Lisa looked from the driver’s seamed face to the snow-covered land. Half a mile didn’t sound like much, but on foot, in such deep snow, as cold as it was? It would be hard going. But she hadn’t come all this way to turn back now. If walking was the only way to get to Sam, then walk she would.
“Are you sure it’s only half a mile?” she queried, wanting to be absolutely certain that she wasn’t going to be left stranded in the middle of nowhere if she got out of the car.
“Yup,” the man answered. “Can’t miss it—just follow the driveway. Don’t know why he hasn’t shoveled out. Most folks do.”
“Then I’ll walk,” Lisa decided. “How much do I owe you?”
He told her, and she paid him. Then he lifted her suitcase out of the trunk and set it down in the snow, which came halfway up its sides.
“If I were you, young lady, I’d leave this here bag right where it is. Let your friend up there come fetch it later. He’s a big healthy feller—I’ve seen him once or twice in town. I’m sure he’ll be glad to get it for you.”
Lisa nodded, thanking the man for his trouble, and decided to take his advice about the suitcase. She didn’t really have much choice: there was no way she could lug that heavy piece of luggage up a half a mile of snow-covered driveway.
The driver sat and watched her until she crested a hill and was out of sight. Lisa, plodding through the snow, which came almost to her knees, felt reassured by his stolid presence. When at last she heard him put the cab into gear and drive slowly away, she felt almost bereft.
It was bitterly cold, as she had noted before, maybe ten degrees below zero. Lisa was dressed in skin-tight jeans, a red turtleneck lambswool sweater, a pair of high-heeled cowboy boots, and a thigh-length, charcoal gray persian lamb coat with a deep hood. Except for the coat, which was toasty warm, it was not exactly ideal gear for a half-mile hike in such weather. But when she had donned it that morning, her only intent had been to impress Sam with how at home she looked on his ranch. And blue jeans, she had decided, were just what was needed.
She saw the house from some distance. It was a long, low, white clapboard structure. At least, it used to be white. The paint had peeled and weathered until it was more of a dirty gray. A barn and various outbuildings stood some little distance from the house. Lisa, looking at the ranch that would be her home for perhaps the rest of her life, felt a little taken aback at its shabbiness. But then she thought of Sam and her spirits revived. After all, the house could be fixed up—it would be fun. And if she had to, to have Sam, she would live in a hole in the ground and like it.
By the time she reached the edge of the yard, her face was stiff with cold and her eyes were watering from the wind. Her feet were twin blocks of ice, and her legs, with only the jeans to protect them, had gone numb. Her hands, thrust deep in the pockets of her coat, were faintly blue at the tips.
There was a light on in the house. Lisa stared at it, thinking of the warmth that must lie inside—with Sam. If her legs hadn’t been so frozen, she would have run to it, and him.
Even as she looked at the house, the front door opened and a man’s tall body was silhouetted against the light streaming out from behind it.
“Sam!” she tried to call out joyfully, but what emerged was more in the nature of a strangled croak. No matter. He was here, and as soon as he recognized her he would come striding out into the snow and sweep her up into his arms.
She was right—at least to a point. He did come striding out into the snow to meet her. But when he got close enough that she could see him properly, she had no difficulty interpreting what was stamped all over that lean, hard face: it was annoyance, pure and simple.
“What the hell are you doing here?” he bit out, his eyes distinctly hostile as they met hers. Then, seeing how her teeth chattered, his face altered slightly. “Damn fool woman,” he muttered, peering sharply into her cold-pinched face. “Don’t you have any sense at all? Where did you walk from, the end of the driveway? What if you had gotten lost, somehow missed the house? You could have frozen to death in a couple of hours, as cold as it is tonight! Since I didn’t know you were coming, I certainly wouldn’t have looked for you!”
“Sam . . .” Lisa began, mumbling through lips that were stiff with cold. He uttered a terse profanity and picked her up in his arms. As she felt herself being lifted high against his muscular chest, which was protected from the elements only by the thickness of a flannel shirt, she snuggled closer, her arms sliding around his neck. This was more like the greeting she had been expecting!
