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The moment the doors closed, he had her in his arms. He spared a moment to take her tiny evening bag off her wrist and tuck it in his cummerbund, but then his arms went back around her and she was pressed comfortably against him.
“Am I gonna have to carry you, or can you make it to a cab?”
Stacey leaned her cheek against his hard, warm chest because her eyelids were amazingly heavy. She was distantly aware when the elevator stopped, and that she remained on her feet only because he turned so she could cling to his waist. He held her up enough to foster the illusion that she was able to walk under her own power.
She wasn’t particularly drunk but she was dizzy and sleepy and slow, yet even so, she didn’t want to be carried out. She didn’t want everyone’s last sight of Stacey Amhearst to be of her being carried out of a building because she’d had too much to drink. It was bad enough that they’d find out in a few more days that she was almost penniless.
At least leaving the party with a tall, rugged stranger would be a plus in their eyes. Until they found out where he was from and what he did for a living.
The warm city night cleared her head a little. McClain led her along the row of cabs waiting at the curb. She was becoming steadier with each step, but when they reached the cab at the head of the line, they walked on past.
Stacey searched ahead for some other cab he must have been aiming for, but there were no other vehicles in the line, so then she looked for a limousine. After several more steps it dawned on her that there were no limos ahead either. She slowed, perplexed.
“Where are we going?”
“The walk’ll be good for you,” he said, and she glanced up at him, dismayed.
“But it’s six blocks. And it must be after midnight.”
“It’s a nice night.”
His naiveté was a shock. “We could be mugged.”
Now he smiled a little, blatant evidence that he was far too macho to give a thought to the perils of big city crime. And maybe he was right. McClain was a big man, and he looked rugged and harsh, the quintessential tough-guy, even in an elegant tuxedo. And there was a “don’t mess with me” aura about him that most muggers would choose to pass up. There were easier targets.
“But it’s six blocks,” she reminded him, then felt heat flash into her cheeks. She’d sounded whiney and a little put upon, and she had just enough sense left to be a little ashamed of that in front of a man like him.
It’s what she would have said to anyone else and not thought a thing about it, but she’d said it to Oren McClain. A man whose fit, work-hardened body would see a paltry six blocks as laughably light exercise.
“You outta walk off some of that wine,” he said gruffly. She heard the hint of disapproval and was embarrassed that she’d been drinking like a fish. He’d caught her at a bad time, and what pride had survived everything else was under sound assault.
“Maybe you’re right,” she said, then submitted as he again slid his arm around her waist. Her arm went hesitantly around his, and they started. Hopefully, the effects of the wine would numb a little of the ache of walking six blocks on concrete in her heels.
They’d only gone two blocks before her head cleared more and her feet began to hurt enough that she reconsidered her pride in favor of trying to hail a taxi. But because she wanted to behave well while McClain was still around to witness it, she refrained from complaining. Or begging.
By the time they reached her building, got past security and took the swift silent elevator to her apartment, Stacey was abysmally clearheaded, and was already vowing to never again use alcohol to escape her problems. All it had done was make them worse, though something told her that her notion of worse was about to be revised downward.
That little inkling seemed downright prophetic by the time they reached her door and she tried to tell Oren McClain good-night.
“I’d like to see you inside,” he said. “Make sure you’re all right.”
The genuineness in his tone told her he wasn’t angling for more than that, though she couldn’t actually be sure. He’d been completely trustworthy before, but people were rarely what they seemed on short acquaintance.
And, it was kinder to him to stop things before she gave him any false hopes. Not that she assumed that every man who came in range was instantly lovesick, but because she couldn’t overlook that he’d said he was here to see if she’d changed her mind about him. He’d have to be more than a little smitten to do that.
Besides, she didn’t want to give herself the opportunity to grab whatever rescue he could provide. It would be wrong to use him, and she wasn’t sure how long she could be noble if she spent even a few more minutes with him. And it was a disturbing fact that her body was still reacting to the masculine pull of his, and she still tingled everywhere they’d touched on the walk home.
