by Diana Palmer
“Several,” Gene admitted. “Along with a hundred dollars’ worth of baby clothes, a bed, and so forth.” He glanced at Jason. “And it cuts you to the bone to hear about it, I know. That’s another reason Cherry and I want to get into our own house by Christmas, Jay. It will be better for you and Kate to have some time alone. Oh, Sheila’s around, sure, but she never intrudes.”
Jason felt hunted. “I’m over it,” he said shortly. “There’s no reason for you to have to buy a house….”
“But we want to,” Gene replied. He stuck his hands in his pocket and stared at his older brother, smiling. “Look, Jay, if I have normal bills, I’ll have to produce. I have Cherry and a baby to think about now, and I’m responsible for them. It will be for the best, in the long run.”
“If you need help, any time,” Jason said. “I’m here.”
“You always have been.” Gene’s face hardened. “My God, even when I was a kid, you were always there, taking licks I deserved, doing anything to protect me from Dad when he was drinking; do you think I could ever forget the sacrifices you’ve made for me?”
Jason couldn’t handle that. He moved away. “Stop it,” he said curtly. “You’ll have me in tears.”
Gene didn’t realize that it was the truth. He thought it was just more of Jason’s standoffish dry humor. “Okay,” he murmured, and forced a laugh. “As long as you know that I’d die for you.”
“I’d do the same for you, Gene,” came the quiet reply. “Now can we talk about something else? Like how much I’m going to have to come up with for that painting?”
Gene gave up. Jason couldn’t let people get close. He wondered if Kate would ever really get through that wall around him, or if that was the real problem in their marriage.
They talked about the painting, and then Gene got something off his chest that had bothered him for days.
“Jay,” he began, “do you remember the day you sent me to get a stock quotation out of your desk drawer in the study.”
Jason turned. “Sure. Why?”
The younger man hesitated. This was even more sensitive ground than Kate. “I saw a letter.”
“She deserted us,” Jason reminded him. His eyes grew cold, hard. “She walked out on us and let that drunken tyrant beat and bruise and humiliate us. Can you forgive that? Well, I can’t. I want no part of her.”
“Then why keep the letter?”
Jason hated questions he couldn’t answer. That one disturbed him. Without a word, without a gesture, he turned on his heel and left the room. Gene watched, wondering. He had an odd feeling that if Jason ever bent enough to admit how he felt about Kate that it might thaw him just a little. Maybe it might make him more human, more responsive to the human frailties he seemed to hate in himself and everyone else. He wanted Kate, Gene knew that. But if he loved her, some of Kate’s natural empathy might get through to him. Everybody in the family, except Jason, knew how Kate felt. It was only getting Jason to accept the cost of love that was the problem. But perhaps one day he would. And if Jason didn’t, Gene would go to see that woman in Arizona. But he wasn’t giving up on big brother yet. He knew there was a soft spot in that hard armor. And it was getting softer by the day, thanks to Kate.
Kate got to see her portrait later that night, when she walked into the living room. It was hanging over the fireplace. She gasped at the sight of herself in such detail.
“My goodness,” she burst out. “Is that me?”
“It looks like you,” Cherry replied. “You dish! Doesn’t my husband paint pretty portraits?”
“I love it. It’s too pretty to be me,” Kate sighed, smiling up at it. “My, my, you’re going to be so famous, Gene, and I’ll be able to say that I knew you in your starving garret days.”
“Speaking of which, we move Saturday,” Gene mused, winking at Cherry. “Into our own little house, with our own little mortgage.”
“I’ll miss you both,” Kate said honestly.
“You can visit,” Cherry said. “And we’re not moving that far away!”
“Well, in that case, I’ll visit a lot,” Kate returned. “Especially when the baby comes.” In that instant, even as they began talking about baby furniture, she grew morose. She thought about the baby she’d lost, for the first time in weeks, and she could have cried with the emptiness she felt. She and Jason were growing closer, but he never touched her these days. He was gentle and affectionate. But affection wasn’t love. And she began now to worry about the future. What if he never loved her?
