Denim And Lace

She had to fight tears. “No,” she said. “Heaven knows, you’ve already done more than your share, Cade.”

“You look tired,” he said, his dark eyes sweeping over her creamy skin now pale with fatigue. She had big brown eyes, a peaches-and-cream complexion and a body that made him ache every time he looked at it. She wasn’t pretty. Without makeup she was fairly plain. But Cade saw her with eyes that had known her most of her life, and they found her lovely. She didn’t know that. He’d made sure she didn’t know it. He had to.

He removed his hat, unloading snow onto the faded Oriental rug, onto his worn boots. “Mother and the boys send their condolences, too,” he added, and his eyes darkened as he looked down at her.

Bess misunderstood that dark appraisal. He looked at her as if he despised her. Probably he did, too, she thought miserably. She was her father’s daughter, and her father’s risky venture might have cost him his ranch. She knew he’d had to borrow heavily to scrape up the money to invest in her father’s venture. Why had he done it? she wondered. But, then, who could ever figure Cade?

“That’s very kind of them, considering what my father cost you all,” she replied.

A corner of his mouth curled up, and it wasn’t a kind smile. “We lost our shirts,” he said. He reached into his pocket for a cigarette and without bothering to ask if she minded, lit it. He let out a thick cloud of smoke, his eyes taking in her thinness, the unhealthy whiteness of her face. “But you know that already. Your mother is going to have a hell of a time adjusting.”

That was true. “She isn’t strong,” she said absently, lowering her eyes to his broad chest. Muscles rippled there when he breathed. He was powerfully built, for all his slimness. She’d seen him without a shirt, working in the fields in the summer, and the memory of it made her feel warm all over. With his shirt off, he was devastating. Bronzed muscle, covered with a thick, sexy wedge of hair that ran from his chest down to his lean stomach, into the belt at his jeans...

“She smothers you,” he returned, cutting into her shocking thoughts. “She always has. You’re twenty-three, but you act sixteen. She’ll never let you grow up. She needs somebody to lean on. Now that your father’s gone, you’ll be her prop. She’ll wear you down and bring you down, just as she did him.”

Her dark eyes flinched. “What do you know about my mother?” she demanded. “You hate her, God knows why...”

“Yes, I do,” he said without hesitation, and his black eyes pierced hers, glittering like flaming coals. “And God does know why. You don’t know what she really is, but you’ll find out someday. But it will be too late.”

“What can I do, Cade, walk out on her?” she cried. “How could I, when she’s just lost everything! I’m all she’s got.”

“And she’s all you’ll ever have,” he returned coldly. “Cold comfort in your old age. She’s a selfish, cruel little opportunist with an eye to the main chance and her own comfort. Given a choice between you and a luxurious lifestyle, she’d dump you like yesterday’s garbage.”

She wanted to hit him. He aroused the most violent sensations in her. He always had. She hated that cold look on his face, the devastating masculinity of him that put her back up even at a distance. But she kept her feelings to herself, especially her temper. “You don’t know either of us,” she said.

He moved a little closer, threatening her now with just the warmth of his body, his superior height. He looked down at her with an expression in his eyes that made her toes curl inside her shoes.

“I know what I need to know,” he said. He studied her face in the silence of the hall. “You’re very pale, little one,” he said then, his voice so soft that it didn’t even sound like Cade’s. “I’m sorry about your father. He was a good man. Just misguided and gullible. He didn’t force any of us to invest, you know. He was as badly fooled by the deal as we were.”

“Thank you,” she said huskily, fighting tears. “That’s a very tolerant attitude to take.” Her eyes searched his. “But it won’t save Lariat,” she said sadly, remembering Cade’s dreams for his family ranch. “Will it?”

“I’ll save Lariat,” he said, and at that moment he looked as if he could do anything. One eye narrowed as he studied her. “Don’t let Gussie own you,” he said suddenly. “You’re a woman, not her little girl. Start acting your age.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “How?”

“My God,” he said heavily. “Don’t you even know?”

