CHAPTER NINE
CADE DIDN’T KNOW how he stayed sane through the next few hours. Bess was cut out of the car by the local rescue unit and taken immediately to the nearest hospital emergency room. She was in a coma, with internal injuries and severe bleeding. The doctor was as kind as he could be, but the fact was she might die. Comas were unpredictable, and medical science was simply helpless. Either she’d come out of it or she wouldn’t. It was in God’s hands.
He sat in the intensive-care waiting room, smoking like a furnace, until his mother and Gussie got there.
“Has there been any change?” Gussie asked, looking pale and worried.
“None,” Cade said curtly. He didn’t look up.
“How did it happen?” Gussie asked without really expecting an answer. “A car wreck, you said, but she’s such a careful driver. I didn’t even know she had a car.” She buried her face in her hands and cried helplessly. “My poor baby.”
“It’s all right, Gussie,” Elise said gently, comforting her. “Cade, can they do anything?”
He shook his dark head. He didn’t look at his mother, because she knew him too well. He didn’t want her to see his anguish.
“I just don’t understand why she was out driving in the middle of the night,” Gussie said in a choked voice. “She never went out at night. She wouldn’t even go out with men...”
Cade’s head jerked up and he stared at Gussie with barely concealed fury. “She wouldn’t? That isn’t what you said at Lariat!” he reminded her harshly, too cut up himself to worry about Gussie’s feelings, if she had any. “You said she and Ryker were close.”
She looked at him through red, puffy eyes, aware of Elise’s pointed stare. “I hoped they would be,” she faltered. “I haven’t seen her for several weeks, you know. They might have been close.” She ground her teeth together. “All right, I lied, hoping that you’d think she had someone so that you’d stay away from her. You’re the last man on earth she needs. All of us know how Bess feels about you,” she muttered defensively. “She worships the ground you walk on, but you’d walk all over her. She doesn’t have the spirit to stand up to you.”
“I’m not blind,” Cade returned curtly. He glanced at Gussie and then away, but not before Gussie got a look at his eyes.
Gussie stopped sniffing and simply looked at him. His face was as tormented as she imagined her own was. Why, he cared about Bess! She’d never stopped hating him long enough to consider his feelings, but they were written all over him now.
She almost reached out to him. Almost. But there had been too many bad feelings between them over the years. She wondered what he would say if he knew that her letting him think she’d been with his father that day had kept a devastating secret from him as well as from Elise—and that the truth would hurt him every bit as much as it would hurt his mother.
“I thought she was letting Ryker keep her,” Cade said, grinding out his words. “The fancy apartment, that fox jacket...”
Gussie took a deep breath. “She doesn’t have a fox jacket,” she said.
“She does. I saw her with it in town!”
She stared at him. “It was mine. At least I bought it.” She lowered her eyes. “She took it back to the store. After she threw me out of the apartment,” she added tightly, her face coloring. “That’s why I went to Jamaica, because it was the only place I could go. She has a good job now, she could afford fox if she wanted it, but she said she wasn’t supporting me. I went to Jamaica and then, when the welcome ran out, I had no place to go. If it hadn’t been for Elise...” She looked past him at the other woman, and a long, quiet look passed between them. “I’ll never forget what your mother did for me, Cade. Even though I know I don’t deserve it.”
Cade gaped at her. He knew his face had gone white. He’d accused Bess of something she hadn’t done, he’d deliberately hurt her, and needlessly. He’d sent her into the path of that oncoming car. She might die, and it would be his fault. Out of jealousy and Gussie’s interference, he’d attacked her. And all the while she’d been freeing herself of her mother’s domination, working to earn what she had.
“You’d been to see her, hadn’t you?” Gussie asked Cade suddenly.
“Thanks to you, yes,” he returned, his heart ice-cold now from the terror of what he’d done. “You lied about Ryker.”
Gussie’s eyes filled with tears. “To protect Bess. Maybe to protect myself, too,” she said miserably. “Bess thought she loved you, and I knew I’d lose her forever if she was with you.”