At least she’d shown her abilities as a hostess at that production sale, mingling with guests, talking cattle to the men and fashion to the women. It had been a lovely day all round, sunny and bright. Afterward, Jason had been lavish with praise and so obviously proud of his wife that she’d gone to bed with delicious memories. But she’d gone to bed alone. As she always did now. Jason never even opened the door of the guest room where he slept. And the nights were lonely and too long. She wished she could ask him why he didn’t want her anymore, if he didn’t. Perhaps he was afraid to risk another child.
The day that Gene and Cherry moved out, Kate grew quiet and brooding. They’d been so happy about having their own place. Jason and Kate had gone along with the last stick of furniture to see them settled. It was the baby furniture that had done it. Kate had burst into tears the minute she’d gone into her room for the night. She’d cried the whole time she was putting on her thin green gown with its delicate lace, and was crying still as she cleaned the makeup from her face and combed her dark hair that was slowly growing long again.
It was nearing Christmas and she wondered what it might have been like if she’d still been pregnant. It was really ridiculous to grieve anymore, she told herself, but she couldn’t help it. She’d wanted the child so much.
Just as the tears were burning her cheeks and she was sniffling back more, the door opened quietly and the light went on.
“I shouldn’t be able to hear you crying, should I?” Jason asked from the doorway. “But I did.”
He looked tired. He was still dressed in his suit because he’d gone straight from Gene and Cherry’s new house to some business meeting. He hadn’t even loosened the tie, and Kate thought that, even blurred by tears, he was still the handsomest man she’d ever seen.
He came into the room, pausing beside the bed.
“What’s the matter, honey?” he asked gently.
“I was thinking about the baby,” she whispered, and the tears ran again as she held out her arms, like a lost and frightened child.
He didn’t even hesitate. He reached down, throwing back the bedcovers to scoop her up in his hard arms and hold her, rocking her with the strength and warmth of his body.
“Shhh,” he whispered at her ear. “Damn it, I should have been with you in Atlanta,” he murmured huskily. “I never should have left you there alone.”
“You were hurting, too,” she whispered brokenly. “I understood.”
Hadn’t she always, he thought bitterly. He held her closer, drinking in the soft, woman scent of her body, the exquisite yielding of it in his arms. God, it felt good to hold her. To have her close and clinging to him, to smell the sweet fragrance of her clean, warm body. He could feel her through the gown, even through his suit, and he wanted so much to lie her down on that bed and make the sweetest love to her. But he had to go slow.
“You need a good night’s sleep,” he murmured. “It was just reaction, from seeing the baby furniture at Gene and Cherry’s.”
She stared at his chest. “I guess so.” She sighed. “I guess I’ll never have another one. It would be hard to go through that again, anyway,” she added, trying not to let him see how badly she wanted it.
“Are you afraid of the risk?” he asked point blank.
She avoided his gaze. Did that mean that he was? “I don’t know,” she began hesitantly, trying to think of a way to approach the subject that wouldn’t alienate him.
He saw her frown and abruptly chan
ged the subject. “Well, we’ve got other things to worry about right now,” he said. “And Christmas is coming up.”
He shifted her, so that she was closer, wrapped up in his warm arms, rough fabric against soft skin. She let him do it, too drugged by the feel of his arms around her to argue. She nuzzled under the jacket and against his white silk shirt. Under it, she could feel the hard muscle and the gentle cushion of thick hair. She remembered how it felt against her bare breasts and trembled a little with traces of pleasure. Her fingers unconsciously curled into his chest, her nails delicately scoring him with a slow, sensual rhythm that she wasn’t even aware of. All the while her tears began to dry.
“Do you want to go away for Christmas or stay home this year?”
“If things are still hard financially, hadn’t we better pinch pennies or something?” She didn’t add that she could use those few weeks to get her designs well underway and get paid for them, so that she might be able to help him out.
