“What made you change your mind?”
“I don’t know exactly. I guess because you’re as confused as I am in some ways. Oh, I didn’t mean to insult you or anything.”
Sandra meant it. There was something so pitiful about her apology; she truly believed that no one could possibly be as confused as she was. Leslie’s heart went out to the other woman. She shrugged. “It’s okay. I’m sure I’m just as confused as you, maybe more so,” she admitted.
Sandra smiled and it was a real smile, full of warmth. “No one could be that confused.”
“Except me,” Leslie said, feeling strangely touched.
Sandra swallowed, as if struggling with tears. Her eyes were strangely bright. “We can’t both win, can we?”
Leslie sighed. She didn’t know if winning would mean being loved by Ward or learning to live free of him, but neither seemed possible at the moment.
“You don’t have to answer. I know he doesn’t care for me. I just make a fool of myself because I can’t help it.”
“You’ve not made a fool of yourself,” Leslie protested.
“You haven’t seen everything,” Sandra said, pain clouding her gray eyes. She lifted her chin as if that would somehow rearm her, then she shrugged. “I didn’t mean to say so many…revealing things. I hope you will forgive me.”
“Of course,” Leslie said, meaning it. “That’s a lovely locket you’re wearing,” she said to change the subject. The intricate Chinese dragon design in the center of the unusual gold and enamel locket had caught her eye.
“It was a gift from my aunt. Would you like it?”
“Oh, no!” Leslie said, slightly horrified. “I wouldn’t dream of taking it.”
Sandra shrugged. “Suit yourself. It means nothing to me. Well, shall we go face the old biddies for a while longer?”
Leslie laughed. “Might as well.”
When she told Jennifer about the singular conversation Jennifer smiled her slightly ironic smile. “What did you make of it?”
“I knew not what to make of it.”
“That is just as well. With your genial nature you are much too prone to give generous interpretations to everyone’s actions. A line from a Henry James play I did once has stuck indelibly in my memory. ‘My dearest Emma, do not pretend, with your sweet temper, to understand a bad one, or to lay down rules for it: you must let it go its own way…’ And I fear that is what we should do with this. Leave the interpretation to time. Then and only then will we be able to guess at its meaning, if there is one.”
Leslie frowned. “Surely you don’t think that aimless encounter had some deeper meaning?”
“My dearest Leslie, do not pretend, with your sweet temper, to understand a bad one.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Through the sprawling leaves of a potted palm, Leslie saw Dallas Younger in the spacious entryway, hat in hand, speaking to the McCormicks’ butler. He was presentable in a dark frockcoat, but he looked out of place among the elegance and sophistication of the gingerbread mausoleum. She stopped dancing abruptly.
“What’s the matter, darling?” Tim asked, his pale, handsome face reflecting his concern for her.
“Dallas Younger. What’s he doing here?” she demanded.
Tim craned his neck, peering through the palm leaves.
“Looks like he has business with Mr. McCormick.”
Leslie would not be led back into the strains of the music. She watched as Younger talked to McCormick. Soon Sandra joined them, took Younger’s hand, teased and cajoled for a few moments, and led him onto the dance floor. Ignoring the looks of the curious, Younger danced as if he purely enjoyed the opportunity. Cantrell, standing beside one of the double doors that led outside, watched, his handsome face impassive.
During dinner he had looked strangely vulnerable, reminding her of the Ward who brought her that one fragile flower. She’d had the feeling, vibrating to his nearness, that she could search him out and find him instantly—even in a dark cave packed wall to wall with men—the way mother bats return unerringly to their young. Maybe his damned arrogant body sent out signals to her.
Now, with his thumbs hooked in his pants pockets, even the slim horizontal shadow under his smooth bottom lip added to the impression of barely contained rebelliousness and cold passion. He was a hellion, a maverick, and he definitely looked the part tonight; even in very correct evening attire he exuded an aura of controlled recklessness that was as much a part of him as his silver-streaked, tawny hair and those insolently sensuous lips.
