Kitabı oku: «A Wedding in the Family»

CHAPTER ONE

RYE PARRISH hated socialites.

His mother had been one of those. Rich, spoiled, obsessed with her looks, her clothes and her rancher husband’s bank account. She’d hated the grand Texas house Rand Parrish had built for her. She’d endured his attentions and tolerated his companionship from time to time—as long as she could spend his money like water and live most of the year in the city.

But two sons later, she decided motherhood was too high a price to pay in exchange for the Parrish fortune. She’d abandoned her husband and sons. Walked away without a backward glance before her youngest was out of diapers and her eldest was eight years old.

Rye’s younger brother, Chad, had few memories of their beautiful mother. Rye remembered everything about the glamorous woman who’d never had the capacity to show affection to her rambunctious offspring. Rena Parrish had been appalled by the dirty face and dirty clothes he’d worn after a day of play. She’d been too squeamish about his scraped knees and normal childhood illnesses to tend them. She’d never offered comfort and seldom paid either of her sons any attention. Except to criticize.

Even so, her final desertion had deeply wounded him. Her abandonment had been so absolute that he’d eventually come to hate her. But for the rest of his thirty-three- years, he’d measured every female he’d ever met against her. Whatever a woman’s faults or shortcomings, he’d rarely come across one whose failings were as abysmal as Rena’s, rarely met another who deserved so little respect.

But the elegant blonde who walked through the small air terminal in his direction might be the rare one who came close.

Rye watched her, his eyes narrowing cynically as he noted that her collar-length blond hair had been trimmed to fall into a precise pageboy curve. Her aristocratic face was fine-boned, her features delicate, her skin a glamor-perfect peaches and cream. Her pink silk blouse and khaki bush pants were designer labels, the leather sandals on her small feet made for her by the same Italian designer who’d crafted the matching handbag. The baggage handler who carried four pieces of her monogrammed luggage followed closely, but her very erect, regal posture gave every signal that she’d dismissed his presence behind her as completely as if he’d been in charge of someone else’s luggage.

Rye Parrish liked most women, but his first glimpse of this woman roused little more than contempt. Even if he hadn’t guessed the little snob had come all the way from New York to Texas to express her snooty family’s disapproval of her sister’s engagement to his younger brother, he wouldn’t have liked her. His disdain for females of her ilk ensured that.

Lillian Renard walked down the concourse, so badly disrupted by this trip to the wilds of Texas that her stomach was in knots. She’d been watching dismally out the window when the commuter aircraft began to reduce altitude, more appalled by the second at the vast emptiness of the land she’d been about to descend upon. The sparse scattering of buildings—not one more than six stories high, she’d noted—emphasized the notion that she was hundreds of miles from civilization.

Lillian didn’t handle stress well. She was, in fact, a coward. Traveling to an area which she regarded as little more than a Wild West frontier was terrifying for a young woman who’d grown up in the city and had never traveled anywhere in the world that wasn’t metropolitan. Why her imperious grandmother had insisted that she be the one to travel to Texas to issue the ultimatum to her rebellious younger sister, Rachel, was impossible to discern.

Except that Rachel was Grandmama’s favorite. Lillian had lived most of her life scrambling to attain even a smidgen of their grandmother’s approval. But Rachel, no matter how eccentric, no matter what her latest escapade or public blunder, had managed to capture the lion’s share of the old woman’s affection.

Until she’d run off with a cowboy from Texas. Though Rachel was barely twenty-two, Chad Parrish was her fifth love affair. But because he was a cowboy—a glorified farmer who herded cattle from horseback—their grandmother had taken exception to him. Once she’d learned he’d inherited only half of a Texas fortune, which she’d calculated to be far below her staunch requirements for her favorite granddaughter, Grandmama was apoplectic. If Rachel didn’t give up her cowboy lover and return to. New York, she would be promptly and irrevocably disowned.

And though the old harridan hadn’t expressly decreed it, Lillian might well find herself disowned if she failed to succeed in her assignment.

Her heart trembled at the thought of being so horribly shamed. After growing up among the elites of New York, she couldn’t bear to imagine the terror of being cast adrift, without a penny to her name. The scandal and humiliation of it was unthinkable. Carefully cosseted and repressibly overprotected from those her grandmother deemed unworthy, every friend she’d ever had had been ruthlessly investigated and monitored by the old lady who downright dominated everyone she came in contact with. She’d restricted the education of her granddaughters to boarding schools and colleges which catered exclusively to young ladies of impeccable breeding. A real education in something useful—in anything that might have afforded either of them a moneymaking career apart from their inheritance—had been discouraged.

