does it make?” He took off his hat and ran a lean hand through his hair. “Mrs. Holton is a determined woman, and she thinks she’s God’s gift to manhood.” His face clenched and he averted it, as if it tormented him to tell her all of it. “I need that damn tract of land, but I have to let her come to Sheridan to talk to me about selling it. She wants me, and she’ll find out, if she pushes hard enough, that I’m…incapable. Right now it’s just gossip. But she’d make me the news item of the century. Who knows? Maybe that’s her real reason for wanting to come in the first place, to check out the gossip.”
Barrie was horrified. She moved back to the sofa and sat down, hard. Her face was drawn and pale, like his. It shocked her that he’d tell her such a thing, when she was his worst enemy. It was like offering an armed, angry man a bullet for his gun.
He saw her expression and grew angry. “Say something.”
“What could I possibly say?” she whispered.
“So you do have some idea of how devastating it is,” he murmured from a rigid face.
She folded her hands in her lap. “Then I’m to run interference for you? Will the threat of a sister stop her?”
“That isn’t how you’d come back to Sheridan.”
She lifted both eyebrows. “How, then?”
He fished a small velvet box out of his pocket and tossed it to her.
She frowned as she opened it. There were two rings inside, a perfect emerald in a Tiffany setting and a matching wedding band set with diamonds and emeralds.
She actually gasped, and dropped the box as if it were red-hot.
He didn’t react, although a shadow seemed to pass over his eyes. “Well, that’s a novel way of expressing your feelings,” he said sardonically.
“You can’t be serious!”
“Why can’t I?”
“We’re related,” she blurted out, flushing.
“Like hell we are. There isn’t one mutual relative between us.”
“People would talk.”
“People sure as hell would,” he agreed, “but not about my…condition.”
She understood now, as she hadn’t before, exactly what he wanted her to do. He wanted her to come back to Sheridan and pretend to be engaged to him, to stop all the gossip. Most especially, he wanted her there to run interference while Mrs. Holton was visiting, so that she wouldn’t find out the truth about him in a physical way while he tried to coax her into selling him that vital piece of land. He could kill two birds with one stone.
To think of Dawson as impotent was staggering. She couldn’t imagine what had caused it. Perhaps he’d fallen in love. There had been some talk of him mooning over a woman a few years ago, but no name was ever mentioned.
“How long ago did it happen?” she asked without thinking.
He turned and his green eyes were scorching. “That’s none of your business.”
Her eyebrows arched. “Well, excuse me! Exactly who’s doing whom the favor here?”
“It doesn’t give you the right to ask me intimate questions. And it isn’t as if you won’t benefit from getting her to sell me the land.”
She flushed and averted her face.
He rammed his hands into his pockets with an angry murmur. “Barrie, it hurts to talk about it,” he snapped.
She should have realized that. A man’s ego was a surprisingly fragile thing, and if what she’d read and heard was correct, a large part of that ego had to do with his prowess in bed.
“But you could…you did…with me,” she blurted out.
He made a rough sound, almost a laugh. “Oh, yes.” He sounded bitter. “I did, didn’t I? I wish I could forget.”
That was surprising. He’d enjoyed what he did to her, or she certainly thought he had. In fact, he’d sounded as if the pleasure was…She shut out the forbidden thoughts firmly.
He bent and retrieved the jewelry box from the floor, balancing it on his palm.
“It’s a very pretty set,” she remarked tautly. “Did you just buy it?”
“I’ve had it for…a while.” He stared at the box and then shoved it back into his pocket before he looked at her. He didn’t ask. He just looked.
She didn’t want to go back to Sheridan. She’d learned last night and this morning that she was still vulnerable with him. But the thought of Dawson being made a laughingstock disturbed her. He had tremendous pride and she didn’t want that hurt. What if Mrs. Holton did find out about him and went back to Bighorn and spread it around? Dawson might have recourse at law, but what good would that do once the rumors started flying?
She remembered so well the agony her stepfather and Antonia Hayes had suffered over malicious gossip. Dawson must be remembering as well. There was really no way to answer suspicious looks and whispers. He seemed to have had a bad enough time from just the gossip. How would it be for him if everyone knew for certain that he wasn’t capable of having sex?
“Barrie?” he prompted curtly.
She sighed. “Only for a week, you said?” she asked, lifting her eyes to surprise a curious stillness in the expression on his lean, handsome face. “And nobody would know about the ‘engagement’ except Mrs. Holton?”
He studied his boots. “It might have to be in the local papers, to make it sound real.” He didn’t look at her. “I doubt it would reach as far as Tucson. Even if it did, we could always break the engagement. Later.”
This was all very strange and unexpected. She hadn’t really had time to think it through. She should hate him. She’d tried to, over the years. But it all came down to basics, and love didn’t die or wear out, no matter how viciously a heart was treated. She’d probably go to her grave with Dawson’s name on her lips, despite the lost baby he didn’t even know about, and the secret grief she’d endured.
“I need my mind examined,” she said absently.
“You’ll do it?”
She shrugged. “I’ll do it.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. Then the box came out of his pocket. “You’ll have to wear this.”
He knelt just in front of her, where she sat on the sofa, and took out the engagement ring.
“But it might not fit…”
She stopped in midstatement as he slid the emerald gently onto her ring finger. It was a perfect fit, as if it had been measured exactly for it.
He didn’t say a word. He had her hand in his and, as she watched, he lifted it to his mouth and kissed the ring so tenderly that she stiffened.
He
