Tragically, 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.”
Fiona went to a cupboard and took down an aspirin bottle from which she shook two tablets into Cara’s palm. “Take those with a big glass of orange juice and then go up and have a hot bath. Maybe you’re just needing the comforts of civilization.” A thin smile curved her lips. “I hear you managed fine.”
“Who told you?”
“El Patrón. Off with you now.”
Cara soaked in a hot tub, but the aches in her muscles did not loosen their grip. “I’ll just crawl into bed for a little while,” she said to herself. Her last thought was to wonder what she would wear that evening.
Cara sensed a dark presence looming over her and opened her eyes. At first she thought she was dreaming, for Jeth Langston often occupied the thoughts of her sleep, but then the dream materialized into reality and placed a tray from which steam rose on her bedside table. “You’ll do anything to delay the inevitable, won’t you?” Jeth said dryly. “Try to sit up. I’ve brought you some soup.”
“What time is it?” Cara wanted to know. Her throat was sore and scratchy. The room spun dizzily when she tried to rise up.
“Eight o’clock. You’ve slept nearly twelve hours.”
“Twelve hours!” As she spoke, Jeth thrust a thermometer into her mouth and indicated that she should move over so he could sit beside her on the bed. The mattress depressed under his weight, and Cara’s hip rolled against his thigh. With a large hand that covered one side of her face, he felt her for fever, then slipped it inside her night shift to the supple curve of her neck and shoulder. When she tensed, he said, “Relax, I’m not going to take advantage of a girl in her sickbed.”
Presently, he removed the thermometer and studied it with a frown. “You do have a fever, a respectable one. I want you to stay in bed for the next few days. A good rest and a diet of Fiona’s soups should do the trick. They’re worth getting sick for.” After he had capped the thermometer, Jeth’s eyes went back to her, moving over the clean, sun-streaked hair and flushed cheeks, the luminous eyes in the softly tanned oval of her face. “Did I say I wouldn’t take advantage of a girl in her sickbed?” he mused, positioning both hands on either side of her hips and gazing deliberately into her eyes. “I would very much like to. Right now. You look deliciously enticing, cuddly as a kitten.”
“And sick, too,” Cara reminded him. “Probably with something highly contagious.”
Jeth’s lips twitched in amusement. “A good point. I’ll just have to keep a tight rein on my ardor, won’t I? Get well quick, little girl.”
But though she rested and dutifully ate the delicious soups Fiona brought her, Cara was a full week in bed. After the second day, Jeth had gone back to the roundup, and Cara had felt a sharp disappointment. Lying in bed, she thought of him every waking moment and knew that she wanted him more than she’d ever wanted anything in her life. There was an aching void in her that only he could fill. She knew she would be incapable of preventing his making love to her. Indeed, she didn’t want to. And perhaps when Jeth had positive proof that she had never been…Ryan’s whore, he would then have to look at her in a different light. He would probably even intuitively perceive why she had come to La Tierra. She could not lead him to the truth, of course. Her promise to Ryan must be kept. But Jeth had known his brother better than anyone, and once he came to know her as well…then who knew where their mutual need of each other might lead once Jeth guessed the truth?
Finally Cara woke one morning and knew her illness was over. She threw the covers back and got out of bed. The early sun was streaming through the bay windows. She padded out to the terrace and followed it around to Jeth’s bedroom, vacant now for nearly a week. She looked out toward the mountains, and her vision fell upon a caravan of horse trailers and pickups followed by a group of men on horseback. “The roundup is over!” she said aloud to the spring sky, eager to dress so that she could meet Jeth out of bed and on her feet.
In the kitchen, Fiona turned from her work to survey Cara with pursed lips. “You look better, but how do you feel?”
“Healthy,” Cara answered, “and hungry.”
“Good sign. El Patrón left word that you are to begin eating solid food.”
“Left word?”
“He’s gone to Dallas on business. Won’t be back for a week or more. The roundup is over; so is the cold weather. The planting has already begun.”
