Chapter Nine

Jace didn’t go near her for the rest of the day, and she knew that she’d hurt him. Despite his scorn for Beatrice Carson, it was clear that he was still vulnerable to her daughter. Had the flowers been a peace offering?

Duncan sat and played gin rummy with her all evening, winning hand after hand until she finally refused to play with him anymore out of sheer exasperation.

“Spoilsport,” he goaded. “It’s early yet. You’re going to force me to go out in search of other entertainment.”

“Don’t call me names, you cheating cardsharp,” she said in her best Western drawl. “I ought to call you out and plug you, stranger.”

“The marshal don’t like gunplay in this here town,” he replied narrow-eyed.

She tossed her hair. “A likely story. You, sir, are simply cowardly.”

“Yes, miss, I sho is!” He grinned.

She lay back against the pillows with a weary smile. “Thanks for keeping me company, Duncan. I do feel better now. In fact, I may even be able to get up in the morning.”

“Don’t push it.”

“I have to.” She studied her clasped hands. “I have to leave just as soon as I can,” she ground out. “I can’t take being around Jace much longer.”

“He won’t bite,” he promised her.

She smiled wanly. “Care to bet?”

He drew a deep breath. “Exactly what is going on? Can’t you tell me?”

She shook her head. “Private, I’m afraid.”

“That sounds ominous, like guns at ten paces or something,” he teased, and his brown eyes danced at her.

“I almost wish it was, but he’d have me outgunned on the first draw,” she admitted. “I can’t fight Jace and win. I don’t think anyone can.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

“I am.”

“Getting sleepy?”

She shook her head. “Just worn out. I didn’t even mange to finish my supper, I was so tired.”

“You’ll be up raiding the kitchen before dawn, mark my words,” he scolded.

She laughed. “Maybe.”

* * *

Duncan’s prediction came true shortly after midnight, when she found that she couldn’t ignore her growling stomach an instant longer.

She slipped on her old robe and slippers and opened the door into the hall. She tiptoed past Jace’s darkened room, her heart shaking her briefly with its beat, and down the dimly lit stairs. Her feet made no noise at all on the carpet, and she found the kitchen without a slip and turned on the light.

Marguerite’s kitchen was absolutely spotless—mosaic tile floors, done in the same blue-and-white motif as the bathrooms, looked recently polished, and the huge stove that Mrs. Brown used for baking was a blazing white. The big counters and huge oak cabinets were a cook’s dream. So was the long solid oak table used to prepare food on. There were two or three chairs scattered around, and frilly blue curtains at the darkened windows. Amanda thought idly that it would be a pleasure to work in.

The clean pots and pans cried to be used, so she opened the double-doored refrigerator, knowing her hostess wouldn’t mind if she made herself a snack. She pulled out eggs and a big ham, and took down some spices from the cabinet, proceeding quietly to make herself a huge, mouthwatering omelet. She was in the middle of cooking it when the back door suddenly swung open and Jace walked in.

She froze at the sight of him, and he didn’t look any less stunned to see her standing at the stove in her robe, her blond hair in a lovely tangle around her shoulders, hanging down to her waist in back.

He was wearing a suede jacket and his familiar black Stetson, jeans that were layered in dust, and old boots with scuffed toes. He didn’t look like a corporate executive. He looked the way Jason Whitehall used to look when she was a girl—like a cowboy struggling to carve an empire out of a few hundred head of cattle, a lot of sweat, and a generous amount of business sense.

“What are you doing out of bed?” he asked quietly, closing the door behind him.

“I was hungry,” she replied softly.

He glanced toward the pan she was holding on the burner.

“That smells like an omelet,” he said.

“It is.” She checked it to make sure it wasn’t burning.

“Ham and egg.”

“It smells delicious.”

She glanced at him. He looked hungry, too. And cold and tired. There were gray hairs at his temples that she’d barely noticed before, and new lines in his hard face. “Want some?” she asked gently.

“Got enough?” he countered.

She nodded. “I’ll make some coffee….”