Lillian was certain even that was their grandmother’s way of maintaining control over her young, orphaned charges. Lillian and Rachel had been reared to supervise a houseful of servants, serve on the boards of selective charities, entertain guests on a grand scale, and make some wealthy man of Grandmama’s choosing the perfectly turned-out wife. Neither of them were capable of earning a living that would enable them to maintain the rarefied lifestyle they’d been born into. The idea of either of them reduced to making their way in the world without a fortune to back them was terrifying.

Which was why Lillian had come to Texas to rescue her wayward sister. Rachel behaved as if the prospect of imperiling her inheritance was as improbable as it was untenable. Rachel had already run through huge sums of money as she’d skipped about the world indulging her whims. That she also showered her man of the moment beneath the same fountain of money she showered over herself had made her an easy target for dishonorable men with an eye to her fortune. If young Rachel were suddenly impoverished, the free-spending lifestyle she seemed to require might lead her to make desperate choices which could lead to disaster.

Particularly when Lillian considered that Rachel had landed herself in enough disasters, even with their grandmother’s fortune to buy her out of trouble.

Lillian’s aloof gaze continued to scan the small air terminal. Though she would have heartily welcomed the sight of her sister’s beautiful face, she’d already resigned herself to the idea that Rachel would send someone else to carry out the boring chore of collecting her. That meant someone from the Parrish Ranch should already be on hand.

And that was surely the reason for the fresh wave of nervousness that flooded her. She was completely out of her element. She’d heard Texans were a difficult, if sometimes amiable lot. Filled with overweening pride and braggadocios exaggerations about heaven knew what in their huge, rugged state, Texans were reputed to be rough-mannered, uncouth, and nearly impossible to truly civilize, despite the size of their land, cattle and oil wealth. Grandmama had warned her implicitly about all that.

The fact that Lillian had been so closely shielded from such low-brow elements gave her an understandable fear of suddenly having to bear exposure.

And if the very tall, broad-shouldered cowboy who lounged against the next pillar was an example of the uncouth male element she’d be exposed to, she was certain she’d be terrified.

From his black Stetson to the scuffed and dusty leather of his boots, the man was a blatantly male specimen of Texas arrogance. Macho-looking in the extreme, he looked as hard and unrelenting as weathered granite. The chambray cotton of his work shirt strained over impressive chest, shoulder and arm muscles, and the soft wash-worn denim of his jeans hugged trim hips and heavily muscled thighs.

But it was the cowboy’s harshly chiseled face and the almost brutal line of his mouth that drew her attention and gave her qualms about meeting his gaze. When she did, the blazing blue of his narrowed eyes made her heart skip. Even from beneath the small bit of shade his Stetson cast over his tanned face, his eyes were a hot, electric blue, their color emphasized by his dark skin-tones. That those hot, electric-blue eyes were trained on her face with the cutting intensity of a laser made her chest tighten with distress as she registered the unmistakable hostility in their hard lights.

The tightness became more pronounced, but Lillian resisted the urge to immediately look away. Some primitive sense about the man warned her not to show even a sliver of weakness. If she could brazen out his harsh gaze a moment more and get past him, she would surely find someone from the Parrish Ranch and be on her way. Suddenly, the wild, outdoor expanse of a remote Texas cattle ranch seemed far less intimidating than the man who appeared to hate the very sight of her.

She finally allowed herself to glance away, finding it surprisingly difficult to break the gleaming eye contact. Her chin went up the slightest fraction in unconscious self-defense as she continued past him.

The low, gravelly drawl that reached her before she’d got a safe distance sent a shudder of pure horror through her small frame.

“Miz Renard?”

Somehow she’d known that low, gravelly drawl would carry the unmistakable hint of insolence that it did. But how had she known it would also be so slow-sounding and rough-edged, like the warning growl of a vicious guard dog? What she hadn’t known until she’d actually heard it, was that the cowboy’s voice had such an appealing sensual texture beneath all that insolence and warning. The fact that it called up the image of a velvet glove covering a tight male fist didn’t dampen a bit of her shockingly feminine response to it.

If this was the Texas cowboy Rachel had run off with, she could now understand a bit of her sister’s rabid attraction. She also understood even more deeply how unhealthy that rabid attraction was.

Lillian brought herself to a reluctant halt, her posture going more rigid as she tried to brace herself against the cowboy’s clear message of hostility. As she forced herself to turn back to him, she was terrified by the reminder that she never fared well with people who seemed not to like her. She did even worse with overbearing, domineering people. That this man appeared to possess all of those intimidating qualities badly unnerved her.

