The Rawhide Man

IT WAS A MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE…

But convenient for whom? Jude Langston had practically kidnapped Bess White and brought her to his San Antonio ranch. It wasn’t that he’d wanted her so desperately—he didn’t even like Bess. No, Jude’s cool green eyes were firmly fixed on the shares of his company that she’d inherited.

Bess had always thought of Jude as the Raw hide Man—lean and rough. But then she discovered he could also be unexpectedly gentle, and it devastated her. For as much as she fought it, Jude had captured her heart. Yet how could she stay in a marriage that was so much less than such a union should be?

The Rawhide Man

THE

ESSENTIAL COLLECTION

New York Times and USA TODAY Bestselling Author

Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Doris, Kay, Kathleen, June, Mary, Cindy, Sharalee, and all those lovely San Antonio ladies

Dear Reader,

I really can’t express how flattered I am and also how grateful I am to Mills & Boon Books for releasing this collection of my published works. It came as a great surprise. I never think of myself as writing books that are collectible. In fact, there are days when I forget that writing is work at all. What I do for a living is so much fun that it never seems like a job. And since I reside in a small community, and my daily life is confined to such mundane things as feeding the wild birds and looking after my herb patch in the backyard, I feel rather unconnected from what many would think of as a glamorous profession.

But when I read my email, or when I get letters from readers, or when I go on signing trips to bookstores to meet all of you, I feel truly blessed. Over the past thirty years I have made lasting friendships with many of you. And quite frankly, most of you are like part of my family. You can’t imagine how much you enrich my life. Thank you so much.

I also need to extend thanks to my family (my husband, James, son, Blayne, daughter-in-law, Christina, and granddaughter, Selena Marie), to my best friend, Ann, to my readers, booksellers and the wonderful people at Mills & Boon Books—from my editor of many years, Tara, to all the other fine and talented people who make up our publishing house. Thanks to all of you for making this job and my private life so worth living.

Thank you for this tribute, Mills & Boon, and for putting up with me for thirty long years! Love to all of you.

Diana Palmer

Table of Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter One

Thunder was crashing wildly outside the elegant middle Georgia house, but the poised young woman standing in the parlor was too numb to be frightened of it. The ordeal of the past two days had stripped her nerves of all feeling.

Elizabeth Meriam White was twenty-two and felt fifty. Her mother’s lingering illness had been torment enough, but she hadn’t expected the loss to be so traumatic. Wishing only the peace of oblivion for her beloved parent, she hadn’t realized how empty her own life was going to become. Now she had no one. Her stepsister had left that morning for Paris in a whirl of expensive perfume and chiffon, with her share of their mother’s estate firmly in hand. They’d never been close, but Bess had hoped for something more after the ordeal. She should have known better. Crystal had never once offered to help nurse her dying stepmother. After all, she’d told Bess carelessly, there was plenty of money to hire someone to do that.

Plenty of money. Bess could have cried. Yes, there had been, until Bess’s father died and her mother remarried to Jonathan Smythe and turned her father’s business interests over to him. Carla had never bothered with finance, except to make sure that the Rawhide Man couldn’t get his hands on that precious block of shares in the Texas oil corporation his father and Bess’s had pioneered together.

Bess shivered at the thought of Jude Langston. She’d always thought of him as rawhide through and through, because he was like that—lean and tough and very nearly invulnerable. He hadn’t been at the funeral, but Bess had seen her mother’s will and she knew he’d be along. Even in death, Carla’s obsession with besting Jude went on.

With a long sigh, Bess walked to the window and watched the rain beating down outside on the bleak, barren trees, whose autumn leaves had only just disappeared as cold December hovered overhead.

She leaned her forehead against the cold window-pane and closed her eyes. Oh, Mama, she thought miserably, I never knew what loneliness was until now. I never knew.

