CHAPTER SIX
BLAIR HAD TOLD Todd that he wasn’t having supper with them. Niki knew why, and it devastated her, but she couldn’t let it show.
“Niki, you aren’t eating enough to keep a bird alive,” her father chided her at dinner. “This is excellent steak. Almost as good as what we raise ourselves. And you’re just picking at it.”
“Sorry,” she said with a wan smile. “I really do have a headache. I shouldn’t have stayed in the sun so long.”
He laid down his fork and sipped red wine, giving her a long look. “He and Janet are friends. Just friends.”
She looked up, feigning surprise. “Janet?”
He scowled. “I thought you were brooding because Blair wasn’t eating with us.”
“No, that’s not it,” she denied, then had to rush to find an explanation. “Mr. Jacobs had wondered why I got my job without going through the usual interview process.” She held up a hand when he started to speak, angrily. “I told him that you’d asked Blair to have him hire me. He just wondered, that’s all. He’s a very nice man. Did you know that his daughter has rheumatoid arthritis?”
He shook his head. “No. No, I didn’t.”
“Dan was giving him all sorts of ‘helpful’ advice like he’s given me. Herbal compounds and diets that can actually heal what’s wrong with Mr. Jacobs’s daughter and me, no doctors necessary,” she added with a laugh.
“Good God!”
“He’s nice, otherwise.” She hesitated. “He wants me to go on a hike with his nature group. I said I would.” She looked up. He was grimacing. “Dad, I’ll take all my meds with me, and I’ll be careful. Dan’s right about one thing. I do pamper myself too much sometimes.”
“No, you don’t,” he said, and the worry showed on his face. “Your lungs are fragile. Nothing is going to cure them. Not with current medical technology. Your friend Dan sounds like a health nut.”
She laughed softly. “I suppose he does, at that. But he’s kind, in his way. He thinks exercise will benefit me.”
“I’m sure that you’d do just fine on a four-mile jog,” he said, dripping sarcasm.
“Oh, Dad,” she chided. “I won’t let him drag me on one. I’d fold after the first five minutes. I know that, even if he doesn’t.”
“All right. But you make sure your cell’s in your pocket. If you have a bad episode, we can follow GPS to find you and get you out of there.”
“I will.”
He drew in a long breath and sipped more wine. Things had seemed to be going so well between Blair and Niki. Now she was involved with this man who sounded like a complete lunatic, and Blair was cozying up to old flames. Sure, there was an age difference between Blair and Niki. But he knew, better than other people, how little it mattered when love was involved. He’d been almost eighteen years older than Niki’s sweet mother, and they’d loved each other with an anguish of passion right up until her death, far too young, of lung cancer.
He shivered inside. Lung cancer. He’d seen her eaten up with it, undergoing surgery after surgery, chemo and radiation, and more chemo, for almost two years until she died. He’d stayed by her bedside every minute. When they’d diagnosed Niki with asthma, he’d been miserable. She had weak lungs, like her mother. He’d insisted on chest X-rays every other year, just to make sure her lungs were all right. Her next X-ray was a few weeks away. He held his breath when she had them, although her doctor found his obsession touching. He couldn’t lose Niki. It would be like losing his sweet wife all over again. He couldn’t bear that.
“You’re very morose,” Niki pointed out.
“Yes, sorry. It’s almost roundup, on the ranch,” he said, and looked at her with a suffering expression.
It was enough to bounce her out of her own misery. She grinned. “Let Tex take point this year,” she said, referring to the cowboy who was their range manager, a man who was only ever known by an abbreviation of the state he came from.
“He’s already taking point. But decisions have to be made that only I can make,” he pointed out.
“I suppose so. All the more reason to enjoy this vacation while you can,” she added, lifting her glass of sparkling water. “Cheers!”
He chuckled and touched his wineglass to hers. “Cheers!” he replied, and drained it.
* * *
NIKI HAD LONG since gone to bed when Blair passed by their suite. All the lights were out, so he didn’t stop to chat with her father. He was exhausted. Janet had chatted with him for several hours about her film career behind the cameras and her responsibilities and her miserable, lonely life.
