Fit for a King (20 page)

156

Diana
Palmer

Fit for a
King

157

She got
up and dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved
blouse, feeling as summery as the weather.
She left her hair down and her face clear of makeup.

Downstairs,
King was sitting at the breakfast table
with a brooding look. But it wasn't the
King she'd
become accustomed to. This was a
Westerner with a
capital
W.
She
stood stock-still in the doorway, just
staring.

From his
faded jeans and dusty boots up over a blue-and-white Western shirt to his dark
hair, he was
a different man. It wasn't only the clothing; it was
something
in his face. A different look. A naturalness.
A man in his native setting.

He looked
up from his newspaper and cocked an
eyebrow. "Well? Aren't you
hungry?"

"Of
course." She sat down beside him, her eyes
curious.

"You've
seen me in jeans before," he reminded
her, amused at her
expression.

"You
never looked like this before," she faltered. Her eyes searched his.

He winked at her. "Did you sleep well?"

"Beautifully," she sighed. "How about
you?"

"When
I finally got to sleep," he muttered darkly,
"it was soundly. Ben had five hours'
work waiting."

"Wasn't
some neighbor supposed to be watching
things for you?"

"He
was, and he did," came a deep, amused voice

from the doorway,
"but only Kingston can sign King
ston's name to his checks."

Elissa
turned to find the voice. The man she saw
made her shiver. He looked dangerous, a
wild man
with unruly black hair and
pale-green eyes set in lashes as thick and black as his eyebrows. He was
lithe and lean and sported a scar down one cheek
and a nose that looked to have been broken once too of
ten. Somehow he didn't look like the kind of man
King would call a friend, and Elissa wondered how
much else there was to learn about the enigmatic
man
she'd fallen in love with.

"Blake Donavan," King
introduced him. "This is
my houseguest,
Elissa Dean."

"I'm glad to meet you, Mr.
Donavan," she said
hesitantly.

He gave
her an indifferent appraisal and nodded.
"Same
here." He turned his attention to King. "If
you've got
everything you need, I'll head back home.
I've got those damned lawyers waiting. At
least this
time it's for something
productive. My signature goes
on a
document, and the suit's settled once and for all."

King
lifted his coffee cup. "I hear Meredith Cal-
houn just won an award
for her latest book."

The green eyes kindled, and the
lean face seemed
to close up. Obviously
this writer, whoever she was,
was a
touchy subject for Blake Donavan, Elissa noted.

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Palmer

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King

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Had King brought up
the name deliberately? she won
dered.

"I've
got work to do," Donavan said tersely. "See
you, Roper. Miss
Dean," he added, touching the brim
of his hat, and was
gone.

"Who's
Meredith Calhoun?" Elissa whispered,
mindful of the open door.

King
sighed. "That's a long story," he replied, ap
parently unwilling to delve
into it.

"He's a hard-looking man," she ventured.

"Pure
diamond," he agreed, "and it goes straight through. If he looks hard,
it's because life made him hard. He was illegitimate, and his mother died in
childbirth.
He was taken in by a crusty old uncle who adopted him and gave him his name.
The uncle died
last year, and Donavan's been in a hell of a court
battle for
the property ever since."

"I
can see why he won," she remarked, shivering slightly and wondering anew
at King's ready compassion for life's unfortunates. Of course, that com
passion was what had made him
so vulnerable to Bess.... "He's younger than you, isn't he?" she said
weakly, dragging her thoughts back to the present.

His dark
eyes narrowed on her face. "Yes. Eight
years. He's almost thirty-two. Why? Does
he appeal
to you?"

She
blinked. That sounded amazingly like jealousy.
Why on earth should
he feel possessive about her when it was Bess he loved?

Without
waiting for her reply—besides, she was
too stunned and
confused to offer one—he got to his
feet. "I've got a full day's work
ahead of me."

"Not in your office, I gather?" she fished.

"On
my ranch," he said, leaning down to press a
hard, warm kiss on her
parted lips. "This is how I
relax, tidbit—by keeping busy. Manual labor
built this ranch."

"You
look like a cowboy," she mused, surprised
by the ardent kiss.

"I am a cowboy," he
replied, searching her blue
eyes. "I
can travel first-class and buy damned near
anything I want, but what I like best is a horse under
me and open land around me and a night sky to
sleep
under."

"Do
you?" She reached up to him, and amazingly,
he came to her,
letting her have his mouth. She kissed
him warmly and was stunned by the softness
of his
lips, by his eager participation in
a caress that had
nothing to do with
sex.

"Want
to come see the calves later?" he asked as
he lifted his head.
"If you're good, I'll even let you
pet one."

"Yes, I'd like to," she said, smiling lazily.

He drew
in a slow, pleased breath as his eyes drank
in her lovely face.
"Fairy face," he whispered. He
bent again, brushing
her mouth with his. "I'll see you
at lunch. Don't let
Margaret talk you to death."

"I like Margaret," she murmured.

