Rawhide and Lace (6 page)

"I'm a realist," he corrected. "I don't expect miracles."

"Maybe that's why none ever happen for you," she said. She leaned on the cane a little and stared down at Bruce's grave. "Bruce was a dreamer. He was always looking for surprises, for the unexpected. He was a happy man most of the time, except when he remembered that he was always going to be second best. You're a hard act to follow. He never felt that he could measure up to you. He said that even your mother talked about you more than she did about him."

He raised an eyebrow. "I didn't know that. She seemed to hold me in contempt most of the time. We never understood each other."

Her quiet eyes searched his face, the hard lines around his mouth. The iron man, she mused. "I don't think anyone will ever understand you," she said quietly. "You give nothing of yourself."

His jaw tautened and his pale eyes kindled through the cloud of smoke that left his pursed lips. "Now that's an interesting statement, coming from you."

It was the emphasis he put on it. She saw with sudden clarity a picture of herself lying in his arms by the firelight, moaning as he touched her breasts....

"I didn't mean...that kind of giving," she said uneasily, and dropped her eyes to his broad chest. It strained against the denim, rippling muscles and thick dark hair that covered him from his collarbone down.

He took another draw from the cigarette. "You said before that you never had anything going with Bruce. Was that true?"

"Yes," she said simply. She searched his pale eyes. "I'm sorry there were hard feelings between you because of me. I didn't volunteer anything, you know, but he asked a lot of questions, and I was pretty upset. I don't even remember what I said to him. But I didn't tell him about...what happened. He guessed. Maybe I looked like a fallen woman or something." She laughed bitterly.

"You aren't a fallen woman," he said. "I came up on your blind side, that's all. I should have realized when you didn't put up a fight that you were too naive to know what was happening. You thought I'd stop in time."

She shook her head. "I trusted you, it's true. But you didn't rape me. It was never that."

He sighed heavily and reached out a tentative hand to brush at the loose hair around her collar, pushing it away from her throat, from the scar on her cheek. She shivered a little at letting him see.

"Was it very painful?" he asked tenderly.

Her lips trembled as she formed words, and around them the wind blew cold and the sun gave barely any warmth, and death was in the trees as well as the graveyard.

"Yes," she whispered. She turned away, trying not to let the feelings overwhelm her a second time. All she seemed to do lately was cry. Impatiently, she brushed away her tears.

Ty shifted awkwardly. He wasn't used to women crying. He wasn't used to women, period. He didn't know how to handle this situation.

She straightened. "I'm embarrassing you," she murmured.

He'd forgotten how honest she was; she never pulled her punches. Just like himself. His broad shoulders rose and fell. "I'm not used to women," he told her.

She searched his eyes. "Why did Bruce tell me you were a womanizer?"

"Don't you know?" he asked quietly.

"You weren't, though, were you?" she persisted.

He reached for another cigarette and lit it. "What a hell of a question," he said shortly.

"Never mind, don't answer me; I don't care," she shot back. She moved away from the grave, putting more weight on the cane than was necessary in her anger and frustration. "I ought to go back to New York and let Ward Jessup move in with you!"

"We'd never get on," he said imperturbably, falling into step beside her. "He's a nonsmoker."

She didn't believe she'd actually heard him right. Dry humor-from Tyson Wade? She kept walking. "Bruce had moved out, hadn't he?"

"Bruce is dead," he said shortly, stopping to stare down at her. "What he did or didn't do, or said or didn't say, has nothing more to do with either of us"

"I'm sorry he's gone."

"So am I. But all the mourning in the world won't bring him back." He stared back at the grave, and for an instant there was a deep, dark hurt in his eyes. Then he erased it and turned a bland face back to Erin. "Right now, you're my top priority. I'm going to get you back on your feet again."

"I won't let you take over my life," she told him. "Sure you will," he replied dryly. "You're nothing but a little walking rain cloud right now. You don't have enough spunk to fight me."

"Want to bet?" she said angrily.

"I don't gamble. Look out, you'll break that cane if you aren't careful."

"Then you'd just have to carry me home, wouldn't you?" she taunted. All the same, she lightened up on the cane. "How long do I have to stay here?"

"Until you turn sixty-five, if I know Jessup." He sighed. He glanced at her as they walked. "Put a little more weight on that leg, honey, you need to exercise it."

"Listen, cowboy...!" she snapped.

"I'm not a boy," he said.

"Will you listen to me?"

"Sure. When you say something I want to hear. Get in. I've got work to do. Winter isn't quite as hectic as the rest of the year, but I keep busy. I hope you like reading. You'll die of boredom without something to keep your mind occupied."

"I can watch television," she muttered as he helped her into the car and got in beside her.

"I don't own a television," he told her. Her jaw fell open.

"I don't like television," he persisted, starting the car.

"What do you do in the evenings?" she asked.

"I read."

