one held a gun on him and made him invest a penny,” Gussie said savagely. “I hope he does lose everything! Maybe he’ll be less arrogant!”
“Cade would be arrogant in rags, and you know it,” Bess said softly. “We’ll have to sell the house, Mama.”
Gussie looked horrified. She sat straight up, her careful coiffure unwinding in a long bleached tangle. “Sell my house? Never!”
“It’s the only way. We’ll still owe more than we have,” she said, staring out the window at the driving sleet. “But I have that journalism degree. I might get a job on a newspaper.”
“We’d starve. No, thank you. You can find something with an advertising agency. That pays much better.”
Bess turned, staring at her. “Mama, I can’t take the pressure of an advertising agency.”
“Well, darling, we certainly can’t survive on newspaper pay,” her mother said, laughing mirthlessly.
Bess’s eyes lifted. “I wasn’t aware that you were going to expect me to support both of us.”
“You don’t expect me to offer to get a job?” Gussie exclaimed. “Heavens, child, I can’t do anything! I’ve never had to work!”
Bess sat down on the end of the bed, viewing her mother’s renewed weeping with cynicism. Cade had said that her mother wouldn’t be able to cope. Perhaps he knew her after all.
“Crying won’t help.”
“I’ve just lost my husband,” Gussie wailed into her tissue. “And I adored him!”
That might have been true, but it seemed to Bess that all the affection was on her father’s side. Frank Samson had worshipped Gussie, and Bess imagined that Gussie’s demands for bigger and better status symbols had led her desperate father to one last gamble. But it had failed. She shook her head. Her poor mother. Gussie was a butterfly. She should have married a stronger man than her father, a man who could have controlled her wild spending.
“How could he do this to us?” Gussie asked tearfully. “How could he destroy us?”
“I’m sure he didn’t mean to.”
“Silly, stupid man,” came the harsh reply, and the veneer of suffering was eclipsed for a second by sheer, cruel rage. “We had friends and social standing. And now we’re disgraced because he lost his head over a bad investment! He didn’t have to kill himself!”
Bess stared at her mother. “Probably he wasn’t thinking clearly. He knew he’d lost everything, and so had the other investors.”
“I’ll never believe that your father would do anything dishonest, even to make more money,” Gussie said haughtily.
“He didn’t do it on purpose,” Bess said, feeling the pain of losing her father all over again, just by having to discuss what had caused his suicide. “He was taken in, just like the others. What made it so much worse was that he talked most of the investors into going along with him.” She stared at her tearful mother. “You didn’t know that it was a bogus company, did you?”
Gussie stared at her curiously. “No. Of course not.” She started weeping again. “I simply must have the doctor. Do call him for me, darling.”
“Mother, you’ve had the doctor. He can’t do anything else.”
“Well, then, get me those tranquillizers, darling. I’ll take another.”
“You’ve had three already.”
“I’ll take another,” Gussie said firmly. “Fetch them.”
Just for an instant Bess thought of saying no, or telling her mother to fetch them herself. But her tender heart wouldn’t let her. She couldn’t be that cruel to a stranger, much less her own grieving mother. But as she rose to do what she was asked, she could see that she was going to end up an unpaid servant if she didn’t do something quick. But what? How could she walk out on Gussie now? She didn’t have a brother or a sister; there was only herself to handle things. She couldn’t remember a time in her life when she’d felt so alone. Her poor father—at least he was out of it. She only wished she didn’t feel so numb. She’d loved him, in her way. But she couldn’t even cry for him. Gussie was doing enough of that for both of them anyway.
She went to bed much later, but she didn’t sleep. The past couple of days had been nightmarish. If it hadn’t been for Cade, she didn’t know how she and Gussie would have managed at all. And there was still the funeral to get through tomorrow.
Her thoughts drifted back through layers of time to the last day Cade had been teaching her how to ride. He’d grown impatient with her attempts to flirt, and everything had come to a head all too quickly.
He’d caught her around the waist with a strength that frightened her and tossed her down on her back into a clean stack of hay. She’d lain there, her mind confused, while he stared down at her from his formidable height, his dark eyes glittering angrily. Her tank top had fallen off one smooth shoulder, and it was there that his attention wandered. He looked at her blatantly, letting his gaze go over her full breasts and down her flat stomach to the long, elegant length of her legs in their tight denim covering.
“You don’t look half bad that way, Bess,” he’d said then, his voice taut and angry. He’d even smiled, but it hadn’t been a pleasant smile. “If all you want is a little diversion with the hired hand, I can oblige you.”
She’d gone scarlet, but that shock led quickly to another. He moved down atop her, his heavy hips suddenly square over her own while his arms caught his weight as his chest poised over hers. He laughed coldly at her sudden paleness.
“Disappointed?” he asked, holding her eyes. “As you can feel, little rich girl, you don’t even arouse me. But once we get your clothes out of the way, maybe you can stir me up enough to give you what you want.”
Bess closed her eyes even now at the shame his words had made her feel. She’d never felt a man’s aroused body, but even in her innocence she knew that Cade was telling the truth. He’d felt nothing at all. She’d stiffened, her eyes tearing, her lower lip trembling, as the humiliation and embarrassment swamped her.
Cade had said something unpleasant under his breath and abruptly got to his feet. He was holding down a hand to help her up, but before she could refuse it or even speak, Gussie was suddenly in the barn with them, her dark eyes flashing as she took in the situation with a glance. She’d hustled a shaken Bess into the house, ignored Cade’s glowering stare, and the next day the riding lessons became a memory.
Bess had often wondered why Cade had felt the need to be so cruel. It would have been enough to simply reject her without crushing her budding femininity at the same time. If he’d hoped to discourage her, he’d succeeded. But her feelings hadn’t vanished. They’d simply gone underground. There was a lingering nervousness of him in a physical way, but she knew in her heart that if he came close and took her in his arms, she’d cave in and give him anything he wanted, fear notwithstanding. He hadn’t really touched her that day anyway. It had all been planned. But what hurt the most was that he hadn’t wanted her and that he’d taunted her with it.
She rolled over with a long sigh. It was just her luck to be doomed