“I’ll make it. Women never get it strong enough.” He shrugged out of his jacket to disclose a faded blue-patterned cotton shirt, and threw it onto an empty chair with his hat. He found the coffeepot and proceeded to fill it with apparent expertise while Amanda took up the omelet and put bread into the toaster.

“Butter,” she murmured, turning back toward the refrigerator.

“I’ll get it,” he said.

She took out the toast and laid it on one plate while she went to the cabinet to get a second one for him.

Jace leaned on the counter, but his silvery eyes followed her all around the kitchen, quiet and strange, tracing the slender lines of her body in the old blue terry-cloth robe.

She barely glanced at him as she came back with the plate and set it down on the counter. Her heart was doing acrobatics in her chest, but she tried to look calm, working with deft, efficient hands to divide the omelet, and giving him the lion’s share of it.

“Hold it,” he said, laying a quick hand on her wrist. “That’s more than half.”

His touch was warm and light, but she looked down at the lean, darkly tanned fingers with a sense of impending disaster, her face flushing at the emotions playing havoc inside her.

“I…wasn’t really that hungry,” she admitted. She glanced up at him shyly, and away again. “You…don’t look like you even had supper.”

He traced a rough pattern on the soft flesh of her wrist. “I didn’t.”

She moved away from him to put the pan in the sink, wondering at the strange mood he was in.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

“Only with me,” he said on a rough side. “I couldn’t sleep.”

She stared down at the soapy water in the frying pan. “I’m sorry about the flowers,” she whispered. “I didn’t realize…that you’d sent them.” Her eyes closed. “You’ve been so cruel.”

“Because I told you the truth about your mother?” he demanded. “Why not? You’re old enough.”

She turned, staring across into his blazing eyes. “Did you have to be so brutal about it?” she asked.

“There’s no other way with you,” he said quietly. “At least it gets your attention.”

Her lips parted. “I don’t understand.”

He laughed mirthlessly. “Of course not.”

Her eyes pleaded with him. “Jace, can’t you find it in your heart to forgive her?”

“Forgive her? She’s nothing but a slut!” he ground out. “Like her daughter,” he added coldly.

She drew in a harsh, hurt breath. “You think you know everything there is to know about me, don’t you?”

“All I need to know,” he agreed.

“How wonderful to never make a mistake, to never be wrong!” she cast at him.

He turned and caught her blazing eyes with his own. “I make mistakes,” he corrected quietly. “I made my biggest one with you.”

“How, by not shooting me instead of the bull?” she choked.

“By not taking you into my bed when you were sixteen,” he said quietly, and there was no mockery, no teasing light in his eyes now.

Her face went blood red. “As if I’d have gone!” she cried.

“I could have had you the other night,” he reminded her, his eyes narrowing. “You were a great deal more vulnerable than that when you were sixteen, and you wanted me even more than you do now.”

“That’s a lie!” she gasped, outraged.

“The only difference,” he continued coldly, “is that it wasn’t permissible back then, when the Whitehalls were still just middle class. Now that the shoe’s on the other foot, it’s perfectly all right for you to want me. Even to give in to me. And why not—it wouldn’t be the first time.”

Her fingers clenched on the handle on the pan in the sink, and she felt pain as she gripped it.

“I’d rather take poison,” she breathed.

One corner of his chiseled mouth went up. “Really?” His eyes swept down over her slender body. “So would I. You can arouse me when you try, but then, so could anything in skirts. One body’s the same as another to a hungry man.”

“Go to hell!” she burst out.

“I’ve been there,” he told her. “I don’t recommend it. Come and eat your omelet, Amanda, before it gets cold. These coy little performances are beginning to wear on my temper.”

He took the plates to the table. Amanda let go of the pan and started blindly toward the dining room, her face stark white, her heart shaking her with its anguished beat. All she wanted from life at that moment was to escape from him.

But he wasn’t about to let her escape that easily. He reached out and caught her wrist in a steely grasp, halting her in place.

“You’re not going anywhere,” he said in a dangerous undertone. “I said sit down.”

