The Princess Bride

He pursed his lips. He might as well humor her. “That sounds dangerous,” he said softly.

“It will be,” she promised, teasing him with her eyes. “You might even notice that I’ve grown up.”

He frowned a little. That flirting wasn’t new, but it was disturbing lately. He found himself avoiding little Miss Blair, without really understanding why. His body stirred even as he looked at her, and he moved restlessly in the saddle. She was years too young for him, and a virgin to boot, according to her doting, sheltering father. All those years of obsessive parental protection had led to a very immature and unavailable girl. It wouldn’t do to let her too close. Not that anyone ever got close to Kingman Marshall, not even his infrequent lovers. He had good reason to keep women at a distance. His upbringing had taught him too well that women were untrustworthy and treacherous.

“What time?” he asked on a resigned note.

“About seven?”

He paused thoughtfully for a minute. “Okay.” He tilted his wide-brimmed hat over his eyes. “But only for an hour or so.”

“Great!”

He didn’t say goodbye. Of course, he never had. He wheeled the stallion and rode off, man and horse so damned arrogant that she felt like flinging something at his tall head. He was delicious, she thought, and her body felt hot all over just looking at him. On the ground he towered over her, lean and hard-muscled and sexy as all hell. She loved watching him.

With a long, unsteady sigh, she finally turned away and remounted her mare. She wondered sometimes why she bothered hero-worshiping such a man. One of these days he’d get married and she’d just die. God forbid that he’d marry anybody but herself!

That was when the first shock of reality hit her squarely between the eyes. Why, she had to ask herself, would a man like that, a mature man with all the worldly advantages, want a young and inexperienced woman like herself at his side? The question worried her so badly that she almost lost control of her mount. She’d never questioned her chances with King before. She’d never dared. The truth of her situation was unpalatable and a little frightening. She’d never even considered a life without him. What if she had to?

As she rode back toward her own house, on the property that joined King’s massive holdings, she noticed the color of the grass. It was like barbed wire in places, very dry and scant. That boded ill for the cattle, and if rain didn’t come soon, all that new grass was going to burn up under a hot Texas sun. She knew a lot about the cattle business. After all, her father had owned feedlots since her youth, and she was an only child who worked hard to share his interests. She knew that if there wasn’t enough hay by the end of summer, King was going to have to import feed to get his cattle through the winter. The cost of that was prohibitive. It had something to do with black figures going red in the last column, and that could mean disaster for someone with a cow-calf operation the size of King’s.

Ah, well, she mused, if King went bust, she supposed that she could get a job and support him. Just the thought of it doubled her over with silvery laughter. King’s pride would never permit that sort of help.

Even the Guadalupe was down. She sat on a small rise in the trees, looking at its watery width. The river, like this part of Texas, had a lot of history in it. Archaeologists had found Indian camps on the Guadalupe that dated back seven thousand years, and because of that, part of it had been designated a National Historic Shrine.

In more recent history, freight handlers on their way to San Antonio had crossed the river in DeWitt County on a ferryboat. In Cuero, a nice drive from Lariat, was the beginning of the Chisolm Trail. In nearby Goliad County was the small town of Goliad, where Texas patriots were slaughtered by the Mexican army back in 1836, just days after the bloodbath at the Alamo. Looking at the landscape, it was easy to imagine the first Spanish settlers, the robed priests founding missions, the Mexican Army with proud, arrogant Santa Anna at its fore, the Texas patriots fighting to the last breath, the pioneers and the settlers, the Indians and the immigrants, the cowboys and cattle barons and desperadoes. Tiffany sighed, trying to imagine it all.

King, she thought, would have fitted in very well with the past. Except that he had a blasé attitude toward life and women, probably a result of having too much money and time on his hands. Despite his hard work at roundup, he spent a lot of time in his office, and on the phone, and also on the road. He was so geared to making money that he seemed to have forgotten how to enjoy it. She rode home slowly, a little depressed because she’d had to work so hard just to get King to agree to come to her party. And still haunting her was that unpleasant speculation about a future without King.