Cade stared down at his dusty boots. It wasn’t the time for all that, for the past to start intruding again. Gussie was partly right, too. The way he felt about Bess’s mother, he would have kept them apart if he could. But now he didn’t have a chance in hell with Bess. After what he’d said and done to her, he’d be lucky if she ever spoke to him again. He couldn’t blame Gussie without blaming himself. Bess had accused him of always thinking the worst about her, of being willing to listen to any damaging gossip about her. His own jealousy had been his biggest enemy. He should have trusted her. He should have given her a chance to tell him about the fox jacket and about her mother. But he hadn’t. Now she was lying in the hospital, maybe dying, and he had to live with the fact that he’d put her there. Gussie had dug the hole and he’d pushed Bess into it. He groaned and put his head in his hands.
“She’ll be all right,” Elise said gently, smoothing her hand over Cade’s shoulder. She looked across at Gussie, who was weeping. “We have to believe that she’ll be all right.”
“It’s my fault,” Gussie whimpered. “I pushed and pushed and demanded. I never realized how overbearing I was. I expected her to take Frank’s place, and how could she?”
Cade didn’t answer. He lifted his head and stared sightlessly ahead of him, memories flooding his mind, mental pictures of Bess laughing, running toward him, begging for his kisses. He had to believe she’d be all right, he thought, or he’d go mad.
In his mind he could hear the angry words he’d spoken, the accusations he’d made. He’d cut Bess to pieces with what he’d said to her, denying that he had any feelings for her aside from desire, demanding that she take Gussie back. He’d even acted as if he meant to attack her, so she had every reason in the world to run. And the irony of it was that she was the last human being on earth he’d hurt deliberately. He’d been angry, but only at first. Just before she’d pulled out of his arms, they’d been sharing the most exquisite tenderness with each other. Reality, after years of empty dreams, and if she’d only known it, she’d made a mockery of his claim not to care about her. A few more minutes of that tempestuous exchange and he’d have bared his soul to her. But she hadn’t thought he was going to stop, and she’d run from him. He’d made it worse by chasing her, but he’d been so afraid that she was going to get hurt. And she had anyway.
Elise, seeing his tormented expression, took pity on him. “Isn’t there a chapel?” Elise asked, rising. She took Gussie’s arm. “Come on, dear, let’s go find it. Cade?”
He shook his head. “I’ll stay here, in case they need to tell us something.” He didn’t add that he’d already done, was still doing, his own share of praying. Life without Bess would lose its meaning completely. He wasn’t sure if he could cope without her.
In some way that he didn’t understand, Bess’s adulation made him whole. It gave him strength. Now he was like a ship without a rudder, drifting without a direction. He’d worked for years to build Lariat into a successful ranch, mostly so that he’d have it to offer to Bess, if he could come to grips with the differences between them. There hadn’t really been another woman in his heart, even if he’d known a few women over the years, including the divorcée whose attractions had momentarily dazzled him. And that physical attraction had only lasted as far as her bedroom. He’d seen the hardness under the beauty, and it had repelled him, along with her attitude toward sex. She liked three in a bed, but Cade only wanted two. It hadn’t even bothered him when she left.
Cade glanced impatiently toward the nurses’ station. He’d smoked a pack of cigarettes already, and he knew he was going to have to stop or he’d cough himself to death. But it was that or a quart of straight Kentucky bourbon, and he couldn’t climb into a bottle, even if his heart was breaking in two.
He sighed wearily as he looked out the window. He hadn’t told the others exactly how the accident happened because it hurt too much to admit it had been his fault. He didn’t think he could live with himself if she was crippled. There had been some internal damage, the doctor had said after a preliminary examination, and a good deal of bleeding, but she’d most likely recover. Cade hadn’t half heard him; he was trying to force an assurance from the doctor that she’d live.
“Excuse me...”
He turned to find a nurse watching him. She smiled gently. “She’s calling for someone named Cade. Would that be you?”
