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  There was a cardinal rule that people who gave parties never invited both Barrie Bell and her stepbrother, Dawson Rutherford, to the same social event. Since the two of them didn't have a lot of mutual friends, and they lived in different states, it wasn't often broken. But every rule had an exception, and tonight, Barrie discovered, was it.

  She hadn't really wanted to go out, but Martha and John Mercer, old friends of the Rutherfords who'd taken a interest in Barrie since their move to Tucson, insisted that she needed a diversion. She wasn't teaching this summer, after all, and the part-time job that kept her bank account healthy had just ended abruptly. Barrie needed cheering up and Martha was giving a party that was guaranteed to accomplish it.

  Actually it had. Barrie felt brighter than she had in some months. She was sequestered on the steps of the staircase in the hall with two admirers, one who was a bank executive and the other who played guitar with a jazz band. She was wearing a dress guaranteed to raise blood pressures, silver and clinging from its diamante straps at her lightly tanned shoulders to her ankles, with a long, seductive slit up one side of the skirt. The color of her high heels matched the dress. She wore her long, wavy black hair loose, so that it reached almost to her waist. In her creamy-complexioned, oval face, bright green eyes shone with a happy glitter.

  That is, they had been shining until she saw Dawson Rutherford come in the front door. Her sophisticated chatter had died abruptly and she withdrew into a shell, looking vulnerable and hunted.

  Her two companions didn't connect her stepbrother's entrance with Barrie's sudden change. Not, at least, until a few minutes later when he spotted her in the hall and, excusing himself to his hostess, came to find her with a drink in his hand.

  Dawson was more than a match for any man present, physically. Some of them were spectacularly handsome, but Dawson was more so. He had wavy blond hair, cut conventionally short, a deep tan, chiseled, perfect facial features and deep-set pale green eyes at least two shades lighter than Barrie's. He was tall and slender, but there were powerful muscles in that lithe body, which was kept fit from hours in the saddle. Dawson was a multimillionaire, yet being the boss didn't keep him from helping out on the many ranches he owned. It was nothing unusual to find him cutting out calves for branding on the Wyoming ranches, or helping to drive cattle across the spinifex plains of the several thousand-square-mile station in Australia's Channel Country. He spent his leisure hours, which were very few, working with his thoroughbred horses on the headquarters ranch in Sheridan, Wyoming, when he wasn't buying and selling cattle all over the country.

  He was an elegant man, from his hand-tooled leather boots to the expensive slacks and white silk turtleneck shirt he wore with a designer jacket. Everything about him, from his Rolex to the diamond horseshoe ring on his right hand, screamed wealth. And with the elegant good looks, there was a cold, calculating intelligence. Dawson spoke French and Spanish fluently, and he had a degree in business.

  Barrie's two companions seemed to shrink when he appeared beside them, a drink cradled in one big, lean hand. He didn't drink often, and never to excess. He was the sort of man who never liked to lose control in any way. She'd seen him lose it just once. Perhaps that was why he hated her so, because she was the only one who ever had.

  "Well, well, what was Martha thinking, I wonder, that rules were made to be broken?" Dawson asked her, his deep voice like velvet even though it carried above the noise.

  "Martha invited me. She didn't invite you," Barrie said coldly. "I'm sure it was John. He's laughing," she added, her gaze going to Martha's husband across the room.

  Dawson followed her glance to his host and raised his glass. The shorter man raised his in acknowledgment and, catching Barrie's furious glare, turned quickly away.

  "Aren't you going to introduce me?" Dawson continued, unabashed, his eyes going now to the two men beside her.

  "Oh, this is Ted and that's... what was your name?" she somewhat abruptly asked the second man.

  "Bill," he replied.

  "This is my... stepbrother, Dawson Rutherford," she continued.

  Bill grinned and extended his hand. It was ignored, although Dawson nodded curtly in acknowledgment. The younger man cleared his throat and smiled sheepishly at Barrie, brandishing his glass. "Uh, I need a refill," he said quickly, because Dawson's eyes were narrowing and there was a distinct glitter in them.

  "Me, too," Ted added and, grinning apologetically at Barrie, took off.