He’d smiled and pretended interest. Inside he was agonizing over the way he’d treated Niki. He should never have let himself be tempted. That damned bathing suit had undermined all his inward protests about their differences.
But the worst thing had been the way he’d ignored her afterward. How hurt she must have been, to have him push her away without even a word about what had happened, what he was feeling. He hadn’t wanted to. He’d been hurting, overwhelmed and in anguish by his headlong response to her. He’d wanted to tell her how exquisite their passion had felt to him, how sweet and heady it was to love her like that, to feel her first response to physical delight. It had been her first real taste of intimacy, and he’d made it into a shameful memory.
Her soft young body in that bathing suit would have tempted a saint. He hadn’t been able to resist her. It was his lack of control that had made him angry, not Niki’s shy attempts to gain his interest. She’d given him everything he asked for, and he’d turned away from her with anger.
She hadn’t even questioned his behavior. Apparently, she’d thought that she’d disappointed him, and she’d gone quiet. No fuss, no argument. No woman in his life had ever been as gentle with him as Niki was. He was used to temperamental, fiery women who never even thanked him for gifts, who took his interest as their due. It had never bothered him before. But Niki was a new experience in many ways. He’d treated her shabbily. Now all he wanted was to make amends. But he didn’t know how.
She was still too young for him. None of his arguments could change that. But he couldn’t afford to backtrack, to let her think that he wanted more than a few minutes of passion with her. That he wanted...forever.
He clamped down hard on his hunger. He would find a way, a kinder way, to ease her out of his life.
With another woman, he’d have sent a diamond necklace, a fur, the keys to an exotic car. None of those were likely to please a woman who fell in love with a tiny strip of buckskin attached to a piece of deer antler. Her lack of avarice puzzled him. Losing her would just about destroy him. As he sat down on the sofa in his suite, he put his head in his hands and poured himself another whiskey. If he drank enough of it, he might get through the night.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, Niki went back down to the beach in her new bathing suit. She knew Blair wasn’t going to come near her, but she did want to enjoy the surf and the sunshine and try to get over yesterday.
She had hardly slept the night before. She felt Blair’s mouth on hers, his body hard and close, wanting her. She could hear his voice at her ear, husky with feeling, whispering things that made her blush. She hadn’t known what physical passion was. Now that she did, it caused an ache, a hunger that was almost painful. She wished that he’d never touched her, because he’d awakened her to a whole new world of pleasure, then dropped her like a hot horseshoe. She was certain that she’d never understand men as long as she lived.
When she got to the beach, understanding men was suddenly a real issue.
“Ooooh, baby, look at you!” a shabbily dressed young man catcalled, staring at her and walking around her as if she were on sale. “Why don’t you come back to my room with me and we’ll see if we can break the box springs?”
She just gaped at him. In her life, no man had ever made such crude remarks to her.
“I don’t know you,” she blurted out.
“Well, of course you don’t, you’ve got too many clothes on! You look like one hot little piece of tail, honey,” he chuckled. “Come on.” He grabbed her hand.
She shook it off and backed away, the towel held in front of her like a shield.
His face contorted. His eyes were bloodred and he looked...something. Drunk, maybe. “Too good for the locals, huh?” he snarled. “What do you think you’re doing, walking around like that?” He gestured toward her bathing suit. “No woman wears a bathing suit like that unless she’s looking to get laid!”
Niki was shivering. Was that what Blair had thought, too? That she was offering herself up with no strings?
She didn’t know what to do. She had no self-defense training. There was nobody around that she could look to for help, although any of the hotel’s employees would come running if she screamed. She was about to, when suddenly, a miracle happened.
“Oh, go away, you festering little fly,” a harsh female voice said from behind her. A woman moved into view, in a one-piece bathing suit with a long, gauzy coverup over it. “Shoo! Go inflict yourself on someone else!”
The young man hesitated, as if he was shocked to be spoken to in such a manner.
