Dream's End (6 page)

She wiped away the tears. It was none of her business anymore. She had a life of her own to pursue, and it was, she told herself, time to get on with it. She had to make plans. She had to map out a life for herself. And it was going to take some doing to decide if Jim Black was at the end of her path, or if she needed to put more than ten miles between herself and Curry Matherson.

 

Jim called late that afternoon and asked her out to supper at the ranch.

“Oh, I'd love to,” she agreed with a smile. “Curry took Amanda to Houston and they won't be back until tomorrow.
A whole night and day of blessed peace!”

“Are things that bad over there?” Jim asked suddenly, and in her mind she could see the set of his square jaw and the darkness in his eyes.

She took a deep breath. “Just about,” she admitted finally.

“I'll be over in an hour and a half,” he told her. “It'll take that long to scrub off the mud.”

“Mud?” she queried.

He chuckled softly. “Remember that sorry old Brahma bull of mine I've been trying to pawn off on the rodeo boys?”

“How could I forget him?” She laughed.

“Well, I finally convinced Bubba Morris that he could shed any rider who was fool enough to climb up on his back, so I was throwing a rope on him while the boys got the trailer back up to the corral.”

“There was a mudhole,” she guessed.

“From last night's rain,” he agreed.

“And the bull pulled harder than you did.”

“Lady, you read my mind. Never fear, the headache's gone now, and I hope some mean-tempered cowboy rips his gut open for him.”

“Sadist,” she teased.

“What did Curry take Amanda all the way to Houston for?” he asked suddenly.

“Lunch.”

“Why didn't they go to San Antone; it's closer,” he said, abbreviating the name of the well-known Texas city affectionately, because, it was said every Texan had two homes—his own and San Antonio.

“I don't know,” Eleanor told him. “I guess she wanted to look in on her apartment or something. She's been staying with a friend for the past two weeks, over in Victoria.”

“Bad time for Curry to be away from the ranch, what with roundup coming
on,” Jim remarked. “He's got a hell of a lot of work ahead of him. It's no easy thing to move that many cattle from winter to summer pasture, and brand them, and check them, and spray them…”

“Don't tell me, I know all too well,” Eleanor sighed. “Whose shoulder do you think they cry on when Curry's out of earshot? Sixteen hour days, no time off, hurting feet, no booze because Curry won't let them drink on roundup, machinery breaking down…I've heard it all, and I will again. But I understand Curry to say it was already going on; he invited Amanda down to watch the branding.”

“Of those new ones he just bought, probably,” Jim reminded her. “I'll bet he called Terry over to check them and give them their shots at the same time.”

“That's right, he did,” she replied. “Oh, gosh, I knew things were going too smoothly. I've got to live through roundup before I get out of here!”

“If we broke your leg, you wouldn't
be any more use to him,” he said thoughtfully.

“Oh, no,” she returned. “I need both legs to keep out of his way!”

“What's he been up to, Norie?” he asked darkly.

“Just his usual incorrigible temper,” she lied calmly. “I'd better get off this thing and get dressed. Want to go back to the club tonight and give the lady another charge?” She grinned.

He paused. “Why not? Let her see what she's missing.” He chuckled.

Jim was more outgoing than usual, and Eleanor found herself laughing as she hadn't in weeks. The club was crowded, but not so much so that she couldn't see Jim's pretty blonde shooting curious glances their way.

“She's hooked,” Eleanor told Jim, darting a glance toward the blonde two tables over. “I'm getting vicious green-eyed looks.”

“You don't mind?” he asked quietly.

Both narrow eyebrows went up, and she smiled. “If I did, would I be here?”

He smiled back. His dark eyes twinkled. “Isn't she a dream, Norie?” he asked.

“Now, Jim, I'm not that interested in girls,” she told him.

“Oh, hell, you know what I mean!”

She laughed. “Yes, she is a dream. For heaven's sake, why don't you ask her out? Are you afraid of her?”

