Fool for Love (Montana Romance) (13 page)

“But you can’t possibly want to help me now.  I … I can’t control my basest instincts.”

“Hell, why would I want you to?”

Amelia gaped at him.  “Because good men should be with good women, not debauched strumpets!”

Eric blew out a heavy sigh, scrubbing a hand over his clenched jaw.  “I’ve heard just about enough of this from you.  You’re my wife, and that’s that.”

“We’re not really married.”

“Then you’re going to really marry me first chance we get.”

Like a flash of lightning, shock and anger poured through her.  Her mouth dropped open and she blinked.  Marry him?  No.  Her mind couldn’t comprehend it.

“You … you have no right to issue orders as to what I can and can’t do with my life!” she scrambled for words even as her skin prickle
d with bittersweet temptation.

“Like hell I can,” he grumbled, reaching for her arm.

Amelia pulled away, shaking her head.  “No.  And that’s final.  I won’t marry you.  I can’t.  You deserve better.”

“You’re damn right I do!”  His shouted answer made Amelia jump.  “I deserve a fancy hotel with a hot bath and a bar where I can order the biggest whiskey New York City has ever seen.  I deserve a sweet woman who doesn’t run off in the bad section of town trying to get herself robbed and worse.”

Amelia balled her fists, jaw clenched and cheeks burning as she searched for a reply.  “Don’t you see that I’m none of those things?” she argued.  “You know what I’ve done, how far I’ve fallen.  How can you be such a fool to propose marriage to a woman carrying another man’s child, conceived in shame?”

“Because I love you, all right?” he snapped, refusing to back down.

Amelia clamped her mouth shut, ice and fire swirling through her.  She swayed, her head telling her to run and never look back while her heart and body ached to stay right where she was and more.  Right and wrong were so hopelessly tangled that she couldn’t think.

He loved her.

“Well you shouldn’t,” she fumbled, chest heaving.  “You shouldn’t give your heart away to a fallen woman.”

“It’s not for you to say who I give my heart to.”  He held firm.

She gasped for breath, twisting the strap of her purse around the handle of her carpet bag, shifting her weight from leg to leg, paralyzed with shame and desire.  The trouble was, he was right.  She had no right to tell him how to conduct his life when she couldn’t manage her own.

With that knowledge every ounce of her bravado wilted.  She lowered her head and squeezed her eyes shut.  Her life was one long nightmare.

Eric sighed and reached for her carpet bag again.  This time she let him take it.

“Come on,” he muttered.  He took her arm and led her out to the main street and back toward the customs house.

Several more long moments passed in uncomfortable silence before Eric said, “Look, I don’t understand where any of this is coming from.  But if you’re so all-fired determined to turn me down….”  He stopped and hissed in defeat.  “If you want to strike out on your own without any help from me, then at least let me get you out to Montana.”

She glanced up at him, blinking through tear-reddened eyes.  Wo
uld he let her go that easily?

“Why?  Why Montana?”

“’Cuz it’s a hell of a lot safer than here!” he barked.

He stopped and turned to face her.  He was so much bigger than her, so much stronger in every way.  Against every ounce of her will to run, his ferocity attracted her.  What was she doing?

“You stand a far better chance at home in Cold Springs, or wherever else you want to go in the west, than you do in a ratty old city like this one.”

“Oh.”  She swallowed and rested a hand on her belly.

She caught him staring at her stomach and moved her hand.

He took a breath and went on.  “Promise me you won’t try to make a break for it again until I’ve got you good and safe out west.”

“I wouldn’t-”

“Promise!”

The pain in his eyes was still there.  But he had a point.  New York was dangerous.  Five minutes in the city had proven that to her.  Everything he’d told her about the American west in the last week had made it sound like a land of greater opportunity.  She could take that opportunity to start a new life.  If he let her go.  If she could pry herself away from him.

At last she nodded.  “All right,” she whispered, feeling the pull into disaster as strong as ever.  “I’ll wait.  I’ll go to Montana with you and I won’t try to run.”

Yet, she added to herself.  She wouldn’t try to run yet.

Chapter Eight

Eric fought the twisted, sour feeling in his stomach as he sat on the end of the bed in the hotel room listening to Amelia washing up in the bathroom.  She’d left him, or tried to at least.  That much was clear as a crisp winter day.  And it didn’t make a lick of sense.  Everything on the ship had been going just fine.  She’d helped him land the deal with Ben Chase and caused him to get far less sleep than he should have.

He sighed and tried to focus on sorting through the contents of his billfold.  He didn’t have a ton of cash anymore.  He’d picked this hotel because it was fancy enough to suit what Amelia deserved, but willing to accept a transfer of funds from Phineas Bell’s bank in Cold Springs to pay for the visit.  Not that there was much left in that account either if Curtis was to be believed.  His whole life was hanging by its fingertips.

He rose and paced to the bathroom door.

“You just about ready?” he asked through the polished wood.

“Almost.”  Amelia’s reply was muffled.

Eric sighed and paced back to the bed, slipping his billfold into his suit pocket.  Amelia would marry him, one way or another.  She had to.  Babies needed fathers, as far as he was concerned, and he needed her.  Forget ranching, his business was now making her see that, whether she liked it or not.  If it took all month, he’d get it through her head that she needed him.

The bathroom door opened and Amelia stepped into the room.  His determination melted into pitiful longing.  She wore the nicest of the dresses he’d bought for her, a lemon yellow thing with a low neck and soft ruffles around puffy sleeves.  It hugged her curvy body with an elegance that few women he’d ever known could pull off.

“I think you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,” he said, heart sudden
ly too big to fit in his chest.

Amelia looked away, her cheeks pink, her mouth turned down in a miserable line.  She lay a hand over her belly then jerked it away as if she hadn’t meant
to draw attention to herself.

