by Penny Jordan
She didn’t see Jay frown as he felt her tremble and looked into her shadowed face. Her reaction had caught him off guard. It hadn’t been what he had expected at all… He could almost have believed that no man had ever… She was an even better actress than he had supposed, he decided bitterly, releasing her so abruptly that she fell across the bed.
Natasha opened her eyes, shock and pain coursing through her. ‘Well,’ she heard Jay demand harshly, ‘do you still claim that you don’t want to share my bed? That you…’
She covered her ears so that she couldn’t hear any more. Tears clogged her throat… She felt as though she had been abused in the most painful way there was—not physically but emotionally. She wanted to crawl away somewhere and die. She wanted…she wanted to be back in Jay’s arms, his hands and mouth caressing her skin. She wanted…she wanted him in the most intense and shockingly intimate way there was, she acknowledged achingly. She wanted him to make love to her, real love…not this—this parody of desire…
Mercifully he let her crawl away to the other side of the bed, and as he switched off the lamp her body relaxed on a tormented breath of relief. He wasn’t going to touch her again. She knew she couldn’t have resisted him if he had. Her skin burned with shame, her body tormented by physical longing she knew would never be satisfied.
‘Didn’t manage to hold out for very long, did you?’ Jay tormented her savagely. ‘God, I could have…’
He stopped abruptly and then said cruelly, ‘I think I begin to understand the hold you have on your victims. That’s one hell of a mighty fine act you’ve got yourself there, lady.’
She couldn’t let that pass. She had been struggling to do up the ties on her nightdress, but now she stopped, wincing as the fine cotton brushed against the still aroused outline of her breasts.
‘I don’t…’
‘What? Give all your lovers the pleasure of the performance you’ve just given me? You should do. I know men who’d part with millions for a reaction like that, and after all, we’re all the same to a woman like you, aren’t we? Who do you think about when you close your eyes? Your first lover? Your bank account?’
Through the darkness, the tension that gripped her body reached him. A sense of desolation washed over him, and he lay down with his back to her. He couldn’t blame Tip for doing what he’d done, not any more. God, he himself… He blanked off the thought deliberately, willing himself to put the woman lying in bed beside him, and everything to do with her, out of his mind.
Long after Jay’s deep, even breathing signalled the fact that he was asleep, Natasha lay awake. The tears which had slid silently from her eyes under the onslaught of his insults had dried, leaving her skin feeling tight and sore.
She couldn’t stay here now. Somehow she would have to find a way to leave. She ought never to have allowed him to force her into this marriage. She hadn’t tried anything like hard enough to dissuade him… Because secretly, she hadn’t wanted to dissuade him, she realised. She hadn’t wanted to dissuade him because… because she loved him.
‘No!’ She mouthed the word, her throat dry, her eyes stinging as she fought against what her heart was telling her. How could she love him? How could any woman love a man who treated her the way Jay had treated her? Who believed that she was nothing more than…
She tried to push the thought away, to deny it, or to explain away her feelings by some means of logic and analysis, but it was no use.
Here in the short, dark hours of the night, the truth refused to be banished. She was in love with Jay. How? Why? When? All these were questions she could not answer. She only knew that when he looked at her, spoke to her, touched her, something happened to her that had never happened before.
No, she couldn’t stay here now, her pride disintegrating, her heart and body aching for him, her will-power slowly destroyed by the need eating into her as she waited for the day when his anger, or his physical hunger, brought him to her. If they made love, he would know the truth, but that would not alter his lack of feelings for her. Knowing that she was innocent of the charges he had brought against her would not change his feelings for her.
He had married her because of Tip’s will. Very well then, she would do what she had planned to do originally. She would go home to England and get her solicitor to draft out a document by which she could rescind her interest in the ranch. She would leave. She had to leave. But how?
* * *
WHEN NATASHA woke up, it was in the knowledge that something unbearable and earth-shattering had taken place. It was several seconds before she remembered what. She was so used to denying her feelings, to hiding from them, that at first she could almost pretend that it had all been a mistake, that she didn’t love Jay at all. But she only had to remember what had happened last night, to feel again the same mixture of pain and need that had brought the truth to her the night before. She loved him, and perhaps, deep down inside, she had let him marry her, hoping that by some miracle he might come to love her too.
She was too old for such foolish hopes. They were best left to the twins.
She was alone in the bedroom, and that seemed to underline the impossibility of her folly. She got up listlessly, dressing in the first thing that came to hand.
Dolores gave her a shrewd and concerned glance as she walked into the breakfast-room, but she was too caught up in her own thoughts to see it.
The twins greeted her eagerly. ‘You’re late. Uncle Jay’s down with the cattle… Are you going down to see him?’
Natasha shook her head.
‘When I went out to feed Nobby this morning, Jake was polishing your car. Are you ever going to drive it?’
Her car! Of course, she had forgotten all about the Mercedes… She could drive it to Dallas, leave it there and board a plane for home.
