Diamond Spur

by Diana Palmer

  “It’s just a little,” he whispered. “Do you hurt at all? Is there any pain?”

  “No,” she said. She dabbed at her eyes with the back of her hand. “I just wanted you so much….”

  He pressed her cheek against his chest and kissed her dark hair. “I wanted you, too, honey,” he confessed quietly. “But we can’t do that again. We’re too violent with each other. I can’t seem to be tender with you when I’m that aroused. I’m sorry. We’ll have to wait until it’s safe, Kate. Even if that means separate beds.”

  Safe. He meant that the baby came first, and perhaps he was right. But Kate felt him slipping away from her by the minute, even after that exquisite closeness. She wondered how she was going to hold him without the lure of desire. She knew Jason wanted the baby, and part of him wanted her with the same desperate passion she felt for him. But hers was tempered with love, and his wasn’t. And if she lost the child because of her hunger for him, she’d have nothing at all. Only an empty marriage with a man who felt trapped.

  She closed her eyes with a weary sigh. At least, she thought, she’d have her memories.

  He felt that sigh and wondered how he was going to survive nine months of keeping his distance. His loss of control shocked and frightened him. Did he have no pride with her, no restraint at all? If he let her, she could take him over, and he wasn’t risking that. She’d already told him that she wanted her career more than marriage. If it hadn’t been for the baby, she’d never have married him in the first place.

  He stroked her dark hair quietly, worried. He couldn’t put the child at risk again. He’d just have to get himself together. If that meant keeping Kate at arm’s length, so much the better. She was his first and only weakness. He couldn’t let her discover how vulnerable he was, or she might turn it against him. The one lesson life had taught him so far was that trusting women was dangerous. It was a hard lesson to forget, even with a women he…cared about. He didn’t love her, of course. That kind of weakness was something for men with no pride, no manhood. He wouldn’t love her. But he’d protect her and take care of her, and when the baby came, she’d forget all this career nonsense and stay home with him, where she belonged. He laid his cheek against her head. Yes. She’d be his, once the baby came.

  After a minute, she stirred, moving away from him. It was still new, and strange, to have her clothes off with a man. Not that he was any better dressed.

  “Are you sure I haven’t hurt the baby?” he asked as she got up and reached for her briefs and bra.

  “I’m not hurting or anything,” she said gently. “I think it will be all right, Jason. Really, I do. Don’t worry.”

  “How can I help it?” he asked, his voice deep and quiet and moody. “I shouldn’t have touched you.”

  While she was digesting the sting of that bitter pill, he moved away to pull on his undershorts and Bermuda shorts with brief, quick movements. She took advantage of that diversion to get dressed herself.

  He turned away to light a cigarette, and she pulled out the red and white polyester dress she’d brought with her. It was sleeveless, ankle length, and one of those one-size-fits-all things that was very comfortable to walk around in.

  She pulled it over her head, and Jason glared at her when he turned and saw it.

  “Where in hell did you get that?” he asked with unexpected irritation.

  Her eyebrows arched. “Why, at a thrift sale,” she faltered. “It had only been worn once or twice….”

  He stiffened with outraged pride. “Don’t ever let me hear of you going to another thrift sale. You go to one of the department stores in San Antonio to shop. Neiman-Marcus or Joske’s. I’ve got charge accounts in both stores.”

  “A thrift sale is something even high-class women go to,” she began.

  “They most certainly do not,” he shot back. “They go to bazaars to benefit charity.”

  “Thrift sales benefit poor people,” she reminded him. “That is charity.”

  He glared at her.

  She glared back.

  After a minute, he made a rough sound, glared at the dress, and went out the sliding doors.

  It was dark now, but the brilliant white of the beach and the reflection of the half moon in the crashing waves was idyllic. The dark silhouettes of the feathery casuarinas waved back and forth in the eternal breeze that blew off the Caribbean.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Kate remarked, joining Jason on the patio.