Cara barely heard her. She was suddenly not hungry anymore.
Leon greeted her with warmth and relief, and the members of the roundup crew with comradely good humor when she joined them for lunch in the Feedtrough. She ate with Bill and afterward he led her to the stable where the horses of the headquarters staff were stalled, including Jeth’s. “The boss didn’t want us to turn her loose like we did the rest of the remuda,” Bill explained when Cara, spotting Lady, ran to the mare’s stall with a joyous cry. “I figure he meant her to be yours to ride as long as you’re here.”
“That was kind of him,” she said, her back to Bill. He didn’t see the shadow cloud her eyes.
“Why is there no flower garden?” Cara asked Fiona that evening as they were eating their supper in the kitchen. Cara had gone exploring over the grounds of the house in the afternoon and found that, except for the oleanders bordering the formal approach to the entrance, no flowers of any kind had been included in the landscaping.
Thin shoulders shrugged. “Nothing at La Tierra is here for beauty’s sake, señorita. Everything must have a function and be productive, be it man or horse, woman or child. The care of flowers takes up valuable time and soil and water. El Patrón has never ordered a flower garden be planted, only the vegetable fields and orchard.”
There should be flowers at La Tierra, Cara decided, thinking of the barren graves at the cemetery. The house needed flowers to enliven its rooms with beauty and color.
The next day she found an ideal location for a flower garden. It was a bare, unused portion of land outside the ten-foot walls, facing the desert. “Do you think you could buy this list of flower seeds for me when you go into town tomorrow?” Cara asked Fiona.
The small brown eyes peered at the list. “You intend planting these? Without El Patrón’s permission?”
“Yep!” Cara said emphatically, using the vernacular she had picked up from the roundup. The list contained the names of regional flowers she had read about in a book from Ryan’s room.
The garden plot would be hard to clear. There were weeds to pull, rocks to be moved, and rocky, sandy soil to be improved with manure and topsoil she’d have to persuade Bill to bring her from the vegetable fields. She had never seen them, but she knew they were the source of the vegetables she’d helped to prepare for the Feedtrough’s tables. “Keep a cowboy’s stomach happy,” Leon was fond of saying, “and you keep him happy.” Apparently that was one of the strategies that Jeth Langston employed to keep his men loyal and contented. Flowers were not a big seller.
That afternoon, Cara, wearing shorts and a halter top, began to clear the land for the planting of the flower seeds that Fiona promised to bring her. For several days she hauled out the larger rocks, which could serve, her mind ran ahead, for a natural limestone fence to protect the garden from the encroachment of grass. As she worked, the sun evened the light tan that she had already acquired on her forearms and at the V-neck openings of her shirts.
Bill, seeing her go into the barn to shovel manure into plastic bags, grabbed a shovel and helped her. “Boss know you’re doin’ this?”
“Nope! But what kind of guy would object to a flower garden?”
At the end of a warm day, she would look longingly at the pool. It would be just like him, she thought, to return unexpectedly and find me in it. “Miss Martin,” she mimicked the rancher’s deep voice, “didn’t I tell you not to use the possessions of my house unless I give you permission to do so?”
May was nearly gone. The seeds of zinnias and portulaca, achillea and bachelor buttons had been planted and waited for the miracle of germination. Cara lay in bed in a thin, short nightgown, her limbs still warm and silky from her evening bath, her scalp still tingling from a vigorous brushing. But though she was bone-tired, sleep would not come. Pushing back the covers, she decided that Ryan’s room might offer something to read until she grew sleepy.
Pattering in slippered feet back along the hall with an armful of books, Cara came to an abrupt halt. Jeth Langston, looking every inch the wealthy Texan in an impeccable light gray Western suit and Stetson, stood at his door, one hand on the doorknob, the other holding a leather briefcase. He registered her presence without expression for an interminable length of time, it seemed to Cara, long enough for her to wonder if he were having difficulty remembering who she was. “Oh, I—” she stammered, like a car starting up without the least idea of its destination. Her knees were weak from the sudden sight of him. “You’ve been gone for over two weeks” was all she could think of to say.
