Part 21 (1/2)
What could he do to her? She wasn't alone. She had help now.
But to pay for it she was about to turn over half her property--half of Uncle Joe's legacy to her--to Jamie Slater. If he chose, he could be her neighbor all her life. She could watch him, and torture herself day after day, wondefing who he rode away to see, wondering what it was like when he took a woman into his arms.
She groaned and pushed away from the table. She couldn't solve a thing tonight. She needed some sleep. She needed some sleep very badly.
She doused the light and crawled beneath the covers. It felt so good to be in her own bed again. The sheets were cool and clean and fresh-smelling, and her mattress was soft and firm, and it seemed to caress her deliciously. A faint glow from the stars and the moon entered the room gently. It kept everything in dark shadows, and yet she could see the familiar shapes of her dressing table and her drawers and her little mahogany secretary desk.
The breeze wafted her curtains. She closed her eyes. Perhaps she dozed for a moment. Not much time could have pa.s.sed, and yet she suddenly became aware that nome thing was different. Her door had been thrust open.
She wasn't alone.
Jamie was standing in the doorway, his hands on his hips, his body a silhouette in the soft hazy moonbeams. There was nothing soft or gentle about his stance, however. She could feel the anger that radiated from him.
”All right, Tess, where's my room?”
His room?
”Oh!” she murmured.
”Your room ... well, I didn't think you were going to stay here.”
Long strides brought him quickly across the room. She scrambled to a sitting position as he towered over her.
”I.
just spent two days riding with you to get here. I spent two nights sleeping on the hard ground beneath the wagon.”
”The hay in the barn is very soft.”
”The hay in the barn is very soft,” he repeated, staring at her. He leaned closer.
”The hay in the barn is very soft? Is that what you said?” She felt his closeness in the shadows even as she inhaled his clean, fascinating, masculine scent.
His eyes seemed silver in the darkness, satanic. She was rid- died with trembling, so keenly aware of him that it was astonis.h.i.+ng.
”You don't have a room for me?” he demanded. ”All right, I am sorry.
But you were gone, and we were all exhausted. And you did have a bath somewhere. I just believed that you meant to sleep where you had bathed.”
He was still for a moment--dead still. Then he smiled. ”Miss. Stuart, move over.”
”What?”
”Move over. If there's no room for me, then I'll sleep here.”
”Of all the nerve!”
”Hus.h.!.+ We share this bed, or we sleep in the hay together,” he warned her.
He meant it! she thought, still incredulous. She started to rise, trying to escape from the bed. He caught her arm and pulled her gently back.
”Where are you going?” he whispered.
”Where else! You're bigger than I am--I can't throw you out! I'm going to the barn!”
”Wait.”
”For what?” she demanded.
For what? Every pulse within her was alive and crying out. She felt him with the length of her body, with her heart, with her soul, with her womb.
He did not hold her against him. He caressed her. He was warm, and his smile and the white flash of his teeth in the night were compelling and hypnotic.
”I said that we'd go together,” he told her. He swept her up, coc.o.o.ned in a tangle of sheet and quilt. He held her tightly against his body and started for the door. Her arms wound around his neck. She stared at the planes of his face and felt as if the soft magic of the moonbeams had wrapped around her. She should have been screaming, protesting, bringing down the house.
But she was not. Her fingers grazed his nape, and she felt absurdly comfortable in his arms. He was dragging her out to the hay, she thought, and she did not care.
Nor was there anything secretive or furtive about his action. He moved with long strides and went down the stairway with little effort to be quiet. He opened the front door, bracing her weight with one arm, then let it close behind him. He stood on the porch and looked out into the night. Then he stared at her, and she knew that she was smiling.
”Where am I heading?”
”I don't know.”
”Where do the hands sleep?”
”In the bunkhouse, by the far barn.”
”Then I want the first barn?” he demanded softly. She couldn't answer him.
She wasn't sure what the question was. All she could think was that he meant her to sleep in the hay.
She wasn't sure what else he meant for her to do there, but though she was in his arms now, and though he carried her with a certain force, she suddenly knew that what happened would be her choice. Still, he had caught hold of something deep within her, and she wasn't angry.
She smiled again as she looked at him and told him primly, ”You, sir, are completely audacious.” ”Maybe,” he said, and smiled in return. Then it seemed they were locked there in the night, their eyes touching, and something else touching maybe, with the tenderness of the laughter they shared. Then the laughter faded.
He pulled her more tightly against him, higher within his arms. And as she watched him, fascinated, in the glow of the moonbeams, his lips parted upon hers, and the world seemed to explode as his kiss entered into her.
Darkness swirled around her, and sensation took flight. She had to get away from him. and quickly.
No. she had to stay. She was where she wanted to be. Exactly where she wanted to be.
Chapter Eight.
He carried her, in the moonlit night, to the barn. He entered it and laid her, in her coc.o.o.n of covers, in the rear of the building, where soft alfalfa lay freed from its bales, ready to be tossed to the horses.
The smell of the hay was sweet, almost intoxicating.