  “This was a pirate stronghold back in the eighteenth century,” he remarked as he smoked. “So were the Bahamas, and most of the Caribbean islands. Henry Morgan and his privateers held sway around Kingston for many a long year until Morgan became governor and threw his buddies off the island.”

  “Shame on him,” she said.

  “A man has to think about his own throat,” he said quietly. He gestured toward the front of the complex. “There’s a plantation house not too far away called Rose Hall. The woman who lived there reputedly murdered her husbands and used voodoo on her workers. They called her the White Witch of Rose Hall. We can go up and look around tomorrow, if you like. There’s an old bar in the basement where you can get a soft drink, and a small gift shop.”

  She shuddered. “You’ll think I’m strange, Jason, but I don’t like things like that,” she confessed. “I’d have nightmares.”

  His eyebrows arched. “Chicken,” he accused.

  She made a noise like a clucking hen.

  He laughed and puffed on his cigarette. It was the first pleasant sound she’d heard from him since they’d dressed. “Okay. Then how about a ride around the island and a look at the country and the people?”

  “That,” she assured him, “is much more my style.”

  “Then that’s what we’ll do,” he replied gently.

  She wanted a look inside the small boutique she’d noticed just past the lobby, too, but she didn’t want to start another argument, so she didn’t mention that. She leaned back and smelled the fresh, florid scent of the breeze. Kate thought of long days and gentle nights in the distant past, when other married people sat and enjoyed it as she did now. She glanced at Jason, but he was staring moodily out at the bay, and she quickly averted her eyes.

  She wondered if his lack of control had disturbed him. She’d knocked him off balance and he didn’t like it. But it had been so urgent, so sweet. She knew she’d remember it all her life. Except…

  Her hand went to her abdomen. There were some faint cramps now, and there had been a little bleeding. What if that violent lovemaking had hurt the baby? And it would be her fault, because she’d incited him. She’d invited it.

  With a wistful sigh, she closed her eyes and listened to the calming sound of the surf and the wind in the casuarinas. The baby would be all right. She just had to keep telling herself that; she had to think positively.

  They strolled along the poolside, watching the swimmers in the beautifully lit blue water, and they sat down in white wooden chairs to sip fruit drinks under the avocado trees. Just before bedtime, they walked along the beach, Kate with her sandals held loosely in her hand, Jason smoking his eternal cigarette.

  He’d put on a shirt when they went to sit beside the pool, but he’d unbuttoned it when they got to the beach. He towered over her now, lithe and powerful and graceful silhouetted against the sky. Kate stopped walking and just looked at him.

  He caught that scrutiny and stopped, turning back toward her. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Not a thing,” she replied, smiling. “I like looking at you. Do you mind?”

  He frowned slightly. That honesty of hers took some getting used to, and he wondered if she realized how it affected him when she said things like that. He couldn’t afford another lapse like the one he’d had that afternoon in their room. He couldn’t put their child at risk just because Kate aroused him to madness.

  “No,” he said absently. “I don’t mind.”

  “It was just a comment, Jason,” she murmured as she
fell into step beside him. “I mean, I’m not planning to wrestle you down on the sand and tear your clothes off or anything.”

  He chuckled helplessly, glaring at her even through it. “Damn you, stop that.”

  She smiled up at him. “At least you’ve stopped looking like one of the Roman senators in those intimidating statues,” she commented. “You never used to laugh at all.”

  “I’ve never had much to laugh about,” he said. His dark eyes smoothed lazily over her face as they paused to watch the surf curl onto the white beach. “Then you came along and started getting under my skin.”

  “You didn’t used to mind.”

  He took a long draw from the cigarette and lifted his head, letting the ocean breeze rip warmly through his thick, straight black hair. “You made everything bearable,” he said stiffly. “I got to where I even looked forward to getting hurt, because it meant somebody would stick his nose in long enough to get you. And you always came. Patching cuts. Bandaging wounds.” He smiled slowly. “Nobody ever gave a damn about me, Kate, until you did.”

