Dream's End (7 page)

“I thought ranch managers were supposed to keep their mouths shut,” she grumbled.

“They are—but you're forgetting, I don't keep a ranch manager, I keep an assistant manager. Nobody manages this spread except me,” he added.

“As if I didn't know.” She sighed. “You manage everybody on it, too, when they'll let you.”

“You used to let me,” he said.

“I grew up,” she said smugly.

“Not quite,” he said with a meaningful lift of his eyebrow.

She glared at him across the table. “Maybe it depends on the man, did you ever think of that?”

The smile got deeper. “Or maybe the
man just didn't try hard enough. Next time, I won't be so impatient.”

Her eyes widened and she dropped them to her plate with volcanic eruptions taking place in her blood. “There won't be a next time,” she said firmly, although her voice wasn't quite steady.

“Are you coming with me? You'll have to change. That pretty pantsuit will be ruined if you wear it.”

She glanced down at the white slacks and matching top. “More likely it'd turn red,” she mused. “Jeans and a cotton shirt okay, boss?”

He smiled at her. “And boots. Got yours?”

“Of course. I do ride, you know,” she reminded him.

“I haven't seen you on a horse in two months.”

“You haven't looked in six months to see what I was on,” she teased.

He didn't smile at that. His pale eyes caught hers and held them for a long time
with a searching look that made her forget the blistering heat of the cup in her hand.

Bessie came in noisily with the coffeepot and broke the spell. Eleanor held her cup out with a smile while she fought to calm her stampeding pulse.

“Haven't touched your breakfast,” the housekeeper scolded. “He ruining your appetite?” she nodded toward Curry.

“Maybe it's the other way around.” Curry grinned, winking at Bessie.

“Well, aren't we in a good mood this morning!” Bessie said brightly as she filled his cup again. “What'd you do, foreclose on somebody?”

“You,” he told the buxom woman, “are pushing your luck.”

“Not likely. Who'd you find with the gumption to put up with you?” she shot back.

Eleanor smiled. “She does have a point,” she put in.

“Look who's talking,” Bessie scoffed.
“You only just got the good sense to leave after three years of it.”

The smile faded as Bessie went out again, and she felt an aching emptiness inside her that breakfast couldn't fill.

“Don't think about it,” Curry said suddenly, his jaw set, his eyes somber. “Let's take it one day at a time, honey.”

“I'm still going, Curry,” she told him gently.

He met her eyes. “We'll see.”

“
We
won't see anything,” she returned, putting the cup down. “I'm not taking any more orders, and you're not going to bulldoze over me…oh!”

He'd moved out of his chair while she was in midsentence to stand by her chair. All at once his head bent, and he pressed a hard, quick kiss against her open mouth.

“Stop talking and get your clothes changed,” he told her. His lean hand ruffled her hair. “I can't wait all day.”

He was gone out the door before she
could come up with a lucid sentence. Her fingers went involuntarily to her parted mouth. She could still feel the warm, hard pressure against them.

He was on the phone downstairs when she got changed into faded jeans, boots, and a blue-patterned cotton blouse. She'd tied her hair back with a blue ribbon to keep it out of her face and left off her makeup. The prospect of spending a whole day with Curry had been too tempting to turn down, but when she heard him call Amanda's name while he spoke into the receiver, all the color went out of the day for her.

“I told you,” he was saying gruffly, “I'm not being railroaded, Amanda. Either we wait until I'm ready, or we call the whole damned thing off. You don't want to? Then what the hell are you doing in Houston?” There was a pause and he cursed under his breath. “You couldn't turn it down? Then stay there. Don't ‘oh, Curry' me! I want you like
hell, but not enough to let you lead me around like a broken stallion. My terms, Amanda. No ifs, buts or maybes. My terms, or nothing. All right.” He sighed roughly. “Maybe the breathing space will do us both good. I'll see you in two weeks, and we'll talk about it. Sure. Bye.”

He hung up and stood there staring down at the phone, his hard-muscled body as taut as a stretched rope, running a restless hand through his hair. He looked as if he might explode, and Eleanor hesitated uncertainly on the bottom stair.

As if he sensed her presence, he turned, and his pale, troubled eyes looked full into hers.

“Problems?” she asked softly.

He nodded. His eyes traced her slenderness like an artist's brush. “Take your hair down,” he said.

“It gets in my eyes,” she faltered.

