by Diana Palmer
She wasn’t going to give in, she told herself firmly. She wasn’t going to let him rush her. She glanced out the window at the dead grass and the long stretches of pasture where great rolls of fall hay had been put in cattle feeders for the various lots of cows and bulls and steers.
“Neither one of us was very experienced,” she explained it, “and you said yourself that you’d been celibate for a long time.”
He lifted an eyebrow under the shadowy brim of that battered black Stetson he always wore. “And desire was all it was on my part, is that how you see it?”
She shifted restlessly. The conversation was getting all too personal, too soon. She lifted her eyes to his dark face and studied his profile curiously. “I didn’t think it could be anything else,” she said honestly. “I was just a country girl with a few big dreams, after all. I didn’t have poise or culture. I still don’t,” she added. “We both know if you’d had a choice about who you married, it wouldn’t have been me.”
He stopped the Bronco in the middle of the pasture and cut off the engine. When he turned toward her, his black eyes were narrow and intent. “Listen here, honey, if I’d had a choice, I’d never have married anybody,” he said shortly. “I wanted an heir, but not enough to suffer a woman in my house. Or so I thought.”
She felt as if she’d stopped breathing. “You…you wanted our child more than you wanted me.”
“I wanted our child,” he said slowly, “because he was our child. Not because I wanted someone to inherit the Spur.”
“But, you said…!”
He leaned toward her and brushed her soft mouth with his hard one, nuzzling her nose gently. “You stopped looking under the words when we got married, didn’t you?” he whispered. “You started taking me at face value. I couldn’t bend enough to tell you what I really felt, and you didn’t try to find out.” He nibbled at her lower lip, liking the way she caught her breath and relaxed to let him do it.
“I thought you hated me,” she whispered.
“Your mistake,” he breathed as his mouth worked on hers. “Open your mouth a little more.”
“Only if you’ll put out that cigarette and kiss me properly,” she whispered back, shocked at her own boldness.
He chuckled delightedly. “Okay,” he murmured. He put it in the ashtray without even looking at it and drew her face up to his with the hand that wasn’t cupping the back of her head. “It’s been a long, long time since we did this together,” he whispered, and his lips eased under hers, pushing them gently apart.
It began tenderly, but their hungers had gone unfulfilled too long. In no time, her arms were clinging around his neck and his mouth was grinding hers against her teeth, its feverish pressure arching her neck. His hard chest was crushing her back against the seat.
“Jason,” she whispered brokenly, trying to get closer.
He murmured something rough, fighting her out of her seat and across him, her head against his window, his mouth still possessing her lips. His lean hand glided under her shirt, fighting a front catch that must have been invented by a ninety-year-old virgin.
“Help me,” he groaned, his big hand all too big for such a dainty fastening.
She could barely find enough breath to laugh because he sounded as desperate as she felt. She helped him, and watched his face as he peeled the lacy covering away. He was watching her eyes, not her body. Her shirt wasn’t even unfastened. His fingers traced only the outside edge of the soft satin mound, just lightly touching, and she gasped.
“You were always mine the minute I touched you,” he said roughly, searching her wide, darkening green eyes. “You never held back from me, or played games, or pretended to be shocked at my hands on your body.”
“I was innocent,” she reminded him. “It was all new and exciting.”
He bent, brushing his mouth tenderly over her eyes to close them while his hand drove her slowly mad with its lazy teasing. “It still is,” he whispered. “Oh, no you don’t, Mrs. Donavan,” he added unexpectedly when her fingers went instantly to his shirt buttons. “This is my party, I’ll call the shots.”
Her eyes opened, questioning. His hand moved and she gasped involuntarily as it teased closer and closer toward a hardening tip. “Jason…!”
“I like being in control, didn’t I ever tell you?” He smiled as he bent toward her, his lips smoothing lazily over her mouth. Her body was beginning to tremble. Second by second, she was twisting, just barely moving, trying to trap that hand where she wanted it most. He knew that, and it delighted him, but he wasn’t going to give her what she wanted. Not yet. His mouth pressed her lips open and he kissed her with a deep, slow pressure that made her moan.
