Fearless (7 page)

But the music was slowing. He released her abruptly, before they were noticed, or heard. He seemed preoccupied as he stared down at her swollen mouth, her flushed cheeks. His dark eyes narrowed. He held her by the waist and eased her away from him.

“What the hell am I doing?” he murmured roughly.

She knew then that it had been an impulse. Not eternal love, not even savage lust. It had just been an impulse, perhaps kindled by the presence of the woman he wanted and couldn’t have. And now he looked both apologetic and uncomfortable with her. She had to find a way out for him, something that would hide her own headlong desire and spare her pride from the sting of his sudden rejection.

“Wow,” she said, wide-eyed.

He blinked. “Excuse me?”

She grinned up at him. “Sorry, were you expecting a different reaction? Okay.” She wiped off the smile and glared up at him, propping her hands on her hips. “How dare you treat me like a sex object!”

He was really looking odd, now.

Her eyebrows went up. “Not that approach, either? All right. How’s this?” She shook back her hair. “Honestly,” she said haughtily, “you men are all alike!”

He wasn’t usually so slow. The contact had gone a little to his head. She might not be a raving beauty, but she had a kissable mouth, and he liked the way she responded to him. “We are not all alike,” he pointed out, eyes twinkling now.

“Yes, you are,” she retorted. “Dressing in a sexy manner, wearing cologne that makes us weak-kneed, enticing us into intimate dances…”

“Guilty,” he agreed, chuckling. “But I could accuse you of the same thing,” he added.

She started to answer the charge, but before she could, one of the daughters of a worker, just out of high school, popped up and boldly asked Rodrigo to dance.

“Sorry,” he told Glory. “But apparently, I am in demand.”

“Yes, you are,” the girl laughed, tugging at his hand. “Come
on,
Rodrigo!”

He spared a last wistful glance at Glory and let himself be led to the dance floor.

A
LL TOO SOON, THE
band packed up and left. The workers went back to their homes. Glory had left the party a little before everyone else. The dance had been wonderful, but her hip was killing her. She took her evening medicines and sat on her bed in her sleeveless long white cotton gown, praying for it to take effect soon. This was an old battle that she’d fought since her teens, this constant pain.

But she smiled, remembering Rodrigo’s mouth on her own, the exciting things he’d whispered in her ear. She remembered, too, that he’d been cold sober when they danced. There wasn’t a trace of alcohol on his breath. Handsome, sexy Rodrigo who could have had almost any woman he wanted, and he’d chosen to dance with plain old Glory. It made her feel proud. She tried not to think that he might have been pretending with her, pretending that she was the lovely blonde woman from his past.

She was just setting her alarm clock when there was a faint tap at her bedroom door.

Puzzled, because it was very late, she walked gingerly across the carpeted floor and opened the door just a crack.

Rodrigo pushed it back, gently, and smiled at her. “You forgot to take something with you,” he said.

“What?” she asked with breathless delight.

“Me.”

He closed the door behind him, lifted her gently into his arms and bent to her mouth.

Kissing was addictive. She loved the tenderness he showed her, the exquisite caresses that didn’t threaten, didn’t frighten, but made her hungry for more.

There was more than a trace of alcohol on his breath, but she was too stunned by his sudden appearance in her bedroom to care. She was barely aware that she was suddenly lying across the bedspread with Rodrigo half beside, half over her yielded body. It felt right to lie in his arms and let him love her.

“You dress like someone’s grandmother,” he murmured against her mouth as his hand slid down her body.

She would have told him that no girl child wore provocative nightwear in foster care. It would have been asking for trouble. But his mouth was already over hers and seconds later, the gown was moving up as Rodrigo’s hands found her soft breasts and smoothed over them.

He lifted his head to look. There was fire in his eyes now, and a faint ruddy color over his high cheekbones. “Pretty little breasts,” he whispered. “Like firm apples with dusky stems…”

Before she had time to be embarrassed, his mouth had covered one of them and she was lifted completely off the bed in a shock of pleasure unlike anything she’d ever felt in her life.

