by Kay Hooper
“Don’t you remember?” he asked, pulling on a pair of jeans.
“Well, no. Not that it matters. I can always hold the edges together.”
Ian came to the bed and sat down beside her. “You don’t need anything to wear. Stay with me.”
She finger-combed her damp hair and looked at him uncertainly. “Tonight?”
“And tomorrow night. And as many nights as we can manage.” He kept his voice light.
“All right,” she said simply.
“We have to talk.”
A shadow crossed her eyes. “I don’t want to talk.”
He eased her back onto the bed and kissed her gently. “Baby, we have to. You know we do.”
The faintly swollen curve of her lips was unsteady for a moment, then firmed. In her eyes was anxiety and reluctance and regret. “Yes. I know.”
“We’ll work it out,” he promised, pushing from his mind the certain knowledge that there was no painless solution. “Why don’t you call room service and order some food. I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
His smile went a little crooked. “Unless you’re on the pill, I’m going to that shop in the lobby.”
Michele felt herself blushing, which was, she told herself, fiercely ridiculous. “Oh.”
He kissed her again. “I’ve been so wild for you I didn’t even think about protection. I’m sorry.”
“I didn’t think about it either,” she reminded him.
His eyes burned down at her, and one hand rested possessively over her stomach. “We may be too late,” he said gruffly.
The possibility of carrying his child sent a surge of warmth spreading through her. But she wasn’t certain of his feelings even now; as wild as their desire for each other was, he’d said nothing about their future. And the odds were so strong against them…
Conjuring a smile, she said ruefully, “Stuart seed taking root in a Logan? Our ancestors would be spinning in their graves.”
“And our fathers foaming at the mouth,” Ian added. “Still, unlikelier things have happened.”
“I know.”
He hesitated, then kissed her lightly. “Whatever happens, we’ll face it together.”
After he’d finished dressing and gone, Michele rose and found a shirt in his closet. She put it on and borrowed his comb to untangle her damp hair, then called room service and ordered food to be sent up. She picked their scattered clothing up off the floor. Then, after a slight hesitation, she called down to Jackie’s room. Her friend answered on the first ring.
“Hi, it’s me,” Michele said.
“Hello, stranger,” Jackie replied dryly.
“I just wanted you to know that I—I’m going to be with Ian for a while. Didn’t want you to worry.”
There was a long pause, and then Jackie said, “So. You’re lovers.” Her voice was flat.
“Does that surprise you?”
“No. No, it doesn’t surprise me. Jon called a little while ago. I told him you were fine, and out on the beach. I don’t like lying, Michele.”
“You weren’t lying. I am fine.”
“If you say so.” Jackie’s voice was still flat and polite.
Michele sighed and gave up. “I’ll talk to you later, all right?”
“Sure.”
After hanging up the phone, Michele continued to sit on the bed, gazing at nothing. Jackie’s reaction had been only a sample, a mild sample at that, of what awaited her in Atlanta. She hadn’t wanted to think about that; in Ian’s arms, she’d been able to forget.
But she couldn’t forget for long. She loved Ian—but did she trust him? Even now, even after all they’d shared, she didn’t have that answer. Alone in his room without the sight and touch of him to send every rational thought spinning into oblivion, she felt wary, uncertain, painfully vulnerable. And in the back of her mind were dark stirrings she couldn’t seem to banish. Jackie had been right; Ian could hurt her more dreadfully than any other man.
For herself, she had no choice but to accept that possibility. The greatest shock of her love for Ian wasn’t that he was her family’s enemy, or that she went wild in his arms with a passion she hadn’t known herself capable of. The greatest shock was the complete disappearance of her pride. She’d been raised to be proud, that being the single surviving trait of a Southern heritage; raised by a man whose pride in his name and in his person was immense.
But her love for Ian put such arrogance in perspective. Because she loved, she was achingly vulnerable, and that lowering of all barriers left her with the knowledge that pride didn’t matter. As long as he wanted her, she belonged to him. For the rest of her life, she belonged to him.
For herself, it didn’t matter who he was. But her father and brother would never see it that way. And along with her own natural uncertainties and doubts at accepting a man as her lover, she had to cope with the terrible knowledge that her relationship with Ian could be the spark that would ignite violence between their families.
“Are you decent?”
Startled, she looked up and saw Ian peering at her around the partially opened door. She hadn’t even heard his key in the lock. “Of course I’m decent,” she said, pushing her anxiety back into its dark corner.
He looked at her thoughtfully, then said, “No,” and disappeared. Moments later, he opened the door all the way and pushed a room service cart in ahead of him. “Decent enough for me,” he said calmly, “but not the waiter.”
“I’m wearing clothes.”
“You’re wearing my shirt—and you look sexy as hell in it. Have I told you you’re beautiful?”
“Umm…I don’t remember.”
“I must have been saying it inside my head, then. You are beautiful.” Ian was concentrating on shifting the food from the cart onto the table by his balcony door. “I thought so when you were sixteen.”
“What?” That really did surprise her.
He pushed the emptied cart back out into the hall and then came back and shut the door. He came to the bed and drew her to her feet, enfolding her in his arms. “Now, why does that surprise you so much?”
