Diamond Spur

“How do you know his bull bred them?” Cherry asked innocently.

Jason looked suddenly hunted, his whole expression set and uncomfortable.

“Go ahead,” Kate dared him. “Tell her.” She knew about the new system of dyes that were used to show a stockman when a cow had been bred, but Cherry had never taken much interest in the cattle. Like Gene, she was more fascinated by art.

Jason took a sharp breath and stood up. “You tell her,” he said to Kate, his tone deep and cutting. “I’ve got better things to do.”

“You might congratulate me on my new job,” Kate said quietly.

He searched her green eyes curiously, his eyes narrowing on her oval face in its frame of dark, softly loosened hair. “I can’t do that. I think you’re making one hell of a big mistake.”

“You didn’t think so when I wanted to take the course in fashion design!” she argued.

“That was just something to help you sew better at the plant, or so I thought. I didn’t realize that San Frio was going to get too small to hold you.”

She stuck her chin up in the air and stared at him, refusing to be told how to live her life. “You’re just jealous because you can’t sew a dress, Jason,” she replied, resorting to teasing to keep from blowing up at him again.

“Oh, hell.” He turned on his heel and walked away without another word or a backward glance.

Kate smothered a grin, sharing a wink with Cherry, who was about to burst with mischief. Jason would come to his senses and then they’d talk about it. For now, he had to get used to the idea, and Kate knew very well how to skirt his moods. She’d had almost three years of practice.

“I never used to believe Gene when he talked about how well you managed to get along with Jason,” Cherry grinned. “But I’m beginning to see the light. My gosh, he takes a lot from you, doesn’t he?”

“From time to time,” Kate agreed with a sigh. “I wish he could understand that women aren’t property anymore. He doesn’t like them very much, you know.”

“It’s hard to miss,” Cherry murmured dryly. “All the same, I guess he’ll marry a woman someday, as long as she’s socially acceptable and doesn’t mind giving him an heir.”

Cherry couldn’t have known how much that supposition hurt Kate, even though she’d already faced it.

“I guess he will,” Kate replied, going quiet. She finished her cobbler and poured herself a cup of coffee from the carafe. She took it black, hardly tasting it as she lifted it to her mouth.

Cherry smiled. “I thought he was going to pass out when you dared him to tell me about those bred cattle.” The younger girl frowned. “How do you tell that a cow’s been bred?”

Kate told her absently, and Cherry just shook her head. “I can’t imagine a man being a rancher who’s too old-fashioned to talk about breeding in mixed company,” Cherry remarked.

Kate bit back a defensive comment. She couldn’t help it that she felt defensive about Jason. Despite her proud defense, she liked a few of his old-fashioned attitudes. In the modern world, where rough language and frank discussions were a matter of course, it was sometimes refreshing to be treated like a lady. Not that Jason cared much who was around when he lost his temper, she mused, but he’d never let Kate near his cows and heifers at breeding time or expose her to cattle that were being put down because of illness. Apparently he thought women were too delicate for that kind of thing.

She’d asked him once why he didn’t want her around the breeding stock, just in passing. He’d said something that had puzzled her at the time—that he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea about it because the cows would sound as if they were in pain and he didn’t want her to be frightened of a natural process. Now that she was older, and had been exposed to at least one racy motion picture, she began to understand what he’d meant. Passion was violent, if what she’d seen was any indication, and on the screen at least, women looked and sounded as if they were being killed. Kate had wondered a time or two if she’d ever sound like that, but she’d never felt passion with the few hometown boys who’d taken her out. She’d only felt that kind of fiery heat with Jason, the day before, and it was still new and a little unnerving.

“Jay just rattled the windows in the front room slamming out the door,” Gene remarked as he rejoined them with another saucer of cobbler. He grinned knowingly at Cherry as she guiltily gulped down the last bite of his after having finished her own.

“It was my fault, I guess,” Kate confessed. “I got a little overheated about his opinion of a woman’s place. Honest to goodness, I think sometimes that he doesn’t know what century this is.”

“You know why, though,” Gene said gently. “You of all people know why.”

Kate sighed. “Yes. But I was so excited about my break,” she smiled. “I wanted to share it.”

“He’ll storm around the barn for a while and then he’ll be all right,” Gene assured her. “Just drink your coffee, Kate, and remember that even the nastiest storm rains out eventually.”

“After it gets through rumbling,” she agreed, and sipped her coffee.

