CHAPTER TWO
THE LONG STRETCH of Texas horizon looked lonely in winter. The man sitting quietly astride the big bay gelding understood loneliness. It had been his constant companion for some years with only occasional and unsatisfying interludes to numb the ache he could never ease. His dark eyes narrowed on the sleek silver Jaguar paused at the road where his calves were straying, and he wondered if it had just come from the house. Probably it had. Gussie Samson wouldn’t have bothered to tell him his calves were out, but her daughter would. Despite all his efforts to drive her away, and his attacks of conscience because of the method he’d once used, Bess kept coming back for more. He wondered sometimes why he didn’t just give in and stop tormenting them both. But that was madness. He was poor and she was rich, and all he could ever offer her was a brief affair. That wouldn’t do for Bess. It wouldn’t do for him either. He had too many principles and too much moral fiber to compromise her for his own satisfaction. He wanted her honorably or not at all. Besides all that, she was no match for his passionate temperament, and that was the one thing that stopped him from letting her get close. He’d break her gentle spirit in no time. The thought made him sad, made him even lonelier as he turned it over in his mind. Bess was all heart, the gentlest creature he’d ever known except for his own mother.
Bess was made for a palatial house with elegant white columns surrounded by white fences and stables and a neat red barn. Someday she’d find a man who fit into her elegant world, who had the money and power to keep her in diamonds and furs and spoil her rotten. He could only give her a life of hard work, and she wasn’t suited for that. She never would be.
Cade Hollister leaned over the pommel of his saddle, his black eyes thoughtful as he watched her get out of the car and move toward a calf that was down. That wouldn’t do. Not only would she ruin that pretty and probably expensive green dress she was wearing, but the mama cow might take exception to her interference and charge her. He urged the horse into motion. The leather creaked softly against his weight and he winced a little from the lingering soreness in his left leg. He’d taken top money at the Las Vegas National Finals Rodeo, but he’d pulled a tendon in the bareback bronc riding. Now he was hoping he could get back in peak condition before the San Antonio rodeo. A lot was riding on his skill with cattle and horses. Too much. His mother and two brothers were depending on him to keep Lariat solvent, which was not an easy task even at the best of times. His father had died ten years before, but his debts 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.
“Isn’t it always?” He loosened his tie and looked around at the black-and-white marble floor leading to a carpeted staircase. There was a Waterford crystal chandelier in the foyer and elegantly furnished rooms off both sides of the hall. “My God, it gets worse every day. No matter how hard I work, I just go backward. Sometimes, Bess, I’d like to chuck it all and go to Africa. I could live in a hut somewhere in the jungle and ride an elephant.”
“Africa is in turmoil, most of the jungle has been eaten by the elephants, and some of the little ones are even being transplanted to other countries in an experiment to see if they can repopulate in areas with sufficient vegetation,” Bess informed him.
“You and your damned National Geographic Specials,” he muttered. “Never mind. I’ll sign aboard Moulin à Vent and help Jacques Cousteau and his son explore what’s left of the seas.”
“They have a new windship now. Its name is—”
“I’ll tell your mother you didn’t go to the coffee,” he threatened.
She laughed. “Okay, I’ll stop. Where is Mama?”
“Upstairs primping. I told her I’d take her to San Antonio for lunch.” He checked his watch. “If she gets finished in time.”
“She’s still beautiful,” she reminded her father. “You can’t rush beauty.”
“I’ve been trying for twenty-four years,” he said. “Next year we celebrate our silver anniversary. They’ve been good years, despite your mother’s harebrained spending. I hope I can keep enough in the coffers to support her diamond habit,” he chuckled, but his eyes didn’t laugh. “It’s getting to be an ordeal. I’ve just taken one of the biggest gambles of my financial career, and if it doesn’t pay off, I really don’t know what we’ll do.”
Bess frowned because he sounded worried. “Daddy, can I help?”
“Bless you, darling, no. But thank you for caring.”
“Mama cares, too,” she said hesitantly.
“In her own way,” he agreed. “I hoped in the beginning that it was really love on her part and not just an attraction to the good life. Then I settled for friendship. We haven’t had the best of marriages, but I promise you I’ve loved her enough for both of us. I still do,” he said, smiling.