It had been a long year. A long two years. Carla had had a progressive kind of bone cancer that hadn’t responded to any kind of treatment, not radiation or chemotherapy. And Carla herself had refused any discussion of bone marrow transplants. So her death had been by inches, while Bess had tried to be brave and nurse her and not go to pieces. It hadn’t been easy. Her mother had been demanding and perverse and irritable and impatient. But Bess loved her. And she took care of her, up until the final hospital stay. She did it without any help from Crystal, too, because Crystal was having a mad fling with a French count and couldn’t be bothered to come home. Except to grab her share of the pitiful amount of money that was left, of course. Bess had reminded her coldly that hospital and doctor bills had drained the family resources. And then Crystal had asked about the oil stock….

Bess rubbed the back of her neck where it felt strained to the limit. She was sick all over with grief and the lack of rest and food. The stock, Crystal had said, might pull Bess out of the hole.

“Even so, you’ll have to sell the house, Bess,” Crystal had said, oddly sympathetic. “It’s mortgaged to the roots of the grass.”

“The minute he hears from the attorneys, Jude Langston will come down on my head like judgment,” Bess returned, “and you know it.”

“That sexy man,” Crystal said, nodding dreamily. “My God, what a waste, to look like that and be as hard as he is. He could have women by the barrelful, but all he wants to do is play around with oil and cattle and that baby of his.”

“Katy’s not a baby anymore,” Bess reminded her. “She’s almost ten.”

“That’s right, you go to the ranch every summer, don’t you, to those reunions? But you didn’t go this summer….” Crystal remarked.

Bess colored delicately and turned away. “I had to take care of Mother,” she said shortly.

“Yes, I know it was hard. I’d have helped darling, really I would, but…” Her delicate features twisted. “What will you do about the stock?”

“I wish I didn’t have it,” Bess said levelly. “I don’t relish having to face Jude. I only wish Mother hadn’t tied up the stock the way she did.”

“Oh, she hated him, all right,” Crystal said, laughing. “Even when she was able, she’d never go to the reunions, because she knew he’d be there. Why were they such enemies?”

“Because she was a society girl,” Bess said bitterly, remembering. “And there’s nothing in the world Jude hates more. Katy’s mother was one, you know. She broke their engagement while he was in Vietnam and married someone else, even though she was carrying his child. He still takes that hatred out on anyone handy. Mother. Or me. I just wish the battle had died with her.”

“I think you’ll manage, sweet,” Crystal told her, sizing up her stepsister’s tall, elegant carriage. Bess wasn’t exactly pretty, but she was a lady and she had class, and it stuck out all over her, from her silver blond hair to her soft brown eyes and creamy complexion.

“Against Jude?” Bess smiled sadly. “I watched him back down an armed cowboy once, when I was with Dad at the Langston ranch. I was about fourteen, and one of the hands got mad at Jude for something. He took a couple of drinks and went at Jude with a loaded gun. Jude didn’t even flinch. He walked straight into the gun, took it away from the cowboy and beat him to his knees.”

“Your eyes flash when you talk about him,” Crystal observed, watching Bess. “He excites you, doesn’t he?”

“He frightens me.” The older girl laughed nervously.

Crystal shook her head slowly. “You’re awfully naive for a woman your age. It isn’t fear, but you aren’t experienced enough to know that, are you?” she asked absently. Then she shrugged and whirled away. “Have to run, pet. Jacques is meeting me at the airport. Let me know how things work out, won’t you?”

And that was that. Bess was left alone in the house, and it was getting dark. She had no family, no close friends—there hadn’t been the opportunity to make friends, with an invalid mother who needed constant care. So she was alone.

Involuntarily her mind went wandering back to Jude like a puppy that wouldn’t mind. He’d be along, all right. As soon as he realized that Bess had control of his precious stock, he’d be at her throat. He hadn’t managed to run over Carla, though, and he wasn’t going to run over Bess, either. She had the shares and she was keeping them. They were all that stood between her and starvation, and they paid a high dividend.

She let the curtain fall and turned away from the window too quickly to catch the flash of car lights against the glass. The force of the rain muffled the sound of a purring engine coming closer.

