Diana Palmer - Lone Star Winter

Her lips parted on a quick breath. “You saw…that?”

“I saw it,” he said curtly. “That’s why I stopped by later and said something about the way you were pitching hay by yourself.”

She shifted in the seat. “He said they were old friends,” she replied. “I guess he really meant they were former lovers. He never treated me to that sort of charm and flirting. He really wanted Dad’s ranch. It was a pity I went with the deal.”

“It was his loss that he took you for granted,” he corrected. “You’re not inadequate. You proved that earlier tonight, in the parking lot.”

She cleared her throat. “An incident best forgotten.”

“Why?”

“Why?” She stared at him. “Walt’s only been dead two weeks, that’s why!”

He stopped at a four-way stop and turned in his seat on the deserted road to look at her. “Lisa,” he said quietly, “it wouldn’t have mattered even if he’d still been alive, and you know it. What happened was mutual and explosive.”

“It was a fluke…”

His hand reached out and his fingers traced her lower lip. She couldn’t even speak. “Would you like me to prove that it isn’t?” he asked quietly. “There are plenty of dirt roads between here and home, and the seats re cline all the way.”

“Cy Parks!”

“Best of all,” he mused, “we wouldn’t even have to worry about pregnancy, would we?”

Her face was scarlet; she knew it was. He was making her breathless with that torturous brush of his fingers, and she was vulnerable. She’d never really known desire until tonight, and she wished she could turn the clock back a day. Life was difficult enough without this new complication.

He drew in a long breath and lifted his hand back to the steering wheel. “God knows I want to,” he said shortly, “but you’d die of shock and never speak to me again afterward.”

“I…certainly…would,” she faltered, pushing her hair back unnecessarily just for something to do.

He shook his head. He’d known her such a short time, really, but she seemed to hold his attention even when he wasn’t with her. Every future event he thought of these days, he considered her part in. It was disturbing to know that he considered her part of his life already.

She fiddled with the top button on her coat. Her eyes were restless, moving from the dark horizon to the occasional lighted window flashing past as the utility vehicle picked up speed. What he’d said disturbed her, mostly because she knew it was true. She’d have gone anywhere with him, done anything with him. It made her guilty because she should be mourning Walt.

“Don’t brood,” Cy told her. “You’re safe. No more torrid interludes tonight, I promise.”

She fought a smile and lost. “You’re a terrible man.”

“You have no idea how terrible.” He paused to look both ways before he crossed a lonely intersection. “Harley’s fired your part-time hired hands, by the way.”

“He’s what?”

“Calm down. They were being paid for work they didn’t do. That’s economically disastrous.”

“But who’ll get in the hay and brand the calves…?” she worried.

“You didn’t hear the noise? Harley got the tractors out in your hay field early this morning. The haying’s done. The corn crop is next. I’m hiring on four new men. Harley will supervise them, and your place will live up to its promise.” He glanced at her. “You haven’t decided not to sell it have you?”

“I can’t afford to keep it,” she confessed. “I’m glad you don’t plan to build a subdivision on it or something. It’s been in my family for a hundred years. Dad loved it with all his heart. I love it, too, but I have no idea how to make it pay. I’d like to see it prosper.”

“I think I can promise you that it will.”

She smiled, content with just being next to him. He turned on the radio and soft country music filled the cab. After a few minutes, her eyes slid shut as all the sleep less nights caught up with her.

She was vaguely aware of being gently shaken. She didn’t want to be disturbed. She was warm and cozy and half-asleep.

“No,” she murmured drowsily. “Go away.”

“I have to,” came a deep, amused voice at her ear. “Or we’ll have a scandal we’ll never live down. Come on, imp. Bedtime.”

She felt herself tugged out of the seat and into a pair of warm, hard arms. She was floating, floating…

Cy didn’t wake her again. He took off her shoes, tossed the cover over her, put her glasses on the bedside table and left her on the bed in her nice dress and coat. He didn’t dare start removing things, considering his earlier passionate reaction to her. But he stood beside the bed, just watching her, enjoying the sight of her young face relaxed in sleep. He wondered how old she was. She never had told him.

He turned and went back out into the hall, pausing to check the lock on the back door in the kitchen before he went out the front one, locking it carefully behind him. He still wasn’t convinced that Lopez wouldn’t make a beeline for Lisa if he thought his men could get away with harming her. Cy was going to make sure that he didn’t.

He stopped by the bunkhouse to have a word with Nels before he went home and climbed into his own bed. He stared at himself in the bedroom mirror, his eyes narrow and cynical as he studied his lean, scarred face and equally scarred body. He was only thirty-five, as Lisa had already guessed, but he looked older. His eyes held the expression of a man who’d lived with death and survived it. He was wounded inside and out by the long, lonely, terrible years of the past. Lisa soothed the part of him that still ached, but she aroused a physical need that he’d almost forgotten he had. She was a special woman, and she needed him. It was new to be needed on a personal level. He thought about the child she was carrying and wondered if it would be a boy or girl. She’d need someone to help her raise it. He wanted to do that. He had nobody, and neither did she. They could become a family—for the child’s sake.

He turned off the lights and went to bed. But his dreams were restless and hot, and when he woke up the next morning, he felt as if he hadn’t slept at all.

Harley got the calves branded and the corn in the silo in quick order.

“You’ve got a knack for inspiring cowboys to work, Harley,” Cy told him one afternoon a few days later.

“I get out there and work with them, and make them ashamed of being lazy,” Harley told him with a grin. “Most of them can’t keep up with me.”

“I noticed.” Cy leaned back against the corral fence and stared at the younger man evenly, without blinking. “You were out near the warehouse last night. What did you see?”

“Three big trucks,” Harley said solemnly. “One had some odd stuff on the back. Looked like oil drums lashed together.”

That was disturbing. Cy knew that drug dealers threw portable bridges across rivers to let trucks full of their product drive to the other side. What Harvey was de scribing sounded like a makeshift pontoon bridge. Cy and the mercenaries he’d worked with had used them, too.

“Did you get a look at what was in the trucks?” he asked.

Harley shook his head. “The doors were closed and locked. I was afraid to risk trying to pick a lock, with all that hardware around. Those guys had Uzis.”

“I know,” Cy said without thinking.

Harley’s eyebrows went up, and he grinned in a fairly condescending way. “Do you now? Are you using Uzis to load cattle these days, boss?”

Cy realized what he’d said and chuckled. “I wasn’t listening. Sorry.”

“No problem. I noticed a couple of new faces over there,” he added. “Tough-looking men, and they weren’t wearing suits.”