by Janet Dailey
His statement was one she couldn't deny, so she attempted to sidetrack him with the first thing that came to mind. 'I…I didn't s—see you outside.'
'That I can believe,' he jeered softly. 'You were much too occupied with…other things.'
She swallowed back the nausea that rose in her throat as she realized he must have seen her in the car with Marshall. 'Th—that's none of your affair,' she protested, her voice growing stronger. Out of the corner of her eye, she ought a glimpse of the telephone beside the couch. With quickened steps she reached it and picked up the receiver with a threatening look. 'If you don't leave, I'll call the police and have you thrown out!'
With a swiftness that she hadn't expected in a man Barrett's size, he was at her side and wrenching the black receiver from her hand. And Dani knew she hadn't underestimated the strength in his muscular chest and arms. Hadn't he more than once picked her up and carried her as if she weighed no more than a child?
'You will call no one,' he told her, his head arrogantly tilted back, 'until I find out what the hell is going on!'
'I owe you no explanations.' Her tight voice threatened to break under the strain.
'I thought you knew what kind of a man Marshall is,' not letting her escape from his penetrating gaze.
'I've always been an excellent judge of people, which is probably why I never liked you,' Dani retorted.
'What's happened to you this last week?' Barrett demanded. 'Last night at the party, you chattered away, making-stupid, inane remarks while recoiling from me as if I had the plague. I did try to telephone you to let you know I was back in town, but I couldn't reach you and I was too busy to get away.'
Bitterly Dani agreed that he probably was too busy. Nicole had acted as if she expected every minute of his time, but she wasn't about to voice that opinion.
'I wouldn't have cared if you never saw me again,' she said scathingly.
'I thought we'd agreed to be friends.' His words were drawn tightly through clenched teeth, the muscle still working convulsively along his jaw.
'That was before I realized that I preferred Marshall's company to yours. He's infinitely more satisfying,' she stated with a defiant thrust of her chin.
Chapter Nine
'You blind, naive little fool!'
In a lightning move that she couldn't elude, Dani was jerked against him. It was like coming in contact with a high-voltage wire, jolting her to the tips of her toes. His taut thighs burned through her gown until her legs were powerless. Beneath her hands she felt the uneven rise and fall of his chest, not much different from her own ragged breathing.
'What do you know about love? Or sex, for that matter?' Barrett snarled, the leaping flames in his eyes derisively encompassing her face.
'More than you think,' she said weakly. Her gaze was uncomfortably conscious of the ruthless line of his mouth. 'I know it takes two willing people.'
A mirthless sound of laughter came from his tanned throat. 'The first time I kissed you I knew that if you'd ever been kissed before, it wasn't by a man.'
'I've been kissed before,' Dani asserted. She tried to push herself away from his chest, only to have him draw her more firmly against the long line of his body. She was disturbingly aware that the rounded swell of her breasts was being imprinted through the silk shirt on to his skin.
'Yet you believe that a man can't force himself on you,' he jeered. A wicked light entered his eyes,
'Let me go!' Dani cried, suddenly frightened by that look.
As her hands reached up to scratch at his face, her wrists were imprisoned and twisted behind her back. Before she could kick out with her foot at his vulnerable shins, Barrett was bending her backwards so she was off balance, and any attempt to defend herself with her feet would send her sprawling on the floor.
With one hand, he held both her wrists while he viciously forced her twisting and turning head to receive his bruising kiss. His mouth smothered hers, depriving her of breath while grinding her lips against her teeth. A searing fire was coursing through her, making her doubly weak and defenseless, incapable of any kind of action to resist him while her mind reeled beneath his violent embrace.
When Barrett forsook her mouth to ravage the sensitive areas around her neck and ears, Dani gasped for breath, feeling the betraying shudder of her body beneath his expert, if savage, touch. 'No,' she moaned in a plaintive protest. Her mouth opened to repeat the cry again, only to have it die in her throat as his mouth closed over hers, taking advantage of her parted lips to the fullest.
