“Josh, what is it?” she asked in a whisper. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Nothing, I just—” The air he sucked into his lungs was heated with resentment and frustration. Alisha was marrying someone else. She was sitting in the parlor now, laughing and making her plans to wed a paunchy, randy bag of money, not even sparing a thought for the torment she was causing him.
“Josh—?”
The blood pounded up into his temples, blurring his thoughts, blurring his ability to reason. His hands found their way to either side of Amanda’s neck, his fingers twined themselves into the silk of her hair, and he brought her lips to within a breath of his.
Amanda’s skin glowed where his hands cradled her neck. Her body pressed eagerly, expectantly into his, and the tiny, tickling thrills became urgent shudders that weakened her arms, her legs, and sent her lashes fluttering closed. His heady, masculine scent engulfed her, and her hands inched higher, boldly demanding the support of his arms. With a smothered groan, Josh crushed her to him, sinking his fingers deeper into her hair and holding her captive to the bruising hunger of his lips.
But it was a savage, brutal kiss, not at all what she had foreseen, and the yearning for tender intimacy turned suddenly and frighteningly into the shock of intrusion. She tried to push away, to turn her head and be free of the wet, stabbing insistence of his tongue, but he would not permit it. His grip tightened and his mouth worked more furiously over hers until the sawing of his teeth and tongue wrought a genuine cry of alarm from her throat.
Amanda twisted and pushed with all her might, managing at last to fling herself out of his grasp. Displaced by his fingers, her hair flew every which way around her shoulders and her chest heaved with surprise and confusion. Her eyes were fixed wide, staring in disbelief. Her hand rose instinctively to her mouth, covering it like a shield.
Josh had stumbled back a step or two and for a moment it looked as if he were going to lunge after her again and renew his assault. His cheeks were flushed and his gaze seemed to be without focus, bright-hot with a lust she had never seen in him before. But even as she watched, frightened and bewildered, the snarl of his lips started to fade and the look in his eyes subsided, draining away to shock.
“Amanda,” he gasped. “Amanda … I’m sorry. Christ Almighty … I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”
He advanced a step and Amanda flinched back, not trusting his intentions or her own reactions.
“Amanda … you have to believe me … I never meant to hurt you.”
She swallowed hard. “You … haven’t hurt me, Josh. You’ve just … startled me, is all. I mean, it wasn’t as if I didn’t expect you to kiss me, or didn’t want you to kiss me. It’s been three months since you started calling and—”
“Stop,” he groaned, raking his hands into his hair. “Dear God, stop. Please. I never meant to let it go this far.”
“This far? I … don’t understand.”
“I never meant to let it go this far! I never meant to hurt you, never wanted to hurt you. If nothing else, you have to believe that.”
“Of course I believe you, but I still don’t—”
“It was Alisha’s idea,” he said in a husky, strained voice. “She didn’t want anyone to know that she and I … that we …”
The blue of Amanda’s eyes was so pure it seared his soul with guilt and brought his confession to a stammered halt He could not put their deceit into words, could not bear to see each and every one of them reflected in the growing horror that began to turn Amanda’s features rigid.
Her skin became ashen and the hand she held pressed to her lips began to tremble visibly.
“It was you,” she said hollowly. “Last night in the garden —here—it was you.”
“God, Amanda, I—”
He reached out again, and again she jerked back. The color she had lost from her complexion resurged with a vengeance, staining her cheeks red and hot.
“You … and my sister … all this time?”
He could not bring himself to face the accusation in her eyes, and he looked at the ground, at the overgrown hedgerow, at the cracks in the cobblestones. What could he do? What could he say? He loved Alisha. He hadn’t planned on it happening, but it had and there was nothing he could do to change it, or to change the way he felt. Amanda had always been like a sister to him, someone he could talk to, be comfortable around, and respect for her loyalty and honesty. Alisha, on the other hand, was dangerously wild and unpredictable. She was exciting and passionate and pushed his emotions—love and hate—to the limit each and every time they were together. And although it did not say much for the strength of his own character, he could not imagine a life without that wildness and passion in it now.
