Diamond Spur by Diana Palmer

cumin in that tac o
    casserole." "Only half a cup, isn't that what you put?" Kate asked with a blank smile. "If you poison me, I'll tell Mr. Rogers to throw your designs out the window." "Okay, I'll behave. Sit down and eat something. You're going to blow away." "I'm a good size. I can walk through a harp sideways." Kate turned away to flip the switch on the old rusted table fan that her father had bought
    when she was just a baby. There was no money for a new one, not even a cheap new one. But money, Kate reasoned, had never made anybody happy by itself. She'd rather have her mother and friends like Jason any day than a bankroll.
    "You're very quiet tonight," Mary remarked as they fin ished off the small casserole and homemade Mexican corn-bread Kate had cooked with it. Kate linked her hands around her coffee cup. "Well, I've been thinking." "About what?" About Jason, she could have said, and that he almost kissed her today. But that was a memory too precious to share, even with her mother. Smiling, she tilted the cup and watched the ripples move with the overhead light that hung from the ceiling. The kitchen was worn, like the rest of the house. The walls needed painting. They were a dirty unpleasant yellow, and the gold and green linoleum on the sloping floor was torn in places and cracked in others. The stove was almost as old as Kate, and the sink had stains that nothing would get out. Faded yellow curtains hung over the windows, their miserable condition reflecting the stains on the ceiling where a leaking roof had left its mark before its haphazard repair. The house was falling apart, and there was no money for maintenance. Kate wondered sometimes what she and Mary would do if the roof fell in or the floor gave way. She'd seen some winged ants just yesterday. If they were termites, even now the house could be under a death sentence. The only new thing in the place was the new zigzag sewing machine that Jason had given her last Christmas, and it was the first thing she'd have saved if the house had caught fire. "I said, what are you thinking about?" Mary prodded as she flicked an ash into the cracked glass ashtray with Phoenix, Arizona in faded letters in its gray-caked center. Kate looked up. "About if the house is going to fall around our ears." Mary's thin shoulders lifted and fell. "It's lasted fifty years already. I guess it's got a few more in it. And we can always cry on Jason's shoulder if things get desperate. God bless him, he'll do something." "We shouldn't depend on him too much, Mama," Kate said, her tone hesitant. "Why not? He doesn't mind, honey." "I mind." Mary grimaced. "Katy, pride won't satisfy hunger or fix leaking roofs." "I know that." She sipped coffee. "But it's not right, to always be asking him for things." "Did something happen today? Did the two of you argue?" Mary probed. Kate laughed nervously. "When have Jason and I ever argued?" That seemed to be a relief to the older woman. She smiled. "Silly thought, wasn't it? It amazes me, the things he'll let you get away with."
    "Like taking him to the doctor?" Kate smiled back. "He likes me."
    "You like him, too, don't you?"
    "Stop digging, Sherlock Holmes," the younger woman said firmly and got up to wash the supper dishes. "You won't find romance. I'm not Jason's type. He'll want a society girl who can organize business dinners and act sophisticated for his rich friends. I'm just his late foreman's daughter and he feels sorry for me."
    "Rich men have married poor girls before," Mary said doggedly. A match between Kate and Jason was the dream of her life, and the source of the only arguments she and Kate ever had. Mary had been poor since childhood. She wanted a way out of the rut, at least for Kate.
    "I don't want to marry Jason," Kate replied. She ran water in the sink. It wasn't the whole truth, but she didn't dare confess to Mary that she was madly in love with their rich neighbor and would give her left arm to live with him.
    There was some