Eye of the Tiger

by Diana Palmer

  “Beast!” she exclaimed.

  He pursed his lips and studied her with that possessive smile she hated. “Why not marry me? I’m sexy and filthy rich, I can kiss you stupid without half trying, and you’d get half of the colt to boot.”

  Gene and Barnett stared at her as she searched for some graceful way out.

  “You can’t cook,” she declared.

  “You could teach me,” he returned.

  “I’m going to marry Wade,” she announced defiantly.

  “Over my dead body,” he replied fiercely. “You’re not getting yourself tied to that playboy!”

  “Look who’s calling Wade a playboy!” she cried. “And you’re one to talk about him doing it hanging from tree limbs, when you tried it in a hospital room with nurses coming and going all around us!”

  “Eleanor,” he chided, nodding toward their fascinated audience, which now included Mary June, “how could you embarrass me like this?”

  “I couldn’t embarrass you by taking off your clothes in Central Park!”

  He smiled slowly. “I’m game if you are. I’ll rush right out and buy two plane tickets to New York.”

  She threw up her hands and got out of the chair. “I give up.”

  “Marry me, Eleanor, or I’ll hound you day and night,” he threatened.

  She flushed and turned away. “I’m going home.”

  “I’ll drive you.”

  “No, you won’t!” she raged, close to tears. How could he humiliate her like this? She loved him, and he was making some horrible joke out of it.

  He saw the tears and wondered if there could be some deep, lingering passion there, if she still cared for him. She was upset, but she wasn’t unreceptive. He had her on the run. If he played his hand carefully, he might yet wrench her out of Wade’s arms and get her to a minister.

  “If you’re determined, we’ll all go,” Gene said, grinning. “Come on, Barnett.”

  “I won’t ride with him,” Eleanor said, pointing at Keegan.

  Keegan sighed theatrically. “Shoved aside by the woman of my dreams. I’ll perish to death for love of you, Eleanor.”

  “The only thing you’ll perish of is your own cooking,” she said curtly. “I’m going home. Good night.”

  She didn’t say another word to him. She crawled into the back of Gene’s car, and the two older men talked farm business all the way back.

  Once home, Eleanor went straight to bed. And that was the worst thing she could have done. The bed still smelled of Keegan, and it always would. She’d been able to strip off and change the bed linen, but she’d never be able to erase the memories… and they haunted her dreams.

  Chapter Eleven

  If Eleanor thought she’d seen the last of Keegan for a while, she was in for a surprise. When she went down to fix breakfast the next morning, he was sitting in the living room with her father, as relaxed as if he belonged there.

  He looked up as she entered the room and grinned at her. “Good morning, glory,” he teased. “You look pretty in that.”

  “That” referred to her faded blue jeans and a green pullover knit shirt. Eleanor was off duty today and hadn’t expected to find Keegan piled up in the living room like a redheaded snake, just waiting for her.

  Now she felt her face going red as she looked at him, remembering yesterday and how easily she’d succumbed. Keegan saw her flush and smiled even wider.

  “I wasn’t expecting you,” she said helplessly.

  “I figured that,” he replied. “What are we having for breakfast?”

  “Did Mary June’s ankle get worse?” she asked sarcastically.

  “Nope. I just like your biscuits.” He chuckled. “And your sweet company, pretty girl.”

  “She is pretty,” Barnett agreed solemnly. “I never could understand why she stayed single so long.”

  “She was waiting for me, of course,” Keegan declared, leaning back in his chair like a conquering general. “Weren’t you, Ellie?”

  “Don’t call me Ellie,” she grumbled.

  “Okay, honey.”

  She started to protest, then threw up her hands and went to make breakfast.

  Keegan watched her through bacon and eggs and buttered biscuits and homemade apple butter, and she fidgeted helplessly in her chair. After all that had happened between them, she couldn’t be casual about their relationship. She just didn’t understand what he wanted of her.

  “Want to go watch a harness race with me?” he asked Eleanor as she sipped coffee. “Or we could go to the yearling sale at Gainesmore Farm—I saw an Arabian over there that I’d like to bid on.”

