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Lacy watched the Model T Ford drive away and she cried
piteously, along with Marion and Katy, for the rest of the day.
    Cole did write, but not to Lacy. He wrote to the
family, and because there was no mention at all of what they'd shared in his
bedroom, she didn't write to him, either. Apparently he was eager to forget the
intimacy. It was never referred to. His letters were full of airplanes and the
beauty of France. He never spoke of the dogfights he participated in, but his
name drifted back home to Texas in newspaper accounts of the air war, and along
with several other Americans, he became known as an ace.
    Katy grew wildly infatuated with the aces she
read about—and especially with one they called Turk Sheridan, a blond Montana
boy with nerves of steel who was considered the most daring of the fliers.
    Late in 1918, as life droned on at the ranch,
they received word that Cole had been wounded. Lacy almost went mad before they
finally found out that he wasn't critically ill, and that he would live. The
letter came from Turk Sheridan, who added that he might come back with Cole to Texas after the war as the two men had become fast friends and Turk himself was a rancher.
    Katy was over the moon about their prospective
new lodger, but Lacy was worried about Cole. When his letters came again, they
were in a different handwriting, and the tone of them was stiff and distant.
    Cole came home soon after the armistice in 1919,
with the big blond Turk in tow. Lacy went running to Cole, despite all her
stubborn determination not to. When he put out his hands and almost pushed her
away, his rejection total and all too public, Lacy felt something die inside
her. There was no expression on Cole's hard face, and nothing in his eyes. He
was a different man.
    He threw himself into the business of trying to
get the ranch back on its feet, while Katy began a long and determined pursuit
of Turk Sheridan, whose real name was Jude. Soon after the war, a wealthy
great-aunt of Lacy's died and left her an inheritance of monumental
proportions. Lacy was grateful because it gave her some measure of
independence, but it seemed to set her even further apart from Cole, who was
foundering in hard financial times following the war.
    They planted crops to supplement the cattle they
raised, and Turk got his hands on an old biplane and used it to dust the crops
with pesticides. It amazed everyone that not only did Cole refuse to go near
it, he didn't even care to discuss airplanes anymore. That shocked Lacy, who
one day made the mistake of asking him why he'd lost his fascination with
flying. His scalding reply had hurt her pride and her feelings, and she'd
walked wide around him afterward.
    About that time, young Ben developed a huge
crush on Lacy. It was disturbing, because he was eighteen to her twenty-three
and Lacy's heart had always belonged to Cole, even if he didn't want it. She
let Ben down as gently as she could, but in revenge, he coaxed Lacy and Cole to
a line cabin and locked them in, having had the foresight to also nail the
shutters closed so that they couldn't be forced from the inside.
    Cole mistakenly thought Lacy had put Ben up to
it, knowing how she felt about him, and Lacy shivered remembering the harsh,
furious accusations he'd thrown at her all through the long night until some of
the ranch hands rescued them the next morning. Lacy was compromised, and Cole
was forced to marry her—not only to spare her reputation, but to save the
family's good name.
    He'd been glad enough when she'd left. If that
was so, then why, she wondered, did he want her to come back now? She didn't
dare think about it too much. With any luck, it wasn't purely because of his
family. There was a small possibility that he'd actually missed her.
    She'd bluffed him into agreeing to her terms, to
sharing a room. But remembering that night he'd stayed in her bed, she had
faint misgivings about the wisdom of her actions. Despite her longing for a
child and the