Ryan's Hand (13 page)

“Yes,” she said through clenched teeth. “I happen to have some on at the moment. Do you mind?”

“
I
certainly don't, but you might. The important thing is for you not to get a chill.”

“Why?” she asked. “That would put an end to your problem, wouldn't it—if I caught pneumonia and died?”

“That would certainly not be in my best interests,” the rancher replied, kneeling down to stoke the fire. “You're worth more to me alive than dead. I need you alive to sign over Ryan's share of La Tierra.”

Cara fell back into the folds of the slicker, abashed. Ryan's share of La Tierra was all he cared about.
She
had not been the reason he had braved the storm.
She
was not the concern of the moment. How could she be so in love with a man whose only interest in her was her signature?

With a muted cry, Cara stood up.

“What is it, Miss Martin?” Jeth glanced up at her in alarm. “You look as if you've been struck by lightning.”

T
ragically, Cara stared down at the dark head, the high cheek-boned face, the puzzled eyes caught in the flickering glow of the flames—and slowly sank to her seat again.

“What's wrong?” Jeth asked.

“Nothing,” she whispered. “Nothing at all.”

“Women always say that. They can be drowning in tears, or wringing their hands off, or staring into tomorrow—like you're doing right now—and still say ‘nothing' when they're asked what's wrong. So what's wrong?”

Slowly she answered, “Ryan was on my mind—no, my heart—all day, or so I thought…”

Jeth turned back to the fire, his expression grave. He finished stoking it, then threw the stick he had used into the pit. Straightening up, he said, “You know how to ruin a good evening, don't you?” and went to the mouth of the cave to observe the storm.

Cara watched the tall figure gazing out into the lightning-illumined night, an ache within her so intense that she thought she would die from it. “I love you,” she whispered. “I love you,” the revelation so soft that it was lost in the sound of wind and brush lashing at the mouth of their shelter.

A bright crack of lightning struck near the cave. “Jeth!” She was on her feet, shaking. “Come away from there! It's dangerous to stand so close to the opening!”

Startled, Jeth turned to her, his stature so great that it blocked the light from the storm. His gaze held hers intently for a brief moment before the horses nickered uneasily, and he went to them, speaking low. Cara watched him run a hand along their quivering flanks, heard his deep murmur, and sat down again, consumed with envy.

“How did you know where to find me?” she asked, almost sullenly, when he had joined her.

“I saw you from the plane when we were coming in to land. If I hadn't, the entire roundup crew would have been out looking for you—led by Leon,” Jeth added wryly. “You showed bad judgment in going out on horseback with a storm coming.”

“You cut it pretty close yourself. A plane is as susceptible to lightning as someone on horseback. Doesn't that pilot of yours know when it's safe to fly?”

Jeth gave her a long, measuring look. “No, Miss Martin. That isn't going to work.”

Perplexed, Cara asked, “What isn't going to work?”

“This sudden interest in my safety.”

Cara sighed. “Can't you take anything I say at face value?”

“I'd be a fool to, wouldn't I? You're proving the most formidable enemy I've ever had to fight.”

Taken aback, Cara exclaimed, “Me? What have I done now to make you think such a thing?”

“You're trying to beat me at my own game, as if you didn't know, and you've very nearly succeeded. I bring you up here, expecting you to last maybe a week before you begged to sign on the dotted line. I expected you to turn tail the first time a scorpion crawled out of your boot, the first time you heard the squeal of a rabbit being eaten alive by a coyote. But you turned the tables on me. You made yourself an asset to the roundup rather than the liability I anticipated. You made yourself indispensable to Leon. You endured without complaint what has sent some cowboys packing their bags. You've been cheerful and agreeable when you could have been sullen and bitchy. Oh, Miss Martin”—Jeth shook his head in wonder—“the more I'm around you, the easier it is for me to see how you got to Ryan. The devil himself would have a hard time holding out against you.”

Speechless, Cara thought sickly, He's twisted everything! “But why?” she demanded. “What would be the motive for my behavior except to survive the roundup?”

“To confuse the men's thinking about you, and in that way to drive a wedge into their loyalty to me—to La Tierra. You knew what they were expecting you to be, so you cleverly set out to present yourself as just the opposite—a dignified lady whose manners and conduct would be beyond reproach. Now the men don't know quite what to believe about the brave, lovely
Miss Cara.
They've become quite protective of her, as proved a while ago when they all wanted to come looking for the lost lady in the storm. They're beginning to think of her as the next patrona of La Tierra—of a La Tierra
divided
, Miss Martin, which I will never allow.”