Her soft cry shocked him as well. He met her wild, curious eyes while his lean hand tenderly caressed the hard crest. “You act as if this is something unknown to you,” he said quietly.

She swallowed. “It is.”

He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. His head moved a little sideways as he stared down at her, unblinking. “Glory, are you still a virgin?” he asked gently.

She bit her lower lip. It was almost a stigma of shame in the modern world, to admit to such a thing. She hesitated.

His thumb swept over her nipple in a rough caress that made her shiver. “You’d better tell me the truth,” he said softly.

She drew in a long breath. She knew what would happen when she admitted it. He’d be gone in a flash. These days, no man wanted inexperience.

“I never…I mean, I didn’t feel…I haven’t wanted…” she stammered, flushed.

But the expected revulsion wasn’t there. He looked at her with something like reverence. The change softened his features, made his eyes darker.

“Not even this far,
mi vida?
” he whispered, indicating her bare breasts.

She grimaced and shook her head.

“Why?”

She couldn’t go into her whole history. Not now. He didn’t really want to know. He just wanted some explanation. “I’m not cut out for that sort of relationship,” she said finally. “I…didn’t want to end up like my mother. And for a long time, people seemed to think I would be like her when I grew up.”

He drew his hand up to her face and traced her cheeks and her chin with a long forefinger. “Promiscuous, you mean?”

She nodded. “She slept with any man who would buy her things.” It hurt to remember that, to remember her father’s silent misery as his wife became the object of vicious gossip around town. His pride had suffered from it.

He smiled. “Letting a man make love to you doesn’t qualify you as promiscuous,” he told her. “It’s a natural, beautiful thing between a man and a woman.”

“My mother did it a lot.”

“It’s a new world from the one your grandparents grew up in.”

Her eyes were solemn as she stared up at him. “Would you like a woman who went to bed with any man who asked?” she asked quietly.

He drew in an audible breath. “No,” he said after a minute. “I grew up in a religious family.”

“So did I,” she replied. “At least, my father was religious.”

He was smiling. “So you don’t want to make babies until you marry.”

Her whole body tingled at the way he said it. And it was visible, that reaction.

He chuckled, moving down to rest his weight on an elbow while he flicked open the rest of the buttons on his shirt and pushed it aside. “We won’t go that far,” he whispered. “At least, not now.”

He bent to her mouth, and as he approached it, he eased down so that his bare, hair-roughened chest drew sensuously against her bare breasts. As he’d expected, it was as powerful as seduction itself. She shivered, and then moaned, and then clasped him so close that when he kissed her, it felt as though they were fused together.

He hadn’t meant to let it get out of hand, but that first touch of flesh against flesh robbed him of his objectivity. It had been too long since he’d had a woman. Seeing Sarina tonight, reliving the loss of her, had made him so hungry that he’d been out of his mind. He’d been on fire when he and Sarina shared the dance floor. But even then, the earlier love play with Glory had aroused him. He couldn’t stop thinking about Glory’s body in his arms.

He’d had two or three beers, hoping they might calm him down and send the unwanted desire away. They hadn’t. In the end, he’d come to her because he couldn’t help himself. On the dance floor, he’d been sure that she wanted him. And she had. He hadn’t realized that she would be so innocent. He did want to respect that innocence. It was just that it had been so long. Ages. And tonight, to his shame, he was too hungry to care about anything beyond his own fulfillment.

One long leg pushed her legs apart so that he could lever himself down against her in an intimate position. He moved slowly, feeling the power of his arousal, feeling her helpless reaction to it.

“Glory?” he whispered huskily.

“Yes?”

“Are you sure you’re a virgin?”

She was in over her head. She didn’t want him to stop. If this was all she could ever have in her life, it would be enough. “It doesn’t matter,” she whispered back into his mouth. “I want you.”

“Not as much as I want you,
querida,
” he ground out.

