Diamond Spur (7 page)

surprise. His mother's betrayal had warped his attitude toward marriage, and his one-time fiancee's defection to Hollywood had compounded the prejudice.

"Not this woman," Kate told him as she sat down beside him at the table. "I think a woman's place is at a man's side."

"Here we go again," Gene muttered to Cherry, who giggled.

"Women shouldn't have careers," Jason repeated, his dark eyes level and somber. "Not unless they never plan to settle down." "I plan to settle down one day," she said unexpectedly. "And have a home of my own, and children. And a career. I'm going to be a designer." "Without any help from me," he returned blandly. "I'll be damned if I'll start you on the road to women's liberation." Her eyes flashed. It wasn't the first time she and Jason had argued about the traditional place of a man and a woman in society, but it was the first time it had mattered. "I'm on the way already," she shot back, "and without any need to go to you for help, thank God. I've just agreed to sign a contract with Clayborn to design a new line of leisure wear."

"Congratulations! Kate, that's grand!" Cherry gushed.

"I knew you could do it," Gene chuckled.

"What's this? A career designing clothes?" Sheila asked from the doorway, all eyes. "Great! Design something for heavyset women, the moderately priced stuff I can afford makes me look like a tub of lard." "Don't say it," Cherry gritted as Gene started to say something. "Not until after we get our peach cobbler, for heaven's sake!"

Gene looked as if he might burst. Sheila glared at him out of gimlet eyes, the bowl of cobbler held protectively against her waist, her head cocked threateningly.

"I'll throw it out," she promised the young man.

Gene sighed. "I love peach cobbler." He grinned. "Sheila, you ravishing beauty, you, how about a taste of that exquisite dessert you concoct with such style and sensuality?" He wiggled his eyebrows.

Sheila curtsied, almost falling over. "Why, thank you, kind sir, would you like to eat it or wear it?" "I'll eat it, thanks, and I swear," he stood, hand over his heart, "I'll never make another sarcastic remark about your size."

Sheila nodded curtly. "See that you don't. Here."

She set the deliciously browned dessert on the table and laid a serving spoon beside it. "Kate goes first, since we're celebrating." "Well, I won't argue with that." Gene grinned. "She's earned it. When did you find out?" "This morning," she replied, digging with the serving spoon through the sugar-sprinkled crust

to the sweet smell of sugary peach and dumpling beneath. She filled her dish, aware of Jason's dark glare on her averted features. It was difficult to keep her hands from trembling as she began to sample the dish.

"It's wonderful," she told Sheila, who beamed and went back into the kitchen.

Gene got up and did an impression of the ample-hipped housekeeper waddling away, only to turn and find the object of his demonstration scowling at him from the doorway.

He cleared his throat and sat down quickly. "I lost a button, I was looking for it."

Sheila glared at him. "Ha, ha. You just hold your breath until I cook you that vanilla pound cake

you keep begging for." "I'll repent!" He ran into the kitchen after her and the door closed behind them. "Disgusting, watching him grovel." Cherry grinned. She grabbed the cobbler. "Maybe if I hurry, I can finish his part and mine before he gets back." "Evil girl," Kate accused. She glanced at Jason, who hadn't said a single word through all the wordplay. He didn't seem to hear what was going on around him. In fact, he didn't. He was still hearing Kate rave about her career. He'd never realized how ambitious she was. It bothered him

because he didn't like to think of losing her to the big city and high fashion. And that was vaguely surprising. He'd been fighting the memory of her soft mouth for a whole day without success, and that hadn't helped his temper.

"Don't you want any cobbler?" Kate asked him.

"I've lost my appetite." He lit a cigarette, daring anyone to object, and leaned forward to stare at Kate while she tried to eat her cobbler. "What will it mean, this job?"

"More money to start with. And I'll get to do a lot of traveling once the designs are finished and we have samples made up," she told him. "I'll go to New York for market week this October and talk to the buyers and salesmen, and if my designs sell well, I'll get to do another collection. All with my own name on it. I may even get to go to Europe to look at styles before I start on my next designs."