Michele blinked up into his smiling face. “Well, I was gawky. All bones.”
“All lovely bones. And wild hair and haunting eyes. You’ve been in my head ever since, like a song I couldn’t forget. I used to catch a glimpse of you across some huge, crowded room, a theater lobby, or restaurant, and I’d wonder what would happen if I went up to you, considering the curses you’d spat at me when you were sixteen—”
“I wouldn’t have,” he murmured, realizing that it was true.
Ian kissed her, holding her hard for a moment. Then he guided her to the table and put her in one of the chairs while he took the other. “We better eat to keep up our strength,” he said in a slightly rough voice. He looked at her, his eyes burning.
Reading the heated expression correctly, Michele felt a jolt of desire. Lord, just a look from him and she went weak. She fixed her gaze on her plate, concentrating on eating even though she’d forgotten what she’d ordered.
Ian ate automatically, hardly able to keep his eyes off her. She looked so delicate enveloped in his shirt, the dark cloud of her hair making her appear almost sixteen again. He knew she was troubled, knew that during his absence she had begun to confront what lay ahead of them. And he also knew that if he took her in his arms, she’d forget the problems. For a while.
The desire between them pushed everything else away, leaving only them and what they felt. But with the sharp edge of that blunted, however momentarily, the world and the problems outside crept closer.
In a low voice, without looking up, she said, “Do you think we can stop the feud?”
“I don’t know.” He wished he had a better answer.
She looked up then, gray eyes clouded. “Between our fathers, it’s always stopped short of violence. Have you realized that—our relationship could change that?”
“We won’t let it happen, Michele.
”
“How will we stop it? By telling them it’s just us, that they aren’t involved? They won’t see it that way. By telling them we didn’t plan this? That won’t matter. They won’t understand, Ian. They’ll never understand.”
He was silent for a moment, then pushed his plate away and sat back. Reluctantly, he said, “It’ll be worse on you, even assuming we can keep them from striking out at each other. No matter how furious my father is, he won’t disown me. I’m his only son, the last of the line.”
Michele shivered almost unconsciously. “Dad…won’t be that rational. I’d be lucky if he gave me time to pack. Years ago, I heard him say what he’d do if a Stuart ever touched me. I saw the look in his eyes. I’m afraid of what he might do to you and your father.”
“Michele…” He reached across the small table and covered one of her hands with his.
“I don’t even know how to tell him. Or Jon.” Her hand turned under his, holding on as if to a lifeline. “I think I’m more afraid of what Jon will do. He’s always been very protective of me—and he hates you.”
“But he loves you,” Ian said quietly. “So does your father. I can’t believe either of them would hurt you.” Even though part of his mind was telling him she was right, that her family could very well react with a violence that would catch her in its storm, another part of him found it impossible that any man could look into her eyes and say or do anything to hurt her.
Michele pulled her hand away and met his gaze very steadily. “Can’t you? Do you want me to tell you how they’ll look at this, what they’ll say? They’ll say that you set out to make a fool of me, that you cold-bloodedly seduced me with the intention of tearing our family apart. They’ll say you used me as a tool or a weapon to further delay the completion of Dad’s building, that you wanted to—to disrupt our family any and every way you could, put us at each other’s throats—”
“Michele—”
She rose jerkily and stepped away from the table, away from the sudden dark realization in his eyes. She leaned against the open balcony door and stared out on paradise. “That’s what they’ll say,” she whispered.
“And that’s what you think, isn’t it?” Ian rose as well, going to her and turning her around roughly to face him. “My Lord, you still don’t trust me.”
She stared at the pulse beating in his neck, unable to meet his eyes. “I can’t get it out of my head,” she said unsteadily. “The words. All the awful things I’ve heard for twenty years. I try not to—but I keep hearing them. And I know what it’ll do to Dad and Jon, I know. I’m the best weapon you could use to destroy them.”
“Even now?” His voice was tight. “Even now, you think I’m using you?”
Feeling the hot sting of tears, she looked up finally into his hard face. “I don’t want to. Don’t you see, Ian? When you hold me, it doesn’t matter because it’s just us and I know I have to take the chance. I can’t fight what you make me feel.”
“But you can’t trust me not to destroy your family.”
She saw her hands go up, saw them touch his face in some aching effort to soften him. But the touch seemed to go unfelt, his expression remaining hard and his eyes flinty. Despair swept over her as she tried to make him see and understand the pain tearing at her.
“Please…You made me face this. You said we had to talk about it. I’m trying to tell you that no matter how strongly you make me feel, and even though I could never hate you, I still can’t forget what I’ve been taught. And if I can’t forget that, if I can’t trust you with all that I feel, after everything that’s happened between us, then how could my family ever survive this? Ian…what we are will destroy them.”
He pulled her suddenly into his arms, holding her as if something had tried to snatch her away from him. He hadn’t wanted to face the fact that it could never, ever, be just them, that what they felt for each other couldn’t be held separate and apart from the feud between their families. But he had to accept it now. They were each bound by ties of blood and love to opposite sides of a battle that had raged for centuries, and no bond between them, by the simple fact of its existence, could end that war.
