Man of Ice (8 page)

She was worried, and looked it. “I don’t know if I can—” she began uncertainly.

“That makes two of us,” he said interrupting her.

She grimaced. “Sorry.”

His chest rose and fell heavily. “One day at a time.”

“Okay.”

* * *

They took Leslie Holton riding that afternoon. She was surprisingly good on a horse, lithe and totally without fear. She seemed right at home on the ranch. If only she hadn’t been making eyes at Dawson, Barrie could have enjoyed her company.

But Leslie Holton wanted Dawson, and she was working on ways to get him. The sudden engagement was very strange and she knew for a fact that Dawson had a reputation for avoiding women altogether. She thought Barrie was helping him put on an act, and if it took her every minute of her time here, she was going to unmask them. If Dawson really was cold, Leslie was going to find out why before she left.

Five

U
NAWARE
of Leslie Holton’s plotting, Barrie was trying to concentrate on what Dawson was telling them about the history of the area they were riding through. But her eyes kept straying to the tall, proud way he rode, as if he were part of the horse. He looked good on horseback.

He looked good any way at all.

He caught her staring and smiled gently. Her heart skipped beats. He’d never been this way with her in all the time they’d known each other, and she couldn’t believe he was faking it. There was a new tenderness in his eyes. He didn’t talk to her in the old, mocking way. If she was different, so was he.

And through it all, there was an attraction that had its roots in the past. But Barrie was still afraid of intimacy with him. It was one thing to kiss him and hold hands with him. It was quite another to think of him in bed with her, demanding, insistent, totally out of control, hurting her…!

He glanced at her and saw that flash of fear, understood it without a word being spoken.

As Leslie rode ahead, he fell back beside Barrie. “Don’t brood on it,” he said seriously. “There’s no rush. Give it time.”

She sighed as she glanced toward him. “Reading my mind?”

“It isn’t that difficult,” he told her.

She toyed with the reins. “Time won’t help,” she said miserably. “I’m still afraid.”

“My God, what is there to be afraid of?” he asked shortly. “Didn’t you hear what I told you? I meant it. I can’t, Barrie. I can’t!”

She searched his eyes slowly. “You can’t with other women,” she corrected.

“I can’t with you, either,” he muttered. “Hell, don’t you think I’d know after last night?”

She glanced warily ahead where Leslie was riding. “Last night you were holding back,” she said.

“Yes, I was,” he admitted. “You’d just had a nightmare and you were terrified. I didn’t want to make it worse. But even this morning,” he said heavily, averting his eyes to the horizon. His broad shoulders rose and fell. He couldn’t bring himself to admit that even the hungry kiss he’d started to share with Barrie hadn’t been able to arouse him.

Barrie noticed his reticence and kept her silence. She glanced around at the budding trees. Spring was her favorite season, although it certainly came later to Wyoming than it did to Arizona, even if May was basically the same in both places. Closer than the budding trees, however, was the irritated way Leslie Holton was glaring back at them.

“We aren’t fooling her, you know,” she said suddenly, and lifted her eyes to search his. “She thinks we’re pretending.”

“Aren’t we?” he asked with a bitter laugh.

She supposed they were. Only it hadn’t felt like pretense that morning on her part.

“That was a bald-faced lie,” he murmured after a minute, and the saddle leather creaked as he reined in his horse and turned to look at her. His eyes were level and penetrating. “Suppose we try.”

She felt her eyes widen. “Try…?”

“What you suggested last night. Or have you already forgotten where you put my hand?” he asked outrageously.

“Dawson!”

“You should look shocked. That was how I felt.”

“That’s right,” she agreed, “pretend it was the first time a woman ever offered you any such thing!”

He managed a wistful smile. It had been a very long time since he’d been able to laugh about his body’s lack of interest in women. “I can’t,” he admitted.

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

He drew up one long leg and wrapped it around the pommel, straining his powerful muscles against the thick fabric of his designer jeans. He leaned against it to study her, pigtailed and wearing similar clothing, jeans and a loose shirt. “You don’t wear revealing clothes around me.”

She shrugged. “No. Because I don’t have to fight you off.”

He cocked an eyebrow inquiringly.