Jason stared at her quietly. That wouldn't suit Kate. She was meant for a kitchen and a house of her own, for children. Not this house, of course, not his children. He didn't want any kind of permanent relationship even with Kate. He frowned. She'd meet all kinds of men in a job like that, predatory men. He didn't like to think about some suave stranger seducing her.

"You're too damned green for a sophisticated job like that," he said aloud, shocking her. She gaped at him, her fork poised in mid-air. So did Cherry. "What?!" Kate asked, torn between exasperation and laughter.

He crossed his long legs and took a heavy draw from his cigarette. In the overhead light, his dark straight hair seemed to have black highlights. "You'll get in trouble back East, with no one to look out for you."

"Well, you'll probably bleed to death while I'm gone," she shot back, "since nobody else can convince you that blood poisoning is dangerous."

"I've been looking out for myself just fine."

"Oh, of course," she agreed. "Ripping your arm open, trying to shoot people...how's the bull, by the way?" His jaw tautened. "The bull is alive, through no fault of mine. I had to sell six cows to Tanner because his bull bred them. Luckily, I had plenty of replacement heifers this time."

"How do you know his bull bred them?" Cherry asked innocently.

Jason looked suddenly hunted, his whole expression set and uncomfortable.

"Go ahead," Kate dared him. "Tell her." She knew about the new system of dyes that were used to show a stockman when a cow had been bred, but Cherry had never taken much interest in the cattle. Like Gene, she was more fascinated by art. Jason took a sharp breath and stood up. "You tell her," he said to Kate, his tone deep and cutting. "I've got better things to do."

"You might congratulate me on my new job," Kate said quietly.

He searched her green eyes curiously, his eyes narrowing on her oval face in its frame of dark, softly loosened hair. "I can't do that. I think you're making one hell of a big mistake." ' 'You didn't think so when I wanted to take the course in fashion design!" she argued. "That was just something to help you sew better at the plant, or so I thought. I didn't realize that San Frio was going to get too small to hold you." She stuck her chin up in the air and stared at him, refusing to be told how to live her life. "You're just jealous because you can't sew a dress, Jason," she replied, resorting to teasing to keep from blowing up at him again. "Oh, hell." He turned on his heel and walked away without another word or a backward glance. Kate smothered a grin, sharing a wink with Cherry, who was about to burst with mischief. Jason would come to his senses and then they'd talk about it. For now, he had to get used to the idea, and Kate knew very well how to skirt his moods. She'd had almost three years of practice. ' 'I never used to believe Gene when he talked about how well you managed to get along with Jason," Cherry grinned. "But I'm beginning to see the light. My gosh, he takes a lot from you, doesn't he?" "From time to time," Kate agreed with a sigh. "I wish he could understand that women aren't property anymore. He doesn't like them very much, you know." "It's hard to miss," Cherry murmured dryly. "All the same, I guess he'll marry a woman someday, as long as she's socially acceptable and doesn't mind giving him an heir."

Cherry couldn't have known how much that supposition hurt Kate, even though she'd already faced it. "I guess he will," Kate replied, going quiet. She finished her cobbler and poured herself a cup of coffee from the carafe. She took it black, hardly tasting it as she lifted it to her mouth.

Cherry smiled. "I thought he was going to pass out when you dared him to tell me about those bred cattle." The younger girl frowned. "How
do
you tell that a cow's been bred?"

Kate told her absently, and Cherry just shook her head. "I can't imagine a man being a rancher who's too old-fashioned to talk about breeding in mixed company," Cherry remarked.

Kate bit back a defensive comment. She couldn't help it that she felt defensive about Jason. Despite her proud defense, she liked a few of his old-fashioned attitudes. In the modern world, where rough language and frank discussions were a matter of course, it was sometimes refreshing to be treated like a lady. Not that Jason cared much who was around when he lost his temper, she mused, but he'd never let Kate near his cows and heifers at breeding time or expose her to cattle that were being put down because of illness. Apparently he thought women were too delicate for that kind of thing.

