Man Of Ice

“What do you want?” she asked belligerently.

An eyebrow jerked over amused green eyes. “A kind word. But I’ve given up asking for the impossible. Can I come in? Or,” he added, the smile fading, “isn’t it convenient?”

She moved away from the door. “Check the bedroom if you like,” she said sarcastically.

He searched her eyes. Once, he might have taken her up on it, just to irritate her. Not since last night, though. He hadn’t the heart to hurt her any more than he already had. He tossed his hat onto the counter and leaned against it to watch her close the door.

“Have you decided whether or not you’ll come back to Sheridan?” he asked bluntly. “It’s only for a week. You’re on summer vacation, and John told me that you’d been laid off at your part-time job.” He looked at the counter and said with calculation, “Surely you can survive without your flock of admirers for that long.”

She didn’t contradict him or fly off the handle. That was what he wanted. She made points with Dawson by remaining calm.

“I don’t want to play chaperone for you, Dawson,” she said simply. “Get someone else.”

“There isn’t anyone else, and you know it. I want that land. What I don’t want is to give Mrs. Holten any opportunities for blackmail. She’s a lady who’s used to getting what she wants.”

“You’re evenly matched, then, aren’t you?” she replied.

“I don’t have everything I want,” he countered. His eyes narrowed. “Corlie and Rodge will be in the house, too. They miss you.”

She didn’t answer. She just looked at him, hating him and loving him while all the bad memories surfaced.

“Your eyes are very expressive,” he said, searching them. There was so much pain behind the pretense, he thought sadly, and he’d caused it. “Such sad eyes, Barrie.”

He sounded mysterious, broody. She sensed a change in him, some ripple of feeling that he concealed, covered up. His lean fingers toyed with the brim of his Stetson and he studied it while he spoke. “I bought you a horse.”

She stared at him. “Why?”

“I thought you might respond to a bribe,” he said carelessly. “He’s a quarter horse. A gelding.” He smiled with faint self-contempt. “Can you still ride?”

“Yes.” She didn’t want to admit that it touched her to have Dawson buy her a present. Even a plastic necklace would have given her pleasure if he’d given it to her.

His eyes lifted back to hers. “Well?”

“You have Rodge and Corlie to play chaperone. You don’t need me.”

His pale eyes held hers. “Yes, I do. More than you know.”

She swallowed. “Look, Dawson, you know I don’t want to come back, and you know why. Let’s just leave it at that.”

His eyes began to glitter. “It’s been five years,” he said coldly. “You can’t live in the past forever!”

“The devil I can’t!” she snapped. Her eyes hated him. “I won’t forgive you,” she whispered, almost choking on the words. “I won’t ever, ever forgive you!”

His gaze fell, and his jaw clenched. “I suppose I should have expected that. But hope springs eternal, don’t they say?” He picked up his hat and turned back to her.

She hadn’t gotten herself under control at all. Her slender hands were clenched at her sides and her eyes blazed.

He paused just in front of her. At close range, he was much taller than she was. And despite their past, his nearness disturbed her. She took a step backward.

“Do you think I don’t have scars of my own?” he asked quietly.

“Men made of ice don’t get scars,” she managed to say hoarsely.

He didn’t say another word. He turned and went toward the door. This wasn’t like Dawson. He was giving up without a fight; he didn’t even seem bent on insulting her. The very lack of retaliation was new and it disturbed her enough to call to him.

“What’s wrong?” she asked abruptly, even as he reached for the doorknob.

The question, intimating concern, stopped him in his tracks. He turned as if he didn’t really believe she’d asked that. “What?”

“I asked what was wrong,” she repeated. “You aren’t yourself.”

His hand tightened on the doorknob. “How the hell would you know whether I am or not?” he returned.

“You’re holding something back.”

He stood there breathing roughly, glaring at her. He shifted, restless, as highly strung as she remembered him. He was a little thinner these days, fine-drawn. His eyes narrowed on her face.

“Are you going to tell me?” she asked him.

“No,” he said after a minute. “It wouldn’t change anything. I don’t blame you for wanting to stay away.”

He was hiding something. She knew instinctively that he didn’t want to tell her. He seemed vulnerable. It shocked her into moving toward him. The action was so unexpected, so foreign, that it stilled his hand on the doorknob. Barrie hadn’t come toward him in five years.

She stopped an arm’s length away and looked up at him. “Come on, tell me,” she said gently. “You’re just like your father, everything has to be dragged out of you. Tell me, Dawson.”

He took a deep breath, hesitated, and then just told her.

She didn’t understand at first.

“You’re what?” she asked.

“I’m impotent!”

She just looked at him. So the gossips weren’t talking about a cold nature when they called him the “ice man.” They were talking about a loss of virility. She hadn’t really believed the rumors she’d heard about him.

“But…how…why?” she asked huskily.

“Who knows?” he asked irritably. “What difference does it make?” He took off his hat and ran a lean hand through his hair. “Mrs. Holton is a determined woman, and she thinks she’s God’s gift to manhood.” His face clenched and he averted it, as if it tormented him to tell her all of it. “I need that damn tract of land, but I have to let her come to Sheridan to talk to me about selling it. She wants me, and she’ll find out, if she pushes hard enough, that I’m…incapable. Right now it’s just gossip. But she’d make me the news item of the century. Who knows? Maybe that’s her real reason for wanting to come in the first place, to check out the gossip.”

Barrie was horrified. She moved back to the sofa and sat down, hard. Her face was drawn and pale, like his. It shocked her that he’d tell her such a thing, when she was his worst enemy. It was like offering an armed, angry man a bullet for his gun.

He saw her expression and grew angry. “Say something.”

“What could I possibly say?” she whispered.

“So you do have some idea of how devastating it is,” he murmured from a rigid face.

She folded her hands in her lap. “Then I’m to run interference for you? Will the threat of a sister stop her?”