Chapter Three
THE LASSITER BAR-D was a working cattle ranch. Besides José Dominguez and Hardy, who were horse wrangler and cook, respectively, Dane employed a ranch manager, Beryl’s husband, Dan, and half a dozen cowhands and other assorted personnel necessary to keep the place running. One man did nothing but look after the purebred bulls. Another took care of the tanks used to water the cattle. Still another was a mechanic.
Tess hadn’t really wanted to let Dane spirit her out of the hospital and down to his ranch, but she hadn’t been strong enough to fight him. He’d cleared it with the doctor, had had her bags—packed by Helen—already in the car, and the minute she was released, had headed straight down to Branntville.
Tess was uneasy about the prospect of several days in Dane’s company. He was acting strangely, and she was nervous—much more so than usual.
He’d never been much of a talker unless he had to socialize as part of his job, so the trip down to Branntville was undertaken in silence. Tess stared out the window, buried in her own thoughts and occupied with the twinges of pain she was still feeling from the wound in her arm.
“Is that a ranch?” she asked when they reached the outskirts of Branntville, her eyes on a huge white-fenced property with a black silhouette of a spur for a logo.
“Yes. Cole Everett and the Big Spur are known all over the state. Cole married his stepsister, Heather Shaw. They have three boys, all teenagers now.”
“It’s very big, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Except for the Brannt Ranch, it’s the biggest north of the King Ranch.”
“Brannt Ranch? Is Branntville named for the people who live there?”
He nodded and indicated a ranch house far in the distance. “King Brannt owns the spread now. Talk about a hard case,” he murmured. “King makes up his own rules as he goes along. He married a beautiful young girl, a model named Shelby Kane, daughter of the movie star Maria Kane. Nobody thought he’d ever marry. He says Shelby came up on his blind side.” He smiled mockingly. “He’d do anything for her.”
“Did she take to ranch life?” Tess asked curiously.
“Like a duck to water. She and King have a son and a daughter. The daughter, I understand, is sweet on one of the Everett boys.”
“What a merger that would be,” Tess said.
“They’re young yet. And marriage isn’t always the end of the rainbow,” he added with faint bitterness.
“I guess it has to have common ground, doesn’t it?” Tess asked absently, staring out at the horizon. “Two people need more than physical attraction to make a marriage.”
He glanced at her. “Such as?”
“Respect,” she said. “Shared interests, similar backgrounds—things like that.”
“And no sex?”
She shifted uneasily, her eyes on the windshield. “I guess if they wanted kids…”
His eyes darkened. “Children aren’t always possible.”
“I suppose not.” She glanced at her hands. “Maybe some people don’t mind intimacy.”
“Tess,” he said heavily. “You don’t have a clue, do you?”
She flushed. “Don’t I?”
His dark eyes played over her profile, and the fire in his blood kindled. She knew nothing of men and women. It was his fault that she had such hang-ups. He’d hurt and frightened her. Now he wished he’d been different. If he could learn tenderness, it would be sweet to lie with her, to share the beauty of a man and a woman together with her. His body tautened as pictures danced in his mind. Tess, loving him. He could have groaned out loud. He’d thrown away something precious. Ironic that it should have taken a bullet to bring him to his senses, when it was a bullet that had robbed him of them in the first place.
“Here’s the ranch.”
He turned in between two rows of barbed-wire fences where red-coated cattle grazed. “I share a purebred Santa Gertrudis stud bull with the Big Spur,” he explained. “We’ll have to replace him pretty soon, though. We’ve been using him for two years, and that’s enough inbreeding.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Are you interested in ranching?” he asked suddenly.
“Well, I don’t know much about it,” she faltered, her gray eyes darting up to his. “I guess it’s complicated, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes. But it isn’t as difficult a subject as it sounds. You don’t ride, either.”
“I guess…I could learn,” she said hesitantly.
He smiled to himself as he rounded a curve, and suddenly they were coming up to a sprawling one-story white wooden frame house with beds of flowers all around it and tall trees.
“How beautiful!” she exclaimed.
Dane’s heart swelled at her delight in it. “It belonged to my grandfather,” he told her. “He left it to me when he died.”
“Oh, it’s charming,” she said breathlessly. “And the flower beds! I’ll bet they’re glorious in the spring!”
“They are Beryl’s contribution to beautifying the landscape. There are magnolia trees and azaleas and camellias, all sorts of blooming things. She can tell you, if you’re interested.”
“I love to garden,” she confessed. “I’ve never had anyplace to do it, except in my apartment window, but I used to do all the yard work at my grandmother’s house.”
He pulled up at the steps and turned off the engine, staring at her quietly. “I don’t know you,” he said, his voice soft and deep. “I don’t know a damned thing about you, Tess.”
“Why would you want to?” she asked evasively. “Look, is that Beryl?” A short, white-haired woman had come onto the porch.
“That’s Beryl.”
“It’s about time you got here!” the woman muttered. “Late, as usual. Is this her?” She stopped in front of Tess and looked her over. “Thin and sickly, she is. I’ll take care of that with some good home cooking. How’s that arm, lovey?” she asked gently. “Still hurt?”
Tess smiled, at home already. “It’s much better.”
“If you’re through running your mouth, I’d like to get the walking wounded into the house,” Dane drawled. “She isn’t going to get better standing out here in the cold.”
“It’s not that cold at all,” Beryl scoffed. “Why, in little more than a month there’ll be flowers everywhere!”
Tess could picture that, but she wouldn’t be around to see it, she thought wistfully. She let Dane help her inside, unable to stop herself from stiffening at the feel of his lean arm around her.
“Don’t panic,” he said curtly as Beryl went ahead to lead the way to the guest room. “I won’t hurt you.”
She colored involuntarily. “Dane…”
Her reticence made him irritable. “Relax, can’t you? You’re among friends.”
“You were never that,” she said stiffly.
“I’m thirty-four years old,” he said as they moved down the long hall. “Maybe I’m tired of being alone. You said once that neither of us has anybody else.”
“And you said once that you didn’t need anyone.”
He shrugged. “I’ve spent