Bess went into the bare hall and sat down on the steps, ruffling her disheveled blond hair. She touched her face lightly, mentally comparing it with Crystal’s. Her nose was arrow straight; her mouth had a bee-stung appearance, full and red and soft. Her brown eyes were wide spaced and appealing. She wasn’t beautiful like her stepsister, but she wasn’t ugly, at least. Of course, she was very thin and small breasted—not voluptuous like Crystal. But someday she might find a man and get married. And again she thought of Jude and cursed her stubborn, stupid mind. Jude would never marry. For heaven’s sake, he’d never even bothered to marry Katy’s mother!

Bess stared around her at the opulent home, which had been part of the White estate for over a hundred years, surviving even the Civil War. How sad that it hadn’t been able to survive the Smythes, she thought with a surge of humor. Crystal was right, of course. It would have to be sold. Dividends from her stocks would provide enough to support her if she was frugal, but not to maintain the house as well.

With a weary groan she got to her feet. She might as well get busy and clean out some drawers or something. It would have been a blessing if she’d had a job to go to, but she’d been trained for nothing except managing this monstrous house. And soon she wouldn’t have even that. She laughed almost hysterically at the thought. She’d have to get a job.

The sudden clang of the doorbell made her jump. She hadn’t expected visitors in this wild rain.

She glanced at her hair in the mirror. It looked as if it had been caught in a windmill, but there was no time to fix it, and she wasn’t wearing makeup at all. She looked pale and plain and sickly. She hoped this wasn’t going to be another bill collector; she had enough trouble already, and the phone calls and demands for payment were growing hourly since the news of her mother’s death had been made public. When it rained it poured, she thought desperately.

A wild shudder went through her when she opened the door. The man outside was the image of every woman’s secret dream. Tall, broad shouldered and long legged, dressed in an expensive gray pin-striped suit with matching Stetson and boots, he looked like something out of a smart men’s magazine. But his face, deeply tanned, was as inscrutable as a stone carving. His mouth was rigid, as firm as his jaw. His eyes were deeply set under thick black lashes and they were a glittering pale green. His scowling eyebrows were the same jet black as the hair she glimpsed under his hat. And the whole portrait was so formidable that she instinctively stepped back.

“You’ve been expecting me, I imagine,” Jude Langston said curtly, just a trace of a Texas accent in his deep, measured voice.

“Oh, yes, along with flood, earthquake and volcanic eruptions,” she agreed, using the protective guise of humor that had always saved her nerves when she had to deal with him. “I won’t even bother asking why you’re here. Obviously, you’ve seen the will.”

He moved forward, and she knew him too well to stand her ground. He closed the door roughly behind him, and rain dripped from the wide brim of the gray hat that shadowed part of his face.

“Where can we talk?”

She turned, remembering that she was still Miss White of Oakgrove, and led him into the shabby parlor.

“Still the society girl, I see,” he taunted, dropping down onto the sofa. “Do I get coffee, Miss White, or aren’t the servants working today?”

She blanched, but her chin lifted and her brown eyes accused. “My mother died two days ago,” she said pointedly, “so could you save your sarcasm for a special occasion? Yes, there’s coffee, and no, there aren’t any servants. There haven’t been for a number of years. Or don’t you know yet that the only thing standing between me and imminent starvation is that block of oil shares you’re so hot to get your hands on?”

He looked as if she’d actually surprised him, but she turned away. “I’ll get the coffee,” she said curtly.

While she was gone, she cooled down her hot temper. It wouldn’t do her any good with Jude; the only chance she had was to keep her head and not go for his throat. By the time she carried the worn silver service into the living room, he’d discarded his topcoat and hat and was wandering around the room, glancing distastefully at the portrait of Carla and Bess above the mantel.

He turned and watched her set the heavy service on the coffee table without offering to help. That was like him, the original chauvinist who had no time for women.

“Thank you,” she said elegantly, “for your kind offer of assistance.”

“Is the damned thing heavy?” he asked carelessly.

She almost laughed. The situation was unbelievable. She sat down and poured out the coffee, handing him his black without realizing what that little slip gave away.