Almost of their own volition, her tense, frightened muscles began to relax, allowing Barrett to mould her more firmly against his masculine hardness. Slowly he straightened, her wrist still imprisoned, her head still bent back so he could take his pleasure of her lips. And her lips throbbed beneath the punishing assault of his mouth, a sensual pain that shot white-hot fires through her. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for the undiluted passion of his touch.
'Do you see how easy it could be?' Barrett muttered against her mouth.
The very steadiness of his voice curbed the weakness that had made her pliant to his demands. The suddenness of her struggles succeeded in freeing one of her wrists as her head twisted away from his mouth. In the next instant she found herself prone on the couch with Barrett's weight holding her there easily, his eyes glittering dangerously at the frightened roundness of her eyes. Never in her life had Dani been so aware of the difference between a man and a woman than she was at that moment when every hard, muscular contour of his body was forcibly emphasized.
'Are you going to insist that I prove it?' The softness of his voice didn't hide the steel beneath the surface.
But Barrett didn't allow her time to answer as he lowered his head again to ravish her mouth, this time with a gentle sweet seduction that disarmed her completely, compelling her to remember that sensation of security and comfort she had first experienced in his arms, coupled with a strange conviction that this was where she belonged.
Lost in the labyrinth of her paradoxical emotions, Dani blinked in confusion when his pressing weight left her body. A thousand unanswered questions in her eyes as she stared at the erect figure standing beside her.
'Well?' Barrett challenged, his hands on his hips, that unrelenting hardness still in his expression.
'I hate you!' Her voice trembled as she tried to find the strength to move from her singularly inviting position on the couch.
A scoffing sound of amusement came from his throat. 'I've been hated before,' Barrett mocked, turning away from her.
Released from his paralyzing gaze, Dani struggled upright on the cushions, stung by his indifference to her statement,
'I hate better than most people!' she retaliated in a surge of childish temper.
'Is that what you felt a moment ago? Hate?' There was something very intimate in the look that swept over her, stripping her of her protective anger and exposing the naked response of her body that she was trying so hard to deny.
'Go! Get out of here!' she demanded hoarsely, hot waves of shame filling her cheeks. 'I want nothing from you. Not your friendship or your kisses! Keep your disgusting passion for Nicole. She probably loves the caveman technique!'
'Nicole?' An eyebrow arched enquiringly, then a slow smile spread across Barrett's face and he threw back his head to laugh heartily.
'I don't see anything very funny in that,' she said crossly.
The laughter stopped, but the devastating smile remained. 'So that's what all this is about,' he murmured in satisfaction.
'I don't know what you're talking about.' Dani turned away from his much too perceptive gaze, earnestly wishing she had never mentioned Nicole's name. It was unthinkable that she could possibly be jealous of the woman.
He reached down, taking the wrists of her tightly clenched hands and drawing her to her feet. When she attempted to pull free, he raised a placating hand.
'I made an unforgivable mistake the other night and I owe you an apo
logy,' he told her. The mutinous expression on her face changed to one of bewilderment as she warily watched the solemnly amused face for a sign of mockery. 'I assumed that you knew that Nicole and Travis Blackman, my sister's fiancé, are half-brother and sister.'
A frown puckered her forehead, afraid to believe the implication of his statement that for Barrett, Nicole didn't exist except as the half-sister of his future brother-in-law.
'Have you been listening to Marshall's gossip?' he prodded gently when she remained silent.
'I have eyes. I can see,' Dani murmured instead, afraid now to acknowledge the wild beat of her heart. 'And last night you were—'
'And last night I was escorting a future in-law of my family, nothing more,' Barrett finished the sentence for her, his gaze thoughtfully watching the betraying emotion on her face.
His thumbs were caressing the inside of her wrists, unsettling her already jumbled thoughts further. Dani's stomach was a mass of twisted, churning knots and there was a terrible urge to cry, because she couldn't understand what was happening to her.
