Nelson's Brand

“Life goes on,” Allie said. She sighed, spreading her long, elegant fingers over the full skirt of the dress. “Isn’t this a dream? I don’t know how to thank you and Winnie for letting me stay with you. I really had nowhere else to go.”

“I’m sure you have plenty of friends besides us, even if they are spread around the world a bit,” Winnie chided. She hugged Allison. “But I’m still your best one. Remember when we were in seventh grade together back in Bisbee and we had to climb the mountain every day after school to get to our houses?”

“I miss Arizona sometimes,” Allison said absently.

“I don’t,” Mrs. Manley said, shaking her head. “I used to have nightmares about falling into the Lavender Pit.” She shuddered delicately. “It suited me when Winnie’s father changed jobs and we moved here. Of course, if I’d known he was going to have to travel all over the world, I might have had second thoughts. He’s gone almost all the time lately.”

“He’ll retire next year,” Winnie reminded her.

“Yes, so he will.” Mrs. Manley smiled and changed the subject. “You two had better get going, or you’ll be late. The barbecue’s at the Nelsons’?”

“Yes. Dwight invited us.” Winnie grinned. “I’ll have to make sure he doesn’t toss me into the corral with those wild horses and ride off with Allie.”

“Small chance when you’re engaged.” Allison grinned.

Winnie drove them to the Nelson place in her small Japanese car, a sporty model that suited her. Allison could drive, but she didn’t have a current license. Where she’d been for the past two years, she hadn’t needed one.

“Before we get there,” Winnie said with a worried glance at Allison, “remember what I said and don’t get too close to Gene. I don’t think he’d let you get near him anyway—he’s pretty standoffish around shy little innocents. But I wasn’t kidding when I told you he was a dangerous customer. Even his brother and sister walk wide around him lately.”

“He can’t be that bad,” Allison said gently and smiled.

“Don’t you believe it.” Winnie wasn’t convinced. She scowled. “You watch yourself.”

“All right. I will,” she promised, but she had her fingers crossed beside her. “Is he by chance a jilted man, embittered by the faithlessness of some jaded woman, or was he treated horribly by his mother?” she added dryly.

“Gene doesn’t get jilted by women, and his mother was a saint, according to Dwight,” Winnie recalled. “A really wonderful woman who was loved by the whole community. She died about ten years ago. His father was a small-time rancher with a big heart. They were happily married. His…father died about six months ago.”

Allison wondered at the hesitation in Winnie’s voice when she talked about the late Mr. Nelson. “Do you know what’s wrong with Gene, then?” she persisted.

“Yes. But I can’t tell you,” was the quiet reply. “It’s not really any of my business, and Dwight’s already been asked too many questions by the whole community. I don’t mean to sound rude, and I trust you with my life,” Winnie added, “but it’s Gene’s business.”

“I understand.”

“No, you don’t, but Dwight may tell you one day. Or Marie.”

“Is Marie like Gene or Dwight?”

“In coloring, she’s like Dwight, blond and blue-eyed. Gene’s…different. More hardheaded. Fiery.”

“I gathered that. Doesn’t he ever smile?”

“Sometimes,” Winnie said. “Usually when he’s about to hit somebody. He isn’t an easygoing man. He’s arrogant and proud and just a little too quick on the trigger to be good company. You’ll find all that out. I just don’t want you to find it out at close range, the hard way.”

“I can take care of myself, you know,” Allison mused. “I’ve been doing it in some pretty rough places for a long time.”

“I know. But there’s a big difference in what you’ve been doing and a man-woman relationship.” She glanced at Allison as she turned into a long, graveled driveway. “Honestly, for a twenty-five-year-old woman, you’re just hopelessly backward, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. It isn’t as if you’ve had the opportunity to lead a wild life. But you’ve been criminally exposed in some ways and criminally sheltered in others. I don’t think your parents ever really considered you when they made their plans.”

Allison laughed gently. “Yes, they did. I’m just like them, Winnie. I loved every minute of what we all did together, and I’ll miss it terribly, even now.” Her eyes clouded. “Things happen as God means them to. I can cope.”

“It was such a waste, though….”

“Oh, no,” Allison said, remembering the glowing faces she’d seen, the purpose and peace in the dark eyes. “No, it was never a waste. They’re still alive, in the work they did, in the lives they changed.”

