Authors: Blush
As the moments spun by she kept telling herself to leave, but she couldn't. Her pulse was pounding fearfully. It riveted her to the spot. "Why are you doing this?" she asked him. "You don't love me. You said yourself I was a bitch. "
He continued to work, etching out both their names first, and then putting the final touches on the last letter of hers. "Maybe I like bitchy women. "
"Oh, please, you can barely stand the sight of me. You didn't want anything to do with me in the desert. You couldn't even let yourself... finish when we made love. "
He had just started to carve the
L
word, but he stopped midstroke and looked over his shoulder at her. His expression said that she'd caught him by surprise, that he didn't believe what he'd heard. The sounds of the creek below them, of swift water swirling and gurgling through rocks, accentuated his silence. They were almost sad, those sounds.
"Ah, Gus, " he said softly. "Is that what you thought?" He stuck the knife in the tree and turned to her. "Is that really what you thought? That I couldn't
let
myself?"
His voice was rough with regret, and the catch in it made her throat tighten. He was shaking his head as he walked toward her, and Gus prayed that he wouldn't touch her, or that she would be strong enough to stop him if he did. But there was little point in even trying, she knew. She
wasn't
strong enough, or perhaps she didn't want to. Whatever it was, when he reached out and caressed her face, she shuddered and her arms dropped to her sides.
She looked down, painfully aware of him as he moved up very close to her. His thumb glided along her face, whispering to her aching heart. His fingers slipped into the dark tangle of hair that had fallen free from her ponytail. "If you're thinking I didn't want you, " he said, stroking her, murmuring to her, "you couldn't be more wrong. If anything, I wanted you too much. "
Gus breathed in deeply, causing her senses to swim with honeysuckle and the soft thunder of the rushing stream. Or was that her heart? He was making her
want
to believe him. God, how she wanted to. It was madness. He was a diabolical man, yet in many ways he was everything she'd ever imagined a man could be, and now he was carving hearts that said he loved her when no one had ever loved her that way. It was almost perfect, or it would have been... except that nothing was perfect. There was no such thing.
Her heart twisted bitterly. He was lying through his gorgeous white teeth. He had to be. He had some perverse reason for trying to soften her up and make her susceptible to him. Any second she would realize what it was. Nobody ever loved you
just
because they loved you.
"Only one of those things you said about me is true, " he was telling her. His fingers flirted with her lowered eyelashes.
"Which one?"
"I didn't finish what I started. I didn't get to finish making love to you. I want to do that, Gus. Right here under this tree with our names. "
His smile was rough and sensual. It was tender, but his eyes weren't. They were crystallizing at the center, growing diamond hard with desire. He began to work with the knot of her blouse, undoing it, and Gus knew she had to stop him. His hands were warm on her skin, his knuckles tantalizing as they brushed the underswells of her breasts. Pleasure shuddered through her. If she didn't put a halt to this soon, she wouldn't be able to.
"We're married, and I want to make love to my wife. Is that so hard to understand?"
She closed her eyes and heard his words echoing in her head. But instead of fading, with each repetition the volume increased, haunting, like an echo in reverse.
"We're married, and I want to make love to my wife—"
"I'm getting hard for you, Gus," he murmured. "I want to do all those things men and women do—couple and consummate and come. 1 want to do all of that with you. " His lips touched her temple, and he whispered the rest as if his intention was to arouse rather than shock her. "You know what I want, " he said, his breath warm against the delicate scrollwork of her ear. "I want to fuck my wife. "
Gus felt as if something had struck her. But it wasn't the four-letter word he'd used, it was a much longer one. Consummate?
He cupped her face, and her eyes flew open just as he bent to kiss her. Was that what this was all about? He was carving hearts in trees and vowing his desire to have sex with his wife, but not out of love. That idea was ludicrous. He wanted to consummate their relationship, to make it official. He was trying to block her from having it annulled.
"I'm going back," she said, astonished at the fresh pain that welled within her. She had to get away from him, to escape the feelings that he kept triggering. God, she was nearly helpless against those feelings. He made her long for things he had no intention of giving her. It was cruel what he was doing.