She licked her dry lips nervously and sat down at the table in the seat he indicated. But she only stared at the omelet through her tears, feeling so sick she was afraid to take a bite of it.

Jace laid down his fork and moved his chair close to hers.

“Amanda?”

There was a foreign softness to his deep voice. It was the final undoing. A sob broke from her throat and let the dam of tears overflow down her cheeks until her slender body was shaking helplessly with them.

“For God’s sake, don’t!” he growled.

“Please…let me go to bed,” she pleaded brokenly. “Please…!”

“Oh, hell.” He pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket and mopped up her tears, and all the anger and spite seemed to go out of him at once. “Here, eat your omelet,” he said gently, as if he was speaking to a small child. “Come on. Let me see you taste yours first.”

“Why?” she sniffled, looking up at him through tear-spiked lashes.

“I hear that you’ve been threatening to make me a bowl of buttered toadstools,” he mused, and a faint smile eased the rigid lines of his face. “I’d hate to think you laced this omelet with them.”

She smiled involuntarily, and her face lit up. He watched the change in her, fascinated.

“I wouldn’t poison you,” she whispered.

“Wouldn’t you, honey?” he asked gently. His fingers reached out to touch, very lightly, the tracks of tears on her flushed cheeks. “Not even with all the provocation I’ve given you?”

She studied his darkly tanned face solemnly. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what?”

Her eyes fell to the deep yellow omelet with its cubes of pink ham on her plate. “About what…my mother did.”

He drew in a sharp breath. “Eat your omelet.”

She stared across at his impassive face as he turned his attention to his own plate.

“Not bad,” he murmured after a taste. “When did you learn to cook?”

“When we moved to San Antonio,” she said, picking up her fork to speak a chunk of omelet. “I didn’t have much choice. Mother couldn’t cook at all, and we couldn’t afford to eat out.” She smiled as she chewed and swallowed the fluffy mouthful. “The first time I tried to fry squash I cut it up raw into the pan and didn’t put a drop of oil in it. You could smell it all over the building.”

He glanced at her, and one corner of his mouth went up. “You didn’t eat that night, I gather.”

“Not much.” She laughed. “I forgot to salt the macaroni, and burned the meat…” Her voice sighed in memory. “I’m still not a good cook, but I’m better than I was.” She studied his rough, arrogant profile. “You learned to cook in the service, didn’t you?”

That seemed to surprise him. He stared at her searchingly before he turned his attention to his coffee. “One of my specialties was fried snake,” he said dryly.

“Green Berets, wasn’t it?” she recalled with a tiny smile as she toyed with her toast. “I remember how striking you used to look in uniform…”

“You were just a baby then,” he teased.

“I’m glad,” she said suddenly, as a blinding thought floored her. How would it have been all those years ago to have been a woman, and in love with Jace as she was now—to watch the afternoon newscasts knowing he and his unit were so far away and fighting for their lives…

“What’s the matter?” he asked quietly.

She shook her head. “Nothing.”

He swallowed down his coffee and leaned back in his chair. “Where do you live in San Antonio?” he asked conversationally.

She glanced at him and away. It was as if Bea had never come. They were talking now as they had that day at the restaurant—freely, openly, like two people who understood and respected one another.

“In a one-bedroom efficiency apartment,” she replied. “Right downtown. I can walk to work, and it’s convenient to the corner grocery store, too.”

“You don’t own a car?”

“Can’t afford one,” she said sheepishly. Her soft brown eyes teased his. “They break down.”

He drew a long, slow breath. His lean hand went up to unfasten the top buttons on his shirt, as if the warmth of the kitchen was uncomfortable for him. Her eyes involuntarily followed the movement and he smiled sensuously at her.

“Want me to take it off?” he asked in a lazy, teasing drawl.

She caught her breath, remembering without wanting to the feel of that mat of thick, curling hair on his chest under her fingers.

She averted her eyes, wrapping both hands around her coffee cup.

He chuckled softly, but he didn’t stop until he’d opened the shirt all the way down, baring his bronzed chest in the sudden tense stillness of the room. His hand rubbed over it roughly and he drew in a long, heavy yawn.