  Barrie glared after them. "Craven cowards," she muttered.

  "Does it take two men at once to keep you happy these days?" Dawson asked contemptuously. His cold gaze ran down her dress to the low neckline that displayed her pretty breasts to their best advantage.

  She felt naked. She wouldn't have dreamed of wearing clothing this revealing around Dawson normally. Only the fact that he'd come to the party unbeknownst to her gave him the opportunity to see her in this camouflage she adopted. But she wasn't going to spoil her sophisticated image by letting him know that his intent regard disturbed her. "There's safety in numbers," she replied with a cool smile. "How are you, Dawson?"

  "How do I look?" he countered.

  "Prosperous," she replied. She didn't say any thing else. Dawson had come to her apartment only a few months ago, trying to get her back to Sheridan to play chaperone to Leslie Holton, a widow and former actress who had a piece of land Dawson wanted. She'd refused and an argument had resulted, which led to them not speaking at all. She'd thought Dawson would never seek her out again after it. But here he was. And she could imagine that the widow was still in hot pursuit of him—or so her best friend Antonia Hayes Long had told her recently.

  He took a sip of his drink, but his eyes never left her face. "Corlie changes your bed every other day, hoping."

  Corlie was the housekeeper at Dawson's Sheridan home. She and her husband Rodge had been in residence since long before Barrie's mother had married Dawson's father. They were two of her favorite people and she missed them. But not enough to go back, even for a visit. "I don't belong in Sheridan," she said firmly. "Tucson is home, now."

  "You don't have a home any more than I do," he shot back, his voice cold. "Our parents are dead. All we have left is each other."

  "Then I have nothing," she said harshly, letting her eyes speak for her.

  "You'd like to think so, wouldn't you?" he demanded with a cold smile. And because the flat statement wounded him, he added deliberately, "Well, I hope you're not still eating your heart out for me, baby."

  The accusation made her feel even more vulnerable. Her hands clenched in her lap. In the old days, Dawson had known too well how she felt about him. It was a weapon he'd used against her. She glared at him. "I wouldn't waste my heart on you. And don't call me baby!"

  His eyes narrowed on her face and dropped to her mouth, lingering there. "I don't use endearments, Barrie," he reminded her. "Not in normal conversation. And we both remember the last time I used that one, don't we?"

  She wanted to crawl under the stairs and die. Her eyes closed. Memories assailed her. Dawson's deep voice, husky with feeling and need and desire, whispering her name with each movement of his powerful body against hers, whispering, "Baby! Oh, God, baby, baby...!"

  She made a hoarse sound and tried to get away, but he was too close. He sat down on the step below hers and settled back on his elbow, so that his arm imprisoned her between himself and the bannister.

  "Don't run," he chided. "You're a big girl now. It's all right to have sex with a man, Barrie. You won't go to hell for it. Surely you know that by now, with your record." She looked at him with fear and humiliation. "My record?" she whispered.

  "How many men have you had? Can't you remember?"

  Her eyes stared straight into his. She didn't flinch, although
she felt like it. "I can remember, Dawson," she said with a forced smile. "I've had one. Only one." She actually shivered.

  Her reaction took some of the antagonism out of him. He just stared at her, his pale eyes unusually watchful.

  She clasped her arms tightly over her breasts and her entire body went rigid from his proximity.

  He moved back, just a couple of inches. She relaxed, but only a little. Her posture was still unnatural. He wanted to think she was acting this way deliberately, in an attempt to resurrect the old guilt. But it wasn't an act. She looked at him with eyes that were vulnerable, but even if she cared as much as ever, she was afraid of him. And it showed.

  The knowledge made him uncomfortable. More uncomfortable than he usually was. He'd taunted her with her feelings for him for years, until it was a habit he couldn't break. He'd even done it the night he lost his head and destroyed her innocence. He'd behaved viciously to push away the guilt and the shame he felt at his loss of control.

