by Diana Palmer
He made a rough, amused sound deep in his throat. “I remember your one time on the stage.”
She grimaced. Yes. In tenth grade. She was in a play, with a minor role. She’d tripped walking to her mark, bounded into another actor and they’d ended up in a tangle on the stage floor. The audience had roared. Sadly the play had been a tragedy, and she had a monologue—left unspoken—about death. She’d left the stage in tears, without speaking her lines, and had been kicked out of the play the same night by a furious director. Jason had gone to see the man, who put Gracie right back in the play and even apologized. She never had the nerve to ask why.
She looked down at her lap. “Maybe I could get work as a mannequin,” she suggested. “You know—stand upright in a boutique and wear different things every day.”
He glanced at her. “Maybe you could take karate lessons.”
“Karate? Me?”
“They teach self-confidence.” He smiled faintly. “You could use a little.”
“I’d aim a karate chop at somebody, hit a vital spot and end up in federal prison for murder.” She sighed.
He glanced at her, but without answering. He turned on the radio. “I want to listen to the market report. Do you mind?”
“Of course not.” She did, but she couldn’t force him to talk if he didn’t want to. So they listened to stock prices until he turned into the driveway of the mansion in San Antonio and pulled up at the steps. He cut off the engine, went around the truck and opened her door. The rain had followed them. It was pouring down, and the driveway was almost underwater.
“I can walk,” she said quickly.
He raised an eyebrow and glanced pointedly at the several inches of water pooled on the driveway.
She was wet, but she didn’t want to ruin her new shoes. She bit her lip hard.
He gave her a quizzical look. “Some women are aroused by being carried,” he said in a worldly way. “You act as if I’m carting you off to a guillotine every time I have to do it.”
She swallowed uncomfortably. “It’s just…it reminds me of something bad. Most especially when it storms.”
“What?”
Her face tightened. “Just…something. A long time ago.”
He studied her, while rain bounced off his hat and raincoat, and he realized that he knew absolutely nothing about Gracie’s life before her mother married his father. He remembered having to lure Gracie out of her room with chocolates, because she’d been so frightened of him at the age of fourteen. It had taken him months to win her trust. He scowled. His father had never discussed her with Jason, except to tell the young man that Gracie would always need someone to look out for her, to protect her. That hadn’t really made much sense at the time.
“You keep secrets, Graciela,” he said deeply, using her full name, as he rarely did.
The sound of her name on his lips was sexy. Sweet. It made her hum with sensations she didn’t want to feel. She had nothing to give, and he didn’t know it. She could never let anything…romantic…develop between them. Never. Even if she wanted to. And she did. Desperately. Especially since he’d whispered those exciting, sensually charged remarks to her at the party.
She managed a smile. “Don’t you keep secrets, too?”
He shrugged. “Only about my breeding program,” he said drily, mentioning the genetic witchery and technological skills he practiced to produce better and leaner purebred herd bulls.
About women, too, she was about to say, but she didn’t dare trespass into his private life.
“Some secrets are better kept,” she said.
“Suit yourself.” His eyes twinkled. “You work for the CIA, do you?”
It was the first olive branch he’d extended. She laughed with pure delight. “Sure. I have a trenchcoat, a blindfold, a cyanide pill and the telephone number of a Russian KGB agent in my purse.” She gasped. “Jason, my car!”
“The wrecker will be right behind us. It’s going slower than we were. I told him to tow it up here and bill the ranch. Come on, baby. I’ve got more work to do before I can call it a night.” He sighed. “I was out looking for mired cattle, supervising two new cowboys who don’t know a bull from a steer, when a fence went down under a wash in the rain, and cattle scattered to hell and gone. I’ve got a full crew out trying to round them all back up. But the new hands need watching.”
“You hire men to work cattle and then you get out and do it yourself.”
He shrugged. “I’m not a desk sort of man.”
“I noticed.”
He reached in and slid his arms under her knees and her back and swung her out of the truck as if she was light as a feather. “You’re such a cat, Gracie,” he mused. “All sleek lines and light weight. You don’t eat enough.”