“Should I be flattered that you remember how I take my coffee?” he asked, leaning back to study her insolently, running his eyes over every curve outlined by the simple gray jersey dress she was wearing.

“Don’t put on your cowboy drawl for me, mister,” she replied quietly, lifting her cup to her lips. “I know you.”

“You think you do,” he agreed, his green eyes narrowing.

“How’s Katy?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Growing up fast.” His gaze focused on her. “She asked about you when the family got together this summer.”

“I’m sorry I missed it,” she said. “I couldn’t leave Mother.”

He flexed his broad shoulders and leaned forward. The action stretched the fabric of his pants over his powerful thighs and Bess had to look away.

“That’s enough small talk,” he said suddenly, piercing her eyes with his. “You’re coming back to San Antonio with me.”

She hardly had time to catch her breath. “I’m what?”

“You heard me.” He set down his cup. “The only way I can control that stock is by marrying you. So that’s how we’ll do it.”

Her body jerked as if he’d hit her, and she stared at him uncomprehendingly. She might have thought of this before—it was so like Jude to take the direct approach.

“No,” she said shortly.

“Yes,” he replied. “I’ve waited years to get my hands on those shares, and I’m having them. If you come along with the deal, I’ll just have to make the best of it.”

She went red in the face and sat up straight. “What makes you think you’re any prize?” she asked in her coldest tone. “You’re cold and hard and you don’t care about anybody in the world except Katy!”

“That’s absolutely gospel,” he agreed, staring at her unblinkingly. “But you’ll go to the altar with me if I have to tie you up and gag you, except for the part where you say, ‘I do.’”

“I do not,” she corrected. “You can’t force me to marry you.”

“Think not?” He stood up, his green eyes glittering with cold humor, his face confident and frighteningly hard.

He left the room, and Bess stood up, staring helplessly around. What in the world was he doing!

Minutes later he was back, with her coat in one hand and her purse dangling from his fingers. He slung them at her. “I’ve undone the fuse box. You can call a real estate agent from San Antonio and put the house on the auction block. Any little things you want can be shipped out. Now put on that coat.”

She couldn’t believe this was happening. It must be a hallucination brought on by the strain, she told herself. But a minute later, always impatient, he was stuffing her into the coat. He jerked the hood up and thrust the purse into her hands.

“I won’t go!” she cried out.

“Like hell you won’t go.” He bent and swung her up into his arms like a sack of feathers and carried her out into the rain.

Chapter Two

This isn’t happening, Bess told herself an hour later as she sat beside Jude in the cockpit of his big Cessna. It simply isn’t happening!

But the sound of the engine was very real, and so was Jude’s set, humorless face as he concentrated on flying the plane.

Characteristically, he wasn’t trusting his life to another pilot. He liked having total control—in everything. That was why he was flying himself and that was why he wanted the block of shares that Bess now owned. It was also, Bess suspected, why no woman had ever managed to get him to the altar in a conventional way. Falling in love would be giving a measure of control to someone else, too.

She leaned back in the seat, staring blankly at the clouds ahead, and wondered how she was going to get herself out of this predicament. Surely some other way could be found to give him the stock, if he reimbursed her. She brightened. Until she remembered the exact wording of the will. She muttered under her breath. Carla had taken care of that angle, too. The only way Jude could possibly get the stock was to marry Bess. And that, Carla had smugly thought, he’d never do. He disliked Bess. Everyone knew it, too. They fought like cats and dogs, and people moved out of the way at Langston family get-togethers when they were both present.

The reunion two summers ago was the reason Bess had stayed away from the most recent gathering. She and Jude had gotten into a horrible fight about Katy. She could still blush at the language he’d used; the fact that there had been bystanders present hadn’t slowed him down one iota.

Katy had told Bess about a fight she’d been in at school, stating proudly that she’d done just like Daddy, she’d pounded the hell out of a boy twice her size, and wasn’t that super? “Super” had been Katy’s latest word; it described everything from her dog, Pal, to the calf Jude had given her to raise for 4-H.