He shifted restlessly in his chair. “I guess maybe I am, a little.” He sighed. “I'm not a young man any more, Norie, and I've got a son. There are a lot of women who'd mind that combination.”

“And a lot more who wouldn't.” She leaned forward. “I dare you.”

“Norie, I can't.”

“I double dog dare you.”

“But, I….”

“I double-double dog dare you.”

He threw down his napkin. “That does it, no man alive could refuse a double-
double dog dare! But if I come back bleeding, it'll be your fault.”

“I'll put on the tourniquet,” she promised faithfully.

She watched him out of the corner of her eye as he walked up to the table where the fragile looking blonde was sitting alone and bent over to speak to her. She saw the look on the girl's face, and something inside her relaxed. That beaming, tender look the blonde was giving Jim said more than a volume. Eleanor smiled involuntarily and turned her attention back to her supper.

 

All Jim talked about on the way back to the ranch was Elaine and how sweet she was and how amazing his luck was that she'd finally agreed to go out with him.

“And what do you mean, finally,” Eleanor chuckled. “You never asked her before, you big old shy maverick.”

“Thanks, Norie.” He sighed. “You'll never know…”

“Yes, I do,” she protested, “and
you're very welcome. What are friends for?”

“To help each other, it looks like.” He pulled up in front of the ranch house and switched off the engine. “I only wish there was some way I could help you besides giving you a job.”

“I'm fine, Jim, really,” she said, twisting her purse in her hands. “Just…a little worn, and time will fix that. I may not stay with you for a long time, you know,” she added gently. “I'm not sure where I want to go yet. I've never given any thought to a future beyond this place,” she said, gesturing toward the Matherson property. “Now, I have to decide what I want to do with my life. You know, I've only just realized that there are things beside ranch work that I could do. I could work for lawyers, or doctors, or I could go back to school. I could even train for an entirely new profession—go to a technical school, or train on the job. The world is opening up for me.”

“It won't bother you to leave here?” he asked shrewdly.

She looked down at her darkened lap. “I didn't say that. But time heals most wounds, even the kind Curry Matherson dishes out. I'll live. People do.”

He tilted her face up to his eyes in the dim light that came from the front porch.

“Curry's a damned fool,” he said quietly. “Amanda will never make the kind of wife he needs. She'll be sick of the ranch in two weeks, and back to Houston to recuperate. Unless I miss my guess, she'll live there and leave Curry here and he'll have to come to Houston just to get to see her. She'll never adapt.”

She shrugged. “He loves her,” she said simply.

“No, he doesn't. He wants her, which is something you'd have to be a man to understand. It's a kind of burning thirst that usually gets quenched after one good sip. But she'll keep him hanging until the ring's on her finger, and then it'll be too
late to go back.” He sighed. “Curry's not the kind of man to back out of a deal once he's given his word. That includes marriage. No, he'll stick it out. He's too bullheaded to cry quits.”

“It won't be much of a life, will it, Jim?” she asked softly.

“No, hon, it won't. But don't think you can tell him that.”

She laughed mirthlessly. “When was the last time
you
tried to tell him something?” she challenged.

“I remember it well, as it happens. It was 1969, and I warned him that if he bought that damned helicopter to use to herd cattle, he'd spend more time maintaining it than he would flying it.”

“That was before my time,” Eleanor said. “What happened?”

“One of his temporary summer hands got smashed at a local bar and decided to take the thing up at midnight one night.”

“Could he fly a helicopter?” Eleanor asked.

“Well, as a matter of fact, he'd only been in one twice. He knew how to start it and how to get it in the air. The only problem,” he added with a grin, “was that he didn't know how to get it down. Hit a pine tree, broke off a blade, and came down in the lake. My God, you should have seen Curry when they told him. He hasn't let a drop of alcohol on the place during roundup since. And,” he added with a grin, “he's never bought another chopper.”

“So that's why he uses the little Cessna,” Eleanor remarked.

