by Diana Palmer
“You’re very quiet,” Fay remarked on the way to Houston. “Are you sorry you asked me out?”
He glanced at her. “No. I was remembering.”
“Yes?”
He was smoking one of the small cigars he favored, his gray eyes thoughtful as they lingered on the long road ahead. “My father disgraced himself to marry money, to keep the ranch for me and my children, if I ever have any. Ironic, that I’ve never married and never want to, because of him.”
She folded her hands primly in her lap. It flattered her that he was willing to tell her something so personal.
“If you don’t have children, what will happen to your ranch?” she asked.
“I’ve got a ten-year-old nephew,” he said. “My sister’s boy. His father’s been dead for years. My sister remarried three years ago, and she died last year. Her husband got custody. But he’s just remarried, and last month he stuck Jeffrey in a military school. The boy’s in trouble constantly, and he hates his stepfather.” He took a long draw from the cigar, scowling. “That’s why I was sitting in that bar the night you walked in. I was trying to decide what to do. Jeff wants to come out here and live with me.”
“Can’t he?”
He shook his head. “No chance. His stepfather and I don’t get along. He’d more than likely refuse just to get at me. His new wife is pregnant and he doesn’t seem to care about Jeff at all.”
“That’s sad,” she said. “Does he miss his mother?”
“He never talks about her.”
“Probably because he cares too much,” she said. “I miss my parents,” she added unexpectedly. “They died in a plane crash. Even if I never saw much of them, they were still my parents.”
“What do you mean, you never saw much of them?”
She laughed softly. “They liked traveling. I was in school, and they didn’t want to interrupt my education. I stayed at home with an elderly great-aunt. She liked me very much, but it was kind of lonely. Especially during holidays.” She stared out the window, aware of his curious stare. “If I ever have kids, I’ll be where they are,” she said suddenly. “And they won’t ever have to spend Christmas without me.”
“I suppose,” he began slowly, “there are some things money won’t buy.”
“An endless list,” she agreed. “Beginning and ending with love.”
He chuckled softly, to lighten the atmosphere. He glanced sideways at her. “Money can buy love, you know,” he murmured.
“Well, not really,” she disagreed. “It can buy the illusion of it, but I wouldn’t call a timed session in bed ‘love.’”
He burst out laughing. “No,” he said after a minute. “I don’t suppose it is. They say that type of experience is less than satisfying. I wouldn’t know. I couldn’t find any pleasure in a body I had to pay for.”
“I can understand that.”
There was a pleasant tension in the silence that dropped between them. Minutes later, Donavan pulled up in front of a Chinese restaurant and cut off the engine.
“This is it,” he said. He helped her out of the car and escorted her inside.
It was a very nice restaurant, with Chinese music playing softly in the background and excellent service.
Donavan watched her covertly as he sampled the jasmine tea the waitress had served. “Tell me about your job. How does it feel to work for a living?”
Her eyes brightened and she smiled. “I like it very much,” she confessed. “I’ve never been responsible for my own life before. I’ve always had people telling me what to do and how to do it. The night I met you at the bar really opened my eyes. You made me see what my life was like, showed me that I could change it if I wanted to. I wasn’t kidding when I said you turned my world around.”
“I thought the job was a means to an end,” he confessed, smiling at his own folly. “I’ve been chased before, and by well-to-do women who saw me as a challenge.”
“You’re not bad looking,” she said demurely, averting her eyes. “And you’re very much a man. But I meant it when I said I wasn’t chasing you. I have too much pride to behave that way.”
Probably she did. He liked her honesty. He liked the way she looked and dressed, too. She wasn’t beautiful, but she was elegant and well-mannered, and she had a big heart. He found himself wondering how Jeff would react to her.
They ate in a pleasant silence and talked about politics and the weather, everything except themselves. All too soon it was time to start back for Jacobsville.
“How are you and your uncle getting along?” Donavan asked on the way back.
“We speak and not much more. Uncle Henry’s worried about something,” she added. “He gets more nervous by the day.”
He’d never thought of her uncle as a nervous man. Perhaps it had something to do with Fay’s inheritance.
“Suppose you inherit only a few dollars and an apology?” he asked suddenly.
She laughed. “That isn’t likely.”
“But if it was?”
She thought about it seriously. “It would be hard,” she confessed. “I’m not used to asking the price of anything, or denying myself a whim purchase. But like anything else, I expect I could get used to it. I don’t mind hard work.”
He nodded. That would make her life easier.
He turned off onto a farm road just at the outskirts of Jacobsville.
“Where are we going?” she asked, glancing around at unfamiliar terrain.
“I’m going to show you my ranch,” he said simply. His eyes lanced over her and he smiled wickedly. “Then I’m going to shove you into the henhouse and have my way with you.”
“Do you have a henhouse?” she asked excitedly.
“Yes. And a flock of chickens to go with it. I like fresh eggs.”
He didn’t add that he often had to budget in between cattle sales, even on the good salary he made.
“I guess you have your own beef, too?” she asked.