She made herself say, “I’m all right. Really. I’m just tired now…and embarrassed that I made a fool of myself.”
One side of his stern mouth curved slightly. “You didn’t make a fool of yourself, Miss Stacey. You’re the same proper lady you always are. Just a little thirsty.”
Stacey so liked the gently scolding tone in his gravely voice—as if he thought she was too hard on herself—but his kind words hurt. He was so gallant.
Too gallant to string along or exploit.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Good night, Mr. McClain.” She turned toward the door.
“You might need this,” he said, and she glanced back. Seeing the tiny handbag, she took it, fumbled with the catch, then got out her key. Her hand was steady enough to unlock the door.
She felt her body tingle again as he reached past her to push open the door, so she stepped quickly inside and turned.
“I’d like to see you tomorrow,” he said. “Take you to lunch somewhere.”
Stacey knew he meant to try to court her again, and she couldn’t allow that. It took almost more will than she had to tell him so.
“I’m…sorry. I’m truly sorry, Oren. It wouldn’t be…right.” She almost bit her lip again for calling him Oren. Using his first name after she’d called him Mr. McClain seemed far too personal, and maybe even a little inviting.
As if he hadn’t noticed anything but her refusal, a stoniness came over him. Had she hurt his feelings or merely made him angry?
Though he couldn’t know she no longer had a house staff, she was very aware that they were the only two people here. If he was a threat to her at all, she might be in trouble more serious than losing her fortune.
She was afraid of him—he was so big and tough that he could hurt her with very little effort—and yet she wasn’t afraid of him at all. He might not pass muster with the etiquette police, or know which fork to use, or how to properly greet royalty and important guests in a receiving line, but he was a complete gentleman.
“All right then, Miss Stacey,” he said, and his rugged face seemed merely solemn. He lifted his hand to an inside pocket and withdrew a business card. He held it out to her.
“I wrote the name of my hotel there, and the room number. I’m stayin’ till Thursday. After Thursday, you can get hold of me at any of those numbers.”
Stacey made herself take the card because he didn’t deserve rudeness, and he was perceptive enough not to need a strong rebuff. Proof of that was when he turned and crossed the short distance to the elevator.
Stacey literally had to press her fingers over her lips to keep from calling him back. She managed to step farther into her apartment to let her door go shut before he could get into the elevator and turn so she could see his face. Stacey listened to the latch on her door catch securely, then heard the elevator doors close.
Had she just done Oren McClain a kindness, or had she just cut off her last chance for an easy rescue?
CHAPTER TWO
THERE was nothing noble about the ghostly pale face in the mirror late that next morning or the self-pitying thoughts she was wallowing in. Stacey forced herself through the motions of a hot shower and the numbing discipline of doing her makeup and hair before she wandered into one of her closets to decide what to wear for the day.
The almost military precision of the spacing between the hangers of clothes on one side of the huge closet mocked her. Angelique had taken meticulous care of her clothes, hanging them just so and stuffing them here and there with rumpled tissue paper to prevent wrinkling. Every shoe and boot had been placed with equal precision in their slots according to color in one of the sections, and Stacey knew her underthings were laid away with the same obsessive neatness and attention to color that had made Angelique a neurotic’s dream.
But the simple fact was that in less than a week Stacey had already proven a failure at maintaining the rigid order that had come so effortlessly to her maid. The left side of the closet was a mess, with wads of tissue here and there on the carpet. Her inability to maintain order, like her every other little incompetence over trivial things, had further undermined Stacey’s secret lack of self-confidence and left her feeling increasingly inept and adrift.
Though she’d been raised by an elderly grandfather who’d seen women as social ornaments whose chief aims should be to marry well and be an asset to a wealthy husband, there was really no excuse in this day and age to not have pursued some kind of career that could at least support her.
