Johanna Lindsey - A Man to Call My Own

"You here yet, Chad? Horses need feeding—well, hell, looks like I'll have to ..."

The mumbling stopped. It was the sick cowhand, worried about the animals. Chad swore beneath his breath when the cowhand added, "Oh, didn't see you there, Lonny."

Chad whispered as he grabbed his clothes and donned them quicker than he'd removed them, "Get dressed while I get rid of them. We'll talk about this later."

Later? If she saw him later, she just might shoot him—well, after she got some lessons on shooting.

CHAD DIDN'T NEED TO ask Lonny if he'd heard anything in the stable. The grin Lonny was wearing was easy enough to decipher. He sent the cowhand back to bed and urged Lonny outside. They stopped halfway between the stable and the bunkhouse.

"What are you doing back here?" Chad asked.

"The same thing you are—well, maybe not."

Lonny's grin turned into a chuckle that really grated.

"Whatever you heard, keep it to yourself."

"Of course," Lonny replied. "But I've got to say, you are one lucky son of a bitch. Don't think I've ever seen a gal as pretty as that Amanda is."

"Wait a minute. Not that it's any of your business, but I was with Marian."

"No way. Marians too prim and—and—"

"Spinsterish?"

"Well, yes, now that you mention it. Besides, I heard you call her Amanda."

Chad sighed. "That was a mistake. Just for a brief moment I had some doubt, but I didn't mean to voice it aloud."

"You're saying you couldn't tell them apart? It wasn't that dark in there, and those two are nothing alike."

"In behavior, no, they aren't, which is what confused me for a moment. But in looks, they're identical, Lonny. Twins."

"Yeah, right," Lonny scoffed.

Marian took that moment to rush out of the stable, without noticing them off to the side. Her long blond hair was floating about her, the cuffs on her sleeves unbuttoned, her short boots held one in each hand. There was something distinctly sexy about her looking so disheveled—and mad. She definitely looked mad. But then he hadn't missed that glower she'd given him. She obviously hadn't missed him calling her Amanda.

Damn! He'd have to explain later, and apologize. Her boldness had simply thrown him off. And her impatience. He hadn't expected either from her. Of course, he never would have expected such passion from her either.

"I rest my case," Lonny was saying. "That was Amanda."

Chad rolled his eyes and asked dryly, "Did you miss the part where I said they're twins?"

"Did you miss the part where I said 'no way5?"

Chad couldn't help grinning at that point. "Okay, I understand your doubt. Took me a while to notice it myself. Those ridiculous spectacles that distort her eyes are too much of a distraction, and anyone with any decency won't stare at her long enough to notice that the rest of her features are exquisite—and identical to Amanda's. The problem is, sometimes you can't help wondering which one you're dealing with."

Last night when he'd kissed her, he'd been sure he was kissing the same woman he'd kissed by the camp-fire that night. But Marian had denied it, had even got huffy about it. Yet he'd been so sure, had even been relieved to have his confusion finally put to rest, only to end up confused again with her denial.

He simply had no trouble accepting that Marian had tried to rescue him from Leroy that night, and that she'd done so quickly and spontaneously that she'd forgotten to put her spectacles on first—and had been able to see perfectly without them. Which would mean that there was nothing really wrong with her eyes. In fact, she probably couldn't see a damn thing through those silly spectacles, which would account for her abnormal clumsiness.

Believing that it had been Amanda that night had never really sat quite right with him. It had looked like her, yes. He'd had no reason then to think otherwise. But attributing such a selfless act to her had just seemed—strange. And in fact, it was the only nice thing he could attribute to her. But he had no trouble attributing a selfless act to Marian. Yes, she'd gone out of her way to insult him more than once, but he had to wonder about that with what he had learned since. He suspected her rudeness might have been deliberate, part of that jealousy thing with her sister that she'd only half told him about.

He understood the jealousy part now, or at least most of it, which Marian had tried to explain to him without giving him any details. It hadn't made much sense at the time, when she made herself as ugly as she possibly could. It simply wasn't conceivable that Amanda could be jealous of her. But they were twins. One hid her beauty, the other let it shine.