“God, I’m so tired,” he said heavily.

“Why did you send the flowers?” she asked. An instant later she could have bitten her tongue for the impulsive question.

His silver eyes searched hers. “You might have died,” he said bluntly, “and I’d have been responsible. The flowers were by way of apology,” he added gruffly, looking away. “I never meant you to be hurt like that.”

She stared at his sharp profile, knowing how it shook that towering pride of his to admit he was sorry about anything. And suddenly she realized how much it must have hurt him to know that his father was unfaithful to Marguerite. Knowing it, trying to protect his mother…. All her own pain fell away as she studied him, just beginning to understand his point of view.

“Would you listen, if I explained something to you?” she asked gently.

His silver eyes cut at her. “Not if it’s about your mother,” he said bluntly.

She drew in a sharp breath, her cold hands clenching around the coffee cup. “Jason, have you ever been in love?” she asked harshly. “So deeply in love that nothing and no one else mattered? I don’t pretend to know how your father felt, but Mother loved him beyond anything on earth. There was never anyone but Jude for her, not even my own father. It was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love, and she had the bad luck to feel it for a married man. I’m not condoning what she did, but I can at least understand why she did it. She loved him, Jace.”

His eyes dropped to the table. “When is the wedding?” he asked curtly.

“In a month. I’ll be joining Mother and Reese in the Bahamas for the ceremony.”

He studied her downbent head. “And in the meantime?”

“I’m going back to San Antonio as soon as I’m well enough to travel,” she said honestly, tears in her voice. “You can let Terry know your decision about the account,” she added in a whisper.

He drew in a weary breath. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s yours. You can iron out the details with Duncan.” He stood up. “If you want to leave here that badly, go ahead.”

Her lovely eyes filled with tears as she looked up at him. He wasn’t going to bend an inch. He could let her walk away, out of his life, and not feel a thing. But she loved him too much to let go.

“Is that what you want?” she asked bravely, her face pale in the soft light of the kitchen.

His jaw tautened, his silver eyes narrowed. “You know what I want.”

Yes, she knew all too well. Perhaps Bea was right. Love was the most important thing. A few hours in Jace’s arms might not be proper, but it would be a soft memory to wrap around herself in the long, empty years ahead. She loved him so much. Would it be so wrong to spend just one night with him?

“All right,” she said softly, her tone weak but unfaltering.

He scowled down at her. “All right, what?” he asked.

She lifted her face proudly. “I’ll sleep with you.”

His nostrils flared with a sharp indrawn breath. “In return for what, exactly?” he asked harshly.

“Does everything have to have a price tag?” she murmured miserably, standing up. “I want nothing from you!”

“Amanda!”

She stopped at the doorway, her back to him. “Yes?”

There was a brief, poignant silence. “If you want me, come back here and prove it.”

She almost ran. It would have been in character, and it was what she would have done a few months earlier. But now she knew there was more to Jason’s ardor than an angry kiss in the moonlight. She knew how exquisitely tender he could be, how patient. And her need of him was too great to ignore. There was no limit to the demands he could make on her now that she knew how desperately she loved him.

She turned and went back to him, pausing at the table, her eyes faintly apprehensive as they looked up into his. He hadn’t moved at all, and his gaze was calculating as it met hers.

“Well?” he asked.

She moved closer, searching her mind for a few clues as to what would be expected of her. She’d never tried to seduce a man before. A couple of old movies came to mind, but one called for her to crawl into his sleeping bag and the other would only work if she could already be undressed and in his bed when he came out of the shower.

Experimentally, she linked her hands around his neck and reached up on tiptoe to brush her lips against his jutting chin. He wouldn’t bend an inch to help her, and his chin was as far as she could reach.

“You might help me a little,” she pointed out, puzzled by the faint amusement in his silver eyes.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked obligingly.

“If you’d bend your head just an inch or so….”

He bent down, watching her as she looked up at him hesitantly. Nervous, inhibited, it was all she could do to make that first movement toward him, to put her mouth against his and yield her body to the strength of his.