He carried her through the yard, up the rickety steps, and into the house, kicking the door shut behind them. Lisa was aware of a blessed sensation of warmth and light as he carried her down an uncarpeted hallway, past several opened doors, to the kitchen at the rear of the house. In a lightning-fast glance from the safety of Sam’s shoulder, she saw that the kitchen looked even shabbier than the outside of the house. Grubby red-and-white linoleum squares covered the floor, clashing hideously with the green-painted cabinets. Rusty-looking metal that had once been white formed the countertop surrounding the single, stained sink. An old white gas stove and refrigerator were pushed against the wall at right angles to each other. A fluorescent light glaringly illuminated every shortcoming.
“Not quite up to your standards, I know, but better than freezing to death,” Sam said, not missing the fleeting expression of surprise that widened Lisa’s eyes. He plopped her down with scant ceremony into a vinyl kitchen chair that he had drawn up with his foot to a wood-burning stove. Lisa realized that this was the source of the delicious heat.
“It’s very—nice,” Lisa said lamely, then wished she had just not replied when Sam’s mouth tightened. “Sam . . .” she began, hurriedly trying to retrieve her position, but he brusquely interrupted her.
“Get those wet boots off—and the jeans, too, they’re soaked to the knee.”
After issuing that curt order, Sam swung on his heel and left the room. When he returned minutes later, Lisa had managed to shed her coat and tug off one wet boot. Seeing her progress—or lack of it—he gave a disgusted grunt, dropping to one knee on the floor in front of her and pulling off her remaining boot. Then he reached up for the zip of her jeans, his actions as impersonal as if he were preparing to peel an onion.
“Stand up.”
Lisa obediently stood, her toes curling against the cold linoleum as he slid her jeans down over her hips and told her to step out. It was as he was doing the same to her pantyhose—which he accorded one half-fascinated and half-scornful look—that Lisa registered what was different about him.
“Your cast!” She gasped, staring down at the jean-clad leg that looked to be as good as new.
He finished peeling off her pantyhose and stood up, towering over her, seemingly oblivious to the fact that she was clad only in a sweater and a pair of silky white bikini panties, her long legs left bare.
“They took it off last week,” he said indifferently, turning to scoop from the kitchen table some items of clothing that he had brought back into the room with him earlier. “Here, put these on. They don’t have designer labels, but at least they’ll keep you warm.”
“That’s unfair and you know it.” Lisa took the garments—which were a pair of athletic socks and the bottom half of a set of men’s longjohns—from him. She suspected that he had selected such unglamorous things for the sole purpose of annoying her. Well, she would wear them and be glad to do it. And show him a thing or two in the process!
“Is it?” He turned away and busied himself at the stove as she stepped into the longjohns, then sat to pull on the socks. By the time Lisa was dressed, he was pouring some sort of liquid from a battered-looking aluminum sauce pan into two mugs.
“Hot chocolate?” He turned, proffering one of the mugs. Lisa took it, cradling the warmth gratefully, sipping at the rich sweetness. She was still seated in front of the wood-burning stove; he stood a few feet away, looking down at her broodingly.
“Now,” he said briskly after she had drunk about half of her chocolate. “Suppose you tell me what the hell you’re doing here.”
Lisa cast him a sideways glance. Clearly, he did not intend to make this easy for her.
“You don’t sound as if you’re very glad to see me,” she murmured provocatively.
“I’m not.”
The blunt words took Lisa aback. She stared at him, affronted. Her lips tightened. So he was going to demand every ounce of his pound of flesh, was he?
“I didn’t mean what I said to you that night,” she said, her eyes meeting his with a coaxing smile in their green depths. “I lost my temper—as I know you did. I’m sorry, Sam. Will you forgive me?”
Once the words were out, she breathed easier. That hadn’t been so bad. . . .
“Of course,” he said, as she had known he would.
A brilliant smile curved her lips; she set her half-empty mug on the floor and jumped up, practically throwing herself into his arms, her own arms closing around his neck as she hugged him ecstatically.
“Whoa, there.” He set down his mug on the table and reached up to untangle her arms from about his neck, holding her a little away from him.
Lisa looked up at him, her puzzled gaze revealing her confusion. “What’s wrong?”
His mouth twisted wryly as he looked down at her. His hands were tight around her forearms.
“I think you may have jumped the gun a little bit here. All I said was that I accepted your apology.”