But there were ways to tell them apart, thankfully. Amanda's hands were always moving, to draw attention to her face, her breasts. When she smiled, it never seemed real. If she had a sense of humor, she'd lost it in her displeasure over the trip. If she had anything good to say about anything, he'd yet to hear it. Her mannerisms were different, as were her temperament, her tolerance, her patience. And she was a complainer. Actually, she was probably exactly what his father had called her, a born-and-bred nag. Her beauty had blinded him to all of that, but he saw it clearly in comparison to Marian.

He still didn't understand the reason for the deception though. It made no sense at all for a woman as beautiful as Marian to want to hide her beauty. But she couldn't hide what she'd felt today, a powerful desire for him that he'd reacted to in the most primitive way. His reaction still surprised him. He usually had much more control over his baser instincts. Actually, he had never before lost control quite so thoroughly. Or maybe he just hadn't wanted to stop what was happening between them. That was more likely the case. It was like the kiss last night, something he'd been unable to resist taking. And every time he'd kissed her, she'd yielded, telling him without words that she wanted him, too.

MARIAN TOOK A LEAF from her sisters book and spent the rest of the day in her room. To keep from driving herself mad with her own thoughts, she asked Rita to help her find Kathleens painting supplies. And once that had been easily accomplished, she carried them all to her room.

"When Chad showed up for the promised talk with "Amanda," he'd have no luck. Amanda's tactic of hiding in her room was an old one, since she actually felt she was punishing everyone else by denying them her presence.

Marian was hiding for a much different reason. She didn't want to be around to see Chad waiting around for her sister to make an appearance, or to be asked to talk Amanda into coming down. She wouldn't be surprised if he asked. But he wasn't going to find out, at least today, just how much he'd blundered in his conclusions.

She still couldn't believe he'd done that. God, she'd been so elated that he could actually want her, her, not Amanda. But she should have known better. He'd wanted Amanda from the start, and that wasn't going to change. Just because she was Amanda's twin.

He probably thought all along today that she was Amanda, and the worst part was, it was her own fault. What she'd told him last night—that Amanda liked to play tricks on people by pretending to be her— would have been fresh in his mind.

She probably should warn Amanda that Chad was under the mistaken impression that he'd made love to her. But then she'd have to listen to her sister gloat about her fallen virtue, despite the fact that her own had fallen long ago. Marian just couldn't stomach that on top of everything else that had happened today. Besides, it was no more than Chad deserved, to have both sisters refusing any intimacy with him. Maybe in the future he'd pay closer attention to just whom he was making love to, the dense man.

A few hours after she started painting, she finally began to relax enough to take note of what she was painting. She was surprised. She didn't paint from sketches because while she was rather good at sketching, she didn't enjoy it as much as painting. But then she painted just as well from memory, so didn't need to do both.

Actually, she shouldn't really be surprised at what had taken form on the canvas. Though she'd been trying to put him out of her mind, he was still lurking there. So finding the basics of Chad's face staring back at her from the easel merely had her shaking her head in disgust at herself.

It was a good resemblance, though. She hadn't lost her talent through lack of use. The eyes needed work, not the shape, but the color. The chin needed more definition so it would look stronger. The skin tone would have to be darker to reflect his deep tan. And she should probably add his hat, tipped low as he usually wore it. ...

What was she thinking? She wasn't going to finish a portrait of him. She removed the canvas, set it behind the easel so she wouldn't have to look at it, and replaced it with a fresh one. She'd have to be more careful, at least until she could restock Kathleen's supplies.

There had only been four large canvases to work with, two medium-sized ones, and one miniature, but Marian wasn't a slow painter. She could finish a portrait in one sitting if she put her mind to it and was careful, so the supplies wouldn't last her very long.

She decided on a different sort of portrait, while the memory was still somewhat fresh, one that actually amused her to paint. It wouldn't amuse Amanda, if she ever got a look at it.