“I won’t argue with you,” Winnie said gently. “We’ve kept in touch and remained friends all these long years since we were in school together in Bisbee. You’re still the sister I never had. You’ll have a home as long as I’m alive.”

Tears sprang to Allison’s big eyes. She hurriedly dashed them away. “If the circumstances were reversed, I hope you know that I’d do the same thing for you.”

“I know,” Winnie said. She wiped away a tear of her own.

There was a crowd of cars in the front driveway at the Nelsons’ after they’d wound their way up past the towering lodgepole pines and aspen trees to the big stone house, backed by jagged high mountains.

“Isn’t it just heaven?” Allison sighed involuntarily. “Wyoming is beautiful.”

“Yes, it certainly is. I can happily spend the rest of my life here. Now, Allie, you aren’t planning to sit behind bushes all night, are you?” she muttered. “The whole idea of this party is to meet people.”

“For you to meet people,” Allison emphasized. “You’re the one who’s getting married, not me.”

“You can take advantage of it, all the same. These are interesting people, too. Most of them are rodeo folks, and the rest are cattlemen or horse breeders.”

“You’re making me nervous,” Allison said, fidgeting in her seat as Winnie parked the car behind a silver-gray Lincoln. “I don’t know anything about rodeo or horses or cattle.”

“No time like the present to learn,” Winnie said easily. “Come on. Out of there.”

“Is this trip really necessary?” Allison murmured, swinging her long, elegant legs out of the car. “I could stay in the car and make sure it doesn’t roll down the hill.”

“Not a chance, my friend. After all the work I’ve put in on you today, I want to show you off.”

“Gloating over your artistry, I gather?” Allison primped. “Well, let’s spread me among the peasants, then.”

“I’d forgotten your Auntie Mame impersonation,” Winnie winced. “You really have to stop watching those old movies. Don’t lay it on too thick, now.”

“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Allison agreed. She drew an imaginary line across her stomach.

“Your heart isn’t down there,” Winnie said worriedly.

“Yes, it is. The only thing I really love is food, so that’s where my heart is. Right?”

“I give up.”

Allison followed her friend up the wide stone steps to where Dwight Nelson waited on the porch, his blond hair gleaming in the fading sunlight.

“There you are!” he chuckled, and swung a beaming Winnie up in his arms to kiss her soundly. “Hello, Allie, glad you could come,” he told the other woman and suddenly stopped, his eyes widening as he stared at her. “Allie? That is you, isn’t it?”

Allison sent a dry look in her friend’s direction. “Go ahead. Gloat,” she dared.

“I did it all,” Winnie said, smiling haughtily. “Just look. Isn’t she hot?”

“Indeed she is, and if I hadn’t seen you first…” Dwight began.

Winnie stomped on his big foot through his boot. “Hold it right there, buster, before you talk yourself into a broken leg. You’re all mine, and don’t you forget it.”

“As if I could.” Dwight winced, flexing his booted foot. “You look gorgeous, Allie, now will you tell her I was kidding?”

“He was kidding,” Allie told Winnie.

“All right. You’re safe, this time.” Winnie slid her arm around Dwight’s lean waist. “Where’s Marie?”

“Around back,” he said, grimacing as he glanced toward the sound of a local band beyond the arch in the surrounding wall. “Gene’s out there.”

“Gene and Marie don’t get along,” Winnie told Allison.

“That’s like saying old-time cowboys and old-time Indians don’t get along.” Dwight sighed. “Fortunately the guests will keep them from killing each other in public. Mother used to spend her life separating them. It was fine while Gene was abroad for a year on a selling trip. We actually had peaceful meals. Now we have indigestion and a new cook every month.” He pursed his lips. “Speaking of food, let’s go see if there’s any left.” Dwight glanced over their heads toward the driveway. “I think you two are the last people we expected.”

“The best always are, darling,” Winnie said, smiling up at him with sparkling affection.

Allison had to fight her inclination to be jealous, but if anyone ever deserved happiness, Winnie did. She had a heart as big as the whole world.

She followed the engaged couple through the stone arch to the tents that had been set up with tables and chairs positioned underneath it to seat guests. A huge steer carcass was roasting over an open fire while a man basted it with sauce, smiling and nodding as two women, one of whom Winnie whispered was Marie Nelson, carried off platters of it to the tables.