His hard mouth tugged up in a smile. “Will you leave me if I lose it all and wind up living in a line cabin, posing for Gene’s western landscapes?”
“Silly man,” she whispered, her smile warm, her eyes full of soft affection. “Where would I go, without you?”
His dark eyes slid down to the bodice of the gown. “Isn’t it a little cold for a see-through gown?” he asked huskily.
She nuzzled her face against his suit coat. “I didn’t notice the cold. I was lonely, and I’m tired of sleeping by myself.”
That made his heart race. His jaw went taut. “Then why didn’t you come to me and say so?” He looked at her quietly. “You say I’m always holding back, but what are you doing?”
She looked up at him. “You’re the one who said we needed to get to know each other before we slept together again.”
“I thought that was what you wanted,” he said, puzzled. “Babies ought to be made out of love, not uncontrollable desire, isn’t that what you said to me the night we argued?”
“I wish you could read my mind sometimes,” she sighed as she got off his lap and moved away. “But you keep giving me what you think I want.” She kept her back to him. “No, babies oughtn’t to be made out of desire. But then, ours wasn’t.”
He stood up, studying that straight, tanned little back that was all too visible in the low cut of the gown. He wasn’t sure he’d heard her right. “You wanted me,” he said.
She turned, her pale eyes holding his, her body straight, her chin lifted proudly. “I loved you,” she corrected, her eyes bright and steady as they met his.
He was suddenly, acutely still. “You what?”
She searched his shocked, glittery black eyes. “I loved you. I still love you. I’ll always love you. Deathlessly,” she whispered, ripping away the mask. “Endlessly. Hopelessly. I loved you from the very beginning, Jason.” She smiled bitterly. “I tagged after you like a lovesick child, you even said so. I goaded you into making love to me, and I deliberately didn’t take precautions because I thought if I got pregnant, you might love the baby even if you couldn’t love me.” She laughed, but through sudden tears as she leaned back against the wall for support.
He stood there like a statue, not moving. She’d said once before that she’d loved him in the past, but that she didn’t anymore. He hadn’t realized, until now, that she was still in love with him. It changed him. It knocked him completely off balance.
“But it all backfired, didn’t it, Jason?” she was asking miserably. “Because you’re never going to feel like that about me…!”
His mouth cut her off. He was close against her, his body hungry like the mouth that devoured her trembling lips. His weight crushed her gently against the wall behind her. She tasted tears on her mouth, like salt, mingling with coffee and smoke on his breath. He was hard and warm over her, and she was trembling. Then his mouth opened and his hips shifted. She stopped thinking at all.
Chapter Twenty-one
Lightning shot through Kate’s body. It was the most primitive kind of thing that she felt in Jason as he bent over her, devouring her in a hush that was only broken by the rasp of his breathing and the rough bump of his heartbeat. There should have been thunderstorms around them, or crashing waves, or an earthquake. They should have been in the middle of an open field with the rain coming down in pitchforks around their oblivious heads. But there was only the bright room, with its pink decor and canopied bed, the soft sound of the wind outside the closed window and the hum of the furnace coming through the register behind Kate’s feet.
She didn’t have enough room to respond to him. His powerfully muscled body was against her from thigh to breast, one leg bent between both of hers, his hands rhythmically pulling her hips upward into his while his tongue probed past the soft trembling of her lips.
“I’m trying…to talk to you,” she whispered against his hard mouth when he finally lifted it just enough to catch a breath of air.
His lean hands moved up to her breasts, slowly taking their weight over the silky fabric of her bodice. “You told me you loved me,” he whispered unsteadily. “What did you expect me to do?”
“I didn’t think you wanted to be loved,” she breathed as his mouth lowered again.
“More fool, you,” he murmured against her welcoming lips. “If you don’t want to get pregnant again, you’d better tell me while I can fumble something to use out of my wallet.”
“Is that where you keep it?” she whispered.