Chills had begun to sweep Cara from head to foot. She had to clench her teeth to keep them from chattering. Beneath the rain slicker, she hugged her body tightly to stanch the hurt spreading within her.

“But the cleverest move of all,” Jeth continued, “is how I've been made to look like the heavy in this little drama.”

Cara spoke through her clenched teeth. “What do you mean?”

“That bruise you wore for a while, your grazed hands—the men thought I was responsible for them.”

“But I explained to Jim and Leon that I
fell
!”

“Leon believed you. Apparently Jim didn't. He must have intimated to the men otherwise.”

“Oh, Mr. Langston, I am
sorry
! Truly I am. Jim thought—would you believe—that…you were
jealous
of us, and apparently that you had struck me out of—well, jealousy.” Warmth flooded her face. She huddled miserably in the raincoat.

“I see. Well now—” He paused as if deciding whether to divulge his next thoughts. Then he resumed casually, “He was right, you know. I was jealous. I owe Ryan's memory an apology for using it as the reason for my reaction when I saw you and my foreman together. And while I'm on the subject of apologies, Leon told me why you were with Jim. If it makes you feel any better, I was doubly sorry that I had misjudged you when I saw your bandaged hands that first night when I zipped you in your sleeping bag.”

Cara was stunned. Jeth Langston jealous? And it had been he who had zipped up her bag that first night? “Uh, Mr. Langston—” She wet her lips. “There's something here I don't understand—”

Jeth scoffed harshly. “Oh, come off it,
Miss Cara.
You know damn well Jim was right. I was jealous, and you knew it even before I did. I wouldn't put it past you to have set the whole thing up, just to get a show of feeling out of me. You're such an expert on men, you knew exactly how I would react.”

“F-for your information”—her chattering teeth made it impossible not to stutter—“I w-would not be fool enough to risk y-your wrath by consorting with any man in y-your employ. F-furthermore, I don't know the foggiest thing about m-men. The only man I ever really knew w-was your brother, but not in the w-way you are determined to think!”

She was beginning to shake visibly from a gripping cold that had penetrated to her bone marrow. Giving her a stern glance, Jeth went to a dark recess in the wall of the cave where Cara could see an ancient wooden box. The lid creaked open as Jeth lifted out a blanket and something that resembled a towel. He brought them to her and explained, “That box is kept here with emergency supplies for La Tierra riders caught in a storm. Unsnap that slicker and wrap yourself in the blanket.” He shook out the towel and inspected it. “This seems clean enough. Dry your hair with it. You've gotten a chill. And you can stop looking at me in such wide-eyed astonishment. I'm not deceived.”

“Maybe you're not, but I certainly am!” Cara snapped, snatching the towel to her. “How could I possibly have known that you would be jealous of Jim and me? Why would you be?”

Only a small distance separated them, and Cara felt the volatile tension growing between them, heightened by the crackling, hissing flames. She countered his direct gaze as bravely as she dared. Then the tension seemed to drain from the broad shoulders.

“All right—” He turned his back to her with a sigh. “Suppose you wrap yourself in that blanket and dry your hair, then tell me about you and Ryan—and how a desirable twenty-four-year-old woman like yourself doesn't know anything about men.”

Cara, warm at last, her hair and body securely wrapped in the towel and blanket, wondered where to begin. Jeth looked so disturbingly male in the way he sat with his elbows on his knees, long fingers locked. The fabric of his Western shirt gripped the breadth of his shoulders and arms, and the leather chaps emphasized the power of his long legs. “Well?” Jeth's dark brows rose. “Begin,” he ordered.

Haltingly at first, Cara began to tell Jeth of her childhood, of how her first passion had been music. Her parents, she explained, had encouraged her to become a concert pianist. She had been educated, until Juilliard, in private girls' schools where, she realized now, her family's aspirations for her were not likely to encounter competition from the opposite sex. At Juilliard, she had just become aware that she was interesting to men when her world suddenly fell apart, went dark. The obligations she had assumed afterward precluded men. After several long years, there had been a light in the darkness. Ryan. He had offered her friendship, nothing else. His death had left her devastated and more alone than she had ever been. Jeth should know there had been no men in her life. They would have been named in that detective's report.