Janet raised a hand toward a hotel steward and motioned him to the beach. She smiled at the worried young man. “How do you like jail, sweetie?” she purred. “I’m sure they’ve got a nice cell, but I’ll bet you’re already on parole, aren’t you?”
“Damned woman!” The man took off running, going fast enough to almost overturn the steward on his way off the grounds.
“That man, he was bothering you, señorita?” he asked Janet.
“Not me. Her.” Janet indicated her flushed companion. “Do you know who he is?”
“Yes, I know,” the employee said coldly. “He comes here to sell drugs to the tourists. We know, and when we see him, we run him off. He has been most offensive to our female guests. I am very sorry. I will speak to the police.”
“That would be a good idea,” Janet said. “Thank you.”
“Yes,” Niki added. “Thanks very much.” She was almost shivering with the upset. She turned to Janet as the hotel man left. “Thank you. I...I’ve never been spoken to like that by a man. I didn’t know what to do.”
“You’re very young,” Janet said gently, and she was thinking that this poor child had been sheltered overmuch by her father. Blair had said as much the night before. “You don’t know much about the world, do you, honey?”
Niki grimaced. “I know a lot more this morning than I ever did before. You took a terrible chance,” she added worriedly. “He might have hurt you.”
She shrugged. “Tae Kwon Do. Brown belt.” Her eyes twinkled. “If he’d touched me, he’d be on his back, unconscious. You might benefit from a self-defense class or two.”
“I might. But...I’m not sure...it would help...” All of a sudden, Niki couldn’t breathe. She looked in her small fanny pack for her inhaler, took it out and used it. Her breath came back, but very slowly.
“Asthma?” Janet asked worriedly.
Niki nodded. She waited a minute and used the inhaler again. “I’m on preventative meds, and I always carry my rescue inhaler.” She smiled weakly. “I’m not in good health.”
“I can see that.” Janet had a very different picture of Niki than she got this morning. She wondered if Blair really knew much about her.
The medicine finally worked. Niki picked up her towel, which she’d dropped in the sand during the episode with the man.
“Don’t go,” Janet said. “Don’t let that fungus spoil the day for you. Come lie down and talk to me. I don’t know a soul at the hotel, except Blair.” Her smile was full of sweet memory. Niki tried her best to hide the pain it gave her.
“My father’s here for a business meeting,” she said, without mentioning Blair. “Are you part of that, too?”
“Oh, no. I’m in film. Well, in filmmaking,” she laughed. “I’m down here with my company making a commercial for a soft drink company. We’ve got five world-class models and an A-list actor doing it for us. I worry that the cameraman will forget to put film in the camera. He actually drools when the girls are lining up.”
Niki laughed in spite of herself. “It must be a very good job.”
“It is. I’d hoped to marry and have children, but Blair wasn’t ready in those days. I never thought he’d marry at all. And then he found Elise.” She ground her teeth together. “She should be hanged for what she did to him.”
Niki knew more about that than Janet probably did. “He loved her,” was all she said. “Or at least, that’s what Dad said,” she added, to make sure she wasn’t telling Janet too much.
“He thought he did. She cured him of that illusion pretty quickly. You know that old saying ‘what you see is what you get’? Well, that certainly wasn’t the case. He had no idea what he was getting until it was too late. Now she holds him up for more money while she carouses around the world, mixing with the jet set. Her father was a plumber, and her mother cooked for a restaurant.” She hesitated. “I guess I sound like a snob.” She smiled at Niki. “I’m not. My dad was a cop. My mother worked in social services. I didn’t move in the fast lane, either.”
“How did you meet Blair?” Niki asked, trying to sound only mildly interested.
“I met his mother,” she corrected, laughing, “in a Starbucks. We talked and she must have liked me, because she sent Blair down to the photography studio where I was working to have a portrait done. We dated for a few wonderful weeks.”
“He didn’t want to get married, you said.”
“No,” Janet replied wearily. “I ran out of ways to try to convince him. He was very stubborn. Business was all he lived for. That, and his mother, whom he loved dearly. He spent the rest of her life trying to make up to her what her husband did to Blair.”