“Not for slaughter,” he replied. “I like animals too much to raise one to kill. Mesa Blanco has slaughter cattle, but I don’t spend any more time around them than I have to.”
The picture she was getting of him didn’t have a lot to do with the image he projected. An animal lover with a core of steel was unusual.
“Do you have dogs and cats?”
He smiled slowly. “And puppies and kittens,” he said. “I give them away when the population gets out of control, and most of mine are neutered. It’s criminal to turn an unneutered animal loose on the streets.” He slowed as the road curved toward a simple white frame house. “Ever had a dog or cat of your own?”
“No,” she said sadly. “My parents weren’t animal lovers. My mother would have fainted at the thought of cat hair on her Louis Quinze furniture.”
“I’d rather have the cat than the furniture,” he remarked.
She smiled. “So would I.”
His heart lifted. She wasn’t at all what he’d expected. He pulled up in front of the ranch house and cut off the engine.
There were flowers everywhere, from shrubs to trees to beds of them right and left around the porch. She could see them by the fierce light of the almost-full moon. “How beautiful!” she exclaimed.
“Thank you.”
“You planted them?”
“Nobody else. I like flowers,” he said defensively as he got out and helped her out of the car.
“I didn’t say a word,” she assured him. “I like flowers, too.”
He unlocked the front door while she glanced covetously along the long front porch at the old-fashioned swing and rocking chair. Somewhere nearby cattle made pleasant mooing noises.
“Do you keep a lot of cattle here?” she asked.
“I have purebred Santa Gertrudis,” he told her. “Stud cattle, not beef cattle.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” she teased.
He laughed, standing aside to let her enter the house.
The living room was done in Early American, and it
looked both neat and lived-in. For a bachelor, he was a good housekeeper. She said so.
“Thanks, but I can’t take all the credit. My foreman’s wife looks after things when I can’t.”
She was insanely jealous of the foreman’s wife, all at once.
He saw her expression and smiled. “She’s fifty and happily married.”
She blushed, moving farther into the room.
“Look out,” he warned.
Before the words went silent, her foot was attacked by a tiny ball of fur with teeth.
“Good heavens!” she exclaimed, laughing. “A miniature tiger!” she kidded.
“I’m training her to be an attack cat. I call her Bee.”
“Bee?”
He grinned. “Short for Beelzebub. You can’t imagine what she did to the curtains a day or so ago.”
She reached down and picked up the tiny thing. It looked up at her with a calico face and the softest, most loving blue-green eyes she’d ever seen, with black fur outlining them.
“Why, she’s beautiful!” she exclaimed.
“I think so.”
The kitten’s eyes half closed as it began to purr and knead her jacket with its tiny paws.
“She’ll pick that silk,” he said, reaching for the kitten.
She looked at him curiously. “That doesn’t matter,” she said, surprised by his comment.
His silver eyes registered his own surprise as they looked deeply into hers. “That suit must have cost a small fortune,” he persisted. He extricated the kitten, despite her protests, and carried it into the bedroom, closing the door behind him.
“Want some coffee?” he asked.
“That would be nice.”
“It will only take a minute or so.” He tossed his hat onto the hat rack and went into the kitchen.
Fay wandered around the living room, stopping at a photograph on the mantel. It was of a young boy, a studio pose. He looked a lot like Donavan, except that his eyes were dark, and he had a more rounded face. He looked sad.
“That’s Jeff,” he told her from the doorway. He leaned against it, waiting for the coffee to brew. His long legs were crossed, like his arms, and he looked very masculine and sexy with his jacket off and the top buttons of his shirt unfastened over a thicket of jet black hair.
“He favors you,” she remarked. “Did your sister look like you?”
“Quite a lot,” he said. “But her eyes were darker than mine. Jeff has his father’s eyes.”
“What does he like?” she asked. “I mean, is he a sports fan?”
“He doesn’t care much for football. He likes martial arts, and he’s good at them. He’s a blue belt in tae kwon do—a Korean martial art that concentrates on kicking styles.”
“Isn’t that a demonstration sport in the summer Olympics?”
He smiled, surprised. “Yes, it is. Jeff hopes to be able to participate in the 1996 summer games in Atlanta.”
“A group of Atlantans worked very hard to get the games to come there,” she recalled. “One of my friends worked in the archives at Georgia Tech—a lot of the people on campus were active in that committee.”
“You don’t have many friends here, do you?” he asked.
“Abby Ballenger is a friend,” she corrected. “And I get along well with the girls at the office.”
“I meant friends in your own social class.”
She put the picture of Jeff back on the mantel. “I never had friends in my own social class. I don’t like their idea of fun.”
“Don’t you?”
He moved closer. His hands slid around her waist from behind and tugged her against him. His cheek nuzzled hers roughly. “What was their idea of fun?”
“Sleeping around,” she said huskily. “That’s…suicidal these days. All it takes is the wrong partner and you can die.”
“I know.” His lips slid down her long, elegant neck. His tongue tip found the artery at her throat and pressed there, feeling it accelerate wildly at his touch. His fingers slid to her slender hips and dug in, welding her to his hard thighs.