She grimaced. “Well, men come on to me all the time, and I don’t want any sort of physical relationship. So I flaunt my figure and flirt and talk about how much my family wants to see me get married and have a big family. You’d be amazed at how fast they find excuses to stop seeing me.”

He chuckled. “Suppose someday a man calls your bluff?”

“That hasn’t ever happened.”

“Hasn’t it?”

She realized what he meant, and her cheeks burned.

“I don’t suppose I even bothered to tell you that I’d never seen a body more perfect,” he continued quietly. “Barrie, undressed, you could pose for the Venus de Milo. I’m not sure that you wouldn’t make her jealous.”

She wasn’t sure if it was a compliment or a dig, because their relationship had shifted in the past two days.

“I mean it,” he explained, so that there wasn’t any doubt. “And if I were still the man I was five years ago, you’d need a dead bolt on your door.”

She searched his eyes. “I suppose at one time or another someone’s ventured the opinion that your problem is mental and not physical?”

“Sure. I know that already. The thing is,” he added with a faint smile, “how to cure it. And you seem to have a similar hang-up.”

She shrugged. “From the same source.”

“Yes, I know.”

She traced around her pommel. “The obvious solution…”

He swung his leg back down and straightened as Leslie, missing them, came back to find them. “I’m not capable,” he said shortly.

“I wasn’t offering,” she muttered. She glared toward Mrs. Holton. “Of course, she would, in a New York minute!”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Maybe I should let her try,” he said cynically. “She probably knows tricks even I haven’t learned.”

“Dawson!”

He glanced at her, and he didn’t smile. “Jealous?”

She moved restlessly in the saddle. “I…don’t know. Maybe.” She searched his face. “I wish I could offer you the same medicine she could. But you’d have to get me stinking drunk,” she said on a pained laugh. She averted her eyes. “I’d never forgive you if you did.”

“Did what? Get you stinking drunk?”

“No!” she said at once. “Do it…with her,” she explained.

His caught breath carried, but before he could reply, Leslie reined in beside them. “Aren’t you two coming along?” she drawled. “It’s lonely trying to explore a ranch this size on my own.”

“Sorry,” Dawson said, easing his horse into step beside hers. “We were discussing plans.”

“I have a few of my own,” Leslie murmured sweetly. “Want to hear them?”

Barrie fell back a little, glaring at them. But Dawson wasn’t having that. He stopped and motioned to her to catch up, with eyes that dared her to hesitate. Reluctantly she rode up beside him and kept pace, to Leslie’s irritation, all the way home.

* * *

She’d thought Dawson would forget what she’d said before Leslie interrupted them. But he didn’t. While Leslie was changing clothes before supper, Dawson caught Barrie by the hand and led her into his study that overlooked the cottonwood-lined river below.

He closed the door behind them and, as an afterthought, locked it.

She stood by the desk at the window, watching him warily. “I gather that you wanted to talk to me?” she asked defensively.

“Among other things.” He perched himself on the edge of the desk facing her, and searched her wary face. He folded his arms across his broad chest. “You kissed me back this morning,” he said. “You weren’t doing it in case Leslie was watching, either. You’ve buried everything you used to feel for me, but it’s still there. I want to try to dig it back up again.”

She studied her hands in her lap. It was tempting, because, despite everything that had happened, she loved Dawson. But the memories were too fresh even now, the pain too real. She couldn’t block out the years of sarcastic remarks, cutting words, that had wounded her so badly.

She didn’t know what he was offering, other than an attempt at a physical relationship. He’d said nothing about loving her. She knew he felt guilty about the baby she’d lost, and the knowledge of her miscarriage was very new to him. When he had time to cope with the grief, he might find that all he really felt for her was pity. She wanted much more than that.

She traced a chipped place on one neat fingernail.

“Well?” he asked impatiently.

She lifted her eyes. “I agreed to pretend to be engaged to you,” she said quietly. “I don’t want to live in Sheridan for the rest of my life, or give up the promotion I’ve been offered at my school in Tucson.” He started to speak, but she held up her hand. “I know all too well how wealthy you are, Dawson, I know that I could have anything I wanted. But I’m used to making my own way in the world. I don’t want to become your dependent.”