He caught her upper thigh in his hand and dragged her hips up against his arousal, feeling the pleasure leap between them until it was like a drug in his veins. He moved against her blindly, his mouth devouring her lips.

“It isn’t enough,” he said harshly.

“I know.”

His hand went under her, to the elastic of her briefs and began to pull it down. “I’ll be good to you,” he whispered. “I’ll make you so hungry that you won’t feel the pain, or even remember it. I’ll take you to heaven in my arms.”

She couldn’t answer. The air was cool against her hot skin. She felt him touching her where no one else ever had. He looked down into her eyes while he stroked her, watching her helpless reaction to the rhythmic and intimate contact that stopped her breath in her throat.

“Yes, that’s it,” he whispered as he increased the rhythm. “I’m going to make you explode into a thousand silky pieces, and I’m going to watch it happen to you. Then, when you’re so hot that you’re blind with it, I’m going to go right up inside you and give you the sweetest pleasure you’ve ever dreamed of having….”

She cried out as the rhythm started lifting her, lifting her, lifting her…!

Her legs opened for him eagerly. Her head was thrown back so that she could see nothing at all except the ceiling overhead. She heard the rhythmic, frantic sound of the springs in the bed moving. And then she felt his body there, hot against her, probing, pushing, penetrating as the pleasure rose so high and so hot that she cried out in a long, helpless, sobbing keen, her body lifting to his harsh, almost violent downward thrusts.

Her nails dug into him. Her voice broke.

“Look at me,” he managed. “Look!”

Her eyes opened, wide and so dilated that they were almost sightless. Above her, his face was a rigid mask, choked with color, his eyes blazing as he drove for fulfillment.

“Now,” he breathed. His eyes closed. “Now!”

She shuddered and shuddered as the pleasure took them both, joined them in a hot fusion that was so overwhelming that she thought she might die of it.

Her high-pitched cry was smothered by his mouth. Muffled, it reflected the frantic motion of her hips as she drained every wisp of physical delight from his body.

S
HE LAY ON HER BACK
, nude, satiated, throbbing with the aftereffects of passion. Her body was still moving helplessly, savoring the tiny stabs of pleasure that came with motion.

Beside her, he lay apart and unnaturally quiet.

“You bled.”

She swallowed hard. He sounded very distant. “Did I?”

As passion, sated, faded away, reality came and hit him squarely between the eyes. He’d just seduced a worker in his employ, and she was a virgin to boot. His need of her had been so urgent that he hadn’t been able to stop. Now he was stone-cold sober and eaten alive with guilt. They came from different worlds. She was a wage earner and he came from Spanish and Danish aristocracy. He was a decade her senior. She was uneducated and he had a degree. Worse, he was very wealthy and she could hardly afford decent clothing. And he’d taken advantage of her. He didn’t feel very proud of himself.

“You said that it didn’t matter, that you were innocent,” he said coldly.

His voice chilled her. She’d been expecting happy ever after, and he was satisfied and wanted to make sure that she didn’t accuse him of seduction. Her first time, and it had to be with a man who only wanted relief.

She was adult enough to cope. If nothing else, he’d helped get her past the nightmarish assault of her early teens. He didn’t know about that. He wouldn’t have understood her fear of men, a fear which had been wiped away tonight the minute he touched her under her gown. It had been a revelation.

“Well,” she said heavily, “if you’re planning to sue me for seduction, I have to tell you that I’ll swear in court that you threw yourself at me and I couldn’t help myself.”

R
ODRIGO SAT UP AND STARED
down at her in the darkness as if she’d lost her mind. “You what?”

“I’ll countersue you,” she promised, pulling the cover over her body. “All those sweet nothings you whispered in my ear, the way you flaunted your chest at me…I mean, what woman could resist a man who did everything but strip and beg to be taken to bed?”

A chuckle he couldn’t choke back escaped him. “Good God.” He got up and started dressing.

“That’s right, blame God, too,” she scoffed. “It was your own fault, and I’m not apologizing.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to,” he assured her.

