by Nan Ryan
At last came the sound of someone approaching—soft footfalls, the rustle of long skirts.
Burt’s arms instantly fell to his sides and he released a long, deep sigh. Then smiling broadly, he moved across the shadowy chamber to the very front of the building. There he stood, completely still, concealed in deep shadow, waiting beside the door, his back against the mission’s rough interior wall.
The bell in the tower was chiming the witching hour when Sabella pushed open the mission’s heavy wooden door. She stepped into the darkness and quietly closed the door behind her. She advanced a few feet, then paused to stand unmoving for a long moment in a pool of moonlight.
Her blond hair was unbound and flowing down her back, held off her face with a blue satin ribbon. Her dress was a cool summer frock of sky-blue organza, its bodice tight over her full, high breasts, the ruffled, low-cut neckline falling appealing down around bare, golden shoulders.
Sabella felt Burt’s presence, although she couldn’t see him. She had no idea if he were in front of her or behind, but she knew he was here, knew he was looking at her. She could feel those glittering gray eyes resting on her, assessing her, undressing her.
She smiled and her own eyes closed in victory as a pair of strong, suntanned hands came out of the darkness from behind and lean fingers gently clasped her bare shoulders. She was drawn slowly back until she was pressed flush against the hardness of a tall male frame. Strong, muscular arms went possessively around her waist, and an almost imperceptible movement of his powerful right shoulder urged her head to drop backward against its firm support.
A deep, masculine voice said softly just above her ear, “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
Ten
HER MUSICAL LAUGHTER FILLED the silent sanctuary as Sabella slowly turned in Burt’s embrace. She tipped her head back and lifted her hands to the broad expanse of his chest.
“You’re a liar, Burt Burnett,” she softly accused, gazing directly into his flashing silver eyes, “and here in this holy chapel, of all places.”
“Am I?” he said, his gaze locked with hers, his hands spanning her narrow waist.
“Yes. You knew very well that I would come.” She smiled engagingly at him and softly added, “Just as I knew you would be here waiting.”
Burt smiled, too.
“Kiss me,” he whispered, his lips lowering to hers until they were almost—but not quite—touching. Again he said, “Kiss me. Kiss me, Sabella Rios.”
Burt kissed Sabella with a surprisingly slow, sweet tenderness that left her half stunned and speechless. When the devastatingly gentle, caring kiss ended, his lips, warm and smooth, stayed on hers. His breath became hers as he murmured into her mouth, “You’re very beautiful. You look like an angel who belongs here in this hallowed place. Are you, Sabella? Are you an angel?”
“I’m no angel,” she warned, her lips brushing his. “Far, far from it.”
“Thank God,” he said.
And he kissed her again.
In the darkened old chapel, Burt stood with his back against the thick adobe wall, his feet apart. His hands cupping Sabella’s hips, he drew her to him, and pressing her soft, slender curves to his tall, solid frame, he kissed her through several breaths.
Minutes passed as they kissed hotly until finally Sabella tore her mouth from his.
“Please,” she whispered breathlessly, her lips against Burt’s tanned throat, “you must stop. Don’t kiss me anymore. If you do, I shall surely faint.”
“Just one more,” Burt murmured against her sweetly scented silken hair. “One more little kiss. Then I’ll stop.”
He didn’t wait for permission. He placed both hands in her hair, tangling the long luxuriant locks around his fingers and urging her head back. He looked at her gleaming lips for a long moment before he bent his head and kissed her.
Knowing this was to be the last she would give him tonight, Burt wanted a special kiss—a long, passionate kiss he could savor through the sleepless hours that surely awaited him.
He began the kiss slowly, lightly, barely pressing his closed lips to the left corner of Sabella’s mouth. Then he rained a shower of soft, brief little kisses back and forth over her parted lips until her lips were sweetly and spontaneously responding: clinging, plucking, attempting to fully capture his.
Burt teased her.
He drew her soft bottom lip into his mouth and gently sucked it. Then the top one. He tormented her further by nibbling on her lips in a prolonged prelude to the coming kiss. Throughout the deliberate dallying, he whispered to her that all he ever wanted to do, now and for always, was to kiss her.