His eyes dropped to her soft mouth. He stared at it intently, and he was standing so close to her that she could smell the leather of his vest, feel the warmth of him as his finger gently caressed her parted lips. The acrid smoke from his cigarette drifted past her nostrils, but it didn’t even register. His dark eyes were on hers, and she’d never seen them so close. He had lashes as thick as her own, and tiny lines beside his eyes. His nose had a small crook in it that was only visible this close, as if it had been broken. His mouth...oh, his mouth! she thought achingly, looking at its chiseled lines, already feeling the hardness of it. She’d wondered for years how it would feel to kiss him, to be close to him. But Cade was like the moon. This was the closest he’d ever come to her, except for that one time when he’d only meant to frighten her, and she didn’t even move for fear that he might move away. He might kiss her...!

But a tiny sigh worked its way out of her tight throat, and it seemed to break the spell. His head lifted, and there wasn’t a trace of expression on his dark face. He moved away from her, without a word. But he kept his back to her for a long moment, quietly smoking his cigarette. That long, intense scrutiny had his heart turning cartwheels, and it would never do to let Bess see how vulnerable she made him.

“We’ll pay you back somehow,” she said after a minute.

He turned, as if the statement made him angry. “Will you? How?”

“I’ll find a way. I’m not helpless, even if I am a mere woman in your eyes,” she added with a faint smile.

He looked as formidable as a cold marble statue. “Challenging me?” he asked in a softly dangerous tone. His dark eyes mocked her. “That’s been tried before, but go ahead if you feel lucky.”

She almost did. But those nearly black eyes had made men back down, and she was just a grieving shadow of a woman.

“Please thank your mother for her concern,” she said quietly. “I’m sure you have better things to do than bother with us.”

“Your father was my friend,” he said shortly. “I valued him, regardless of what happened.”

He turned toward the door without glancing at her.

“I’ll be in touch,” he said as he reached for the doorknob and pulled open the big front door with its huge silver knocker. “Don’t worry. We’ll work out something.”

Her eyes closed. She was sick all over. Just last week she’d been planning parties and helping her mother choose flowers for a coming-out party. And now their world was in shreds. Their wealth was gone, their friends had deserted them. They were at the mercy of the courts. Miss Samson of Spanish House was now just plain Bess.

“It’s a long way to fall,” Cade was saying. “From debutante balls to poverty. But sometimes it takes a fall to get us out of a rut. It can be a challenge and an opportunity, or it can be a disaster. That depends on you. Try to remember that it’s not life but our reactions to it that shape us.”

For Cade it was a long speech. She stared at him hungrily, wishing she had the right to cry in his arms. She needed someone to hold her until the pain stopped. Gussie hadn’t noticed that her own daughter was grieving, but Cade had. He noticed things about her that no one else on earth seemed to, but he was ice-cold when he was around her, as if he felt supremely indifferent toward her most of the time.

She smiled faintly, thinking how uncannily he could read her mind. Sleet was mixing with the snow, making a hissing sound.

“Thanks for the wise words. But I think I can live without money,” she said after a minute.

“Maybe you can,” he replied. “But can your mother?”

“She’ll cope,” she returned.

“Like hell she’ll cope.” He tugged the hat closer over his forehead and spared her one last sweeping appraisal. God, she looked tired! He could only imagine the demands Gussie was already making on her, and she was showing the pressure. “Get some rest. You look like a walking corpse.”

He was gone then, without another word. As if he cared if she became a corpse, she thought hysterically. She’d lived for years on the vague hope that he might look at her one day and see someone he could love. That was the biggest joke of all. If there was any love in Cade, it was for Lariat, the Braided L, which had been founded by a Hollister fresh from the Civil War. There was a lot of history in Lariat. In a way the Hollisters were more a founding family of Texas than the Samsons. The Samson fortune was only two generations old, and it had been a matter of chance, not brains, that old man Barker Samson from back East had bought telephone stock in the early days of that newfangled invention. But the Hollisters were still poor.

She went upstairs to see about Gussie. It was an unusual nickname for a woman named Geraldine, but her father had always called her mother that.

Gussie was stretched out on the elegant pink ruffled coverlet of her bed with a tissue under her equally pink nose. Thanks to face-lifts, annual visits to an exclusive health spa and meticulous dieting, and a platinum-blond rinse, Gussie looked more like Bess’s sister than her mother. She had always been a beauty, but age had lent her a maturity that gave her elegance, as well. She’d removed the satin robe, and underneath it she was wearing a frothy white negligee ensemble that made her huge dark eyes look even darker and her delicate skin paler.

