as her lips moved to his cheeks, his nose, his closed eyes, his eyebrows. He was still trembling, but he didn’t move, he didn’t protest. He let her do what she wanted; stood quietly and let her explore his rough features.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered as her lips moved back to his and brushed them apologetically. “I can’t help it. When you touch me, I go crazy.”

  “I guess that makes two of us,” he said gruffly. His eyes opened and looked into hers. “You’re pretty wild when we make love. I never dreamed you’d be so uninhibited with me.”

  “Neither did I,” she told him. Her mouth touched his cheek, opening, caressing. “I want…to do so…many shocking things with you.”

  He bit her lower lip gently, feeling her go taut at the tiny caress. “I ache,” he whispered.

  “So do I.” She moved her breasts against his chest and whimpered a little with suppressed passion.

  “Erin, if we don’t stop now, we may not be able to. I wasn’t this worked up the night I took you.”

  She let her forehead rest on his broad shoulder. “Neither was I,” she said unsteadily. “But we’ve only been kissing.”

  “Not quite.” He nuzzled his cheek against hers. “Move your breasts against me like that again.”

  She did, feeling them swell and go hard, feeling his sudden rigidity. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she whispered.

  “You can’t imagine what a sweet hurt it is.” He drew her against him as he let her slide to her feet and feel every inch of him on the way down. His legs trembled a little at her nearness. “A kind of throbbing ache…”

  “I want you,” she said huskily, closing her eyes as his hands slid down to her hips and urged her even nearer.

  “I want you, too,” he replied. “But we can’t. Not like this. It’s too big a risk.”

  She sighed. “I guess so.”

  “It isn’t my body saying that,” he added dryly. “Only my mind.”

  She laughed at that, and the tension between them eased a little. “Is that so?”

  He drew in a steadying breath and moved her away enough to satisfy her modesty. “We’re getting married Tuesday,” he reminded her. “I guess we can survive until then.”

  “I guess.” She studied a loose button on his shirt and thought that after they were married, she could take better care of him. Sew on buttons and iron his shirts and wash his clothes—such intimate little things that were suddenly of earthshaking importance. She could even sleep in his arms….

  She flushed, and he saw it and smiled.

  “What brought that on?” he teased.

  “Nothing.”

  He kissed her forehead tenderly. “You can sleep in my bed if you want to, after we’re married,” he whispered.

  She felt hot all over. “Can I?” she asked. Her voice sounded breathless, wildly excited. She felt that way, too.

  “All the time,” he said huskily. “I can watch you undress, and you can watch me. We can touch each other. We can make love.”

  She trembled helplessly. “In the light?” she asked, looking up.

  “In the light,” he whispered, his voice urgent, deep. “Did you talk to the doctor about the Pill?”

  “Yes. I…” She cleared her throat. It was hard to talk about something so intimate. She looked at his shirt instead. “It has to be started at a particular time, which…which I did two days ago,” she faltered.

  He chuckled softly. “I’m a cattleman,” he whispered at her ear. “I know all about cycles and ovulation and ‘that time of the month.’”

  “Oh.” She went really scarlet then and couldn’t
have looked at him to save her soul.

  “Erin, it’s part of life.” He tilted her chin up, forcing her eyes to meet his. “There’s nothing in marriage that should be taboo for a man and woman to discuss. I want honesty more than anything. I’ll never lie to you, and I’ll expect the same courtesy. I don’t want you to be afraid to talk to me about anything that disturbs you.”

  “I never had anyone to talk to about sex,” she whispered as if it were some deep, dark secret. “My mother did it all the time, but she was too embarrassed to discuss it with me. Everything I learned was from gossiping with other girls and reading books.”

  He smoothed her hair. “And with me,” he added quietly.

  “And with you,” she agreed. “It was so intimate….” She hesitated.

  “Talk to me,” he urged. “Don’t bottle it up.”

  He made it so easy, so natural. She toyed with the loose button on his shirt. It was a nice shirt, a brown check, and it moved when he breathed. She could see the swell of his muscles and the dark shadow of hair underneath it. “I’m sorry I fought you at the last,” she whispered.