Other pots contained baked beans and Brunswick stew, which were being served as well, along with what had to be homemade rolls.

“It smells heavenly,” Allison sighed, closing her eyes to inhale the sweet aroma.

“It tastes heavenly, too,” Dwight said. “I grabbed a sample on my way around the house. Here, sit down and dig in.”

He herded them toward the first tent, where there were several vacant seats, but he and Winnie were waylaid by a couple they knew and Allison was left to make her own way to the long table.

She took a plate and utensils from the end of the table, along with a glass of iced tea, and sat down. Platters of barbecue and rolls, and bowls of baked beans and Brunswick stew, were strategically placed all along the table. Allison filled her plate with small portions. It had been a long time since she’d felt comfortable eating her fill, and she had difficulty now with the sheer volume of food facing her.

Gene Nelson was standing nearby talking to a visiting cattleman when he saw Allison sit down alone at the table. His eyes had found her instantly, as if he’d known the second she’d arrived. He didn’t understand his fierce attraction to her, even if she did look good enough to eat tonight. Her dress was blatantly sexy, and she seemed much more sophisticated than she had in the bar with Dwight and Winnie. Winnie was a model, and he knew she had some liberated friends. He’d even dated Winnie once, which was why Dwight’s fiancée had such a bad opinion of him. Not that he’d gotten very far. Dwight had cut him out about the second date, and women were so thick on the ground that he’d never given Dwight’s appropriation of his date a second thought. That might have added to Winnie’s disapproval, he mused, the fact that he hadn’t wanted her enough to fight for her. It was nothing personal. He’d simply never wanted any woman enough to fight for her. They were all alike. Well, most all alike, he thought, staring helplessly at Allison, with her long, dark hair almost down to her narrow waist.

He sighed heavily as he watched her. It had been a while since he’d had a woman. His body ached for sensual oblivion, for something to ease the emotional pain he’d been through. Not that he remembered much about that supposedly wild night with Dale Branigan that had kept her hounding him. In fact, he hardly remembered it at all. Maybe that was why his body ached so when he looked at Allison. These dry spells were hell on the nerves.

Allison felt his gaze and lifted her hazel eyes to seek his across the space that separated them. Oh, but he was handsome, she thought dizzily. He was dressed in designer jeans and a neat white Western shirt with pearl snaps instead of buttons. He wore a burgundy bandanna around his neck and hand-tooled leather boots. His head was bare, his hair almost black and faintly damp, as if he’d just come from a shower. He was more masculine and threatening than any man Allison had ever known, and the way he looked at her made her tingle all over.

She shouldn’t encourage him; she knew she shouldn’t. But she couldn’t stop looking at him. Her life had been barren of eligible men. It was inevitable that she might be attracted to the first nice-looking bachelor she met, she told herself.

If that look in her eyes wasn’t an invitation, he was blind, Gene thought, giving in to it with hardly a struggle. He excused himself, leaving the cattleman with another associate, and picked up a glass of beer and a plate and utensils before he joined Allison. He threw a long leg over the wooden bench at the table and sat down, glancing at the tiny portions on her plate.

“Don’t you like barbecue?” he asked coolly, and he didn’t smile.

She looked up into pale green eyes in a lean face with a deeply tanned complexion. Her eyes were a nice medium hazel flecked with green and gold, but his were like peridot—as pale as green ice under thick black lashes. His black hair was straight and conventionally cut, parted on the left side and pulled back from a broad forehead. He had high cheekbones and a square chin with a hint of a cleft in it. His mouth was as perfectly formed as the mouth on a Greek statue—wide and firm and faintly chiseled, with a thin upper lip and an only slightly fuller lower one. He wasn’t smiling, and he studied Allison with a blatantly familiar kind of scrutiny. It wasn’t the first time a man had undressed her with his eyes, but it was the first time it had affected her so completely. She wanted to pull the tablecloth off the table and wrap herself in it.

But that wouldn’t do, she told herself. Hadn’t she learned that the only way to confront a predator was with steady courage? Her sense of humor came to her rescue, and she warmed to the part she was playing.

“I said, don’t you like barbecue?” he repeated. His voice was like velvet, and very deep. The kind of voice that would sound best, she imagined, in intimacy. She started at her own thoughts. She must be in need of rest, to be thinking such things about a total stranger, even if he was lithe and lean and attractive.