“You have to believe, I never meant to hurt you,” he said again lamely. “We never meant to hurt you.”
Amanda’s hands curled around the folds of her skirt and crushed the fabric so hard her knuckles ached from the pressure. She could almost believe he was sincere—naive and ignorant, yes; blind and besotted, obviously—but sincere when he said he hadn’t meant to hurt her. On the other hand, she was certain Alisha had known exactly what she was doing. She never thought of anyone’s feelings but her own, and if she had to betray her own flesh and blood in order to get what she wanted, she gave it little more thought than stepping on a bug if it was in her way. She clearly had Josh twisted tightly around her finger. It was apparent he was blindly in love with her, and it was difficult for Amanda to feel anything but pity for him.
“You haven’t hurt me, Josh,” she said calmly. “If anything, you may even have helped me. You see, I had some difficult choices to make, and in a way, you’ve made it that much easier for me to do what I have to do.”
He looked up, his face pale and anxious. “You … won’t tell Alisha about this, will you?”
Seeing the pathetic look on his face, she almost smiled in sympathy.
“No.” She shook her head sadly. “No, I don’t think either one of us should tell Alisha about this. You won’t mind, however, if we put an end to this insulting little charade of courtship? If the two of you need or want an excuse to see each other in the daylight, you will just have to find someone else to use. Good-bye, Josh. And … I am sorry for you. Because if anyone is going to get hurt by all of this, it’s going to be you. Alisha will use you, just like she has hurt and used everyone else who’s ever been foolish enough to love her.”
Josh remained wooden and unmoving as she brushed past him and headed not in the direction of the outbuildings, but in the direction of the river. For the sake of her pride, she did not slow her steps until she was well away from the summer-house; for the sake of her skirt and shoes, she stopped in the first thick wedge of trees.
When she was out of sight, she leaned against a wide trunk and covered her face with her hands.
Josh had used her. Alisha had used her. And she had been so wrapped up in her own pride and foolish notions of doing what was best for everyone else, she had not even had an inkling of their duplicity. Tell Alisha? Why? So her twin could laugh in her face and say it only confirmed her low opinion of Amanda’s gullibility? She couldn’t even dare tell Ryan—at the very least he would probably go after Josh with a whip or a gun … or both.
Amanda brushed angrily at her tears and turned her face into the humid breeze, letting it drag at the weight of her hair, but she found neither relief nor comfort in the clinging moisture.
Joshua Brice was indeed the fool if he thought Alisha would give up everything the baron had to offer for the sake of love. And Alisha was just a plain fool for turning her back on the kind of emotion Amanda had seen blazing from Josh’s eyes. It was a certainty no man had ever looked at her that way before, not even Caleb.
It was a further certainty that if any man ever did, she would give up life itself before she would turn him away, and she would die content, knowing the sacrifice had been well worth it.
CHAPTER SIX
With a flourish, Montana
Rose fanned her five cards onto the tabletop, showing the three tens that were good enough to bring home the pot of nearly four hundred dollars. She permitted a small smile as she raked in her winnings. Having arrived on board with less than three hundred dollars, she had managed to coax the tally to over four thousand.
Her secret smile became somewhat less secretive as she surveyed the faces of the men seated around the table. Four out of five of them had their eyes fastened speculatively on the deep cleft between her breasts; the fifth, who had been stretching his legs, rejoined them with a loud scraping of his chair and sent a broad wink across the table.
“Good show, Montana,” he said, and she was not one hundred percent certain he was referring to her card-playing skills. “It looks to me like Lady Luck has decided to favor her own sex tonight.”
Montana ran her fingers caressingly down the final, neat stack of coins and met Lyle Swanson’s gaze directly. “You are not doing too badly yourself, sir.”
