The Cowboy and the Lady (7 page)

“You’ll never make me believe it,” Jace replied coldly. “Those suits you wear didn’t come out of anybody’s bargain basement. The latest fashion, little girl, not castoffs, and you don’t make that kind of money.”

“Can’t I make you understand that they’re old?” she cried, exasperated. “I bought clothes with simple lines, Jace, so they wouldn’t be dated!”

He flexed his shoulders as if the conversation had wearied him, and reached over to retrieve his shirt from the floor. “Nice try, Lady.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call me that,” she said through her teeth. “Why can’t you be like Duncan and just accept me the way I am without believing every horrible thing you can imagine about me?”

His eyes cut into hers. “Because I’m not Duncan. I never was.” His jaw clenched. “Do you still want him? Is that why you came with Black?”

She threw up her hands. “All right. Yes, I want him. I’m after his money. I want to marry him and steal every penny he’s got and buy ermine for all my friends! Now, are you satisfied?”

One dark eyebrow lifted nonchalantly. “I’ll see you in hell before I’ll see you married to my brother,” he said without heat.

Her eyes involuntarily lingered on his broad chest, the hard, unyielding set of his face that never softened, not even when he was in a gentler humor.

“Why do you hate me so?” she asked quietly.

His eyes darkened. “You damned well know why.”

She dropped her gaze. “It was a long time ago,” she reminded him. “And it isn’t a pleasant memory.”

“Why not?” he growled, his hand crumpling the shirt in his lap. “It would have solved your problems. You’d have been set for life, you and that flighty mother of yours.”

“And all I’d have had to sacrifice was my self-respect,” she murmured gently, glancing up at him. “I won’t be any man’s mistress, Jason, least of all yours.”

He looked as if she’d slapped him, his eyes suddenly devoid of light. “Mistress?” he growled.

She lifted her chin proudly. “And what name would you have put on our relationship?” she challenged. “You asked me to live with you!”

“With me, that’s right,” he threw back. “In this house. My mother’s house, damn you! Do you think her sense of propriety would have allowed anything less than a conventional relationship between us? I was proposing marriage, Amanda. I had the damned ring in my pocket if you’d stayed around long enough to see it.”

Death must be like this, she thought, feeling a sting of pain so poignant it ran through her rigid body like a surge of electricity. Marriage! She could have been Jason Whitehall’s wife, living with him, sharing everything with him…by now, she might have borne him a son…

Tears misted her eyes and, seeing them, a cruel, cold smile fleetingly touched his chiselled lips.

“Feeling regrets, honey?” he asked harshly. “I was on my way to the top about then. We were operating in the black for the first time, the first investments I’d made were just beginning to pay off. But you didn’t stop to think about that, did you? You took one long look at me and slammed the door in my face. My God, you were lucky I didn’t kick the door down and come after you.”

“I expected you to,” she admitted weakly, her eyes downcast, her heart breaking in half inside her rigid body. “I wouldn’t even have blamed you. But you looked so fierce, Jason, and I was terrified of you physically. That’s why I ran.”

He stared at her. “Afraid of me? Why?”

She put the repackaged gauze back in the medicine cabinet. “You were very rough that night at my birthday party,” she reminded him, blushing at the memory. “You can’t imagine the secret terrors young girls have about men. Everything physical is so mysterious and unfamiliar. You were a great deal older than I was, and experienced, too. When you asked me so coolly to come and live with you, all I could think about was how it had been that night.”

There was a long, blistering silence between them.

“I hurt you, didn’t I?” he asked quietly, his eyes intent on her stiff back. “I meant to. Duncan told me that you only invited me out of courtesy, that you hated the sight of me.” He laughed shortly. “He’d added a rider to the effect that you didn’t think I’d know what to do with a woman.”

She turned back toward him, the shock in her eyes. “I didn’t tell him why I invited you,” she said. Her head lowered. “The other part…I was teasing. Isn’t it true that we sometimes joke about the things that frighten us most?” she mused. “I was frightened of you, but I used to dream about how it would be if you kissed me.” She turned away. “The dreams were…a little less harsh than the reality.” She shrugged, laughing lightly to mask her pain. “It doesn’t matter anymore. They were girlish dreams and I’m a woman now.”