  She cocked her head, puzzled. “You know I’m not that smart about horses, although I’m sure you think that’s unspeakable for someone born in Lexington.”

  “Okay,” he relented, “how about a walk in the woods? Or you could get your father’s fishing pole and we’ll go drown some worms.”

  “I…I have to work in the garden today,” she faltered. “The weeds are killing my tomatoes.”

  He pursed his lips and shrugged. “So we’ll hoe out the tomatoes,” he said quietly. “I’m not all that particular about what we do, as long as we do it together.”

  Barnett Whitman was grinning from ear to ear. He finished his coffee and got up. “I have to go over some blueprints with Gene,” he said, beaming at them. “I’m back on the job as of today. My doctor said it was all right, before you start screaming, Eleanor,” he added.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Did I say anything?”

  “No, and see that you don’t.” He chuckled. “See you later, kids.”

  “I’ll bet it’s been years since anyone called you a kid,” Eleanor said after her father had driven away.

  “Years since I’ve felt like one, surely,” he agreed. He folded his forearms on the table and searched her face. “Do you really want to spend the day hoeing weeds?”

  She glared at him. “No, I won’t go to bed with you, if that was the next and very obvious question.”

  “It wasn’t, actually, although I’d rather sleep with you than eat,” he said softly, his blue eyes smiling into hers. “You and I do something incredible together when we make love.”

  Eleanor stared at the coffee cup she was holding. Her heart was going wild, all because he was using that slow, sexy tone she remembered so well.

  “I keep wondering what would have happened if I hadn’t given in to temptation that night four years ago,” he said absently.

  “You’d probably have married Lorraine and lived happily ever after,” she said dully.

  “Do you think so? I don’t.” He got up, dragged a cigarette from the pocket of his blue-plaid shirt and lit it. “The only thing Lorraine and I had in common was that we both thought she was a knockout.”

  “All the same, she fit into your lifestyle very well.”

  He turned, leaning back against the sink. “So do you,” he said quietly.

  She laughed. “Not me,” she returned, toying with the cup. “I don’t know about horses, and I’m certainly not debutante material.”

  “You’re real, though,” he said, forcing her to meet his gaze. “That’s right. You’re honest and stubborn, and you don’t back away from things. You have qualities I admire, Ellie. The economics don’t matter a damn. They never have.”

  “They matter to me,” she replied shortly. “Look around you, Keegan. This is a nice house, thanks to you and your father, but it’s not a patch on Flintlock. I’ve never worn fancy clothes until recently, and I didn’t even know that a champagne buffet meant hors d’oeuvres and drinks. When I first walked onto Wade’s property, his mother and sister came at me like spears….”

  “Just as I thought,” he said darkly. “I’ve known them for years.”

  “I gave as good as I got, thank you,” she told him, “but the fact is, I don’t fit in that kind of society. You were right in the first place when you were warning me off Wade. I’m just a country girl who might someday make a small mar
k in the nursing profession. But as a—” she searched for a discreet term “—companion for a rich man, I’d be a dead loss.”

  “I’m not in the market for a mistress,” he said, his voice like velvet.

  Her eyebrows arched. “Excuse me, but isn’t that the position you’re offering me? Or do you make a habit of seducing anyone who happens to be handy?”

  He sighed wearily as he lifted the cigarette to his mouth. “Eleanor,” he said, “what am I going to do about you?”

  “You might just leave me alone,” she replied, although the thought hurt dreadfully. Still, it was the most sensible course.

  “I can’t.” He held out his hand. “Come walking, Ellie. I want to talk.”

  She hesitated, but he nodded curtly and she yielded. This would be the last time she obeyed, she promised herself. The very last time.

  She took his outstretched hand and followed him out into the sunshine. He locked her fingers with his and went off down a path beside the fence that led to the stream cutting through his property.