“Furthermore, I’m not marrying you. And if you get pregnant, I’ll get a DNA test to prove it’s not mine.”

By now, he was bent over double laughing. He’d expected tears, reproaches, accusations, anything but this.

He moved to the bed, fully dressed, and sat down beside her, one arm going past her shoulder to support him as he looked down into her eyes in the dimly lit room. “But I will apologize,” he said softly. “Because I meant only to kiss you. It went too far, because I had abstained for a very long time.”

“Because you couldn’t have her,” she said wisely.

His indrawn breath was sharp.

She’d already guessed, but his reaction to the charge clinched it. He was dying for the woman he’d lost. Glory looked a little like her and, in the dark, it must have been easy for him to pretend.

“I was only standing in for her, wasn’t I?” she asked sadly.

His hand moved under her head and clenched suddenly in her hair. “No,” he said hotly. “I did not pretend you were her. Never could I be so heartless!”

She relaxed a little.

“I wanted you very badly,” he confessed. “You have a quality of compassion that I have rarely encountered in a woman, and your body is exquisite. I enjoyed it. I hope that you enjoyed me as much. But it should not have happened.”

“Why?” she asked, subdued but curious.

“We come from different worlds,” he replied. “This is only an interlude, for both of us. We could hurt each other badly if we let this continue.”

“I guess so,” she replied.

“There is another matter. Do you use birth control?”

Her heart jumped. “No. I never had any reason to.”

“And I was too far gone to consider it.”

She lay very still. It was getting complicated. “I don’t want a child. Certainly not one who came as an accident.” It was a lie, but she had to salvage what was left of her pride. He made it clear that he wanted nothing more than her body. Actually she would have loved a child, but her health might make that impossible. Besides, Rodrigo was not going to consider marriage. She knew that already.

“Then you would go to a clinic?” he asked, and there was something chilling in his tone.

Now she faced her own system of values, and she was shocked to discover that what had seemed sensible a minute ago had suddenly become an action she could not imagine herself performing. Not even to save her own life.

“I…” She hesitated, frowning. “I…don’t think I could,” she said.

The hand holding her hair relaxed and was withdrawn. “How likely is it?”

“Not very,” she lied.

His mind was considering possibilities. If he had a wife, and a child, perhaps he could get Sarina out of his mind and the torment would ease. It had almost destroyed him, losing her and Bernadette.

“I’ll be thirty-six this year,” he said quietly. “I have nothing to show for my life, other than a few small accomplishments.” He didn’t dare tell her what they were. “I hadn’t thought about having a family until recently. But the idea has appeal.” He looked at her with real longing. “I think I would enjoy being a father.”

“I don’t want children,” she said bluntly, hating the words even as she spoke them, because she could see his pride stinging from them.

Her tone was offensive, and it antagonized him. “I said that I wanted them,” he returned coldly. “Not that I wanted them with you!”

She felt her cheeks go hot. “Sorry. I assumed…”

“Wrongly.” He got up from the bed and moved away. “So we agree that this was an unfortunate accident, which we will never permit to happen again.”

“Of course,” she assured him.

He paused at the door. “Why would you not want children?”

Because of my health, she should have told him. Her life would be at risk from a pregnancy. Her career, too, was a sticking point—how could she raise a child and do justice to either her job or her child? But he didn’t know about her career. Or her health—except for the limp. She took the coward’s way out. “I have…health problems, as you may have noticed already,” she reminded him quietly. “Besides, I’m still relatively young to be thinking about family life.”

The pain and guilt her remarks kindled in him were shockingly brutal. He could have cursed aloud. He’d forgotten about her hip. He’d forgotten everything in the joy of having her.

“Forgive me,” he said quietly. “I did not think.”

She closed her eyes. “Nor did I.”

“For what it’s worth,” he said, his accent noticeably thicker, “I am sorry.”

“Not nearly as sorry as I am,” she replied matter-of-factly, and with a bite in her tone.