“His father, you mean?”
“Harrison wasn’t his father,” she said coldly. “His father died even before he was born. Harrison was rich and had oil wells. He fell in love with Blair’s mother, who was pregnant, exquisitely beautiful and cultured, and moved in the same social circles as him. He charmed her into marriage. Then, when she had Blair, his true colors began to show. He hated having to raise another man’s child, especially when he learned that he was sterile and couldn’t have children of his own. He made Blair, and his mother, pay for that.” She hesitated. “He punished Bernice by hitting Blair when she did something he didn’t like. At least, until the day Blair grew big enough to turn the tables and use the belt on him. After that, things were quieter at home. They were better off when Harrison died while trying to show one of his workers the right way to set up a rig. Sadly, or not so sadly, he did it while dead drunk and oblivious to the fact that he didn’t have the foggiest idea what he was doing.”
“What a life he must have had,” Niki said, wincing inside.
“Blair’s never seen a good marriage, I guess,” Janet said. “Even so, any man can be tricked into it by an unscrupulous woman. Every time I saw Blair and Elise together, she was wrapped around him like ivy, playing on his senses and pulling away when he tried to get her into bed.” She shrugged. “I guess it finally worked. But she made him as miserable as his stepfather made his mother.”
“She’s still around, too, isn’t she?” Niki asked absently.
“At every benefit he ever attends, trying to get him back,” came the shocking reply. Niki’s expression spoke for itself. “You didn’t know?” Janet asked with an amused smile. “I guess not. But your father’s his best friend. I expect he knows.”
“I hope he has sense enough not to be taken in twice,” Niki said heavily.
“Me, too. But then, I have some ideas about that,” she added with a smile. “I thought you might invite me to have dinner tonight with you and your father, if you don’t mind,” she added coyly. “And if Blair just happens to show up, too...well, better me than Elise.” She sighed and lay back on her towel, oblivious to Niki’s pained expression. “At least she showed me one foolproof way to get him to the altar. This time, maybe I’ll have better luck!”
* * *
NIKI DID INVITE Janet to dinner. Then she phoned the airport, got a seat on a commercial jet, packed her bags, left a note for her father and went home. She left the gold swimsuit in the trash can in her room. She knew that she’d never have the nerve, or the stomach, to wear it again.
* * *
TODD AND BLAIR came back to their rooms after a long day of discussions about drilling for oil in the Yucatán. It had been favorable, because Blair’s reputation in the oil industry was well-known. He wasn’t a polluter. Todd ran a business that supplied equipment to oil corporations, so he was in talks for the same reason. Mexico had its own oil interests, and Todd was hoping to branch out into a bigger market.
“That went well,” Todd said with a weary smile. “Now maybe we can enjoy the rest of our vacation without business intervening.”
“I hope so,” Blair said. He was dreading seeing Niki. Neither of them was going to be able to hide their discomfort from her father, and that would lead to questions he didn’t want to answer.
They stopped by Blair’s suite when they reached their floor. They were sipping whiskey and discussing dinner venues when there was a knock at the door.
“That’s probably Niki, looking for me,” Todd said with a laugh. “The meetings did run late.”
“Yes, they did.” He steeled himself not to react when he opened the door.
But it wasn’t Niki. It was Janet, in a slinky silver cocktail dress, looking very expensive and pretty.
“Am I late?” she asked.
“Late for what?” Blair asked.
“Dinner, of course. Niki invited me to eat with all of you,” Janet said and smiled.
Blair’s heart skipped a beat. “Where did you speak to her?”
“On the beach, this morning. There was a little unpleasantness,” she added. “One of the local drug dealers made an obscene play for her on the beach. I made him leave her alone, and I called one of the hotel stewards to run him off. Poor thing,” she added softly. “She was shocked. It brought on an asthma attack. Thank God she had her rescue inhaler on her.”
“Who was it?” Blair asked, barely able to contain the utter fury he felt.
Janet saw the expression on his face, and all her hopes died. He was livid. In all their time together, he’d never been like that when Janet was badly treated by anyone, although he’d been supportive. This wasn’t supportive. It was homicidal.