Her father was just on his way out the door when she walked up from the stables. The house was stucco, a big sprawling yellow ranch house. It had a small formal garden off the patio, a swimming pool behind, a garage where Tiffany’s red Jaguar convertible and her father’s gray Mercedes-Benz dwelled, and towering live oak and pecan trees all around. The Guadalupe River was close, but not too close, and Texas stretched like a yellow-green bolt of cloth in all directions to an open, spacious horizon.

“There you are,” Harrison Blair muttered. He was tall and gray-headed and green-eyed. Very elegant, despite his slight paunch and his habit of stooping because of a bad back. “I’m late for a board meeting. The caterer called about your party…something about the cheese straws not doing.”

“I’ll give Lettie a ring. She’ll do them for her if I ask her nicely,” she promised, grinning as she thought of the elderly lady who was her godmother. “King’s coming to my party. I ran him to ground at the river.”

He looked over his glasses at her, his heavily lined face vaguely reminiscent of an anorexic bassett hound; not that she’d ever have said anything hurtful to her parent. She adored him. “You make him sound like a fox,” he remarked. “Careful, girl, or you’ll chase him into a hollow stump and lose him.”

“Not me,” she laughed, her whole face bright with young certainty. “You just wait. I’ll be dangling a diamond one of these days. He can’t resist me. He just doesn’t know it yet.”

He only shook his head. She was so young. She hadn’t learned yet that life had a way of giving with one hand, only to take back with the other. Oh, well, she had plenty of years to learn those hard lessons. Let her enjoy it while she could. He knew that King would never settle for a child-woman like his beautiful daughter, but it was something she was going to have to accept one of these days.

“I hope to be back by four,” he said, reaching down to peck her affectionately on one cheek. “Are we having champagne? If we are, I hope you told the caterer. I’m not breaking out my private stock until you get married.”

“Yes, we are, and yes, I told them,” she assured him. “After all, I don’t become twenty-one every day.”

He studied her with quiet pride. “You look like your mother,” he said. “She’d be as proud of you as I am.”

She smiled faintly. “Yes.” Her mother had been dead a long time, but the memories were bittersweet. The late Mrs. Blair had been vivacious and sparkling, a sapphire in a diamond setting. Her father had never remarried, and seemed not to be inclined toward the company of other women. He’d told Tiffany once that true love was a pretty rare commodity. He and her mother had been so blessed. He was content enough with his memories.

“How many people are we expecting, by the way?” he asked as he put on his Stetson.

“About forty,” she said. “Not an overwhelming number. Just some of my friends and some of King’s.” She grinned. “I’m making sure they’re compatible before I railroad him to the altar.”

He burst out laughing. She was incorrigible and definitely his child, with her keen business sense, he told himself.

“Do you reckon they’ll have a lot in common?”

She pursed her pretty lips. “Money and cattle,” she reminded him, “are always a good mix. Besides, King’s friends are almost all politicians. They pride themselves on finding things in common with potential voters.”

He winked. “Good thought.”

She waved and went to call Lettie about doing the cheese straws and the caterers to finalize the arrangements. She was a good hostess, and she enjoyed parties. It was a challenge to find compatible people and put them together in a hospitable atmosphere. So far, she’d done well. Now it was time to show King how organized she was.

The flowers and the caterer had just arrived when she went down the long hall to her room to dress. She was nibbling at a chicken wing on the way up, hoping that she wouldn’t starve. There was going to be an hors d’oeuvres table and a drinks bar, but no sit-down dinner. She’d decided that she’d rather dance than eat, and she’d hired a competent local band to play. They were in the ballroom now, tuning up, while Cass, the housekeeper, was watching some of the ranch’s lean, faintly disgusted cowboys set up chairs and clear back the furniture. They hated being used as inside labor and their accusing glances let her know it. But she grinned and they melted. Most of them were older hands who’d been with her father since she was a little girl. Like her father, they’d spoiled her, too.

She darted up the staircase, wild with excitement about the evening ahead. King didn’t come to the house often, only when her father wanted to talk business away from work, or occasionally for drinks with some of her father’s acquaintances. To have him come to a party was new and stimulating. Especially if it ended the way she planned. She had her sights well and truly set on the big rancher. Now she had to take aim.