His heart almost burst. She was calling for him! For the first time since the accident he was able to hope. “Yes.” He quickly put the cigarette out in the ashtray and followed the nurse into the intensive care unit, and then to the small cubicle where Bess was hooked up to all kinds of humming, buzzing, beeping machinery. There was an oxygen tube taped in her nose—to replace the one he’d seen in her mouth earlier. She was pale and there were bruises on her cheek, but her eyes were open.
“Bess!” he whispered huskily. “How are you, honey?”
I must be dead, she thought dizzily. Here was Cade looking like his world had almost ended and calling her honey.
“Cade?” she whispered.
“I’m here,” he said, almost choking on the emotion welling up in him.
“Two minutes,” the nurse said gently. “We musn’t tire her.”
He nodded and moved closer to Bess, touching her bruised cheek with his hand. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Oh, God, honey, I’m so sorry...!”
Definitely dead, she was telling herself, or dreaming. She managed to lift one hand and put it against his lean, dark cheek. “I’m okay,” she whispered. She could hardly see him, because she was full of drugs. “Cade, I’ll be okay. I don’t...blame you.”
And that hurt most of all, that her first concern was for his feelings and not her own pain. He felt tears stinging his eyes and he hated his weakness almost as much as he blamed himself. He knew his face was giving him away, but he couldn’t contain the guilt and fear that were raging in his mind. He brought her hand, palm up, to his mouth and kissed it.
She curled her fingers into his and gripped hard. “Am I dead?” she whispered, her eyelids drooping. “You’re...my world, Cade...”
She was asleep again. Her hand slid away from his face and he clasped it tight in both of his and bent to brush his mouth so carefully over her dry lips.
“You’re my world, too, little one,” he whispered brokenly. “For God’s sake, don’t die!”
But she didn’t hear him. Not consciously. She drifted in and out for the rest of the day, aware of her mother’s voice and Cade’s between vivid, disturbing dreams.
Cade kept Gussie and his mother going, his own strength bolstering theirs. He still hadn’t talked about how the accident had happened, and although Gussie and Elise knew that he’d somehow been involved, Gussie let it all slide after Bess was out of grave danger. But Elise was worried. Cade wasn’t acting like himself, and she knew something was bothering him. He’d admitted that he’d gone to see Bess, but he was holding something back, something that was still tormenting him.
While Gussie was visiting Bess, Elise had Cade buy her a cup of coffee in the hospital coffee shop and found a corner table where they could sit and talk.
Outside in the hall, visitors and medical personnel walked past while the familiar intercom sounds and bells signaling the staff made a backdrop for the murmurings around the small white tables.
“What happened?” Elise asked gently, her dark eyes full of compassion. “I won’t tell Gussie,” she added. “But I think you need to tell someone.”
He lit a cigarette, his dark eyes challenging a man nearby who was obviously a nonsmoker to say what he was thinking, before he turned his attention back to his mother. “I told her about Gussie and Dad. And I said some hard things to her, because of what Gussie had said about Bess and Jordan Ryker,” he said quietly. “She ran out of the apartment to get away from me.” He studied the cigarette with disgust. “I don’t know why I smoke these damned things. Sometimes I think I do it just to make nonsmokers climb the walls.” He put out the cigarette and leaned forward to slide his lean hands around his coffee cup. “I got to her before the ambulance did,” he said. “She was trapped, and I couldn’t get her out.”
Elise wanted to put her arms around him as she had when he was a small boy and hold him until he stopped hurting. But he was a man now. Cade was curiously remote about affection. She knew that he cared for her, but his father had been standoffish and undemonstrative and he’d made Cade that way, too.
“What did Gussie say to you about Bess?”
“That she was deeply involved with a rich businessman in San Antonio named Jordan Ryker.” He smiled bitterly. “She’s moved to a new, more expensive apartment and she wasn’t exactly welcoming when I got there. To compound it all, I saw her with a fox jacket the day I was having a business lunch in San Antonio. I accused her of letting Ryker keep her.”
Elise could almost feel his pain. “Do you really believe she would?”
