by Joan Wolf
The result of that conversation with Joe was to change her whole perception of the relationship between herself and her stepbrother. For the first time she realized that she might be reading more into it than was really there.
Why was he so carefully throwing dust in the eyes of his father and Mary Anne? For without a doubt that was exactly what he was doing. And successfully, too, to judge by Joe’s conversation. Joe hadn’t a clue that there might be more between Caroline and Jay than appeared on the surface.
The answer to this question would have been evident days ago to anyone more sensible than she, Caroline thought dismally. Jay was going to marry Mary Anne. With Caroline he just wanted an affair, a casual secret liaison that could stay hidden from his future wife and his father.
It was a devastating piece of knowledge, and it hit her as hard as a physical blow between the eyes. Caroline had been thinking of marriage.
She was very quiet on the ride back to the ranch. Her eyes were drawn, again and again, to the vivacious dark face of Mary Anne—the only girl Jay couldn’t get into bed with him.
“You look as if you had the weight of the world on your shoulders.” It was Jay’s voice breaking into her thoughts, and she turned, a little startled, to look at him. She had no idea how beautiful she looked as she sat, slim and erect in the saddle, with her marvelous hair loose on her back, her eyes startlingly light in her honey-tanned face. She smiled fractionally but did not answer. “Your ankle isn’t hurting, is it?” he asked.
“No.” She took a deep breath. “No, in fact it’s getting much better. I should be able to get back to work very soon.”
He frowned. “You can’t go back to Washington just yet.”
Both Joe and Mary Anne were listening. “Why not?” she asked lightly.
“You have to come and see the horserace,” he answered promptly. He turned to his father. “Isn’t that right, Dad? If I’m going to ride Mahogany, the least Caroline can do is come and watch.”
“Jay’s right.” The big rancher smiled at her good-humoredly. “You’ll enjoy seeing the Macdonald spread. It’s really something.”
Part of Caroline knew she should leave, leave before she was hurt any more. She met Jay’s eyes. They were dark, dark blue and very commanding. “Come to Utah,” he said.
Caroline had never allowed herself to be dominated by a man before. She looked into his eyes and was lost. “All right,” she said. “I’ll come to Utah.”
“Good.” He smiled at her for a very brief second and then turned back to Mary Anne. “You could say Caroline is the person who got me into this race,” he said good-naturedly. “If she hadn’t so clearly demonstrated that Mahogany could be ridden, I might have gotten out of it.”
“I doubt that,” Mary Anne retorted. “Your father would have thought of something.” And both Jay and Joe laughed.
* * * *
Mary Anne left the next day, which took some of the strain off Caroline. She thought about her present situation and decided she had the advantage at the moment: She was here and Mary Anne was not. Caroline had decided to fight. She was going to do her damnedest to make Jay fall so in love with her that he wouldn’t be able to live without her. She had done it to Cliff and to Gerald without even trying. Why shouldn’t she be able to do it to Jay?
Caroline was neither lukewarm nor cautious. In this, the most important crisis of her life, she was ready to risk heartbreak and humiliation, to go all-out, to give of herself wholly, utterly, if it would win her the one thing she knew she wanted in this world: Jay Hamilton. And so she resolutely pushed the thought of tomorrow from her mind and threw herself into the present.
They had a week before they would have to leave for Utah. Caroline and Jay were almost constantly together, and still it seemed as if neither Joe nor anyone else about the ranch was suspicious of what was going on right under their noses. Their lack of perception astonished Caroline, who thought her whole body must be blazing forth with the love that flamed within her.
“It’s odd, isn’t it, how no one seems to notice?” she said to Jay one afternoon. They were at the spring, where they went every day, ostensibly so Caroline could swim and exercise her ankle.
She sensed a slight withdrawal on his part. “Not really,” he said then. “You may be the most beautiful thing to ever grace the state of Wyoming, but they all know how I feel about Eastern women.”