“That and the old-time ways. They're really better on some ranches.” He chuckled.

Eleanor sighed. “Well, I guess I'd better call it a night. It's been such fun, Jim. Thank you.”

“Thank you,” he said with a smile. “If Curry gives you a hard time, come on over, and hang working out your notice. The Blacks will take care of you good and proper.”

“The Blacks,” she returned, “are super people—all three of them.”

“Now, if you'll help me convince Elaine of that…”

“Any time,” she promised. “Good night.”

“Good night, Norie.”

She went into the house with a dreamy smile, relaxed because Curry wasn't home, content to be alone and decide what she was going to do with herself when the job ended. It wasn't going to be so bad after all. Once she got over the initial jolt of not waking up to see Curry at the breakfast table in the morning, in his den during the hours he had to be inside, on the porch late in the evening when the world was still….

A
s she moved through the halls, the grandfather clock chimed twice in a loud, metallic voice. She hadn't realized that it was so late. She'd really enjoyed herself tonight as much from playing cupid as from Jim's company. She had a feeling that Elaine was going to be good for the lonely widower and his family.

“What the hell do you mean coming in at this hour of the morning?” came a
loud, angry voice from the doorway of the den.

She froze for an instant, not expecting that, as she tried to decide whether or not she was hearing things. She turned slowly to find Curry leaning against the door, his hair tousled, his eyes glittering like sun on a knife blade, his whole appearance threatening and dark.

“I…we were at the club,” she faltered. “I thought you were in Houston. You said…”

“You don't even look kissed, little girl,” he growled, and his eyes dropped to her mouth with its soft traces of lipstick, her hair flowing in soft waves around her shoulders, looking as neat as if she'd just left to go out. “I always suspected he was something of a cold fish. Lida Mae started running around on him barely a year after they were married.”

“You don't have any right to talk that way about him,” she replied coldly.

“Why not? I'll bet he's been giving
me hell behind my back ever since he started taking you out.”

Before she could deny it, the flush on her high cheekbones gave her away.

“Come have a drink with me, Jadebud,” he said gently, shouldering away from the door facing with a weariness that was so alien it was faintly shocking. “I've had a hell of a night.”

She followed him hesitantly into the den and watched him fill two glasses with whiskey and ice, lacing one liberally with water to weaken it. He handed her the weaker drink.

“Sit down,” he said, indicating the sofa.

She perched herself on its edge, trying not to cringe when he dropped down beside her and crossed his long legs. The pale brown slacks he wore emphasized the powerful contours of his thighs and he was wearing a cream silk shirt that was partially unbuttoned, and since he never bothered with an undershirt, it left
a wide expanse of bronzed chest and curling dark hair uncovered. He looked unbearably adult and masculine, and the sensuality that clung to him like the exotic cologne he wore made her feel like running.

“Don't start tensing up on me,” he said roughly, darting a quick glance at her rigid profile. “I've learned my lesson, and I don't have the patience to initiate terrified little virgins into the intricacies of lovemaking. You're perfectly safe, so you can lean back and stop looking like a fawn in the hunter's sights. I won't rape you.”

She went red as a beet and sipped at her drink, hating him now as she'd loved him before, wishing she had the sophistication to fight back.

He studied her quietly and a heavy, bitter sigh left him. His lean hand brushed away a thick swathe of hair from her cheek with a tenderness that puzzled her.

“I'm in a hell of a temper. I didn't
mean to say that, little girl.” He set his drink down and lit a cigarette. “I feel like I've had the floor cut out from under my feet tonight.”

She studied her drink, aching with conflicting emotions. “Do you want to talk about it?”

He took a long draw from the cigarette and exhaled a cloud of silvery smoke that almost matched his eyes. “Amanda wants to live in Houston,” he said simply.

“She's a top model, Mr. Matherson, her job…”

“Don't call me that!” he said curtly, his eyes pinning her.

“You…you are my boss, what else should I call you?”

“My name is Curry.”