She gave a cool lift of her light brows as she tried desperately to mask the crippling insecurities she’d felt her whole life.

Her imperious, “Yes?” was meant to assert herself to him as a lady entitled to at least a pretense of outward respect. Instead, it seemed to give him license to behave in any manner he chose. That this cowboy would never lay claim to civilized manners was immediately evident.

“Figured you were Rocky’s meddling big sister. Not many little aristocrats from New York blow down this way without a reason.” He ignored her startled intake of breath. His insolent gaze made a head-to-toe pass over her before he reached for two of the suitcases the baggage handler carried for her.

“Here.” The cases he shoved at her were neither the smallest nor the lightest of her things. When she didn’t immediately take them, he fixed her with a hard look. “No one on the Parrish Ranch is gonna carry you around on a lace pillow, Princess. Either lend a hand and wait on yourself for a change, or climb back on that plane before it flies out.”

Lillian’s cheeks blazed a bright red. She read the challenge in the hard shine of his eyes. His hostility was like a mile-wide wall that soared to the clouds between them. Her first instinct was to abandon her luggage and run for the safety of the airplane. Her second, that she square off with this rude, uncouth male creature and somehow best him, was even stronger.

And that ranked as the biggest surprise of Lillian’s twenty-three years. As a woman who was easily intimidated, who had lived most of her life in cowardly subservience to her volatile grandmother, the notion that this man had somehow stirred some faint bit of spirit in her was stunning. That she felt compelled to fight her fears—and him—to win, was even more stunning.

He didn’t wait longer than that fleeting instant of realization for her to act. He didn’t give her so much as a heartbeat of time to contemplate the meaning of it all. Instead, he shoved the cases toward her a second time.

She almost lost her grip on the handle of her handbag as she grappled to take the cases without touching his long, powerful fingers. He took the other two suitcases and turned.

Just that quickly, he was striding away from her in the direction of an exit. Lillian started after him, then remembered the baggage handler. She stopped and hastily set down the cases to open her handbag for a tip. She passed the bill to the handler with a shaky smile and a soft, “Thank you,” that won her an enthusiastic thanks when he saw the denomination of the bill.

By the time she’d picked up her suitcases and turned toward the exit, she saw through the glass doors that the cowboy was a distant figure halfway across the parking lot. Getting a better grip on the cases, Lillian hurried through the exit.

Once she was past the automatic doors, the heat of the blazing Texas sun struck her slight body like a speeding freight truck. The sun was so bright that she had to squint her eyes to see before they could adjust.

The wall of heat that had slammed into her now beat down oppressively. Her nervous breath began to go shallow, but she made herself step forward and walk in the direction she’d last glimpsed the cowboy.

He was no longer in sight, but she had little choice but to keep going. By the time she reached the far end of the parking lot, she was panting with frustration. She turned to scan the assortment of cars and pickups. She saw a few men with hats, but none with the battered black Stetson the cowboy had been wearing.

She ended up walking all the way back to the doors of the terminal before her arms gave out and she had to set down the heavy suitcases. Her fingers were shaking so much from the worry that she’d been abandoned in the hot sun, that she nearly dropped the cases. She did drop her handbag, scattering its contents on the hot concrete. Her eyes were blurry with perspiration as she bent to gather her things from the ground.

A wave of dizziness and nausea made her straighten and press trembling fingers to her forehead. She was an abysmal traveler, never more so than on this trying mission for her grandmother. The enormity of the task was impacting her in the awful heat, and this shameful bout of bad nerves was mortifying.

She didn’t pay attention to the big pickup that had rumbled to a stop along the curb a few feet away as she struggled to relax.

“What’s the matter? Are you sick?”

That low, gravelly drawl coming from so close beside her made her jump. Resisting the urge to glance up at the cowboy to see if the reluctant concern she’d heard in his voice was in evidence on his rugged face, she turned away and crouched down to gather her things from the concrete.

“No—I—dropped my bag,” she said hastily as she picked up her wallet and cosmetics and shoved them into her handbag. The dusty toes of the cowboy’s enormous boots intruded into the perimeter of her downcast vision. Appalled at his nearness, she stood up.

She was about to step back to reassert the huge distance she intended to maintain between herself and this rude man, when he caught her small chin with calloused, blunt-nailed fingers that were too strong to fight. The unexpected touch sent a cascade of pleasurable tingles over her skin that made her forget her queasiness. Then, despite the inherent power he could have used to manhandle her, he gently forced her face up and her wide eyes made unwilling contact with the harsh blue intensity of his.

“Your face is as white as new cotton panties.”