“The hotel steward knew him,” she said uneasily. “He’s a local drug dealer.”
Blair jerked out his cell phone and started punching in numbers. His eyes were blazing like black coals.
“Thank you, for what you did for my daughter,” Todd said with a smile. He was reeling from Blair’s reaction to what had happened. It told him things Blair never would.
“I like her,” Janet said. “She’s very fragile, isn’t she?” she added gently. “Like thin porcelain. Just as brittle, just as beautiful.”
“Her mother was like that,” Todd said, the pain of loss still in his eyes after so many years. “I lost her when Niki was very young.”
“You never thought of remarrying?” Janet asked.
He shook his head, smiling softly. “Never. I have memories that will last me until the day I die. And her name will be the last thing on my lips, even then.”
Janet tamped down hard on her feelings. She couldn’t imagine an emotion that deep, that lasting. Even with Blair, whom she’d loved, there had never been such intensity. She glanced at him covertly. He was giving somebody hell on the telephone, in perfect Spanish. He finished the call, hung up and made another.
“I almost feel sorry for the drug dealer,” Janet said, tongue in cheek.
“So do I. Blair’s like a train going down a mountain when he wants something badly enough. I should probably be making those calls. But my Spanish isn’t half as good as his.” He grimaced. “My poor Niki. She’s so unworldly...”
“That’s not a bad thing, in this day and age,” Janet told him.
“I suppose not. But I’ve sheltered her. Maybe too much. She’s twenty-two, but her experiences with men have been pretty daunting. Blair saved her from a very bad experience some years ago and sent the perpetrator running. I had my attorneys run him out of the state.” He leaned toward her, laughing softly. “I thought Blair might hurt him if I didn’t. He didn’t let Niki see, but he was furious. He knocked the guy around a bit before he threw him out the front door. When I got home, Niki was curled up in his lap in an armchair. That was when he was just engaged to Elise and looking forward to a happy marriage.” He made a face. “Some happiness she gave him!”
“I know. His mother would have hated Elise,” she added.
“He was staying with us and got sick just before Christmas one year, while they were married. Niki made me call Elise and tell her how bad he was. She said she had a party to go to and sick people disgusted her.”
“True to her nature,” Janet said coldly.
“So Niki nursed him, risking pneumonia, just to take care of him. The doctor and I protested, but it did no good at all.”
Janet was getting a clear picture of the relationship between Niki and Blair, and it did nothing for her ego or her plans for the future. There was something powerful between the two of them. Apparently, Blair was fighting his own feelings tooth and nail. Niki had pretended not to care when Janet told her about her plans to seduce Blair. It must have hurt her.
Blair was off the phone. He put it back into the holder on his belt. His eyes were still blazing. “I’ve got the police looking for him. He’s on parole for assault. He’ll go back. I promise you he will, no matter what it takes! Nobody treats Niki like that!”
Todd moved close to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Calm down,” he said gently. “They’ll find him and he’ll be dealt with. But we need to talk to Niki. I’m sorry now that I suggested this trip,” he added sadly. “I only wanted to give her a holiday.”
Blair felt the guilt all the way to his toes. He had hurt Niki, probably more than the drug dealer had. He dreaded facing her.
“I suggested some martial arts training when I ran the drug dealer off,” Janet said as they left Blair’s room and walked toward Todd’s suite. “I’m a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do. It might help build up her self-confidence, toughen her up just a little.”
“You ran him off?” Blair asked.
She nodded. “Poor little thing, she was too shocked by the things he said to her. It was painful to watch.”
“Thank you for helping her,” Blair said quietly. He could hardly bear the pain he felt at letting Niki out of his sight. The way he’d behaved had hurt her, he knew. Now this only added to her pain. He had to find some way to apologize, to explain, to smooth over what he’d done to her. He never should have touched her in the first place. He’d blamed her, blamed the bathing suit that showed so much of her creamy skin. But in the end the only blame was his own. He had nothing to offer her, and he’d let his body dictate to his brain. It had been, in many ways, the sweetest interlude of his life. But Niki couldn’t know that. He had to find a kind way to keep her at arm’s length, to protect her. To protect her from himself.