He moved close, and his lean, brown
hands reached up to untie the ribbon, letting the soft waves tumble down. His fingers tangled in the softness gently, touching the warm flesh of her throat through it, his breath coming harder and heavy at her forehead.

“Please,” she whispered shakily as his fingers contracted bringing her face up to his suddenly blazing eyes. “Please don't use me to keep your mind off her,” she whispered.

His jaw clenched, his nostrils flared. “Is that what you think?”

“It's what I know. I…I couldn't help overhearing.” She dropped her eyes, licking her dry lips as she fought to keep her emotional upheaval from showing. “I'm sorry you're upset, but hurting me won't help.”

“Would it hurt you?” he asked softly.

She didn't know what he meant, but she was afraid to ask. “Shouldn't we go?”

“Norie, don't be afraid of me,” he
whispered against her temple, using the familiar nickname for the first time. “Little Dresden china doll, I won't hurt you again, physically or emotionally. Don't run from me.”

“I…I'm not running, I just don't want…”

“Don't want what?” he murmured, placing his lips against her closed eyelids. “Let me make love to you.”

“No!” She pushed away with all her strength and backed against the wall like a stalked fawn, her pale green eyes enormous in her pale face.

His eyes narrowed painfully. “God, don't look like that!” he exploded.

“You…you make me feel like something hunted,” she exclaimed. “Please!”

He whirled with a hard sigh and a muffled curse, running his hand around his neck tightly as if there was an ache in it he couldn't ease.

“Come on, if you're not afraid to ride with me,” he growled as he reached for
his battered work hat and started out the door.

She followed along behind him, the day ruined, afraid of him as she'd never been. She hesitated on the bottom step as he swung into the pickup and threw the passenger door open for her.

“Well?” he shot at her.

She got in, slamming the door firmly. She couldn't look at him.

“Is it Black? I'd just like to know.”

She shifted restlessly, staring at the dash unseeingly. “No,” she replied.

“My God, it's like trying to pry a clam open,” he grumbled as he started the truck. “All right, forget it!” he said, and accelerated out of the yard.

I
n a stoic silence, Curry drove down to the twin barns where his horses were kept. His face was set, and a cigarette burned forgotten between his fingers. He was so unfamiliar like this, she thought. The old days of friendly banter seemed to be gone forever, leaving only cold silence or anger between him and Eleanor.

She stared at the lush green pastures stretching to the horizon. The river was
just visible in rare glimpses through the hardwoods that ran along its banks. Both of the truck's windows were rolled down because Curry didn't bother with air-conditioning options in work trucks, and it was blazing hot. She missed the ribbon that would have kept her hair out of her face, and blushed when she remembered how she'd lost it.

Curry unknotted the bandanna around his throat and handed it to her. “Tie your hair back with that,” he said, as if he'd read the thought in her mind. “It's hot as hell out here.”

“Thanks,” she murmured. She drew the weight of her hair behind her neck and tied it with a double knot, letting the ends stream down. The bandanna smelled of Curry's tart after-shave, and she knew she'd never give it back. It would go into her jewelry box with all the other tiny mementos of him that she'd accumulated over the years; things to be taken out only rarely in the future and looked at through
tears while she tried to get used to a world that he wasn't in.

“We'll pick up the horses on the way,” he said as he lit a cigarette. “Sure you're up to this, baby?” he added with a half smile. “It isn't pretty.”

“I'm not a satin doll, Mr. Matherson,” she replied, stung by the sarcasm in his deep voice. “It won't be the first time I've seen cattle branded and castrated.”

“No, it won't, will it?” He frowned thoughtfully, handling the pickup easily with one hand as he took it over the rocky pasture and Eleanor bumped and bounced in her seat as it absorbed the rough terrain on its shocks.

“Were you hoping I'd pass out from the heat?” she asked, peeking at him from her long eyelashes.

His eyes flashed over her young face. “Flirting with me, Miss Perrie?” he mused.

She shifted pertly in her seat and looked out the window, her heart throb
bing. “Me? I wouldn't dream of such a thing, Mr. Matherson,” she replied in her best businesslike tone.

He laughed softly. “Brat.”

“Male chauvinist,” she countered, loving the easy atmosphere that was reminiscent of earlier, more companionable times.

“Me?” Both dark eyebrows went up as he glanced at her. “Honey, I'm one hundred percent in favor of women's liberation.”

