hadn’t. Cade was still trying to pay off his father’s ruined dream of turning Lariat into an empire.
As he approached Bess, he could see her worried face. She looked the way she did when something was eating at her. Usually she walked when she was upset, and usually it was her mother, Gussie, who caused those long hikes in the Texas brush country south of San Antonio. Gussie was a selfish, careless woman who used her only daughter in much the way a plantation mistress would make use of a slave woman. Cade had watched it for years with emotions ranging from disgust to contempt. What made it so much worse was that Bess didn’t seem to realize what a hold her possessive mother had on her, and she made no effort to break it. Bess was twenty-three now, but she had the reserve and shyness of a young girl. Her mother captured the spotlight as her due, wherever they went. Bess was a frail shadow of the elegant, beautiful Gussie, and she was never allowed to forget that she fell short of the mark as far as her mother was concerned.
She was kneeling beside the calf now, and Cade urged his mount into a gallop, attracting her attention. She got up when she spotted him, looking lost and alone and a little frightened. Her long light brown hair was loose for a change, and she had no makeup on. Bess had soulful brown eyes and a complexion like honeyed cream. Her face was a full oval, soft with tenderness and compassion, and she had a figure that had once driven Cade to drink. She didn’t flaunt it, but any man with eyes could see how perfect her full breasts were, rising above a small waist and gently flaring hips to long, alluring legs. But her mother never encouraged her to make the most of her assets. Very likely Gussie didn’t want the competition, or to have a daughter who looked like an attractive twenty-three-year-old woman, which would remind Gussie of her own age.
As Cade neared her, the contrast between them was much more noticeable than at a distance. Bess was a lady, and Cade had been raised rough and without the social graces. She was a society girl and he was part Comanche, a cowboy who was expected to come to the back door when Frank Samson had hired him three years ago to teach Bess how to ride. He still bristled with anger remembering how those riding lessons had ended so abruptly, and for what reason. That, too, had been Gussie’s fault. Most of the resentments in his adult life could be laid at her door, and foremost of them was the untimely death of his father. He wondered if Bess knew about it. He couldn’t imagine that Gussie had ever told her, and Bess would have been too young to remember. Cade, who was thirty-four to Bess’s twenty-three, remembered all too well.
Bess Samson saw Cade coming toward her, and all her dreams seemed to merge in him. Her heart jumped up like a startled thing, and she had to clench her teeth to control her scattered emotions. Even though she’d hoped that she might see him at the house, it was a shock to have him actually appear. The calf was hurt or sick, and Cade cared about little lost things, even if he didn’t care about her.
Whatever Cade felt, he kept to himself. Except for one devastating lapse when he’d become a cold, mocking, threatening stranger, he’d kept Bess at a cold distance and treated her with something bordering on contempt. She knew that he didn’t have much time for rich society girls, but his contempt even extended to her mother, who, God knew, was harmless enough.
She couldn’t quite meet those cold black eyes under the wide brim of Cade’s Stetson when he reined up in front of her. He wasn’t a handsome man. He had strong features, but his face was too angular and broad, his eyebrows too heavy, his nose too formidable and his mouth too thin and cruel. His only saving grace was his exquisite physique. He had the most perfect body Bess had ever seen in her life, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, long-legged and powerful. He looked lithe and slim until he moved into action, and then he was all muscle and masculinity. But Bess tried not to notice those things. It was too embarrassing to remember what had happened between them in the past and the contempt he still held for her, along with a barely hidden anger.
“I...went to the house to tell someone that the calves were out,” she stammered. He made her feel like a schoolgirl. “But then when I came back, I saw this little one lying down...”
Cade swung out of the saddle gracefully, although he still favored the leg with the pulled tendon a little when he went to kneel beside the little red-and-white-coated calf. “It’s dangerous to go near a downed calf when his mama’s close by,” he informed her without looking up. His lean, sure hands went over the calf while he checked for injury or disease. “I don’t run polled cattle here. Mine have horns, and they use them.”
“I know that,” she said gently. “Is she all right?”
“She’s a he, and no, he’s not all right. It looks very much like scours.” He stood up, lifting the calf gently in his arms. “I’ll take him back with me.” He spared her a glance. “Thanks for stopping.”
She walked after him. “Can I...hold him for you while you get on the horse?” she offered unsteadily.
He stopped at the bay and turned, his eyes twinkling for an instant with surprise. “In that dress?” he asked, letting his eyes run down her slender figure with blatant appreciation. “Silk, isn’t it? You’d go home smelling of calf and worse, and the dress would most likely be ruined. His plumbing’s torn up,” he added dryly, putting it discreetly.
But she only smiled. “I wouldn’t mind,” she said. “I like little things.”
His jaw tautened. “Little things, sick things, stray animals,” he added to her list. “Go home, Bess. You don’t belong out in the sticks or on a ranch. You’re meant for better things.”
He laid the calf gently in front of the pommel and swung easily up behind it, positioning it as his hand caught the reins. Bess watched him, her eyes faintly hungry, helpless. He looked down at her and saw that look, and his own eyes began to narrow and darken.
“Go home,” he repeated, much more roughly than he meant to, because the sight of her disturbed him so.
She sighed softly. “All right, Cade.” She turned and went back to her car, her head lowered.
Cade watched her with an expression that would have spoken volumes, even to an innocent like Bess. Without another word he turned his horse and headed back toward Lariat.
Bess wanted to watch him ride away, but she’d already given away too much. She loved him so. Why couldn’t she stop? Heaven knew he didn’t want her, but she kept flinging herself against the stone wall of his heart.
She climbed back into the car, feeling weary and numb. She wished she could fight him. Maybe if she were spirited, he’d notice her, but she loved him far too much to go against him in any way. She wondered sometimes if that wasn’t the problem. He was worse when she knuckled under. She had spirit, it was just that she’d been trained from her childhood not to express it. It was neither dignified nor ladylike to brawl, as Gussie often put it.
Bess pulled the car out into the road, feeling depressed. She was decorative and well mannered, and her life was as dead as a rattlesnake lying flattened in the middle of the highway. Her life had no adventure, no spark. She was nothing except an extension of Gussie. And not a very attractive extension at that, she realized bitterly.
Her father was home when she got there, and he looked twice his age.
“I thought you were going to be in Dallas until tomorrow,” she said as she hugged him warmly. He was only a little taller than she was, dark-eyed with salt-and-pepper hair and a live-wire personality.
“I was,” he returned, “but something came up. No, I won’t tell you, so stop snooping,” he added when she opened her mouth to speak. “It will work out. It’s got to.”
“Business, I suppose,” she murmured.