“I did for a few fatal minutes,” he said curtly. “She’s changed since she’s been in San Antonio. From what I hear about Ryker, he’s attractive to women. Bess is human, and I haven’t given her much encouragement,” he added, his voice bitter. “In fact, she saw me with a business associate’s wife in a perfectly innocent situation, but I let her believe I was dating the woman. I’d just seen her with that expensive jacket, and I couldn’t bear the thought of her with another man. I cut her dead.” His eyes fell to the coffee, oblivious of his mother’s shocked delight. “After Gussie came to the ranch and fed me more of the same, I had to see Bess, to find out for myself.”
“And got into an argument.”
“Yes. She did argue back at least. She’s not the same pliable little Bess she used to be, and she’s got some spunk now. But I pushed her over the edge,” he said bitterly. “I just want her to get well.” His hands tightened around the hot cup. “You can’t imagine what it did to me when I saw the other car fly around the corner and knew it was going to hit her.” His eyes closed with a shudder as it all came flooding back. “Then I had to stand there and wait while the ambulance and rescue units got to her. My God, I almost went crazy. I couldn’t get her out, and she was unconscious and badly hurt.” He lifted the cup and took a small sip. “I thought I’d lost her.”
“She’s going to be all right.” Elise smiled. “And you know she isn’t blaming you, because she called for you after she came out of the coma.”
“I can’t be sure that it wasn’t because of the drugs,” he replied. “But even if she doesn’t blame me, I blame myself, don’t you see? Gussie’s right. Bess is too gentle for a man like me. I can’t help the way I am. It will take a strong woman to live with me.”
“I loved your father, Cade,” Elise replied, reading his thoughts. “He was a hard man, and he hurt me sometimes with his temper and his...one affair, just before he died,” she said, with a haunted look in her eyes. “But I loved him, and in his way he loved me. It wasn’t a modern relationship by any means, because Coleman never changed diapers or gave bottles or offered to help with the housework.” She laughed softly. “I couldn’t have imagined him doing those things. But he took care of me and you boys, he provided for us, and I wouldn’t change one single thing about my life.”
“What worked then won’t work today,” he said simply. “And I can’t risk browbeating Bess that way.”
“If she loves you, and you care about her, why don’t you let those things work themselves out?”
“It isn’t that easy.” He drank the rest of his coffee. “She’s a debutante. She’s used to wealth and society and a different kind of life than I could give her. Ryker can give her everything she wants.”
“Are you sure?” Elise asked seriously. “Because Bess doesn’t seem mercenary to me.”
“Her mother is,” Cade returned. “And you, of all people, know what Gussie is. She hasn’t let go of Bess. She may never let go. Bess looked crushed when I told her to take Gussie back. I didn’t know she’d thrown her out in the first place.” He sighed at his mother’s shocked expression. “You knew I didn’t want Gussie on Lariat.”
“Yes, I knew. But she hadn’t anyplace to stay. She said she couldn’t go back to Bess, although I didn’t tell you that.” Elise toyed with her napkin. “Gussie isn’t a bad woman, Cade,” she said, braving his temper. “She’s what life has made her. I don’t hold any grudges for what happened. It hurt very badly at the time, but Coleman is dead, and vendettas are a waste of emotional energy. Gussie and I were good friends before your father died. Besides that, Cade, we’re churchgoing people. That means I have to believe in forgiveness. It’s much more your war than mine now, dear.”
He glared at her. “How can you stick up for her?”
She looked up. “I’m human enough to resent her part in Coleman’s death,” she replied. “But neither of us ever asked her side of it. We simply blamed her on circumstantial evidence.”
“It was cut-and-dried—”
“No.” She put her hand over his. “We loved Coleman. We reacted to his death in a normal way. One day I want to hear Gussie’s side of it. You can’t live on hate, Cade.”
“I’m not trying to live on it. I just don’t want Gussie around.”
“Well, there isn’t much choice right now, is there? Bess can’t stay in that apartment by herself, and Gussie will be less help than no one at all. She’ll have a catering firm around to fix meals, and Bess will have a relapse when she sees the bills,” she added with a twinkle in her dark eyes.
Cade laughed in spite of himself. “I guess so. You want to take them both back to Lariat, don’t you?”
