"What is it about me that you find attractive?" she challenged, sounding almost angry.
Puzzled, he swiftly considered all her many charms, trying to decide which ones to mention… and which ones he could mention. "Surely you must know how beautiful you are…" he tried.
"Is it my beautiful self that you want or my beautiful money?" she asked, no longer bothering to conceal her fury. Her money was the only thing she could think of that might have brought him back here so determined to win her hand. If he had felt some unrelenting passion, he never would have left in the first place. She could see Felicity's hand in this. The poor girl had probably been trying some matchmaking and had innocently let slip the information that had brought Mr. Gordon rushing back to Texas to plead his case.
Asa frowned. At last her animosity made sense, but it opened a whole new set of problems for him. "Are you very rich, Blanche?" he asked, dreading the answer.
"Don't you know? Surely Felicity told you all about me. Is that why you came, because you decided to try to catch yourself a rich widow?" Blanche knew her anger was out of proportion to the situation, but she could not seem to help herself. The thought that he had sensed her attraction to him and, learning about her financial status from Felicity, had decided to take advantage of it infuriated her.
"Then you are a rich widow," Asa said with genuine disappointment. "I've been afraid to ask. I was hoping that since your husband's death, you'd been just barely scraping by, holding this place together by the skin of your teeth. Maybe you'd even be happy for some help from an unemployed Pinkerton detective."
"Unemployed?" Blanche echoed.
Asa nodded resignedly. "I quit my job before coming here. That double-damns me, doesn't it?" He didn't bother to add that Allan Pinkerton would hire him back in a second. There was no use in making excuses. Blanche Delano was not a woman to be impressed by excuses. His best bet would be to beg her pardon yet again and make his escape while he still had a few shreds of dignity intact. But just as he opened his mouth to do so, a slender Mexican girl emerged from the house carrying a pitcher and two glasses.
"Our lemonade," Blanche announced, grateful for the interruption. At least she would have a few moments to collect her wits and analyze the things Asa had told her so far. She sat quietly as Maria poured their drinks, smiled tentatively at both of them, and then went back into the house. Asa drained his glass in one gulp.
"More?" Blanche asked, lifting the pitcher that Maria had left sitting on the small wicker table that stood between the two chairs.
When Asa extended his glass for her to fill, she noticed the slightest tremor in his hand. Instantly her gaze flew to his face. She had been studying men's faces all her life, reading their thoughts and their intentions. It was the only way she had been able to survive in a man's world. What she saw now in Asa's face was not what she would have expected from a determined fortune hunter.
He looked positively vulnerable. And discouraged, too, as if her accusations had ruined his plan. But if his plan had been to win her fortune, such a setback would not have mattered. A veteran charmer like Asa Gordon would simply overwhelm her with flattery and make her feel so desirable that she would forget all her doubts. Why wasn't he doing that?
The answer came to her in a blinding flash of insight. For the first time in his life, Asa Gordon was trying to be honest. The trouble was, he was so used to lying that he didn't quite know how to go about being honest without ruining everything. It was only a theory, of course, so Blanche decided to test it.
"I'm not really the fine lady that you think I am," she began, filling his glass and setting the pitcher down again.
A little disoriented by the sudden shift in subject, Asa said, "You're not?" for lack of a better response.
"No, I'm not. You see, I was raised in a whorehouse." Blanche waited for his reaction, but it was not the one she expected.
"So was I," he said.
What was it she saw in his eyes? Pity? No, empathy. He was not lying. He really understood. "But it's different for a girl," she continued relentlessly. "When you got old enough, you left. When I got old enough, my mother turned me out to whore, too. That's what I was when Sam Delano found me."
For an instant real pain flickered across Asa's face, pain for what she must have endured, but his expression quickly changed to suspicion. "Why are you telling me all this?" he demanded.
Blanche did not deign to reply. She simply gave him a moment to reach his own conclusions.
The process took only seconds. "Are you trying to put me off? Did you think I wouldn't want you if I knew?" he asked, suddenly furious. He slammed his glass down on the wicker table, making it tremble.
Blanche was unmoved. "Of course, enough money can help a man forget a lot of things," she remarked.
Asa swore and lunged to his feet. "I wouldn't care if you'd slept with half the men in Texas and didn't have a dime to your name," he informed her, wagging a large index finger under her nose. "And if you think for one minute you can scare me off…"
He stopped as he suddenly realized he was shouting threats at the woman he had come to woo. He lifted the hand he had been wagging in her face and used it to cover his own for a few seconds while he regained his control. He swore again, this time in despair. Now he had ruined everything. She would send him packing for sure. But to his infinite surprise, when he lowered his hand, she was smiling.
Blanche rose slowly, savoring this glorious moment, certain that she would never again see Asa Gordon quite so unsure of himself. "All right," she said cheerfully.
Asa blinked in confusion. "All right what?"
"All right, you can court me," she explained, still smiling. "But only if you don't take too long about it."
Asa opened his mouth and closed it, speechless for once. Finally, he managed to ask, "What made you change your mind?"
"I never changed my mind. I always wanted you to court me. In fact," she added, tipping her head coyly, as if to examine him from another angle, "I decided you were the man for me the minute I laid eyes on you."
Asa stared down at her for a long moment, not quite able to believe his ears but unable to doubt the sincerity he saw shining in her emerald eyes. Still, one thing did not quite make sense. "Then why did you act like you couldn't stand the sight of me?"
Blanche batted her eyes at him. "Because you were acting like a damn fool and I couldn't stand the sight of you. I thought you weren't going to apologize, that you really didn't understand how you had hurt me with your story about being Felicity's uncle."
"But I did apologize!" he protested.
"Yes, at the very last minute, and then you ran off and jumped on a train-" "I did not run off-"
"You most certainly did-"
"Blanche!" Asa said in exasperation. "Can we stop fighting for just a minute?"
"Why?" she challenged.
"Because I want to get started with my courting. You said you didn't want me to waste any more time."
"Well, all right," she allowed generously. "What would you like to do first?"
"This," he said, and wasting no more time, he took her in his arms and kissed her thoroughly.
The kiss was everything she had imagined it would be and more. When they were both breathless and clinging, he lifted his mouth from hers and gave her a shaky grin. "We can't keep this up on the front porch. Somebody will see us."
"Maybe we'd better go inside, then," she said with a provocative smile, "where we'll have lots of privacy."
But instead of eagerly agreeing, as she had expected, he frowned in disapproval. "Blanche, you hardly know me. Maybe we ought to take this a little slower…"