by JoAnn Ross
Her planned seduction of Cash Beaudine would have to be abandoned. Which was a shame, since every erotic instinct Roxanne possessed told her that the sexy architect would be a masterful, passionate lover.
As was Vernon, of course, she reminded herself. Lowering her leg to the water, she squeezed the sponge, causing the cooling perfumed water to stream over her breasts.
He was a perfect match for her. Sexually and financially. The King of Discount and the Diva of Domesticity. It had a nice ring. Together they could rule the merchandising world. If there was one thing Roxanne enjoyed even more than hot sex, it was money. And Vernon definitely had enough of that to keep her happy for a very long time.
She was smiling as she left the tub and wrapped a thick fluffy towel around her slightly sore body.
Her smile faded as she walked into the adjoining bedroom and viewed the man sprawled in the flowered wing chair.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
George lifted the Waterford iced tea glass filled with bourbon in a salute. “Is that any way to greet your husband?”
Hell. How could she have forgotten about George? He was the one obstacle to her cleverly conceived plan. She had no doubt that the moment she announced her engagement to Vern, George would challenge their divorce, embroiling her in a decades-old murder.
Equally unpalatable was the idea he might remain quiet until after the wedding, then demand a share of her new husband’s fortune to keep her secret. That, she decided, was more likely.
Bile rose in her throat. She pushed it back down and forced her whirling mind to calm. She could handle this, she assured herself. There was too much at stake to let a loser like George Waggoner screw up her life.
“What do you want, George?” she repeated in a voice far calmer than she felt.
He gave her a long look that caused goose bumps to rise on her arms. He’d obviously been drinking all day. He smelled like a distillery and looked like a skid row bum.
“Actually, sugar, I’ve been thinking that since you seem to be bumpin’ uglies with old man Gibbons—”
“I am not—”
“Shut up.” His voice was quiet. But his order was backed up by the knife he pulled out of his boot. “Like I said, since you’ve been giving it away to that old buck, and probably to Beaudine—”
“That’s not true. I haven’t—”
“I said, shut the fuck up!” He was on his feet, the deadly knife in his hand. There was a murderous gleam in his feral eyes, reminding her all too well of another time he’d looked this same way. But then his weapon of choice had been a carpenter’s claw hammer.
He nodded when she did as instructed. “That’s better.” When he ran the flat end of the blade up her cheek, Roxanne could literally feel the blood flow from her face. “You know, it’s the damndest thing,” he mused.
His breath reeked of whiskey, almost making her gag. Roxanne drew in a deep breath. “What?”
“Most women get uglier when they get older. You’re better looking than you were when you were a girl.” He trailed the knife blade around her jaw, and down her throat. When it experimentally touched the tip at the hollow where her blood was pounding wildly, she struggled against swallowing.
“Yes, indeedy.” He took hold of the top of the towel in his left hand and with one vicious downward swipe, yanked it away. “I figger it’s time I took my husbandly rights.”
He drew the knife across the crest of her breast, allowing the razor-sharp edge of the blade to touch just deeply enough to draw blood. Little beads of red dotted her flesh.
She thought her knees were going to cave out from under her. If he wanted her to beg, she would. After all she’d done in the past, begging was a small price to pay to stay alive.
“Please, George.”
“Please, what, sugar?” he asked absently, as he turned the knife back to the flat edge and drew it slowly, tauntingly down her torso, over her rib cage, beyond her navel, and lower still. “Are you asking me to fuck you? Like you ask that hairy old gorilla?”
She’d rather go to bed with a gorilla. But, she didn’t want to die, either.
“Yes.” The surrender came on a long, ragged note. “Please, George. I want you.”
“You want me to fuck you.”
“Yes.” She’d forgotten how, toward the end, when he’d begun to drink heavily, he’d been unable to get an erection unless she talked dirty. And finally, even that hadn’t been enough, she remembered, her hand unconsciously going to her cheek, where she could still feel the faint edge of the bone he’d broken with his fists. “I want you to fuck me, George.”
“Hard.”
“Hard.”
“In the ass,” he prompted.
“Yes.” She briefly closed her eyes. She’d survived worse. She would get through this, she vowed. “In the ass.”
She opened her eyes just in time to witness an evil yellow grin that sent a frisson of shivers up her spine. “Sugar, I thought you’d never ask.”
They had dinner on the mezzanine. Unusual for the city, the lighting was subdued, the noise level almost hushed. It was, Cash and Chelsea both agreed, perfect.
“You never told me,” she remembered, “how things turned out at the house.”
“Not too bad.” He’d been excited about his afternoon earlier. His success had paled compared to his plans for this evening. “There was some hand-carved ceiling molding that should look great in the parlor. And I got a front door that’s got to be seen to be believed. It was carved in France for some winery. It’s solid oak, twelve inches thick, covered with vines and bas-relief clusters of grapes.”
“Roxanne should be pleased. It sounds exquisite.”
“It is. But not half as exquisite as you.”
For some reason the compliment, and the masculine admiration gleaming in his eyes made Chelsea strangely nervous. She dragged her gaze away, garnering her scattered composure. Down on the lobby floor, she watched a famous British rock star arrive with his sizable entourage.