Elise smiled. “I like taking care of people. I wanted to be a nurse, but my father wouldn’t hear of it. Back then ladies didn’t work, you see,” she whispered conspiratorially, “and certainly not in jobs that involved bathing men.”
Cade’s own eyes twinkled. “I can see my father letting you bathe him,” he murmured, tongue in cheek.
Elise colored delicately, even at her age, and lowered her eyes. “You probably won’t believe this, but I never once saw your father completely undressed. Our generation wasn’t as laid-back—is that the word?—as yours.”
“Laid-back is something city men are,” he said dryly. “I’m bristling with old-fashioned ideas myself. But Robert and Gary are definitely laid-back. I suppose Gary told you that he wants to move in with Jennifer before they marry.”
Elise grimaced. “I know. I don’t approve.”
“Neither do I, but short of locking him in the smokehouse, I don’t see how we can stop him. He’s twenty-five.”
She nodded. “Well, they’re engaged, and very much in love, and they’re getting married.” She shrugged. “The world has changed.”
“Not in ways I like,” he said. “But I guess it was inevitable. Back in the roaring twenties everybody thought the younger generation was going straight to hell, with booze and loose morals and women smoking and swearing, didn’t they?” He chuckled. “Then came the thirties and forties, and it was back to early-Victorian attitudes.”
“Indeed it was,” his mother said, smiling reminiscently. “I remember trying on a pair of slacks just a few years before you were born, and Coleman had a fit! He made me take them back, because it wasn’t decent for a woman to wear pants.”
He glanced at her neat beige pantsuit. “He’d roll over in his grave now.”
“Oh, I did finally wear him down,” she asserted. “In his old age he was much more tolerant of new attitudes.” Her eyes stared off into space. “I do miss him so terribly, Cade.”
“Enough of that. You’ll cry, and everyone will think it’s my fault.”
She pulled herself back and laughed. “As if you’d care.”
“I care about you,” he said gently, and smiled. “Even if you only hear that once or twice every ten years.”
“Actions speak louder than words, don’t they say?” She touched his hand gently. “You’ve taken great care of me, my darling. I hope you haven’t decided to stay a bachelor, because you have the strength to be a very happy family man. You should marry and have children.”
He stared at the graceful, wrinkled hand holding his and gave it a squeeze. “Maybe when I can get us a little further out of debt, I’ll be able to think about it.”
“Don’t wait too long,” Elise cautioned.
He nodded, but he was preoccupied and brooding. He only hoped that Bess hadn’t been delirious when she’d said that he was her world. He didn’t know if they could surmount the obstacles in their way, but more and more he wanted to try.
* * *
BESS DRIFTED IN and out of consciousness for the next two days. Cade had to leave her side long enough to put his brother Robert in charge of Lariat while he was away and delegate a meeting to Gary, but he came back prepared to stay the duration. Gussie, amazingly, had stayed, too, and so had Elise. Cade got two rooms at a nearby motel for himself and his mother, within walking distance of the hospital.
On the third day after the wreck, Bess had been moved into a semiprivate room, where she lay propped up in bed worrying about her insurance while Cade sprawled lazily in a chair beside the bed and watched her.
“I’ve got coverage,” she said, “but I think it only pays 80 percent. What will I do?”
“What the rest of us do,” he mused. “Pay it off on the installment plan. You surely don’t think that I pay cash for cattle when I buy them?”
“Well, yes, I did,” she confessed. Her poor bruised face was still swollen, and she was having some pain in her side from the bruised ribs. The stitches in her abdomen bothered her, but she hadn’t yet asked the reason for them. Apparently some internal damage had been done, but she hadn’t been lucid enough to ask the doctor what was wrong.
Cade looked drawn and worn-out. She found it surprising that he was still around when she was obviously recovering all right. It was difficult to talk to him, because mostly he sat and scowled at the nurses and aides who came and went in the room and looked unapproachable. The argument they’d had before the accident was fresh in Bess’s mind, and she imagined it was fresh in Cade’s, as well. He was a responsible man. Guilt would be eating him, because he’d think he had caused her to drive recklessly and get into the wreck.