The deliberately crude comparison he made between her face and new lingerie insulted her. Profoundly. She reached up and tried to push his big hand away, but it didn’t budge. She grabbed his thick wrist, but the carefully manicured ends of her fingers barely touched nail tips with her thumb as she wrenched his hand away and took an angry step back.

“I thought the Parrish family raised cattle, Mr. Whomever-you-are,” she declared with stiff dignity. “I had no idea they raised swine.”

Once she’d delivered an insult to him which she considered every bit as obnoxious as the one he’d delivered her, she regained her composure. She glanced down, brushing and smoothing at her blouse and slacks, as much for something to do with her shaking hands as to recover her neat appearance.

To Rye, she gave every impression of a small exotic bird smoothing down her ruffled feathers. She already looked as neat and elegant as any other self-obsessed socialite. But to see those fine, delicate little hands fluttering around to tug and smooth over her pricey blouse and pants was almost as amusing as her priggish attempt to insult him. The sight was also powerfully arousing.

“Rye Parrish.”

The sudden offer of a name identified the uncouth cowboy as the owner of the monstrous Parrish Ranch. Lillian’s head snapped up and she gave an involuntary gasp.

“You are Rye Parrish?”

A humorless smile flitted over his hard mouth. “None other,” was his terse response.

Lillian arched a brow, but said nothing. Instead, she turned from him to reach for her luggage. He got to it first, so she followed to the dusty pickup parked at the curb. She winced when he swung her cases over the side of the truck box, but he managed to set them down gently enough next to the rest of her things. The casual strength of his fit, muscled body impressed her despite her reluctance to admire anything about him. The hostility he’d shown earlier reasserted itself when he opened the passenger door of the big pickup and motioned her in with a mocking flourish of his wide hand.

She hesitated a moment, then stepped onto the running board and climbed into the tall vehicle. The door closed smartly beside her the moment she sat on the seat. She got her safety belt on by the time he rounded the pickup and got behind the wheel.

“Ever been to Texas?” His question sounded mild enough as he twisted the key and the truck engine roared to life.

Lillian couldn’t help that her soft, “No, I haven’t,” was wary. Particularly when his expression relaxed and those blue eyes gave her an all-encompassing glance that took in her neatly combed and pressed appearance. She got the impression that her careful grooming was somehow a mark against her.

He glanced away as if he’d suddenly lost interest, starting the pickup off to drive toward the paved road that led to the highway. Lillian eventually made herself relax, grateful for the truck’s air-conditioning as Rye turned onto the highway and accelerated.

She managed to feel a bit more at ease and found a surprising amount of enjoyment in the vast expanse of range land they passed through. Widespread herds of cattle could be seen from time to time, but the oil pumping stations that were visible from the highway seemed to pepper the land with amazing regularity. The novelty of speeding down the long ribbon of highway and rarely meeting another vehicle was astonishing to someone accustomed to the heavy traffic snarls of New York. The huge panorama that surrounded them was breathtaking. The sky was as vividly blue as it was endless, and Lillian realized with some surprise that something about the sheer size of it all was as soothing to her as it was overwhelming.

Rye watched Ms. Lillian Renard’s wide-eyed attention shift to take in every cow, oil well and change in the landscape. Twice they’d sped over the top of a shallow hill. He’d heard her soft intake of breath as they’d reached the crest. The first time, he’d thought she was alarmed by something. The second time she’d done it, he’d realized that her little gasp meant she was favorably impressed by the panoramic view of the countryside they saw briefly from their higher vantage point. He hadn’t expected her to be interested in anything Texas or the Parrish Ranch had to offer.

He still didn’t want to take her to Parrish. Because she was here to look down that perfectly formed aristocratic nose at his baby brother and object to his honorable intentions toward her spoiled, hotheaded sister, he didn’t want her anywhere near his home.

It wasn’t as if he thought her sister was good enough to marry his brother. She sure as hell wasn’t. Rachel—or Rocky, as she insisted everyone call her—was very nearly the last female on the planet he could stand having around, much less wanted to see marry into his family. It had about killed him to keep his objections to himself, but he had. For his brother’s sake, he’d smiled, laughed at Rocky’s off-color jokes and ignored her none-too-subtle come-ons to him. He was deathly afraid that any hint of an objection from him would make his headstrong brother more determined than ever to marry her.

But now Rocky’s high-toned sister was about to stick her nose into the mess. Her interference had the small possibility of spoiling everything, and Rye couldn’t allow that. He didn’t want anyone to put the lovers on the defensive and prompt them to an act of defiance that might end in the elopement he dreaded.