The tension in the room was as thick as cigar smoke. He opened the door with deliberate movements and closed it behind him with a violent snap.

Glory let out the breath she’d been holding. It had been the most traumatic experience of her recent life, and not at all unpleasant. But she was in disguise. He didn’t know the real Glory, and she had doubts that he’d want her at all once he did. Once he knew who she really was, the barrier between them would grow by leaps and bounds. He was a laborer. She was an educated professional. Their cultures were different, their religions were different. They were worlds apart. She couldn’t give up her career that she’d worked so hard for just to eek out an existence with a poor immigrant. She wasn’t even sure that he wasn’t involved in some criminal pursuit. The whole situation was impossible.

She’d let her guard down and actively participated in her own seduction. Now here she was, alone and in danger and possibly pregnant. What in the world would she do if she’d conceived? He wanted a child. She didn’t; not this way, with secrets separating them. He was angry that she didn’t want his child. She couldn’t tell him the real reason. She was living a lie, to save her life. She couldn’t tell him that, either.

The tears rolled down Glory’s cheek in a flood. He’d left, she thought miserably, just in time. She wouldn’t have wanted to disgrace herself by crying in front of him. She couldn’t understand her own easy submission to him. Surely her past should have kept her out of reach of such an experienced man, kept her from giving in to someone who was almost a stranger. Her life was becoming far too complicated. She wished she’d never let Marquez talk her into this masquerade.

M
ONDAY, AFTER A QUIET
and lonely Sunday during which Rodrigo wasn’t even seen, she rode into town with Consuelo to get groceries. As they got out of the farm’s pickup truck, Marquez, in civilian clothes, drove up in another truck and pulled in beside them. He got out, pocketing his keys and starting toward the store when he saw Glory. He pretended surprise—a good act, because he’d followed them here hoping to get a word alone with her.

“Well, if it isn’t Gloryanne! How are you?” he called to Glory with a grin. “Fancy seeing you here! It’s been years, hasn’t it?”

Glory flushed, but hid her face from Consuelo. “Yes, it has,” she agreed. “I haven’t seen you since we were in high school together!” She composed herself and glanced at Consuelo. “I’ll be along in a minute,” she said with a smile. “I just want to catch up on Rick’s life story.”

“Go right ahead,” Consuelo replied. She was giving Marquez an odd look. Before Glory could puzzle it out, the older woman was heading for the store.

The smile was gone immediately from both faces. Marquez, in boots and jeans and a checked blue shirt, moved closer to her. He was very solemn.

“Fuentes has someone checking you out,” he said abruptly. “I don’t know who, or where. You haven’t mentioned anything about San Antonio down here to anyone?”

“Of course not,” she faltered. Her green eyes met his dark ones. “He couldn’t know I was here,” she added. “The only person I’ve talked to at all is Rodrigo, and I’m sure he’s not mixed up in anything illegal.”

Marquez clenched his teeth. “I wish I could be,” he said flatly. “Nobody’s talking, but the police chief, Grier, let slip that Ramirez had ties to Mexico. He also had a cousin who worked for Manuel Lopez, the late great drug lord.”

She fought to keep her expression from giving her away. “What else did he tell you?”

“He didn’t tell me anything, Glory. I overheard him talking to one of the sheriff’s men at the courthouse.”

She nibbled her lower lip. “Oh, boy.”

“I caught up with him later. We didn’t plan it, but I suppose you know that Grier knows why you’re here,” he said quietly.

“Yes, he does,” she replied. “But he said he’d keep an eye out for me.”

“He also said he asked you to keep an eye out for visitors at the farm.”

She nodded. “I can’t find a safe way to contact him, though. I’m not sure if Rodrigo has listening devices in the house.” She hated having to say that, to sound as if she already suspected that Rodrigo was on the wrong side of the law. She had to try to remember that she took a vow to uphold the law, no matter how much it hurt. “Consuelo said he had all sorts of electronic devices in his room.” She moved closer. “We’ve had two very suspicious new hires. One is a man named Castillo, who has a nasty attitude toward women. The other is Consuelo’s son, Marco. He wears the tats and colors of the Serpientes gang.”

