and her own comfort. Given a choice between you and a luxurious lifestyle, she’d dump you like yesterday’s garbage.”
She wanted to hit him. He aroused the most violent sensations in her. He always had. She hated that cold look on his face, the devastating masculinity of him that put her back up even at a distance. But she kept her feelings to herself, especially her temper. “You don’t know either of us,” she said.
He moved a little closer, threatening her now with just the warmth of his body, his superior height. He looked down at her with an expression in his eyes that made her toes curl inside her shoes.
“I know what I need to know,” he said. He studied her face in the silence of the hall. “You’re very pale, little one,” he said then, his voice so soft that it didn’t even sound like Cade’s. “I’m sorry about your father. He was a good man. Just misguided and gullible. He didn’t force any of us to invest, you know. He was as badly fooled by the deal as we were.”
“Thank you,” she said huskily, fighting tears. “That’s a very tolerant attitude to take.” Her eyes searched his. “But it won’t save Lariat,” she said sadly, remembering Cade’s dreams for his family ranch. “Will it?”
“I’ll save Lariat,” he said, and at that moment he looked as if he could do anything. One eye narrowed as he studied her. “Don’t let Gussie own you,” he said suddenly. “You’re a woman, not her little girl. Start acting your age.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “How?”
“My God,” he said heavily. “Don’t you even know?”
His eyes dropped to her soft mouth. He stared at it intently, and he was standing so close to her that she could smell the leather of his vest, feel the warmth of him as his finger gently caressed her parted lips. The acrid smoke from his cigarette drifted past her nostrils, but it didn’t even register. His dark eyes were on hers, and she’d never seen them so close. He had lashes as thick as her own, and tiny lines beside his eyes. His nose had a small crook in it that was only visible this close, as if it had been broken. His mouth...oh, his mouth! she thought achingly, looking at its chiseled lines, already feeling the hardness of it. She’d wondered for years how it would feel to kiss him, to be close to him. But Cade was like the moon. This was the closest he’d ever come to her, except for that one time when he’d only meant to frighten her, and she didn’t even move for fear that he might move away. He might kiss her...!
But a tiny sigh worked its way out of her tight throat, and it seemed to break the spell. His head lifted, and there wasn’t a trace of expression on his dark face. He moved away from her, without a word. But he kept his back to her for a long moment, quietly smoking his cigarette. That long, intense scrutiny had his heart turning cartwheels, and it would never do to let Bess see how vulnerable she made him.
“We’ll pay you back somehow,” she said after a minute.
He turned, as if the statement made him angry. “Will you? How?”
“I’ll find a way. I’m not helpless, even if I am a mere woman in your eyes,” she added with a faint smile.
He looked as formidable as a cold marble statue. “Challenging me?” he asked in a softly dangerous tone. His dark eyes mocked her. “That’s been tried before, but go ahead if you feel lucky.”
She almost did. But those nearly black eyes had made men back down, and she was just a grieving shadow of a woman.
“Please thank your mother for her concern,” she said quietly. “I’m sure you have better things to do than bother with us.”
“Your father was my friend,” he said shortly. “I valued him, regardless of what happened.”
He turned toward the door without glancing at her.
“I’ll be in touch,” he said as he reached for the doorknob and pulled open the big front door with its huge silver knocker. “Don’t worry. We’ll work out something.”
Her eyes closed. She was sick all over. Just last week she’d been planning parties and helping her mother choose flowers for a coming-out party. And now their world was in shreds. Their wealth was gone, their friends had deserted them. They were at the mercy of the courts. Miss Samson of Spanish House was now just plain Bess.
“It’s a long way to fall,” Cade was saying. “From debutante balls to poverty. But sometimes it takes a fall to get us out of a rut. It can be a challenge and an opportunity, or it can be a disaster. That depends on you. Try to remember that it’s not life but our reactions to it that shape us.”
For Cade it was a long speech. She stared at him hungrily, wishing she had the right to cry in his arms. She needed someone to hold her until the pain stopped. Gussie hadn’t noticed that her own daughter was grieving, but Cade had. He noticed things about her that no one else on earth seemed to, but he was ice-cold when he was around her, as if he felt supremely indifferent toward her most of the time.
She smiled faintly, thinking how uncannily he could read her mind. Sleet was mixing with the snow, making a hissing sound.
“Thanks for the wise words. But I think I can live without money,” she said after a minute.
“Maybe you can,” he replied. “But can your mother?”
“She’ll cope,” she returned.
“Like hell she’ll cope.” He tugged the hat closer over his forehead and spared her one last sweeping appraisal. God, she looked tired! He could only imagine the demands Gussie was already making on her, and she was showing the pressure. “Get some rest. You look like a walking corpse.”
He was gone then, without another word. As if he cared if she became a corpse, she thought hysterically. She’d lived for years on the vague hope that he might look at her one day and see someone he could love. That was the biggest joke of all. If there was any love in Cade, it was for Lariat, the Braided L, which had been founded by a Hollister fresh from the Civil War. There was a lot of history in Lariat. In a way the Hollisters were more a founding family of Texas than the Samsons. The Samson fortune was only two generations old, and it had been a matter of chance, not brains, that old man Barker Samson from back East had bought telephone stock in the early days of that newfangled invention. But the Hollisters were still poor.
She went upstairs to see about Gussie. It was an unusual nickname for a woman named Geraldine, but her father had always called her mother that.
Gussie was stretched out on the elegant pink ruffled coverlet of her bed with a tissue under her equally pink nose. Thanks to face-lifts, annual visits to an exclusive health spa and meticulous dieting, and a platinum-blond rinse, Gussie looked more like Bess’s sister than her mother. She had always been a beauty, but age had lent her a maturity that gave her elegance, as well. She’d removed the satin robe, and underneath it she was wearing a frothy white negligee ensemble that made her huge dark eyes look even darker and her delicate skin paler.
“There you are, darling,” she said with a sob. “Has he gone?”
“Yes, he’s gone,” Bess said quietly.
Her mother’s face actually blanched. She averted her eyes. “He’s blamed me for years,” she murmured, still half in shock, “and it wasn’t even my fault, but he’d never believe me even if I told him the truth. I suppose we should be grateful that he hasn’t raided
