Lacy Read Free

thought, with a harsh laugh.
Ridiculous to moon over a man who didn't love her. But worshipping him was such
a habit. And she did. She loved everything about him, from the way he sat his
horse to the arrogant tilt of his dark head, to the way his skin caught the
light and burned like bronze. He wasn't terribly good to look at, except to
Lacy, but he had a masculinity that set her teeth on edge, that made her body
go hot and throbbing. Just to touch him could make her tremble.
    She sighed shakily as her gray eyes swept the
hall. Would he come? Her heart pounded beneath her bodice. Just to see him, she
thought, just to lay eyes on him once more, would be heaven. But it was already
eleven o'clock, and Cole was usually in bed by nine so that he could be up at
the crack of dawn. She turned back toward the living room with a heart like
lead. No, he wasn't coming tonight. It had been a foolish hope.
    She went back to her guests, laughing, drinking
more and more gin. The police made raids once in a while, but Lacy didn't care
if they came and found the gin. She might go to jail, and Coleman might come
and bail her out. Then he might bring her home, and be so inflamed by
smoldering passion that he'd do to her what Rudolph Valentino, as the sheik,
had done to Agnes Ayres in that wildly passionate film The Sheik. Her
heart ran away. She'd gone wild over that movie two years ago and had learned
to do the tango soon after Valentino's Blood and Sand film was released. But,
of course, no one in her circle would do it like Valentino.
    She took another sip of gin, lost in her
thoughts. She jumped as a hand lightly touched her shoulder. She looked up,
wide-spaced eyes huge in her face, and relaxed a little when she saw George
Simon behind her.
    "You startled me," she said in her
calm, very Southern drawl.
    "Sorry," he said, grinning. Well, his
teeth were perfect, even if he was slightly balding and overweight. "I
just thought you might like to know that you have a visitor."
    She frowned. It was midnight, and despite the
fact that the huge Victorian house was overrun with people, it was unusual for
anyone to come calling so late. And then she remembered. Cole!
    "Male or female?" she asked nervously.
    "Definitely male," George said,
without smiling. "He looks like the portrait over the living room mantel.
That's where I left him, staring at it."
    Lacy spilled the drink down the front of the
stylishly wispy dress and mopped frantically at it with a handkerchief.
"Oh, damn," she said curtly. "Well, I'll worry about that later.
He's in the living room?"
    "Say, kid... You're like flour in the face.
What's wrong?"
    "Nothing," she said. Everything, she
thought as she turned and walked stiffly down the long hall, dimly lit by
sconces, her wide-heeled shoes beating a dainty tattoo on the bare, polished
wood floors as she walked.
    She hesitated at the doorway, her eyes huge in
her face, her hand poised on the doorknob. She knew already who was going to be
waiting for her. She knew by George's description, but even more by that smell,
that pungent smoke that teased her nose even as she opened the door and saw
him.
    Coleman Whitehall spun on his booted heel with
the precision of an athlete. Which he was, of course; ranch work demanded that
kind of muscle. His dark eyes narrowed as he looked at Lacy, blazing out of a
face like leather under hair as dark as her own. His skin was bronzed, a legacy
from the Comanche grandfather who'd instilled pure steel in his makeup and
taught him that emotion was a plague to be avoided at all costs.
    He was wearing work clothes. Jeans and boots,
with wide, flaring leather chaps and a vest over his blue-patterned shirt,
leather wristbands on the cuffs. A string hung out of the pocket, which would
be the tobacco pouch he always carried, along with a small, flat packet of
papers to roll cigarettes from. His forehead was oddly pale as he watched her,
his wide-brimmed hat tossed carelessly onto an elegant Victorian wing chair.