  Her breath caught in her throat. “Sheila loves you. So does Gene.”

  “In their way,” he agreed. “I didn’t mean family.” He turned toward her, looking very masculine, and very much older than she was. “I meant women.”

  Amazing, she thought, how he could still make her flush with a look like that, even in the semidarkness. “I won’t believe that none of your lovers ever cared about you,” she replied coolly.

  He studied her without speaking for a long moment. “You might be shocked to know how many women I’d had.”

  She moved restlessly, averting her angry eyes. “I don’t want to know.”

  “Are you sure?” He crushed out the cigarette under his sandal and took her gently by the shoulders, resting his chin on her dark hair. It was a letting down of barriers that he might regret later, but she was his wife now, and he needed to make her understand. “Kate,” he said quietly, “you could count the number of women I’ve had on the fingers of one hand.”

  She wouldn’t look at him. His closeness was having its own effect on her, making it hard to speak. “Pull the other one, Jason,” she said, disbelieving.

  His eyebrows shot up. “What?”

  She turned, glaring up at him. “You don’t have to make up fairy tales for me. I may be grass green, but what we did…what you did…” She shifted restlessly. “You didn’t learn that by reading books.”

  His face changed. Softened magically. His dark eyes searched her mutinous features with a kind of subdued amusement behind the tenderness. “Not all of it, no,” he confessed. “But instinct goes a long way.”

  “You’re serious,” she said after a minute, her eyes darkening as she realized that he was telling her the truth.

  “Dead serious. I’m not much more experienced than you are.” He lifted his chin in that arrogant way he had, daring her to laugh, to make fun of him. “When I told you I’d never undressed in front of a woman, I meant it. You were the first.”

  All the lines went out of her face. She simply looked at him. After a minute, she lifted her hands to frame his hard cheeks and tug his head down. She went on tiptoe then, touching her mouth tenderly to his, breathlessly tender. There were tears on her mouth, and he tasted them.

  “You’re crying,” he whispered softly.

  “I always thought you were experienced,” she said simply, smiling even through the mist of tears that blurred him in her sight. “I thought sex was something you just…sort of took for granted.”

  “I never took it for granted.” His face went hard again. He let go of her and sat down on the sand, resting his arms on his drawn-up knees as he watched the horizon. “Sit down a minute.”

  She moved close beside him and leaned her head against his shoulder.

  “My father hated the whole world after Mother left,” he said. “Most of all, he hated women. He told me…” He hesitated, scooping up a handful of sand and absently drifting it onto the beach. “He told me that sex was a weapon. That women used it to get what they wanted, to keep a man in line. To rob him of his manhood.” He laughed softly, bitterness in his deep voice. “I didn’t understand what he meant, but as I got older, he drilled it into me. He never let me look at the kind of magazine most boys had tucked under the mattress. He wouldn’t let me date or go out with girls, he even got hot if I talked to a girl. After a while, he began lecturing me about how dirty sex was, and how women would cow a man by getting him stirred up and then pulling away. He said the only purpose it had in life was the begetting of children.” He sighed heavily. “I was just a boy, Kate. Just fifteen when my mother walked out. I could never understand why my father didn’t love me. I did my best to please him, to be what he wanted. Finally, when I realized his attitude was warping me, I stopped trying to please him. Just before he died, we got along pretty well. But the damage was done.”

  Kate felt his body going more and more rigid as the minutes passed. She understood him better at that moment than she ever had in their relationship. “Do you still feel that way?” she asked softly.

  “Sometimes.” He drew in a long breath. “I don’t like losing control, Kate. Not even for those few wild, sweet seconds…”

  “Oh, Jason.” She put her arms around him and nuzzled her face into his shoulder. She’d done that to him just today, she’d knocked him off balance and he’d lost his head. She hadn’t understood his remoteness, not then. Now she did, and she felt guilty for doing that to him.