She'd asked him once why he didn't want her around the breeding stock, just in passing. He'd said something that had puzzled her at the time—that he didn't want her to get the wrong idea about it because the cows would sound as if they were in pain and he didn't want her to be frightened of a natural process. Now that she was older, and had been exposed to at least one racy motion picture, she began to understand what he'd meant. Passion was violent, if what she'd seen was any indication, and on the screen at least, women looked and sounded as if they were being killed. Kate had wondered a time or two if she'd ever sound like that, but she'd never felt passion with the few hometown boys who'd taken her out. She'd only felt that kind of fiery heat with Jason, the day before, and it was still new and a little unnerving.

"Jay just rattled the windows in the front room slamming out the door," Gene remarked as he rejoined them with another saucer of cobbler. He grinned knowingly at Cherry as she guiltily gulped down the last bite of his after having finished her own.

"It was my fault, I guess," Kate confessed. "I got a little overheated about his opinion of a woman's place. Honest to goodness, I think sometimes that he doesn't know what century this is."

"You know why, though," Gene said gently. "You of all people know why."

Kate sighed. "Yes. But I was so excited about my break," she smiled. "I wanted to share it"

"He'll storm around the barn for a while and then he'll be all right," Gene assured her. "Just drink your coffee, Kate, and remember that even the nastiest storm rains out eventually." "After it gets through rumbling," she agreed, and sipped her coffee. She stayed a few minutes longer, telling them about the new chores she had at the plant and

what she was going to work around in her designs. Then, depressed by Jason's sustained absence, she told them good-bye, waved to Sheila, and went out the front door to go home.

It was a glorious spring night. The sky was clear and the breeze was warm, and the stars looked close enough to touch. There was a whisper of jasmine in the air from the thick bushes at the front steps and at the corner of the house, lilac was just blooming. Kate sighed, smelling it, her eyes on the long horizon. Somewhere cattle were lowing softly, and she thought about the trail drives of the last century, when cowboys would sing to the cattle to calm them.

"Leaving already?"

She stiffened at the unexpected sound of Jason's voice from the porch. She turned to find him sitting in the porch swing, barely silhouetted in the light from the nearby window. The orange tip of a smoking cigarette waved in his hand as he pushed the swing into motion. Its soft creaking sound was oddly comforting, but Jason's presence made Kate feel nervous.

She lifted her chin. "Are we still speaking?"

"If you're through reading me sermons on the modern woman, we are," he said shortly.

"I might as well be, for all the good it's done me," she sighed, and smiled at him, because it was hard to fight with Jason. She understood him all too well, most of the time. He got out of the swing lazily and strode toward her. Seconds later, he towered over her. The soft light coming out of the window lay on the floor in abstract patterns at her feet.

"I hate fighting with you," she remarked to break the silence.

"Then don't do it," he said lazily, and managed to smile.

But as he smiled, he stared. He hadn't really come face to face with her career until tonight, and now that he had, he was concerned. He knew that she couldn't stay a girl forever. But he'd opened up with Kate in ways he couldn't with even his own brother. He could talk to her. Somehow in the past few years he'd come to think of her as his own, and now she wanted to go away and leave him.

His eyes narrowed as they searched her face and then down her slender, exquisite body. Just lately bis affection for her had become physical. He'd told himself that he hadn't noticed her blossoming figure, but he had. Ever since that sweet interlude by the Bronco when he'd come within a hair of kissing the breath out of her, he couldn't stop thinking about her. And that wouldn't do. He couldn't give her a physical hold on him. He didn't want commitment with anybody just yet, much less with a girl like Kate who was years younger than he was, and a world apart from him in experience and maturity. She wouldn't fit into his world. Even if she could, he didn't want to let her.