He grabbed her and forced her around until she was facing him again. When he let go, the silk robe gaped open and slipped off one shoulder. Seething with fury, she ignored it, but he couldn't. His gaze dropped to the edge of her bodice, to the tempting flesh above the black lace.
"I'm going to say this once and only once," he said when he was able to think again. "I've never slept with anyone in this damn town. The night I left you, I went straight back to the ranch, and I was there until you saw me on the street the next day."
"Are you telling me my son is a liar?"
"No. I'm telling you your son has no idea why I stopped and told that woman where to find me. It's business."
"Business."
"I'm asking you to trust me on this, Rachel. I'm asking you to believe me. If I could tell you what's happening, I would, but I can't. Not yet. Maybe not ever."
She wanted to believe him—he could see it in her eyes. After what she had been through with Stuart McKenna, he didn't blame her for her anger and suspicion, but he hoped like hell he could convince her that she was wrong about him.
"Rachel?" He reached for her hand.
"You have to go," she whispered. "Ty will be back—"
"I'm not going anywhere until you tell me you believe me."
She tried to pull her hand away; he refused to let go. Ragged breaths set her breasts rising and falling temptingly above her corset. Struggling to put her thoughts into words, she closed her eyes.
"I've done a lot of thinking, and I've decided it would be best for Ty, and for me, if you stopped coming around," she said.
He hadn't expected this from her. Not Rachel. Not his Miss Rachel. He'd thought that no matter what anyone said about him, no matter what he had done, she would always be on his side.
He slowly looked her up and down. "Wearing black again? The McKennas have gotten to you, haven't they?"
"Not at all," she said defensively. "Tonight is Robert's homecoming—I'm wearing black so that Loretta won't have to apologize for me."
"Robert McKenna is back? When did he get home?"
"Why?"
Noticing that she'd immediately questioned his sudden interest, he told himself to tread carefully. "It explains your change of heart," he told her. "How long will he be around?"
"I have no idea." Rachel reached out and fingered the hairbrush on her dressing table. She picked it up, turned it over, set it down.
As if suddenly wary of his tine of questioning, she shot back, "It's no concern of yours, is it?"
"Everything about you is my concern."
"I've thought a lot about what happened the other night, and I want to stop all this nonsense before it goes any further."
"Always the sensible Miss Rachel, no matter what you might feel." Lane tried to pull her into his embrace, but she balked and stood her ground.
"As I said before, Ty is already becoming too attached to you. I have to think of him."
"At the cost of your own feelings?"
"He's my son. We'll have each other long after you've ridden out of our lives. I won't see him hurt."
The words gave him pause. She was right: Ty already looked up to him. Rachel was watching him closely now, expecting him to walk out of her life simply because she'd requested it of him.
A better man might have done what she wanted, but he had never claimed to be a better man. His strength was no match for hers. Lane slipped his hands from her shoulders to her upper arms and pulled her close, imprisoning her against him. He stared down at her upturned face, the defiant set of her lips, the anger burning in her eyes.
"'Nonsense'? There's still unfinished business between us, Rachel. Do you think you can ask me to walk away now and forget about it?"
"What are you talking about?" she whispered.
"I'm talking about this." His mouth fused with hers, his tongue hungrily forced her lips open. She responded by pushing her open palms against him, but he ignored her halfhearted attempt to break free and continued to plunder her mouth with a searing kiss until her resistance ebbed.
For a long, heart-stopping moment he continued to drown in the taste and smell of her, the heady scent of rose water, the hush of the fabric of her robe as she shifted in his arms. He wanted to consume her, to draw her into him. He pressed her closer. A low moan of protest escaped her even as she strained into him, her mouth seeking, undeniably eager beneath his. Without breaking the kiss, he let go of her arms and felt her sag against him.
