Lacy. Diana Palmer

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      “It’s a pretty lonely life,” she reminded him, gray eyes soft and searching.

      “Loneliness and independence are different words for the same thing. Freedom. I like mine. I don’t think I could survive being hog-tied and smothered.”

      “I never tried to smother you,” she said, defending herself. “I just hated being ignored constantly.”

      “And the one time I didn’t ignore you,” he replied quietly, watching her blush, “you cried all night long. I heard you, even through the wall.”

      She turned her face away, but he caught her chin and jerked it back around to search it, his eyes dark and fierce.

      “You walked away,” she said unsteadily, glancing around. There was no one near enough to hear them; the train was remarkably uncrowded for that time of day. She looked back at him. “You knew you’d hurt me, and you couldn’t get out fast enough. Of course I cried.”

      “What could I have said or done then?” he asked, eyes narrow and dark. “I thought you wanted me. You seemed to, that morning.”

      Her lips parted at the memory of it: his mouth warm and searching, his body hard and hungry against her own. It had been so sweet, so heady. “Yes, I wanted you,” she whispered. “I thought it would be the way it was that morning. But afterward, it was like being…used,” she said falteringly. “You wouldn’t even let me touch you.”

      His jaw clenched as he stared down at her, his chest rising and falling unevenly. He did want, so desperately, to tell her why he’d hurt her. But he wondered if she’d believe him even if he could make his pride bend that far. “That’s past history, anyway, Lacy,” he said curtly. He lifted the cigarette to his parted lips and took a long draw. “We’ll have to make the best of things, if we can.”

      She looked out the window, to the low horizon and acres of flat, unfenced land outside it. “I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that we could get a divorce?”

      “No. So it looks as if you’re stuck, doesn’t it, kiddo?” he asked, with a cold smile.

      “Or you are,” she replied sweetly, and smiled back.

      He glanced down at the neat dark suit she was wearing and the pretty little hat on her dark head. “I’m glad you aren’t wearing any of those outrageous new dresses like what you had on last night,” he commented. “I have a hell of a time keeping my cowhands working as it is, without you women driving them crazy. They’ve been hanging around the house for weeks now, trying to get a glimpse of Katy’s legs. I finally burned two of her more revealing dresses.”

      “Just your style, cattle king,” she taunted. “If you can’t reason with people, run over them. You were always like that, even when you were younger.”

      “Don’t expect me to change, Lacy. I’m too old.”

      She shook her head, staring at the rugged features, the straight nose and chiseled, wide mouth, the square jaw. It wasn’t the nicest face she’d ever seen on a man, but it suited him, and she loved every hard line of it. Bronzed skin, deep-set dark eyes, heavy brows, thick straight hair that fell into an unruly heap on his broad forehead. He was sensuous. Yes, he really was, she thought suddenly, even in the way he moved. But it was only an illusion, because he was more repressed than any man she’d ever known and he hated the very idea of sex. She’d wondered a time or two how many women he’d had in his life. Oddly, enough, she sometimes thought there had hardly been any.

      “You’re staring, honey,” he chided, watching her intense scrutiny.

      “You’re a very sensuous man,” she said quietly, watching the impact of that statement freeze his hard features.

      He turned his face away from her and leaned back to smoke his cigarette in a frigid silence.

      “I’m sorry if I offended you,” she said after a minute, settling down into her own comfortable seat as the train gathered speed.

      “No. It wasn’t that,” he replied, his voice even, quiet.

      Well, whatever it was, he didn’t volunteer anything more. He sat with his hat down over his eyes, the cigarette smoking between his lean, dark fingers, and he didn’t say another word.

      Still, her eyes continued to study him, running like hands down his long, lean body with its rippling play of muscle as he shifted.

      “Why do they call Jude Turk?” she asked unexpectedly.

      His thin lips actually smiled, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Because there aren’t any fiercer fighters than the Turks. He’s a force to behold when he’s mad, kiddo. A mean man.”

      “As mean as you?” she teased softly, her blue eyes twinkling in their frame of soft, forward-curving hair.

      He glanced down at her with one eye. “About half,” he said. That eye went down to her full breasts and lingered, then went back up again to catch her blush. “Embarrassed?”

      “You’re the one who won’t talk about sex,” she reminded him.

      He looked as if he wanted to say something, but he shrugged and closed his eyes again.

      If only he could talk to her, she thought miserably. If only they could just communicate. She sometimes thought that there was a loving, giving man locked up in those suppressed emotions. That Cole was a keg of dynamite, waiting for a match—that as a lover he’d be everything she could want. If she could only find the spark to ignite him. But he seemed not to care about that side of his nature. And only occasionally, like just now, did any hint of it come out. He was the most complex and puzzling man she’d ever known. Perhaps that was why, after all the years she’d known him, he still fascinated her.

      Ben was waiting for them at the siding, dressed in a beige city suit with a derby on his head, hands in his pockets as he leaned back against the building. The aging but jaunty black runabout was parked nearby, its top down.

      Lacy couldn’t help but grin at the picture of gay youth he presented. “The future famous writer,” she murmured. “Do you think he’ll make it, Cole?”

      “I suppose he’ll keep trying until he dies, at least,” he said. “Don’t encourage him,” he added unexpectedly.

      She glared at him as he got up to let her out of the seat. “I never did.”

      “He’s still got a wild crush on you,” he said. His dark eyes narrowed. “This time, if he makes one move toward you, brother or no brother, I’ll beat him to his knees.”

      “Cole!” she gasped, shocked by the hard look in his eyes.

      “You remember what I said,” he told her, and took her arm firmly in his hand as he retrieved the carpetbag with her clothes in it and walked off the train with Lacy in tow.

      “Lacy, darling!” Ben said in his most sophisticated tone, spreading open his arms. “How are you?”

      “She’s fine,” Cole said, with a cutting edge in his deep voice as he dared Ben to come one step closer. “How’s Mother?”

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