with mounting horror, reading the posted casualty lists with stopped breath, with sinking fear. But Coleman seemed invincible. It wasn’t until the year after the armistice, when he’d turned up back at the ranch after a few sparsely worded letters, an old flying buddy in tow, that they’d learned he’d been shot down by the Germans. He’d only written that he’d been wounded, not how. But apparently it hadn’t done him any lasting damage. He was the same taciturn, hard man he’d been before he’d gone to France.
Well, not quite the same. Lacy treasured the precious few memories she had of Cole’s tenderness, his warmth. He hadn’t always been cold—especially not the day he’d left to go to war. There had been times when he was so human, so caring. Now, there was a coldness that was alien, a toughness that perhaps the war had created. Not that the family had any real idea of what the war had been like for him on a personal basis; he never spoke of it.
Ben had been too young to fight. With Cole’s return, he’d followed after his big brother with wide, dark eyes, all questions and pleas to hear about it. But Coleman wouldn’t tell him a thing. So Ben hounded Jude Sheridan. Jude, whom Coleman called Turk, had been an ace pilot with twelve credited kills. He was an easygoing, too-handsome man with a quick temper and a physique that kept young Katy awake nights sighing over him. Turk had filled Ben’s ear with bloodcurdling tales—until Coleman had gotten tired of it and stopped Turk from encouraging his young brother.
That was about the same time that he’d had to stop Katy from tagging along after the tall, blond flyer who’d become his ranch foreman. Turk was good with horses, and he had a shocking reputation with women. But that was something Katy wasn’t going to find out, Cole had informed her coldly. Turk was his friend, not a potential conquest, and Katy had better remember it. Even now, Lacy could see the heartbreak on the slender, green-eyed girl’s face as Cole blasted her dreams away. He’d even gone so far as to threaten her with firing Turk altogether. So Katy had withdrawn—from her brother, from her family—and had gone wild with the new morality. She’d bought outrageous clothes; she began to use makeup. She went to parties in San Antonio and drank outlawed bathtub gin. And the more Coleman threatened her, the wilder she got.
About that time, Ben had turned his attention to Lacy. It had been embarrassing, because she was twenty-three and Ben only eighteen. Coleman teased him about it when he got wind of it, which only added to the frustration. One night, Ben lured Cole and Lacy to a line cabin and locked them in. He went home to bed, and by the time they were discovered the next morning, they were hopelessly compromised. So Coleman did the expected thing and married her. But he resented her, ignored her, put a wall between them that all her efforts hadn’t dented. He refused to let her close enough to give their marriage a chance.
There had been an attraction between them for a long time—a purely physical one on his part—that had found its first expression the day he’d left for the war. Despite the promise of that long-ago embrace, he hadn’t touched Lacy since he’d been home again, not until after the wedding. The tension between them had reached flash point after an argument in the barn. Cole had backed her up against the wall that rainy morning in the barn and had kissed her until her mouth was swollen and her body raging with unexpected passion. That night, he’d come to her room and, in the darkness, had taken her. But it had been quick, and painful, and she remembered the strength in his lean hands as he’d held her wrists beside her head, not even allowing her to touch him through the brief intimacy while his hard mouth smothered her cries of pain. He’d left her immediately, white-faced, while she cried like a hurt child, and he hadn’t touched her again. The next morning, he’d acted as if nothing at all had happened. If anything, he was harder and colder than before. Lacy couldn’t bear the thought of any more of his brutal passion and his indifference. She’d packed her bags and gone to San Antonio, to be a companion to her great-aunt Lucy, Great-uncle Horace’s widow. Shortly thereafter, the gentle old lady had died. Now Lacy had the house and plenty of money that she hadn’t even expected to inherit. But without Cole, she had nothing.
She still shuddered, thinking about the morning she’d left Spanish Flats. Marion had been hurt, Katy and Ben shocked. Coleman had been…Coleman. Revealing nothing. Eight months had passed without a word from him, without an apology. Lacy had hated him at first because of the pain he’d inflicted so coldly. But one of her married friends had explained intimacy to her, and now she understood a little. She’d been a virgin, so it wasn’t unexpected that her first time had been difficult. Perhaps Cole just hadn’t cared enough to be gentle with her. At any rate, if it happened again, it might be less traumatic, and she might get pregnant. She blushed softly, thinking of how wonderful it would be to have a child, even under these circumstances. She was so totally alone. She could never have Cole, but it would have been nice to have his child.
It was such a good thing that she had Great-aunt Lucy’s inheritance. Added to the unexpectedly small inheritance her parents had left, it had made it possible for her to live in style and give extravagant parties. Coleman hated guests, and gaiety. Lacy could have done without them, too, if she’d had Coleman’s love. Even his affection. But she had nothing, except the contempt that had burned from his dark eyes every time he looked at her. She had money, and he was losing more of his by the day. That had been a point of contention between them from the very beginning. Cole had never gotten over the fact of her wealth…and his lack of it. It was an unexpected prejudice in a man who didn’t seem to have a bigoted bone in his lean body.
Lacy sipped her gin quietly, her eyes on the clock. Marion had written to say that Cole would be in San Antonio today, on business. She’d asked him to stop by and see Lacy while he was in town. Lovely Marion, always the matchmaker. But she didn’t know the real situation. There was nothing more hopeless than the relationship the way it was now. Even if Lacy had thought about asking Coleman for a divorce, as old-fashioned and proper as he was, she knew Cole would never agree to that. It had been his own principles, added to his mother’s horror of scandal, that had made him drag Lacy to the altar in the first place after the night in the line cabin, even though he hadn’t touched her. Apparently he was content for things to go on as they were; for Lacy to live in San Antonio, while he contented himself with business-as-usual at Spanish Flats. She laughed bitterly. All her young dreams of marriage and children and a husband to love and cherish her, and this was what she had. Twenty-four years old, and she felt fifty.
Children had been another problem. She’d worked up enough nerve to approach Coleman shortly after their marriage and ask him if he wanted them. She’d thought in her innocence that a child might make their relationship easier. His face had gone a horrible pale shade, and he’d said things to her that she still had trouble accepting. No, he’d told her, he didn’t want children. Not with a pampered little rich girl like Lacy. And after a few more insulting words, he’d stormed off in a black temper. She’d never had the nerve to ask him a second time. In her heart, she’d hoped that she might become pregnant after that uncomfortable night in his bed, but it hadn’t happened. Maybe it was just as well, because Cole would let no one close to him. She’d tried everything except being herself. It was hard to be herself around Cole, because he inhibited her so much. She wanted to play with him and tease him and make him laugh. She wanted to make him young, because he’d never been that. He’d been a man ever since she’d known him, a solitary, lonely figure with steel in his makeup—even at the age of nineteen—which he’d been when Lacy came to live with the Whitehalls.
In the other room, the radio was giving out New Orleans jazz, and the new Charleston dance was being demonstrated by two visitors whom Lacy didn’t know. There were a lot of people in the house that she didn’t know. What did it matter? They filled the empty rooms.
Lacy walked down the hall, her knee-length gray dress clinging softly to the slender lines of her body, down her hose-clad legs, to her buckled high heels. She felt restless again, hungry. She remembered the hardness of Cole’s mouth, the aching sweetness of his kiss that left her lips softly swollen. All that exquisite passion they’d shared the morning in the barn, and it had led to…that. She shivered. Surely women only allowed men such license with