Finally, his teasing touch reached the hard aching center of her, and he touched it, lifting his head to watch her face at the instant he did it. She actually shuddered, and a tiny cry pulsed out of her throat. She looked incredibly sexy that way. He covered her with his warm, callused hand and she buried her face, embarrassed, against his shirt.
“My God, there can’t be another woman like you in all the world,” he whispered at her ear. He caressed her tenderly, his lips on her eyelids, her nose, her flushed cheeks, her trembling mouth. “I want you, baby doll. I want you badly, can you tell?” he whispered against her lips, and gathered her hips into his.
She flushed red, astonished that even marriage and a pregnancy hadn’t acclimated her to this kind of masculine teasing. “Yes,” she managed, “I can tell.”
“And do you know what I’m going to do about it, Kate?”
She let her cheek slide against the warm, hard shudder of his chest, hearing his wild heartbeat. Then she lifted her head to meet his black, glittering eyes. “No, what?” she whispered, excitement bearing down on her.
He bent and brushed his lips against hers. “Absolutely nothing.” He moved his hand and put her back in her seat, gently but firmly. Then he picked up his cigarette pack from the dash, shook one out, lit it with faintly unsteady hands, and started the Bronco.
Kate felt as if she’d been dropped from a great height and had just hit the ground. Her wide eyes stared at him with slowly dawning comprehension while her body trembled and her breath came like a runner’s.
“See how that ties in with your theory that I only seduced you out of desire,” he invited with twinkling eyes, and turned the Bronco back onto the rutted path with a touch of the accelerator.
For the rest of the morning, he was friendly and attentive, and she sat on the chrome-plated running board of the Bronco and watched him use the complicated wire stretcher to put two strands of barbed wire back in place. Muscles rippled under the sheepskin jacket he’d left open, and her eyes watched his lean, sure hands with memories lying soft and vulnerable in them.
“That does it,” he sighed when he was done, tossing the wire stretcher into the back, where the seats had been let down to make more storage room. “God, that’s work.”
She watched him flex his shoulders, admiring the very set of them. “I know it is,” she replied. “I tried it once, and almost ripped my arm off.” She laughed. “Dad yelled at me and then he hit me, and then he hugged me.”
“Which is probably what I’d do, except for the hitting part,” he added, tilting his hat back to stare down into her eyes. “I’d never hurt you deliberately. Not even if I was stoned to the back teeth.”
She smiled softly. “I know that.” She lowered her eyes to his open jacket. “There was still a full glass of whiskey sitting on the table in the living room last night,” she remarked. “Untouched.”
He stripped off his gloves slowly. It was hard to talk about, but after what he’d done to her, she deserved the truth. “I’m not going down the road my father did,” he said then. “No matter what comes, from now on, I’m going to face it without crutches.”
She looked up, shocked. “Jason, you’ve got it all out of perspective,” she said softly. “An occasional drink isn’t a crutch.”
He shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe it was only a
n occasional one with him, at the beginning.”
She went close to him, and she had to lean her head back a long way to see his face. He towered over her. “You won’t ever become an alcoholic,” she put it bluntly. “Because as long as I’m alive, as long as we live together, I’ll make sure of it. I’ll take care of you.”
“I’ve given you hell,” he breathed.
“Yes,” she admitted. She searched his hard face, seeing now the avalanche of emotion under that taut look. Someday, perhaps he’d trust her enough to show her all those violent feelings he was still afraid to reveal. “All your friends get that special treatment,” she added with her tongue in her cheek.
He relaxed into laughter, tapping her on the cheek with a hard finger. “Shut up. Let’s go home. I’ve got to talk to Sheila about getting everything ready for the production sale next Saturday.”
“Can’t I help?” she asked. He hesitated and she grinned. “I know I don’t have a very good track record, but that was at formal dinners. A production sale means a barbecue and country people. And those,” she added wickedly, “I know very well.”