She closed her eyes and pressed herself against his tall frame, her mouth suddenly hungry as the love she felt melted into her veins like a drug. But it wasn’t enough. It was like kissing stone, and even when she increased the pressure of her lips, he didn’t seem to feel the need to respond.

She drew away and looked up at him, her eyes soft with hunger, her breath unsteady. “Oh, Jace, teach me how.” she whispered brokenly.

His eyes widened, only to narrow and glitter down at her, something passing across his face like a faint shadow as his hands touched her waist and untied the robe with a lazy, deft twist.

She caught his hands as he eased the robe down her arms, leaving her standing before him in only the pale mint gown that was all but transparent, its low neckline giving more than a glimpse of her small, perfect breasts.

“You offered something to me,” he reminded her, something calculating in his gaze. “Cold feet, Amanda?”

She swallowed nervously. “No,” she lied. She let him dispose of the robe, looping it over the chair she’d vacated. His fingers went to the thin spaghetti straps that held the bodice of the gown in place, toying with the bow ties.

“Jason, it’s getting late!” she whispered, feeling a sense of panic, the age-old fear of a woman with her first man.

“Easy, honey,” he murmured, his hands suddenly soothing on her back, his lips gentle as they touched her flushed face. “Just relax, Amanda, I know what I’m doing. Relax, honey, I’m not going to rush you, all right? That’s better,” he mused, feeling some of the tension ease out of her with the leisure of his movements, his tone. “Are you afraid of making love with me?” he whispered.

She swallowed down her fear. “Of course not,” she managed in a voice straight from the tomb.

“Show me.”

She drew back and looked up at him helplessly; it was like being told to play an instrument when she’d never learned to read music. Her look pleaded with him.

His eyes narrowed, but not in anger. Some strange, quiet glow made them darken. He looked down at her with a kind of triumph as one deft hand flicked open the bow on her shoulder. He repeated the gesture with the other bow and held her eyes while the gauzy fabric slid unimpeded to her waist and she felt the soft breeze from the open window on her sudden bareness.

She blushed like a schoolgirl, hating her own inexperience, hating the expertise behind his action, frightened at the intimacy between them even though she’d initiated it.

His eyes dropped to the high, soft curves he’d uncovered, studying them in the tense silence that followed.

“My God, you’re lovely,” he said quietly. “As sweet as a prayer…”

She caught her breath. “What…an incredible way to put it,” she whispered.

He drew his eyes back up to hers. “What did you expect, Amanda, some vulgar remark? What’s happening between us isn’t cheap, and you’re not a woman I picked up on the street. You belong to me, every soft inch of you, and there’s nothing shameful about my looking at you. You’re exquisite.”

Her eyes held his, reading the tenderness in them. “I…like looking at you, too,” she said breathlessly, her fingers lightly touching the powerful contours of his chest, tangling gently in the wiry, curling dark hair over the warm bronzed muscles.

“Mandy…” he breathed, drawing her very gently to him until her softness melted into his hardness, until she could feel the hair-roughened muscles pressing against her own taut breasts, and he heard her gasp.

“Now kiss me,” he whispered huskily, bending his head, “and let me show you how much we can say to each other without words.”

He took her mouth with a controlled ferocity that made her breath catch in her throat, tasting it, savoring it, in a silence wild with the newness of discovery. She lifted her arms around neck, holding him, her body trembling where its bareness was crushed warmly to his until she felt such a part of him that nothing short of death could separate them. She loved him so! To be in his arms, to feel the raw hunger of his mouth cherishing hers, penetrating it, devouring it, was as close to paradise as she’d ever been. Tears welled in her eyes at the intensity of what she was feeling with him, at the depth of the love she couldn’t deny even when she cursed it for making her weak.

His arms contracted at her back and ground her body into his for an instant before he lifted his head and looked down into her soft, yielding eyes.

“I want one word from you,” he said in a gruff, unsteady voice, and the arms that held her had a fine tremor. “I ache like a boy with his first woman, and I can’t take much more of this.”