“You and Gussie are coming back to Lariat with us,” he said out of the blue. “Mother figured that Gussie would hire professional caterers to prepare meals for you and bankrupt you in a week.”
Bess sighed wearily, and she didn’t smile. “Most likely she would.” Her drowsy eyes lifted to his. “But I don’t want to impose on you,” she added quietly. “You’ve got enough people to look after without being landed with us. And I know how you feel about Gussie.” Her eyes lowered. “And about me.”
He felt himself go stiff at the memory of the things he’d accused her of. “I suit myself as a rule, Bess,” he replied easily. “If I didn’t want you there, believe me, I could find reasons to leave you in San Antonio.”
Bess grimaced. He felt sorry for her. Worse, he felt guilty. “It wasn’t your fault,” she murmured. “I didn’t have to run like a shell-shocked thirteen-year-old and take my temper out on the car.”
His dark eyes slid over her face. “I never meant to let it go that far. And despite the impression I might have given, I’d never have forced you,” he said.
She felt her cheeks go hot at the memory.
Cade uncrossed his legs and got up, standing at the window with his hands in his gray pants pockets. “Looking back isn’t going to help the situation, Bess,” he said. “I can’t take back what happened.” He turned toward her. “But I can give you a place to heal and take care of you and Gussie until you’re back on your feet. I owe you that much.”
She wanted to throw his offer back in his face, but she couldn’t afford to. She sighed miserably and lowered her eyes to his boots. At least he didn’t know how much she still cared for him. That was her ace in the hole. “I appreciate the gesture,” she said. “And I won’t embarrass you with any blatant displays of undying love.”
His breath quickened. He wanted to tell her that he wouldn’t mind blatant displays, that it would be heaven to have her run after him the way she used to. But he’d hurt her too badly this time, and the differences were still there. It was too soon.
“I ran into your doctor outside in the hall,” he said to break the silence. “He said that if you keep improving, you can be discharged Friday. He’ll take your stitches out before you leave, and I can run you back up here for your checkup in two weeks.”
“When can I go back to work?”
“When he releases you.”
He sounded irritable, and she imagined he felt it, too, being trapped by his own guilt into having two houseguests he hated added to his troubles.
“Maybe if I talk to Julie, she’ll let me work on my assignment while I’m at your place,” she said. “I’ve got everything I need at the apartment. I could pay you rent for Mother and me...”
He said something harsh under his breath, then added more loudly, “Don’t you ever offer me money again.”
She felt the blood draining out of her face. “Why?” she asked. “Because you think I’ll get it from my rich lover?”
He stared at her without blinking. “Gussie admitted that she had exaggerated,” he said. “And I overreacted.”
“How kind of you to admit it,” she replied with more spirit than she knew she had. “But it’s a day late and a dollar short. I don’t owe you any explanations, so you just think what you like. And I won’t go to Lariat with you. I’ll stay in the apartment with Mother. That should please you,” she added with a false smile, “since the entire purpose of your visit was to make sure she left Lariat.”
He moved away from the bed, his hands in his pants pockets, his dark hair catching the overhead light and gleaming like a raven’s back. “That wasn’t the entire purpose of it,” he said quietly. “But this isn’t the time or place to discuss what brought me there.”
“What you said about my mother...and your father,” she persisted, “was it true?”
“Ask your mother, Bess,” he said shortly. “I can only give you one side of it. And as my mother is fond of saying, there are two sides to everything. I never bothered to ask for Gussie’s. I took what I saw at face value.”
“It’s hard to believe. She loved my father.”
He stopped at the foot of the bed and stared at her intently for a long moment. “Are you experienced enough now to know that love and desire can exist separately?”
She glared at him. “You ought to know.”
His eyebrow arched. “I know about desire,” he mused. “Love is a different animal altogether.”
Her fingers curled into the sheet, and she looked at it instead of him. “Trust you to compare it to something with four legs,” she muttered.
“Where does Ryker fit into your life?” he asked, hoping to catch her off guard.
