The Rawhide Man (2 page)

He moved forward, and she knew him too well to stand her ground. He closed the door roughly behind him, and rain dripped from the wide brim of the gray hat that shadowed part of his face.

“Where can we talk?”

She turned, remembering that she was still Miss White of Oakgrove, and led him into the shabby parlor.

“Still the society girl, I see,” he taunted, dropping down onto the sofa. “Do I get coffee, Miss White, or aren’t the servants working today?”

She blanched, but her chin lifted and her brown eyes accused. “My mother died two days ago,” she said pointedly, “so could you save your sarcasm for a special occasion? Yes, there’s coffee, and no, there aren’t any servants. There haven’t been for a number of years. Or don’t you know yet that the only thing standing between me and imminent starvation is that block of oil shares you’re so hot to get your hands on?”

He looked as if she’d actually surprised him, but she turned away. “I’ll get the coffee,” she said curtly.

While she was gone, she cooled down her hot temper. It wouldn’t do her any good with Jude; the only chance she had was to keep her head and not go for his throat. By the time she carried the worn silver service into the living room, he’d discarded his topcoat and hat and was wandering around the room, glancing distastefully at the portrait of Carla and Bess above the mantel.

He turned and watched her set the heavy service on the coffee table without offering to help. That was like him, the original chauvinist who had no time for women.

“Thank you,” she said elegantly, “for your kind offer of assistance.”

“Is the damned thing heavy?” he asked carelessly.

She almost laughed. The situation was unbelievable. She sat down and poured out the coffee, handing him his black without realizing what that little slip gave away.

“Should I be flattered that you remember how I take my coffee?” he asked, leaning back to study her insolently, running his eyes over every curve outlined by the simple gray jersey dress she was wearing.

“Don’t put on your cowboy drawl for me, mister,” she replied quietly, lifting her cup to her lips. “I know you.”

“You think you do,” he agreed, his green eyes narrowing.

“How’s Katy?” she asked.

He shrugged. “Growing up fast.” His gaze focused on her. “She asked about you when the family got together this summer.”

“I’m sorry I missed it,” she said. “I couldn’t leave Mother.”

He flexed his broad shoulders and leaned forward. The action stretched the fabric of his pants over his powerful thighs and Bess had to look away.

“That’s enough small talk,” he said suddenly, piercing her eyes with his. “You’re coming back to San Antonio with me.”

She hardly had time to catch her breath. “I’m what?”

“You heard me.” He set down his cup. “The only way I can control that stock is by marrying you. So that’s how we’ll do it.”

Her body jerked as if he’d hit her, and she stared at him uncomprehendingly. She might have thought of this before—it was so like Jude to take the direct approach.

“No,” she said shortly.

“Yes,” he replied. “I’ve waited years to get my hands on those shares, and I’m having them. If you come along with the deal, I’ll just have to make the best of it.”

She went red in the face and sat up straight. “What makes you think you’re any prize?” she asked in her coldest tone. “You’re cold and hard and you don’t care about anybody in the world except Katy!”

“That’s absolutely gospel,” he agreed, staring at her unblinkingly. “But you’ll go to the altar with me if I have to tie you up and gag you, except for the part where you say, ‘I do.’”

“I do not,” she corrected. “You can’t force me to marry you.”

“Think not?” He stood up, his green eyes glittering with cold humor, his face confident and frighteningly hard.

He left the room, and Bess stood up, staring helplessly around. What in the world was he doing!

Minutes later he was back, with her coat in one hand and her purse dangling from his fingers. He slung them at her. “I’ve undone the fuse box. You can call a real estate agent from San Antonio and put the house on the auction block. Any little things you want can be shipped out. Now put on that coat.”

She couldn’t believe this was happening. It must be a hallucination brought on by the strain, she told herself. But a minute later, always impatient, he was stuffing her into the coat. He jerked the hood up and thrust the purse into her hands.

“I won’t go!” she cried out.

“Like hell you won’t go.” He bent and swung her up into his arms like a sack of feathers and carried her out into the rain.

Chapter Two

T
his isn’t happening, Bess told herself an hour later as she sat beside Jude in the cockpit of his big Cessna. It simply isn’t happening!