In one smooth motion, Lane cupped one arm beneath her knees and lifted her. Reflexively, Rachel's arms went around his neck as he stepped over to her bed. When he lowered her to the edge of the coverlet and tore his mouth from hers, they were both breathing raggedly. Rachel's eyes were dark with passion as she stared up at him from beneath thick, dark lashes. They fought for breath. Her hair had come undone. Long tendrils fell from her thick topknot to trail down over her shoulders. Her hand fluttered to the top of her corset and rested lightly against her breasts. Like ripe berries, her nipples stood out in tempting relief against the shimmering material.
Inches away, he stared down into her eyes, his arousal an aching reminder of what she did to him. "You can't deny there is something between us any more than I can."
She squirmed, but found no escape. "Are you crazy?"
"Crazy for thinking there might be something between us even though you were my schoolmarm and I'm nothing but a no-account gunslinger?"
"That's not it at all—"
"That's part of it and you know it, Rachel. I don't know what's happening here any more than you do, but at least I'm willing to admit that something's going on inside me that I can't seem to control. And I think it's happening to you, too. Can't you be honest with yourself, Rachel? Are you ever going to face up to your feelings?"
Awaiting an answer, he nipped at her lips with his teeth while he teased the pulse point at her throat with his thumb. She shivered beneath him and clutched at the fabric of his shirt.
He took her silence for acceptance and dipped his head to kiss her throat, then traced the tip of his tongue to her collarbone. He felt her heartbeat begin to trip to breakneck speed as he cupped her breast.
"Kiss me back, Rachel. Let yourself go."
With a sigh of surrender, she ran her trembling hands up the front of his shirt and then reached around his neck and pulling his head toward hers, she kissed him long and thoroughly. He pressed closer and subtly shifted his hard arousal against her mound.
Rachel gasped. He pressed his hips into her and sent another shock wave through her. She moaned and reached up, rasping her fingers through his hair, forcing his mouth hard against hers. She urged him on with her tongue.
He was rock-hard, his hips undulating as he rubbed against her, responding to her kiss, her every movement, her ragged breathing hot against his cheek.
"You're so damn beautiful, Rachel," he whispered against her throat. "You've always been so beautiful." His words rushed out on a sigh as he lowered his lips to the swell of her breasts.
She arched beneath him, gasping aloud as he suckled her through the delicate silk. He was breathing hard, drawing on her with his mouth as his hands traced the curvature of her hips. He held her immobile, positioning her beneath him.
"Lane, stop… please—"
He heard her through a haze of passion and dropped his forehead to her breasts.
"This is one hell of a time to ask me to stop."
She looked like a fallen angel with her hair a dark nimbus against the coverlet, her lips swollen from his kiss. What he saw in her eyes sobered him. She looked dazed and confused, wary and unwilling to believe she held any power over him at all.
He captured her hand and drew it down between them, forcing her to cup his erection, to measure the pulsating quickening that strained against the rough fabric of his pants.
"I can't fake that, Rachel."
She flushed from the neck up and closed her eyes. "Please don't make a fool of me, Lane. I couldn't bear it."
He rolled to a sitting position and drew her up with him, then reached out and raked his fingers through her hair, arranging it over her shoulders, pulling a tendril across her breast.
"You look so beautiful with your hair down."
She licked her lips as her glance shot to the door and back. "Lane, please leave. They'll be home any minute."
He stood up, aching to hold her, aching to possess her. Until this moment he'd believed his heart was too hardened for the riot of feelings he was experiencing.
"Can you honestly tell me you don't ever want to see me again?" he asked.
Slowly, she blinked once, then twice, as if coming out of a trance. Rachel brushed her hair back off her cheek and tried to pull her wrapper up over her shoulder. "Please, I need some time to think…"
He reached around her to lift his hat off the bed.
"Go to your party, Rachel. I won't push you. When you're willing to admit you can't fight this thing between us any more than I can, you know where I'll be."
He had done all he could. There was nothing else he could say. Turning away from her, he shoved his hat on and hit the stairs at a fast clip. When he reached the first floor, he heard Ty's childish voice and then Delphie's reply as they came up the front walk. Unwilling to face them, Lane headed down the hall in the opposite direction, then slipped through the kitchen and out the back, where he had left Shield.
