by Sandra Brown
“Lyon was thoughtful enough to pave a path to the river to accommodate the wheelchair when I became too infirm to walk down there. Would the bank of the river be a good setting?” the general asked.
“Yes! Perfect.”
“Good. Lyon will take you down there after dinner, and you can check it out.”
Chapter Three
I’m sure Lyon has other things to do,” Andy mumbled into her plate, not daring to look at the man across the table from her.
“Not a thing,” he said.
Her fork clattered onto the china. She strove to keep her voice calm. “It would be much more practical to see things in the daylight,” she said to the general, still not acknowledging that Lyon had consented to his father’s suggestion.
“No doubt. But you’ve been cooped up in the house all day and haven’t even looked around the grounds. The walk will do you good. Now finish your apple pie so you can get started.”
She looked at Lyon, hoping that he would support her, but he looked like the proverbial cat who had swallowed the canary. Couldn’t he have thought up an excuse why he couldn’t walk with her? She speared one of the fat apple slices in Gracie’s pie as she glowered at him. Of course he could have. He was only looking forward to another opportunity to ridicule her. This time he would be disappointed. She wasn’t going to rise to the bait, no matter how provoking he became.
“Lyon, on your way out would you please ask Gracie to bring me some warm milk in my room?” the general asked. “I’m very tired tonight.”
Andy instantly forgot her problems with Lyon and turned her concerned attention to the man who had brought her to this house in the first place.
“Are you not feeling well, Dad?” Lyon asked. “Should I call Dr. Baker?”
“No, no. I’m not feeling anything but eighty-some-odd years old. I’m going to bed now and get a good night’s sleep. I want to look my best when Andy interviews me.” He winked at her again. Impulsively she got up and, leaning over his wheelchair, kissed him on the cheek.
“Goodnight, General Ratliff.”
“Forget the warm milk, Lyon, I think I can go right to sleep now.” He waved good night and then steered his chair out of the room.
“Can he … do … for himself? See to his needs?” she asked softly.
Lyon’s sigh was sad and resigned. “Yes.” He rubbed the back of his neck with a weary hand. “He insists that he still dress and undress himself, though I know it exhausts him. He’s proud. He wouldn’t even agree to a male nurse.” His look was bleak as he stared at the empty doorway through which his father had just passed, and Andy knew that the son loved the father and vice versa. After a moment he shook his head slightly and looked down at her. “Are you finished with your pie?”
She pinched off one last morsel of the fluted crust and popped it into her mouth. “Delicious,” she exclaimed, daintily flicking her tongue across the tips of her fingers to rid them of crumbs. When all had been thoroughly cleaned, she looked up at him smilingly.
The breath caught in her throat and her smile dissolved into the partially opened lips of a woman about to be kissed. Lyon stared at her mouth with single-minded concentration, and it was impossible not to respond to his heated gaze. She felt herself gravitating toward him. His magnetism was as potent as the moon’s pull on the tide, and it was as futile to resist.
“I think you missed some,” he said hoarsely. Lifting her hand to his mouth, he drew her fingers toward his lips.
My God, her mind screamed. If he does it, I’ll die. Yet at that moment she couldn’t think of anything more electrifying than having his tongue bathe each of her fingertips with gentle, wet strokes.
His eyes locked onto hers and refused to let go. But instead of licking her fingertips, he blew on them gently until the tiny flakes of pastry gave up their tenuous hold.
Her heart knocked painfully against her ribs. What little breath had been momentarily trapped in her throat was expelled on a shuddering sigh. Then it was impossible to draw any more in, and her lungs constricted against the emptiness. She only hoped she had been able to stifle the soft moan that had pressed against her vocal cords before it could be uttered.
“Lyon, Andy, are you finished?” He dropped her hand and took a step backward as Gracie pushed her way through the swinging door that connected the dining room to the kitchen. “Would you like your coffee on the patio?”