“I’m never hungry.”
“You run it all off.” He turned toward the house.
A huge flash of jagged lightning split the rainy, dark sky, startling Gracie, who suddenly clung to him and hid her face in his throat, shivering. “Oh, I hate lightning!” she moaned as the thunder rolled and rumbled around them. Her face moved again, just as his head turned, and her mouth brushed over his with the action. It was so perfectly synchronized that it seemed as if she’d timed the turning of her own head, to produce that sweet little caress to tempt him.
Jason’s tall, fit body contracted violently and he stopped in his tracks. He didn’t say a word, but Gracie could feel his breathing quicken. The soft contact had flamed through her young body. She wondered if it affected him the same way.
It became quickly apparent that it had. In the light of the wide porch, he looked down at her with pure heat in his black eyes. They narrowed as they fell to her mouth.
The lightning came again, and the thunder, but Gracie didn’t see it. She only saw Jason’s face as he stared at her with growing intensity. She could feel his broad chest against her breasts, moving roughly, as if he had trouble keeping his breath steady. Her heart ran away. The silken touch of her mouth on his had acted as a spark to dry wood.
“Jason?” she whispered, disconcerted by the harsh look on his face. He seemed angry out of all proportion to what had happened. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to…”
“Didn’t you?” he asked through his teeth as he stared right into her eyes.
His arms, steely and warm, contracted fiercely around her body. His teeth clenched as his gaze fell to her soft mouth. He hesitated, as if he were fighting a battle with his own instincts. But he lost it. Gracie saw with dawning shock the aching hunger in the black eyes that began to narrow and glitter as the storm broke around them.
“What the hell,” he muttered as he suddenly bent his head. “I’m already damned, anyway!” His mouth suddenly ground down into hers, parting her lips, as urgent as the lightning, as frightening as the storm as he gave in to a surge of desire so hot that he couldn’t breathe through it. His arms contracted hungrily, grinding Gracie’s slight breasts into the firm, muscular wall of his chest. He groaned against her lips and crushed her even closer, his brows drawn together in an agony of visible need as his mouth moved insistently on her lips, parting them.
She couldn’t believe it was happening. She loved Jason. She’d always loved him. But this was a side of him that she’d never seen before. The passion and expertise of the kiss were worlds away from her mother’s frightening lectures about how it was between men and women. Involuntarily her body reacted to the feel of him; her mouth warmed to the furious need in his kisses. She felt a shock of pleasure beyond anything she’d ever known as his mouth grew more demanding.
But she fought it. This was only how it began, her mother had told her, with fierce need that blinded a woman to the reality of a man’s desires. It began like this, but it ended in pain and humiliation and, ultimately, tragedy. Tragedy. Gunshots and the metallic taste of blood…
And then, quite suddenly, Jason’s hard, warm mouth slid down her neck and right onto the fullness of her breast, pressing so hungrily that she panicked.<
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Memories from the past surged up in her mind, frightened her. His mouth was insistent on her breast, twisting. In a few seconds, she knew, his teeth would bite into her, and she would look like her mother had, bleeding…!
She pushed at Jason’s broad chest, fighting the images in her mind as certainly as she fought this unexpected loss of control in a man whose place in her life had been tempered with iron control. She didn’t know Jason like this. His arms were contracting, and his mouth was opening, as she knew it would…! She pushed harder.
Jason realized, belatedly, what he was doing and he lifted his head. A shudder ran through him as he felt her body move frantically against him. But she wasn’t trying to get closer. She was fighting to get away from him.
“Jason, no! Put…me down! Please!” she cried, panic in her face, in her choked voice. She pushed harder. “Let me go! Let me go!”
“Damn you! You started it,” he ground out, as shocked by his own feverish lack of control as by her rejection of him as a man.
“I know. But I…I didn’t mean to! I didn’t want…that! I’m sorry!” she sobbed.
