Sweet Wind, Wild Wind

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “Little fox,” Carson whispered against her mouth, Whatever he had meant to say was lost in Lara’s choked cry as she tried to throw herself aside, twisting and turning, struggling to evade the kiss. Reflexwely Carson held her still, controlling her with an ease that only increased her fear. She fought wildly, futilely, for he was far stronger. After the first few instants Carson no longer tried to kiss Lara. He simply tried to protect both of them from her frantic struggles. Quickly the weight of his body pinned her against the ground as his legs and arms captured hers, stilling her, making it impossible for her to fight.

  “Lara,” Carson said urgently, “it’s all right, honey. I’m not going to hurt you. Lara! Listen to me! You’re safe!”

  For a terrible moment Carson thought that she was too frightened to hear him. Then he felt her shudder and go absolutely limp beneath him. Instantly he rolled aside. He wanted to gather her against him, to rock her in his arms, to touch her reassuringly; but most of all he wanted to erase even the memory of the fear he had seen on her face when he had bent over her.

  “Lara,” he breathed, touching her pale cheek with aching tenderness. “Honey, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

  She looked up at him with wide eyes that were black in the moonlight, haunted. Then she turned her head aside. Carson took a deep breath and fought to keep his voice gentle when he would rather have screamed his raw rage at the man who had done this to her. After a few more breaths he felt calm enough to speak.

  “Who was he?” Carson asked, his voice shaking with the effort of keeping it under control.

  Lara drew a broken breath, too upset by her own wild, unexpected panic at Carson’s touch to think coherently. She had had no warning, no chance to control her fear in the searing moment when she fought against herself and him without a thought to anything but getting away, fleeing, running and never stopping.

  Suddenly Lara realized that that was what she had been doing for the past four years. Running from Carson. Running from herself. Running in a panic that knew no end. She thought she had gotten over him, but all she had done was flee from that awful moment when she had whispered her love and his expression had changed from passion to disgust.

  “Who was he?” repeated Carson.

  “What?” Lara asked, still dazed by her discovery that she hadn’t solved her problem, she had merely run from it.

  “Who was the man who raped you?”

  Her head turned quickly toward Carson. “What are you talking about?”

  “Don’t be afraid to tell me,” Carson said gently. “Who was he?”

  Lara’s mouth opened in disbelief, hardly able to accept that she had heard correctly. “No one,” she said distinctly, “has ever raped me.”

  Carson’s lips turned down in a sad smile. “It’s all right, little fox. You can tell me.”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  Slowly he shook his head. “It won’t wash, honey,” he said softly.

  “No woman as sensual as you were just turns off sex for no reason at all. What happened?”

  Anger leaped suddenly in Lara, a bright, white-hot flame that burned through all her hesitations and fears. To hear Carson ask the same question that had pursued her through the years made her furious. He didn’t know why she had run, why she was still running. He didn’t even have the least idea of what he had done to her.

  “How would you feel if you had been inexperienced and fascinated by a woman, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with you for years, no matter how much you wanted her? Until one day she turned around and smiled at you and held out her arms and you ran into them.”

  Lara drew a shuddering breath and continued talking quickly, as though her life depended on crowding as many words as she could into as few seconds as possible. And in some ways it did. She couldn’t run anymore. She was appalled that she had run so long and still had stayed in the same place – disarmed, vulnerable, frightened.

  “And then she hugged you and kissed you and undressed you despite your hesitations,” Lara continued almost wildly, “and when she had you naked and begging and crying for your love, she looked at you as though you were dirt and walked away saying you weren’t good enough for her because you were a bastard. How the hell would you feel about that, Carson? Would you run right out and jump on the next woman who smiled at you, or would the mere thought of sex make your stomach turn over?”

  Carson flinched as though Lara had struck him. “Lara,” he said hoarsely, “little fox, listen to me. That isn’t why I walked away from you that night. I never meant to – “

  But Lara was still talking, four years of anger and betrayal pouring out in a headlong rush that nothing could silence.

  “That’s exactly what happened!” she countered, her voice raw.

  “Denying it won’t change it, and it certainly won’t change the way I respond to men because of it. I’ll never be that vulnerable again. I’d die first!” She shuddered and turned her face away from Carson. “In a way, I suppose I should thank you for curing me of an affliction that seems to run the rest of the population ragged.” She smiled bitterly.

  “But I’m sure you’ll understand if I just tell you to go to hell instead.”

  Carson studied Lara’s profile, her long lashes throwing lacy shadows on her moon-washed cheeks, her lips trembling slightly. He let out a long, ragged breath and examined his clenched fists as though they might hold answers to questions he had never thought to ask until that moment “I’ve made it a rule never to look back,” he said finally, bleakly. “The past is for people with roots, people who know where they came from. I don’t. All I know is where I’m going.” He looked at Lara. She was still turned away from him, still living in the moment when he had hurt her so badly and had never even realized it. “I said I made a mistake four years ago and I meant it. Just like you’re making a mistake now.”

  Carson heard the whispering of Lara’s hair as she turned back toward him. “What do you mean?”