"Wait—"
"No!" She broke away with such ferocious determination that he let her go. Her eyes were wet with angry tears as she ran for the horse. Stupid, stupid tears.
She was atop Sapphire and galloping away before he'd moved from the tree where the names were carved. Afraid he would follow her, she headed for the canyon, for the gorge she knew his horse couldn't jump. She couldn't think of any other way to free herself, and she desperately had to get free of him. She hadn't jumped a horse in almost as many years as she'd been on one, and she wasn't at all sure she could do it. But Sapphire could. Lily had trained her as a hunter-jumper. Sapphire could clear mountains.
Moments later as she crested the ridge that led to the ravine on the other side, she glanced behind her and saw him coming up the hill. His riding had improved greatly in one morning. He was moving up on her! She urged Sapphire down the incline at a gallop, crouching down and hanging on. The force of gravity and the horse's jolting power sent Shockwaves through her, jarring her senses.
The gorge came careening toward them at breakneck speed, and Gus held her breath, hardly believing what she was going to do. If Sapphire stopped, if she refused to jump, Gus was dead. She would catapult over the horse and into the gorge.
She tucked her body into the horse's and tried not to cry out. Her face was buried in Sapphire's mane. The leap when it came was explosive. She could feel the coiling power beneath her, the muscles gathering, the massive discharge of action, and the next thing she knew they were flying.
Chapter 16
Jack pulled up on the reins, trying to slow his galloping mount, but Ruby snorted and surged ahead. Gus was out in front of him by a couple hundred feet, and she was heading for what looked like a ravine. A latticework of towering California oaks crisscrossed the horizon just beyond her, making it difficult to track her as she shot through a clearing in the trees. But her horse was galloping at breakneck speed, and the way she was hunched over the animal, it looked as if they were going for it. Christ, she was. She was going to try and jump the gorge!
She had to be
crazy.
It must be twenty feet across.
Jack bent forward to lessen the wind resistance as he urged Ruby on. Gus's horse may have run away with her, and there was still a slight chance he could get to her and cut them off before they hit the ravine. The animal beneath him was fighting to catch her stride. Ruby lunged awkwardly, sending jolts up his spine, but as her gait finally flattened and stretched into a full, rolling gallop, he felt himself melting into her surging momentum. He was getting a crash course in riding.
He'd already closed half the distance between him and Gus, but by now she had nearly reached the gorge, and she showed no signs of turning out. There was no way she would ever make it across, and a fall to the bottom could kill both her and the horse. Jack felt as if Ruby's hooves were thundering inside his chest. He virtually had no chance of overtaking her now, but he had to try. Leaning in deeper, he urged the snorting animal on.
As Gus reached the edge of the ravine, her horse recoiled with massive force and sprang like a trained jumper.
"Jesus, "
Jack breathed, watching them arc through the air and come down safely on the other side. The animal might as well have sprouted wings! Its hooves barely raised any dust when they touched. How had Gus done that? Crouching forward, he gripped the reins, hugged Ruby with his body and prepared himself for takeoff. An explosion of pain told him the horse had other ideas.
As the depth of the ravine came into view, Ruby stiffened her forelegs and put on the brakes. Jack slammed into the brick wall of her neck like a speeding car, agony jarring down his spine. The horse skidded to a stop inches from the edge, propelling him forward like a human rocket. His hand was tangled in the reins, but his body lifted out of the saddle as if he'd been launched. The last thing he saw was the hard, sunbaked ground coming up at him as he did a full twisting half-gainer over the horse's shoulder. His last thought was that horses should come with seat belts.
When Gus summoned the courage to look up, all she could see was an enormous cloud of dust where the man and horse had been.
"Oh, my God, " she breathed. Dread nearly burned away the lining of her mouth as she eased Sapphire closer to the edge of the ravine. The gully was heavily overgrown, which made a visual search difficult, but as she craned around, she could see nothing that looked like a fallen man and horse.