  “Four years ago,” he said without looking at her, “I came by your house on your birthday and asked you out. That night, when I picked you up, you were wearing a blue print dress with puffy sleeves and a low neckline. Your hair was down around your shoulders and smelled of gardenias. I gave you supper at an exclusive restaurant and then I drove you out to the river and parked on a deserted stretch of dirt road.”

  “Keegan…”

  “Shhh,” he said gently. He turned her as they reached the shade of a towering oak tree and held her by the arms, studying her face. “And then I started kissing you. And you kissed me back. I put my hand under your bodice and you held it there. We started kissing feverishly then, and somehow I got you into the backseat of that big Lincoln and eased you down, and you let me take your clothes off. It was a warm, clear night, and we made love to the sound of crickets and rushing water, and afterward you told me that you loved me.”

  She lowered her eyes to his chest. “It isn’t kind, reminding me,” she whispered miserably.

  “I’m not doing it to torment you, Eleanor,” he said. “I want to make you understand how I felt. You were barely eighteen, not even a full-grown woman, and a virgin to boot. I was considerably older, practically engaged to Lorraine, and I was torn apart with conflicting emotions. I never meant it to happen at all, but once you let me touch you, I couldn’t stop.”

  “I realize I was as much to blame as you were, Keegan,” she replied. “I was crazy about you. I thought, since you were asking me out, that you’d stopped caring about Lorraine and I had a chance with you.” She laughed hollowly. “I should have realized that a man like you wouldn’t want a shy little country mouse when he could have a fairy princess like Lorraine, but then, I wasn’t thinking.”

  He ground his cigarette out under his heel and took her face in his lean, warm hands. “I never slept with Lorraine,” he said, his voice deep and soft. “Part of what I felt for her was sexual. Probably most of it was. Once I had you, though, I wasn’t able to want her. That was why I drove her away. I had nothing left to give.”

  She looked deeply into his blue eyes and was shaken by what she saw. “When you told me why you’d asked me out, I wanted to die,” she confessed finally. “I’d practically thrown myself at you…. It was humiliating.”

  “Not to me,” he murmured. “All my life, women had chased me because I was rich. You were the first, and the last, to want me just for myself.”

  She smiled softly. “You were very special.”

  “So were you.” He bent and kissed her, tenderly, warmly. His mouth opened and poised there; she could taste the smoke on his breath. “Your body haunted me after you left Lexington. Your face. Your voice. I couldn’t sleep for feeling your body under mine, those sweet little cries that pulsed out of you. Do you know even now how it excites me to hear you moan when I make love to you?”

  “You make it so…so wild,” she faltered.

  “So do you, honey,” he replied curtly. His hands tangled in her thick, soft hair, and he tugged at it. “You make it so much more than a merging of bodies. I think about babies when I take you, Eleanor, did you know?” he whispered, and his mouth found hers even as the words registered in her whirling mind.

  She gripped his forearms, trembling as he deepened the kiss; then his eyes opened and stared straight into hers.

  “Come close,” he said against her mouth.

  “I’ll hurt you,” she whispered hesitantly.

  “Yes.” He reached down and moved her legs until they touched his, then his eyes closed and his mouth crushed hers in a silence blazing with promise.

  He bent, holding the kiss, and lifted her into his arms. “Just once more,” he whispered, his voice deep and husky as he carried her into the shade of the tree and placed her gently on the ground. “Just one more time, Eleanor….”

  He stretched out against her, and the kiss grew urgent, passionate. His hands caressed her pliant body, molding her breasts, her rib cage, her waist and stomach, her long legs.

  “No,” she moaned. Her hands pushed halfheartedly at his chest, until they found an opening and pressed into warm, hard muscle and thick hair. His tongue searched inside her mouth, and she felt his heart shaking her with its feverish beat, felt the crush of his body over hers, twisting her against the hard ground as he gave up his control to the passion driving him.

  “You want me,” he whispered huskily. “I want you. What else matters?”

  “I won’t…be used,” she whimpered. “I won’t!”

  “Here,” he said under his breath, moving her hand against his chest. “Touch me like this.”

  “Oh, Keegan, this won’t…solve anything.” She panted, twisting her face away from his.