“You’ve been keeping count?” he asked dryly.
“Yes, I…have a calendar—” She had thrown it away only yesterday when she could no longer bear to keep track of the swiftly passing days of her tenure on The Conquered Land. Jeth’s eyes had left hers and were roaming in cool calculation over her figure. Cara realized suddenly how scantily she was clad.
“Excuse me,” she said, hurriedly moving past him. “I have forgotten my robe.”
Jeth blocked her passage by simply stepping in front of her. “Not quite yet, Miss Martin. How are you? Over your bout with the flu, I see.”
“Yes. I hardly remember it now.”
“So it would seem from that glowing tan. Have you been riding Lady? If you have, it’s been with nothing on.”
“I have not been riding Lady with nothing on, Mr. Langston!” Cara was shocked. “I—I’ve been planting a garden.”
Dark eyebrows rose. “A garden? What kind of garden?”
“A flower garden. I—I found a small area that wasn’t being used for anything, and I planted some flower seeds.”
“Why did you do that, Miss Martin?”
Cara hesitated. Why had she done that? “Why, I…thought your house should have cut flowers in the rooms. They’re so…austere. And there are no flowers for the cemetery—”
Biting her lip, Cara bent her head in sudden embarrassment. Who was she to decide that his home and the graves of his family should be adorned with flowers? He had every right to think her presumptuous.
“You think my house austere, Miss Martin?”
“Well, I—it’s a very imposing house, Mr. Langston, and…immaculately maintained—”
“But austere.”
“Well, uh, yes, actually.” Cara felt the light touch of two cool fingertips beneath her chin. They lifted her head to meet an inspection that showed a surprising trace of humor.
“Tomorrow morning you will show me this garden of yours.”
“Yes, of course. Is it all right if I look these over?” In a fluster, she indicated the books. Anything to be rid of the disconcerting fingertips. “I wouldn’t have taken them if they were yours, but since they were Ryan’s—”
The humor vanished. “These belong to me now, Miss Martin. Everything that was once Ryan’s belongs to me now—with one exception. However, take them along. Good night.”
The rancher let her pass, and she hurried along to her room, conscious of his gaze following her. His last words lingered in her ears. She wondered which of Ryan’s possessions was the exception to which he was referring: the land or her?
“He wants you to join him for dinner tonight,” Fiona announced to her the next morning. “Seven o’clock in the study.”
“I was to show him the garden plot this morning,” Cara said.
“He’s been gone since before daybreak,” Fiona answered. “I don’t know where.”
Aimlessly, disappointment like a sharp knife inside her, Cara roamed around the kitchen. She was wearing a wraparound cover-up over a matching pair of shorts and halter top. The mornings were still cool, but even if they hadn’t been, Cara would have worn the cover-up to show Jeth the garden.
“Where does Mr. Langston stay when he’s in Dallas?” she asked Fiona. The housekeeper was sitting at the table drinking coffee and reading the Dallas Morning News.
“He has a town house there. Most often, though, he stays at the ranch of the Jeffers. They are longtime friends of the Langstons. El Patrón will be marrying Señorita Jeffers, the daughter, this year.” Fiona folded the paper to a section she had been reading and handed it to Cara. “This is a picture of her. Very beautiful, no?”
Silently, her heart halted in midbeat, Cara took the newspaper. It was folded to the society page and showed a picture of Jeth with a stunning brunette who was looking up at him and smiling. They were in evening clothes, and the caption explained that they were at a charity ball. The accompanying article said wedding bells would be ringing for the handsome pair as soon as the estate of the famous La Tierra Conquistada was settled.
“Yes, she’s very beautiful,” said Cara tonelessly, returning the paper to Fiona. “I’ll go on with my work since I don’t think Mr. Langston will be coming.”