“No, I’m not,” he agreed readily. “And I intend to give you a run for your money tonight even if none of these other beggars are up to it.”
Her gold locket reflected a flare of light from the overhead lamp as Montana accepted the deck of cards and began to deftly shuffle them. Swanson was a balding, rotund man who developed a tic in one of his bullish jowls whenever he held anything better than a pair. He also had an annoying habit of humming under his breath, a sound that was pervasive and irritating and rarely in keeping with the music that filtered up from the main gambling salon. But he had a stack of greenbacks and gold double eagles in front of him the size of Mt. Vesuvius and gambled with enough indifference to deter any of the others from complaining.
“Shall we try a little round of cutthroat?” Montana suggested casually. “Quick and vicious—just the way I like it sometimes, when the blood needs to flow a little faster.”
In the long moment of exquisite silence that followed her declaration, at least three hearts skipped a beat and more than one mind’s eye had a brief, explicit picture of satin sheets and gleaming, sweating bodies twined together.
“Fifty-dollar ante, deuces wild,” she announced crisply, and began dealing the cards. Her eyes followed around the table as each player met the ante, starting with the gentleman seated on her left.
Norman Smith was a Yankee, like the others, a banker or a speculator come to scavenge what he could from the corpse of the South. Short and squat, with no neck to speak of, he was an officious boor who made it quite clear through unsubtle hints and hard stares that he was a wealthy man who would not be opposed to lavishing his generosity on a fine Southern-bred mistress—if he could find one with enough fire and spunk to hold his interest. Adding to his appeal, he kept an unlit cigar clamped between his lips and as he worked it side to side, the spittle built up a brown crust at the corners of his mouth.
Paul Whitney sat next in the circle. He had the lean, rangy look of a panther, dressed all in black from the toes of his tall, polished boots, to the top of his wide-brimmed, silver-banded hat. He was as miserly with his conversation as Smith was gregarious and rarely showed any change in his expression. He had the smell of a professional about him, someone who made his living from cards and other games of chance. He folded more often than he played, but when he did stay in a game, it was usually with a hand that was tough to beat. He also rarely played a hand that required him to draw more than one card, a sure sign, Montana suspected, he was leading up to a monumental bluff.
Her eyes flicked to the next player, Michael Tarrington. Ex-Army, she surmised. A Yankee officer. His voice and mannerisms bespoke the quiet authority and self-confidence of a man accustomed to giving orders and not having them challenged or ignored. His broad shoulders were encased in tailored blue-black broadcloth. The whiteness of the pleated linen shirt and the burgundy silk of his waistcoat gleamed with casual wealth. His hair was chestnut brown and fell rather handsomely unkempt over his brow, as if he shunned the services of a barber and preferred to let the wind style it for him. He wore a rakishly thick moustache and his peculiar "tell", if it could be said that he had one, was to stroke a thoughtful forefinger over his upper lip whenever he debated a wager of over a hundred dollars— which seemed to be most of the time. He neither won nor lost with any regularity or interest. The latter seemed to be reserved for the scantily clad hostess who hovered in the background replenishing drinks when the need arose.
The last member of the group was Ainsley Scott, the youngest and also the heaviest loser so far. Handsome and spoiled by family wealth, he could not have been a day over twenty, not old enough to have even bruised his callow softness in the war. He was an easy mark, suffering from a combination of poor card sense, a face that read like an open book, and a puppy-like eagerness to impress Montana with his boyish charm. She, in turn, responded to his efforts by relieving him of as many coins and greenbacks as he was willing to squander; a pleasure that would not last much longer to judge by the diminishing reserves in his pockets.
She finished dealing and barely glanced at her own hand before turning to the squinty-eyed Norman Smith. “Cards?”