Her big brown eyes searched his face. “Nita wants me to go down to the Caribbean with her.”
“Your mother will have a fit.”
“Yes, I know. I don’t really want to go anyway.”
Frank Samson grimaced. “Yes, you do. You’re entitled to a life of your own. It’s just that your mother doesn’t realize how possessive she is. She leads you around like a puppy, and you let her,” he said, pointing a lean finger her way. “You’re a big girl now. Stop letting her run over you.”
“She means well,” Bess began hesitantly.
“Don’t wait too long,” he added. “Parents can do a lot of damage without realizing it.”
“I’m not damaged,” she protested, although in a sense she was. She wanted Cade, and her mother would fight her tooth and nail if she knew how badly.
“Where in the world have you been?” Gussie Samson muttered angrily as she came down the staircase in a delicately woven white-and-cream wool suit with pink accessories. Her tinted blond hair was elegantly coiffed and her makeup was perfect. In her younger days Gussie Granger Samson had had a brief career on the stage. Her roles had been supporting ones, not leading ones, but she still acted as if she’d been a full-fledged star, right down to the elegance of her carriage.
“I stopped by Lariat to tell Elise some of their calves got out of the fence,” Bess said.
Gussie glared at her with angry green eyes. “I suppose Cade was at the house?”
“No, Cade wasn’t at the house,” Bess replied quietly.
Gussie sighed angrily. “I don’t want you near that man. He’s a common cowboy...”
“He’s an able and intelligent man with great potential,” Frank argued, putting an arm around his wife. “Stop riding him. All that is in the past, remember? And better forgotten.”
Gussie flushed, darting a glance at Bess. “Never mind the past,” she told Frank quickly. “Shall we go?”
Bess was more in the dark than ever after that statement. She wondered if she knew her parents at all, especially Gussie. But she wasn’t one to pry into people’s secrets, so she smiled and waved goodbye to her parents and went upstairs to change.
That night she overheard an argument between her parents over money, and although they made up quickly, she couldn’t forget it. The next evening a man came to see her father.
“Who is he?” Bess asked Gussie curiously.
“I don’t know, darling,” Gussie said nervously. “Your father’s been in a terrible mood for two days. He snaps and snarls and his color is bad. I don’t know what’s wrong, but something is.”
“Can’t you ask him?”
“I did. He only stared at me. There’s a party tomorrow night at the River Grill. Want to come with your father and me?” she coaxed. “The Merrills will be there, and their son, Grayson, is going to be with them.”
“Gray’s very nice, but I don’t want to be thrown at him, if you don’t mind,” she said softly. “I’m not in the market for a rich husband.”
“You’ll enjoy yourself,” Gussie assured her, smiling. “Now, no more arguments. You know you love seafood, and Gray is just back from a month in Europe; he’ll be full of stories. You can wear your new gray crepe dress and that pretty fox cape I bought you for Christmas.”
“But, Mother...”
“Let’s have some coffee. Ask Maude to fix a tray, dear, and perhaps your father and his guest will join us. There’s a good girl,” Gussie added, patting Bess’s hand absently.
Bess gave up. It was easier than trying to fight Gussie, but she knew that someday she was going to have to stand up to her. Giving in was a dead end. Her father was right. Odd, she thought, that her father should have made such a statement, when it was usually Cade who disliked Gussie’s overbearing maternity. She knew that Cade and her father talked a good deal when they had business meetings about the new real-estate investment. But surely Cade wouldn’t have talked to her father about so personal a subject. Would he?
She came back from the kitchen still pondering, when Gussie came running toward her, wild-eyed and breathless.
“Your father’s guest left, and now Frank’s locked the study door and I can’t make him answer me!” she cried. “Bess, something is terribly wrong!”
“But...what could—”
They heard the chilling, loud report of a pistol and they both froze in place. Then Bess turned and ran down the hall to the study, trying the door with both hands, banging on it, kicking.
“Daddy!” she screamed. She turned to Gussie. “Call the police!”
“The police?” Gussie just stood in place, white and shaking.
Bess ran to the phone, ignoring her shocked mother, and her hands shook as she searched frantically for the number, dialed it, and gave her sketchy information to the man who answered the phone.