Flustered, her entire body tingling, Sabella warned herself about the dangers of standing in the darkness with this handsome, hedonistic man. The way he looked at her. The inflection of his voice. The flash of his smile. Hard to resist. The mastery of his heated lips. The mystery in his smokey eyes. Impossible not to feel their effects.
Burt ran his tongue along the seam of Sabella’s lips and over her teeth. Sabella shivered. At the same time, she reminded herself that she hated Burt Burnett’s arrogance in assuming she would hold still for this conscious dawdling, this intentional trifling with her lips as though she belonged to him.
But more than his arrogance she hated the scary, hot-cold sensations that surged through her as his mouth toyed and played with hers.
His smoldering gray eyes slowly closing, Burt wrapped lean fingers around the delicate nape of Sabella’s neck beneath the heavy blond hair. His other hand touched her waist, moved to the gentle flare of her hip, stayed for a second, then slid down and around the curve of her buttocks.
Sabella struggled in silent protest to the unauthorized liberty. But not for long. Burt’s lips stopped their teasing and claimed hers in a hot, commanding kiss. His tongue thrust brazenly into her open mouth, touched her tongue, and stroked it sensuously. Sabella felt her knees buckle. She would have fallen if not for the fact that Burt held her fast in his powerful arms.
While his lips and tongue did magical things to the sensitive insides of her mouth, Sabella became aware that her breasts had swelled and were flattened against the hard muscles of Burt’s chest. Even more alarming, his spread hand was firmly cupping her bottom and he was pressing her pelvis to meet the slow, rhythmic thrusting of his own.
Horrified, Sabella nonetheless allowed this new intimacy to continue for another moment. She had no choice. She had to make Burt Burnett desire her so that he would want to see her again. Would have to see her again.
So she remained pliant and receptive in his arms until she was satisfied he was on fire for her. Then she pushed anxiously on Burt’s chest and struggled to free herself from his suffocating embrace. Burt’s lips reluctantly released hers. Breathing hard, his chest heaving, he let his head fall back against the wall and closed his eyes.
“Burt, I have to go,” Sabella whispered, laying her head on his chest. Against her cheek she felt the rapid, heavy beating of his heart and was half frightened at the depth of the passion she had stirred in him. “I must leave.”
“Baby, no,” Burt groaned. “Don’t go. You just got here.”
“My chaperon … she’ll be worried.”
“No, she won’t,” he argued. “She’s sound asleep. She’ll never know. Stay with me, sweetheart.” His arms tightened around her.
“I can’t.” Sabella lifted her head, looking up at him. His eyes were closed as though he were in pain, his head turned to one side, a muscle throbbing in his jaw. “I will meet you tomorrow,” she whispered comfortingly.
Burt’s eyes opened. His strong arms and clasping hands still pressing her to the granite hardness of his tall, tense body, he said, fighting for breath, “There’s a … place a half … mile south of the village. It’s called The Point.”
“I know where it is. Is it safe for us to meet there?”
Burt swallowed hard, lifting his head. “At dawn it is.”
“I’ll be there,” she promised.
“You better be,” he said, then finally an infectious grin crinkled the corners of his sultry gray eyes.
“Where will we go?” Sabella asked, squirming to be free of his encircling arms.
“I know the perfect spot,” he said. She nodded and he added, “Will you kiss me good morning the way you just kissed me good night?”
“Better,” she promised.
Burt hugged her to him one last time, then released her. He stayed where he was as she danced out of reach, yanked open the heavy carved door, and hurried outside, leaving him dazed, confused, and aroused.
And totally enchanted.
Sabella hurried through the large, moon-dappled churchyard. Half afraid Burt would catch up and start kissing her again, and half afraid she would let him, she didn’t dare slow her pace until she had left the mission, the manicured grounds, and the amorous Burt Burnett behind.
Only then did she begin to relax. Soon she began to smile. Satisfied with the evening’s success, she strolled leisurely back toward the Inn of the Swallows.