She lifted her eyes to his. “Jordan Ryker is none of your business. As you’ve gone to great pains to tell me, I’m out of your league. I’m decorative and useless and I may someday have to have my mother surgically removed from my back.”
He laughed. He didn’t mean to, because it wasn’t funny, but the way she put it touched something inside him, and relief and delight mingled in the deep sound that escaped his throat.
“For two cents I’d tell Gussie what you just said.”
“Be my guest,” she replied. “I don’t care anymore. My life is falling apart around my ears.”
“None of that,” he said firmly. “You can’t give up and quit now that you’re finally getting independent.”
“What do you care?” she challenged, her brown eyes flashing at him. “You wouldn’t want me if I came with french fries and tartar sauce!”
His dark eyes twinkled. “I’ve never seen you fight back before,” he remarked. “I like you this way,” he added, his voice deep and frankly sensual.
Her cheeks went hot, but she didn’t drop her eyes. “Well, I don’t like you any way at all. Why don’t you go home and brand a calf or something?”
“I can’t leave my mother alone with Gussie,” he replied. “She’d have Mother signing notes for mink coats and luxury cars. Mother feels sorry for her.”
“You sure don’t,” Bess guessed.
“You can tie a bow on that,” he agreed.
“Has anyone called to ask about me?” she wanted to know.
His face closed up. “Ryker did, if that’s what you want to find out,” he said coldly, recalling that Gussie had spoken to him.
“How very nice of him,” she said with a smile. “A man should care about his kept woman.”
“Oh, hell, stop that,” he muttered. Cade moved away from the bed. He looked as if he wanted to bite something. “Someone named Julie called, too.”
“She’s my boss,” she told him. “She’s the office manager.”
He glanced at her. “She?”
“Women can read and write and do math,” she told him. “They can even manage offices if they’re given a chance.”
His eyebrows levered up. “Did I say they couldn’t? My God, I know what women can do. My mother is one of the finest financial managers I’ve ever seen in action. She could run a damned corporation herself, except that she’s softhearted enough to give it away to the first unfortunate who asked for it.”
He sat back down in the chair beside the bed, his eyes going over her poor bruised face, her thin body in the cotton hospital gown. She looked much the worse for wear, but thank God she was alive.
“What do you do at that advertising agency?” he asked.
“I started out doing mechanicals.” She smiled faintly at his curious stare. “That’s the layout for printing ads and brochures and such. But now they’re letting me come up with ideas of my own and do some copywriting, as well. One of my ads is going to be used in a national campaign for a shampoo company.”
“Good for you.” He crossed one leg over the other. “Do you like the work?”
“Very much. And the people I work with are wonderful.”
“Like Ryker?” he asked with a mocking smile.
“Mr. Ryker doesn’t work in our office. He’s downtown in a big building somewhere. He just owns the business. Julie runs it.”
“But you do see him?” he persisted.
“Why does it matter?” she replied with equal stubbornness. “You went to great pains to warn me off, so why do you care what men I date?”
Cade got to his feet and paced some more. He felt restless and irritable and confined. “I guess I have been fighting it,” he admitted, glancing out the window. “For a long time. Maybe for all the wrong reasons. But you were young and soft. Too soft,” he said coldly. “You wouldn’t have lasted a week on Lariat the way you were.” He turned, his black eyes pinning her. “You’re more mature, I’ll hand you that, but you’re still too full of illusions about me. I’m no storybook hero. I’m hard and disciplined, and I’ve got a temper that could take a layer of skin off you. You’re no match for me, cream puff. I need a tigress, not a sparrow.”
“Was the brunette a tigress?” she said with soft malice. “Wasn’t she a match for you?”
His head tilted toward her and his dark eyes kindled. That sounded very much like jealousy, so why not keep his secret and let her chew on the brunette for a while? “I don’t talk about my women. Not even to my brothers, much less to you.”
She averted her eyes, feeling embarrassment stick in her throat. “And I don’t talk about my men, so you can stop asking me leading questions about Jordan Ryker.”
He glared at her profile. “Done. Not that I give a damn about any of your men,” he added with deliberate nonchalance. “All that concerns me is helping you get back on your feet.”