Caroline gazed at the sparkling water. “I see.” And she did see, all too well. She represented everything Jay had hated in his mother. But I’m not like Nancy! She wanted to cry that out to him, to make him understand that underneath her Eastern establishment upbringing, her designer clothes, her holidays in the south of France, she was just Caroline, and all she wanted in the world was his love. “Well, I’m not just an ordinary Eastern woman.” She managed to sound careless.
He was lying with his eyes closed against the sun, and now they lifted just slightly. “That is certainly true,” he said. “You aren’t ordinary anything, Cara sweetheart.”
“Well, that’s a comfort to know.”
He chuckled and closed his eyes again, and she
went back to her ruminations. She was playing
the wrong part in this particular romance, she
thought wryly. The heroine should be Mary Anne—the pretty virginal hometown girl. Caroline was clearly cast as “the other woman”: a rich, phony blond from the East, most definitely not virginal. In this little drama of East versus West, she was afraid she was on the losing side. “Damn,” she muttered under her breath.
Jay opened his eyes. “Did you say something?”
“No. Yes.” She looked at him somberly. “Did you ever read The Great Gatsby?” she asked.
“Yeah, in high school. His name was Jay too. I remember I took a lot of abuse over it.”
“What did you think of him?”
He sat up and looked at her out of suddenly chilly eyes. “What brought this on?”
“I don’t know. What did you think of him?” she repeated.
“I thought he was a goddam fool, if you must know. That slut wasn’t worth two minutes of his time.”
“I know.” She rested her forehead on her updrawn knees. “That was the point of the book, wasn’t it? I mean ...”
“She had a voice like yours,” he broke in abruptly.
“Daisy?” She named the Eastern girl who had been the object of Gatsby’s obsession for the whole of the novel.
“Yeah. Daisy. ‘Her voice was full of money.’ Isn’t that how he described it?”
She raised her head and looked at him, her long hair gleaming in the sunshine, her eyes very green in her tanned face. “Do you think I’m like Daisy?” she asked quietly.
“Caroline ...” He was very pale under his tan.
She kept looking at him, very steadily. “Do you?” she asked again.
“No.” His voice sounded hoarse. “No, God help me, I don’t.” He moved so he was kneeling in front of her. “Cara,” he said. “God, Cara ...” His hands slid into her hair, and she turned her face up for his kiss.
They were both wearing swim suits which were easily shed. Caroline forgot her depression, forgot that for him this was just a transient affair. She loved him so much. His skin tasted slightly salty with sweat. “Jay,” she breathed, “darling. I’ll do anything you want. Just tell me. Anything.”
“Cara.” She shuddered and moved for him, listening to the love words he called her, wanting him desperately. Finally he raised her hips and answered to her longing, burying himself deep within her. Caroline closed her eyes, and then, as he stilled, opened them again. “This is where I want to be.” His face was very close to hers. “Morning, nighttime, all the time. This is where I want to be.”
His eyes were darker than midnight, and she stared up at him, still as he was, both of them poised on the brink of their journey into darkness, passion, and ecstasy. She knew that no other man, no matter how long she lived or how hard she searched, would ever be able t
o make her feel like this. Then he began to move, slowly at first, and Caroline rose on the waves of him, incapable of holding anything back, giving him her passion and her pleasure, as sweet and untamed as honey in the wild.
“God, Cara,” he groaned a good deal later. “It doesn’t seem possible, but it gets better every time.”
“I know.” Her voice was very low.
He buried his face between her breasts. “It’s got to stop sometime,” he said, “otherwise it’ll kill me.”
She laughed, cherishing the feel of his mouth against her breasts. “You’re holding up remarkably well.”
“Um.” He rolled over on his back and stretched luxuriously.
She ran a gentle finger over the line of his eyebrow, and he took her hand in one of his, drawing it across his eyes and his cheeks. “It’s never been like this for me before,” she said softly.
His blue eyes, narrowed against the sun, stared at her face. “And do you have a large number of comparisons?” he asked tautly.
“No.” Her voice was even softer. “Only two. I told you before that I only go to bed with men I’m engaged to.”
She looked down at his face and held her breath. Please let him say it, she thought tensely. Please let him say it.