“That really is one dynamite dress.” Surrounded by the sea of black favored by the other diners, she stood out like a defiant flame.
“I know redheads aren’t supposed to wear red,” she murmured, parroting what her mother and Nelson had been telling her for years. “But it’s always given me confidence.”
“Did you feel you needed confidence tonight?”
In the old days, they wouldn’t have been having this discussion. She realized she’d have to get used to the idea of him being so forthright. She also realized that she’d never be able to hide anything from those knowing dark eyes that seemed capable of looking all the way into her soul.
“I suppose so.” She began fiddling nervously with the cutlery. “After all, it’s been a very long time, and although the chemistry between us is still as strong as ever, stronger, actually—”
“Chelsea.” He reached across the table and covered her hand with his. “Relax. It’s okay.”
“What is it about you that makes me stutter and stammer? And babble. Lord, I never babble. Not ever, not even when I was a teenager. Why, anyone can tell you that…” Her voice drifted off and she managed a faint, sheepish grin. “See what I mean?”
“I think it’s probably the same thing about you—about us together—that makes me feel like a fourteen-year-old virgin again.”
“Really?” Her initial response was relief that she was not alone in these tumultuous feelings. Her second thought, and the one that came crashing on the heels of the first, was that he was far more sexually experienced. “You lost your virginity at fourteen?”
“Fifteen. It was sort of a birthday present.” Despite the circumstances of his upbringing, the memory earned a reluctant smile.
“And so much more original than a baseball glove,” she said dryly. No wonder he’d been so skillful when she’d known him. He’d already had years and years of practice. “I suppose you’re going to tell me that your father, in some sort of southern male rite
of bonding, took you down to the local whorehouse for a boy’s night out?”
“Actually, you’re half right. It was at a whorehouse on the outskirts of town. But my father didn’t have to take me. I was already there.”
“You went there on your own? At fifteen? Surely you had some friends along for support?” She could imagine, with some effort, a group of teenage boys pooling their paper boy money and getting the grand idea to hire a prostitute. Especially in Raintree, where inhibitions seemed to melt away in the steamy southern climate.
He decided to be straight with her now. Her reaction, whatever it turned out to be, wouldn’t change how tonight would end. But it would definitely set the tone for their future.
“I worked there, Chelsea. From the time I was thirteen until I went to college. And sometimes, during vacations after that.”
She was momentarily speechless.
“I told you how my dad died when I was a kid.”
She nodded and covered his hand with hers.
“We were sharecroppers. The owner of the farm came to the burial and told my mom he was real sorry about the accident, but she was going to have to leave, because there was no way a widow and a skinny kid would be able to keep the farm going.”
“That’s hateful!”
“It was the way things were back then. And he was right about us not being able to run the place by ourselves. Even when my dad was alive, we lived hand to mouth. I remember one really bad winter, after that summer’s crop had gotten destroyed in a tropical storm, we were reduced to eating robins.”
His eyes turned reminiscent; his smile was grim. “There were these gall berries growing wild by the house. When they fermented, the robins ate them and got dead drunk. We could almost pick them off the branches. Dad and I gathered up all those drunk birds, crushed their heads, and mama fried the breasts in lard, mixed them with some rice and baked them into robin jambalaya.
“Mama was Scots-Irish, from the Blue Ridge country in the hills. The country that was in the movie, Deliverance?”
Chelsea nodded her familiarity with the movie and the lush green, wild scenery.
“She was used to the hardscrabble life, so it never seemed to bother her that we didn’t have two plug nickels to rub together.
“She took in washing and ironing, which didn’t help her reputation in town, since that was work normally only done by black women. I used to take the wicker baskets of clothes back to those big houses in Raintree for her. At first I couldn’t believe people lived like that. Then, I went through a stage when I was angry at what I considered the injustice of it all.”
“That’s not surprising,” she murmured, thinking of how he’d carried that anger with him to Yale.
“I suppose not. But it sure wasn’t very constructive, either. I got in a lot of fights in those days.” He stared out at some middle ground, giving Chelsea the feeling he was seeing himself as he’d once been.
“Anyway, after we were evicted, we moved to a boarding house in town and she got some work as a maid, but then she got sick, so I did what I could to help out. I had the usual kid jobs, paper route, mowed lawns, that sort of stuff, but it didn’t even make enough to pay for her prescriptions.
“So one day, I was stealing some aspirin from the Rexall Drugstore—we couldn’t afford the pain pills the doctor had prescribed—when the owner of the whorehouse, who’d come in for some hair dye, saw me put the bottle in my jacket pocket. She waited until I got outside, gave me a lecture, then offered me a job sweeping up and running errands after school and on weekends.
“Then, once a month, I’d hitchhike up to the mountains, where my mama’s people were from, and use the money I’d earned to buy whiskey.”
“I don’t understand.”
