Lacy (24 page)

He got out of the runabout and walked up onto
the porch with a step slower than his usual one. Lacy was in the living room,
but she came into the hall when she heard him. She looked as Victorian as Cole
this afternoon, dressed in a very correct, high-necked, gray and white dress,
not one of her short and fashionable ones. Her eyes were as icy cold as Cole's
had ever been.

"Thank you very much for destroying my
marriage—what there was of it," she said to him. "Cole was never
meant to know. You promised you'd never tell him!"

He winced at the whip of her words. He'd always
loved Lacy, even if she couldn't see him for dust. She could hurt him more than
anyone else in the world.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly. "He
accused me of marrying for money and said that only a weasel would live on a
woman's wealth. I lost my temper and hit back."

Lacy felt faint. After that, to tell Cole that
he'd been living on Lacy's money had been a cruelty beyond words. Her eyes
closed and her face paled. "I see."

"He got even," he said huskily.
"He told me about Mother with no preamble at all."

Lacy stared at him. "Do you care?" she
asked. "You've cut Faye up like a Sunday chicken, you've ruined my
marriage, you've decided that wealth and position are worth more than your
family's pride or your self-respect. I can't imagine that you feel anything
these days, Bennett."

"You're wrong," he said. "You're
so wrong."

"Your mother is giving you an engagement
party," she continued, unabashed. "It may be the last party she ever
gives. You are coming to it, with your fiancee, if I have to have Cole and Turk
drive up to San Antonio and bring you here roped and laid over a saddle. Do you
understand me, Bennett? You are going to do this one thing for your mother. And
there had better be no snide remarks about the way we live from your
intended."

Ben went rigid with wounded pride.
"Threats, Lacy?"

"Promises," she corrected. "Your
fiancee isn't the only wealthy person in San Antonio." She smiled with
cold intent. "In point of fact, I have twice her wealth and ten times her
contacts among the right people." Her blue eyes narrowed with venomous
fury, something that Ben had never been on the receiving end of before.
"One word from me in the right ears, and your precious newspaper will lose
enough advertisers to go under. Do I make myself perfectly clear?"

His breath drew in quickly. "You
wouldn't."

"I would do anything for Marion and
Cole," she replied.

"Not for me?" he asked, wounded.

"I'll tell you something, Bennett,"
she said quietly. "My youngest isn't going to be a spoiled brat whose
selfishness extends to every single facet of his life. You exist for one
person's pleasure—your own. You won't even give a thought to the lives you
damage, the hurt you inflict, so long as you have what you want."

Ben colored. "That isn't true!"

"You cold-bloodedly seduced little Faye and
then refused to have anything to do with her, after you'd ruined her
reputation," she said. "You threw a family secret at Cole that
destroyed what little happiness I'd managed to find here. You hesitated so long
about answering Marion's letter concerning your engagement party that she
convinced herself you were too ashamed of her to let your society fiancee set
foot here."

His face stiffened as the words hit home.
"I'm not ashamed of my mother," he choked.

"She thinks you are," Lacy replied.
"That's why you're coming to the party."

"Cole won't let you pay for it—and he can't
afford it," Ben muttered quietly.

"He agreed before you came along and hurt
his pride. He won't go back on his word, even if he wants to. I'll finance the
social event, and try to make sure that the house lives up to your expectations,"
she added, with cold sarcasm that stiffened him. "After that, I'm going
back to San Antonio to live unless your mother is too frail for me to
leave."

"What about Cole?" he asked.

"What about him?" she said, lifting
her head proudly. "It's a pity you don't know what happened to him. If you
had an ounce of compassion in your entire body, you'd probably drown yourself
for the things you've said to him about the war over the years."

She turned on her heel and went back into the
living room. This time, she closed the door behind her.

Ben went to his mother's room, feeling as if
he'd been kicked. He went in and sat by the bed.

"Hello, dear," Marion said. "I
didn't know you were here until noon. I slept, I suppose."

"It's good for you to rest," he said
evasively.

"Coleman told you?" she asked.

He nodded, drawing in a wretched breath.
"Oh, Mama," he groaned.

She held out her arms and drew him to her,
rocking him gently, cooing above his head as she had when he was an infant. Her
youngest. Her very favorite. Although she made sure the others didn't know,
Bennett was her whole heart. It was going to hurt him much more than Cole and
Katy when the time came. But meanwhile, at least she could comfort him. Her
poor baby.

Later, when he was calm, she mentioned the party
very hesitantly.

He felt guilty at what he'd said and thought as
he saw the apprehension in her tired eyes.

"It's very kind of you to give us a
party," he said. "We'll be very happy to come. I'm sure you'll like
Jessica."

She smiled radiantly, and he was glad he'd
agreed. But inwardly he was dreading it. Jessica wasn't all that likable,
except to a man in bed. She was a snob and she had a cutting tongue. She could
very easily savage his gentle mother, and if she found the house and
furnishings shoddy, she wouldn't hesitate to say so.

That could have terrible repercussions. Cole
wouldn't tolerate rudeness, and Lacy had made a threat that unsettled Ben
greatly. She was, indeed, more well-to-do than Jessica and her father, and a
newspaper ran on goodwill and generosity of its advertisers. Advertising kept
the doors open. If Lacy influenced people to stop those ads—and give them to a
rival paper—it wouldn't take long for Ben's journalistic career to become a
thing of the past.