She turned her head away from that penetrating gaze, but his hand caught her under the chin and turned her right back to face him.

“My name,” he repeated in a low, deep tone, “is Curry.”

She swallowed nervously and bit at her lower lip. “All right.”

“Well, say it!”

“Curry,” she said in a hesitant, frightened tone. She didn't recognize him in this strange mood.

“That's better.” He let go and leaned back again, flicking ashes into the ashtray he'd set on the other side of him on the sofa.

“Anyway,” she persisted, “you know how much her job means, she's worked very hard to make it as far as she has.”

His eyes narrowed, glittered, as they met Eleanor's. “I want a son,” he said stubbornly. “At least one, maybe two or three. I want a woman who's here when I need her, who puts me first. I don't want a glossy photograph, Jadebud, I want a flesh and blood woman who'll burn like hellfire in my arms when I make love to her, who'll make sons with me!”

She turned every color of red in the spectrum, feeling herself charred with embarrassment.

“I'm sorry,” he said curtly. “I forget sometimes how unworldly you really are, for all that you've spent the past three years in an earthy environment. I've spent my whole life here, and I don't find anything embarrassing or shocking about procreation. It's a natural, beautiful part of living. But you wouldn't know about that, would you, not with a mother as icy as yours was.”

“Leave my mother out of this! You don't have the right to sit in judgment on her; no one does.”

“After what she did to you?” he demanded, meeting her hot gaze levelly. “My God, it was like kissing a rock, Eleanor!”

She turned her face away from him, remembering with clarity those few painful seconds in his arms when she felt his mouth demanding impossible things of hers. “I'd like to forget that ever happened,” she whispered unsteadily.

“Do you freeze up on Black like that?” he asked quietly.

“He doesn't kiss me,” she said before she thought about it.

“He what?” he asked sharply.

“I told you before, he's my friend, not my lover, and what right have you got to pry into my life?” she demanded.

He shifted, turning so that one long arm rested across the back of the sofa, and his eyes burned where they touched her.

“Not much, I suppose,” he admitted. He ran a lean, brown hand through his tousled hair, and watching it, she wondered how that thick, charcoal-colored hair would feel under her fingers.

“I've been rough on you this week,” he said without malice. “I don't even know why, but I seem to want to hurt you lately. Maybe it's for the best that you do go. I've never had a complaint about your work, Eleanor, if that's any consolation. I couldn't have asked for a better secretary.”

“Thank you,” she said demurely, low
ering her eyes to her glass as she took another sip of the fiery liquid. It was beginning to relax her a little and she sighed as she rocked the glass so that the ice clinked.

She made a pattern in the condensation on the cool surface of the squatty container. “Is that all that's wrong with you?” she asked after a minute. “That Mandy doesn't want to live on the ranch?”

He took another deep, harsh breath. “She's trying to move up the wedding,” he admitted. “We never discussed a definite date, but now she's pushing for next month. I'll be damned if I like being pushed!”

“She loves you,” she said, hurting inside even as she defended the redhead. “Naturally, she's…”

“That isn't it. Something's not right about this whole damned thing, and I'm wearing out my mind trying to figure it. She tried to seduce me tonight,” he said
frankly. “And she damned near succeeded. I'm so hot-blooded, it was all I could do to get out the door.”

“Please, you shouldn't be telling me this….” she protested.

“I've got to tell somebody, damn it, who else is there?” He clenched his fingers around the glass and leaned forward, staring blankly ahead. “I don't know what kind of game she's playing, but I don't like it. She's always said ‘no' before. Now, all of a sudden, anything goes. It looks very much as if she wants a guarantee. And she knows I'd never turn back if there was the risk of a child.”

She got up and moved to the bar, reaching idly for the whiskey bottle.

“What's the matter, little saint, can't you even discuss adult subjects without trying to climb into an alcoholic haze?” he shot at her.

She froze with her hands on the bottle. “It embarrasses me, if you must know,” she said in a choked voice.

