'Very serious.' His stern expression relaxed after a moment until his eyes glittered with a teasing smile. 'Weren't you the one who said that I can't live with hatred and revenge all my life?'
'I didn't think you would take any notice of what I said,' she laughed softly, leaning back against the circle of his arms to study his face.
Her laughter died on a faint gasp at what she saw in his eyes, and for endless, breathtaking seconds they both lifted the shutters to their souls. Their eyes spoke a language for which words were ineloquent, and Cara had the ecstatic feeling that she had been freed from the bondage of uncertainty.
'Cara, liebchen, I love you,' Vince murmured throatily as if he wanted to make sure she understood, then his hard mouth came down on hers.
The passionate demand of his kiss awakened a hunger which she could no longer suppress, and she responded with a surging warmth of her own. She felt Vince's thigh muscles grow taut against her own, and she knew his need as well as she knew her own.
They were reeling on the brink of desire when a sharp tap on the living-room door made them draw apart, and Cara could tell by the look on his face that he resented this intrusion as much as she did.
'Jackson has asked me to tell you that if he has to delay dinner much longer it will be ruined,' Harriet informed them from the doorway with a faintly amused smile on her lips.
'We're coming,' Vince told her, releasing a blushing Cara, but Harriet went out again and closed the door firmly behind her.
Vince's hands reached for Cara the moment they were alone, but that brief respite had allowed a very serious matter to leap to the surface of her mind.
'What about my father's loan?' she asked anxiously, avoiding Vince's arms.
'I shall be writing if off as atonement for the mental agony I have caused him.' Vince smiled down into her incredulous eyes. 'I can't have the father of the woman I love indebted to me financially, now can I?'
Cara felt the last fragment of tension disintegrate inside her, and her eyes were moist with happy tears as she drew Vince's head down to hers to kiss him on his lips, 'I think you're wonderful, and I adore you to distraction.'
The light that entered his eyes gave him that devilish look she was so accustomed to. 'Tell me that again when we are alone tonight… if you dare.'
Cara's soft laughter was unconsciously provocative when she linked her arm through his on their way to dinner. Later, when they were alone, she would rise to meet his challenge, and he knew it, but this time there would be no need to withhold from him that part of her which she had been too wary to disclose in the past.
Vince was a devil; and he could be a ruthless devil as well. He would never change entirely from the arrogant, often cruel man she had learned to love, but there was incredible joy in the discovery that he had a heart after all, and his heart belonged to her.
The Devil's Pawn Page 17