The little village was quiet at this late hour, the streets nearly deserted. All was still and peaceful, a warm beautiful spring night in coastal Southern California.
The scent of the sea was carried on the rising night breezes and below the cliffs, the dark waters of an endless ocean glinted silver in the bright moonlight. The faint sound of hauntingly romantic guitar music drifted from a walled courtyard of a nearby dwelling. Blooming bougainvillea covered the home’s high adobe walls and sweetened the sea-scented air.
Farther down Camino Capistrano, the village’s main thoroughfare, a loud shout of male laughter suddenly shattered the nighttime stillness. The loud laughter came from the Balboa Saloon two blocks away. As Sabella drew nearer to the bar’s swinging batwing doors, she heard the clink of glasses, the rattle of poker chips, the low drone of men’s voices, and the shrill laughter of a woman.
She was less than half a block from the tavern when a tall, spare man stepped through the swinging doors and out onto the wooden sidewalk. He struck a match with his thumb, lifted it to a thin brown cigar between his teeth, and the tiny orange flame lighted his face.
Sabella stopped short.
An unsmiling, sinister-looking man dressed entirely in black, he was Latin with a gaunt, sunken-cheeked face, cold black eyes, a drooping black mustache, and a whiplash scar on his right jaw. The newly lit cigar dangling from his lips, the Mexican lifted a booted foot up to the hitching rail and pulled a dark trouser leg up a few inches.
A black leather scabbard was strapped to his hairy calf. The Mexican flicked a knife out of the leg scabbard. The long blade glinted menacingly in the moonlight. Smoke drifting up into his narrowed black eyes, the Mexican lowered his foot to the wooden sidewalk and began casually cleaning his fingernails with the knife blade’s tip.
Making a face, Sabella automatically began backing away. The Inn of the Swallows was located on the other side of the saloon. She shook her head, back-tracked and ducked in between two buildings, choosing to walk down the dark, narrow alley rather than risk an unpleasant encounter with the man standing before the Balboa Saloon with a long-bladed knife in his hand.
She hurried through the alley, circled around behind the inn, went quickly inside, and climbed the back stairs. She slipped silently into the second-floor suite. Careful not to awaken Carmelita Rivera sleeping soundly in the adjoining room, Sabella undressed in the darkness.
Naked, she pulled a batiste nightgown over her head, raised her arms and let the gown’s soft fabric whisper down over her tall, slender body and fall to her knees.
The Mexican already forgotten, she got into bed and lay awake for the better part of an hour, painstakingly reviewing the tension-charged events of the past week.
So far, all had gone pretty much as expected.
Only one week after seeing her for the first time, Burt Burnett desired her, had slipped away early from his fiancée to meet her. Already he was edging dangerously close to falling into the trap she had cautiously set for him.
Plotting her strategy with the deliberation of a battlefield commander, Sabella lay in bed and pondered her next crucial moves. She would, she knew, be walking a tightrope for the next few days and weeks. It was absolutely necessary that she exercise sound judgment in handling Burt Burnett.
If she played her hand very carefully and very wisely, within a month Burton Burnett would come to the decision that the only honorable thing to do would be to break his engagement to Gena de Temple.
Sabella sighed and stretched in the darkness like a great cat. She was pleased with the timetable she had laid out well in advance of coming to California. She had figured on it taking two months from the day she arrived in San Juan Capistrano until Burt Burnett realized he couldn’t live without her. And that was before she had known he was engaged to another.
She had now been in Capistrano three weeks. Unless she missed her guess, it wouldn’t take more than another full week, perhaps two, before he was falling in love with her. Sabella’s dark eyes flashed.
Soon he would propose.
She wouldn’t accept his proposal of marriage right away. She’d let him worry and wonder for a while. But not for long. The small sum of money that had taken her years to save would last only a few months. She had to become his wife before her meager funds ran out. Besides, waiting was dangerous. The risk too great that she would be found out.