Chapter 2

Tiffany’s evening gown was created by a San Antonio designer, who also happened to own a boutique in one of the larger malls there. Since Jacobsville was halfway between San Antonio and Victoria, it wasn’t too long a drive. Tiffany had fallen in love with the gown at first sight. The fact that it had cost every penny of her allowance hadn’t even slowed her down. It was simple, sophisticated, and just the thing to make King realize she was a woman. The low-cut bodice left the curve of her full breasts seductively bare and the diamanté straps were hardly any support at all. They looked as if they might give way any second, and that was the charm of the dress. Its silky white length fell softly to just the top of her oyster satin pumps with their rhinestone clips. She put her long hair in an elaborate hairdo, and pinned it with diamond hairpins. The small silk gardenia in a soft wave was a last-minute addition, and the effect was dynamite. She looked innocently seductive. Just right.

She was a little nervous as she made her way down the curve of the elegant, gray-carpeted staircase. Guests were already arriving, and most of these early ones were around King’s age. They were successful businessmen, politicians mostly, with exquisitely dressed wives and girlfriends on their arms. For just an instant, Tiffany felt young and uneasy. And then she pinned on her finishing-school smile and threw herself into the job of hostessing.

She pretended beautifully. No one knew that her slender legs were unsteady. In fact, a friend of one of the younger politicians, a bachelor clerk named Wyatt Corbin, took the smile for an invitation and stuck to her like glue. He was good-looking in a tall, gangly redheaded way, but he wasn’t very sophisticated. Even if he had been, Tiffany had her heart set on King, and she darted from group to group, trying to shake her admirer.

Unfortunately he was stubborn. He led her onto the dance floor and into a gay waltz, just as King came into the room.

Tiffany felt like screaming. King looked incredibly handsome in his dark evening clothes. His tuxedo emphasized his dark good looks, and the white of his silk shirt brought out his dark eyes and hair. He spared Tiffany an amused glance and turned to meet the onslaught of two unattached, beautiful older women. His secretary, Carla Stark, hadn’t been invited—Tiffany had been resolute about that. There was enough gossip about those two already, and Carla was unfair competition.

It was the unkindest cut of all, and thanks to this redheaded clown dancing with her, she’d lost her chance. She smiled sweetly at him and suddenly brought down her foot on his toe with perfect accuracy.

“Ouch!” he moaned, sucking in his breath.

“I’m so sorry, Wyatt,” Tiffany murmured, batting her eyelashes at him. “Did I step on your poor foot?”

“My fault, I moved the wrong way,” he drawled, forcing a smile. “You dance beautifully, Miss Blair.”

What a charming liar, she thought. She glanced at King, but he wasn’t even looking at her. He was talking and smiling at a devastating blonde, probably a politician’s daughter, who looked as if she’d just discovered the best present of all under a Christmas tree. No thanks to me, Tiffany thought miserably.

Well, two could play at ignoring, she thought, and turned the full effect of her green eyes on Wyatt. Well, happy birthday to me, she thought silently, and asked him about his job. It was assistant city clerk or some such thing, and he held forth about his duties for the rest of the waltz, and the one that followed.

King had moved to the sofa with the vivacious little blonde, where he looked as if he might set up housekeeping. Tiffany wanted to throw back her head and scream with outrage. Whose party was this, anyway, and which politician was that little blonde with? She began scanning the room for unattached older men.

“I guess I ought to dance with Becky, at least once,” Wyatt sighed after a minute. “She’s my cousin. I didn’t have anyone else to bring. Excuse me a second, will you?”

He left her and went straight toward the blonde who was dominating King. But if he expected the blonde to sacrifice that prize, he was sadly mistaken. They spoke in whispers, while King glanced past Wyatt at Tiffany with a mocking, worldly look. She turned her back and went to the punch bowl.

Wyatt was back in a minute. “She doesn’t mind being deserted,” he chuckled. “She’s found a cattle baron to try her wiles on. That’s Kingman Marshall over there, you know.”