“I hate formal dinners,” he said unexpectedly. “You needn’t look so shocked,” he added, “I do. I hate dressing up and trying to act like a gentleman and say and do all the right things. I can, and I’ve learned to bluff my way through, but I’ve never learned to like it. Hell, I was dirt poor before I built up the Spur.”
She had forgotten. He seemed so suave and comfortable at those affairs that she’d actually forgotten his beginnings. “You never told me you hated it.”
“I never told you a lot of things I felt,” he said shortly, his eyes narrowing. “I’m trying. Can you see that? I’m trying not to hold things in.”
She’d sensed it, but it was nice to know it. She reached out hesitantly and touched his hand, loving the way his fingers curved towards hers, gathering them in.
His fingers contracted. “I feel guilty about Jamaica,” he said tautly, bringing her shocked eyes up. “I lost control and I hurt you. I thought I’d killed…” He averted his gaze.
She gasped. She’d been too wrapped up in her grief to see through his cold, angry mask. Tears stung her eyes. She went against him without hesitation, just as she always had when he needed comforting, without a single sane thought of her own survival.
She clung to him. “You didn’t kill our baby.” She held him closer, feeling the shudder that ran through him. “Stop blaming yourself.”
“I blamed you instead.” He gathered her against him convulsively. “I’m…” He hesitated. He had to swallow to get it out. “I’m…sorry.”
Kate cried. It was that much a milestone in their rocky relationship.
“Oh, don’t cry, for God’s sake,” he muttered, hiding his embarrassment in bad temper. “Stop it, Kate.”
She laughed through her tears. He didn’t realize it yet, but they were on the way to a brand new relationship, to a future that was going to be so bright it might blind them both.
She threw her head back and looked up at him with her radiant face. “Okay,” she laughed. “God forbid that I should embarrass you.”
“Yes. God forbid.” He searched her wet eyes slowly. Then he bent and kissed away the tears, smoothing them away from the warmth of her eyelids. “We’d better go home,” he whispered. “If you’re going to help me with that sale, I’ll have to tell you what I want.”
She nuzzled her nose against his. “I’ll give you three guesses what I want right now,” she whispered at his lips.
But he put her away from him firmly, his eyes faintly amused. “No.”
She blinked. Her eyes searched his face, looking for cracks in the armor.
“Sex,” he said slowly, “is an exquisite way to express what two people feel for each other. But it shouldn’t be the foundation of a marriage.” He scowled, searching for words. “We put the cart before the horse, just like you said last night. You don’t really know me, except in a surface way, because I’ve never shared what I feel with you. What I’m trying to say is that I think we should turn the cart around, Kate.”
Her face at that moment was beautiful. She smiled at him, her eyes alive with feeling. “Does that mean we’ll see each other besides at the supper table once a week?”
“That’s what it means.” He slid his hands warmly up her arms. “And I’ll try to stop living in the past.”
“Then, isn’t there something else you need to do?” she asked quietly.
He knew without asking what she meant. His face went hard. “No.”
“Jason…”
“No!”
She sighed, lowering her eyes to his chest. “All right, I won’t push.” But it was depressing that, even with this new attitude, he still couldn’t find a way to forgive his mother. Nell Donavan would die sooner or later, and it would be tragic if Jason never tried to see her and hear her side of the story.
Chapter Twenty
Kate’s portrait took longer than Gene expected it to. It was just past Thanksgiving Day when he finally produced the painting.
They had just finished supper and Kate and Cherry had gone to visit Mary. Gene ushered Jason into the living room, where he had the portrait on an easel, to watch his older brother’s reaction.
Jason didn’t move an inch. His smoking cigarette hung limply at his side while he stared and stared at the canvas with eyes so hungry that Gene actually looked away in embarrassment.