“Damn!” he muttered. “I thought we’d managed to keep those devils out of our community here.”

“They have links everywhere,” she reminded him. “In prisons, in cities all over the world. It’s a network, just like a corporation.”

He leaned back against the passenger side of his truck and folded his arms over his broad chest. “This seemed like a good idea at the outset. Now I’m not too sure anymore. I didn’t persuade you down here to get you killed. What if Marco brings someone with him who recognizes you? As I recall, you prosecuted two San Antonio members of that Houston gang for carjacking.”

“And convicted them,” she returned. She blew out a breath. “I never expected any of the gang to surface down here in Jacobsville. Well, this might be a good time for me to start packing heat.”

“No.”

“I can shoot,” she muttered. “I used to take a .40 caliber Glock onto the police firing range and practice with it.”

“Yes,” he replied, eyes narrowed. “I remember. We got the windshield in the squad car replaced,” he added meaningfully.

She flushed. “That was not my fault! A bird flew past and distracted me just as I started to shoot!”

“Really? What distracted you when you blew the taillight out on the sheriff’s department’s newest car?”

She pushed back a stray wisp of blond hair. “Listen, that deputy should never have parked his stupid car that close to the firing range in the first place!”

He wasn’t buying it. “I’ve never seen so many cops kissing the ground in my life. All they had to do was hear your name and they started putting on Kevlar.”

She laughed in spite of herself. “Okay, Okay. I’m a lethal weapon with a firearm. I admit it. But what am I going to do?”

“We need to put somebody on the farm who can protect you,” he said, thinking. “I understand that there’s a federal agent undercover somewhere between here and Houston, but nobody will tell me where he is or what he’s posing as. If we could get word to him, he might be able to keep an eye on you.”

“Long shot,” she returned.

He grimaced. “Well, there’s always Jon Blackhawk,” he began. “He owes me a favor, and he’s a fed.”

“I am not working with Jon Blackhawk,” she said flatly. “I don’t care how sorry he is about charging his assistant with sexual harrassment.”

“Maybe we can lure Marco back to the big city with the offer of a really lucrative drug run,” he said then. “At least we’d have one gang member out of the picture.”

“That isn’t such a bad idea. Marco needs money,” she said, recalling the scene in the kitchen. “He had his mother in tears, demanding money that she didn’t have.”

“He may be using the stuff as well as selling it,” he replied. “A lot of dealers can’t resist the temptation.”

“It might explain the violent mood swings I’m seeing in him,” she agreed.

“I know a couple of narcs in the city,” he replied. “I might get word to them and see if they can flush out any information about Marco or Castillo.”

“I just hope Marco isn’t going to land himself in prison. Poor Consuelo!”

“She seems like a nice sort of person,” Marquez replied. “Shame she has such losers for a husband and a son.”

“You know about her husband?”

“I arrested him once,” he said, his lips making a flat line. “She’s probably going to remember that, so if she says anything to you about me, we went steady in high school. Okay?”

Her eyebrows lifted. “We did? I must have a bad case of amnesia. You’d think I’d remember something like that!”

He glowered at her. “You’d have been lucky. I was a catch in high school,” he told her. “Girls couldn’t keep their hands off me.”

“That’s not what your mother, Barbara, says,” she replied smugly.

“What does my mother say?” he asked warily.

“She says you hid behind potted plants any time a girl started walking toward you.”

“That was in grammar school!” he protested.

She laughed. “Really?”

He shifted his weight. “Maybe I was a little shy. But I never hid behind a potted plant.”

“Is that so?”

“I might have fallen
into
a potted plant, once,” he relented. “When the cheerleader captain asked me to vote for her in the class president race. She was a dish.”

She couldn’t stop laughing.

“It’s not funny.”

“Yes, it is.”

He moved away from the truck. “I hate losing arguments to lawyers,” he muttered. “I’m going back to work.”