  “You didn’t expect it to hurt that much.”

  She raised her eyes. “No. Nobody told me. I thought it would just be uncomfortable.”

  “It probably would have been, if I hadn’t been so hungry for you,” he told her. “Women take a lot of arousing. But my education in that department is sadly lacking. Knowing the mechanics is one thing; putting them into practice is another. Put simply,” he murmured, searching her eyes, “I know how to have sex. But I don’t know how to make love. There’s one hell of a difference.”

  “You never felt…you never wanted to do that with other women?” she asked.

  He smiled, shaking his head.

  She smiled back shyly. “I’m glad.”

  He brushed her hair away from her collar. “Didn’t you ever want a man to make love to you?”

  “Yes,” she said, touching his shirt pocket gently. “I wanted you to, from the first time I saw you. It frightened me a little, because you didn’t even like me.”

  “Like hell I didn’t,” he said gently. “I wanted you desperately.”

  “But you were horrible to me!”

  “Sure I was,” he said. “I didn’t think you’d look twice at a face like mine.”

  So that was it. It had all been defensive on his part, and, as his father had taught him, the best defense was a good offense. She searched his hard face. “Bruce said you hated me.”

  His eyes darkened. “I know. I read the letters. It wasn’t true. He played on my ego for all he was worth.” He took one of her hands in his and stared at it for a long moment. “He said you laughed at me. At the way I was with you.”

  She shook her head slowly, deliberately. “That was the biggest lie of all.”

  He touched her face with gentle, searching fingers. “I’m sorry that I hurt you,” he said. “That was the last thing I wanted, despite what I said at the time.”

  She felt like a young girl again, all shyness and excitement. “It wasn’t all that bad,” she told him. “I liked…touching you.”

  He remembered her hands, slowly exploring, feeling the hard contours of his body, deliciously uninhibited. He began to tremble. “God!”

  “Ty…” She looked up with tormented eyes.

  “Come here,” he said roughly, pulling her hard against him, wrapping her up in a bearish embrace. “Come close. They say it helps if you hold each other until the ache goes away.”

  She closed her eyes and felt the rigidity slowly draining out of both of them. She was reminded of a particular passage in a book about lovemaking she’d once read. If a woman wasn’t satisfied, it had said, she could ease the ache by being held very hard. Somehow Ty had known this.

  “Do you read books about sex?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he replied dryly. “Don’t you?”

  “Not a lot,” she confessed. “I found out more by listening to some of my girlfriends.”

  “What wild lives they must lead.”

  “You wouldn’t believe it!” And she told him some of their adventures, right down to the scandalous details.

  “For a shy girl, you tell a good story,” he said, laughing. “Feeling better now?”

  “Uh-huh,” she murmured. “Are you?”

  “I guess I’ll live.” He let her go reluctantly, looking into the softness of her eyes, enjoying the vivid alertness of her face. “What a change,” he remarked, “from the pale little ghost I found in that New York apartment.”

  “I was pretty down,” she admitted. “Life wasn’t offering much just then.”

  He took both her hands in his. “I’ll make it up to you,” he said. “All of it, every bit.”

  “Ty…”

  “Soak in a hot tub for a while, now,” he advised, letting her go. “I have some outside work to get through. Later, I’ll ride into Ravine with you and we’ll pick out a wedding ring.”

  “All right.” She watched him leave, her eyes soft and caring. Things were changing so rapidly. And what had begun as a trial, a fearful readjustment, was fast becoming the greatest joy of her life. She felt all the pain and bitterness draining out of her, being replaced by a growing excitement and feeling of closeness.

  If only she could believe that he really felt something for her, something more than pity and desire and a need to make restitution for what he’d done to her. It was so difficult to read him, even now. She didn’t want pity or guilt from him. She thought about the tenderness of his hands, the hungry roughness of his mouth…She wanted him, that was undeniable. But she wanted something else as well. She wanted him to…need her. Yes. Need her. Because she…needed him. There was another word, too, a deeper word. But she was afraid to even think it. That would come later, perhaps, if things worked out.