By summer’s end she would exchange the holy vows of matrimony with Mr. Burton J. Burnett and then … then …
Sabella’s dark eyes narrowed with cold, cunning purpose.
Then all her carefully laid plans for the greedy, thieving, powerful Burnett family would become reality!
Shivering involuntarily with a mixture of dread and excitement at what she would have to go through before it was finished, Sabella solemnly vowed—as she had at least a thousand times in the past—to make the Burnett men pay for their sins.
Both Burnett men.
What better payment could be extracted from the old man than for him to lose his idolized only son. And to her of all people!
The same could be said for the old man’s arrogant son. What more fitting retribution than to take his only son from him!
The son—their son, hers and Burton Burnett’s—who would be the next and only heir to Lindo Vista.
Eleven
SABELLA WASN’T THE ONLY one who had plans.
Burt had a few of his own. But his had nothing to do with long-term commitment or marriage. At least not marriage to Sabella Rios.
He stayed on at the mission after Sabella had gone.
He had to. He had no choice.
What she had done to him in the seductive darkness had left him with a temporary physical condition which made it embarrassingly hard to follow her.
So Burt stood there where she’d left him, sagging against the mission wall, waiting for his hot, heavy blood to cool. And for his rapid heartbeat to quit slamming forcefully against his ribs. And most importantly for the throbbing erection straining the tight confines of his navy linen trousers to go away.
Teeth gritted, a vein pulsing in his high forehead, Burt stood there in that house of God, feeling like the very devil. All because of a woman.
A woman he knew absolutely nothing about. A mysterious blond beauty who could make him weak in the knees just by touching him or saying his name. He had no idea who she was, where she had come from, or what she wanted from him.
But he knew what he wanted from her. And the sooner he got it, the sooner he would get her out of his system and put an end to this risky business. His only interest in the beautiful, enigmatic Sabella Rios was physical. He wanted her. He was hot for her. Fever hot. Burning up with desire. He had a hunch it was pretty much the same with her.
She had come to Capistrano with her duenna, saw him at the engagement party, their eyes had met and held. He was instantly attracted. She was instantly attracted. Now she was sneaking out at night, riski
ng getting caught, solely to see him. Her purpose in coming, he felt certain, was not for the stimulation of his clever conversation. They hadn’t said a dozen words to each other.
Unless he missed his guess, she was after the same thing he was after. A few stolen hours of forbidden passion. A couple of rollicking rolls in the old hay with a hot-blooded stranger who had as much, if not more, to lose as she did should they be found out. Since that was the case, surely he would be successful in seducing her—or was it vice versa?—within the next few days. Or nights. He would make love to her until they’d both had their fill and then that would be that. Nobody the wiser. Everybody happy. It’s been great fun. No hard feelings. Bye, bye, baby. Adios, querida.
The blond temptress would move on to her next adventure and he would marry Gena de Temple and be a devoted, faithful, content husband.
Burt finally pushed away from the wall and exited the chapel. Whistling a mellow love song, he walked through the silent churchyard in the moonlight. He momentarily considered walking down to the Balboa Saloon for a nightcap, but decided against it.
Instead he went directly to the nearby Mission Inn. There in the Spanish wing of the grand hotel, on the very top floor, the Burnett family maintained a suite. A lavish suite kept always at the ready. The suite was a necessary convenience. Like his father before him, Burt stayed at the inn when he didn’t feel like making the six-mile trek home to the ranch.
Burt walked unhurriedly through the hotel’s well-tended grounds where Spanish garrison cannons, their huge steel barrels gleaming in the moonlight, stood harmless and quiet beneath the towering oaks. Lemon and orange trees, in full bloom, lined wide stone walkways leading up to the imposing inn on the cliffs.
Burt reached the inn’s front entrance, climbed the stone steps, and went inside.
When he walked into the spacious, high-ceilinged lobby, he glanced at the open doorway of the hotel’s little chapel. Inside the tiny chamber diffused moonlight spilled through a half dozen Tiffany stained-glass windows, softly illuminating a massive, seventeenth-century gold-leaf alter brought from Mexico.