By the time she'd convinced herself he wasn't there, the dust cloud across the gorge had settled into a sparkling golden haze, and the man she'd expected to see broken and bleeding at the bottom of the ravine had miraculously materialized. He hadn't gone over the side! He was sitting on the ground, facing away from her, shaking his head as if there were something rattling inside. Ruby stood beside him, calmly munching a patch of crabgrass.
Astonished, Gus rose up in the saddle, straining for a better look. He was facing away from her, and she couldn't see any evidence of serious injuries, no grotesquely twisted limbs or blood, though she wasn't close enough to be absolutely certain he wasn't hurt. She was still shaking inside, still horrified by what had happened. No one had ever triggered such confused, impassioned responses from her, and she couldn't begin to make sense of them. If she was desperately relieved that he was all right, she also still wanted him out of her life. Desperately!
Sapphire moved beneath her, and Gus stroked the horse's neck, giving her a congratulatory pat for having made the jump. A musty smell rose off the restless, pawing horse. It was heat and dampness from the hard ride, but the pungency of it swept Gus back to another time. It was the caustic odor of her own clawing fear when she was locked in the root cellar.
A bird called from one of the oaks across the gorge.
Ruby looked up, but Jack didn't move.
Finally, unable to stand the suspense any longer, Gus cupped her hands to her mouth. "Are you all right?" she shouted.
The last word echoed sharply through the ravine. There was no chance he hadn't heard her. but he didn't respond. It had always made her nervous when people didn't answer her. Her mother had ignored nearly everything she'd ever said, fueling Gus's ever-present fears of abandonment. Even now when people went silent on her, she was stricken with the same sense of unworthiness.
Sweat broke out on her forehead and dampened her scalp.
She could feel the unsteadiness in her lips and knew she wouldn't be able to get the words out right if she spoke again. Fortunately she didn't have to. He reached around and rubbed the back of his neck, tilting his head back and forth.
"Culhane?" She thought she'd whispered his name, but it rebounded back at her as if she'd yelled it.
He glanced over his shoulder at her, and Gus had a bizarre reaction. She was tempted to wave. The only thing that stopped her was the malevolent expression in his dark eyes. The terrifying glint reminded her of the day he kidnapped her. Only this time he had murder on his mind. Cold-blooded murder. He would have broken her neck if he could have gotten his hands on her, she was sure of that... and one other thing. There was no point trying to convince him it was an accident. She might as well have had a smoking gun in her hand. He believed she'd led him to the cliffs on purpose.
"Pssst... Bridget. " Gus peeked around the doorjamb into the sunlit kitchen, careful to keep her voice low and conceal herself as she tried to get her niece's attention.
Bridget was polishing off the last of a chocolate cupcake and a glass of milk, but her attention was riveted on
Poopzie Pomerantz, Pick Up Your Feet,
a children's novel about ballet that Gus had brought back from a recent trip to New York. The precocious little thing had been reading since she was three, and once Gus had found her poring over an autobiography of the prima ballerina, Gelsey Kirkland, from the mansion's library.
"Did you know Gelsey and Misha fought all the time?" she'd asked Gus that day. "She screeched at him a lot, maybe even threw things. I didn't get that far. "
She had been talking about the very turbulent, very public affair between Kirkland and Baryshnikov. Gus had known Bridget could read, but not
that
well. Since then she'd been supplying her charge with plenty of children's books.
Now Frances was also sitting at the table, absorbed in a cup of hot mint tea by the smell of the wafting steam—and a midmorning scap opera—but Gus was being careful to stay out of the housekeeper's eyeshot as she waved at Bridget and made little
psssst
noises.
She was trying to get Bridget's attention to take her to a ballet lesson, but she didn't want to be discovered by anyone else in the house, particularly Lily, who she knew was furious because she'd borrowed Sapphire. Daniel, their twentyish stable hand—who Gus had long ago realized was Lily's personal errand boy—had been very huffy with her when she'd returned the sweat-soaked horse to him. Worse, Gus was terrified that Jack might show up at any time and confirm her worst fears, that he was going to kill her with his bare hands.