For all that he did not appear agitated, there was a definite threat in his stance that caused her to shudder. She cast a questioning glance at Tim, wondering if he had somehow known ahead of time that Younger might be dropping in, but, preoccupied by his conversation with Winslow Breakenridge, his face reflected no guile.
Ward searched the room for Leslie, wondering how she was taking Younger’s arrival. The urge to confront the man was strong in him, but this was not the place. He was an officer of the law, sworn to maintain order, not destroy it.
Patiently, Ward waited until Younger had relinquished Sandra to a young man he didn’t know. Younger made his way back to McCormick’s side; Ward walked onto the dance floor and took Sandra out of her partner’s arms.
“Ward, well, sir…it’s about time you deigned to dance with me.” Her cheeks were unnaturally flushed, and her eyes were sparkling with excitement.
“Did you invite Younger here?” he asked, swinging her into the rhythm of the waltz.
“He had business with my father. I only invited him to stay. He’s very handsome, isn’t he? Are you jealous?”
“I realize you’re all grown-up now, and you probably don’t want any advice from me, but if you’re smart, you’ll stay away from Younger.”
“You are jealous!” she said triumphantly.
“I’m trying to warn you,” he said quietly. “I’ve had some experience with Younger. He plays rough.” Her eyes sought out Younger’s villainously handsome face, took on that strange glazed look, and he cursed himself for a fool. He had probably only succeeded in making the bastard irresistible to her.
“Look, Trinket, would you trust me in this? Younger will hurt you, possibly kill you. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”
“What?” She frowned at him, her lovely gray eyes clouded with confusion.
“The man is dangerous. He could kill you.”
A sudden understanding and shame filled her eyes. She seemed to sag in his arms. They were near the open doors to the veranda. He danced her outside.
“Are you all right?” he demanded, setting her down.
In the dim light from the party she began to cry. He sat down beside her and put his arms around her. When her sobs had subsided, she stood up and burrowed into his arms. “I’m sorry,” she sniffed. “I didn’t mean to cry all over your jacket.”
“That’s all right.”
“Why do I do things like that? And like Dusty? And like what I wanted to do with you?” she demanded, furious at herself and shamed to the core.
Ward shrugged. “You’re looking for love.”
She sighed. “That sounds so simple when you say it.”
“Finding love is never simple,” he said, reaching into his pocket for his handkerchief.
“I’m going to die,” she said suddenly. “I know it. I’m going to die in some horrible way and I’ll never find anyone to love me.”
“That’s hogwash.”
She shuddered. “No, it’s true. I know it in here,” she said, touching her stomach. “I’ll die and be completely forgotten, as if I never existed…” New tears welled up in her eyes, and Ward sighed, feeling helpless.
“You aren’t going to die,” he said, groping for some way to handle this. He looked around, wishing there was someone he could turn her over to.
“You’ll forget me. Everyone will. They’ll go to my funeral and say phony things about what a nice girl I was, because no one ev
er knew anything about me. You’re the only one in the world who even knows me.” Sobs bubbled up and shook her slender body. “You’ll forget me too. I’ve always known that I would never live to be twenty.”
Ward shook his head. “That’s nonsense. You’re going to live to be a hundred. This is a hard time for you. But you’ll find someone to love.”
“Do you have a cigarette?” she demanded.
“Not with me.”
She was deeper than he had thought. Of course, she would have to be, since his original impression was that she had all the depth of butcher paper. He felt closer to her suddenly. He had the urge to tell her that Younger had killed a nineteen-year-old girl, but he was no longer completely sure it had been Younger. There could have been another man involved. Some shadowy figure behind both the killings and the rustling. And anything he told Trinket would be all over town. There would be hell to pay, and no way to prove it to anyone’s satisfaction.