But the sound of the engine was very real, and so was Jude’s set, humorless face as he concentrated on flying the plane.

Characteristically, he wasn’t trusting his life to another pilot. He liked having total control—in everything. That was why he was flying himself and that was why he wanted the block of shares that Bess now owned. It was also, Bess suspected, why no woman had ever managed to get him to the altar in a conventional way. Falling in love would be giving a measure of control to someone else, too.

She leaned back in the seat, staring blankly at the clouds ahead, and wondered how she was going to get herself out of this predicament. Surely some other way could be found to give him the stock, if he reimbursed her. She brightened. Until she remembered the exact wording of the will. She muttered under her breath. Carla had taken care of that angle, too. The only way Jude could possibly get the stock was to marry Bess. And that, Carla had smugly thought, he’d never do. He disliked Bess. Everyone knew it, too. They fought like cats and dogs, and people moved out of the way at Langston family get-togethers when they were both present.

The reunion two summers ago was the reason Bess had stayed away from the most recent gathering. She and Jude had gotten into a horrible fight about Katy. She could still blush at the language he’d used; the fact that there had been bystanders present hadn’t slowed him down one iota.

Katy had told Bess about a fight she’d been in at school, stating proudly that she’d done just like Daddy, she’d pounded the hell out of a boy twice her size, and wasn’t that super? “Super” had been Katy’s latest word; it described everything from her dog, Pal, to the calf Jude had given her to raise for 4-H.

Bess hadn’t thought it was super now that Katy was eight. She’d thought it was terrible, and she’d told Jude so later as they were sitting together having dinner with some of the other family members at a restaurant on the Paseo del Rio. Traditionally, they always concluded the annual picnic and rodeo at the restaurant, which Jude would book for an arm and a leg and the family would fill.

“What’s wrong with Katy sticking up for herself?” he’d demanded. “The damned boy hit her first.”

“She’s a girl,” Bess had burst out, exasperated with him. “For heaven’s sake, she already dresses and talks like a boy. What are you trying to do to her?”

“Teach her to stand up for herself,” he’d replied coolly, and had gone back to sipping his whiskey, raising his hand as another male member of the family entered the restaurant.

“Teaching her to be a freak,” Bess had said under her breath.

That had set him off. She could still see him rising, as slowly as a rattlesnake coiling, his eyes glittering and dangerous, his face taut.

“Katy is my daughter,” he’d said with a cold smile. “I decide what’s good or bad for her, and I don’t need help from some dainty little society lady who couldn’t fight her way out of an eclair! Who the hell do you think you are to tell me how to raise my daughter? What qualifies you to be anybody’s mother?” His voice was raised just enough to carry to the other tables, and there was a sudden hush, broken only by the sound of the river and the muffled voices of strolling passersby on the river walk. Bess had wanted to cringe.

“People are staring,” Bess had said under her breath.

“Well, my God, let them stare!” he’d boomed, scowling down at her. “If you’re so free with your damned advice on child raising, let’s tell everybody. Go ahead, Miss White, do advise me on the behavior of my child!”

Her face was white with embarrassment and humiliation, but she held her head up and stared back at him. “I don’t think I need to repeat it,” she said very calmly.

It made him even angrier that he couldn’t make her lose her composure entirely. That was when he’d started cursing. “You damned little prig,” he’d tacked on at the end, and by that time her face was as red as it had been white earlier. “Why don’t you get married and have kids of your own? Can’t you find a man good enough?” He’d laughed coldly and looked over her body with contempt. “Or can’t you find a man?”

And he’d turned and walked away, leaving her sitting there with tears stinging her eyes. The family had lost interest then and gone on to other topics. Bess had gone back to her hotel and packed. It was the last time she’d had any contact with Jude, until now.

“So quiet, Miss White,” he taunted, jerking her out of her reveries. “So ladylike. You didn’t even kick and scream. Is that kind of behavior too human for you?”

She lifted her chin, her perfect composure intact, and looked at him. “Look who’s talking about being human,” she said with a cool smile.

One of his thick eyebrows jerked. “But, then, I never claimed to be, did I?”

She averted her eyes. “If I’d had any doubts about it, you quelled them two summers ago.”