“There you are, darling,” she said with a sob. “Has he gone?”

“Yes, he’s gone,” Bess said quietly.

Her mother’s face actually blanched. She averted her eyes. “He’s blamed me for years,” she murmured, still half in shock, “and it wasn’t even my fault, but he’d never believe me even if I told him the truth. I suppose we should be grateful that he hasn’t raided the stables to get his money back in kind. The horses will bring something...”

Here we go again, Bess thought. “You know he wouldn’t do that. He said we’ll work something out, after the funeral.”

“No one held a gun on him and made him invest a penny,” Gussie said savagely. “I hope he does lose everything! Maybe he’ll be less arrogant!”

“Cade would be arrogant in rags, and you know it,” Bess said softly. “We’ll have to sell the house, Mama.”

Gussie looked horrified. She sat straight up, her careful coiffure unwinding in a long bleached tangle. “Sell my house? Never!”

“It’s the only way. We’ll still owe more than we have,” she said, staring out the window at the driving sleet. “But I have that journalism degree. I might get a job on a newspaper.”

“We’d starve. No, thank you. You can find something with an advertising agency. That pays much better.”

Bess turned, staring at her. “Mama, I can’t take the pressure of an advertising agency.”

“Well, darling, we certainly can’t survive on newspaper pay,” her mother said, laughing mirthlessly.

Bess’s eyes lifted. “I wasn’t aware that you were going to expect me to support both of us.”

“You don’t expect me to offer to get a job?” Gussie exclaimed. “Heavens, child, I can’t do anything! I’ve never had to work!”

Bess sat down on the end of the bed, viewing her mother’s renewed weeping with cynicism. Cade had said that her mother wouldn’t be able to cope. Perhaps he knew her after all.

“Crying won’t help.”

“I’ve just lost my husband,” Gussie wailed into her tissue. “And I adored him!”

That might have been true, but it seemed to Bess that all the affection was on her father’s side. Frank Samson had worshipped Gussie, and Bess imagined that Gussie’s demands for bigger and better status symbols had led her desperate father to one last gamble. But it had failed. She shook her head. Her poor mother. Gussie was a butterfly. She should have married a stronger man than her father, a man who could have controlled her wild spending.

“How could he do this to us?” Gussie asked tearfully. “How could he destroy us?”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean to.”

“Silly, stupid man,” came the harsh reply, and the veneer of suffering was eclipsed for a second by sheer, cruel rage. “We had friends and social standing. And now we’re disgraced because he lost his head over a bad investment! He didn’t have to kill himself!”

Bess stared at her mother. “Probably he wasn’t thinking clearly. He knew he’d lost everything, and so had the other investors.”

“I’ll never believe that your father would do anything dishonest, even to make more money,” Gussie said haughtily.

“He didn’t do it on purpose,” Bess said, feeling the pain of losing her father all over again, just by having to discuss what had caused his suicide. “He was taken in, just like the others. What made it so much worse was that he talked most of the investors into going along with him.” She stared at her tearful mother. “You didn’t know that it was a bogus company, did you?”

Gussie stared at her curiously. “No. Of course not.” She started weeping again. “I simply must have the doctor. Do call him for me, darling.”

“Mother, you’ve had the doctor. He can’t do anything else.”

“Well, then, get me those tranquillizers, darling. I’ll take another.”

“You’ve had three already.”

“I’ll take another,” Gussie said firmly. “Fetch them.”

Just for an instant Bess thought of saying no, or telling her mother to fetch them herself. But her tender heart wouldn’t let her. She couldn’t be that cruel to a stranger, much less her own grieving mother. But as she rose to do what she was asked, she could see that she was going to end up an unpaid servant if she didn’t do something quick. But what? How could she walk out on Gussie now? She didn’t have a brother or a sister; there was only herself to handle things. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d felt so alone. Her poor father—at least he was out of it. She only wished she didn’t feel so numb. She’d loved him, in her way. But she couldn’t even cry for him. Gussie was doing enough of that for both of them anyway.