He didn’t. A small smile touched his mouth and he said, “And me.”
Oh, Jay. Her eyes closed as a strange new pain went through her. But she mustn’t let him see how she was feeling. She remembered all too well the awkwardness, the scenes, the reproaches, when she had had to tell her two previous lovers that their feelings were not reciprocated. She didn’t want to put either Jay or herself through that particular scenario. So she summoned up an answering smile, bent her head, and kissed him on the lips. “And you,” she said lightly. “And you.”
Chapter Twelve
It was a long ride to the Macdonald ranch in northern Utah. Caroline rode with Joe in the station wagon; Jay drove the horse van with Mahogany, and two of the ranch hands rode with the stallion. They started early and didn’t arrive until dusk.
“Wow,” said Caroline as she took in the acres of white-fenced paddocks. “Are you sure this is Utah and not Kentucky?”
“I thought you’d be surprised,” Joe replied.
The ranch house was very large and imposing, but Caroline secretly thought that the Double Diamond ranch house was much prettier. A small, thin man came out onto the front portico to greet them.
“Welcome, welcome,” he said jovially. “Good to see you, Joe. Miss Carruthers, delighted you could join us.” He looked around. “I thought your son was coming, Joe.”
“He’ll be along shortly, Owen. He’s driving the van.”
“I see. Well, let’s get you settled then. Have you eaten?”
“Yes. We had dinner on the road.” They walked into the front hall of the house, and Joe asked, “Who else do you have running this year?”
“Taylor’s bringing a horse, and Morgan’s here, and Banks.” He looked at Joe. “Are you really running your range stallion? That colt you got from Kentucky that nobody could handle?”
He sounded faintly patronizing when he said the words “range stallion,” and Caroline began to see why he was not a favorite with the Hamiltons.
“Jay can handle him,” Joe said shortly.
“Is Jay going to ride?” Owen sounded surprised.
“Yep.”
There was a little pause, and then Caroline said diplomatically, “I’m looking forward to seeing your place, Mr. Macdonald. It looked just lovely as we drove in.”
“I’m looking forward to showing it to you, Miss Carruthers,” the man responded gallantly. “Would you like to freshen up first and then join the rest of us in the living room for a drink?”
Caroline looked as fresh and crisp as if she’d just stepped out of her own door, but she nodded gratefully and said, “Thank you.”
Owen Macdonald took them upstairs and showed Caroline into a pretty chintz-covered bedroom. “I’ve put you right next door, Joe,” he said pleasantly. “I hope you don’t mind sharing a room with Jay. I’m pretty full up this week, I’m afraid.”
Caroline’s heart sank as she closed her bedroom door. If Joe and Jay were doubling up that would effectively put an end to her stepbrother’s nocturnal visits. Caroline opened her suitcase and took out her cosmetic bag, feeling depressed.
She went across the hall to the bathroom to wash her face and brush her teeth. When she opened the door into the hall again, Jay and Owen were coming toward her. She took one look at Jay’s face and stifled a giggle. “Hi,” she said. “Mahogany all right?”
“He’s fine,” Jay said with unmistakable emphasis, and Caroline’s nostrils quivered in her exertion to keep her gravity. Jay looked at her, divined her state immediately, and grinned. “We had a good trip,” he said in a milder voice. “He behaved himself pretty well.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” she managed and escaped back to her own bedroom before she disgraced herself. Her depression had miraculously fled. Just the sight of him could fill her with happiness.
Caroline changed her slacks for a simple print cotton skirt that showed off the golden tan on her long, slender, spectacularly gorgeous legs. She waited until she heard Joe’s door open and then opened her own and joined the men in the hallway.
“Who else is here, do you know?” she murmured to Joe as they walked down the hall.
“Oh, he’s got some lord staying with him,” Joe said. “Made a big song and dance about it on the phone when I called to say we were coming.”
“Did you notice how he’s even started to acquire an English accent?” Jay asked disgustedly.