“You are?” she asked suspiciously.

He took a long draw from the cigarette. “Dead right. I think we ought to liberate women from housework so they'll have more time to wait on us.”

“Incorrigible man!”

His eyes glittered over her soft curves with a familiarity that raised her blood pressure two points.

She moved restlessly. “Would you mind not looking at me like that?” she asked uneasily.

“Yes, I would.”

“Curry!” she groaned, his name slipping from her tongue as if she'd always used it.

“That's the first time you've ever said that,” he remarked with a quick glance into her eyes. “I like the sound of it.”

“It slipped out,” she replied tightly.

“My God, do we really need the postmortems?” he growled. “You make me feel sixty when you call me ‘Mr. Matherson.' I'm not that much older than you are.”

“Fourteen years,” she reminded him.

He stopped the truck in the middle of a rise and let it idle, turning toward her with one long, lean arm across the back of the seat while he studied her thoughtfully. “Does it bother you that much?” he asked.

The look in his silvery eyes did, but she couldn't give him the satisfaction of knowing that. She dropped her gaze to the leather seat between them, to the powerful legs covered in blue denim.

“Why should it?” she asked as coolly as she could.

“Because the emotions you arouse in me lately don't have much to do with dictation,” he said bluntly.

That brought her face jerking up. She gaped at him, her lips parted as her breath gasped through them.

“And now that I have your attention,” he continued casually, “would you mind not trying to build fences between us for the little time I have left to enjoy the pleasure of your company?”

“I didn't realize it was a pleasure,” she told him.

“Neither did I,” he admitted. “But, then, we don't tend to appreciate things as much until we're faced with the loss of them, do we? I'm going to miss you one hell of a lot, little girl. I've gotten…used to you.”

“You make me sound like a habit,” she murmured.

“One I could acquire without a great
deal of effort,” he replied with narrowed, considering eyes as he sat there watching her.

“I'd rather we just left it at a business relationship,” she said through taut lips.

“Would you?” he asked gently. “How would you know, Eleanor? I've never made love to you. Not in all that time we've been together. You don't know me in a physical sense.”

“Don't I?” she whispered, embarrassed, remembering that night….

He drew a deep, harsh breath. “It wouldn't be like that again,” he said gruffly. “I wouldn't hurt you.”

She studied her folded hands. “I'm not going to stay, Curry,” she said tightly, “no matter what you say or do. You don't have to flatter my vanity. No man would be blind enough to want me, remember?” she added bitterly.

“I said that, didn't I? My God, those horrible glasses and shapeless dresses, that staid personality that clung to you
like spiderwebs—would any man have wanted you that way?”

“Probably not,” she admitted quietly. “Maybe that was what I wanted, I don't know. I thought what a person was inside was the most important thing, not what he or she looked like on the outside.”

“That's true, to a certain extent,” he admitted. “But, honey, what's on the outside is what attracts a man to look for what's on the inside, didn't you know?” He smiled mockingly. “A man reacts to the look, smell, taste and touch of a woman, little girl. It's the way he's made. The first thing I noticed about Amanda was the silky way her skin felt under my hands.”

Amanda. The sound of her name was enough to put the sun behind a cloud for Eleanor. “She's very lovely,” she admitted in a subdued tone. “She'll come around, Curry, if you just give her a little time.”

“Eleanor,” he asked gently, “are you in love with Jim Black?”

She avoided those searching eyes. “I don't have to answer that.”

“I'd like to know.” He leaned forward to stub out his finished cigarette. “I don't want to see you hurt, in any way.”

“Jim isn't the kind of man to ever hurt a woman.”

His head lifted arrogantly. “And I am?” he asked narrowly.

She met his eyes bravely. “Yes,” she agreed, “you are. You…you don't really like women, I don't think, except in a purely physical way. Love isn't in your book of words, is it, Curry?”

He leaned back against the door to study her. “Neither are unicorns and the tooth fairy, honey,” he admitted carelessly. His pale eyes glittered with bitter memory. “You know why I feel that way, don't you?”

She nodded.

“You've never asked me about it,” he remarked.

“It wasn't any of my business,” she
said quietly. “I don't like prying into painful subjects.”

“No, Jadebud, you don't,” he said, reaching out to smooth a strand of hair away from her dusky cheeks. “I could tell you anything, do you know that? Things I could never tell anyone else. It's always been like that between us.”

