Danielle Steel - Palomino

When she returned to her own room, Bill was waiting in his pajamas and taking a last puff on his cigar. “Where were you? Still hungry after all that dinner?”

“No.” Caroline shook her head, oddly quiet. “I wanted to make sure that Sam was all right.”

“Is she?”

“Yes. She's sleeping.” They had thought so when they saw the darkened house.

“She's a nice girl. That guy she was married to must've been a damn fool to run off with that other woman.” He hadn't been impressed with what he'd seen of Liz on TV.

Caroline nodded silent agreement and then wondered how many of them were damn fools. She to have let Bill force silence on her for two decades, keeping their love for each other a secret; Bill for living like a criminal, as he tiptoed in and out of her house for more than twenty years; Samantha for falling for a man and a way of life that were both as foreign to her and possibly as dangerous as jumping off the top of the Empire State Building; and Tate Jordan for falling in love with a girl he couldn't have. Because Caroline knew exactly what was happening. She sensed it in her bones, in her gut, in her soul. She had seen it in Sam's eyes before Sam even knew it, sensed it on Christmas when she saw Tate look at Sam while she was busy doing something else. Caroline saw it all, and yet she had to pretend that she saw nothing, knew nothing and no one, and suddenly she didn't want that anymore.

“Bill.” She looked at him strangely, took his cigar away, and set it down in the ashtray. “I want to get married.”

“Sure, Caro.” He grinned and fondled her left breast.

“Don't.” She brushed him away. “I mean it.” And something suddenly told him that she did.

“You're senile! Why would we get married now?”

“Because at our age you shouldn't be sneaking in and out of our house in the middle of the night, it's bad for my nerves and your arthritis.”

“You're crazy.” He lay back against the headboard with a look of shock.

“Maybe. But I'll tell you something. By now I don't think we'll surprise anyone. And what's more, I don't think anyone would care. No one would remember what or where I come from, so all your old arguments are nonsense. All they know after all this time is that I'm Caroline Lord and you're Bill King of the Lord Ranch. Period.”

“Not period.” He looked suddenly ferocious. “They know you're the rancher and I'm the foreman.”

“Who gives a damn?”

“I do. And you should. And the men do. There's a difference, Caro. You know that after all these years. And I'll be damned”-he almost roared it at her-“if I'll make you a laughingstock. Running off and marrying the foreman-the hell I will.”

“Fine.” She glared at him. “Then I'll fire you, and you can come back as my husband.”

“Woman, you're crazy.” He wouldn't even discuss it. “Now turn the light out. I'm tired.”

“So am I…” She looked at him unhappily. “Of hiding, that's what I'm tired of after all these years. I want to be married, dammit, Bill.”

“Then marry another rancher.”

“Go to hell.” She glared at him and he turned off the light, and the conversation was ended. It was the same conversation they had had a hundred times over the last twenty years, and there was no winning. As far as he knew, she was the rancher, and he was the foreman. And as she lay on her side of the bed, her eyes filled with tears, her back to him, she fervently prayed that Samantha would not fall hopelessly in love with Tate Jordan, because she knew that it would end no differently than this. There was a code that these men followed, a code that made sense to no one but them, but they lived by it, and Caroline knew that they always would.

The exchange of cabins between Tate Jordan and Harry Hennessey was completed within four days. Hennessey was enchanted with Tate's offer, and with the appropriate amount of grumbling, Tate eventually moved his things. He claimed that he didn't particularly like his cabin, was sick and tired of hearing Hennessey bitch, and had no vested interest in any of the cabins. To him, it was one and the same. No one took any particular notice of the transaction, and by Thursday night Tate had unpacked all his things. In her room at Aunt Caro's, Samantha waited patiently in the dark until nine thirty, when Caroline was safely in her room. Samantha left via her window and padded through the garden at the rear of the house, until only a few moments later she reached Tate's front door. His new cabin was almost directly behind the house and could be seen by no other. It was even protected from the view of the big house by the fruit trees at the back end of the garden, so there was no one who could see Samantha slip quietly through the door. Tate was waiting for her, barefoot, bare-chested, and in blue jeans, his hair almost blue-black, with salt at the temples and liquid green fire in his eyes. His skin was as smooth as satin, and he folded her rapidly into his arms. Moments later they were between clean sheets on his narrow bed. It was only after they had made love that they indulged in conversation, that she giggled about sneaking out her window and told him that she was sure that at that very moment Bill King was tiptoeing through the front door.

“Doesn't this all seem ridiculous at our age?” She was amused but he wasn't.

“Just think of it as romantic.” Like Bill King with his concern for Caro, Tate Jordan had no intention of turning Sam into a laughingstock on the ranch. She was no quick piece of ass, no easy lay from New York. She was one hell of a special lady, and now she was his woman, and he would protect her if he had to, even from herself. And she understood nothing of the code of behavior between ranchers and ranch hands. What they did was their business and no one else's, and always would be, no matter what Samantha said. It was a point that she no longer chose to argue, there were always too many other things to say. She knew his position now, and he was well aware of hers, there was nothing left to be said for the moment about their clandestine arrangements. And it was comfortable enough for a while. For some reason, in her own mind, she had decided to make it an “open secret” by summer. She figured by then they would have been lovers for six or seven months, and he would be less uptight about the others knowing the score. And she realized as she thought of the summer that suddenly she was thinking of staying on at the ranch. It was the first time that she had admitted to herself that she might stay there, and it brought up the question of what she would do with her job in New York. But she figured that there was time to work that out too. It was still only December, although it already felt as though she had been on the Lord Ranch, and was Tate Jordan's woman, for a number of years.