He wore new store-bought clothing, a dark jacket over dark trousers and a crisp white shirt with a silver string tie. The hat he held in his hands was brushed and clean and his boots were polished to a high gleam. He smelled of good barbershop cologne, and his hair was parted in the center and slicked back with oil.
Freddy’s mouth dropped. “You look… different.” And so handsome that he took her breath away. Tonight his tan seemed darker and his eyes bluer. His shoulders wider and his waist leaner. She was accustomed to seeing him with bristle on his jaw, but tonight he was close-shaven, which made her intensely aware of his mouth and lips.
He stuck his boot in the door and leaned forward, pushing her out of the way, then he carried the packages to the bed and dropped them on the spread before he pulled a pocket watch out of his vest and consulted the time. “Dinner will be served in our room in an hour.” For the first time since Freddy had met him, he seemed uneasy and uncertain. “I’m going downstairs so you can dress in privacy. I’ll return in forty-five minutes. Here. Alex sent you this.”
“Wait a minute,” she called. But he was closing the door behind him.
Alex had sent her perfume? Then Alex knew. Scarlet burned on Freddy’s face, and she collapsed on the side of the bed, clutching the vial in her hand. Damn. During the course of the drive, she had mysteriously moved from not caring what her sisters thought to caring a lot.
Five miserable minutes elapsed before she thought to wonder why Alex would send her perfume. Removing the stopper, she passed the vial beneath her nose, inhaling a light scent of roses. Could it be that Alex was not the most judgmental woman ever born as Freddy had always supposed? Amazing. She brightened enough to inspect the packages on the bed.
Before she left, which she still intended to do, she might as well discover what Dal had brought her. After she saw the dinner gown and slippers, the nightgown and ribbons, she listened to the music floating up to her window and scanned the opulent appointments of the room.
“Well I’ll be,” she marveled softly. “Dal Frisco is a romantic.” But she liked this unexpected side of him, she decided, holding the gown against her body and turning in front of the mirror. He’d chosen green silk with gold ruffles and trim, and the gown looked as if it would fit. Now, if he had just remembered hair pins…
“You are so wishy-washy,” she said, frowning at her image in the mirror. “Bought off with a new gown and slippers. And a bottle of perfume.” Then she laughed. The gown and perfume were inconsequential. The instant she had seen him, her doubts had settled and her longing to discover how the evening would unfold had returned full force.
This time when he knocked, she opened the door immediately and several people entered the room. First came a boy carrying baskets of spring flowers followed by two waiters pushing a linen-clad dinner table set with fine china and sparkling silver. Then Dal appeared.
He stopped mid-stride, just inside the room, and stared. “My God.” A slow narrowed glance traveled over the green gown, paused at her waist and again at her breasts before he met her eyes. “You are absolutely the most beautiful woman I have ever seen!”
Freddy gazed at him with sparkling eyes and a flirtatious glance. This was the first time she had worn anything but black since her father died, and the first time she had worn a formal gown in Dal’s presence. The mirror told her that she looked lovely, but she needed to hear and see confirmation; she needed to see herself reflected in his eyes.
For a long moment they gazed at each other, and Freddy felt her mouth go dry and her heartbeat accelerate. If the evening ended right now, she would still remember this moment for all her days. The music, the perfume of the flower baskets, and the hard look of desire in Dal’s eyes.
Stepping forward, he touched his fingertips to her cheek, then dropped his hand to her waist and led her toward the table. After weeks of sitting on the ground eating supper out of tin plates, the formality of dressing and dining felt strange. Like a role she was playing. Except she didn’t know her lines and his hand on her waist felt warm and strong and would have made her forget her dialogue if she had known it.
Dal held out her chair and she sat down in a rustle of silk and ruffles. A waiter draped a linen napkin across her lap, a second man poured wine into her glass. It was a measure of her nervousness that when she saw Dal cover his glass and shake his head, she forgot his history and asked, “Aren’t you having wine?”
“No.” He drew a breath. “The sight of you is intoxicating enough.”
Her mouth dropped and she stared. Not in a hundred years could she have imagined him uttering such a romantic comment. This was Dal, the man who rode his horse like the animal was part of him, who turned stampedes in the dark of night, who rode out of the dust and sun as if forged from flying dirt and hard sunlight himself. Dal who shouted and cursed and drove his cattle across swollen rivers, who worked himself and his men without pity. She would have sworn there was no softness in this man, no pretty words of seduction.