  “I’m not blaming you,” he said. “I don’t think you have any more resistance than I do, when we make love.”

  “I’m a woman,” she whispered. “It isn’t the same for me.” She smiled shyly and dropped her forehead against his shoulder. “I like giving up control, as long as I’m giving it up to you.”

  She knocked the breath completely out of him with that soft little confession. His arm slid around her, hesitantly. He drew her close against his side and felt her body relax immediately, submissive and warmly responsive.

  He looked down into her eyes, searching them in the windswept darkness. “You said I never let people get close,” he whispered. “Is this close enough to suit you, Kathryn?”

  Tears came warm and soft down her cheeks. She drew his face down to hers and kissed him, tenderly, amazed at the way he indulged her hunger and fed it.

  He eased her down against the grainy sand and smiled as his mouth warmed hers in the darkness. His lean hand found her belly and pressed there, savoring the knowledge of what lay under it.

  “Did I ever tell you that pregnancy suits you, Mrs. Donavan?” he whispered against her lips.

  She smiled, nuzzling her nose against his. “I’m glad,” she whispered back. “Because I like carrying your baby.”

  Wild shivers of emotion went through Jason like fire when Kate said that. His lean hand flattened, became caressing. His mouth slid back over hers and grew slowly more insistent, warming with desire.

  She reached up to draw his broad chest down against her and all at once he felt the danger and drew back.

  “No,” he said huskily, pulling her up to sit beside him. “We can’t risk that again.”

  She knew what he meant, and why. She sighed, leaning her head against his shoulder. “I know. But it was so sweet, Jason.”

  “Sweeter than wine,” he agreed. “And I want you every bit as much as you want me. But we’re going to be parents. We have to protect our baby.”

  “That sounds nice,” she murmured. “Our baby.”

  “I think so, too.” He got to his feet reluctantly and drew her up with him. “You need sleep.”

  “Do I get to sleep with you?” she asked, searching his eyes.

  “I guess I can grit my teeth all night,” he sighed, smiling. “All right, but keep your hands to yourself, Mrs. Donavan. I know about you fast country girls.”

  “You ought to. You taught me everything I know,” she laughed softly.

  Her gentle teasing
delighted him. He slid his fingers into hers and led her back down the beach toward their room.

  Kate curled up against him in her thin blue cotton gown, listening to his heart beat in the darkness, loud against the faint hum of the air conditioner and the even fainter roar of the surf outside the window. He wasn’t asleep, but she didn’t speak. It was new and exciting to sleep with him, to lie in his arms in bed and not have to worry about being caught or hiding from prying eyes.

  “Are you asleep?” he asked, and she saw the glowing orange tip of his cigarette as he turned slightly toward her.

  “I can’t sleep,” she confessed. “It’s different, sleeping with someone.”

  He laughed softly, the sound pleasant and deep in the quiet, dark room. “I know. I’m having the same problem. I’ve never spent the night with a woman before.”

  That was exciting. Apparently his few interludes were conducted in places where he didn’t want to spend the night. She smiled to herself. “I’m glad I’m the first,” she said quietly.

  He took a draw from the cigarette. “You really don’t mind that I don’t have a lot of experience, do you?” he asked suddenly.

  “Of course not,” she returned drowsily. “I don’t like playboys. I really don’t want a man who uses women the way he uses cars.”

  He burst out laughing. “What a hell of a way to put it!”

  “It’s true,” she said doggedly. “A man who can go from one woman to another without sentiment or loyalty isn’t the kind of man I want to father my children.”

  His lean hand brushed gently against her soft dark hair. “It was like the first time, that day I made love to you,” he said quietly. “I did things with you that I’d never thought of before.”

  She buried her face against him, shy all over again as she remembered what they’d done together. “You seemed to know exactly what to do.”

  “I was bluffing,” he whispered. “I was scared to death I was going to do the wrong thing and hurt you.”

  “Jason!” Her eyes came up, shocked as she searched past the orange tip of his cigarette for his face.