A silence, broken only by the crackling flames and an occasional whinny of the horses, stretched between them when Cara finished her narrative.

“So,” reviewed Jeth, “you are telling me that you've never been with any man, not even Ryan.”

Heat surged to her cheeks independent of the fever alternating with chills attacking her body. “Yes,” she whispered. “You can make what you wish of that information.”

“What I wish is to find out if you are telling me the truth.”

Cara was snapped out of the musing introspection into which she had wandered. “What do you mean?”

“You know what I mean. No, maybe you don't, not if you're as innocent as you claim. I'm prepared to believe that you are—in that way. That doesn't change the fact that you schemed to get La Tierra. You didn't need experience with men to figure out that you'd be quite a prize to a man like Ryan. You held out on him until he was too sick, or too noble, to take what you promised. However, Miss Martin, I am neither.” With lithe grace, Jeth rose to his full, awesome height.

Cara's heart began to race as she realized his meaning. She stood up also, clutching the blanket tightly around her. She was wearing nothing beneath it. “No, Mr. Langston, you wouldn't.”

“Not here, I wouldn't. This is neither the time nor the place. But I intend to find out just how innocent you are, Miss Martin, and then we'll go from there. I'll have at least one straight answer to this puzzle.”

“If you didn't insist on twisting everything I say and do, you'd have all the answers!”

“I twist everything, do I? Do I twist the need I feel in you every time I've held you in my arms? Have I misread the message in those beautiful eyes, misunderstood those soft little moans—”

Her pride made her say it. “Yes, damn you!” Cara gritted, chilled from head to foot.

Jeth laughed down into her indignant eyes as he reached her. “You're such a liar, Miss Cara. I'll just take a moment to prove it to you.”

His arms were wonderfully warm and strong. She could have basked, easily died, in them, but she had to resist. “You're taking advantage of me!” she wailed, gripping the blanket.

“Taking advantage of you? Never!” He trailed a series of warm kisses along her neck. “You'll come to me willingly and gladly. You know it and I know it.”

“I'm inexperienced. You'll be disappointed—”

“You could not possibly disappoint me, that I can promise you.” His lips had begun the return journey to the hollow of her throat.

“Mr. Langston?”

“Yes, Miss Martin?”

“I am going to sneeze.”

Just in time he handed her another of the white folded handkerchiefs. While she sneezed into it, he took the slicker and snapped it around her. “That cold coming on is not going to get you off the hook. It just buys you some time. Sit down by the fire until I saddle the horses. The storm is over. You can wear that blanket beneath the slicker back to camp. Tomorrow you're going back to the ranch.”

“But Leon can't possibly manage the chuckwagon by himself!”

“He won't have to. Toby came in the plane with me. He can take over now. I'd be taking you back with me in any event. I can't risk your splitting any more loyalties, now can I? No matter how innocently. And, Miss Cara, be convinced that I intend to find out just how innocent you are. If that prospect frightens you, you can always sign over Ryan's share to me and leave. The choice is up to you.”

The next morning as they flew over the vast, pumping jack–studded acres that made up Jeth Langston's empire, Cara saw that in her absence spring had arrived at La Tierra Conquistada. The cactus, all varieties and shapes, were flowering, and the rangeland grass shone tender and green under the spring sun. She had forgotten how huge and sprawling the house and ranch compound were. From the air, the swimming pool sparkled blue and clear, and she wondered if Jeth had been able to get in his daily swims on his visits back to the ranch.

“Lucky for me your cold didn't materialize,” Jeth said when he handed Cara down from the plane. The cool gray eyes held a mocking glitter. “You'll have dinner with me tonight. You still haven't played for me. Wear something pretty and join me in the study at seven.”

Before she could reply, he was striding off toward the ranch headquarters. The pilot, a wizened, middle-aged man who served as a cowhand when he wasn't flying his employer's plane, taxied the Bonanza toward its hanger.

Left alone, Cara began the long walk to the house. It was true she did not have the usual symptoms of a cold, but her joints ached and she had a headache.

When Cara greeted her in the kitchen, the housekeeper instantly snapped, “What's the matter with you? Your eyes look bleary.”

“I—I think I'm coming down with something, Fiona. I got caught in a rainstorm yesterday.”