“Two,” he grunted. He tossed a couple of chips into the center of the table and discarded a pair of pasteboards, then reached a fat, clammy hand out for their replacements. Following his customary habit, he tapped all five together on the baize and leaned well back in the chair before slowly fanning and peering at the new additions. When he did, he grated his cigar savagely between his teeth and tossed a smug glance at Paul Whitney. “Well, sir, will it be one or none this time?”
A slight tilt in the brim of the gambler’s hat was the only reaction to Smith’s sarcasm as he paid for the privilege and held up a long, tapered finger to call for a single card.
Smith grunted again and Montana shifted her attention along the table. “Mr. Swanson?”
“Lyle, my dear. Call me Lyle, and I shall take a pair. Two ladies as lovely as yourself, if you can arrange it.”
Montana smiled and thumbed the top card of the deck. Something made her look over at the Yankee officer, and she was mildly surprised to find Michael Tarrington’s eyes waiting for her. Nothing so commonplace as gray, they were a smoky blend of steel and slate that seemed to be focussed entirely too closely on her hands, as opposed to her bosom.
She smiled. “And for you, Mr. Tarrington?”
“Three,” he said, not wavering his stare. He made his discard with an irreverent flick of his wrist and slotted his new cards into his hand without looking at them.
“I’m going to stand but for one, Miss Montana,” declared Ainsley Scott, his voice pulling her gaze away from Tarrington’s. “I’m feeling lucky this hand, sure enough, and just one oughta do it. Oughta fit itself”—he paused and grinned hugely when he saw the card she threw him—“right here, you sweet thing. Right here.”
The bluff was so obvious, Montana almost winced.
“Dealer takes three,” she said, paying into the pot and making the exchange with brisk, efficient movements. When she looked up again, it was to find that Tarrington's attention was still focused intently on her hands. It wasn’t the first time she had caught him studying her movements. The green velvet gown had long fitted sleeves and a spill of lace at the wrists—lace she had made a point of folding back so that her hands and wrists remained clearly visible at all times.
“The betting is open, gentlemen,” she said, drawing his eyes up to hers. “No limits, no credit.”
Norman Smith chewed the cigar from one side of his mouth to the other. “I might as well ride this filly awhile and see where she takes me.” He tossed some coins into the center of the table and glared down his nose at Paul Whitney. “Fifty to start.”
Whitney called the fifty and raised fifty without comment. Play passed to Swanson, who glowered at his cards for a long moment before counting out his bet. “Your hundred, gentlemen … and fifty more. And speaking of fillies, what’s your secret, Tarrington? What does a man have to do to get a drink arou
nd here?”
The buxom brunette waitress, who had indeed been giving most of her closest attention to Michael Tarrington, sashayed over to Swanson’s side and tickled his ear with a few breathy words as she topped up his empty glass.
“Gads,” he muttered. “You’d let me do that?”
“If the price is right,” Smith chuckled, “I warrant these hot little Southern wenches would let you do just about anything.”
Tarrington was the only one of the men who did not respond with at least a smile. He called the girl back to his side instead and when she was there, he tucked a hundred-dollar bill into her waistband and held up his glass. “Just a refill,” he said quietly. “Thank you.”
He threw two hundred and fifty into the pot, raising the bet again, and glared narrowly at Smith. Scott, whistling jauntily under his breath, matched Tarrington’s bet and added a hundred more.
While Montana debated what to do, she toyed with the length of gold chain around her neck. She kept her face carefully blank as she studied her cards, knowing this was going to be a rich pot. “Three hundred and fifty to cover," she said quietly. "And five hundred more to see what you Yankees will do for the right price.”
Smith guffawed and bit down hard enough on his cigar to sever a soggy clod in his mouth. He swore and spit at the same time as he threw his cards face down on the table.
“Not play the sucker,” he snorted. “That much I can tell you for free.”
Paul Whitney pursed his lips and riffled thoughtfully through a stack of greenbacks before counting out the required seven hundred and fifty dollars to call Montana’s bet, and two hundred more to raise.
Straight For The Heart Page 8