The hell of it was that his careful patience these past interminably long weeks was beginning to bear a few promising bits of fruit. As he’d hoped, Rocky and Chad were starting to appear less than enchanted with one another. Rocky, when she got worked up, had a mouth on her that could blister the hide off a hog. And she’d got worked up at Chad over a couple of little nothings the last few days. The first time, she’d pitched a fit that had sent Chad to the far end of Parrish range until the next day. The second time, his little brother had stood his ground. Rocky had taken one of the cars and gone to a honky-tonk in town, coming back in the wee hours of the morning so dangerously drunk that they’d all been amazed she hadn’t wrecked the car or killed someone.

From there, Rye realized it was only a matter of time—maybe days, hopefully hours—before Chad woke up to the idea that Rocky was incapable of making him any kind of decent wife. It took every bit of self-control he’d had to allow his brother time to see it.

But now, just as he sensed Chad was on the verge of figuring it all out and calling off the engagement, here came the useless bit of fluff whose interference might coax the mismatched lovers more solidly together.

The call Rocky’s grandmother had made to the ranch the day before had been their only warning of Lillian’s arrival. Chad had taken the call and, believing that a visit from Lillian might soften the old lady’s objections, he’d promised that she’d be met at the airport.

Chad had wanted to meet her plane, but Rye had guessed right off what the sister’s sudden visit was about and insisted on doing the honors. Particularly since her grandmother had got him on the phone two days prior and expressed her violent objection to a marriage between their families. The female curmudgeon hadn’t minced words, so there was no reason to think Lillian Renard’s arrival would be anything more than a face-to-face repeat.

But the fragile-looking socialite perched beside him on the seat didn’t appear capable of repeating the old witch’s exact words. Now that he’d met her, he also found it difficult to believe she could come up with any demands of her hedonistic sister that would press Rocky’s loud-mouthed temper toward anything more serious than laughter.

He’d felt a little like laughing himself at her stiff little swine comment. His worries over her arrival at the ranch were probably groundless. After weeks of enduring Rocky’s overbearing personality and short temper, he couldn’t imagine how the two females were remotely related, much less that this little pansy had the ability to bully her sister into a rash act.

Why the grandmother would send such a colorless little ninny to carry out her dirty work might have made for amusing speculation if he hadn’t found her so personally annoying. Particularly when he reckoned it was up to him to derail whatever it was that she and her grandmother had cooked up. And since his only chance of doing that was to level with her and try to gain her cooperation, Rye reckoned he’d have to make a better attempt at concealing his natural aversion to her kind.

But not until he took the little snob down a notch or two. He leaned back a bit more comfortably on the seat and draped a wrist over the wheel.

“A city girl, huh?”

Rye’s lazy drawl was ripe with cynical humor. Lillian glanced at his strong profile, finding his tanned handsomeness more exciting than she wanted to. The raw masculinity of the man was staggering to a young woman who’d had so little experience with men. Every instinct warned her to keep a safe distance.

“I’m certain you already know that, Mr. Parrish,” she answered stiffly. The man clearly disliked her and meant to rub it in.

“And a gen-u-ine New York socialite,” he drawled on.

Lillian bristled at the scorn in his tone and dared a comeback. “Is there a point to your rudeness, Mr. Parrish, or are you too boorish to realize your lack of manners? I believe it’s clear enough now that the invitation for me to visit your ranch was your brother’s idea. If you had such strong objections, perhaps you should have taken them up with him before my travel plans were this far along.”

“What invitation are we talking about, Miz Renard?” The blue gaze that swung toward her was tinged with mockery. “I’d hardly call your grandma’s demand to meet you at the airport and escort you to the ranch an invitation.”

Lillian stared over at him, startled by his blunt statement. Her face flushed. It was just like her grandmother to do such a thing. The grim duty of delivering her message was odious enough to Lillian. To compound it by barging in on everyone uninvited was unthinkable.

Grandmama’s low regard for all things rural and all things Texan had apparently disqualified the Parrish brothers from any pretense of proper manners. Rye’s hostility toward her and his crudeness, though bad behavior, suddenly made sense. And because Lillian had labored all her life to be as proper and inoffensive as possible, her grandmother’s actions embarrassed her.

“My apologies, Mr. Parrish.” She impulsively reached out to touch his arm to emphasize her sincerity, then froze, her fingers a mere inch from his shirt sleeve. “I naturally assumed—if I’d thought you were being forced—”

She cut herself off, unable to complete the sentence. The knowledge that her grandmother would have pressured her to come anyway—and that she would have complied—kept her from offering the lie. She jerked her hand back and turned her face forward, her apprehension about coming to Texas multiplied a hundredfold.