“Are you?” he asked, rising to tower over her in the small room, moving closer and smiling sarcastically at the quick backward step she took. “Twenty-three, and still afraid of me. I won’t rape you, Amanda.”

She flushed angrily. “Must you be so insulting?”

“I didn’t think you could be insulted,” he said coolly, his eyes stripping the clothes from her. “Poor little rich girl. What a comedown. How old is that thing you’re wearing?”

“It covers me up,” she said defensively.

“Barely,” he replied. His eyes narrowed. “Mother mentioned something about buying you some clothes while you were here. Apparently she’s seen more of your wardrobe than I have. But don’t be tempted, honey,” he added with a narrow glance. “I don’t work like a fieldhand to keep you and that mother of yours in silks and satin. If you need clothes, you see to it that Black furnishes them, not Mother.”

Her lower lip trembled. “I’d rather go naked than accept a white handkerchief that your money paid for,” she said proudly.

“No doubt your boyfriend would prefer it, too,” he said curtly.

“He’s my partner!” she threw at him. “Nothing more.”

“He’s not much of a horseman, either,” he added with a half-smile. “If he couldn’t handle that tame mount Duncan put him on, how does he expect to handle you?”

She turned away. “What would you do for pleasure if I wasn’t around to insult?” she asked wearily.

“Speaking of the devil, where is he?”

“Out by the pool with Duncan, discussing the account.” She glanced at him icily. “Not that it’s going to do any good. You’ll just say no.”

“Don’t presume to think for me, Amanda,” he said quietly. “You don’t know me. You never have.”

She licked her dry lips. “You don’t let people get close to you, Jason.”

“Would you like to?” he asked coolly.

“I don’t think so, thanks,” she murmured, turning. “You’ve had too many free shots at me already.”

“Without justification?” he queried, moving closer. “My God, every time you come here there’s another disaster.”

“I didn’t mean to hit the bull,” she said defensively. “And you didn’t have to yell…”

“What the hell did you expect me to do, get down on my knees and give thanks? You could have been killed, you crazy little fool,” he growled.

“That would have suited you very well, wouldn’t it?” she burst out. She turned away, just missing the expression on his face. “I meant to apologize, but I sprained my wrist and I couldn’t even think for the pain.”

“You sprained your wrist?” His eyes exploded. “And you drove from here to San Antonio like that? You damned little fool…!”

“What was I supposed to do, ask you for a ride?” she threw back, her brown eyes snapping at him. “You’d already shot the bull. I thought you might turn the gun on me if I didn’t make myself scarce!”

She whirled and started out the door, ignoring his harsh tone as he called her name.

He caught up with her in the hall, catching her arm to swing her around, his eyes fierce under his jutting brow. With his shirt off, and that expanse of powerful bronzed muscles, he made her feel weak.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asked.

“To seduce Duncan by the pool,” she said sweetly. “Isn’t that why you think I came?”

“You’ll never marry him.” The threat was deliberate, calculated.

“I don’t have to marry him to sleep with him, do I?” she asked with a toss of her long, silvery hair. “What’s the matter, Jace, does it bother you that your brother might have succeeded where you failed?”

It was the wrong thing to say. She only got a second’s warning before he started after her, but it was enough to make her turn and run. There was a peculiar elation in rousing Jace’s temper. It made her feel alive, light-headed.

She ran into the living room and whirled to shut the door behind her, but she was too slow. Jace easily forced his way in, catching the door with his boot to slam it shut behind him, closing the two of them off from the world.

He stood facing her, his silver eyes blazing under his disheveled hair, his face hard and frankly dangerous, pagan-looking with his broad, bronzed chest bare, its pelt of dark hair glistening with sweat.

“Now let’s see how brave you really are,” he said in a voice deep and slow with banked anger as he began to move toward her.

She backed away from him slowly, all the courage ebbing away at the look on his face. “I didn’t mean it,” she said breathlessly. “Jace, I didn’t mean it!”

The desk caught her in the small of the back, halting her as effectively as a wall, and he closed the gap quickly, his hands catching her upper arms in a viselike grip that hurt.

“Don’t,” she pleaded, wincing. “You’re hurting me!”

“You’ve been hurting me for years,” he said in a rough undertone, his eyes blazing down into hers as he jerked her body against the hard, powerful length of his and pinned her to the desk in one smooth motion. “Has Duncan had you? Answer me!”