“One of the things folks brought with them from the old country was the recipe for making Scotch whiskey. It was one of the few ways a poor mountain farmer could raise cash. And, of course, his wife used it in the home remedies she made and sold. One summer I spent a couple of weeks working on one of those stills and discovered that not only is it illegal and dangerous, moonshining’s just about the hardest work a man or woman can do.
“But since Raintree county was dry in those days, my mama’s family’s recipe sold better than ice-cold watermelon on the Fourth of July.”
Chelsea thought about the life Cash had described. “I think I’m beginning to guess what it was that Jeb said that made you break his nose.”
Cash’s smile was slow and reminiscent. “He called Mama a bootlegger. Just like Al Capone. That would’ve been bad enough by itself. But coming from a kid from one of those big houses, well, I just had to pop him.”
“That’s quite a start to a friendship.”
“The Townelys weren’t like some of the other rich folk in Raintree,” Cash conceded. “After Jeb and I became friends, they’d invite me to dinner, then send me home with the leftovers. It was years before I figured out Mrs. Townely always had her cook make extra on the nights I came over.”
“That’s nice.”
“They were nice people. And they helped me realize that there was a life beyond Raintree, if I was willing to work hard enough for it. Becoming rich became an obsession. I promised my mama I’d buy her one of those fancy houses like Roxanne’s Belle Terre. And make her queen of Tara. But she died before I could make good.”
“It was the thought that counted.” She turned their hands, linking her fingers with his in the center of the small black table. “Besides, she knows what a success you’ve made of your life, Cash. And is proud of you.”
“You sound awfully sure about that.”
“I am.” Her gaze was earnest, her green eyes sober. “If I couldn’t believe that my father somehow knew that I was a successful writer—although admittedly not in his class— I’d feel horribly let down.”
“Good point. And one I’ll think about.”
“I’m glad.”
He lifted their joined hands to his lips and kissed her fingertips, one by one. “And, if you’re right, I’ll bet your dad thinks you’ve done just fine. Following your own star, which doesn’t shine any less brightly than his.”
The touch of his lips on her skin sent tiny flames, like sparklers, skipping through her blood, warming her from the inside out. “How badly did you want that cheesecake for dessert?” she asked.
He read the desire in her eyes. “Why don’t I order a couple of pieces to go?”
Her smile was nothing less that beatific. “I knew you were an intelligent man.”
They returned to the room with two orders of raspberry cheesecake in a foam box and a bottle of champagne Cash immediately put on ice.
“Would you like a glass now?” The waiter, obviously recognizing the opportunity for a generous tip, had also sent along a pair of flutes.
“No.” She shook her head as anticipation and nerves warred within her. “I don’t need any champagne when I’m with you, Cash.”
“Believe me, darlin’, I know the feeling.” He drew her into his arms.
An unseen maid had left the radio tuned to an oldies jazz station after turning down the beds. As if on cue, Billie Holiday began singing about her man.
For a long, silent time, punctuated only by the occasional scream of a siren or taxi horns outside the window, they merely swayed to the music, to several more songs until Quincy Jones’s “One Hundred Ways” began to play.
“That’s not enough,” he murmured against her hair.
“What’s not enough?”
“One hundred ways.” He pressed his lips against her temple, rewarded when he felt her pulse leap in response. “Do you have any idea how much I want you?”
He pulled her closer to him, moving in time to the slow, lonely sound of an alto sax that brought to mind steamy southern nights, and the sweetly seductive scent of night-blooming flowers. “I want you, Chelsea. In more ways than I could count. And not just for tonight.”
One hand tightened on her waist while another fisted
in her hair, tilting her head back again, holding her wary gaze to his. “Not just for tomorrow night. A thousand nights won’t be enough.”
A flicker of fire leaped beneath her skin when he slid his wicked, clever hands between their bodies and his fingers began tracing slow, aching circles on her breasts.
She was trembling. It stunned her. When his thumbs stroked over her nipples, a liquid, shimmering pleasure drifted through her, warming her body and clouding her mind. She slipped her own unsteady hands beneath his jacket to his back, and held on.
Chelsea thought she’d known desire before. She’d thought, during her long ago time with Cash, she’d known need. But those emotions hadn’t come close to the intense hunger she was suffering now. She moved closer, exalting in the feel of his hard male body. Reveling in the heat that threatened to have her melting like a candle beneath a hot southern sun.
“If you don’t kiss me…really kiss me…I think I’m going to scream.”
“Can’t have that.” Banking the fire for now, he brushed a tingling kiss against her lips that only left her wanting more. “I’d hate for us to get thrown out for disturbing the peace.”
His mouth rubbed over hers, lingering, then drawing away. Once. Twice. A third time. His lips remained cool while hers warmed. But instead of the instant flash fire she’d once experienced with this man, the heat was a golden glow, infused with tenderness.
He reached behind her to unzip her dress. It slid down her body like a silken waterfall, creating a scarlet puddle at her feet.
“Good lord.” He stared at the erotic sight of her standing in front of him, wearing only a pair of high heels and those long gold earrings. “You weren’t kidding about not wearing anything beneath that dress.”
Her slow, enticing smile was as sensual as any woman ever shared with any man. “You’re not the only one who can tell the unvarnished truth, you know.”