He'd have to cross that bridge when he came to
it. Meanwhile it would be politic to get back to San Antonio before Cole came
home. After the anguish he'd caused, it would be safer out of reach of Cole's
tongue and Lacy's icy formality. Not to mention out of reach of Faye's soft
arms. He felt terrible guilt about his seduction of her. She loved him, and
he'd used her. Today had made it all worse, somehow. Making love to her had
kindled something incredible inside him, something that Jessica couldn't give
him in a hundred years. Jessica was hard and cold and mercenary, even as she
was sexually exciting. Faye was vulnerable and gentle and loving, and what she gave
him in bed made him spin from dizzy pleasure. But Jessica was rich and Faye
wasn't. He had to keep that in mind. The problem was remembering it, and not
Faye's voice whispering that she loved him more than her own life.

Cole came in very late. Marion was asleep, and
Lacy was clearing away the dishes.

"Where's my brother?" he asked, having
whipped himself into a furious temper. He'd come home with the express purpose
of thrashing Ben to a bloody pulp.

"In San Antonio, I imagine," Lacy said
coolly. "He borrowed the runabout. Marion said it was all right."

"She would. He's her favorite," Cole
replied.

"You aren't supposed to know." She put
the butter in the icebox and folded the linen cloth on the table. "Have
you written Katy about Marion?"

"Yes."

She didn't ask anything else. He was obviously
in no mood for conversation. Neither was she.

He watched her work, his eyes sad and irritated.
She'd given him so much. He'd given her very little over the years, save his
indifference and his lust and, reluctantly, his name. She'd saved the ranch
from ruin, and he'd cursed her for it. But it was hard on his pride to work as
fiercely as he did and still fall short of her wealth.

"I'll be leaving after the party, if Marion doesn't need me," Lacy said quietly.

His heart stopped beating. He didn't want that.
God, he didn't want that! It would tear him apart to have to lose her twice.

"Unless Katy comes home, which is doubtful,
there won't be anyone else to look after Mother," he said.

Lacy didn't flatter herself that he wanted her
here. She was simply a convenience. "Very well. I'll stay.. .as long as
I'm needed."

He hesitated. She knew everything there was to
know about him now. It made him feel vulnerable, raw. "What I told
you..."

She turned, her eyes cool, her body poised.
"Will go no further," she said instantly, misunderstanding his
hesitant beginning. "I should have thought you'd know without
asking."

His face went hard. "It wasn't a question.
I owed you the truth, I suppose."

"Only the truth," she said angrily.
"If you prefer to, why not think of the money as a gift to Katy and Marion
and Ben? They were my family all those years since my own were lost at
sea."

"Them, and not me?" he asked, trying
not to show how painful it was that she didn't include him.

"You never wanted me around," she
said, with dignity. "I was an embarrassment when I was trailing around
after you, an encumbrance when you left for war, and an unwanted burden as a
wife. I never was able to think of you as family, now more than ever."

His jaw tautened. "You wanted me."

She swallowed. "I loved you," she
said, correcting him. "But love eventually dies
...
like a flower that has no place in the sun to warm
itself." She lowered her eyes.

"Then you don't—" he hesitated
"—love me?"

Her eyes went to the window. "I don't want
to love you," she said, correcting him. "I imagine if I work at it
quite hard, I'll accomplish it one day."

His eyes closed. "Lacy," he whispered
huskily. "God, how did it ever come to this?"

She lifted her face and saw his tormented expression.
"You'll only be getting what you wanted all along," she said tautly.
"To be rid of me!" she cried, and turned to run out of the room.

"No!"

He caught her, whipping her into his arms, bent
over her with anguished eyes in a face that was paper-white. "No!" he
groaned, dragging in a harsh breath as he rocked her against him. "I—don't
want to be rid of you," he managed unsteadily.

She felt as if time stopped all around them,
spinning a web of sudden silence and hesitation. She became aware of Cole's
breathing, quick and labored, of his hard pulse against her breasts. He smelled
of leather and hemp and honest sweat, and at least he felt something for her.
Or was it because of Marion that he was giving the impression that he did?

Chapter Eleven

Cole
felt Lacy trembling and
he felt bad, he seemed to never get on the right foot with her. He'd hurt her
again. He didn't know what to do, what to say, to make things right.

"I won't leave Marion," Lacy said
shakily. "This.. .isn't necessary. You don't have to pretend that you mind
if I leave."

He lifted his head, looking down at her with
hard, glittery eyes. "But I do mind. I always did."

"You didn't even write."

"What could I have said?" he asked
quietly. "That I felt like some kind of animal after I'd finished with
you, and you cried and.. .bled..." He let her go abruptly and moved away,
anguish in every line of his body.

Lacy was startled by the action. "It was my
first time," she said, hesitant to talk about something so intimate even
with her own husband. "I had a married girlfriend in San Antonio, who
...
explained it to me. It's unpleasant for
some women. I was simply unlucky."

"In more ways than one. If I'd been more
experienced, it might have been easier for you." He leaned his shoulder
against the wall, unable to look directly at her. "I couldn't take that
again," he said heavily. "I didn't go after you because I thought
you'd never want me to touch you, and I still wanted to." "You didn't
say that."