“We’re going to walk down to the river,” he answered with more calm than Andy could have mustered at that moment. “Why don’t you have it waiting for us when we get back? I don’t know how long we’ll be, so go on to bed if you want.”
“I’ll wash up these dishes and check on General Ratliff,” Gracie said. “Your coffee will be waiting for you on the patio, and if I don’t see you later, good night.”
“Good night, Gracie,” Lyon said.
“Good night and thank you for the delicious dinner,” Andy said, hoping the housekeeper wouldn’t notice her high color.
“You’re welcome. Now you two scoot out of my way. Get on with your walk.”
Lyon led the way through Gracie’s domain, the kitchen. It was enormous, and stainless-steel, commercial-sized appliances lined the walls.
“Does she cook for all your hands in here?” Andy knew that the Ratliff ranch was like a small city. Dozens of cowboys and their families lived within its boundaries.
“For years she cooked for the single men who live in the bunkhouse. He indicated a dormitory-looking building to the left as they went through the patio door. “But when Dad got so ill, I hired a cook for that kitchen. Gracie’s main responsibility now is to look after Dad when I’m not around.”
“You said this morning that she’d been here longer than you.”
“Yes, she came to this house with Mom and Dad when it was built. Mom died when I was ten. Gracie’s seen to me ever since.”
“What was your mother like?” They were walking down the path toward the river, having skirted the pool and a few of the many outbuildings that made up the compound. Andy noted that the shrubbery Mr. Houghton had planted looked very well. An earthy, mossy smell from the freshly turned and dampened soil permeated the night air.
It was a beautiful night. The crescent moon looked like a prop for a stage play, perfectly suspended over the distant hills. A southern breeze lifted the hair away from Andy’s face as she walked with Lyon under the canopy of pecan and live oak branches.
“It’s sad, but I remember incidents rather than the person. My impressions of Mom are gentleness, kindness, warmth. But maybe all children think of their mothers that way.” He smiled, and his teeth shone even in the deepening shadows. “I remember that she always smelled a particular way. I’m not sure I’ve ever smelled that perfume before or since, but I’d know her by that fragrance even now. Her name was Rosemary.”
“Yes, I read that today in some of the clippings. Your father was said to have been very diligent during the war about writing home to her. They must have been very close.”
“They were. Rarely so.” The bitterness in his voice couldn’t be masked, and he quickly changed the subject. “What about your parents?”
“Mother lives in Indianapolis. Father died several years ago.”
“What did he do?”
“He was a journalist. He was quite popular in the area. His column was syndicated in several newspapers.”
“So your interest in journalism began at an early age.”
Was that his first attempt to get a rise out of her? “Yes, I guess so,” she answered smoothly.
The gentle roar of the river caught her attention, and she realized that they had arrived at the grassy banks that sloped downward. She peered into the swirling clear waters that churned over limestone boulders in the riverbed. “Oh, Lyon, it’s lovely,” she cried excitedly.
“You like it?”
“It’s wonderful! The water looks so clear.”
“In the daytime you can see that it is. It washes over and filters through miles
of limestone. This is some of the purest water in the state.”
“And the trees. They’re beautiful,” she said, tilting her head back to look through the delicate branches of the cypress at a starry sky. “You love it, don’t you? This land.”
“Yes. I suppose some would have thought that I’d go in for a military career like my father. But he had retired from the Army before I was old enough to realize he was ever anything but a rancher. We’ve lived here all my life. I did my stint in Nam, but went into the Army hoping no one would connect me with my famous father. Soldiering wasn’t for me.”
“You ranch.”
“I ranch. I also own some commercial real estate. But this is what I love,” he said, sweeping his arms wide to encompass the landscape.
“It’s a shame there’s only the two of you to share it.” She made the comment without thinking and regretted it the moment she said it. It was too much to ask that he would overlook it.
“If you wanted to ask why I’ve never married, why didn’t you just come right out with it, Ms. Malone? I’d never expect you to mince words.”