“You should have entered a convent, then. How old are you now?” he asked gruffly.

“Almost twenty-one.”

There was a long pause. “Twenty?” he asked incredulously.

“I'd just turned eighteen when you hired me,” she reminded him.

“You always seemed so much older…but that was part of the disguise, too, wasn't it?” he asked bitterly. “You're young with Black, like a filly just feeling her legs. Yet with me, there's something matronly about you, a kind of reserve…even when I took your mouth that night, you turned to stone against me. And I hurt you, didn't I?” he asked with a strange, sweet tenderness in his deep voice. “I bruised you all over because I couldn't make you give in. Not a very satisfactory introduction to passion, was it, Jadebud?”

She felt a shudder run the length of her body as he brought it all back again. “I
didn't know…men got like that,” she admitted weakly. “I…I thought the first time it was gentle.”

“The first time is usually with a boy your own age who'd be afraid to touch you,” he replied quietly. “And, yes, it's usually gentle. But a man…kissing is something entirely different for a man, Eleanor. A tightly closed little mouth becomes a challenge; he needs to taste a woman, not just feel the softness of her mouth against his. It's damned hard to explain,” he said finally and with soft laughter. “I suppose it all goes back to the basics, to passion. A man my age likes to arouse a woman more than he likes to simply kiss her, because it usually ends up in a bed. That's one reason I never take out a woman who doesn't already know the score. Until Amanda came along,” he added gruffly. “And by the time I realized how innocent she was, I was hooked.”

“I still think it will work out,” she
said in a soothing tone, turning to look at him. He wanted the woman, and if he loved her, all Eleanor wanted for him was to see him happy.

He met her soft gaze and his silvery eyes studied her for a long time, from her face to her slender body and back up again. “You're lovely, little girl,” he said softly. “As lovely as a dream, and I can't think of anything I'd like better than to draw you down with me on this sofa and teach you how to make love.”

She felt her eyes going wide with fear as she set the glass down quickly. He'd had too much to drink, apparently, and she didn't feel like being a stand-in for the woman he really wanted.

“I…I'm very tired,” she said quickly, moving toward the door. “And sleepy. And I've got a lot to do tomorrow.”

“Afraid of me, Eleanor?” he asked patiently.

She turned at the door, her whole look puzzled and uncertain. “I'm terrified of
you, Curry, and that's God's own truth,” she admitted. “Please don't make it any harder for me. I don't want to be used, like a toy to amuse you when Amanda's not around. I don't want to be flirted with. I'm your secretary and you're my boss, and if it's going to be any other way than that, then please let me go now. I can't bear being played with,” she finished on a pained whisper.

“Honey,” he said quietly, “what makes you think I'm playing?”

She whirled and left him sitting there, feeling her heart bursting against her ribs as she made her way quickly up the stairs. And when she finally got into her room and ready for bed, that last gentle question kept her awake for another hour despite the fact that her senses were exhausted.

 

He was at the breakfast table when she went down only hours later, her eyes still bloodshot from lack of sleep, and she
wondered idly why he hadn't gone out with the hands.

His pale eyes shivered over her as she sat down across from him, and a hint of a smile curved his mouth.

“It's about time you crawled out of bed,” he told her, sipping his coffee as he eyed her. “I want you to come out with me today.”

She stared at him uncertainly. “Where?” she asked.

“Roundup starts this morning.”

“Oh!” She couldn't hide the surge of excitement that statement created. Every year she'd begged to be taken along when the first of the cattle were brought in from winter pasture to be moved to summer quarters. New calves were branded, and the vet was around to check for disease. It was the most exciting time of the year on a cattle ranch.

“You love it, don't you?” he asked with narrowed eyes. “Every bit of it, from the branding to the culling, even
tossing hay to the horses. Yes, Miss Priss—” he nodded at her start of surprise “—I hear what goes on around here. You conned Johnny into letting you feed the horses in the stalls. Or didn't you think he'd tell me?”