But the truth was, she’d been petted and cosseted and spoiled until she was fairly useless. Yes, she’d filled up her time with charities and social activities and a political cause or two, but not much of that could be converted into the kind of cold cash that might keep her in her wealthy lifestyle of ease.
She really would make a good wife to some hard-driven millionaire who was looking for a trophy with a pedigreed background, but she’d be a zero at going it alone. Anything in life that hadn’t come easy or she’d not enjoyed, she’d been free to walk away from. And had.
But there was no walking away from the fact that in a few days, most of her beautiful things would be hauled off to storage in a warehouse somewhere, and she’d be living in a less exclusive section of the city. She’d be learning how to make her way around on buses and subways while she continued to search for a job she could do that would pay enough to keep a roof over her head. It would also have to pay the storage bill until she could bear to part with her things.
If she’d taken over her own finances three years ago when her grandfather had passed away instead of blithely continuing with the latent crook who’d slowly embezzled her money to invest in several risky financial schemes, she wouldn’t be in this mess.
Her only hope was that investigators could locate both him and what might be left of her money, and somehow get it back. The thief had fled to South America somewhere, so the hunt was not only complicated by distance but by the difficulties of cooperation between law enforcement agencies that often had more pressing crimes to solve than embezzled funds.
Her brain made another edgy circuit around every problem and frustration, and when it had replayed each one, a mental review of possible catastrophes began their inevitable parade through her thoughts. Her head had been pounding before she’d gotten out of bed that morning just after eleven, but even after a hefty dose of aspirin, it continued to thump. Whether the thumping was solely from the headache or merely the punishment of tortured thoughts, the pain was the same, as was the queasy anxiety she felt.
When she’d finally chosen something to put on and got dressed, Stacey walked out into her bedroom. Her gaze fell to the ivory carpet and fixed on the business card McClain had given her. She thought she’d tossed it in the wastebasket but she must have missed, and it had ended up on the floor.
The sight of it was a profound irritation. She couldn’t even throw something away and do it successfully. Aggravated, she picked up the card and started to toss it away again before she suddenly froze.
The bold scrawl on the back of the card gave the name of one of the most beautiful and exclusive hotels in New York. Seeing how he’d written the letters gave her a swift sense of McClain himself: bold, masculine, decisive.
His handwriting wasn’t something spidery or refined-looking or difficult to read. It was as blunt as he was, as unpretentious, but the letters seemed confident. The pressure he’d put on the pen fairly shouted guilessness; he’d not needed to dither over what to write, he’d just done it. He was a man who said what he meant and meant what he said, and there’d be no mistaking him because he was too straightforward.
Holding that card in her fingers seemed to calm a little of the anxiety that made her feel so sick. No one would cheat or steal from a man like McClain, if for no other reason than the fact that he looked like he could beat the daylights out of anyone foolish enough to trifle with him.
If he were in her place, he certainly wouldn’t be moping around his house wondering how he’d survive or where he’d live. He probably wouldn’t care that his closets weren’t tidy or feel incompetent because he couldn’t cook for himself or do his own laundry.
He wouldn’t be afraid to look for a job. If his friends shunned him, he’d probably say “To hell with them,” and he’d put all his energy and strength into making his own way in the world, even if he’d need to find some new way to live.
That was her impression of Oren McClain. Because of that, she wondered again what a man like him could possibly see in someone like her. Or was he the kind of man her archaic and chauvinistic grandfather had raised her to marry? The kind of man so driven and taken up with his wealth or position or his business life that he’d choose a wife as an accessory and make certain he selected one with breeding who could provide him with handsome and/or beautiful heirs?
Stacey supposed some Texas ranchers and oilmen might be the same on that score as some of the moneyed eastern elites. She turned the card over and read down through the list of phone numbers. There were six of those.
She felt a spark of hope. If Oren McClain was looking for a trophy wife, he might not be disappointed in her. She took good care of her skin and her body, and she had personal taste and a refined style that would never be an embarrassment to him.