“Donavan?” she whispered unsteadily.
His hands flattened on her stomach, making odd little motions that sent tremors down her long legs and a rush of warmth into her bloodstream.
She didn’t act very experienced. The camouflage was only good at long range, he thought as he drank in the gardenia scent of her skin. He should have been disappointed, because he’d wanted her badly tonight. But something inside him was elated at his growing suspicion that she was innocent. He had to find out if it was true.
“Turn your mouth up for me, Fay,” he whispered at her chin. “I want to taste it under my own.”
The words sent thrills down to her toes and curled them. Blind, deaf, she raised her face and turned it, feeling the sudden warm pressure of his mouth on her parted lips.
It wasn’t at all what he’d expected. The contact was explosive. He’d been in complete control until he touched her. Now, suddenly he was fighting to keep his head at all. He turned her in his arms and caught his breath as he felt her body melt hungrily into his.
It shouldn’t have happened like this. He could barely think. His hands bit into the backs of her thighs and lifted her, pulled at her, needing the close contact as he’d never needed anything. His legs began to tremble as his body went taut and capable, and his hands became ruthless.
Fay moaned. Never at any time in her life had she felt such a sudden, vicious fever of longing. She could always pull back, until now. With a tiny gasp, she lifted her arms around his neck and gave in completely. She felt him against her stomach, knew that he was already painfully aroused. She couldn’t manage enough willpower to deny him, whatever the cost, whatever the risk. He was giving her a kind of pleasure she’d never dreamed of experiencing.
He invaded the silk jacket and the blouse she wore under it. He unbuttoned them and drew the fabric aside seconds before his mouth went down against the bare curve of her breast above her lacy bra. She’d never been touched like that. She clung to him, shivering as his lips became ruthless, his face rubbing the bra strap aside so he could nuzzle down far enough to find the hard, warm nipple.
She cried out. It was beyond bearing, sensation upon hot sensation, anguished joy. Her fingers tangled in his thick, dark hair and pulled at it as he suckled her in a silence throbbing with need.
“You taste of gardenias,” he breathed urgently. “Soft and sweet…Fay…!”
His hands were as urgent as his voice. He unfastened her bra and slid it, along with her half-unbuttoned jacket and blouse, right down to her waist. His glazed eyes lingered for one long minute on the uncovered pink and mauve beauty of her naked breasts with their crowns hard and tip-tilted. Then his mouth and his hands were touching them, and she was glorying in his own pleasure, in the sweet delight of his ardor.
“So beautiful,” he whispered as he drew his face over her soft breasts. “Fay, you make my body throb. Feel it. Feel me…”
One hand went to gather her hips close to his, to emphasize what he was saying. She moaned and searched blindly for his mouth, inviting a kiss as deep and ardent as the hand enjoying her soft breasts in the stillness of the room.
“Little one,” he said huskily, “do you know what’s going to happen between us now? Do you want me?”
“Yes!” she whispered achingly, hanging at his lips.
His body shivered with its blatant need. It had never been so urgent before, with any woman. He bit at her mouth. “Do you have anything to use? Are you on the pill?”
She hesitated. “No.”
No. The word echoed through his swaying mind.
No, she wasn’t protected. He could have her, but he could also make her pregnant. Pregnant! He said something explicit and embarrassing, then he put his hands on her upper arms and thrust her away from him. He went blindly toward the kitchen and slammed the door behind him.
Fay sat down on the sofa, fastening hooks and buttons with hands so unsteady
that she missed half the buttons and had to start over. It was a long time before she was back in order again, and only a few seconds after that, Donavan came in with a tray of coffee.
She couldn’t look at him. She knew her face looked like rice paper. She was still trembling visibly, too, her mouth red and swollen, her breathing erratic and irregular.
He put a cup of black coffee in front of her without saying anything.
She didn’t raise her eyes when she felt the sofa depress near her. She reached for the cup, barely able to hold it for the unsteadiness of her icy fingers.
A big, warm hand came to support hers, and when she looked up, his eyes weren’t angry at all. They were faintly curious and almost affectionate.
“Thank you,” she stammered as she sipped the hot, black liquid.
He smiled. A real smile, not the mocking ones she was used to. “You’re welcome.”
“I’m so sorry…!” she began nervously.
He put a long finger over her soft lips. “No. I am. I shouldn’t have let it go so far.”
“You were angry,” she said hesitantly, her eyes glancing with sheer embarrassment off his before they fell to her cup.
“I was hotter than I’ve been in years and I had to stop,” he said simply, and without anger. “It doesn’t put a man in a sparkling mood, let me tell you.”
“Oh.”
He leaned back and sipped his own coffee, his eyes quiet and faintly acquisitive. “Why are you still a virgin?” he asked suddenly.
The coffee cup made a nosedive, and she only just caught it in time. Her gaze hit his with staggering impact. “What did you say?”
“You heard me,” he accused softly. “You can’t even put on an act, can you? The second I touch you intimately, you’re mine.”
She flushed and looked away. “Rub it in,” she invited.