“So?”
“So that’s all I meant.”
Lisa began to get some inkling of what he was trying to say. She stiffened, her eyes beginning to spark.
“You swine, you’re really going to rub my nose in it, aren’t you?” she snapped. “What do you want, to see me beg? All right, I’m begging. Are you satisfied?”
“No.”
Lisa practically stamped her foot as she glared at him. “What else do you want? I’ve gone as far as I’m going to go. If you want to marry me . . .”
“I don’t.”
“What?” Lisa stared at him, incredulous. She couldn’t believe her ears.
“It wouldn’t work.”
“What!” She practically shrieked the word at him.
“You heard me.” His face was implacable. “It wouldn’t work. And if you weren’t such a spoiled little brat, always used to grabbing for what you want without thinking about the cost, you’d know it. Oh, you’d enjoy being my wife—for about six months. Then you’d start wanting things I can’t give you, start wishing for Granddaddy’s mansion and servants and clothes and fancy cars, start feeling bored stuck out here on a rundown ranch in the middle of nowhere, with no shops and no restaurants and no parties—and you’d realize you’d made a mistake.”
“I would not!” Lisa protested vehemently, staring at him. He meant what he was saying, she could tell. He wasn’t just trying to give her a hard time. A cold little fear snaked up her spine. “Sam, I would not!”
“You would.” He was inexorable. His fingers were still clenched tightly around her forearms, and those blue eyes seemed to bore into hers. “Be honest with yourself for once in your life, Lisa, and admit it. This just isn’t your scene.”
“It is!” she cried, but he ignored her, continuing with the words that were stabbing her to the heart.
“I saw your face when I carried you in here. You were appalled. And you’re right. This isn’t much—but it’s my home. You would have to live here—and you wouldn’t like it.”
“I would!”
“For God’s sake, Lisa, use your head for once!” His patience was fraying about the edges, she could tell. “If you married me, you’d be a rancher’s wife—and not a rich one. You’d have to cook all the meals—and from what I’ve sampled, you’re one of the world’s worst cooks—”
“I could learn!”
“. . . And clean the house, and wash the dishes—there’s not even a dishwasher, and somehow I can’t picture you up to your elbows in suds.”
“You could buy a dishwasher, couldn’t you?” He was being so unreasonable, she couldn’t believe it. She knew that they could work all these things out, if he would just give them a chance.
“Maybe—in a year or so. Right now, all my money is tied up in land—and stock.”
“I have money. . . .” As soon as she said it, she knew she’d made a mistake. His eyes narrowed, and his mouth tightened into a hard, straight line.
“That’s what you had in mind, wasn’t it?” he asked, his voice deceptively cool. “To use your money to buy yourself the luxuries you wouldn’t be able to afford as my wife. Well, as I believe I told you once before, no way. My wife lives on what I can give her.”
“All right,” Lisa said desperately. “I wouldn’t mind, honestly, Sam. If you would only give me a chance. . . .”
“No.”
“But I love you!” Lisa practically wailed.
“You love what I do to your body,” he said brutally. ‘That’s all there is between us, baby: good sex!”
“That’s not true and you know it!”
“It is true. When you get a little more experience, you’ll realize it.”
“I love you. . . .”
“You think you love me,” he corrected.
“I want to marry you!” Lisa glared at him.
He met her look with an odd little glitter in his eyes. “Well, now, that’s too bad,” he drawled after a moment. “Because I don’t want to marry you!”
Heartbreak and outrage combined to make Lisa fighting mad. She gave an infuriated little cry and reached for the nearest object, which happened to be his discarded mug. Her fingers clenched around the smooth round shape, and she hurled it at his head. The remnants of the hot chocolate sprayed out over the room. Sam ducked, and the mug whistled harmlessly past him to shatter against the far wall. Furiously she reached for something else to throw, but he was too quick for her. Even as her fingers closed over a saucer that was left on the table apparently from his supper, he was beside her, catching her hands in his, pulling her away from the table to stand in the middle of the floor while he kept a tight grip on her wrists.
“Temper tantrums won’t make me change my mind, Lisa,” he said quietly, his eyes burning down into hers.
Lisa glared up at him, helpless to inflict any damage on him with her hands imprisoned so tightly in his.