“Oh, I like barbecue,” she answered with a demure smile. “I’m just not used to having it cut off the cow in front of me.”

He smiled faintly, a quirk of his mouth that matched the arrogant set of his head. “Do tell.”

“Do tell what?” she asked with what she hoped was a provocative glance from under the thick lashes that mascara had lengthened.

He was a little disappointed at her easy flirting. He’d rather expected her to be shy and maidenly. But it certainly wouldn’t be the first time he’d been mistaken about a woman. He lifted a thick eyebrow. “Give me time. I’ll think up something.”

“A reason to stay alive,” she sighed, touching a hand to her chest. “I do hope you aren’t married with six children, Mr. Nelson. I would hate to spoil the barbecue by throwing myself off the roof.”

His eyes registered mild humor. “I’m not married.”

“You must wear a disguise in public,” she mused.

He studied her with pursed lips for a minute before he picked up his plate and glass and came around the table. Her heart skipped when he sat down beside her—very close. He smelled of soap and cologne, potent to a woman who wasn’t used to men in any form.

“You didn’t come alone, I suppose,” he mused, watching her closely. “Let me get a few bites of this under my belt so that I’ll have enough strength to beat your escort to his knees.”

“Oh, I don’t have one of those,” she assured him, hiding her nervousness in humor, as she always had. “I came with Winnie.”

“That spares my knuckles.” He was flirting, too, but she appealed to him.

“Have you known Winnie a long time?” he asked pleasantly.

“Yes,” she said. “We’ve been friends since we were kids, back in Arizona.”

Winnie had never mentioned her, but then, he hadn’t been around Winnie that much since she’d become engaged to Dwight. And these days, he had very little to say to Dwight.

“You said at the bar that you’d only be here a couple of weeks. How long have you been in Pryor?”

She smiled faintly. “Just a few days. I’m looking forward to a nice visit with Winnie. It’s been years since we spent any time together.” She couldn’t very well tell him that the length of her stay depended on whether or not she could keep anybody in Pryor from knowing who she was and why she was here. She’d successfully ducked the media since her arrival. She didn’t want them after her again.

“Have you done much sightseeing?” he asked, letting his eyes fall to her bare shoulders with bold interest.

“Not yet. But I’m enjoying myself. It’s nice to have a vacation from work.”

That sounded odd, as if she’d forced the words out and didn’t mean them. One pale eye narrowed even more. His gaze slid over her curiously, lingering on the thrust of her breasts under the low neckline. “What do you normally do—when you aren’t visiting old friends?” he asked.

“I’m a vamp,” she murmured dryly, enjoying herself as she registered his mild surprise. It was like being an actress, playing a part. It took her mind off the horror of the past months.

“No, I won’t buy that,” he said after a minute. “What do you really do?” he persisted, fingering his glass.

She lifted her own glass to her lips, to give her time to think. He didn’t look stupid. She couldn’t say anything that might give her away to Winnie’s neighbors, especially her future brother-in-law.

“I’m in the salvage business,” she said finally.

He stared at her.

She laughed. “Oh, no, I didn’t mean used cars and scrap metal and such. I’m in the human salvage business. I’m…” she hesitated, searching for something that wouldn’t be a total lie.

“You’re what?” he asked.

He was dangerously inquisitive, and almost too quick for her. She had to throw him off the track before he tripped her up and got at the truth. She lifted her eyebrows. “Are you by any chance the reincarnation of the Spanish Inquisition?”

“I don’t even speak Spanish,” he said. He smiled slowly, interested despite his suspicions. “How old are you?”

“Sir, you take my breath away!” she exclaimed.

His eyes fell to her mouth. “Is that a request?” he murmured, and there was suddenly a world of experience in the pale eyes that skimmed her mouth, in the deepness of his soft voice.

Her hand trembled as she put down the glass. He was out of her league and she was getting nervous. It didn’t take a college degree to understand what he meant. “You’re going too fast,” she blurted out.

He leaned back, studying her through narrow eyes. She was a puzzle, a little mass of contradictions. But in spite of that, she appealed to him as no one else had in recent years.

“Okay, honey,” he said after a minute, and smiled faintly. “I’ll put on the brakes.” He took another bite of barbecue and washed it down with what looked and smelled like beer.

