Silver Bells: An Anthology Hardcover - 2012

Summary

Excerpt

There was a cardinal rule that people who gave parties never invited both Barrie Bell and her stepbrother, Dawson Rutherford, to the same social event. Since the two of them didn't have a lot of mutual friends, and they lived in different states, it wasn't often broken. But every rule had an exception, and tonight, Barrie discovered, was it.

She hadn't really wanted to go out, but Martha and John Mercer, old friends of the Rutherfords who'd taken a interest in Barrie since their move to Tucson, insisted that she needed a diversion. She wasn't teaching this summer, after all, and the part-time job that kept her bank account healthy had just ended abruptly. Barrie needed cheering up and Martha was giving a party that was guaranteed to accomplish it.

Actually it had. Barrie felt brighter than she had in some months. She was sequestered on the steps of the staircase in the hall with two admirers, one who was a bank executive and the other who played guitar with a jazz band. She was wearing a dress guaranteed to raise blood pressures, silver and clinging from its diamante straps at her lightly tanned shoulders to her ankles, with a long, seductive slit up one side of the skirt. The color of her high heels matched the dress. She wore her long, wavy black hair loose, so that it reached almost to her waist. In her creamy-complexioned, oval face, bright green eyes shone with a happy glitter.

That was, they had been shining until she saw Dawson Rutherford come in the front door. Her sophisticated chatter had died abruptly and she withdrew into a shell, looking vulnerable and hunted.

Her two companions didn't connect her stepbrother's entrance with Barrie's sudden change. Not, at least, until a few minutes later when he spotted her in the hall and, excusing himself to his hostess, came to find her with a drink in his hand.

Dawson was more than a match for any man present, physically. Some of them were spectacularly handsome, but Dawson was more so. He had wavy blond hair, cut conventionally short, a deep tan, chiseled, perfect facial features and deep-set pale green eyes at least two shades lighter than Barrie's. He was tall and slender, but there were powerful muscles in that lithe body, which was kept fit from hours in the saddle. Dawson was a multimillionaire, yet being the boss didn't keep him from helping out on the many ranches he owned. It was nothing unusual to find him cutting out calves for branding on the Wyoming ranches, or helping to drive cattle across the spinifex plains of the several-thousand-square-mile station in Australia's Channel Country. He spent his leisure hours, which were very few, working with his Thoroughbred horses on the headquarters ranch in Sheridan, Wyoming, when he wasn't buying and selling cattle all over the country.

He was an elegant man, from his hand-tooled leather boots to the expensive slacks and white silk turtleneck shirt he wore with a designer jacket. Everything about him, from his Rolex to the diamond horseshoe ring on his right hand, screamed wealth. And with the elegant good looks, there was a cold, calculating intelligence. Dawson spoke French and Spanish fluently, and he had a degree in business.

Barrie's two companions seemed to shrink when he appeared beside them, a drink cradled in one big, lean hand. He didn't drink often, and never to excess. He was the sort of man who never liked to lose control in any way. She'd seen him lose it just once. Perhaps that was why he hated her so, because she was the only one who ever had.

"Well, well, what was Martha thinking, I wonder, that rules were made to be broken?" Dawson asked her, his deep voice like velvet even though it carried above the noise.

"Martha invited me. She didn't invite you," Barrie said coldly. "I'm sure it was John. He's laughing," she added, her gaze going to Martha's husband across the room.

Dawson followed her glance to his host and raised his glass. The shorter man raised his in acknowledgment and, catching Barrie's furious glare, turned quickly away.

"Aren't you going to introduce me?" Dawson continued, unabashed, his eyes going now to the two men beside her.

"Oh, this is Ted and that's.. what was your name?" she somewhat abruptly asked the second man.

"Bill," he replied.

"This is my…stepbrother, Dawson Rutherford," she continued.

Bill grinned and extended his hand. It was ignored, although Dawson nodded curtly in acknowledgment. The younger man cleared his throat and smiled sheepishly at Barrie, brandishing his glass. "Uh, I need a refill," he said quickly, because Dawson's eyes were narrowing and there was a distinct glitter in them.

"Me, too," Ted added and, grinning apologetically at Barrie, took off.

Barrie glared after them. "Craven cowards," she muttered.

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