She went to bed much later, but she didn’t sleep. The past couple of days had been nightmarish. If it hadn’t been for Cade, she didn’t know how she and Gussie would have managed at all. And there was still the funeral to get through tomorrow.

Her thoughts drifted back through layers of time to the last day Cade had been teaching her how to ride. He’d grown impatient with her attempts to flirt, and everything had come to a head all too quickly.

He’d caught her around the waist with a strength that frightened her and tossed her down on her back into a clean stack of hay. She’d lain there, her mind confused, while he stared down at her from his formidable height, his dark eyes glittering angrily. Her tank top had fallen off one smooth shoulder, and it was there that his attention wandered. He looked at her blatantly, letting his gaze go over her full breasts and down her flat stomach to the long, elegant length of her legs in their tight denim covering.

“You don’t look half bad that way, Bess,” he’d said then, his voice taut and angry. He’d even smiled, but it hadn’t been a pleasant smile. “If all you want is a little diversion with the hired hand, I can oblige you.”

She’d gone scarlet, but that shock led quickly to another. He moved down atop her, his heavy hips suddenly square over her own while his arms caught his weight as his chest poised over hers. He laughed coldly at her sudden paleness.

“Disappointed?” he asked, holding her eyes. “As you can feel, little rich girl, you don’t even arouse me. But once we get your clothes out of the way, maybe you can stir me up enough to give you what you want.”

Bess closed her eyes even now at the shame his words had made her feel. She’d never felt a man’s aroused body, but even in her innocence she knew that Cade was telling the truth. He’d felt nothing at all. She’d stiffened, her eyes tearing, her lower lip trembling, as the humiliation and embarrassment swamped her.

Cade had said something unpleasant under his breath and abruptly got to his feet. He was holding down a hand to help her up, but before she could refuse it or even speak, Gussie was suddenly in the barn with them, her dark eyes flashing as she took in the situation with a glance. She’d hustled a shaken Bess into the house, ignored Cade’s glowering stare, and the next day the riding lessons became a memory.

Bess had often wondered why Cade had felt the need to be so cruel. It would have been enough to simply reject her without crushing her budding femininity at the same time. If he’d hoped to discourage her, he’d succeeded. But her feelings hadn’t vanished. They’d simply gone underground. There was a lingering nervousness of him in a physical way, but she knew in her heart that if he came close and took her in his arms, she’d cave in and give him anything he wanted, fear notwithstanding. He hadn’t really touched her that day anyway. It had all been planned. But what hurt the most was that he hadn’t wanted her and that he’d taunted her with it.

She rolled over with a long sigh. It was just her luck to be doomed to want the only man on earth she couldn’t have. He’d thought she was teasing because he was poor and she was rich, but that wasn’t the case at all. He couldn’t see that his lack of material things had nothing to do with her emotional attraction to him.

He was a strong man, but that wasn’t why she loved him. It was for so many other reasons. She loved him because he cared about people and animals and the environment. He was generous with his time and what little money he had. He’d take in a stray animal or a stray person at the drop of a hat. He never turned away a cowboy down on his luck or a stranded traveler, even if it meant tightening the grocery budget a little more. He was hard and difficult, but there was a deep sensitivity in him. He saw beneath the masks people wore to the real person inside. Bess had seen his temper, and she knew that he could be too rigid and unreasonable when he wanted his own way. But he had saving graces. So many of them.

It was odd that he’d never married, because she knew of at least two women he’d been involved with over the years. The most recent, just before her twentieth birthday, had been a wealthy divorcée. That one had lasted the longest, and many local people thought that Cade was hooked for sure. But the divorcée had left Coleman Springs rather abruptly, and was never mentioned again by any of the Hollisters. Since then, if there were women in Cade’s life, he’d carefully kept them away from his family, friends and acquaintances. Cade was nothing if not discreet.

Bess herself had no real beaux these days, although she’d dated a few men for appearance’s sake, to keep Gussie from knowing how crazy she was about Cade. No other man could really measure up to him, and it was cruel to lead a man on when she had nothing to offer him. She was as innocent as a child in so many ways, but Cade obviously thought she was as sophisticated as her outward image. That was a farce. If only he knew how long she’d gone hungry wanting him.