His heart was still careening out of control when he mounted up. As he rode away, he glanced over his shoulder. There was no sign of her in the bedroom window, only the lace curtain luffing in the breeze. He didn't really expect to see her there, or hear her call his name, but he looked back anyway. She needed time to think about what he had said, what he had forced her to feel. If she truly wanted him out of her life, so be it. For now, he would leave her to make up her mind while he went about his business, knowing full well that a woman as sensible as Rachel Albright McKenna wasn't about to make a snap decision about anything.
By evening it was unseasonably warm. Not even a hint of breeze slipped through the wide expanse of open bay windows that fronted the elegant Queen Anne mansion Loretta and Stuart McKenna had remodeled from the original homestead on the Mountain Shadows Ranch. Forty guests from all over the state were crowded cheek to jowl on side chairs lined up facing the far end of the music room, where Mary Margaret stood reciting her latest work of poetry.
Rachel, seated next to Robert McKenna in the front row, heartily wished she had chosen a place in the back so that she could have slipped out unnoticed. As it was, she was trapped, her downcast eyes pinned on the black beaded fan she held in a death grip. Not until one of the thin ivory ribs of the fan snapped did she force herself to relax.
Not four feet away, Mary Margaret stood wrapped in yards of black silk trimmed in blood red lace, her elbow-length strawberry-blond hair flowing over her shoulders like a rippling cape. She held her hands clasped beneath her ample bosom with her eyes rolled up in her head as if she were gazing at a host of hovering celestials. Although Mary Margaret had not mentioned Lane by name, he was obviously the subject of the piece she was reciting.
"He moves through the day as well as the night
like a shadow, a specter shrouded in black
intending to frighten,
The wary, the unsuspecting, the weak of heart
or any who might swoon with a start
at the mere sight of him."
Rachel didn't dare glance over at Loretta, who was seated in front of a huge urn of hothouse flowers, facing the gathering of her friends. She didn't have to. She could feel the barely suppressed anger rolling off her mother-in-law in waves. The woman's face was afire, her lips quivering as she tried to keep them pressed tight together. Rachel didn't envy Mary Margaret what was sure to be her fate when the last of the guests had departed.
"His gun is hard, cold metal, shining, deadly,
sheathed, but ready to kill, to maim.
He has made for himself a name
like a highwayman of old, while stealing gold
His hands are warm, his heart is cold."
Rachel felt Robert shift uncomfortably on the chair beside her. They had been sitting for the better part of an hour, captive in the stuffy room. He leaned closer and whispered in her ear, "Is it my imagination, or do you suppose Mother is about to erupt like a volcano?"
From beneath lowered lashes, Rachel snuck a glance over at Loretta. At the very least, the woman appeared to be on the verge of a stroke, staring sightless over the heads of the crowd. Mary Margaret's voice had risen an octave. The dark subject of her poem was riding up to the door of his lady love. There, in a blaze of gunfire, he died in her arms with a bullet lodged "near his reckless heart."
The recital ended in a crescendo as Mary Margaret, howling the words "reckless hearrrrt," raised herself on tiptoe and stretched her arms toward the ceiling so that her hands were waving back and forth above her head. She swayed as if buffeted by gale-force winds, her fingers wriggling to and fro.
"Good God," Robert whispered. He began clapping exuberantly and jumped to his feet, then swiftly closed the distance to his spinster aunt. He threw his arms around her, a move as effective as tossing a bucket of water, thus ending the high-pitched trilling. He began thumping her on the back in congratulation.
Then, with his arm about her shoulders, he turned to face the stunned audience and begged, "Please, a round of applause for my aunt's wonderful dramatic interpretation of her own piece. What a welcome! I can't think of a more pleasant interlude. Now, I'm certain Mother would love to have all of you move into the dining room for dessert and champagne."