* * *
“NIKI?” TODD CALLED when he walked into the suite. There was no answer. The door to her room was closed. “She said she had a headache. She might have gone to lie down. I’ll check.”
He opened the door. Blair was right behind him. But the room was empty. Blair’s eyes looked around it and landed on the chest of drawers. There was a note. Beside the chest, in the trash can, was the gold bathing suit she’d worn to the beach. Blair’s teeth ground together.
Todd had spotted the note, too. He read it with a grimace. “She’s gone home,” he said heavily. “I guess it was too much for her, what happened this morning.” He walked back into the sitting room. “I’m going to call and make sure she’s getting home okay.”
Blair was staring at the trash can, his face hard and lined.
Janet moved beside him. “I told her that we’d been an item once,” she confessed in a dull, quiet tone. She looked up at him, her keen eyes not missing the expression that drifted across his face. “Do you know how she feels about you, Blair?”
“She’s a child. The daughter of my best friend. That’s all she is.” He managed a cool smile. “She’s infatuated with me. Last year it was a singer in a pop band. After that the actor in a lawman series on TV.” He chuckled, making a joke of it. “There will be somebody new by Christmas.”
“Oh. I see.” She brightened. “Well...”
Todd came back into the room. “She’s landing in Billings now. I sent Tex there to pick her up.”
Blair’s eyes narrowed. “Tex is sweet on her.”
“Yes, he is,” Todd laughed. “For all the good it will ever do him. He doesn’t get out much, and Niki’s usually around, especially during roundup. She actually goes out with the men to watch the branding.” He grimaced. “Dust everywhere, and I can’t stop her. At least I convinced her into wearing a surgical mask.”
Blair turned away. He glanced at the bathing suit and sighed.
“Well, we might as well go to dinner,” Todd said. “Janet, you coming?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind,” she said.
“We’re happy to have you.”
Blair took a breath. “You two go ahead. I’ve got another phone call to make.”
“We’ll wait to order until you get there,” Todd said.
“Just order me a steak and salad. Rare, mind you,” Blair said. “No dessert.”
“Okay. Will do. Janet?” Todd took her arm and led her out into the hall.
Once they were gone, Blair picked up the gold bathing suit out of the trash. He looked at it, remembering how Niki had looked in it, how sweet it had been to touch her, to hold her, to kiss her. He touched the suit tenderly with his lips. Then took it back to his own suite and stuck it in his suitcase.
* * *
DINNER WAS QUIET. Very quiet. Blair was brooding. Todd was worried about Niki and couldn’t hide it. He was worried about Blair, as well. Before he made the phone call, he’d gone back to ask him what sort of dressing he wanted on his salad. Blair had been standing by the dresser, with Niki’s discarded bathing suit in his big hands. As he watched, the younger man touched his lips to it with a tenderness he’d rarely ever seen in him.
Todd went back out quickly, before his friend even knew he was there. The look on his face, unguarded, had told him everything. He was in love with Niki. Desperately in love. And fighting it with his whole heart.
Janet tried to brighten things up at dinner with party talk and jokes. He was still upset about Niki’s encounter with the drug dealer. But he didn’t want the girl forever. He’d made that clear. Janet still had a chance, and she was going to take it.
After dinner, while they walked on the beach, she told him about the conversation with Niki, adding that the younger girl had said she was going to make a play for Blair and see if she could lure him into marriage. That was why she’d worn the seductive bathing suit.
Blair didn’t say a word. He took her hand in his and asked how the commercial she was making was going.
Janet felt a twinge of guilt. Niki was frail and couldn’t really hide how she felt about Blair. But this was war. Janet had seen him first, so to speak, and she wasn’t giving him up without a fight.
* * *
NIKI LOOKED AROUND for Tex at the Billings airport, on the Rimrocks. It was a small airport, but very modern, very nice. She had a suitcase with wheels, easy to roll. She was feeling miserable and just wanted to go home.