Surely he wasn’t looking for a woman who could outride, outrope and outcowboy him, because he could have found a woman like that in Texas. Before her hope could rise very far, Stacey got a swift mental picture of a Texas cattle ranch. How did anyone survive socially and culturally so far from a city?
Did McClain have a maid? A cook? He’d talked like he had money, but how much money did he actually have? And how did he spend it? Did he spend it all on cows and land and pickup trucks and cowboy hobbies, or would he spend some on household help? How big was his house? Was it a cabin or something with some real size to it?
She thought again of his remark about jewels and designer duds. Her impression of him was of honesty and straightforwardness. Maybe he hadn’t exaggerated the things he could provide a wife. If anything, McClain might be the kind of man who understated things to avoid appearing a braggart.
Stacey’s hopes rose a little more as she considered all that. He’d said he’d come to New York to see her, to find out if she’d changed her mind, but she couldn’t just take him at face value. She needed more information, but she needed a means to get it that wouldn’t cost very much.
An Internet search got her started. Going by McClain’s business card, she found out which part of Texas he was from and managed to find newspaper coverage that mentioned McClain Ranch and McClain Oil. A social page in a San Antonio newspaper mentioned an Oren McClain in an article about an area fund-raiser weeks ago, but something else that had gotten her attention was the fact that a TV Western mini-series had been shot on location on McClain Ranch.
Stacey began to feel a little more at ease about Oren McClain. He apparently wasn’t a social outcast, he was well known in the area of Texas he was from, and she hadn’t seen his name associated with anything criminal.
She gave a self-deprecating groan. Her grandfather would have had the background of any potential husband investigated at least as far back as three generations, and he would have had to know to the penny how much the man was worth. Stacey was reduced to doing an Internet search to rule out a criminal background and reading through a society page and business directory to see if the man had enough resources to support a spoiled wife.
Disgusted that she’d gone this far toward the idea of marrying a stranger for his money, she got up and started to pace. Though her apartment was large it seemed to grow more oppressively small by the hour.
She thought about the money she’d had over the years. Or rather, the money she’d spent. What she’d give for a year’s worth of the money she’d spent on clothing and jewelry alone! And now she couldn’t buy much of anything. What little she had left would have to fund a new, painfully modest life. And what if she couldn’t find a job? She’d already waited two months for something she could live with.
The grim future she pictured for herself made it nearly impossible to contemplate the wait between now and Monday, when she could again call the employment agency she’d consulted in hopes of finding something she was qualified to do.
Saturday night loomed before her like lonely shadows in a long dark hall. She was already sick of the deli food in the refrigerator. A fine, hot meal would go a long way in calming her jitters and helping her shore up what little actual courage she had.
Stacey glanced over at the business card propped up on the computer keyboard and realized she was in serious danger of sinking low enough to take advantage of Oren McClain.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be so awful to at least find out if he’d like to take her to dinner. Maybe he wasn’t really serious about marriage. After all, he said he’d come to New York to see if her answer was still no. Perhaps if he took her out once or twice, he’d realize that he didn’t really want her to say yes. She might be doing him a favor if she let him spend enough time with her to become disillusioned.
Stacey didn’t let herself think about how far she’d twisted things around to make her selfish motives—and her craving for a hot meal—seem noble. Not until she’d made the call to McClain’s hotel and let him know she’d changed her mind about seeing him.
Once they’d made plans for the evening and she’d hung up the phone, she felt so heartsick over her cowardly scheme that she almost, almost called him back.
The lady was as jumpy as a flea on an old dog. He could almost smell her guilt over their date tonight, and he was satisfied by that hint of character.
A little aristocrat like Stacey Amhearst was probably terrified of being poor, and she was no doubt close to the point where she’d do just about anything to save herself from the horrors of being broke. She might even marry a rough old Texas boy like him.