She knew exactly what he meant, and there was only one way she could answer him after the way she’d responded. She loved him more than her own life, and even though she’d probably hate both of them in daylight, the soft darkness and the sweet pleasure of his body against hers would be a memory she could hold for the long, empty years ahead without him.

She opened her mouth to speak, to tell him, when the beautiful dream they were sharing was shattered by the sudden, loud roar of a car’s engine coming up the driveway.

Jace said something violent under his breath and held Amanda close in his arms, burying his face in her throat in a silence bitter with denial until the tremor went out of his arms, until his shuddering heartbeat calmed.

Her fingers soothed him, brushing softly at the cool strands of hair at his temples. “I’m sorry,” she whispered tenderly. “I’m sorry.”

His lips brushed her silky skin just below her ear and moved up to touch her earlobe. “Are you really?” he whispered. “Or is it like a reprieve?”

“I don’t understand,” she murmured.

He drew back, his eyes missing nothing as they probed hers. “You’re a virgin, aren’t you, Amanda,” he said quietly.

She flushed, her face giving her away, and he nodded, dropping his eyes to the soft curves pressed so closely against him. “I should have known,” he mused, and a corner of his mouth went up as he carefully eased her bodice back in place and lifted her hand to hold it there while he retied the spaghetti straps with a sophisticated carelessness that had her gaping at him.

“I…I tried to tell you before,” she faltered, “but you wouldn’t listen.”

“I was jealous as hell, and hurting,” he said bluntly. “Jealous of Black and jealous of my own brother. I thought you came because of Duncan and I wanted to strangle you both.”

“You’re the only one I wanted,” she breathed, her eyes telling all her secrets to him in the soft, sweet silence that followed.

He caught her narrow hips and drew them against the taut, powerful lines of his legs, watching the faint tremor that shook her.

“I like to watch your face when I hold you like this,” he said tightly. “Your eyes turn gold when you’re aroused.”

Her eyes closed on a wave of pure hunger. “Jace,” she whispered achingly, clinging to him.

“I want you, too,” he whispered back, but for all the wild, fervent hunger she could sense in him, the lips he pressed against her forehead were breathlessly gentle. “Damn Duncan…!” he ground out as the sound of a car door slamming burst onto the silence.

Jace let her go with a rough sigh, his eyes caressing as they swept down her slender body. “You’d better go on up. I’m not in the mood for any of Duncan’s witty remarks, and I’d hate to end the day by knocking out any more of his teeth.”

She smiled at him, the radiance of her face giving her a soft beauty that made him catch his breath. “Poor Duncan,” she murmured.

“Poor Duncan, hell!” He grabbed up her robe and helped her into it, jerking the ties together to pull her body against him. He bent and kissed her roughly, his lips hard, faintly hurting. “You’re mine, honey,” he told her, his breath warming her mouth. “And I’m not sharing you. Once I take you into my bed, I’ll kill another man for touching you.”

“Jace!” she whispered, stunned at the cool violence of the words.

“I’ve waited seven years for you,” he said harshly. “I’m through waiting. By the time this weekend is over, you’ll belong to me completely.”

She stared up at him helplessly, understanding him with a painful clarity. “I…I was going back to San Antonio after the party tomorrow night.”

“Was is right,” he said, his eyes hard. “You’re staying now. I want the whole damned world to know you’re mine. There’ll be no hushed-up weekends at your apartment, no climbing the back stairs to your bedroom. It’s all going to be open and aboveboard, so you’d better start making plans.” He released her and turned her around with a slight push in the direction of the door. “Go to bed. We’ll talk about it tomorrow night.”

She looked over her shoulder at him when she reached the door. “Does…everyone have to know?” she asked, feeling the shame wash over her like the night air.

“Why in hell not?” he wanted to know.

It was different for men. Why should he care? She turned and walked toward the door.

“Amanda!” He studied her face as she turned. “The light’s gone out of you. What is it? Something I said?”

“I’m just tired,” she assured him with a wan smile. “Just tired, Jason. Good night.”