“There are schools in Sheridan,” he said shortly.

“Yes. There are good schools in Sheridan, and I’m sure I could get a position teaching in one. But they’d know my connection to you. I could never be sure if I got the job on my merit or yours.”

He glared at her. This wasn’t at all what he’d expected, especially after the way she’d softened toward him since last night.

“Don’t you feel anything for me?” he asked.

She dropped her eyes to the emerald ring on her engagement finger. “I care for you, of course. I always will. But marriage is more than I can give you.”

He got off the desk and turned away to the window. “You blame me for the baby, is that it?”

She glanced at his straight back. “I don’t blame anyone. It wasn’t preventable.”

His head lifted a little higher. At his nape, his blond hair had grown slightly over his collar and it had a faint wave in it. Her eyes searched over his strong neck lovingly. She wanted nothing in life more than to live with him and love him. But what he was offering was a hollow relationship. Perhaps once he was over his guilt about the baby, he’d be able to function with a woman again. It was only a temporary problem, she was certain, caused by his unexpected discovery that she’d become pregnant and lost their child. But marriage wasn’t the answer to the problem.

“We can have therapy,” he said after a minute, grudgingly. “Perhaps they can find a cure for my impotence and your fear.”

“I don’t think your problem needs any therapy,” she said. “It’s just knowing about the baby that’s caused it…”

He whirled, his eyes flashing. “I didn’t know about the baby five years ago!” he said curtly.

She stared at him blankly for a minute, until she understood what he’d just said. Her face began to go pale. “Five years!” she stammered.

He glowered at her. “Didn’t you realize what I was telling you?”

“I had no idea,” she began. Her breath expelled sharply. “Five years!”

He looked embarrassed. He turned back to the window. He didn’t speak.

She couldn’t find any words to offer him. It hadn’t occurred to her that a man could go for five years without sex. She eased out of her chair and went to the window to look up at him.

“I had no idea,” she said again.

His hands were clasped behind him. His eyes were staring blankly at the flat horizon. “I haven’t wanted anyone,” he said. “When I found out about the baby, I was devastated. And yes, I felt guilty as well. One reason I asked you back here was to share the grief I felt, because I was pretty sure that you felt it, too, and had never really expressed it.” He glanced down at her wistfully. “Maybe I hoped I could feel something with you, too. I wanted to be a whole man again, Barrie. But even that failed.” His eyes went back to the window. “Stay until Leslie leaves. Help me keep what little pride I have left. Then I’ll let you go.”

She wasn’t sure what to say to him. That he was devastated was obvious. So was she. Five years without a woman. She could hardly imagine the beating his ego had taken. It was impossible to offer comfort. She had her own feelings of inadequacy and broken pride.

“Everything would have been so different if we hadn’t gone to France that summer,” she said absently.

“Would it?” He turned to look at her. “Sooner or later, it would have happened, wherever we were. I know how my father felt,” he added enigmatically.

“I’ll stay until the widow leaves. But what about your land? She doesn’t seem excited about selling.”

“She will be, when I make her an offer. I happen to know that Powell Long is temporarily strapped for ready cash because of an expansion project on his ranch. He won’t be able to match what I offer, and she’s in a shaky financial situation. She can’t afford to wait a long time for a buyer who’ll offer more.”

She was curious now. “Then if you know she’ll sell, why am I here?”

“For the reason I told you in the beginning,” he replied. His eyes were old and tired. “I can’t let her find out that everything they’ve said about me is true. I do have a little pride left.”

She grimaced. “It won’t do any good if I tell you that…”

He touched his forefinger to her mouth. “No. It won’t do any good.”

She searched his eyes quietly. She felt inadequate. She felt sick all over. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew that the only hope he had of regaining a normal appetite was with her. The problem had begun in France. Only she would have the power to end it. But she didn’t have the courage to try.

“Don’t beat a dead horse,” he said heavily, and managed a smile. “I’ve learned to live with it. I’ll get along. So will you. Go back to Tucson and take that job. You’ll do them proud.”

“What will you do?” she asked. “There must be a way, someway…!”