The Girl with the Golden Spurs (21 page)

“Of course not!”

“I thought maybe when you came upstairs last night…you were chasing me.”

“I was delivering your girlfriend’s message,” she snapped. “I’m glad you two had fun.”

The corner of his sensual mouth tightened. “Well, you damn sure don’t sound like it. You sound grumpy as hell. I’ll bet Suz—”

“What do you want from me?” she muttered, her nerves going raw.

“That’s the last thing you want to hear, darlin’,” he teased, his gaze lingering on her body. “Or is it?”

Her breath caught. Was he flirting with her?

He looked at his watch. “
Hell
. I’m late. The hands headed out for the pens an hour ago. After San Antonio I’m way behind.” He stalked across the office to the door.

“Cole, what was your meeting about?”

His shoulders tightened, but he didn’t turn around. “That’s between Leo and me.”

“I’m supposed to be in charge.”

“Then, so long, boss lady. Don’t let me keep you.” He tipped his hat and then slammed out of the office.

She stood up and stomped her feet a dozen times until she felt better.

“Good. This is good.” Better for him to be mad and me to be mad back than for me to be dreaming about his mouth between my legs.

When her gaze fell to the locked drawer again, she remembered the scissors she’d found earlier. Pulling them out, she jammed a pointed tip into the lock and jiggled it. Before she was done, she’d destroyed the scissors, broken a nail and her coffee was cold. But she’d successfully unlocked the drawer. Chewing on her nail, she yanked the drawer all the way open and began digging through its contents.

Feeling a little guilty, she lifted a large manila envelope with the word Confidential scrawled across it in her father’s bold hand. Underneath the fat envelope lay a thick stack of letters tied together with a wide, blue, satin ribbon. The postscripts on the envelopes were from all over the world, and they were addressed to her father at a P. O. box in Corpus Christi, a city ninety miles north of the ranch, rather than to the ranch itself.

Had her father been carrying on a secret correspondence?

A tremor went through her as she opened the first letter, which was from Kenya. She was right.

Slowly she began reading words that had been written
years ago in a strong, loopy hand. When she finished the first paragraph, Lizzy’s heart was pounding in her throat.

When Lizzy finished the letter, her heart was still thudding violently. Slowly, carefully, she folded it and put it back in its envelope. With exquisite care, she tied the letters
up exactly as they’d been in the fat blue ribbon and laid them on top of the desk.

Then she shut the drawer. Before standing up, she traced the scratches she’d made on the wood with her fingertip. They weren’t really noticeable unless one looked closely.

Gathering the envelope and Electra’s letters, she walked toward the door and stepped out onto the porch, which was lit by magical, golden light. Electra’s light. For a long time Lizzy stood in the long dark shadow of a column, clutching the letters and the manila envelope against her heart, feeling connected to the light in a new and different way.

She barely noticed the two pickups, one with a trailer for horses driven by Cole followed by another pulling a trailer for cattle driven by Kinky. They were probably heading for the pens.

Electra Scott was her mother—not Joanne Kemble
.

All her life, Lizzy had felt that something was wrong with her, that she didn’t belong here…that she wasn’t a true Kemble. Now she knew why. No wonder Mother had favored Mia.

Not Mother…Joanne
.

No wonder Joanne and Mia fit. No wonder her father had been so determined to make Lizzy prove her mettle.

She was his bastard from some sordid affair like the one he’d had with Cherry. He’d forced Joanne to raise her. He’d forced her down everybody else’s throats. Cole had said everybody was jealous of her. How many of them knew the truth? No wonder she had wild, shameful dreams. Her mother had been some sort of artistic, free spirit.

Oh, God…

The early, brilliantly lit morning air suddenly felt so chilly, she shivered.

* * *

From where Lizzy sat in the middle of her big bed as she talked to Mandy on her cordless phone, she could see herself in the gilt-framed mirror over the dresser. Her skin was pale, her lavender-blue eyes huge. Never had she looked so small and defenseless.

“Incredible,” Lizzy said. “I can’t believe you know who she is.”

“I went to Princeton, kiddo. Electra Scott’s, like, really famous. Not to mention supercool. They had an exhibit of her stuff at the Met when you lived here. You’re her daughter? Way cool!”

“You mean you went to her exhibit?”

“Yeah. They were black-and-white close-ups she’d done of kids and animals all over the world. She loved children, all colors and shapes.”

“Then why did she ditch me so fast?”

“She had special gifts. She made a choice. Life’s all about choices. It’s not like she threw you out to starve.”

“But I’m all mixed up. I always have been because of what she did.”

“Did you never have to make a hard choice where there was no perfect solution?”

“Who made you such a guru?”

“You called me, kiddo.” She let that hang. “Hey, I gotta go. A customer just walked in. Looks like a live one, too. You should see her. Black bondage outfit. Diamond piercings. Oh, she just stopped at the edible undies section. Gotta reel this baby in, kiddo. Did I tell you the manager put me on a commission? You’re gonna figure this out, so lighten up.”

“Nice to hear your voice at least. And thanks for keeping an eye on my New York apartment. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get back there, but at least it’s in good care.”

“No problem, kiddo.”

When Mandy hung up, Lizzy felt restless and out of sorts and abandoned. Her thoughts turned to Cole.

He was the next person she wanted to tell about her real mother. Why was that? Why did he have to pop into her mind all the time? Like he was someone special to her?

When she called Joanne to find out how her father was, Lizzy felt more awkward with her than usual. “S-so, how’s Daddy?”

“More or less the same, but they’re moving him out of ICU.”

“Thanks—Joanne.”

She had never called her that before.

“Are you all right?” Joanne asked.

“Fine.”

The line fell silent long before each of them hung up.