She’d secretly studied him all through dinner as if she was judging a horse she might buy. He knew she liked the way he made her feel because he couldn’t mistake the way she’d melted when he’d escorted her across the restaurant with his hand at the back of her waist.
Or earlier, when he’d picked her up at her place and taken her arm to go downstairs to get in the taxi. And again when they’d arrived here and he’d taken her hand for the short walk from the taxi into the restaurant.
The lady was like a choice sweet in a kid’s warm grip, and he liked that her cool grace and polite reserve was about as thin as a cellophane wrapper. Months ago, she’d behaved as if she hadn’t quite known how to handle him—or herself—when he got close. She still behaved that way, but he couldn’t tell if that was because she liked him more than she wanted to or if she just didn’t have much experience with men like him. At least she seemed to enjoy being with him.
He probably came off like a brute compared to the men she was used to. Hell, he was no peacock. His skin had been burned brown by the sun and weathered by the elements, his hands were big and scarred and thick with calluses, and the only truly fragile and refined thing in his life was her.
But she might marry him anyway, because he had money and she knew he wanted her. She’d be torn up with guilt over it because she’d be marrying him for something other than love. How he knew that was more because of what he’d sensed about her than any bit of gossip he’d been able to ferret out.
Though he could be wrong, his instincts were usually on target. They told him Ms. Stacey Amhearst knew right from wrong. She just didn’t have enough confidence in herself—yet—to do right and damn the consequences. He meant to benefit from that while he could.
Oren leaned back to watch as she picked up her last spoon and dug into dessert. Though he knew from months ago that she’d been raised to pick and fuss daintily over her food, she’d gone after her meal tonight like a half-starved cattle crew at a cookhouse table.
The reason was obvious. She’d lost weight she couldn’t spare, and that was because she couldn’t do for herself in the kitchen. How the hell her grandfather could have raised her to be so helpless was a marvel to Oren McClain. No daughter of his would be dependent on anyone.
No wife of his would either. His only real criticism of Stacey was that she’d stayed helpless and dependent, though he meant to see that change. There was no reason in the world that she couldn’t have class and beauty and grace along with a hefty dose of can-do independence and the self-confidence that went with it.
“So tell me, Oren,” she began after she’d mostly finished the artsy dab that passed for a big city dessert. He enjoyed the sound of his name when she said it. She made it sound dignified and upper crust. “About your ranch. Is it just outside San Antonio?”
Oren smiled. “It’s about three hours outside, give or take.” He noticed she picked up her cloth napkin and touched it to her lips as if to think about that. Or to cover a rush of dismay.
“What do you do so far out? For entertainment.”
“We’ve got dances, church socials, barbecues, rodeos, school events. There’s a county fair and an occasional parade. Several small town celebrations and events, a couple honky-tonks for nightlife and weekends, a golf course, a lake, and we have our own doings at the ranch. Buyers and business folks fly in. I sometimes drive out or fly out to other places when something interests me or work takes me away.”
He could tell she was mentally trying to picture all that—and whether she could tolerate it or not—so he added, “Most folks in town or on the land are good people, lots are family folk and real friendly. Salt of the earth.”
The down-home, plain-folk descriptions must have rattled her a little because she made a big production of returning her napkin to her lap and then kept looking down as she fiddled with it. When she finally looked up, the smile she gave him looked a little too strained to be as serene as she must have meant.
“They sound…very nice,” she said, then reached for her water glass and took a delicate sip that made him stare at the way her lips handled the task.
As if catching him staring at her mouth unsettled her, she quickly put down the glass and offered him a self-conscious smile. She casually pushed her dessert plate a little away, and he guessed she was finished with it.
Oren lazily returned her smile. “How do I get the waiter to bring me the check so we can get out of this place?”
He was as much as declaring to her that he was a country hick, and as he’d hoped, she took it kindly. Now she smiled a little less tensely.
She lifted her napkin to the table and laid it neatly beside her plate, and her voice was low enough to not be overheard.