  “You think I walked away from you because you’re Larry’s illegitimate daughter.”

  Lara went very still. It was the first time anyone in the Blackridge family had openly acknowledged who her father was. “Yes,” she said, her voice as thin as moonlight “No,” Carson said flatly. “All my life I had two things shoved down my throat by my dear ‘father.’ The first was that I wasn’t of his blood. The second was that you were. No matter how hard I tried, how much I accomplished, how good I was at what I did, it wasn’t good enough. A real Blackridge would have done better. And you were the living proof. Dear old Larry never tired of telling me that you were the brightest quickest most beautiful, polite, respectful, graceful kid in Montana. You were better than any other kid at anything and everything you did. In short, you were a real Blackridge, although he never said it in so many words.”

  Lara’s mouth opened in silent shock. Never had Larry Blackridge said or done anything in her presence that made her think she had even been noticed by him in any special way. “But – “ she began.

  “No,” Carson said, cutting across Lara’s attempt to speak. “I’m going to tell you why I walked out four years ago, and I’m only going to tell you once. Then the past will be buried in the same grave our parents are, and I’ll be damned if I’ll go digging it up again. Ever!”

  The hostility Carson felt toward the past crackled in every word he said. Lara could imagine what it had done to a man of Carson’s pride to be belittled for something over which he had no control – the fact that he hadn’t been born from Blackridge loins. Nothing he could say, nothing he could do, could ever change that simple fact. It had been the same for Lara when she had been belittled by schoolchildren for being a bastard. Nothing she did, nothing she said, could change the fact of her illegitimate birth. She understood how that kind of unfair rejection could eat into a person’s soul. She wanted to tell Carson that, but she didn’t. She was afraid that if she interrupted a
gain, he would simply stop talking. Then she would never know the answer to the question of why he had walked away from her love, if not because she was his father’s bastard child.

  “The older you got,” continued Carson, “the more Larry shoved you down my throat. Partly he did it just to needle me because he was old and sick and I was young and strong and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about either one. But mostly he baited me as a way of getting even with me for not being his real son.” Carson swore tiredly and rubbed the back of his neck, trying to ease muscles knotted by tension. “Anyway, I decided that I’d get even, too. I’d go find this paragon of perfection, this real Blackridge, and I’d screw her and then I’d shove that fact down Larry’s throat until he gagged on it.”

  Lara made an odd sound as she realized where Carson’s words were going, why he had sought her out four years before, flirted with her, dated her, seduced her, rejected her. She put her fist against her mouth and tried not to cry out in protest. He had never wanted her, not ever, not even in the beginning.

  “So I went to the café, where you worked,” Carson said. “I stood outside in the dark watching you for about an hour before I went in. You reminded me of a fox at twilight – graceful, wary, elusive. I expected you to flirt with all the men. You didn’t. You had the same polite smile for everyone. You worked hard.”

  Carson rolled his head and sighed. He hated talking about the past. He hated even thinking about it. Talking and thinking only brought it all back, all the pain and the rage and the hurt. And to what purpose?

  None of it could be changed. Not one damned second of it. But if it helped Lara to know why he had walked away from her, he’d talk until his jaw locked. He owed her at least that much. And he needed her. Having her was the only possible way to defeat the past.

  “So I went into the café and the first thing that happened was that my big feet got in your way.” Carson smiled wryly, remembering despite himself, and not all of the memories were bad. Some of them were like rainbows shining in the midst of the stormy past. “You were so sweet about it. You acted as though my clumsiness were your fault. That surprised me. It wasn’t what I’d expected. I’d thought that any girl with looks as stunning as yours would have been spoiled to death by the men around her.”

  Lara’s eyes widened as she stared at Carson. She had never thought of herself as unusually attractive. The realization that he had thought of her that way wanned her subtly.

  “After the first few times I ate at the cafe, I found myself looking forward to going back. I enjoyed watching you, and you enjoyed watching me. I could tell by the blush when I turned and caught you at it.” Carson’s voice softened. “When you said you’d go to the dance with me, I could hardly wait for the weekend. I had heard all the gossip. I thought that your sweet innocence was just an intriguing kind of act, a way of making the moment even hotter when you finally gave in. Then you opened the door and stood there in that sheer silk blouse and sexy, floaty skirt, and your hair was all soft and loose and begging for a man’s fingers, and I was sure that I’d have you before the night was over.”

  A tiny shiver coursed through Lara as she listened to Carson’s deep, gritty voice painting a picture of the past that was unlike any she had in her own mind. Is that how he saw me? A sexy little tease who pretended innocence only to make the chase more interesting?

  The realization that Carson’s image of Lara had been so different from her own image of herself expanded through Lara’s mind like a shock wave, rearranging every memory it touched. It was as though reality were a book in which each chapter contained a different version of the same story, and everyone who looked at it saw a different chapter, a different slice of history, a different view of life; now she was reading the chapter Carson had read, with the result that her own view of the reality of the past was changing with every word, every new insight. It was disorienting, dizzying, and at the same time it was exciting, almost miraculous, another page from the past revealed.