Joe’s snort was eloquent of his feelings. However, Caroline noticed that they had both suited their attire to the greater formality of the occasion. Joe was wearing twill pants and a blue shirt open at the neck, while his son was similarly attired in khaki pants and white shirt. Jay had also rolled up his sleeves, and his skin looked Indian-dark against the fine white cotton.
The three of them arrived together in the archway that led to the living room. It was a very large room with about ten people seated on a collection of sofas and easy chairs. Owen came across to them immediately. “You must let me introduce you around,” he said. “We have a visitor from overseas I’d particularly like you to meet.”
Caroline heard him through a haze of stunned incredulity. She was staring, wide-eyed with shock, at a tall, fair-haired man in a battered tweed jacket. “The Earl of Clontarf.” Owen said.
“Gerald,” croaked Caroline. “Whatever are you doing here?”
The tall man was standing now in front of her. “Caroline! I don’t believe my eyes!”
“Do you know each other?” asked Owen.
Caroline got a grip on herself. “Yes, we do. We met while I was on a visit to Ireland.” She held out her hand and smiled. “How nice to see you again, Gerald,” she said insincerely.
His blue eyes were grave on her face. “It’s wonderful to see you” he said, and it was clear he meant it. He took her hand and then kissed her on the cheek.
Caroline could feel the color flushing into her face. Involuntarily, she looked at Jay.
His face was very still; his eyes on her and Gerald were unreadable. Caroline said with a composure she was scarcely feeling, “Gerald, may I present Mr. Joseph Hamilton and his son Jay.” She looked at the rancher. “Lord Clontarf, Joe.”
Gerald smiled easily and held out his hand. “So pleased to meet you, Mr. Hamilton.” Joe shook hands, and Gerald moved along to Jay with another polite handshake.
“You’re a long way from home,” Joe commented pleasantly.
Gerald smiled. “I know. But Mr. Macdonald was kind enough to invite me for a visit, and I couldn’t resist seeing the fabled American West.”
“Lord Clontarf has a stud in Ireland,” Owen put in. “I bought a filly from him who’s a real stunner. I’ll have to show her to you tomorrow.”
“She’s one of Maire’s foals,�
� Gerald said quietly to Caroline.
“Then I’m sure she is a beauty.” Caroline smiled at Owen, trying to overcome the tension that was rising within her.
Owen beamed back. Caroline had risen inestimably in his opinion since she had claimed friendship with his lord. “Let me get you a drink, Miss Carruthers. What will you have?”
“A glass of wine would be lovely,” she replied.
“And you, Joe? Jay? How about you, Clontarf? Can I refresh your glass?”
The drink orders were given and Joe said, “I’ll give you a hand, Owen,” and accompanied his host to the bar. Caroline was left alone with her two lovers, past and present.
Gerald, whose manners were impeccable, addressed a remark to Jay in his very upper-class British accent. Jay, whose manners were not the equal of Clontarf s, said bluntly, “You don’t sound Irish at all.”
Gerald smiled faintly. As a member of the landowning Protestant Ascendency, his family had always identified itself with England. “I went to school in England,” he replied easily. Jay didn’t say anything in return, only looked sardonic. Caroline rushed in.
“Jay is my stepbrother, Gerald. Nancy’s son.”
Now why did I say that? she thought as Jay’s icy-blue stare fell full upon her. But I had to say something.
“Lovely woman, your mother.” Gerald was making matters worse. “Made a tremendous hit in Ireland.”
“Yes,” said Jay. “She would.”
Really, thought Caroline in exasperation, he was behaving very badly. Even Gerald looked a little startled at his tone.
“Have you been here long?” Caroline asked her former fiancé.
“A few days.” Gerald looked at her, and Caroline had little difficulty reading his eyes. “I was going to stop over in Washington before I went home,” he said.
“Oh.” Once again Caroline glanced at Jay. His hair had fallen forward over his forehead, and his eyes were blazingly bright.
He gave her a singularly unpleasant smile and said, “Lucky Caroline.”
Caroline wanted to hit him, but she got back at him even more effectively. She smiled at Clontarf and said, “That was sweet of you, Gerald.”