She stayed a few minutes longer, telling them about the new chores she had at the plant and what she was going to work around in her designs. Then, depressed by Jason’s sustained absence, she told them good-bye, waved to Sheila, and went out the front door to go home.

It was a glorious spring night. The sky was clear and the breeze was warm, and the stars looked close enough to touch. There was a whisper of jasmine in the air from the thick bushes at the front steps and at the corner of the house, lilac was just blooming. Kate sighed, smelling it, her eyes on the long horizon. Somewhere cattle were lowing softly, and she thought about the trail drives of the last century, when cowboys would sing to the cattle to calm them.

“Leaving already?”

She stiffened at the unexpected sound of Jason’s voice from the porch. She turned to find him sitting in the porch swing, barely silhouetted in the light from the nearby window. The orange tip of a smoking cigarette waved in his hand as he pushed the swing into motion. Its soft creaking sound was oddly comforting, but Jason’s presence made Kate feel nervous.

She lifted her chin. “Are we still speaking?”

“If you’re through reading me sermons on the modern woman, we are,” he said shortly.

“I might as well be, for all the good it’s done me,” she sighed, and smiled at him, because it was hard to fight with Jason. She understood him all too well, most of the time.

He got out of the swing lazily and strode toward her. Seconds later, he towered over her. The soft light coming out of the window lay on the floor in abstract patterns at her feet.

“I hate fighting with you,” she remarked to break the silence.

“Then don’t do it,” he said lazily, and managed to smile.

But as he smiled, he stared. He hadn’t really come face to face with her career until tonight, and now that he had, he was concerned. He knew that she couldn’t stay a girl forever. But he’d opened up with Kate in ways he couldn’t with even his own brother. He could talk to her. Somehow in the past few years he’d come to think of her as his own, and now she wanted to go away and leave him.

His eyes narrowed as they searched her face and then down her slender, exquisite body. Just lately his affection for her had become physical. He’d told himself that he hadn’t noticed her blossoming figure, but he had. Ever since that sweet interlude by the Bronco when he’d come within a hair of kissing the breath out of her, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. And that wouldn’t do. He couldn’t give her a physical hold on him. He didn’t want commitment with anybody just yet, much less with a girl like Kate who was years younger than he was, and a world apart from him in experience and maturity. She wouldn’t fit into his world. Even if she could, he didn’t want to let her.

But letting go was hard. “Do you even realize what a change it will be, if you get what you think you want?” he said after a minute. “You’ll be thrown into a world you’ve never experienced,” he said.

“It isn’t so different from mine,” she defended.

He lifted his chin, staring down his straight nose at her. “You’re a poor little girl from rural Texas, Kathryn,” he said shortly. “You don’t even know how to speak the language.”

“And I guess you do?” she challenged.

He looked at her half angrily. “Of course I do,” he said shortly. “I’m worth a small fortune. I’ve been moving in monied circles for years.”

Her face went blood red. She’d never considered the differences between herself and Jason as much in her life as she had in the past two days. She knew he was a rich man and she was a poor woman, but she’d never really noticed it before.

“You like to go barefooted and groom horses,” he said on a slow breath. “The people you’ll be associating with in New York will be city sophisticates. You won’t understand the discussions they have, or know the people they talk about, or be knowledgeable about the customs they’ll take for granted. You’ve got a Texas drawl that will stand out, and an innocence that some city man will do his best to relieve you of. If you aren’t careful, you’ll end up a broken flower, used up.”

She glared up at him. “What a glowing character reference,” she said, almost choking on her own pride. “I’m poor white trash, is that how you think of me after all these years?”

Her voice broke and she turned away furiously. But he was one step behind her. Without bothering to worry about consequences, he reached for her hungrily, locking her in his arms. He held fast, her tearstained cheek against his broad chest.

“I don’t want you hurt,” he said curtly. His mouth brushed her forehead, his lean hand smoothed her hair away from her face. “You’d be on your own in the city, with nobody to protect you, and you’re so damned innocent, honey.”

“And who’s to blame for that?” she demanded, hitting at his broad chest.

He took a slow breath. “All right, if you want to put it that way, I guess some of the blame is mine,” he admitted. He nuzzled her dark hair with his cheek. “I’ve tried to help Mary keep you out of trouble, and maybe I’ve gone overboard. It’s just that it’s hard to let go,” he admitted finally, breathing in the scent of her.