  He hadn't meant to attack her tonight, of all times. Not after the argument he'd had with her months ago. He'd come to make peace. But the attempt had backfired. It was the way she was dressed, and the two eager young men sitting like worshipers at her feet, that had enraged him with jealousy. He hadn't meant a word he said, but she wouldn't know that. She was used to having him bait her. It didn't make him feel like a man to punish her for his own sins; it made him sick. Especially now, with what he'd only just found out about the past, and what had happened to her because of him...

  He averted his eyes to her folded arms. She looked like a whipped child. She'd adopted that posture after he'd seduced her. The image was burned indelibly into his brain. It still hurt, too.

  "I only want to talk," he said curtly. "You can relax."

  "What could we possibly have to say to each other?" she asked icily. "I wish I never had to see you again, Dawson!"

  His eyes bit into hers. "Like hell you do."

  She couldn't win an argument with him. It was better not to start one. "What do you want to talk about?"

  His gaze went past her, to the living room, where people were laughing and drinking and talking. Happy, comfortable people. Not like the two on the staircase.

  He shrugged and took another swallow from the glass before he faced her again. "What else? I want you to come home for a week or two."

  Her heart raced. She averted her gaze. "No!"

  He'd expected that reaction. He was ready to debate it. "You'll have plenty of chaperones," he informed her. "Rodge and Corlie." He paused deliberately. "And the widow Holton."

  She looked up. "Still?" she muttered sarcastically. "Why don't you just marry her and be done with it?"

  He deliberately ignored the sarcasm. "You know that she's got a tract of land in Bighorn that I have to own. The only way she'll discuss selling it to me is if I invite her to Sheridan for a few days."

  "I hear that she's hanging around the ranch constantly," she remarked.

  "She visits regularly, but not overnight," he said. "The only way I can clinch the land deal and get her to go away is to let her spend a few days at the ranch. I can't do that without you."

  He didn't look pleased about it. Odd. She'd heard from her best friend, Antonia Long, that the widow was lovely and eligible. She couldn't understand why Dawson was avoiding her. It was common knowledge that she'd chased Powell Long, Antonia's husband, and that she was casting acquisitive eyes at Dawson as well. Barrie had no right to be jealous, but she was. She didn't look at him, because she didn't want him to know for sure just how vulnerable she still was.

  "You must like her if you're willing to have her stay at the ranch," she said. "Why do you keep plaguing me to come and play chaperone?"

  His pale green eyes met hers. "I don't want her in my bed. Is that blunt enough?"

  She flushed. It wasn't the sort of remark he was in the habit of making to her. They never discussed intimate things at all.

  "You still blush like a virgin," he said quietly.

  Her eyes flashed. "And you're the one man in the world who has reason to know that I'm not!" she said in a harsh, bitter undertone.

  His expression wasn't very readable. He averted his eyes to the carpet. After a minute he finished his drink. He reached through the bannister to put the glass on the hall table beyond it.

  She pulled her skirt aside as he reached past her. For an instant, his deeply tanned face was on an unnerving level with hers. She could see the tiny mole at the corner of his mouth, the faint dimple in his firm chin. His upper lip was thinner than the lower one, and she remembered with sorrow how those hard lips felt on her mouth. She'd grieved for him for so long. She'd never been able to stop loving him, despite the pain he'd caused her, despite his suspicions, his antagonism. She wondered sometimes if it would ever stop.

  He turned sideways on the step, leaning back against tbe bannister to cross his long legs in front of him. His boots were immaculate, as was the white silk shirt under his open dinner jacket. But, then, he made the most casual clothes look elegant. He was elegant.

  " 'Why don't you get married?" he asked suddenly.

  Her eyebrows went up. "Why should I?"

  His quiet gaze went over her body, down her full, firm breasts to her narrow hips and long legs. The side slit had fallen open in the position she was sitting, and all too much of her silk-clad leg was visible.

  He watched her face very carefully as he spoke. "Because you're twenty-six. In a few more years, it will be more difficult for you to have a child."

  A child... A child. The color drained out of her face, out of her eyes. She swallowed a surge of nausea as she remembered the wrenching pain, the fear as she phoned for an ambulance and was carried to the hospital. He didn't know. He'd never know, because she wouldn't tell him.