“I didn’t—”
“For your information,” he said tightly, “I was married. The debacle lasted four miserable years. When she got bored with the ranch, the house, my father, and me, she left, bag and baggage. I never saw her again. She got a divorce through Uncle Sam’s postal service and Alexander Graham Bell’s marvelous invention.”
“And now you take out your hatred for her on the rest of the female population.” She had been leaning against the trunk of the cypress. Now she pushed herself angrily erect.
“No. You have to have some feelings for someone before you can hate him. Whatever feelings I had for her died the moment she left. Let’s just say that I distrust the female of the species.”
“Then you’ll go down as a confirmed old bachelor?”
“Most definitely.”
“Surely the ladies in Kerrville aren’t going to stand for that,” she said provocatively, remembering the motel clerk’s interest when Lyon had picked her up. “Don’t they hound you to find yourself a suitable mate?”
“Yes. Every mother with a deb has thrown her daughter at me. I’ve been hopefully introduced to every divorcee in town. It was even conveniently arranged that I share a table at a dinner party with a young widow whose husband had been dead less than a month.”
“So you spurn all women.”
He came up from his slouching position against a boulder and took a few steps forward until only a hairsbreadth separated them. “No, I don’t spurn women. I just said that I don’t marry them. I’m plagued—or maybe blessed is a better word—with the same carnal drives as any man over the age of fifteen.”
His words had now taken on a different tone: Gone were the clipped, laconic phrases of a man who had endured the whims of a frivolous woman. In their place were the low-timbred vibrations of a man aroused.
Andy wet her dry, trembling lips and pivoted away from him to look down into the river. “I … I think this will be a good location to shoot the outdoor scenes. Of course, the noise of the water has to be dealt with, but—” Her chattering broke off abruptly when she felt his hands on her shoulders. Large hands. Hard. Strong. Tender. Hot. He turned her around.
“You’ve been dying of curiosity, haven’t you?” His breath was a warm vapor coasting over her face.
“Curiosity?” she squeaked and hated herself for the immature sound. “About what?”
“About me.”
“What about you?”
“About what it’s like to be touched, kissed, by a redneck cowboy. That’s what you thought of me the first time you saw me, didn’t you?”
“No,” she said, untruthfully. Men like him were rare in the circles she ran in. Men like him were rare, period. He was a novelty, but she hadn’t realized she had let him know she thought of him as such.
He went on in a voice that could have melted butter, which was exactly what she felt like. “You didn’t take your returned, unopened letters as a no, so you thought you’d come down here and sweet-talk a dumb hick into letting you interview his father. You thought I’d dissolve like mush when I got a look at your golden eyes and your creamy skin and your silky hair and your sexy body, didn’t you?”
“No!” she cried softly, earnestly. He wasn’t being fair. She recognized the insincerity of his embrace, yet she yearned for a closer one. Even as he mocked her, she craved his touch.
“And the more I insulted you, the more curious you became, until I was getting to you real bad. Do you think I didn’t know you were watching me today? Did you see anything you didn’t like?”
Thankfully, mercifully, her temper flared and she was given a chance to save herself. “You conceited—”
“Brace yourself, Ms. Malone. I’m about to satisfy your curiosity. Among other things.”
Using his size to overpower her, he walked them backward until once again her back was against the cypress tree’s trunk. Deftly, boldly, he unbuttoned the first button of her blouse. Then the second.
She stared directly into his eyes, her chin raised and pointed with disdain. She only hoped he couldn’t feel her treacherous heartbeat. “I’m not going to dignify this by fighting or struggling.”
“Fight or struggle if you like. You won’t stop me. And I don’t give a damn if it’s dignified or not.”
Then his mouth bore down on hers, and the battle was lost before it was ever joined. His lips were firm, but curiously soft as they slanted over hers. He moved them in such a way that hers opened involuntarily before she was aware of it.