  “Yes, it will,” he said. He slid down against her, feverishly pushing up the hem of her shirt, revealing her bare, taut breasts. “God, Ellie, you’ve got the prettiest breasts,” he whispered huskily, then bent his head.

  She was lost from the first touch of his open mouth, taking her inside that warm, moist darkness, letting her feel the roughness of his tongue, the soft nip of his teeth. He whispered something she didn’t hear, and his lean hands smoothed warmly up and down her rib cage while his mouth made her tremble.

  He worked his way down to the fastening of her jeans, pressing his face into her warm flesh, making her burn and ache. His fingers dug into her hips, lifting her rhythmically to the probing of his tongue, the nip of his teeth.

  “Please,” she whispered helplessly. Her eyes closed and she shuddered. Her hands held his hair, trapping his mouth against her warm belly. “Please, make me stop aching.”

  “There’s only one way to do that,” he whispered. He slid up her body, his mouth poised over hers as his hands found and cupped her breasts. He searched her eyes in a lingering scrutiny. “Tell me you love me, Eleanor, and I’ll love you in ways you’ll never forget as long as you live. I’ll make you cry.”

  “Please.” She was beyond arguing. Her body throbbed, burned. She arched helplessly, her legs moving in a wild rhythm on the ground. “Keegan…”

  “Say the words, baby,” he breathed, toying with the zipper of her jeans. “Come on. Tell me, Ellie.”

  Her eyes closed. Why not? He owned her, after all. He owned her. “I love you,” she whispered achingly, her eyes opening, large and dark and full of pain. “I always have. I always will.”

  He hesitated, his lips parting, his body shuddering as he looked down at her.

  “Isn’t that the price?” she whispered brokenly. She lifted her body, sliding her arms under his to press her breasts hungrily against his chest. “Oh, Lord, how sweet it feels to do that,” she moaned softly. She rubbed her torso against his and felt him tremble at the silken brush of her skin. “I want you. I want all of you, right here, under the sun, I want to look up and watch you having me….”

  His mind exploded. He stripped her with hands that trembled, then shrugged off his own clothing and
overwhelmed her with feverish abandon.

  She laughed. Laughed, as he held her down and forced his body on hers, and she matched that wild passion, every step of the way. Her eyes open, huge, blazing with the same hunger he was feeling, watched him, gloried in what he did to her with his hands, his mouth, his powerful body.

  “I love you,” she cried in a voice she barely recognized. Then, as the tension accelerated into something like flying, she felt her body tensing until it threatened to shatter. Her fingers dug into his back while he arched over her and ground her into the dead leaves and grass with the feverish crush of his muscular body.

  “Yes, watch me,” she said shakily. “Watch me!”

  The leaves above them blurred and burst into color. She felt her mouth open, her body turn to liquid and burn with lightning flashes as she throbbed and throbbed and throbbed. She could hardly see his face above her.

  “Eleanor,” he moaned.

  Her fingers trembled as they found his and locked with them. “You belong to me,” she whispered.

  “Oh, God, yes.” His eyes closed and his head fell beside her ear, tortured breaths pulsating out of him with strangled groans as his body tensed and convulsed. “I…love…you!”

  It was the passion talking, of course; she knew that, but it was so sweet to hold him, to soothe him, and know that what she’d given him he could find with no one else. For this tiny stretch of time, he was completely, wholly hers.

  He trembled in her arms for a long time. And this time, there was no lazy awakening, no moving quickly away. He collapsed against her and lay breathing raggedly until she could feel his skin sticking to hers.

  “Yes, hold me, Eleanor,” he whispered. One lean hand came up to trace her ear, her cheek, to smooth her damp hair. Somewhere in the tree above them, birds sang sweetly. “Hold me, now.”

  “Are you all right?” she asked softly.

  “Yes. Are you?”

  She smiled against his tanned cheek. “I don’t know.”

  He managed to raise himself enough to search her eyes. His were very blue, sated, full of secrets and adoration. Genuine adoration.