He put her back on her feet abruptly and let her go. She looked up at him with shocked, anguished eyes. He stepped back, his jaw clenched. He looked down at her with smoldering black eyes in a face harder than rock. There was violence and barely leashed passion in his expression. He looked at her as if he hated her. A harsh sob burst from her lips. She had started it, even if accidentally, and now he was angry again. It was her fault. He hated her for tempting him…!
Before he could speak, she was gone, into the house, running like a madwoman for the staircase. He stared after her with turbulent emotions, his eyes blazing, his body tense and aching. Desire evaporated slowly out of him, to be replaced with embarrassment at his lapse, with Gracie of all people. He was furious with himself. Then he was furious with her, for the teasing that aroused him and the deliberate touch of her mouth on his that had kindled his passion and made him cross the line. She’d permitted the intimacy at first, and then, when he turned up the heat just a little, she’d pushed him away as if she found him utterly repulsive. He replayed the episode in his mind, and anger grew from the embarrassment, along with rejection and humiliation and wounded pride. He’d betrayed his desire for her, and she’d been…disgusted. He’d seen it in her face.
The pain hit him like a flood. At first he was hurt. And then he was enraged. Damn her! Why tempt him into indiscretion and then behave as if he was totally responsible for it?
He turned on his heel and stalked back out to the truck. At that moment, he didn’t care if he ever saw her again as long as he lived. He cursed her every mile of the way back to Comanche Wells, so unsettled that he didn’t even see the wrecker pass him on its way to San Antonio. He’d never had anything hurt so much. Gracie didn’t want him. She was afraid of him now, running scared. He would never be able to erase this painful episode from both their minds. In a heartbeat, they had become enemies.
He stepped down hard on the accelerator. He didn’t care if he got a speeding ticket. Nothing mattered anymore. Not now.
UP IN HER ROOM, Gracie stood in the darkness, shivering. Hateful memories flooded her mind. Screams from the bedroom. Tears. Bruises and fear and blood, staining the bodice of her mother’s nightgown. Her mother, crying. Her father scathing, brutal, accusing. Other memories; of the boy who’d brought Gracie home, far too late because of a flat tire. Her father, snatching her up in his arms and throwing her at the wall with all his might. She’d fallen, dazed, bruised and terrified, only to have him come at her with a doubled-up belt. He’d snapped it on the way to her. The sound, loud even above the thunder of the storm outside; the horror of the blows, the blood…
She turned on the light and went to look in her mirror. Her face, like her mother’s had been, was covered with tears, flushed, anguished. The boy had never come back. Gracie had been bundled out of the house, bloody and sobbing, by her mother. Her father’s threats had followed them as they ran next door for help. Her mother got away. Gracie didn’t. She wasn’t quick enough to escape her father’s pursuing rage. She was lifted, carried forcibly back to her own home while her mother screamed and begged from the yard next door.
Blue lights flashing. Sirens. Men in a van, dressed like soldiers, but all in black. Big guns. Gracie trapped in her father’s arms, being dragged to the door, the pistol held at her head, her father laughing. Her mother might leave him, but Gracie would die, and she’d have to live with it. Taunting, refusing to speak with a negotiator. He wanted the news media to know it was the fault of Gracie’s faithless, whoring mother. Gracie would die now, in time for the six o’clock news! He yelled it to the policemen who were standing with their weapons drawn in the street. And he started to pull the trigger.