Nearly until dawn she had lain awake wondering how she could get away without alerting anyone to what she was doing, and she had never once thought about the car.
‘Of course. In fact, I think I might give it a trial run today.’ She tried to sound nonchalant, keeping her eyes fixed on her coffee-cup as she spoke.
‘Great! Can we come with you?’
‘Not this time. I’d like to get the feel of her before I take any passengers.’
It appalled her how easily the lies came to her lips. It just showed what the human psyche was capable of when the need arose.
Please God the twins wouldn’t hate her when they realised that she had gone… One day, when they were adult, perhaps she would be able to explain to them just why she had had to go. If only Jay was more approachable, less inclined to believe the absolute worst of her, she might have been able to talk to him, to persuade him to let her go.
But if that had been the case she wouldn’t have been in the situation she was, she reminded herself miserably.
Dolores offered her more coffee. She raised her head and saw that the Mexican woman was frowning slightly.
‘You all right?’ she asked as Natasha refused.
‘A little tired, that’s all.’ Her skin flushed brightly as she said the words, and she bit down hard into her bottom lip, hoping that Dolores would put her behaviour down to bridal shyness. She hated having to lie like this, to plot and plan, but she had to get away. If she didn’t, she would be reduced to little more than a sexual toy that Jay could take up or put down as he pleased, and she had too much pride for that. She would kill herself rather than be reduced to that fate, she told herself fiercely.
It was an impossible situation. She loved Jay too much to withstand him if he did start to make love to her, and once he knew the truth he would probably still despise her for not being strong enough to resist him.
Manlike, he would take all that she had to offer and give nothing in return, other than the physical intimacy of his body. And that was something she didn’t think she could endure.
She made her plans carefully, packing her cases while the twins were out riding, waiting until she knew Dolores would be busy in
the kitchen before taking them down to the car.
Luckily the garage area was deserted, but her body was shaking after she had finished stacking them into the boot. She locked it and returned to the house. She had already decided that she would wait to leave until just after lunch. That way no one would be suspicious about her absence until she missed dinner.
By then she would be safely in Dallas, and perhaps even on board a plane for home.
Home. Why did it have such a mournful sound? Why did she feel so wretchedly miserable about the thought of leaving? Because she was leaving the man she loved… That was why.
CHAPTER TEN
ALL round her the flat landscape shimmered under the appalling heat of the mid-afternoon sun. Even with the car’s air-conditioning working on full, Natasha could still feel perspiration soaking her body.
Of course, it wasn’t all entirely heat induced. There was an element of fear and apprehension in the fierce burning of her skin and the rapid thump of her heart, Natasha acknowledged, wiping her sticky hand on her skirt before returning it to the wheel.
She had no idea how far she was from Dallas. She had been driving for over two hours, and there was absolutely nothing at all in sight, but at least she had managed to get away without being spotted.
The ranch had its own petrol supply and she had filled up the car’s tank before she left. It was over three hundred miles to Dallas, but she should have enough, surely?
Soon she would be off Jay’s land. The boundary fence must be somewhere up ahead of her. She pressed her foot down harder on the accelerator, anxious to get past that psychological barrier.
The rabbit appeared from nowhere and she braked instinctively, gasping as the impetus of her too-sudden action threw the heavy car off the tarmac. Her head hit the soft top of the car as it bounced on to the rough terrain, the steering wheel slipping from her hands.
Natasha cried out as the front wheel hit a huge boulder. The car lifted with a grating sound of expansive metal, the engine dying as the car slipped back, tilting at an uncomfortable angle.
Unfastening her seat-belt, Natasha managed to scramble out. She hurried to the front of the car, and came to an abrupt and appalled stop. The front end of the car was firmly and quite inextricably wedged on to the narrow end of the boulder. There was just no way she was going to be able to get it off.
Her first thought was that she was trapped, that she would never escape from Jay. And then, as that initial panic subsided, another and darker possibility struck her, namely that she could die out here in this burning landscape without ever being found.
It would be several hours yet before she was missed… Hours during which she would be exposed to the sun’s heat on her sensitive skin. She had no water, no food. She licked her already dry lips, appalled by her own folly. Perhaps she should try and walk. But where to? Back to the ranch? It was over fifty miles! She would never do it!
No, she would just have to stay here, and hope that someone would find her.
She crawled back inside the car, and curled up on the passenger seat.
An hour crawled past. The heat inside the car was stifling, but it was just as hot outside, and outside there was no protection for her head. No, she was better off inside, she decided listlessly.
A muzzy feeling filled her head. She wanted to close her eyes and go to sleep, but something warned her that she must not. She thought she heard the sound of a car, but when she looked there was nothing… Nothing but the vastness of the Texan landscape and its empty blue sky.
She dozed, drained of energy by the heat. She woke suddenly, her lips framing a name her throat was too dry to speak.
‘Jay.’