After lunch Lizzy put Vanilla down for a nap and took a walk, wandering to all Joanne’s favorite places for reasons she didn’t fully understand. Joanne drove everywhere in a golf cart, so there were paths cut through the brush for her cart. Lizzy followed the path that led to the fenced garden and Joanne’s greenhouse.

Inside the greenhouse, thorny plants burst out of terracotta pots. Lizzy flipped through a gardening book that told how to grow things and how to kill weeds without poison. Weirdly shaped sticks, interesting bones, turkey feathers and rows of antlers had been precisely lined up on low shelves. There wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. Joanne was a naturalist and an environmentalist, as well.

Lizzy had come here as a child when she’d been curious about her mother and wanted to feel close to her. She lifted one of the antlers and turned it over, studying its graceful shape. Who was Joanne really? Had the war between her parents been about her? Mia and she had been the same age. Had Daddy gotten two women pregnant at the same time?

Why had Joanne and Daddy married if they hadn’t loved each other? Would she ever know? Were one’s parents always a mystery?

The last of Joanne’s retreats that Lizzy visited was the aviary. Joanne had put wire mesh in a stable and then had knocked a hole in the back wall of the barn and had had a huge screened aviary built when the birds had multiplied.

Cole found her there, cooing like an idiot to seventeen white fantailed pigeons.

“Your mother’s babies,” he said as he let himself through the screen door. “She started out with four. You know. If she doesn’t start giving birds away, she’s going to have to add on again.”

He took off his Stetson and propped a shoulder against the rough wood wall. Crossing his legs, he leaned back, his gaze traveling over Lizzy.

“Don’t look at me like that!” she said, frustrated by his heated perusal.

“Like what?” His black brows went up in feigned innocence.

“You know.”

He chuckled. “Sorry. Couldn’t resist. It’s really your fault you know.”

“How is it my fault?”

“For looking so sexy.”

“I thought you had a new girlfriend.”

“If you say so.”

Wild turkeys silently picked at the ground outside the aviary. Dragon flies sparkled like jewels in the air. The wind was light and balmy. Even with Cole here, and the aviary feeling smaller by the second because he was inside it with her, Lizzy felt a sense of peace she’d never once felt in Manhattan.

He leaned toward her. “Missing your mother, are you?”

His deep voice was so gentle her throat constricted. More than anything Lizzy longed to tell him about Electra. She’d read all her mother’s letters.

In her own way her real mother had loved her. She’d kept up with her through the years. Her father had clearly been proud of Lizzy, too. Lizzy felt good about that, and she wanted to share her feelings with Cole. She felt a new confidence in herself now that she knew her true story.

Why was it becoming harder and harder to remember why he was so wrong for her?

“Are you okay?” he asked, his low tone, huskily protective.

She felt herself softening toward him again.

“I’d better go,” she said. “Like you said, you have a new girlfriend. So, I’m sure you’ve got lots and lots of better things to do than to waste time with me.”

“Not really. But I get it. I know a brush-off when I hear one.”

He slammed out of the aviary so hard there was a wild flurry of white wings. Pigeons flew about her face in a mad rush to reach the safety of the rafters overhead.

“Cole!”

When she ran after him, he turned.

“You scared them,” she said.

“Sorry.” His black hair gleamed in the sunlight. Never had his shoulders looked broader or his hips leaner. But he looked hurt and confused, too, and that made her feel even more vulnerable to him. Oh, why did he have to be so dear and so dazzlingly handsome and look like he cared? Suddenly she forgot to worry about Suz or Mia or New York or his old greed and quest for revenge.

“Sorry—you looked so lost and sad, I forgot the rules,” he muttered. “Won’t happen again.”

He turned his broad back to her and plopped his battered

Stetson on top his head. Squaring his shoulders, he strode down the golf cart path toward the big house.

“Cole!”

He sped up without looking back.

It was dark. Caesar hated the dark, hated the long nights when all his visitors went home and he couldn’t sleep.

His tiny, prisonlike hospital room reeked of antiseptics. Caesar couldn’t move, not even to twist his head. Joanne was gone. So was Hawk. Thus, he was alone with his thoughts and regrets. All he could move were his eyelids, so he glared at the ceiling tiles.

Electra Scott was dead. She’d taken up such a big place in his heart for so many years it was hard to imagine her dead or murdered or believe that all that was left of her were her ashes that he’d scattered under the Spur Tree. So, he didn’t think about her being dead, maybe because he couldn’t bear it.

Nothing had turned out as he’d planned. He remembered the day they’d met. He’d been in a foul mood because Joanne, the girl from the ranch next door, had slept with his older brother, Jack, who now felt duty bound to marry her.

Jack had wanted to elope. Joanne had wanted a big wedding. As usual Joanne had won. The next thing everybody knew, Joanne’s best friend from
The University
in Austin, as that school was so arrogantly called, at least, in Texas, had been asked to be maid of honor and was on her way to the ranch to help plan the wedding.

A few days later she had landed on Caesar’s doorstep. Bold as brass, arms crossed under her ample breasts, her triangular chin thrust willfully in his face, she stood pale and tall, a warrior goddess, not his type at all. She had thick platinum hair that flowed to her waist in silken waves and a lush red rose that matched her red clingy dress tucked behind her ear. Her bright lavender eyes burned a hole through his heart.

His preference ran to small, soft brunettes, not Amazons who didn’t know how to dress and he was tempted to tell her so.

“Hello. I’m Electra Scott. You must be Jack.” She licked her lips as if he looked delicious enough to eat.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” he muttered, furious at her because of her instant power over him.

“Who says I’m disappointed? Who the hell are you, cowboy?”

“His little brother. Not that it’s any of your business.”