  She went back to the hated exercises for the first time without being told. She had to get back on her feet, she had to be whole again; because it was imperative that she show him she could stand alone. Then, if he still turned to her after that, without pity and without guilt…then there might be the hope of something deeper between them.

  But until he saw her as a woman, and not some crippled songbird with a broken spirit, she could never be sure of him—or herself.

  Chapter Eight

  Ty and Erin were married in a quiet ceremony in the small Presbyterian church where the Wades had worshiped for two generations.

  Erin wore a white street-length dress with long sleeves and a high neckline. She’d hoped that she wouldn’t need her cane, but it was still difficult to walk without it.

  Ty was wearing a well-tailored three-piece suit, and he looked debonair and worldly. He towered over Erin, even though she wore high heels, and she felt small and vulnerable standing next to him.

  A handful of people witnessed the ceremony, including Ty’s foreman, Stuart Grandy, Conchita and José, and a few neighbors. It only took a few minutes, and as Ty slid the small circle of gold onto her finger, he brushed his lips gently against her mouth in a kiss that was more promise than reality.

  Erin felt tears burning her eyes, and she tried desperately not to cry. Ty seemed to realize that her emotions were in turmoil because he smiled at her and produced a handkerchief as well-wishers gathered around them.

  “Well, somebody had to cry at my wedding,” she said, dabbing her eyes, “and who better than me?”

  “I’d cry, too, if I had to marry him,” declared Red Davis, one of Ty’s cowhands.

  Ty glared at him. “There went your Christmas bonus.”

  Red grinned. He was only in his early twenties, and full of rowdy humor. “Think so? In that case, wait until tonight, boss.”

  “You set one foot on my homestead and I’ll load my Winchester,” Ty told him.

  “Reverend Bill, did you hear what he just said?” Red called out to the tall, bespectacled minister. “He says he’s going to shoot me!”

  “I never!” Ty said, looking shocked.
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  Reverend Bill Gates chuckled as he joined them. “I heard why he said that, Red, and if you go onto his porch, I’ll lend him some buckshot for his shotgun.”

  Red shook his head sorrowfully. “Shame on you.”

  Bill grinned. “Shame on you.”

  Ty took Erin’s hand in his and braced himself for all the congratulations. She wondered if he found this as much of an ordeal as she did. She wasn’t all that comfortable in public yet, with her scars still visible and her self-confidence shot to pieces. But she leaned on Ty instead of the cane and forced herself to smile.

  Eventually, they returned to Staghorn for the reception. Conchita had taken care of all the details, and had even hired a caterer to help so that there would be plenty of food. It seemed to take forever for the guests to eat their fill, and by then Ty was into a heavy discussion with two of the neighboring ranchers about the growing number of oil fields in the area.

  Erin felt guilty for being so irritable, but she was fuming long before the last piece of cake had been finished off. She went into the kitchen with Conchita and helped her wash dishes.

  “Is not right,” Conchita grumbled, glaring down at la señora. “On your wedding day, this is not the proper thing for you to be doing.”

  “That’s right,” Erin agreed. “So you wade in there and tell my new husband that.”

  “Not me,” Conchita replied. “I like my job.”

  “You and I could take this terrific dishwashing routine on the stage,” she told the housekeeper. “We’d make a fortune.”

  Conchita stared at her, round-eyed. “Perhaps it is the fever.”

  “I don’t have a fever.”

  “No?” Conchita grinned, her teeth a flash of white in her dark face.

  Erin flushed and grabbed at a dishtowel. “I’ll dry.”

  “As you wish, señora.”

  Ty found them there half an hour later. He stopped in the doorway, watching. “What a hell of a way to spend your wedding day,” he said shortly.

  “No, it’s not,” Erin replied, smiling poisonously over her shoulder. “It’s super. Conchita and I are going to take this great act on the stage. We’ll win awards.”

  “I wouldn’t buy a ticket.”