After all that she mumbled, “Thank you.”

Well, he just wasn’t having it.  He caught her as she tried to cross to the door and pulled her into his arms.

“I just told you you’re the most beautiful woman in the world, Amelia.”  He brushed his fingers along the side of her face, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.  “You’re supposed to smile when a man says that.”

Amelia raised her mournful eyes and tight lips to him.  “You’re too kind, Eric.”

Her words were an accusation.

Nope, not gonna take it lying down.  Unless he was lying down with her.

“I could never be kind enough to you.”  He cradled the side of her face and kissed her with mercenary strength, his mouth demanding over hers.  She was his, dammit.

“Eric,” she protested with a sigh as soon as he let up, glancing to the side.

“I don’t want to hear it.”  He cut her off, brushing his fingers along her jaw and tipping her
chin up to meet another kiss.

Her lips were warm, but there was too much tension in them.  She still needed convincing.  He dropped his hand to her breast, claiming it through the soft fabric of her dress.  She groaned and swayed into him, closing her arms around him and kissing him back with passion that set his soul on fire.  That was more like it.  He backed her toward the bed, pressing her against the tall post at its foot and scooping his hand around her thigh to hitch her leg against his hip.

It would have been the perfect seduction move except for the awkward mound of her belly.  The heat between them unraveled.  Approaching her straight-on, he couldn’t get close enough to touch her the way he wanted and she writhed with self-consciousness.  As fast as he’d lit the fire, it was out.

“We can’t,” she squeaked, struggling out of his arms.  “Eric, you know we can’t.”

“I don’t see why not,” he said, chasing her and catching her again.  She would not get away.

“It’s wrong,” Amelia answered, unable to meet his eyes.

“Darling, you can’t tell me you don’t want me, because I know you do.  You drip with it.”

Instead of melting with desire and giving in, Amelia burst into tears.

Hell.

“I know,” she wept.  “I know I do.  I can’t help it.  I’m a disgrace, a wretch.  I’m sorry.”

“What for?” Eric asked, knowing it probably had something to do with his spinning head and tangled up insides and the feeling that he’d been thrown by a green mare off a cliff into a field of jagged diamonds.

She shook her head and sniffled against his shoulder.  “I have no right to lead you to show me any more kindness than you already have when I’m….”

Her explanation dropped off.  Eric filled it in mentally with ‘when I’m just planning on leaving your sorry, stupid ass as soon as we get to Montana’.

Something close to panic replaced the liquid heat he’d been working on.  He could lose his money, he could lose the ranch, but he couldn’t lose her.  He closed his arms around her in a gentle h
ug, afraid to let her go.

“Well, come on,” he said at last, forcing himself to hold her at arm’s length.  He wasn’t going to win this battle tonight.  “I’m starving and dinner is waiting.”

He let her go only to offer his arm like a proper gentleman.  He gave her a smile that would melt butter to boot.  She sniffled and wiped her eyes and took his arm the way a mouse might reach for cheese in a trap.  The showdown wasn’t over.  Neither of them had proven anything.

The twisted feeling in Eric’s stomach flared higher as they stepped out into the hall and followed the grand staircase down to the lobby and the hotel dining room.  The lobby was crowded so close to dinner.  Plenty of other couples stood comfortably together, like it was the easiest thing in the world.  He wondered how they managed it.

“Eric?”  He heard his name called in a familiar voice across the lobby.  “Eric Quinlan!”

He turned this way and that a few times searching for the voice.  Amelia’s frown shifted to curiosity as she watched him.  When Eric found the source of the voice and burst into a broad grin, Amelia’s eyebrows flew up.

“Well I’ll be!  Michael!  And Charlie!”

Of all people, his pal Michael West and Michael’s new wife, his extremely pregnant new wife, were there in that hotel in New York.  They cut through the guests in the lobby to make their way over to where he stood with Amelia.

“Eric, what are you doing here?” Michael asked when they met.

“I was about to ask you the same thing!”  He turned to Charlie.  “Look at you!”

Charlie beamed and patted her round belly.  “Michael didn’t want me to come with him because of the baby, but I insisted.  Randolph was my step-father, after all.”  Her delighted look faded.

Eric stared at both of them, wondering if there was something he was supposed to know.

“There was some trouble after you left last fall,” Michael explained.  “My father, who happens to be Charlie’s step-father, showed up.”

“I thought you hadn’t spoken to your father in years,” Eric said, long lost before the story began.

“It’s quite a saga,” Charlie added, sending Michael a wary look.

“I’ll fill you in on the details later,” Michael went on.  “The important part is that my father killed someone and was convicted and sent to prison.  He petitioned to be removed from the Montana prison and sent back east.  I couldn’t see why not, since he’s never walking free again.  I had to come back here to deal with lawyers and accountants and to settle a few other things having to do with some diamonds.”

“Diamonds?”  Eric arched an eyebrow.

Michael and Charlie exchanged looks that made Eric question w
hether he even wanted to know.

“It’s a very long story,” Michael said.  That was all he said.  “Can we treat you to dinner?”

“Who is your beautiful companion?” Charlie asked, switching her attention to Amelia.

Eric had been so caught up with his friends that he hadn’t noticed that Amelia had gone silent and pale.  It made the pink spots stand out on her cheeks and her eyes glow.  She was clutching his arm with one hand and resting the other on the bump of her stomach.  She dropped her arm to her side as soon as attention was on her.

“This is Amelia,” Eric introduced her, beaming with pride and affection.  It wasn’t an act either.

“I see.  Lovely to meet you, Amelia.”  Michael held out a hand to her, giving Eric a sly grin.  “I’m Michael West, and this is my wife, Charlotte.”