“No!” she whispered. “He’s never touched me that way, never, Jace, I swear!”

She watched some of the strain leave his hard face even as she felt the tension grow in the powerful muscles of his legs where they pressed warmly into hers. His hands shifted around to her back. She wasn’t wearing a bra under the terry-cloth dress, and she could feel his bare chest against her soft breasts through the thin fabric. The intimacy made her tremble.

He looked down at her, where her slender hands were pressed lightly against the mat of hair over his bronzed skin, and she was aware of the heavy, hard beat of his heart against the crushed warmth of her breasts.

“Is there anything but skin under this wisp of cloth?” he asked in a taut undertone. “I might as well be holding you in your underclothes.”

“Jace!” she burst out, embarrassed.

“No, don’t fight,” he warned shortly when she tried to struggle away from him. His hands moved slowly, caressingly on her back, easing down below her waist to hold her tightly against the hard muscles of his thighs.

“Doesn’t Black ever make love to you?” he asked curiously, watching the reaction in her flushed face, her frightened eyes. “You’re too nervous for a woman who’s used to being touched.”

“Maybe I’m nervous because it’s you,” she burst out. Her fingers clenched together where they were forced to rest against his chest, as she fought not to give in to the longing to run her hands over his cool flesh. Her nostrils drank in the faint scent of cologne and leather that clung to his tall body.

“Because it’s me?” he prompted, eyeing her.

She bit her lower lip nervously, all too aware of the privacy the closed door provided. “The last time, you hurt,” she murmured.

“The last time you were sixteen years old and I was mad as hell,” he reminded her. “I meant to hurt you.”

“What did I do,” she asked miserably, “except make the mistake of having a huge crush on you?”

He was so still, she thought for a moment that he hadn’t heard her. His hands pressed into her soft flesh painfully for an instant, and a harsh sigh escaped from his lips.

“A crush on me?” he echoed blankly. “My God, you ran the other way every time I looked at you!”

“Of course I did—you terrified me!” she burst out, her eyes wide and dark and accusing as they met his. “I knew you and Mother didn’t get along, and I thought you disliked me the way you did her. You were always and forever snapping at me or glaring.”

His eyes ran over her face lightly, lingering pointedly on her mouth. “I suppose I was. I got the shock of my life when you invited me to that party.”

She searched his hard face. “Why did you come?” she asked softly.

His shoulders rose and fell heavily. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I was out of my element in more ways than one. I’d had women by then. I was used to females a hell of a lot more sophisticated than the crowd that surrounded me that night.”

A surge of inexplicable jealousy ran riot through her body as she stared up at him. “So I gathered,” she grumbled.

One dark eyebrow went up. “And how would you have known? You were obviously a virgin. I remember wondering at the time how many boys you’d kissed. You didn’t even know enough to open your mouth to mine.”

She lowered her eyes to his chest before he could see the embarrassed flush that spread down from her cheeks.

“I’d never been kissed by anyone,” she said quietly. “You were…the first. You were almost the last, too,” she added with an irrepressible burst of humor. “I was scared silly.” Her eyes glanced up and down again. “It was a terribly adult kiss.”

He lifted a lean hand and tilted her face up so that he could study it. “Did I leave scars on those young emotions?” he asked gently. “All I could remember about it later was the way you trembled against me, the softness of your body under my hands. I had a feeling I’d frightened you, but I was too angry to care. If I’d known the truth…”

“It probably wouldn’t have made much difference,” she put in. “I…get the feeling that you’re not a gentle lover, Jason.”

“Do you?” He drew her slowly up against him again, feeling the sudden tension in her body as his hands spread around her waist and trapped her there. “Maybe it’s time I did something about that first impression.”

“Jason, I don’t think…” she began nervously.

“Shhhh,” he whispered, bending his dark head. “We won’t need words…it’s been so long, Amanda,” he murmured as his mouth brushed hers, his teeth nipping at her lower lip to make it part for him before his warm mouth moved on hers with a slow, lazy pressure that knocked any thought of resistance out of her mind. His arms swallowed her gently, folding her into his tall, powerful body while he taught her how much two people could tell each other with one long, slow kiss.