“God knows. I think the only one I have is three years old, and it’s probably long since rotted,” he managed with the last traces of humor in him. He was trembling, and she could feel that, and he didn’t give a damn. She loved him. And he loved her. He wanted to show her how much, and it was going to take one hell of a long time.
“What happens if I say I don’t want a child yet?” she asked unsteadily as he bent to lift her. “Hold the thought while you rush into town to the drugstore…?”
“Dream on, honey.” He eased her onto the mattress and followed her down, his mouth nudging her gown out of the way so that he could get it over her taut nipple. She moaned when he did that, clutching at him with satisfying hunger. He knew what she liked best, and he did it, overwhelmed with the newness of knowing she loved him, wanting nothing in life more than to please her.
“Jason, the door…” she managed. It was standing open, and her eyes were like green and black saucers.
“Who’s going to see us, or hear us?” he asked softly.
“What if they come back to pick up something, or Sheila did?” she asked.
“Damn,” he sighed. But he got up and closed it, then locked it. He stared down at her as he returned to the bed, warm, possessive desire making him arrogant. His dark, hungry eyes ran the length of her body in the gown that concealed nothing from him, lingering on the taut tips of her breasts.
She felt all woman, letting him look at her like that. She liked it. And because she did, and because she had no more secrets from him, she pulled the bodice down and slid it over her hips. Then she lay back, her body curled and soft on the coverlet, and let him look at her.
“I love you,” she whispered huskily. “I don’t even care if you know it. I love you to distraction.”
“If you don’t stop saying that, I’ll never get my clothes off,” he said with black humor as he tried to work buttons with hands that wanted nothing more than Kate’s body under them.
“Why?” she murmured dryly. “Does it disturb you?”
“Disturb me, the devil,” he laughed. “It excites me so much I can’t even feel my damned hands!”
That was new, too, to see Jason ruffled. She liked it. She watched the clothing come off that powerful, darkly tanned body with a feeling of utter possession. He might not love her, but he wanted to be loved. And as long as he was open to her, she might move in under his heart if she was very careful.
He turned finally, his body like bronze in the light except for one wide swathe because he didn’t sunb
athe in the nude. He was beautifully made, she thought, watching him with blatant interest. She loved the evidence of his hunger for her, the powerful masculinity that was hers alone now.
“You’ve never looked at me like that before,” he said quietly as he eased down alongside her.
“I was too shy of you,” she said gently. “I still am, a little. But you give me so much when we make love. I tingle all over, just thinking about how it is.”
“You give me a lot, too.” He slid his hand along her breasts, watching her stomach curve in suddenly with pleasure, and he smiled. But it was no mocking, superior smile. It was amused, indulgent, even conspiratorial.
She made his head spin. She made him invincible. He found new things to do, that made her cry out, that made her shudder. He touched her in ways he’d been too reticent to touch her before. He smoothed his mouth over silky skin that trembled. He lifted her and held her, he pushed down against her and buffeted her, and all the while she looked at him with those eyes. Those soft, green, misty eyes that held enough love to bind him forever.
It was sweet madness. She looked down where he lifted up her hips in firm, sure hands. And she watched. And so did he. Her eyes slid back up to his with new knowledge and fascinated pleasure. It was like no other time with him. Even the sounds were different. There was passion, but it was so slow, so tender. Every movement was careful and loving, and their rhythm like summer wind, slow and sultry and sweet.
She caught her breath and he smiled. “There?” he whispered, and did it again.
She gasped, laughing. “It…never felt…like this.”
His hands cupped her face and he smiled down into her eyes. “We never loved like this,” he whispered, and bent to her mouth. His breath caught as his hips moved again. “Don’t be afraid of another baby, Kate,” he breathed into her open mouth, and then his hips moved sharply.
The world exploded into a dazed kaleidoscope of color and urgent, quick movement, of jerky gasping cries and then buffeting, rough, shuddering rhythm. She felt him and heard him, and held him. And all around her, the world became red and blazing hot, and throbbed.