Give Me Tonight(30)

Russell was not listening. "C'mon, honey. Ben's over there pullin' out a steer from a boghole."

She followed him reluctantly, riding further down the pasture to the site where two longhorns were stuck fast in a boghole, having tried to evade swarms of flies by wallowing in deep mud. One of the steers was mak­ing plaintive noises, while the other was silent and exhausted, making no protest as it was pulled out with ropes tied to the cowboys' saddle horns.

Addie's lips tightened with disdain as she looked at Ben, who had tied the ropes around the longhorn. His Levi's were black with mud all the way up to his knees and beyond. It looked like he'd been doing some wal­lowing right alongside the cattle. Sweat made streaks through the dirt on his face and the sides of his neck, and caused the ends of his black hair to curl damply against the back of his neck. That was where he be­longed, in the dirt.

"Ben seems to have gotten the worst of it today," she commented with a trace of satisfaction.

"He's not afraid of work." Russell regarded his foreman fondly. "The men respect him for it. And they know he won't ask them to do somethin' he wouldn't do himself. Hardest thing in the world, Ade­line, is to work for a man you know is lazier than you are, just like it's easy to work hard for someone you respect. "

It didn't fit conveniently into her picture of Ben Hunter. After all, he would murder Russell for his own personal gain. Money the easy way. That kind of man didn't take to hard work . . . wasn't that true? She wasn't pleased by the discovery that Ben might have a few good qualities to complicate her vision of him as an unscrupulous criminal. She wanted it all to be cut­and-dried.

If only there were someone she could talk to about him, someone to help relieve her burden of silence! Everyone was so maddeningly pleased with Ben. They admired and respected him, not knowing what kind of man he really was.

As if he could feel her stare, Ben turned his head to look at her. She was amazed by the intense color of his eyes, emerald fringed with thick black lashes, set deeply in his dark face. For a second she couldn't move, trapped by his intent gaze. Despite the distance between them, it seemed as if he could read her mind, and she felt heat rising in her cheeks. She was relieved when he finally returned his attention to the steer struggling out of the boghole.

The animal stumbled forward on unsteady legs and collapsed at the edge, having lost the will to do any­thing but lie there and die. Swearing, the men went to the quivering longhorn and strained to lift it to its feet. After a long struggle the men succeeded in their task, and the longhorn staggered away to find a place to graze. Leaving the others to pull the second steer out, Ben walked over to Russell and Addie, wiping his hands on the back of his pants. Addie noticed the way his smile turned cool when he looked at her, and something inside her shifted uneasily.

"Miss Adeline. Hope you aren't offended by the cussing. " He tilted his head back and squinted up at her. As he had intended, the remark served to remind her that she was out of her depth in this, a scene that belonged so utterly to the men. The language, the work, the clothes—every detail was a complete con­trast to the feminine surroundings women were usually relegated to. According to the dictates of this world, she was supposed to be in the kitchen or bending over needlework, not riding around the range with her fa­ther.

"I've heard language worse than this," she said.

"It's nothing less than what I'd expected."

Ben kept his thoughts well-hidden as he looked at her. He couldn't explain to himself why his feelings for her had started to change. They had disliked each other from the first moment they met, and with each of her visits home during vacations, their mutual in­tolerance had increased.

It had been a long-dreaded day when she'd returned from the girls' academy for good. He couldn't stand the games she liked to play, her capricious moods, her ability to shake everyone up and wrap anyone she wanted around her finger. She had always been haughty to him, until she became intrigued with his lack of interest in her, and that had resulted in the scene in the bam when she'd tried to seduce him. After he turned her down coldly, she decided to treat him with simple loathing, which had suited him just fine.

And then . . . it seemed incredible, but she had changed in the twinkling of an eye. There was no way of knowing whether it was permanent or temporary, but this new Adeline had a different effect on him than the old one. Ben had never noticed how beautiful she was, how vulnerable and disarming she could be. He almost wished he'd taken her up on her offer in the bam. At least that way he wouldn't be wondering now what it would be like to feel her body underneath his. Now he would never know, and although that was just as well, he was still unwillingly fascinated by her.

Addie looked around the pasture at the dirty, un­shaven men, their clothes dark with perspiration, their faces adorned with unkempt mustaches or overlong sideburns. They kept on looking at her covertly. With­out Russell nearby, she wouldn't have felt safe.

Ben noticed her uncertain expression and grinned.

"Diamonds in the rough, every one of us. You'll never come across a group of gentlemen with higher regard for a lady. Some of them have ridden hundreds of miles just to catch a glimpse of a woman of good character. "

"Including you, Mr. Hunter?" she asked, her voice soft and lethal.

"I've never been particularly interested in women of good character, Miss Adeline."