Angel Creek Read online

  She looked up at him with tear-wet eyes that held both pain and a promise. “I’ll give you my answer soon,” she whispered.

  Dee walked out on the porch and held out a glass of cool lemonade to Olivia, who sat on the very edge of the rocking chair, keeping it tilted forward on the rockers. She studied Olivia’s face, thinking that she had never before seen her friend as edgy as she was now.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  Olivia sipped her drink, then rolled the glass back and forth in her hands. She watched the motion of her own fingers as if fascinated. “I think I’m in love,” she blurted. She drew a deep, shaky breath. “With Luis Fronteras. And I’m scared.”

  “Luis Fronteras?” Dee asked blankly. “Who’s he?”

  “He works for Kyle Bellamy. He’s a Mexican. A drifter.”

  Dee gave a low whistle of astonishment and slowly took her own seat. This was like a queen taking up with a commoner.

  “He wants me to marry him,” Olivia continued.

  “Are you going to?”

  The look Olivia gave her was agonized. “I can’t bear the thought of not seeing him again. But it will hurt my parents so, and I don’t want that either. I don’t know what to do.”

  Dee wasn’t sure what advice to give her. She knew how important family was to Olivia, and she also knew how impossible it was to stay away from the man you loved, even when your common sense told you to.

  “What is he like?”

  “Gentle,” Olivia said, then she frowned. “But I think he can be dangerous, too. It’s just that he’s always gentle with me, even when he’s—” She broke off, and her face turned pink.

  “Aroused?” Dee suggested helpfully, grinning when Olivia’s flush deepened.

  “Is Lucas gentle when he’s aroused?” Olivia retorted with spirit. “And don’t tell me you don’t know, because I won’t believe you. At the picnic he couldn’t stop looking for you, and he left right after lunch and never came back. I’ve thought right from the beginning that he’d be perfect for you,” she finished smugly.

  “Perfect?” Dee said in disbelief. “He’s overbearing and arrogant, and he—” She broke off, because she couldn’t lie to either herself or Olivia. “I love him,” she finished flatly. “Damn it.”

  Olivia threw herself back in the rocking chair with a whoop of laughter, sloshing the lemonade over the rim of the glass. “I knew it, I knew it! Well? Has he asked you to marry him?”

  “He asked if marriage would be the price for Angel Creek. Not exactly the same thing.” Dee managed a crooked smile. “The fact that I love him doesn’t mean that he loves me.”

  “Well, he does,” Olivia replied. “If you could have seen him at the picnic! He kept trying not to let it slip that he’d been seeing you, but he couldn’t talk about anything else.”

  Dee went still. “He told other people about me?”

  “No, he was just talking to me,” Olivia reassured her. “He came here after he left the picnic, didn’t he?”

  “Yes.”

  Olivia cleared her throat, good manners wrestling with her curiosity. Curiosity won. “Does he . . . I mean, has he tried to . . . you know?”

  “Make love to me?” Dee clarified in her blunt way.

  Olivia flushed again but nodded.

  “He’s a man.”

  Dee evidently felt that her bald statement was explanation enough. Olivia decided to agree with her. “Do you like it when he touches you?” she asked in a rush. “I mean when he touches your . . .” She stopped, appalled at what she had been about to say. What if Dee hadn’t permitted Lucas such intimacies? With her question she had practically admitted that she and Luis . . .

  “Stop blushing,” Dee ordered, though her own cheeks were growing warm.

  “He has, then. Well? Did you like it?”

  Confused, Dee wondered just what Olivia was asking and what part of the body she was thinking about. Caresses, or the actual sexual act? Then she shrugged, because the answer was the same regardless of the question. “Yes,” she said.

  Olivia closed her eyes on a sigh of relief. “I’m so glad,” she said. “I thought I was wicked, even though Luis said everyone . . .” She stopped herself again and opened her eyes. She had never before had such an opportunity, and she felt giddy with the freedom. “Does he take your blouse off when he touches you there?”

  Dee was beginning to feel harassed. “Yes.”

  “Has he ever taken the top of your shift down? So that he can see your—er—breasts?”

  “Yes.”

  Though her face was bright red, Olivia wasn’t about to stop. “Has he ever kissed you there? Like a baby, I mean, only different. Well, maybe it’s the same—”

  Dee erupted from her chair. “For God’s sake!” she yelled, goaded beyond endurance. “If you must know, he’s stripped me naked and done everything there is to do! And I enjoyed every minute of it!” She struggled with herself for control and took a deep breath. In a more moderate voice she said, “Maybe not every minute. It hurt the first time, but it was worth it. Though I do like it better when I’m on top.”

  Olivia’s mouth moved, but no sound emerged. Her eyes were so huge they eclipsed her face. She shut her mouth.

  They stared at each other in silence. Dee’s lips twitched first. She gulped, then bent double as she shrieked with laughter. Olivia pressed her hand to her mouth in an effort to stifle the unladylike sounds that were bubbling up, but it was a useless effort. She guffawed. That was the only word for it. The lemonade spilled in her lap.

  When the hysterical fit of laughter had subsided into giggles they wiped their streaming eyes and struggled for composure. “Come inside and sponge your skirt,” Dee said, her voice still shaky with mirth.

  Olivia stood and followed her into the cabin. “Don’t try to change the subject,” she warned, and her shoulders began shaking again. “I want to know all about it. If you think I’m going to let a chance like this go by, you’re crazy!”

  “Ask Luis,” Dee replied maddeningly, and it set them both off again.

  13

  KYLE BELLAMY KICKED AT THE DRY CREEK BED, THEN looked up at the cloudless sky. It hadn’t rained in six weeks. It might not rain for another six weeks. They didn’t normally get that much rain anyway, but then they didn’t usually need it because of the runoff from the snowcaps. But there hadn’t been as much snow during the past winter, and now they weren’t getting even the normal amount of rain. Who knew how long it would last? Droughts sometimes lasted for years, turning what had been fertile into wasteland. He’d never thought it would happen here, but hell, no one ever settled where they thought there’d be a drought.

  He felt an almost sickening sense of panic. He had sworn that he’d make something of himself, something respectable, and he’d been close enough to taste it. Now the damn weather was turning it into dust, literally. The weather! Of all the ways he could have been done in, of all the things that could have caught up with him, it was the weather that would bring him to his knees.

  There was only one creek left running now on the Bar B. When it dried up his cattle would die. Without the cattle he wouldn’t have the ranch, wouldn’t have the money to restock, because he’d just spent all of his capital to add to the herd. Damn, why hadn’t he waited? But he’d wanted the ranch to expand, and now he was in danger of losing everything. He wouldn’t be able to pay his men’s wages, would end up as nothing . . . again.

  God, he’d been so close. He had thought the years when he’d had to steal food to survive were finished. He had buried his memories of the little boy who lived in the streets of New Orleans and was sold into prostitution at the age of ten. He never let himself think about the man he had killed when he was just twelve, to escape the horror. He had thought he’d never again have to cheat or lie. All he’d wanted was to be like respectable folks everywhere, to be welcomed into people’s homes and treated like someone who counted. He’d had that in Prosper. Only Tillie had known him when he had lived