For prolonged moments he hesitated, breathing into her mouth, making her ache with anticipation—never dread. Then his tongue glided over her bottom lip, the top one, slipped between them, coaxing her mouth to accept its skillful violation … He swept the interior triumphantly. But suddenly he lifted his head.
His eyes impaled her. His uneven breathing was an echo of hers. Two hearts beat together. He scanned her face. What was he searching for? She looked up at him with a silent plea. Then, as though directed by a master choreographer, his arms closed about her at the same time she locked her hands behind his neck.
When his mouth descended again, hers was open and waiting to receive it. This kiss was no longer motivated by a challenge, but by a mutual hunger that threatened to destroy them should they not appease it. His tongue sampled each nuance of her mouth with a fervent desperation, as though she were some elusive dream that might vanish before he’d had his fill.
He tore his mouth free at last, and she collapsed against him. His lips wandered at random over her face, dropping brief kisses wherever they alit. Her fingers knotted in his hair, holding his head against her as he nuzzled her neck.
“Lyon,” she breathed when his hands came around her rib cage, the heels of them brushing the sides of her breasts. Moving slowly, his hands parted the unbuttoned blouse and covered her breasts with possessive warmth.
He squeezed her gently. Lifting her up, he tested the fullness and found it gratifying. The satin camisole was worn for modesty’s sake beneath the sheer blouse. But it provided no shelter from his seductive caresses, and her nipples responded firmly and proudly to the stroking of his thumbs.
His mouth was at her ear, lazily nipping the lobe with his teeth. “What do you know? I’ve found something about you that isn’t phony.”
If he had slapped her, she couldn’t be more stunned. She grabbed his wrists and pulled his hands away from her, shoving him backward with surprising strength. “Is that all this was to you? An experiment?!” she shouted.
“Wasn’t that all it was to you?” he asked with deliberate, mocking indifference.
“God, you’re disgusting.” She stumbled past him, frantically adjusting her clothing in the night that had suddenly gone dark and cold. She was yanked around by his painful grip on her upper arm. Every inch of his tall body radiated fury.
“Me? I didn’t invade anyone’s home, looking for
secrets and skeletons in the closet.”
“I—”
“My father may have been hoodwinked by you, but not me, sister. I know your type—”
“Stop saying that,” she screamed. “I’m not a type. Can’t you get that through that thick head of yours? I came here to do an interview with your father. I know he’s ill. I’m sensitive to that, but that’s all the more reason I want to remind the American people about him, because he may not be around forever. Why you indicted, convicted, and were ready to hang me before you even met me, I don’t know. But I’m here. And I’ll do my job in spite of you. With or without your cooperation.” She could feel scalding tears clogging her throat and flooding her eyes and was only glad that the darkness obscured them from him. “Finally, don’t touch me again.” She flung off his hand that was like a manacle around her arm.
“You can bet on it,” he said bitingly. “One kiss in the dark doesn’t make you a woman, Ms. Malone. You’re ambitious, shrewd, headstrong. You’re just an imitation of a man living in a female body, without any of the softness or gentleness or kindness that should characterize your sex.”
His words stung. For years she had felt just like the shell he’d described. She protested vehemently. “I’m not. I’m not.”
“You couldn’t prove it by me.”
“I don’t want to.” But she did, and that humiliating fact filled her mouth like brassy-tasting medicine as she stalked back toward the house.
“Did I wake you?” she said into the telephone receiver. The house had been quiet when she arrived back, though Gracie had left the promised coffee on the patio table. It went untouched. Glad that she didn’t have to face anyone, she had made her way upstairs without turning on any lights. She had bathed in the deep, claw-footed bathtub, hoping to wash away the memory of the hour she had spent with Lyon. It would take more than a bath to do that. Still feeling shame and anger, she had pulled on a robe and padded into the hallway to place her call to Les.
“Hell, no. I wish you had. I’m only about halfway to getting stinking drunk. And halfway doesn’t count.”