She rested her head against the seat. What a wonderful time she was going to have. In between pain pills and being forced to exercise her leg, she could sit and watch him read books. It looked as if Staghorn was going to be a great rest camp-the next best place to hell. Oh, Bruce! she thought miserably, mourning quietly for her old friend, why did you have to die and leave me in this awful mess?

Chapter Four

Erin had vowed that she wouldn't go to the doctor, but Ty simply put her in the car and drove her there. To make matters worse, he raised eyebrows in the crowded waiting room by insisting on going in with her to talk to the doctor.

Her face flushed wildly as they followed the nurse down the hall.

"This will be all over town in no time," she groaned. "How could you do that to me?"

"Everybody knows you're living out at the ranch anyway," he said reasonably.

He was right, but that didn't make her feel any more comfortable about it. She hated being the object of idle gossip. People probably already knew that she was getting half of Staghorn, and she could just imagine what they figured she'd done to earn it.

"Will you stop torturing yourself?" he grumbled, glancing down at her as they stepped into the examination room. "What the hell does it matter if people talk?"

"Well, it won't be your reputation that gets ruined, will it?" she returned.

"Miss Scott? I'm Dr. Alex Brodie." The elderly, white-coated man entered right behind them and shook hands with Erin and then with Ty. He sat down and went over the details of her surgery with her. Apparently Ty had given him her doctor's name and he'd had a conversation with the man, because he knew exactly what had been done as well as the exercises that had been prescribed.

"Have you been doing the physical therapy?" he asked.

She colored delicately and averted her eyes. "There didn't seem much point," she began.

"Miss Scott, may I be blunt?" he asked, and proceeded to be so. "Surgery can help only to a certain point. You can walk again, but unless you do the exercises, exactly as prescribed, that leg will be stiff for the rest of your life, and you'll always limp. I understand that you were a professional model. That makes it even more important for you to exercise-if, that is, you have any idea of going back to work in the future."

She stared at her hands, clenched in her lap. How could Ty do this to her?

"We can, of course, have you drive to the hospital each day, and a physical therapist can instruct you and work with you."

She looked up, her eyes disturbed. "Oh, no. Please," she asked gently. "I couldn't bear that...."

"Suppose I work with her at the ranch," Ty suggested. He was sitting cross-legged in a chair, hat on one knee, looking impossibly arrogant. "I had a busted hip once, remember?"

The doctor cleared his throat. "Oh, how I remember!" he said. "One of my best nurses quit, two physical therapists retired..."

Ty just grinned, and Erin gaped at him, unbelieving. She'd hardly ever seen him smile like that.

"I could give you a list of the exercises," the doctor murmured. "But she'll have to do them twice a day, every day, thirty minutes at a stretch."

"She'll do them," Ty promised before Erin could open her mouth.

"I'd like to examine that hip now," he added, calling his nurse into the room.

Erin glared at Ty. "Unless you're planning to do a consultation, Dr. Wade, would you mind leaving?"

He cocked an eyebrow as he rose. "Testy little thing, aren't you?" He moved past her. "Watch out," he told the doctor. "She bites."

"Be sure your tetanus jabs are current," she whispered as he left the room.

It was amazing, the ease of that repartee, when once she'd been too tongue-tied to talk to him. In spite of everything that had happened between them, she was still drawn to him. Ty was stronger than any other human being she'd ever known. Just for a little while, she needed to lean on someone. And who better than the man who was partially responsible for her condition?

Dr. Brodie looked at the stitches, had an X ray made, and pronounced her well on the way to recovery. He prescribed some additional pain pills, in case she needed them, and gave her a preprinted sheet of exercises with special ones circled.

She stared at them all the way back to Staghorn, dreading the ordeal they represented.

"I don't want to start this," she muttered. "All that pain and cramping, and for what? I'll always limp!"

"Not if you want to walk," he returned impassively. "But you have to be willing to do the work. I'll help, but I can't do it for you."

"Why should you want to help?" she asked, turning in the seat to fix him with a cold, level stare.

He was smoking. He took a draw from the cigarette before he answered, and he didn't look at her. "Because I did that to you, as surely as if I'd pushed you in front of another car."

She stared at him uncomprehendingly. "Surely you don't think that you caused me to have the wreck?"

"Didn't I?" He laughed mirthlessly. "You were half hysterical when you left here."

"Yes, I was. And I pulled off the road and got myself together before I ever left the ranch!" she told him. "I'm not suicidal, and I'm not homicidal. I never drive when I'm not fit emotionally. By the time the wreck happened, I was at least levelheaded. Even the state patrol said it was unavoidable. I was hit by a drunk driver who took a curve too wide and came at me in my lane. He was killed outright."

Ty's face paled, and his hands clenched the steering wheel tightly. "Lucky man," he said under his breath. Erin knew what he meant without asking for explanations.

"So if you're on some guilt trip, let me reassure you," she continued quietly. "The only thing you did was try to save your brother from me. And you succeeded."