Her eyes avoided his. “I'm flattered that you trust me.”

“Is that all it is?” he asked quietly.

She couldn't answer him, was afraid to even think he meant…

He started the truck and pressed down on the accelerator.

 

Later, riding over the pasture with Curry brought back childhood memories. Rocking gently on the back of the chestnut gelding he'd given her, Eleanor studied the lay of the land she'd spent her life in.

Texas was a land of contrasts, of desert and green pastures, of mountains and flat-land, cattle and high-rise apartments, cat
tle drives and desperadoes and men in handmade Italian silk shirts.

She breathed in the sweet smell of grass and closed her eyes dreamily as the horse moved lazily and the saddle leather creaked in the bright morning sun. In her mind she could picture the old trail riders punching the herd along the Chisholm Trail, the Goodnight-Loving Trail, all the famous cattle trails that ragged, weary cowboys had followed so many years ago. It was impossible to look around and not feel the sense of history here, the ghostly presence of those rugged souls who withstood the ravages of storm and drought and Indian war parties and rustlers. It excited her to think about the proud history of the land that was her own.

“Where are you?”

Curry's deep voice broke her out of her reveries and she darted a sheepish glance toward him, towering over her on his coal black stallion.

“I was riding on the Chisholm Trail,” she confessed.

He chuckled, his good humor returning under the wide canopy of sky and cloud. “You baby,” he teased. “How many copies of Zane Grey did you cut your teeth on?”

“The first hundred,” she replied. “I loved everything he wrote.” She studied his shadowed face under the battered ranch hat he wore. “Curry, did you like Western history when you were a boy—you know, about gunslingers and lawmen and cattle drovers?”

He reined in and crossed his forearms over the pommel. After a moment, he pushed his hat back on his head and studied her in a still, waiting silence. “What made you ask that?” he mused.

She shrugged. “I don't know. I was curious.” She turned her gaze back to the horizon. “How much farther is it to where you've got the cattle?”

“A mile or so. Think your backside can take it?”

“I'll live,” she replied, easing up and down in the saddle. Her legs would probably feel like twin bruises tomorrow, she thought wryly.

“You're nervous today,” he observed as they started moving again.

“Am I? I don't feel nervous,” she assured him.

“We've never been alone like this before,” he said without looking at her. “Bessie was always around, or some of the hands.” He turned his head and caught her eyes. “I could drag you off into the trees and no one could hear you if you yelled your head off,” he teased gently, but something dark and dangerous began to cloud his eyes as they swept over her face.

She bit her lower lip. “I'm safe, you told me so,” she replied with a confidence she didn't feel. “You didn't have the patience, you said…”

He drew a sharp, angry breath. “You've got a memory like a steel trap,
haven't you, Eleanor? Do you remember every damned word I've ever said to you?”

“I didn't mean to make you angry.”

“Then shut up, and you won't,” he said bluntly, giving the stallion its head, leaving her to follow or not as she chose.

Several hundred cattle were raising dust and a lot of noise where they were held in pens connected to a network of chutes that were used to sort them according to age, sex and breed. Two men were herding the cattle from one pen into the chute, yelling and slapping the animals on the rump with their hats to move them along. Another man was on top of the railing of the chute to keep the animals moving along. Other cowboys straddled a two-way gate that separated calves from cows and steers.

“Noisy as hell isn't it?” Curry laughed as they neared the pens. “The sorting takes a while, and this is only a fraction of the whole herd.”

“Which herd is this?” Eleanor asked, shading her eyes with her hat.

“The breeding herd—some of it. We'll run them through before we even start on the grade cattle.”

“I don't envy those men their jobs,” she said, shaking her head. She searched the area. “I don't see Terry,” she remarked, looking for the local veterinarian's tow head among those of the cowboys.

Curry glared over at her. “Isn't Black enough for you, honey? Or are you just collecting scalps as you go along?”

She wondered at the bite in his voice. “I just wondered where he was, Curry, that didn't mean I want to assault him while he vaccinates the herd!”

“He likes you,” he persisted.

“Horrible glasses and all,” she said with a defiant gleam in her pale eyes.

He got down off his mount with a quick, graceful motion and strode over to the corrals.

Terry Briant arrived just after the sorting was completed, while the men were preparing the branding irons. Eleanor took a place beside the chutes to watch as the calves were herded into them and chased down to the metal trough at the end of the chute and the entrance to the branding corral.