'Now do you understand?' Barrett asked gently.
'No,' she answered weakly, closing her eyes briefly against the magnetic attraction. 'No, I don't understand anything.'
His smile was gentle, but it didn't relieve that peculiar ache in her chest. 'Sleep on it. I'll pick you up around eight in the morning.'
'Why?' numbed confusion in her face.
'Because I arranged to be free tomorrow and I want to spend the day with you.'
'But—'
'Eight o'clock,' he said firmly, releasing her wrists and touching a finger to her lips. Then he was walking away from her and seconds later Dani heard the door close.
Her arms wrapped themselves around her queasy stomach, a reaction she blamed on the news that Barrett wasn't serious about Nicole Carstairs. Although why that should be of such importance to her, Dani didn't know. She and Barrett were simply friends. That thought brought a sickening rush of pain.
A little voice inside her said, 'You aren't sick. You're in love.'
And Dani laughed aloud, a weak, tremulous laugh that soon caught in her throat. Love was a nebulous something that would come to her some time in the future. Not here! Not now! Not with Barrett King!
'Marshall. Why can't I be in love with Marshall?' she demanded, not realizing she had spoken her thoughts.
But she wasn't. Tonight she had turned to Marshall for solace, to try to erase Barrett from her memory. Marshall's kisses had stimulated her, but it was Barrett's brutal embrace that had wakened her desire against her will.
And Barrett? Did he simply feel responsible for her, as Marshall had said? Dani remembered again the control Barrett had exhibited during that embrace. Even her own father had asked him to see her so she wouldn't be alone. Yet it couldn't be strictly responsibility that made Barrett want to be with her, she argued. He had gone to great lengths to make her understand that Nicole meant nothing to him.
All those crazy, unanswered questions hammered to be heard until Dani's head pounded from trying to solve them. Then exhaustion swept over her again, this time draining her completely and mercifully, bringing an end to the questions she couldn't begin to answer.
With the morning sunlight they all came raring back. One moment her heart was leaping with the hope that Barrett might care and the next moment sinking to the deepest depths of despair against some imagined argument that he did not. By the time he arrived promptly at eight, Dani was as tense as a coiled spring, her brilliant gaze bouncing away from the levelness of his. In an effort to appear casual and uncaring, her mouth ran away with her tongue in a flurry of unnecessary comments while Barrett patiently sipped the coffee she had poured.
'Aren't you interested in where we're going today?' he asked, stopping her flow of trivia with a single question.
'Yes,' she swallowed, trying to glance his way casually and failing as her gaze slid rapidly back to her empty coffee cup,
'Good. I thought we'd take a drive through the country and I'll show you some of the attractions Kentucky has to offer besides Churchill Down.'
'Would you like to leave now?' Dani asked nervously.
The slight reluctance in her voice earned her a quizzically amused look from Barrett. 'The sooner we leave, the more we'll be able to see.'
Her reply was a quickly worded agreement as she hurried to clear the coffee items from the table. Acid tears burned her eyes. Somehow she had hoped there would be some indication from Barrett of his feelings towards her after the way he had kissed her last night. Yet he was acting no differently from any of the other times he had taken her out. His friendly aloofness hurt.
The sheer futility of her love washed over her. Had it been so very long ago that she had asserted that they were no different? Now her clothes and appearance were impeccable. She had rubbed elbows with the élite of society and never in her life had she felt more certain that she wasn't good enough for a man such as Barrett King.
'Dani?' A hand touched her arm at the same moment that he spoke.
Her first instinct was to turn into his arms, accept the sweeping comfort of that broad chest. The impulse was so strong she had to jerk away from his touch to resist it, a creeping flush rising in her face when she looked at him. His eyes had narrowed and the line of his mouth had grown grim.
'You don't sound very excited about today.' There was an edge to his voice that cut Dani with its razor sharpness. Her throat refused to let any words pass through it. 'Is it because of last night?'