He felt frustration and a growing sense of his own helplessness. Nothing he could do or say would make a difference to her. She was so hungry for a man of her very own that she would settle for anything, as long as it was exciting and would horrify her father. For a moment, when she was crying, he had felt hope, but he knew by the look in her eyes that neither shame nor tears mattered to her. Only her need mattered. She was a female first, a person second.
“Would you like to dance?” he asked.
She sighed. “I would like a cigarette, but since you don’t have that, would you do me a favor?”
“If I can.”
“Promise me that you won’t forget me.”
Jolted by the intensity of her need, he nodded. “I promise.” He held out his arms to her, she moved into them, and he swung her into the rhythm of the music. They danced for a moment on the veranda, and then Ward edged them back into the main ballroom. When the dance ended, he left her to search for Leslie.
“Tim took her home. I think Younger’s turning up here had something to do with her sudden headache,” Winslow said, quirking his heavy black brows.
Tim drove Leslie home and offered to stay with her, but she convinced him that she needed to be alone. He kissed her and left reluctantly. She asked Annette, who was still up, to prepare a bath, and forced herself to try to enjoy it in spite of her jangled nerves.
“Not feeling well, mademoiselle?”
“My head hurts frightfully,” she lied, sighing.
The bath helped a little. She put on a gown, brushed out her hair, pinned it up because the night had stayed unaccountably warm, and lay like a board on the bed, holding herself half off the mattress with her elbows. Sleep did not come, so she paced in the moonlit room, cursing herself for leaving the social because now she would have to wait until tomorrow to find out if he had started a fight with Younger or gone home with one of his Trinkets or, worse yet, embarrassed Jennifer in some way. He was capable of anything.
She walked to the balcony. The moon was up, silvering the tree-tops and casting shadows beneath them. A dog or a coyote howled in the distance, and a breeze whipped her gown around her legs. The smell of sage mingled with the fresh garden scents. Cantrell would not come here. She was safe now from any threat he might have posed her if she had stayed at the party. On an impulse, she shrugged out of the nightgown, let it drop, and walked to the full-length mirror next to the french doors that led into her private bathroom. The pale silvery moonlight slanting into the room lighted her breasts and cast shadows beneath them that accentuated the slenderness of her waist. Liking the fragrance of jasmine her bath had imparted, she lifted her arms, posing, wondering how her body compared to the bodies of the women Ward Cantrell had known…Her in-curving waist was taut, flaring into slender hips and long, slim, well-shaped thighs. Perhaps her breasts were too small and her body too skinny…
She heard a sound on the balcony and turned in time to see a shadowy form loom suddenly, filling the doorway. Leslie drew back, gasping, her heart lurching.
“Christ!” Ward whispered, his husky quiet voice rich with consternation.
She faced him—a sweet, curving ivory wand in the moonlight that slanted into the room—and he leaned against the door frame, groaning. “Leslie…” He knew he had to tell her he was leaving town, that he had only come here to release her from their bargain, but the rapid rise and fall of her small tip-tilted breasts struck to the core of him.
“I should have known you would make this as difficult as possible,” he said grimly, stalking past her to rip the coverlet off the bed. He wrapped it around her but did not step away. His strong hands used the fabric like a net to pull her close.
“Difficult?…” she repeated dumbly, frowning down at her naked breasts, left exposed to her view, her mind so befuddled that even the revealing hardness of her nipples did not faze her. The heat of his body so near, the warm masculine scent of him, added to her confusion. He groaned huskily and pulled her close against him. Without his hands to hold the coverlet between them it fell away, covering only her back. The rough feel of his clothes against her sensitive flesh sent a shudder through her slender form. She was breathing far too fast. Light-headed, she leaned weakly against him.
“Leslie, dammit.” Arms tightened around her trembling body; one warm hand slid up her arm to tangle in the raven tresses, scattering the pins, fanning the fragrant mass around her shoulders. The urge to bury her face against the warm, manly crook of his neck and shoulder was irresistible.