Rachel watched as her brother-in-law escorted Mary Margaret to the piano stool. Gently patting her shoulders, he calmed her until the bright red flush across her cheeks had subsided. Rachel could barely hear him speaking to his aunt in hushed tones, but caught bits of phrases: "Very innovative"… "moving presentation"… "quite daring."
When she was able to do so without losing her composure, Rachel glanced over her shoulder at the thinning crowd. More than one of the women had hidden the lower half of her face behind an open fan while the men were straining not to burst into gales of laughter. Stuart Senior had already fled the room. Rachel suspected he was fortifying himself with brandy and a cigar in the library.
When the gallery was cleared of all but Mary Margaret, Robert, Rachel and Loretta, the elder woman finally stood. She moved across the room and, shaking with rage, leaned over Mary Margaret. Her voice went up an octave with every word. "What in the world were you thinking?"
Like someone coming out of a deep trance, Mary Margaret shuddered and stared up at Loretta as if trying to place her.
Finally, penitently, she asked, "What do you mean, Sister?"
"I mean what are you trying to do to me? You know the talk that has been going around this week regarding Rachel and that… that… that gunfighter."
Robert looked up quickly, caught Rachel's eye and frowned in question. She mouthed the words "I'll tell you later" and started to rise, hoping to slip out of the room unnoticed. Copious hothouse flowers gave off such a heady, sweet smell that her head was pounding unmercifully.
"There's nothing wrong with what I wrote," Mary Margaret sniffed. "You would think Lane Cassidy was calling on me, not Rachel, the way you are acting. I only wrote a poem about a fictitious gunfighter. At least I'm not entertaining one."
Unable to ignore the jealous chord of envy in Mary Margaret's tone, Rachel felt even more uncomfortable. When the woman burst into tears, Loretta turned on Rachel before she could escape.
"I told you no good would come of your allowing that man to hang around. Now look what you've done."
Halting halfway to the door, Rachel lifted the heavy skirt of her black bombazine gown and turned back. "I will not let you blame this on me."
She glanced over at Mary Margaret, who was bent over the piano, her elbows resting on the lid that covered the keys, her face buried in her hands
as she sobbed brokenheartedly. Robert remained behind his aunt, but he was paying her little attention. Instead, he adjusted the tips of his wing collar and then his silk necktie as he inspected his reflection in the gilt-edged mirror above the marble fireplace.
"If you don't mind, I have a splitting headache. I'd like to step outside for some air," Rachel told them.
"I'll go with you." Robert quickly stepped away from his aunt. Outfitted in a country suit of fine wool check, he crossed the room, moving with a graceful, yet commanding, stride. His hair was chestnut brown tinted with streaks of auburn. Sporting a new, neatly trimmed mustache, he exuded a level of polished elegance and sophistication that his mother never quite achieved, no matter how hard she tried.
When he reached Rachel's side, he took her by the elbow and ushered her out the front doors, which were standing wide open. Here and there couples strolled along the wide veranda, while others gathered in small groups to chat and enjoy champagne and chocolates.
"Let's go out into the garden," he suggested. "There seem to be a few interesting details of life in Last Chance that you conveniently omitted from our dinner conversation."
She smiled up at him, perfectly at ease with the suggestion. They had been friends since the night Stuart had taken her home to meet his parents. Although he was the younger of the two, in many ways Robert had always seemed older than Stuart. He had a good head for business and the poise it took to see it through. Stuart had balked at working the cattle ranch with his father, and to further irritate Stuart Senior, he'd become sheriff of Last Chance. Although Robert had once confided in her that he had no notion of ever returning to run Mountain Shadows, he had convinced his father that by starting a lucrative import/ export business in New Orleans, he would be able to diversify their funds, which he had done.
Chamber music floated on night air heavily laced with the scent of jasmine. As they walked arm in arm through Loretta's extensive gardens, they remained silent for a time, so comfortable with each other that there was no need for idle chatter.
Last Chance Page 12