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Diana
Palmer

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King

161

"Margaret
likes you, too, baby doll," Margaret
said from the
doorway with a platter of eggs in her
hand. She grinned toothily at King.
"You lucky man,
you."

King
actually flushed. "I've got work to do," he
mumbled, and he left
them both there, pulling his hat
down over his eyes with a jerk as he strode
noisily
from the room.

"Only
walks that way when I've annoyed him,"
Margaret assured her,
grinning even wider. "But
you're the first girl he's brought home to
me to visit
in a long, long time, so I reckon he's in pretty deep.
But you
watch him; he's no choirboy. He can be right
dangerous in full
pursuit."

Elissa
burst out laughing. "Oh, Margaret, you're a
jewel," she
said, and meant it. "He doesn't love me,
you know. I'm just
his friend, that's all."

Margaret
nodded as she sat down. "That's right,
and I'm a Halloween
pumpkin," she agreed. She
helped herself to a cup of coffee and folded
her hefty
forearms on the table. She stared straight at Elissa.
"Now,
tell me about yourself. I hear you design clothes."

It was
like the Spanish Inquisition. By the time
Elissa was allowed
to escape and go exploring around
the house, Margaret knew her favorite
perfume, her
entire family history—she'd hooted with delight upon
learning
King had brought home a minister's daugh
ter—and as much as
possible of her potential future.

The ranch
itself was a new experience. There were well-kept stables housing beautiful
Appaloosas, cattle
everywhere and a bull who seemed to have his own
building
and a full-time caretaker. He was red and white, like most of the cattle, and
as big as a house.
When King came home at lunchtime, he found her at
the barn,
staring at the creature.

"His
name is King's Pride 4120," he informed her
smugly, hands in his
pockets. "He's out of the foun
dation herd of Herefords Bobby's
grandfather began
here, but I've improved the strain with selective
breeding."

"Why
does he have a number?" she asked. "Has
he been arrested or
something?"

"That
gets complicated." He threw an affectionate
arm around her
shoulders and led her back to the
house, explaining things like embryo
transplants and
daily weight-gain ratios and all the intricacies of
breeding
superior beef cattle. The technical informa
tion rattled around
in Elissa's head like marbles, but it was fascinating all the same.

"Margaret's
making beef-salad sandwiches for
lunch," she told him on the front
porch, where the
big green swing and several rocking chairs faced the open
plains.

"How
much has she dragged out of you so far?"
he asked with a raised
eyebrow and a dry smile.

"Before
or after she got to the color of my under
wear?" She
laughed.

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Diana
Palmer

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King

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He just shook his head.

Lunch was quiet.
Margaret went off to listen to the
news while she worked in the kitchen,
and King
didn't seem inclined to talk. Afterward, he saddled a
horse for
her with the ease of long practice and helped
her into the saddle.
This, at least, was familiar; they'd
gone riding together in Jamaica
several times over the
past two years. She glanced at him under the
brim of
her borrowed straw hat, thinking how everything
about him
was familiar to her and yet subtly different
these days.

He caught
her glance and grinned. "Remember the day we rode down the beach
hell-for-leather, and you
fell off in the surf?"

"I'm
holding on tight this time," she retorted,
wrapping the reins
around her hand. "Lead on, cow
boy; you won't lose me."

"Let's see."

He took
off, nudging his Appaloosa gelding to a
quick lead. She
followed on her mare, laughing de
lightedly at the open land and his
company and the
sunny afternoon.

The calves
were Herefords, and not newborn as
she'd expected. The calves started
coming in Febru
ary and March, he told her, to coincide with his breed
ing
program. They were fattened up and then sold
when they reached
the desired weight.

"It's
so sad to think of eating them," she mused

while she scratched a
white-topknotted head above
soulful brown eyes. "Isn't he cute?"

He leaned
against the fence post, his hat pushed
back, his eyes
watchful. "They tell stories about the cattle drives in the old days and
how close the cattle
got to their drovers. They say that sometimes
the cow
boys had to actually go with the cattle into the ab-
batoirs,
to keep them from stampeding. They bawled
when the drovers
started to leave them."

Tears
sprang to her eyes. She was vaguely embar
rassed at her
sentimentality and tried to hide her re
action, but he saw
her tears. He caught her gently by the shoulders, turning her. He bent, lifting
her into his
arms, and carried her back to the horses.

"I'm
sorry," she whispered.

"You
soft-hearted little greenhorn," he whispered
back, and he smiled
as he brought his mouth with
exquisite tenderness to hers.

He'd meant
it to be a sweet, comforting gesture,
but her mouth opened beneath his, and
his breath
stopped in his throat. He hesitated, but only for a
second.
Then he carried her away from the horses and
laid her down in the
tall buffalo grass, his lean body settling completely over her.

"King!"
she gasped.

"Elissa,"
he breathed huskily. He kissed her hun
grily, giving in to
the aching need, the long nights of
wanting her. He reached under her to
catch her hips
and drag them lazily against his, letting her feel the