Trilby. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ felt inadequately covered for some reason, even though her neat calico dress was very demure. She wiped her hands unnecessarily on her apron. “I should get back to the kitchen before I burn my apple pie,” she began, hoping he might take the hint and go.

      “Am I being offered a slice of it?” he drawled instead.

      She almost panicked. Teddy answered for her, his young voice excited. “Surely!” he said enthusiastically. “Trilby bakes the best pie, Mr. Vance! I like it with cream, but our cow’s gone dry just lately and we’ve had to do without.”

      “Your father didn’t mention the cow,” Vance said as he swung lithely out of the saddle and tied the reins to the porch post. He came up onto the porch with a bound, his long, lithe body as graceful out of the saddle as in it. He towered over Teddy and Trilby, too tall and forceful.

      She turned quickly and went back into the house. At least her blond hair was up in its neat braid, not loose and uninhibited as she usually wore it around the house. She looked much more cool and collected than she felt. She wished she had some red cayenne pepper; she’d fill Mr. Vance’s pie full of it. He probably thrived on hot peppers and arsenic, she thought wickedly.

      “We got another cow yesterday, from Mr. Barnes down the road,” Teddy volunteered. “But sis got busy baking and hasn’t milked her. I’ll go and do it for you, Trilby, while you check the pie. It will only take a little while.”

      She tried to protest, but Teddy had grabbed the tin milking pail and rushed out the back door before she could stop him. She was left alone, and frightened, with the hostile Mr. Vance.

      He wasn’t bothering to camouflage his hostility now, either, with Teddy out of the way. He pulled a Bull Durham pouch out of his pocket, along with a small folder of tissue papers, and proceeded to roll a cigarette with quick, deft movements of his long-fingered hands.

      Trilby busied herself checking inside the wood stove to see if her pie was finished. Back home, there had been a gas stove. Trilby had been secretly afraid of it, but she sometimes missed it now that she had to cook on the wood-burning one, the best they could afford. Stocking the ranch had been expensive. Keeping it going was getting harder by the day. Teddy should never have mentioned the cow going dry.

      She saw the brown crust even as she smelled the mingled cinnamon and sugar and butter smell of baking apples. Just right. She took her cloths and got it quickly out of the oven and onto the long cooking table that ran almost from wall to wall. Her hands shook, but thank heaven, she didn’t drop the pie.

      “Do I make you nervous, Miss Lang?” he asked, pulling up a chair. He straddled it, his powerful body coiled like a snake’s as he folded it down onto the chair and rested his forearms over its back. He looked very masculine, and the very set of his muscular body, with the chaps and jeans drawn tight over long, powerful legs, made Trilby feel awkward and shy. She’d never noticed Richard’s legs at all. Her sudden interest in Thorn’s unsettled her, made her defensive.

      “Oh, no, Mr. Lang,” she replied, with a vacant smile. “I find hostility so invigorating.”

      His eyebrows lifted and he had to stifle a smile. “Do you? Yet, your hands shake.”

      “I have little experience of men…except for my father and brother. Perhaps I’m ill at ease.”

      He watched her push back a wisp of blond hair with eyes that held nothing but contempt. “I thought you found my cousin quite irresistible at that social gathering last month.”

      “Curt?” She nodded, missing the look that flared in his dark eyes. “I like him very much. He has a pleasant manner and a nice smile. He gave Teddy a peppermint stick.” She smiled at the memory. “My brother never forgets a kindness.” She glanced at him warily. “Your cousin reminds me of someone back home. He’s a kind man. And a gentleman,” she added pointedly, her eyes making her opinion of his garb, and himself, perfectly plain without a word being spoken.

      He wanted to laugh out loud. Sally had told him about seeing Curt and Miss Lang here in a passionate embrace. She wasn’t the first to mention the relationship, either. A lady from the church—a notorious gossip—had mentioned seeing Curt and a blond woman in an embrace at a gathering. He’d taken the gossip home to Sally, who’d told him about Trilby. She’d done it quickly, but almost reluctantly, too. Thorn remembered that she’d gone quite pale at the time.

      The revelation had left him with a fine contempt for Trilby. His cousin Curt was a married man, but Miss Lang didn’t seem to mind shattering convention. Funny, a woman who acted as ladylike as she did, behaving like that. But then, he knew too well what deceivers women were. Sally had pretended to love him, when she’d only wanted a life of wealth and comfort.

      “Curt’s wife also admires him,” he said pointedly.

      When she didn’t react, he sighed roughly and took a long draw from the cigarette, his eyes never leaving hers. “The wrong type of woman can ruin a good man and his life.”

      “I have found very few good men out here,” she said flatly. She busied herself slicing the pie. Her hands shook and she hated the fact that he watched them, his smile mocking and unkind.

      “You don’t seem to find the desert too hot, Miss Lang. Most Easterners detest it.”

      “I’m a Southerner, Mr. Vance,” she reminded him. “Louisiana is hot in the summer.”

      “Arizona is hot year-round. But you won’t find an overabundance of mosquitoes. We don’t have swamps here.”

      She glared at him. “The yellow dust makes up for it.”

      “Does it, truly?” he asked, mocking that very correct Southern accent that brought to mind cotillions and masked balls and mansions.

      She wiped her hands and put the knife aside. She wouldn’t throw it at him, she wouldn’t!

      “I suppose so.” She went to get the dishes for the pie from the china cabinet, praying silently that she wouldn’t drop any of them. “Do you care for iced tea, Mr. Vance?” And if I only had some hemlock…

      “Yes, thank you.”

      She opened the small icebox and with an ice pick chipped off several pieces of ice to go in the tall plain glasses. She covered the small block of ice with its cloth again and closed the door. “Ice is wonderful in this heat. I wish I had a houseful of it.”

      He didn’t reply. She took the ceramic jug of tea she’d made for dinner and poured some of the sweetened amber liquid into the glasses. She’d fixed three, because surely Teddy would be back soon. She’d skin him if he wasn’t! Her nerves were strung like barbed wire.

      She put a perfect slice of pie on a saucer and placed it before him at the table with one of the old silver forks her grandmother had given them before they’d left Baton Rouge. She placed a linen napkin with it and put the glass of tea on it. The ice shook and made a noise like tiny bells against the glass.

      His lean hand shot out as she withdrew hers and caught her small wrist in a hot, strong grasp. She caught her breath audibly and stared at him with wide, wary eyes.

      He scowled faintly at her reaction. His gaze went to her hand as he turned it in his and rubbed the soft palm gently with his big callused thumb. “Red and worn, but a lady’s hand, just the same. Why did you come out here with СКАЧАТЬ