Diana Palmer - Lacy

He muttered something under his breath, finished his cigarette, and slammed it into the fireplace. “Damn you!” he repeated.

She moved around in front of him, making him look at her. “Why did you come to me that night if you didn’t want me?”

“I did…want you,” he bit off.

“And now you don’t?”

Oh, God. She was killing him by inches! His body felt like drawn cord. What she was demanding was impossible, but he couldn’t let her carry out her threat. The thought of Lacy with any other man cut his heart. He drew a deep breath. He couldn’t show weakness, not now.

Attack was the best defense. He lifted his face and glared down at her. “Sex is a weapon women use,” he said coldly. “My grandfather taught me to live without it.”

“Your grandfather almost succeeded in making a slab of stone out of you!” she shot back.

“Caring is a weakness,” he said shortly. “It’s a disease. I won’t be owned by any damned woman—much less a society girl from Georgia with a fat wallet!”

Her face blanched. Her fists clenched at her sides. So it was going to be war. All right. He was asking for it.

“Nevertheless,” she said tautly, “if you want me to come back, you’ll have to share a room with me. I’m not going to have the family laughing at me a second time. You don’t even have to touch me, Cole,” she conceded, hoping proximity might accomplish what blackmail couldn’t. “But you are going to have to share my room. If you want me back…” she added calculatingly. “And I think you need me—at least to help you cope with Katy. Don’t you?”

“Haven’t you any pride, woman?”

“No. I gave it up the day I married you,” she told him. “My pride, my self-respect, and my hopes of a rosy future. If you want me back, I’ll come. But on my terms.”

His eyes were fierce, black as coal. He drew in a slow, deep breath. “Your terms,” he said curtly. “Blackmail, you mean.”

He looked so formidable that she almost backed down. Then she remembered how she’d learned to treat George when he got out of hand. She wondered absently if it might work on stone?

She moved a little closer, coquettishly, and deliberately batted her long eyelashes at him. “Kiss me, you fool!” she said vampishly, lifting her face and parting her red lips.

He stared down at her through narrowed eyes and hoped like hell she wouldn’t notice the sudden thunder of his heartbeat at that innocent teasing. “Stop that,” he said irritably, giving nothing away. “All right,” he said, with a rough sigh, “we’ll share a room.”

“Finally, a chink in the stone!” She sighed, smiling wickedly, and he actually seemed to soften a little. Miracle of miracles! Had she accidentally hit on a way to get to him?

He scowled at her for another few seconds, half irritated, half intrigued by this new Lacy. He pursed his lips and almost smiled down at the picture she made. “I’ll pick you up in the morning at seven.” He glanced toward the hall. “You’d better send that pack of coyotes home.”

She curtsied. “Yes, Your Worship!”

“Lacy…” he said warningly.

“You’re so handsome when you’re mad,” she sighed.

The scowl got worse. He actually seemed to vibrate, and she felt a fever of pleasure that she could knock him off-balance. If he were vulnerable, there might be a little hope. Eight months, wasted; years wasted—and now she’d discovered the way to reach him!

“Good night,” he said firmly.

She gave him an impish little grin. “Wouldn’t you like to stay the night?”

“I would not,” he said shortly.

“Then enjoy your last night alone,” she said, with a gleam in her blue eyes. She turned and walked away, on legs that could hardly hold her. And she was laughing when she reached the room where the party was still in full swing.

But the man letting himself out the front door wasn’t laughing. He never should have agreed to her terms. He should have told her to take them and go to hell. Only he was so hungry for the sight of her that his mind had stopped working. It was probably all bluff on her part, about sleeping with that tall clown. But how could he risk it? By God, he’d beat the man to death if he so much as touched her!

The violence of his feelings disturbed him. She was just a woman, just Lacy, who’d been around so long she was like the flowers his mother always put on the hall table. But things had been different since that night with her. He hadn’t meant to touch her. The marriage had been forced; he’d been determined to find some way to drive her from the ranch without ever consummating it. And then he’d started kissing her, and one thing had led to another. He wasn’t sorry, except for hurting her. It had been magic. But it was too big a risk to repeat. How in hell was he going to share a room with her and keep his secret? In that intimacy, which he’d avoided for years even with his men, how could he keep her from finding out?

He’d lose her when she knew, he thought. That hadn’t bothered him at first, but he’d had too much time to think. He’d missed her. He’d wanted her. Avoiding her hadn’t worked. He’d tried that, eight months’ worth, and tonight was the first time he’d felt alive since she’d left him. He sighed. Well, he’d take it one day at a time. That was what Turk always said: Stop gulping life down in a swallow. So maybe he’d try that. As he left the house, the look in his eyes was as grim as rain, as hopeless as dead flowers on a grave.

Lacy sat down heavily in the wing chair, still reeling from her demands and Cole’s reluctant agreement to them. She’d been bluffing, but fortunately he didn’t know that. Imagine, she thought, shy little Lacy Jarrett actually winning one over Coleman Whitehall. The gin had helped, of course. She still wasn’t used to it, and it had gone to her head. Also, she mused, to her tongue.

Back in the old days, she would have been too shy to even speak to him. Her eyes closed and she drifted back to those first, nerve-wracking days at Spanish Flats following the death of her parents.

Katy had been welcoming, like Marion and Ben. But Cole had been formal, distant, and almost hostile to her. She’d made a habit of keeping out of his way, so quiet when he was at the table for meals that she seemed invisible. It didn’t help that she started falling in love with him almost at once.

There had been rare times when he was less antagonistic. Once, he’d helped her save a kitten from a stray dog. He’d placed the tiny thing in her hands and his eyes had held hers for so long that she blushed furiously and was only able to stammer her thanks. When she’d gotten sick from being out in the sun without her bonnet, it was Cole who’d carried her inside to her bed, who’d hovered despite Marion and Katy’s ministrations until he was certain that she was all right. Occasionally he’d been home when Lacy went for the quiet walks she enjoyed so much, and he’d fallen into step beside her, pointing out crops and explaining the cattle business to her. Eventually she lost much of her fear of him, but he disturbed her so much when he came close that she couldn’t quite hide it.

Her reactions seemed to make him irritable, as if he didn’t understand that it was physical attraction and not fear that caused them. Cole didn’t go to parties, and Lacy had never known him to keep company with a woman. He worked from dawn until well after dark, overseeing every phase of ranch operation, even keeping the books and handling the mounting paperwork. He had a good business head, but he also had all the responsibility. It didn’t leave much time for recreation.

The blow came when war broke out in Europe. Everyone was sure that America would eventually become involved, and Lacy found herself worrying constantly that Cole would have to go. He was young and strong and patriotic. Even if he weren’t called up, it was inevitable that he would volunteer. His conversation about the news items in the papers told her that.