Denim And Lace. Diana Palmer

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СКАЧАТЬ mother doesn’t,” she said simply. “Anyway,” she added to divert him, “I can get a job as a copywriter. Advertising work pays well.”

      “I wouldn’t know,” he muttered. “I don’t have much contact with cities or city professions. All I know is cattle.”

      “You know them pretty well,” she said with a faint smile. “You were making money when all the other cattlemen were losing theirs.”

      “I’m a renegade,” he said simply. “I use the same methods my great-grandfather did. They worked for him.”

      “They’ll work for you, too, Cade,” she said gently. “I know you can pull the ranch out of the fire.”

      He stared at her silently. She had such unshakable faith in what he could do. All that sweet hero worship was driving him to his knees, even though he knew it couldn’t last. Once she got out from under Gussie’s thumb and felt her wings, there’d be no stopping her. Then, maybe, when she could see him as a man and not a caricature of what he really was, there might be some hope for them. But that looked as if it was a long way off.

      “Don’t let your mother get her hands on those pearls,” he said unexpectedly. “They’ll go the way of anything else she can liquidate.”

      “Yes, I know,” she said, agreeing with him for once. “I told her they were costume jewelry,” she added with a faint smile.

      “It won’t work if she gets a close look at them,” he murmured.

      She knew that, too. “Why do you feel so strongly about them, Cade?” she asked.

      “Because they’re a legacy. Something that’s been in your family a long time, a piece of history for the children you’ll have one day.”

      She felt herself coloring. “I don’t know that I’ll ever have any.”

      “You will,” he said. “So will I. I want half a dozen,” he mused, letting his eyes run over the land, the horizon. “Ranches are tailor-made for big families. This one is big enough for my kids, and for Gary’s and Robert’s, too. Gary’s too city-minded to settle here, and I don’t know about Robert. But it’s in my blood. I’ll never be able to leave it.”

      She’d known that already, but it was new to have him talk to her without the usual cold hostility in his voice. Perhaps it was because she was leaving. And maybe there was a little guilt for the things he’d said the night before.

      “Anyway,” he continued, “legacies shouldn’t be used to get ready cash. Gussie isn’t sentimental. You are.”

      She smiled shyly. “I guess I am, at that.”

      “Get down for a bit.” He swung gracefully out of the saddle and helped her down, while she tried to control an irrational urge to throw her arms around him and hang on. Her heart was beating wildly when he put her down and moved quickly away to tie the horses separately to small trees.

      He stood on the banks of the creek, leaning back against a big oak, smoking his cigarette while he studied the small flow of water over the rocks. He was wearing denims and a blue-checked shirt with his shepherd’s coat and a battered old tan Stetson, and to Bess’s eyes he looked the very picture of a working cowboy. His boots, like his hat, were worn with use, and he was wearing working spurs—bronc spurs, in fact, small rowels with pincer edges around them that looked fierce but only pulled the hair of the animal they were used on. A horse’s hide was tough and not easily damaged if the right kind of spurs were worn, and Cade knew the right kind to wear.

      “You’ve been breaking horses,” she said, because she knew from experience that he only wore those particular spurs when he was riding new additions to the remuda.

      “Helping Dally,” he corrected. Dally was the ranch’s wrangler, and a good one. “We compromised. He wanted to take three years and I had three weeks, so he turns his back while I help him break them to the saddle. Besides, it’s good practice for the rodeo.”

      She knew that he competed at rodeos all around the Southwest and that he won a lot. He needed the money to help prop up Lariat.

      “It’s dangerous work.” She remembered so well the cowhand several years ago who’d had his back broken when a bronc slung him off against the barn wall. “You pulled that tendon...”

      “I barely limp at all now,” he said. “And any ranch work is dangerous.” He turned his head and looked at her, and she could see the light of challenge in his dark eyes. “That’s why I enjoy it.”

      “Race-car drivers,” she murmured. “Mountain climbers. Skydivers. Ranchers—”

      “Not to mention little girls who buy oversize horses,” he inserted, nodding toward Tina, who was towering over his own buckskin.

      “She’s terribly gentle.”

      “I guess so. Your father and I had words over her, but he finally convinced me that you’d be safe.”

      She went warm all over to think that he’d been concerned about her. He’d never said anything to her, and neither had her father.

      “But Gussie never cared, did she?” he asked pointedly, his cold eyes holding hers. “Not about seeing you trampled by an oversize horse or anything else. Unless it interfered with her comfort.”

      “Not again,” she said, grimacing. “Cade...”

      “She doesn’t give a damn about you. Can’t you see that? My God, Bess, you’ve got enough problems without taking on Gussie for life.”

      “It won’t be for life,” she began.

      “It will,” he said solemnly. “She’ll never let go. She’s like a leech. She’ll suck you dry and leave you the first time some rich man dangles a diamond over her head.”

      It was the truth. But she wasn’t strong like Cade. She never could say no to Gussie. How could she desert her own mother?

      “You’re thirty-four,” she pointed out. “And you still live at home and take care of your own mother and both your brothers—”

      “That’s different,” he returned curtly. “I’m strong enough to shoulder the responsibility.”

      “Oh, of course you are,” she said softly, her eyes adoring him. “You’ve had to be. But the point I’m making is that you’ve got all that responsibility and you’ve never turned your back on your own people or refused to do for them. How can you expect me not to do for my mother?”

      He stared at her quietly. “At home Gary keeps the books and Robert handles the sales. Gary’s engaged and won’t be around much longer, and Robert keeps talking about going to San Antonio to find work. I don’t know how much longer they’ll be here. But my mother takes care of a yardful of chickens and a gaggle of geese, which we use for pest control in the garden that she keeps every year. She sews and cleans and cooks. She cans and even helps out at roundup when she has to. I don’t mind providing for a woman like that.”

      “I guess my mother would faint if she had to get near a horse,” Bess mused. “But we lived in a different world from yours.”

      That СКАЧАТЬ