She closed her eyes and forced her taut muscles to relax. She had to stop worrying over the past and get some sleep. The funeral was tomorrow. They’d lay her poor father to rest, and then perhaps she and her mother could tie up all the loose ends and get on with the ordeal of moving and trying to live without the wealth they’d been accustomed to. That would be a challenge in itself. She wondered how she and Gussie would manage.

CHAPTER FOUR

AS BESS EXPECTED, there was a crowd at the simple graveside service, but it wasn’t made up just of friends and neighbors. It was a press holiday, with reporters and cameras from all over the state. On the fringe of the mob Bess caught a glimpse of Elise Hollister, stately and tall, standing with her three sons. She caught the older woman’s eye, and Elise smiled at her gently. Then, involuntarily, Bess’s eyes glanced at Cade. He looked very somber in a dark suit, towering over his mother and his brothers, Gary and Robert. Red-haired Rob was outgoing, nothing like Gary and Cade. Gary was bookish, and kept the accounts. He was a little shorter than Cade, and his coloring was lighter and he was less authoritative. Bess turned her attention back to what the minister was saying, aware of Gussie’s subdued sobbing beside her.

The cemetery was on a small rise overlooking the distant river. It was a Presbyterian church graveyard with tombstones that dated back to the Civil War. All the Samsons were buried here. It was a quiet place, with live oaks and mesquite all around. A good place for a man’s final resting place. Frank Samson would have approved.

“My poor Frank,” Gussie whimpered into her handkerchief as they left the cemetery. “My poor, poor Frank. However will we manage without him?”

“Frugally,” Bess said calmly. Her tears had all been shed the night before. She was looking ahead now to the legal matters that would be pending. She’d never had to cope with business, but she certainly couldn’t depend on Gussie.

She helped her mother into the limousine and sat back wearily on the seat as the driver climbed in and started the engine. Outside, cameras were pointed in their direction, but Bess ignored them. She looked very sophisticated in her black suit and severe bun atop a face without a trace of makeup. She’d decided early that morning that the cameras wouldn’t find anything attractive in her face to draw them to it. They didn’t either. She looked as plain as a pikestaff. Gussie, on the other hand, was in a lacy black dress with diamonds glittering from her ears and throat and wrists. Not diamonds, Bess reminded herself, because those had already been sold. They were paste, but the cameras wouldn’t know. And Gussie had put on quite a show for them. She didn’t look at her mother now. She was too disappointed in the spectacle she’d made of their grief. That, too, was like Gussie, to play every scene theatrically. She’d left the stage to marry Frank Samson, and that was apparent, too.

“I don’t want to sell the house,” Gussie said firmly, glancing at her daughter. “There must be some other way.”

“We could sell it with an option to rent,” Bess said. “That way we could keep up appearances, if that’s all that matters to you.”

Gussie flushed. “Bess, what’s gotten into you?”

“I’m tired, Mother,” Bess replied shortly. “Tired, and worn-out with grief and shame. I loved my father. I never dreamed he’d take his own life.”

“Well, I’m sure I didn’t either,” Gussie wailed.

“Didn’t you?” Bess turned in the seat to stare pointedly at the smaller woman. It was her first show of spirit in recent memory, and it almost shocked her that she felt so brave. Probably it was the ordeal of the funeral that had torn down her normal restraint, she thought. “Didn’t you hound him to death for more jewels, more furs, more expensive vacations that he couldn’t afford in any legal way?”

The older woman turned her flushed face to the window and dabbed at her eyes. “What a way to talk to your poor mother, and at a time like this.”

“I’m sorry,” Bess murmured, backing down. She always backed down. It just wasn’t in her to fight with Gussie.

“Really, Bess, I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately,” Gussie said haughtily.

“I’m worried about how we’re going to pay those people back what they’ve lost,” Bess said.

Gussie’s eyebrows lifted. “Why should we have to pay them back?” she exclaimed. “We didn’t make them invest. It was all your father’s fault, and he’s dead.”

“That won’t make any difference, don’t you see?” Bess said gently. “His estate will be liable for it.”

“I don’t believe that,” her mother replied coolly. “But even if we are liable, your father had life insurance—”