Friends and Lovers. Diana Palmer

      Madeline had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep from giggling out loud. John’s face was deadpan, wearing a look of pure disgust.

      “You work here?” the blonde asked.

      “Yes, ma’am, like a mule, and that man won’t even pay me the back wages he owes me.”

      “You oughtn’t let him get away with it,” the woman told him. “I’d sue him.”

      “Well, if I didn’t owe him so much money, I might do that,” John agreed.

      “Owe…him money?” The tourist’s eyes widened. “For what?”

      “Oh, little ticky things. Like rent on this here horse.”

      The blonde looked horrified, and Madeline was digging her nails into her palms to keep from howling.

      “He makes his men pay rent on their horses—’his’ horses—to work ‘his’ cattle?” the tourist burst out.

      “Well, he don’t take in much money on the cattle, so he had to make it up somehow, I reckon,” John said with a shrug. “Of course, it’s not hard to see how he got so rich when you consider how much money we all owe him in gambling debts.”

      “You all owe him gambling debts?”

      “Well, yes, ma’am,” John continued in his slowest drawl. “You see, he gets us drunk every Friday night and suckers us into playing poker with him. I reckon I owe him less than the others, though. I’ve paid my bill down to where I only got twenty thousand dollars more to pay off.”

      “Oh, my God,” the tourist gasped.

      John shook his head good-naturedly. “Could be worse,” he assured her.

      “I don’t see how!”

      John was more than willing to tell her. “He could make me sleep in the bunkhouse with the boys. Got rattlers in there ten feet long, big around as my leg.” He slapped his broad, denim-encased thigh. “Never could find a gun powerful enough to kill them things, so what you have to do is make pets of them. But snakes just don’t take to me like they do to some of them other boys, so Big John lets me sleep in the big house.”

      The blonde was beginning to look suspicious. “Snakes ten feet long? Is that what they call a Texas tall tale?”

      “Oh, no, ma’am,” John assured her. “I only lie when Big John tells me to, like when the income tax people ask questions about his trips to Europe and the thirty dependents that he swears are his illegitimate children—youngest girl’s twenty, you know….”

      The blond woman started to laugh. She kept on until tears were rolling down her cheeks, and her companion was giggling audibly. Madeline let go of her own self-control at last, doubling over with laughter.

      “Thank you for the profile, Mr. Durango,” the tourist laughed at John, her eyes twinkling. “Next time I read a story about you in some magazine, I’ll be one of the privileged few who know what a scalawag you really are. Making your men rent their horses…!”

      He chuckled. “I’ve thought about it sometimes,” he swore. He pulled out his wallet and handed her a card. “I can always use a good attorney,” he told her. “If retirement gets too tough, give me a call.” He winked at her. “You’re too damned young to retire, honey.”

      Madeline could have kissed him when she saw the older woman’s face begin to glow.

      “Thank you,” came the heartfelt reply. “Now which way do I go to get to Houston?”

      After the tourists had driven away, John mounted his gelding, waiting for Madeline to follow suit. He lit a cigarette with steady fingers and led the way toward the barn where his prize bulls were quartered like royalty. They had their own air-conditioning as well as a heating system for winter.

      “You scalawag, you,” Madeline muttered, trying to tease him out of his black mood.

      He didn’t even spare her a glance. He was still furious, and she didn’t know how she was going to explain her own actions. How could she, when she didn’t understand them herself?

      “John, what was your father like?” she asked suddenly.

      He glanced at her as they rode along. “What brought that on?”

      She shrugged. “I don’t know. You’ve never talked about him. I just…wondered.”

      He took a draw on the cigarette and stared at the horizon. “He was rigid. Hard. Very disciplined and single-minded. He had nothing as a child, and he was determined to show the whole damned world that he was as capable of getting rich as anybody else. He was a career man in the Marines before he bought Big Sabine and started drilling for oil.” He laughed mirthlessly. “What he found didn’t amount to much at first, but we invested carefully, bought more land, and got lucky.”

      “Your mother?” she asked carefully.

      “She died when I was born.”

      “Oh.” Madeline stared at the red coats of the bulls as they neared the barn. “The ranch was named for a battle, wasn’t it?” she murmured.

      “The battle of Sabine Pass,” he agreed, “where my father was born. In 1863, Union troops tried to invade Texas through the pass. Two lieutenants named Richard Dowling and N.H. Smith defended the fort there with six cannon and forty-two men. That defense was so successful that Union troops never tried to invade through the pass again.”

      “I’ll bet your father liked the odds when he heard the story, didn’t he?” she asked with a tiny smile.

      “Impossible odds?” he mused. “Yes. That appealed to him, all right. The only thing that didn’t was fatherhood. He spent the first twenty years of my life blaming me for my mother’s death. It was just as well that he left me with my uncle while he was in the service.”

      She studied his rigid profile wonderingly. She was curious about him in new ways; she wanted to know what forces had shaped him into the man he was.

      He dismounted at the fence and hooked his boot on the lowest rung, leaning his arms over it to watch a huge Santa Gertrudis bull lumber along in his solitary pasture.

      Madeline joined him by the fence, drawn by his strength and size, as she thought about the lonely young boy he must have been. She liked the closeness—perhaps, she told herself, because of the faint chill in the air. John radiated warmth at this range. Her eyes swept over him—from the long, powerful legs up to the broad leather belt around his lean waist, the massive chest and muscular arms. His forearms were dark with the same sprinkling of hair that covered the rest of his body, and there was a thin gold watch strapped over his wrist. He wore no rings at all and had beautiful hands—broad, tanned, with long fingers and a feathering of hair over their backs. The nails were flat, neatly trimmed and immaculate, despite the manual labor he did when at the ranch.

      “Are you considering taking up art?” he asked with a lash in his voice. “You must have me memorized by now.”

      She dragged her eyes back to the bull. “I was thinking,” she said shortly. “You just sort of got in the way.”

      “Thinking about what?” he prodded. “Your next murder victim?”

      It was the first sign of melting in the glacier he’d drawn around himself, and she met his look with a shy smile.

      “Not quite,” she assured him. “Only the vile tools I’m going to need and the grisly details.”

      He laughed softly, bending his head to light a cigarette. “Who’s going to get the ax this time?” he asked.

      She peeked up at him. “I thought I’d kill off the detective-hero.”

      “Your fans would hang you from the nearest tree,” he commented. He glanced down at her, his eyes taking in the long, waving disarray of her red gold