A shot. One shot. A crack like thunder. Wetness on Gracie’s face, in her mouth, metallic and thick; a searing pain in her head as she and her father both fell to the wet ground…
She jerked her mind back to the present. Jason had kissed her. His mouth had pressed down hard on her breast. Had he meant to grind his teeth into her flesh, the way her father had done to her poor mother? She’d told Gracie never to marry, that a man lured a woman in, and then he beat her and tortured her in the bedroom, because it was the only way he felt any pleasure or release. Gracie understood. Sex was only for a man’s pleasure, and a woman paid for it with pain. Blood and screams and pain…
Gracie gripped the edge of her dresser and felt sick. She’d run from Jason. He must think she found him disgusting. She wished she could apologize, but that would involve admitting the truth about her father and mother, and she couldn’t do that. If she did, Jason would probably throw her out of the house. It would be a terrible scandal if anyone ever found out about Gracie’s past. But it had been a long time ago, and people had short memories these days. Nobody would connect the newspaper article about the bloody little girl crying in a policeman’s arms beside her father’s body outside the dilapidated little house, with the grown woman who lived in a mansion. Especially when her own mother had told everyone that Gracie was only her stepchild. Nobody knew that her last name had been legally changed in the days just after her father’s death, to Marsh—her mother’s maiden name. She was safe.
She dabbed at her eyes as she stared at the puffy-eyed woman in the mirror. Her mother had been beautiful. Gracie favored her father, whose face had been ordinary. She had a nice mouth and her figure was well-proportioned, if a little small-breasted. Her long hair, twisted into a tight bun, would have been her best feature if she’d let it stay loose. But it was like Gracie, tied up tightly so that it couldn’t ever escape. Inside, Gracie was tied up in horrible memories.
Jason would hate her now. Maybe that was best. He wouldn’t be tempted to touch her again, to make her so weak that she wanted to do anything he liked. She felt a sense of profound loss. She would have loved being a normal woman. Jason was a kind, gentle, very masculine sort of man, for whom women held no mystery. He would make a wonderful husband and father.
But Gracie was certain that she could never submit her body to a man’s physical dominance. She had men friends—mostly gay ones—but she’d never had what they called a “hot date.” Word got around early in the circles she frequented that Gracie was ice-cold. It suited her that people thought that. It saved her the humiliation of refusing any man who saw her as dessert after a nice dinner. It protected her from amorous advances. Especially now. Jason would think she was frigid, that she didn’t want him to touch her. It hurt to let him think that. But it was the only way she could escape her mother’s fate. Even Jason, in passion, would be the same as her father. Hadn’t she felt his mouth grinding into her soft breast? He hadn’t used his teeth—but then, she’d pushed him away just in time. Just in time. She turned away from the mirror. She felt dead inside.
4
JASON WALKED THROUGH the sophisticated New York crowd at the cocktail party in a daze. He was racked with torment over
what had happened with Gracie. She’d never forgive him, even if it had been her teasing that had precipitated things. He was trying to forget that he’d crossed the line with her long before she went into the ditch in the rain. It had begun at that party, two days after the auction. He’d gone over the line then. He’d almost kissed her. The night in the rain, he hadn’t been able to hold back any longer. His anguished desire for her had consumed him in those scant, passionate minutes on the front porch of the mansion in San Antonio. For a few precious seconds, Gracie had clung to him, answering the hunger of his mouth. But then she’d started fighting him, pushing him away. Her rejection had been absolute. Her expression had been horrified. She’d looked at him as if he were the devil himself.
He was working his way through his second whiskey highball of the evening—an anomaly for a man who never drank hard liquor. He’d only been drunk one other time, when the family attorney had given him the sealed letter that was left with his father’s will. In it was a revelation that had knocked Jason flat. His father had been a snob, but even Jason had never expected that he could be so cruel and insensitive.
The letter said that he was leaving nothing to the household staff because they were of inferior birth. Especially Mrs. Harcourt, he’d added. Jason recalled the sacrifices Mrs. Harcourt had made for him over the years, being a surrogate mother after his own had died when he was only five years old. She’d been his comfort, his security. She’d taken care of him when he was sick. Hell, she’d taken care of his snobbish father when he was sick. And for that, she was left nothing because she was of inferior birth. Jason had been so repulsed that he’d never shared the contents of that letter. He’d just gotten drunk, amazed that his father could be so damned insensitive. Glory and Gracie hadn’t been related to him, but he’d left them money. Why had he been so deliberately scathing about Mrs. Harcourt? he’d wondered. Perhaps he was jealous of the attention she gave Jason, or felt it was inappropriate. God only knew the truth.