Her shoulders lifted in a defensive shrug. 'What are you talking about?'
She felt rather than saw the exasperated sigh from Barrett. 'Regardless of the impression I may have given you last night, I am not inviting you out with me today, with a half-formed notion of seducing you. If I'd wanted to do that, I would have last night.' The shimmering green gaze was boring into the back of her neck. 'So forget about it.'
'That's not easy to do,' Dani admitted, knowing she would never forget and dying a little that he should ask her to do so. 'I don't know if we can be friends any more, Barrett.'
'It's always difficult for a man and a woman to be friends,' he said cryptically. 'But all we have to worry about today is enjoying ourselves.'
'Yes. Yes, of course,' she nodded, forcing a determined smile on her mouth,
'That's my girl,' Barrett said lightly, flashing her a quick smile before he turned away. It was a bittersweet phrase that Dani desperately wished was true.
She could read between the lines. Although Barrett recognized that it was impossible for them to go back to the easy relationship they had enjoyed before, his request to forget his violent lovemaking was a subtle statement that he did not want to become involved with her seriously. If he cared for her at all, it was because he felt obligated, indirectly responsible for the promise extracted by her father.
Proudly raising her chin, Dani vowed silently that Barrett would never guess the change in her feelings towards him. So she gave herself up to his lighthearted teasing mood and allowed him to believe the events of last night had been forgotten. What did it matter if her senses were too vividly aware of him beside her? The copper sheen of his hair. The bright glitter of his green eyes. The musically husky pitch of his voice. The intoxicating blend of cologne with his maleness. And the tantalizing nearness of him behind the wheel of the car.
His tour through the Kentucky countryside surrounding Louisville took them first to Bardstown. Dani was grateful for the many things to see because they were able to fleetingly sidetrack her attention from Barrett. Tree-lined residential streets were crowned with stately mansions, including the home that had prompted Stephen Foster to write 'My Old Kentucky Home' while visiting Bardstown so many years ago.
Dani discovered she was even capable of laughter when they toured the Museum of Whisky History and saw an original whisky bottle distilled by E. C. Booz in 1854, a brand name that had prompted the present slang term of 'booze' for liquor.
&nbs
p; The time passed more swiftly than Dani dreamed it could. When Barrett suggested a particular restaurant in Lexington for their evening meal, she could hardly believe that much time had gone by since lunch. The service was fast and excellent, leaving little time for small talk as she concentrated on the meal. There had been very little idle conversation the entire day, she realized. Both of them had kept the discussion centred on the sights they were seeing. Hers had been deliberate and she wondered if his had been, too.
'We should be able to make it home before dark,' she said idly after Barrett had paid the bill and they were on the way to his car.
'We aren't going back yet,' he said smoothly.
The velvetness of the coming night seemed so intimate that Dani bolted from the thought. 'Where are we going?'
'To the auction, of course. You haven't been to it before, have you?' There was an enquiring tilt to his head as he opened the car door for her.
'Auction?' Her mouth worked nervously before she got the word out.
'Don't tell me you haven't heard of the yearling sale at Keeneland race-track before?' he chided mockingly.
The July sale of year-old Thoroughbreds Dani knew was heralded as the biggest and the best in the world. Horse breeders paid entry fees to have their colts and fillies considered for sale, but out of the thousand or so entries, only those yearlings with the bluest blood and the most desirable conformation were accepted.
And the buyers were just as élite. Tickets for seats in the sales pavilion were given only to those who could prove they could afford the five and six-figure price tag that the best yearlings in the land would fetch.
A shiver of excitement raced through Dani as she contemplated actually attending the auction of these untried and unnamed Thoroughbreds that could all trace their ancestry back to a handful of horses of the seventeenth and eighteenth century.
'I know all about the sale,' she murmured, the excitement dying. 'But I can't go, Barrett. You know that.'