“How old are you?” she asked without meaning to, her eyes on the hard lines of his face. She imagined that he had a poker face when he wanted to, that he could hide what he was feeling with ease. She knew his age, because Dwight had told her, but it wouldn’t do to let him know that she’d been asking questions about him from the very first time she saw him.

He glanced at her, searching her wide, curious eyes. “I’m thirty-four.”

She dropped her eyes to his chin and farther down, to his broad chest.

“Too old for you, cupcake?” he asked carelessly.

“I’m twenty-five,” she said.

His dark brows drew together. He’d thought she was younger than that. Yes, she had a few lines in her face, and even a thread or two of gray in her dark hair. Nine years his junior. Not much difference in years, and at her age, she couldn’t possibly be innocent. His heart accelerated as he studied what he could see of her body in the revealing dress and wondered what she’d look like without it. She was nicely shaped, and if that beautiful bow of a mouth was anything to go by, she was probably going to be a delicious little morsel. If only she wasn’t best friends with Winnie.

He studied her again. She really was a puzzle. Young, and then, suddenly, not young. There had been a fleeting expression in her eyes when he’d asked her about her profession—an expression that confused him. He had a feeling that she wasn’t at all what she seemed. But, like him, she seemed to hide her emotions.

“Twenty-five. You’re no baby, are you?” he murmured.

Her eyes came up and that expression was in them again, before she erased it and smiled. Fascinating, he thought, like watching an actress put on her stage makeup.

“No. I’m no baby,” she agreed softly, her mind on the ordeal she’d been through and not really on the question. She didn’t realize what she was saying to him with her words, that she was admitting to experience that she didn’t have.

He felt his body reacting to the look in her eyes and he stiffened with surprise. It usually took longer for a woman to affect him so physically. He wouldn’t let her look away. The electricity began to flow between them and his eyes narrowed as he saw her mouth part helplessly. She was close, and she smelled of floral cologne that drifted up, mingling with the spicy scent of barbecue and the malt smell of his beer.

His gaze dropped to the cleft between her breasts and lingered there, on skin as smooth and pink as a sun-ripened peach. His chest rose and fell roughly as he tried to imagine how her breasts would feel under his open mouth…

The sudden shock of voices made the glass of beer jerk in his lean hand.

“Did you think we’d deserted you?” Dwight asked Allison, echoing Winnie’s greeting. “I see you’ve found Gene,” he added, patting the older man on the shoulder as he paused beside him. “Be careful that he doesn’t try to drag you under the table.”

“Watch it,” the older man returned humorously. But his eyes were glinting, and he knew that Dwight wouldn’t mistake the warning even if it flew right past his new acquaintance.

Dwight understood, all right, but he didn’t do the expected thing and go away.

“You don’t mind if we join you, do you?”

“Of course not,” Allison said, frowning slightly at Gene’s antagonism. She glanced from him to Dwight. “You two don’t favor each other a lot.”

There was an embarrassed silence and Winnie actually grimaced.

“No, we don’t, do we?” Gene’s eyes narrowed as they glanced off Dwight’s apologetic ones. “We all share the same mother, but not the same father.” He leaned back and laughed coldly. “Isn’t that right, Dwight?”

Dwight went red. “Allison didn’t know,” he said curtly. “You’re always on the defensive lately, Gene.”

The past few months came back to torment him. He stared at his half brother with eyes as cold and unfeeling as green stone. “I can’t forget. Why should you be expected to?”

“You’re family,” Dwight said, almost apologetically. “Or you would be if you’d stop lashing out at everybody. You’re always giving Marie hell.”

“She gives it back.” Gene swallowed his drink and put the glass on the table. His eyes went to a silent, curious Allison. “You don’t understand, do you, cupcake?” he asked with a smile that was mocking and cruel. “I had a different father than Dwight and Marie. I was adopted. Something my mother and stepfather apparently didn’t think I needed to know until my stepfather died six months ago.”

She watched him get up, and her eyes were soft and compassionate as they searched his. “I’m sorry,” she said gently. “It must have been very hard to find it out so suddenly.”

He hated that softness in her eyes, that warmth. He didn’t want compassion from her. The only thing he might ever want from her was that silky body, but this was hardly the time to be thinking about it. He glared at her. “I don’t want pity, thanks.”