He made a sound deep in his throat. “You ran,” he recalled curtly. “Somehow, I didn’t expect that. You’ve never run from me before.”

The wording was unusual and it made her curious, but she wasn’t in the mood to start trying to unravel Jude again.

“I didn’t run,” she replied, telling the lie very calmly. “I simply didn’t see any reason to stay an extra day and give you any more free shots at me.”

He glanced at her. “I meant what I said about Katy,” he said darkly. “I don’t want her made into a miniature debutante, is that clear? You lay one hand on her wardrobe and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

There was no arguing with him when he was in that mood; she knew the look from memory. She turned her face away. “Don’t worry, I won’t be around long enough to do any damage.”

“You’ll be around. Now shut up,” he added, glaring her way. “I don’t like conversation when I’m flying this thing. You wouldn’t want to crash, would you?”

“The airplane wouldn’t dare,” she muttered angrily, glancing at him. “Like most everything else around you, it’s too intimidated to take the chance!”

Surprisingly, he laughed. But it was brief, and then his face was the familiar hard one she was accustomed to.

They landed at the San Antonio airport late that night, and Bess was exhausted. She barely noticed her surroundings until they were heading toward the exit and she got a good look at the walls. They were hung with paintings, all for sale, all exquisite, and most of Western subject matter.

“Oh, how beautiful!” she exclaimed over one, which showed a ranch house and a windmill overlooking a vast expanse of desert land. It looked like West Texas might have looked a hundred years ago, and she was instantly in love with it.

“Come on, for God’s sake,” Jude muttered, dragging her away with a steely hand on her arm. The touch went through her like fire.

“Could you stop grumbling for one minute?” she asked him, glaring up, and it was a long way despite her two-inch heels and her five feet, seven inches of height. “And glaring and scowling….”

He lifted an eyebrow and looked down his nose at her. “Why don’t you stop criticizing everybody around you and take a look at yourself, society girl?” he taunted. “What makes you think you’re perfect?”

She knew she wasn’t, but it hurt, coming from him. “I won’t marry you,” she said with controlled ferocity. “Not if you kill me first.”

“If I killed you first, there wouldn’t be much point in marrying you,” he said conversationally. He pulled her along with him. “And you might as well stop arguing. You’re going to marry me and that’s the end of it.”

They stepped out into the nippy air and she tugged her coat closer. It wasn’t raining here, but it was cold all the same. The palm trees looked chilly, and the mesquite and oak trees they drove past in Jude’s black Mercedes had no leaves on them. They looked as stark as the pecan trees back home.

Pecans reminded her of food, which reminded her that she hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, and then she remembered what he’d said about turning off the power.

“My gosh, you idiot!” she burst out, turning in the seat. “You cut off the power to the refrigerator!”

He glanced at her. “Don’t start name-calling. I’ve got an edge on you in that department. So what if it spoils? You won’t be there to eat it.”

“It will smell up the whole house!”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said calmly. “You can give me the name of a realtor.”

“You can’t order me to sell Oakgrove!” she burst out irrationally, though earlier she’d made up her mind to do just that. “It’s been in my family for over a hundred years!”

“You’ll sell it if I say so,” he returned, giving her a hard glare. “Shades of Scarlett O’Hara. It’s just a piece of land and an old house.”

She thought back to all the family picnics, the rides through the woods, the beautiful springs and summers and the loving care that each generation had lavished on the estate. Suddenly it was clear to her that she wouldn’t sell it, after all. “No,” she said. “It’s a legacy. If land is so unimportant, why do you hold on to Big Mesquite?”

“That’s different,” he said. “It’s mine.”

“Oakgrove is mine.”

“God, you’re stubborn,” he growled, glaring across the passenger seat at her. “What do you want the place for?”

“It’s my home,” she told him. “When you come to your senses, I’m going back there to live.”
And I’ll figure out some way to maintain it,
she added to herself.

He turned his attention back to the road. “I need those damned shares. Your mother,” he added curtly, “has very nearly cost me the corporation I’ve worked all my life to build up. By denying me the shares that were rightfully mine, she’s tied me up in a proxy fight that I’ve almost lost.”