  "I don't want to marry anyone. Excuse me, I have to—"

  She tried to get up, but his lean hand shot out and caught her forearm, anchoring her to the steps. He was too close. She could smell the exotic cologne he always wore, feel his breath, whiskey-scented, on her face.

  "Stop running from me!" he growled.

  His eyes met hers. They were relentless, intent.

  "Let me go!" she raged.

  His fingers only tightened. He made her feel like a hysterical idiot with that long, hard stare, but she couldn't stop struggling.

  He ended the unequal struggle by tugging slightly and she landed back on the steps with a faint thump. "Stop it," he said firmly.

  Her eyes flashed at him, her cheeks flushed.

  He let go of her arm all at once. "At least you look alive again," he remarked curtly. "And back to normal pretending to hate me."

  "I'm not pretending. I do hate you, Dawson," she said, as if she was programmed to fight him, to deny any hint of caring in her voice.

  "Then it shouldn't affect you all that much to come home with me."

  "I won't run interference for you with the widow. If you want that land so badly..."

  "I can't buy it if she won't sell it," he reminded her. "And she won't sell it unless I entertain her."

  "It's a low thing to do, to get a few acres of land."

  "Land with the only water on the Bighorn property," he reminded her. "I had free access when her husband was alive. Now I buy the land or Powell Long will buy it and fence it off from my cattle. He hates me."

  "I know how he feels," she said pointedly.

  "Do you know what she'll do if you're not there?" he continued. "She'll try to seduce me, sure as hell. She thinks no man can resist her. When I refuse her, she'll take her land straight to Powell Long and make him a deal he can't refuse. Your friendship with Antonia won't stop him from fencing off that river, Barrie. Without water, we'll lose the property and all the cattle on it. I'll have to sell at a loss. Part of that particular ranch is your inheritance. You stand to lose even more than I do."

  "She wouldn't," she began.

  "Don't kid yourself," he drawled. "She's attracted to me. Or don't you r
emember how that feels?" he added with deliberate sarcasm.

  She flushed, but she glared at him. "I'm on vacation."

  "So what?"

  "I don't like Sheridan, I don't like you, and I don't want to spend my vacation with you!"

  "Then don't."

  She hit the bannister helplessly. "Why should I care if I lose my inheritance? I've got a good job!"

  'Why, indeed?"

  But she was weakening. Her part-time job had fallen through. She was looking at having to do some uncomfortable budgeting, despite the good salary she made. It only stretched so far. Besides, she could imagine what a woman like Mrs. Holton would do to get her claws into Dawson. The widow could compromise him, if she didn't do anything else. She could make up some lurid tale about him if he didn't give out... and there was plenty of gossip already, about Dawson's lack of interest in women. It didn't bear thinking about, what that sort of gossip would do to Dawson's pride. He'd suffered enough through the gossip about his poor father and Antonia Long, when there wasn't one shred of truth to it. And in his younger days, his success with women was painfully obvious to a worshiping Barrie.

  "For a few days, you said," she began.

  His eyebrows lifted. "You aren't changing your mind!" he exclaimed with mock surprise.

  "I'll think about it," she continued firmly.

  He shrugged. "We should be able to live under the same roof for that long without it coming to bloodshed."

  "I don't know about that." She leaned against the bannister. "And if I decide to go—which I haven't yet when she leaves, I leave, whether or not you've got your tract of land."

  He smiled faintly. There was something oddly calculating in his eyes. "Afraid to stay with me, alone?"

  She didn't have to answer him. Her eyes spoke for her.

  "You don't know how flattering that reluctance is these days," he said, searching her eyes. "All the same, it's misplaced. I don't want you, Barrie," he added with a mocking smile.

  "You did, once," she reminded him angrily.

  He nodded. His hands went into his pockets and his broad shoulders shifted. "It was a long time ago," he said stiffly. "I have other interests now. So do you. All I want is for you to run interference for me until I can get my hands on that property. Which is to your benefit, as well," he added pointedly. "You inherited half the Bighorn property when George died. If we lose the water rights, the land is worthless. That means you inherit nothing. You'll have to depend on your job until you retire."