Kate was running through a meadow of wildflowers. Daisies and black-eyed Susans, Indian paintbrush and bluebonnets dotted the lush grass, and behind her a big mesquite tree’s feathery fronds danced in the same wind that blew the skirt of her white lacy dress against her legs. Her long black hair hung over her shoulders, and she was wearing a big brimmed, floppy lace hat on her head. She was laughing, as Kate always had in earlier times. The green eyes that shone out of her lightly tanned, oval face gave her a sweet mystery, an elusive beauty that held Jason spellbound.
“Did you do that from memory?” Jason asked him after a long pause.
“Most of it,” Gene said quietly. “All of it, except for the dress and hat—I had a photo of her in those when she came to our wedding, it was a dress that Cherry had loaned her. I remember she didn’t want to risk ruining it, and Cherry insisted. It suited her.”
“Yes,” Jason said idly. He couldn’t look away from her pretty, impish expression. “Gene…that look in her eyes…you did that from memory?”
“She looked like that the day you were married,” Gene replied, knowing that it was a delicate memory for his brother, and his voice was soft and hesitant. “When she looked up at you, just before you kissed her….”
Jason had thought about that a lot, lately, now that he and Kate were speaking to each other, laughing together, getting acquainted all over again. They were growing closer in every way, except physically. He held back because he didn’t want her to get the idea that all he wanted was her body. But his hunger for her was getting more unmanageable by the day, and that painting succeeded in arousing him as much as Kate did.
He wanted it. He’d made a new payment on the interest, although the next one would get close pretty soon and he wasn’t sure he could meet it. He’d pay Gene on the installment plan if he had to, but he wanted that portrait. “You can name your own price for that,” he said, staring at the open doorway that led into the hall. “Anything you want.”
“You name the price,” Gene said. “I’ll even give it to you, if you like it that much.”
“Like it.” Jason laughed, but there was an odd huskiness in his voice. He took a long draw from the cigarette, and his posture was rigid. He blew out a cloud of smoke on a heavy breath, and finally he turned, composed again. “It’s the best work I’ve ever seen,” he told his brother with genuine praise. “If that’s the kind of thing you want to do for a living, I expect you’ll make more than I ever do raising cattle.”
Gene flushed with embarrassment. He hadn’t expected anything more th
an a grunt, or maybe an argument. He hadn’t expected this. “Thanks, Jay,” he said.
Jason smiled at him. “Okay, son, you’ve made your point. You’re a damned good artist. I’ll help you, any way I can. But that,” he added, nodding toward it, his eyes narrowing with possession, “that doesn’t leave this house, even if it is your best work. It’s mine.”
“So is Kate. Isn’t she?” Gene asked gently.
“God, I hope so,” Jason said with unexpected fervor. “At least we’re making a start again.”
“You’d make it quicker if you stopped having separate bedrooms,” Gene murmured dryly.
“Tell me about the portrait you’re doing for Mrs. Drake,” Jason asked.
“You’re avoiding the issue.”
“Which means I’m through discussing it.” He turned. “Come on. What are you painting for Mrs. Drake?”
“Her youngest grandsons,” he sighed. “She’s already approved the preliminary sketch. Nice lady. Did you know she’d been teaching Kate how to give parties?”
Jason’s eyebrows arched. “What?”
“Well, Kate thought you were ashamed of her, so she’s trying to bone up on manners and deportment. Mrs. Drake is teaching her. She says she’ll shock you with the Christmas dinner party she’s throwing for the rest of those businessmen on the list you gave her.”
“I told her I wasn’t ashamed of her. I thought she’d given up on all that.” He frowned.
“Surprise, surprise,” Gene grinned. “Kate’s full of them.”
“Yes, I know.” The older man’s dark eyes went back to the portrait on the easel, caressing it. “God, she’s beautiful,” he said half under his breath.
“Indeed she is,” Gene murmured. He smiled softly at his own handiwork. “She was pregnant when I painted her, just like Cherry is now. There’s something about a woman when she’s carrying a child. Something gentle and mysterious. Elusive.”
“I guess Cherry’s already picked out a name,” Jason replied, trying not to sound bitter because their baby was only a memory now.