All he had to do was touch her and that hard knot of heavy pain, coiling like a snake in her belly, brought her hands up of their own volition to pull his head down. His fingers tightened in her hair, pulling her head back, and slowly, as if he were trying to stop himself but losing, his mouth closed over hers, and she was lost, drowning, oblivious to everything except her primitive, undeniable need to couple with this man.
“No…” he groaned softly, his breath a feather against her cheek. His fingers encircled her wrist so tightly she cried out.
“Owww! What?”
“Don’t do that,” he growled, moving her arm back so he could capture both her hands. He dragged in a heavy breath and expelled it. “You have to listen to me,” he panted, “because if you don’t, all my good intentions are going to dissolve.”
“I’m listening,” she breathed, taking a fiendish delight in the sure knowledge that having her naked in his arms was more painful for him. Unable to resist the urge to torment him, she squirmed against him, wriggling around so that her hands were behind her, his arms around her again. He groaned, like a man lost. His mouth found hers, at first tentatively, as if he really didn’t want to kiss her again, and then hungrily, his hands sliding up her arms to close over her shoulders, as if he didn’t dare touch her anywhere else.
Forgetting her desire to torture him, she arched into the lean, hard warmth of him, pressing her body shamelessly against his, aware only of his touch, which satisfied a hunger that had lain dormant in her for too long, but satisfied it only a little. The tasting seemed to feed the hunger, so that it swelled and grew in her, becoming uncontrollable. Trembling, clinging to him, she pulled his head down, wanting his kisses with a fierceness and hunger that seemed bottomless.
“Leslie, love,” he groaned. “Please look at me.”
Why was he pulling away from her? Why was he talking when he could be kissing her? She buried her face against the hardness of his chest and felt the heavy hammer of his heart, matching her own. She sought his mouth, but he caught her face between his hands.
“You have to listen to me,” he panted. His voice was husky and harsh, and his hands, holding her face, were harshly possessive.
“What?” she murmured sulkily.
“I want you, Leslie,” he whispered against her face, his breath warm. “I want you more than I’ve ever wanted any woman, but I can’t take you by trickery or deception. I just came here to tell you that I am not romantically interested in Jennifer Kincaid. I never was. I only said that because you made me so dam
ned mad. And to punish you for choosing Summers over me.” He paused, panting as if he had run a mile. “I have to go. I’m leaving Phoenix.”
“Go?”
He buried his face in her hair. Air escaped from his lungs, making a sound low and filled with pain. His arms tightened around her as if he couldn’t bear to let her go. “I just came to tell you so you would understand.”
“So go,” she crooned insincerely, pulling his head down to continue the kiss he had interrupted.
“Did you understand a word I said?” he demanded, resisting her, holding her arms in a fierce, viselike grip.
“You want to go. So go.” She shrugged with perfect feminine wile, her chin lifted, her lovely eyes hooded, mysterious, not willing to let him see the joy that had flooded her that he was not involved with Jennie, that he never had been.
“I have to go,” he whispered. “I forced you once. I can’t do that again, dammit. You have to come to me of your own free will. Do you understand that? I have to know that I didn’t trick you into anything.”
Flushed with her own power, she laughed softly and reached up on tiptoe to kiss his neck. His hand tightened on her arm, biting into the soft white flesh, and even that pain felt wonderful to her, because she understood the reason for it.
“I’m trying to do something that you will think honorable, dammit,” he growled, furious with her.
“I’m not interested in your honor. Just be yourself, Cantrell,” she whispered.
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” he said grimly. “I’ll be back in one week. You know where the other Kincaids live? If you want to see me, come to me there…or send a message and I will come to you.”
“And what if I don’t come?” she whispered. “What if I asked you to take me for a ride instead?”
“When?” he scowled.
“Tomorrow…”
Saturday. Could he wait one more day to join the men in Buckeye? She held her breath, waiting, until he sighed and said, “Where?”
The Lady and the Outlaw Page 31