  Lara had felt a similar excitement before, when her research had turned up a fact that changed everything, rearranging the past before her very eyes. That had been the fascination of history for her. History wasn’t dead – it was alive, immensely vital, capable of infinite change. The realization that her own personal history was also fluid, vital, changing, gave Lara hope for the first time in years. Nothing was fixed. Nothing was final. Everything was possible.

  Carson’s words sank into Lara, sliding past old barriers and fears, touching the vulnerable core that had never died.

  “And then you looked so shocked when I called your bluff,”

  Carson said. “I couldn’t believe you were that innocent, until I saw your face. You had gone pale. No actress is that good. When you apologized for being a virgin and told me you understood that I wouldn’t want to waste any more of my time on you, I felt as though I’d been sandbagged. By the time I realized that you were every bit as sweet and innocent as you seemed, you were lost in all the dancers.”

  Lara bit her lip, remembering again how she had fled across the dance floor. It had been like a nightmare. No matter how she had twisted and turned, there had been no clear exit, no way out of the room. Trapped. Even the thought of it made her heart beat faster.

  “I sat there and told myself there was no point in chasing you, I wasn’t going to get my revenge by screwing you. And then I remembered how you had smiled when you saw me walk into the café. You didn’t smile at other men like that. Whether you knew it or not, you wanted me.” Carson hesitated, then added, “I wanted you, too. You could make me hot with a look. And you kept surprising me. I enjoyed that. It had been a long time since I’d found anyone half so intriguing.” He smiled a swift, off-center smile and ran the back of his index finger along Lara’s cheek. “Hell, little fox, I still haven’t found anyone like you.”

  Startled, she flinched at the touch. Carson’s mouth flattened into a grim line. He wished that he had never started talking, wished that all of it had never happened, wished that he had a clean slate with the woman lying so close to him, wrapped in the black shroud of the past, a past that was strangling the only future he had ever wanted. He had to find a way to unwrap the clinging shroud or there would be no future, nothing but the past repeated, hopes and dreams dying.

  “Then you curled up so trustingly in my arms on the dance floor,”

  he said, the words clipped. “You fit perfectly against me and you smelled like a sweet, wild spring wind. I wanted you until it felt like I was being pulled apart.”

  Again Carson had surprised Lara, making the huge pages of history turn again, shifting reality, revealing yet another new truth. He had wanted her. No matter the ultimate outcome, he had truly wanted her once. She heard it in his deep voice, saw it in his hands clenched against the memories of hunger.

  “I kept on wanting you,” Carson said. “I told myself it was revenge I really wanted. That was why I kept on seeing you, talking with you, laughing, enjoying myself. Revenge. Every day brought me closer to the time you’d give in and I’d go back to Larry and tell him ‘like mother, like daughter.’” Carson’s breath hissed out in a savage curse.

  “Most of the time I even believed that it was revenge I was after. I had to believe it. There couldn’t be any other reason for seeing you. Larry couldn’t be right – you could not be the perfect woman for me. You were my mother’s enemy and my enemy. You always had been. You always would be.”

  Lara lay very still, trying not even to breathe. The complex emotions in Carson’s voice flicked over her like burning threads, scoring her.

  “I didn’t ask myself why I avoided any chance of actually getting my revenge by seducing you,” continued Carson. His tone was oddly distorted, as though he had flattened all emotion from it. “I could have teased and nudged you into bed a lot sooner, but I avoided even being alone with you. Damned funny way for me to go after my revenge, wouldn’t you say?”

  Car
son resumed rubbing his neck, speaking matter-of-factly, not expecting an answer from Lara. “Then the storm came that day and chased us inside. We were alone, and you were watching me with eyes that made me ache. So beautiful. So curious. So hungry. I tried to leave before I touched you. I swear to God I tried not to – “

  Carson made an abrupt sound, a harsh word that was bitten off before it could offend Lara.

  “Then I told myself one kiss, just one,” he said, turning toward Lara, looking at her. “I should have been able to stop, but I couldn’t. I’d wanted you so long, and you trembled when I kissed you. Passion, not fear. You were burning and so was I. When I kissed your breasts and you moaned, I nearly went crazy. You were more beautiful than I had imagined, and I’d spent more than one night undressing and loving you in my mind.”

  A visible shiver went through Lara. Once Carson would have assumed that it was desire. Now he was afraid it was revulsion. He continued speaking quickly, not wanting her to get up and flee his words as he described things she no longer could bear even to think about.

  “And then you were naked,” he said. “All that softness, all that fire. Mine. When I touched you, really touched you, I felt the proof of your innocence. So did you. You looked at me and said that it was all right, that you weren’t frightened, that you loved me.”

  Carson’s voice changed as emotion seethed beyond his control once again. “At that instant I knew I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t take your virginity for revenge. Suddenly I despised my father and your mother for their years of adultery, for all the pain they had caused other people in the name of the lie called love.” Carson grimaced, his face expressing exactly what he thought of love. “I knew all about love. At best, love is a trick you play on yourself. At worst, it’s a trick you play on the unwary, the innocent – like you that night. Innocent. Trusting.”