Minutes later sirens wailed toward the house, and the nightmare began. The door to the study was finally forced open. Bess got a brief and all too good look at her father’s body, where it was sprawled on the carpet in a pool of blood. She shuddered and had to run into the guest bathroom as her stomach emptied itself. Gussie, in shock, had gone upstairs even before the police came and Bess phoned the doctor when she came out of the bathroom.
The rest of the night went by in a blur of pain, grief, and numb shock. She answered questions until she wanted to scream, vaguely aware that Cade was suddenly there.
He fielded the police, lifted Bess in his hard, strong arms and carried her up the staircase into her room. She was barely coherent and shaking all over with mingled horror and fear. “The police...” she whispered huskily.
“I’ll cope with everything,” he said firmly, easing her down onto the bed. He removed her shoes and gently covered her quivering body with a sheet. “Try to sleep. The doctor is with your mother, but I’ll send him along when he’s finished.”
“He killed himself,” she said, choking.
“Lie still. Everything will be all right,” he promised. His dark eyes scanned her white face. “If you need me, just yell. I’ll be around for a while. At least until you’re asleep.”
Her eyes searched his hard face and she reached up with a numb hand to touch it while tears escaped her eyes. “Thank you.”
He clasped her hand for an instant and then laid it beside her on the coverlet. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
The doctor came and gave her a sedative, murmuring comforting things. She was aware of Cade’s concerned gaze once or twice, but then the sedative took effect and she slept. When she woke, the house was empty, and the pain began.
Gussie was no help at all. She wailed and moaned and had hysterics every two hours, and took sedatives by the handful. As the day wore on, Bess began to realize just what a headache she’d inherited. If this was any indication of what was to come, her life was going to be hell.
Cade hadn’t come back. She found that curious since she knew he’d been there the night before, but apparently he’d made all the arrangements and had felt that Gussie wouldn’t welcome his presence.
“I’m so glad you’re strong, Bess,” Gussie sniffed as they sat in the living room. “I couldn’t have coped.”
“I didn’t. Cade did,” Bess said quietly. “He carried me upstairs and got the doctor. I caved in, too.”
“You mean that man was in my house all night?” Gussie raged. “I won’t have him here, I won’t!”
“This is no time for hysterics, Mama,” Bess said in a soothing tone. “I couldn’t attend to details, but Cade did. Whatever you think of him, Daddy liked him—they were friends.” She shuddered to think of Cade having to see what she’d seen through that opened door. He’d liked her father. “Why did he do it?” she asked huskily. “Why? I don’t understand what’s happened. Daddy was rational and strong...”
“We’ll know soon enough,” Gussie said. “Now, do get me some coffee, darling, please. We’ll sit and talk.”
Their attorney, Donald Hughes, came to the house just after lunch to tell them what was going on prior to the reading of the will, which would be the next day, after the funeral. Cade had arranged the funeral, too, thank God, with Donald’s help.
Bess listened to Donald’s quiet voice with a feeling of utter shock, and Gussie’s face went from white to red to paste.
“We’re what?” Gussie faltered.
“You’re bankrupt,” Donald replied gently. “The investment scheme your husband involved himself in was a fake. The perpetrators are already out of the country and can’t be extradited. Frank invested everything he had. That’s gone, along with Cade’s ten thousand dollars. And unfortunately Frank guaranteed Cade’s money back to the penny. I’m sorry. It’s all legal. There’s nothing you can do, I’m afraid.”
There was one thing Gussie could do, and she did it. She fainted.
Bess sat there with her eyes glued to the lawyer’s face, not moving, not speaking as she tried to absorb what Donald had said. Her father had been involved in an illegal operation, and it had failed. He’d lost everything and sold out his friends, and that was why he’d killed himself.
That was understandable, in a way. But now Gussie and Bess were left with his debts and they were going to lose everything. Worst of all, they were going to lose the house. It would mean having to move and being poor, and having to start again from scratch. Bess looked down at her mother, absently thinking that Gussie looked beautiful even when she was unconscious. Bess wished she could faint, too, and wake up to find that it was all just a bad dream. But Donald was very real and so was her mother. It was all real. And her problems were only just beginning.