Tex came around the corner, smiling from ear to ear when he saw her. “Well, hello, kid,” he teased, using his pet name for her. “Glad to be home in civilized surroundings again?”
“Civilized and cowboys aren’t words that go easily together,” she said on a laugh. “Thanks for coming to meet me.”
“Your dad was worried. Weren’t you supposed to fly home with him and Mr. Coleman on Monday?”
“I had a bad experience on the beach,” she said, averting her eyes as they walked. “It spoiled the trip for me.”
He put the suitcase in the back of the big, black Ford truck he drove and turned to her, pushing his Stetson back over thick black hair. “What sort of bad experience?” he asked, his pale blue eyes flashing in his tanned face.
“A drug dealer on the beach made some...vulgar remarks to me and tried to get me to go to his room with him,” she said.
“Damn! I hope your father has the police lock him up for the rest of his miserable life!” he said harshly.
She smiled gently. Tex was only a few years older than she was, but mature and kind and patient. She liked him a lot. “Thanks, Tex. So do I.”
“Odd that Mr. Coleman didn’t punch him,” he mused when they were in the truck headed home. “The way he did that stupid football player a while back,” he added on a chuckle.
“He was busy at the time,” Niki said, making sure her voice sounded normal. “He and Dad were in a business meeting with some Mexican officials. I went to the beach alone. But Blair’s old girlfriend showed up and made the man leave, with some help from one of the hotel stewards. She’s nice. I guess if Blair married her, it wouldn’t be so bad. At least she’s far and away a better match for him than that vicious ex-wife of his who left him sick and refused to give up a party to come see about him!”
“You get hot about him, don’t you?” he mused as he drove. “He’s a good man. One of my friends works for him. He’s a drill rigger. He said that Mr. Coleman would shed his fancy suit jacket and get right out there to work with the men when there was a problem with one of the rigs. He’s fair and honest, and he treats his workers well.”
“That’s what Dad says, too,” she agreed. The casual remark that she got hot about him was true, but she didn’t want to talk about it.
Tex drew in a breath when he glanced at her and saw her expression. “Harry has a sister who works at the restaurant downtown,” he said. “She mentioned that she saw you and Dan Brady there.”
“Yes,” she sighed. “I ordered fried fish, and the battle began.” She glanced at him. “You know, anything that tastes good is especially bad for you. We should all be eating alfalfa sprouts and taking herbal supplements.”
He scowled. “You got a fever or something?”
She chuckled. “That was Dan’s attitude. I have asthma because I don’t exercise enough or eat the right foods.” She glanced at him from under her eyelashes.
“A man who wants to change you doesn’t love you,” he replied.
She smiled gently. “You’re very perceptive, Tex.”
“I’m a student of human nature,” he replied. “Plus, I did a few courses in psychology when I went to college, after the military.”
“Gosh, you never mentioned that you were in the military.”
“Never talk about it,” he said. “I was in Iraq.”
“I see.”
He glanced at her. “The fighting was pretty brutal. Some things get to you.”
She studied his lean, handsome face. There were more lines in it than she’d realized. He wasn’t as young as she’d first thought. “I thought you were only a couple of years older than me. But you aren’t, are you?”
He shook his head. “I’m pushing thirty-four.”
She grinned. “Old and ancient, aren’t you? Do your poor old bones creak when you move?” she teased.
He laughed. “They do. I was in an armored vehicle when the lead vehicle in our convoy was hit by an IED.” His breath let out slowly. “We all caught some shrapnel. I got mine in the hip. So I can tell you really accurately when it’s going to rain,” he added. “Bone injuries lead to arthritis in the joints.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...”
“Stop that,” he chuckled. He looked at her with warm, soft eyes. “Everybody has scars, kid. Some are deep.” The smile faded. “Heart deep,” he added, as if he knew how she felt about Blair.
She turned her purse in her hands and stared at it instead of him. “Yes,” she confessed. “Some are...very deep.”
She turned her eyes to the pasture as they approached the turnoff to the ranch. They didn’t speak again.