Bess hadn’t thought it was super now that Katy was eight. She’d thought it was terrible, and she’d told Jude so later as they were sitting together having dinner with some of the other family members at a restaurant on the Paseo del Rio. Traditionally, they always concluded the annual picnic and rodeo at the restaurant, which Jude would book for an arm and a leg and the family would fill.

“What’s wrong with Katy sticking up for herself?” he’d demanded. “The damned boy hit her first.”

“She’s a girl,” Bess had burst out, exasperated with him. “For heaven’s sake, she already dresses and talks like a boy. What are you trying to do to her?”

“Teach her to stand up for herself,” he’d replied coolly, and had gone back to sipping his whiskey, raising his hand as another male member of the family entered the restaurant.

“Teaching her to be a freak,” Bess had said under her breath.

That had set him off. She could still see him rising, as slowly as a rattlesnake coiling, his eyes glittering and dangerous, his face taut.

“Katy is my daughter,” he’d said with a cold smile. “I decide what’s good or bad for her, and I don’t need help from some dainty little society lady who couldn’t fight her way out of an eclair! Who the hell do you think you are to tell me how to raise my daughter? What qualifies you to be anybody’s mother?” His voice was raised just enough to carry to the other tables, and there was a sudden hush, broken only by the sound of the river and the muffled voices of strolling passersby on the river walk. Bess had wanted to cringe.

“People are staring,” Bess had said under her breath.

“Well, my God, let them stare!” he’d boomed, scowling down at her. “If you’re so free with your damned advice on child raising, let’s tell everybody. Go ahead, Miss White, do advise me on the behavior of my child!”

Her face was white with embarrassment and humiliation, but she held her head up and stared back at him. “I don’t think I need to repeat it,” she said very calmly.

It made him even angrier that he couldn’t make her lose her composure entirely. That was when he’d started cursing. “You damned little prig,” he’d tacked on at the end, and by that time her face was as red as it had been white earlier. “Why don’t you get married and have kids of your own? Can’t you find a man good enough?” He’d laughed coldly and looked over her body with contempt. “Or can’t you find a man?”

And he’d turned and walked away, leaving her sitting there with tears stinging her eyes. The family had lost interest then and gone on to other topics. Bess had gone back to her hotel and packed. It was the last time she’d had any contact with Jude, until now.

“So quiet, Miss White,” he taunted, jerking her out of her reveries. “So ladylike. You didn’t even kick and scream. Is that kind of behavior too human for you?”

She lifted her chin, her perfect composure intact, and looked at him. “Look who’s talking about being human,” she said with a cool smile.

One of his thick eyebrows jerked. “But, then, I never claimed to be, did I?”

She averted her eyes. “If I’d had any doubts about it, you quelled them two summers ago.”

He made a sound deep in his throat. “You ran,” he recalled curtly. “Somehow, I didn’t expect that. You’ve never run from me before.”

The wording was unusual and it made her curious, but she wasn’t in the mood to start trying to unravel Jude again.

“I didn’t run,” she replied, telling the lie very calmly. “I simply didn’t see any reason to stay an extra day and give you any more free shots at me.”

He glanced at her. “I meant what I said about Katy,” he said darkly. “I don’t want her made into a miniature debutante, is that clear? You lay one hand on her wardrobe and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

There was no arguing with him when he was in that mood; she knew the look from memory. She turned her face away. “Don’t worry, I won’t be around long enough to do any damage.”

“You’ll be around. Now shut up,” he added, glaring her way. “I don’t like conversation when I’m flying this thing. You wouldn’t want to crash, would you?”

“The airplane wouldn’t dare,” she muttered angrily, glancing at him. “Like most everything else around you, it’s too intimidated to take the chance!”

Surprisingly, he laughed. But it was brief, and then his face was the familiar hard one she was accustomed to.

They landed at the San Antonio airport late that night, and Bess was exhausted. She barely noticed her surroundings until they were heading toward the exit and she got a good look at the walls. They were hung with paintings, all for sale, all exquisite, and most of Western subject matter.