His father wouldn’t disown him, but the bitterness and sense of betrayal would always be between them. And her father and brother would never be able to accept him in Michele’s life. Not with the feud raging stronger than ever between the families.
“We’ll find a way to stop it,” he muttered into the dark silk of her hair. His arms tightened around her, and he lifted his head to stare down at her. “Somehow. We won’t let it destroy them—or us.”
Michele let herself be comforted by his certainty, because the alternative was simply too painful. In any case, there was no going back. She pushed all the horrible words back into their darkness, and with their banishment came the sharp awakening of everything else she felt for him. The desire rising in her with such abruptness held more than a little desperation and she knew it, but she didn’t care. These feelings were honest and untainted by dark things; these feelings were all she could really be sure of between them.
“I want you,” she whispered.
His breath caught as she pressed closer, and his eyes flared with instant heat as his head bent to hers. “Michele,” he murmured against her lips. “Michele…”
—
Late the following morning, Ian swore creatively as he dressed, his feelings obvious. “It isn’t enough that the client has to arrive a day early,” he said irritably, “but then he has the nerve to ask me to meet him on the other end of the island and spend the day walking over the job site.”
“It can’t be helped,” Michele said, lying on her side in bed as she watched him.
“Come with me.”
“Do you really think that would be wise?” she murmured.
Ian looked at her, lying in his bed naked except for the sheet draped over her, and he knew exactly what she was thinking. They had decided to eat dinner downstairs in the restaurant the night before. They’d stopped by her room so that Michele could put on something besides a caftan with no buttons, and then had gone on to the restaurant.
They hadn’t made it to dessert.
Smiling just a little with a smile that was pleased and secret and so intimate it nearly made his heart stop, she said, “Your client probably wouldn’t be thrilled to watch us vanish into the bushes.”
He leaned over the bed, placing a hand on either side of her. “Do you think that would happen?”
“You tell me.”
Ian knew damned well it would; in the last twenty-four hours, touching her had become as necessary as breathing, and since her desire was as strong as his, those touches just couldn’t be casual ones. “You make me feel eighteen and at the mercy of my hormones,” he told her.
“Good.” Smiling, she lifted her face for his kiss.
“Dammit. I hate to leave you,” he murmured against her mouth, thinking that if he ever saw her smile like that at another man, he’d kill the bastard. The primitive impulses and urges he felt around her no longer surprised him, for he’d learned the simple truth about himself: He was a man deeply, possessively, and irrevocably in love.
She sighed regretfully as he straightened, then said, “Just for a few hours. I should spend some time with Jackie anyway. Call home. Things like that.”
“I’ll be back before six. No matter what the client says.”
“All right. I’ll be here or in my room.”
After he’d gone, Michele stretched like a lazy cat and reluctantly got up. She wanted to hold on to the peaceful feeling of well-being as long as possible, and determinedly kept her mind sedate as she dressed in the clothing that had been very hastily abandoned the night before.
The memory brought a smile to her lips as she left his room and slipped downstairs to her own to shower and change, but the smile left her as Jackie’s closed door reminded Michele of things she wanted to forget. After the brief but painful discussion between her and Ian yesterday, neither
of them had wanted to return to the subject of their future, and so it had been left hanging.
Michele still didn’t want to think about it. She knew the problems wouldn’t vanish by being ignored, but the wonderful hours with Ian and the delight she had found in his arms was an interlude she wasn’t yet ready to jeopardize in any way.
She was dressed and brushing her drying hair when Jackie suddenly appeared in the connecting doorway.
“Hi. Abandoned so soon?”
Looking at her friend, Michele wished she could say something to ease Jackie’s worry; her studied unconcern and flippant tone didn’t hide her anxiety. “Ian had to meet a client on the other side of the island.”
Jackie came far enough into the room to lean a hip on the low dresser. “Oh. So you’re at loose ends?”
“For a few hours anyway.”
“Then let’s go have our fortunes read.”
Michele wasn’t surprised by the suggestion. Jackie’s interest in fortune-telling was a long-standing one; since her early teens she’d been dragging various of her friends to palmists, tarot card readers, and psychics. She had collected her share of futures, most of them containing the invariable promise of a tall, dark, and handsome man—and the fact that the man she had recently become involved with could easily fit that description had only deepened her faith in destiny.
It wasn’t a belief Michele ever shared. Humoring Jackie, she’d gone along and had her fortune read a number of times. She, too, had been promised a tall dark stranger in her future. One enthusiastic palmist had even told her flatly that her first lover would be a dark man with burning eyes.
Well, Michele thought now with a flash of amusement, she’d gotten it half right.
Mildly, she said, “I’m game. Have you already found a fortune-teller on the island?”
Jackie drew a card from the back pocket of her jeans and looked at it. “This was pushed under my door this morning. There’s some kind of small carnival out by the harbor, just for the day. And a Mrs. Fortune offers tarot readings.”
Wondering idly why there had been no card under her own door or Ian’s, Michele came to the conclusion that Mrs. Fortune no doubt had a limited supply of cards; most of her breed made a marginal living at best. Luckily she had shoved one under the door of a true believer in fortune-telling.