“Thank you so much,” she said. “I’ll do my best to set new records for healing!”
He moved toward the door, trying not to smile. In the past her lack of spirit had annoyed him. Now she was developing it rapidly, and he liked the way she dueled with him. He liked the jealousy in her voice and the sparks of dark fire in her eyes. The old Bess would never have made it in his world, but this new one could. Although he did hope she wasn’t going to take it to extremes, the verbal jousting aroused him.
“Leaving so soon?” she called gaily. “Do give my regards to your brothers,” she added with a smile.
He turned at the door, his eyes narrow as a new complication presented itself. “Gary is engaged to Jennifer Barnes,” he told her. “I’d appreciate it if you don’t give him any encouragement.”
That seemed to needle him. Good! “I wouldn’t dream of trying to cut Jennifer out. On the other hand,” she added, “Robert is still very much a single man. I trust you won’t object if I speak to him?”
He didn’t say another word. With anger smoldering in his eyes he opened the door and left the room. That was a curve he hadn’t expected, and it haunted him for the rest of the day. Not only was Robert unattached, he was a born flirt, and he already liked Bess. What a hell of a situation this could develop into, especially when Bess had every reason in the world for wanting to give him hell. What better way than to get involved with his brother?
He didn’t come back for the rest of the day, leaving Gussie and Elise to talk to Bess and encourage her.
The doctor came to do his rounds after supper, and the two women left the room while he had a long, frank talk with Bess about her injuries. What he told her was so staggering that she didn’t believe him at first. But when the knowledge began to penetrate, she burst into tears.
“I’m sorry,” he said, patting her shoulder gently. “But the truth is always best. And it isn’t impossible, you know. There are other ways...”
“I knew I had stitches, but I never dreamed that much damage had been done,” she said, weeping.
“I didn’t want to tell you sooner, not until you were strong enough to face it,” he replied. He was tall and elderly, and his voice was quiet with concern. “Believe me, we did our best. It just wasn’t good enough.” He paused. “I notice you’ve had a very persistent male visitor, and if he’s involved with you, I thought you should be told, in case you and he have made any plans.”
Her eyes closed. “No, there’s no need,” she whispered huskily. “Because there’s no hope of any lasting relationship. He’s a friend of the family, that’s all. There’s nothing between us.”
“Miss Samson, don’t let this prevent you from marrying,” he pleaded softly. “It isn’t the end of the world.”
“Oh, yes it is,” she whispered.
“Adoption is a very attractive alternative,” he added. “You might consider it if you marry.”
It might be attractive to some men, but it wouldn’t be to Cade: she knew that already. He had such pride in his family’s heritage. For years he’d talked about the heirs he was going to have someday, his sons who’d inherit Lariat after him. Now those children would be born to some other woman. As long as she’d been whole, she couldn’t stop hoping. But now she felt that she was only half a woman. What good was hoping after what he’d said in her apartment anyway? He’d admitted that he’d never marry a woman like her, that all he could have offered her was a brief affair. So it was just as well that he didn’t care, because this was one obstacle she couldn’t overcome, even if she could have changed Cade’s mind about her uselessness on a ranch and her inability to adjust to the hard life there. This was a stone wall, separating her from Cade forever.
Her eyes filled with tears as they searched the doctor’s. “You’re telling me that it’s completely impossible, that there isn’t a chance that I could ever have a child of my own?”
“Let me explain. You have one ovary left, but it was slightly damaged, too. It is possible that you could conceive, it just isn’t too likely. Not unless you married a man who was incredibly potent and all the factors were just exactly right. No, it isn’t completely impossible, and I’ve seen too many miracles in my work to discount God’s hand in things. But being realistic is best in the long run.”
“I see.” She had a little hope then, but not much. She managed a smile for him. “Thank you for being honest with me.”
“It’s the best thing, you know. I’ll check on you again. Try to get some sleep.”
“I’ll do that.” She watched him go. When she was alone, the room seemed to close in around her. She was scared to death, and there was no one she could tell. Least of all Cade.