‘Just what in hell do you think you’re playing at?’
She blinked and blinked again, not convinced that he wasn’t a mirage. A truck was parked alongside her car, but she hadn’t even heard it draw up. Jay was taking hold of her, almost dragging her out of the stifling car.
‘You little fool!’ he shook her roughly. ‘Don’t you know you could have died out here?’
‘Then why didn’t you let me?’
The waspish words were out before she could stop them, followed by tears that filmed her eyes and made her shake horribly.
She turned away as Jay put her down, half stumbling because of the numbness in her cramped limbs. She heard Jay swear and then she was back in his arms, being carried over to the cab of the truck.
He closed the door on her and returned to her car, opening the boot and removing her cases.
It was only when he started the truck’s engine that she realised they were leaving.
‘My car,’ she protested.
‘I’ll send someone out to salvage it. Have you no sense in your head?’ he demanded thickly. ‘God, didn’t your common sense tell you that…’
He broke off as she shuddered. They were sitting so close together that her body was pressed against his, and there was no way she could stop him from feeling the reaction coursing through her.
‘I…I’m thirsty.’
He swore again, stopping the truck, and reaching behind him for a flask which he handed to her.
‘Drink it slowly,’ he advised her. ‘You haven’t been out for long enough to have suffered real dehydration, but even so, if you drink too fast you could get sick…’
He had put the truck back on the road, but instead of heading back for the ranch he was driving in the opposite direction.
‘Where are you taking me?’
He gave her a derisive look.
‘Not where you want to go…You and I have got some talking to do before I let you go anywhere.’
‘We don’t have anything to talk about,’ Natasha protested miserably. ‘I’m going to rescind my interest in Tip’s will. I…I have to get away from here.’
The admission was made before she could stop it, and she couldn’t bear to look at Jay when he brought the truck to a screeching halt.
She waited for him to make some blistering sardonic comment, but when he spoke he said shatteringly, ‘Have you any idea what it did to me when Dolores told me that you’d gone?’
Stupidly all she could say was, ‘I didn’t think you’d find out until after dinner…’
‘If it hadn’t been for Dolores I shouldn’t have done, but she was…concerned about you…’ He frowned and stared out of the truck window. An odd sort of tension filled the enclosed space.
‘Natasha—’
‘Jay—’
They both spoke together and then fell silent, and then astonishingly Jay said curtly, in an oddly constrained voice, ‘I don’t care how many other men there’ve been, from now on there’s only going to be me. I can’t let you go, Natasha. Stay with me… I love you.’ He said it simply, looking directly at her. ‘And it’s slowly sending me out of my mind. I’ve tried to tell myself that I’m a fool, that a man should run a mile before he lets himself get involved with… It doesn’t matter… None of it matters…when it comes down to it. Stay with me. We could make a fresh start, forget about the past.’
A painful, disbelieving joy filled her. Jay loved her. She looked at him, searching his face for the signs that would tell her that he was lying; that it was all some sort of elaborate trap, but there were none. All she could see were lines of strain and dread etched into his skin, a pain in his eyes that mirrored her own.
‘Jay, there’s something I must tell you,’ she began softly, but he stopped her.
‘No! No explanations…no confessions.’ His hands gripped hers, so tightly she thought her bones might crack. ‘Just you and me and a clean start. Say it, Natasha… Say you’ll stay with me.’
There were so many things she wanted to say, so many explanations, so many truths he didn’t yet know, but it seemed he wanted to hear only one thing and so she sighed softly, ‘I’ll stay.’
She didn’t know what she had expected his reaction to be, but it was a shock when he simply re-started the truck without a word.
‘We’re
going the wrong way,’ she pointed out timidly after a few minutes.
‘No, we’re not,’ Jay corrected her, but he didn’t say anything else, and when after several miles he turned off the road and down along a narrow dust track, he explained tersely, ‘There’s a shack down here where I used to camp out as a boy. The men still use it at times when they’re checking the fences. We’ll be there soon.’
But he hadn’t told her why he was taking her there, Natasha thought, as he settled back into silence.
The shack was slightly larger than she had visualised, and the first thing that struck her when Jay stopped the truck was the emptiness of their surroundings. He got out of the truck and helped her down. She could feel the fierce thud of his heart against her body as he held her.
It reminded her of something—something she had to say to him.
‘Jay, you say you love me, but Jenneth told me that…that you loved the twins’ mother…that you and she were going to run away together.’
‘It’s not true. Helen told Jenneth that to break us up,’ he frowned darkly. ‘My grandfather never wanted Nat and Helen to marry. He tried his best to stop them. Helen was a gold-digger, Gramps said, and he was right. Helen never loved anyone but herself. She tried to cause trouble between Nat and me, purely out of malice. She was always threatening to leave. When she did, he went after her and they were both killed.’
‘And Jenneth?’
‘Jenneth was the girl next door. There was a time when I thought we’d marry but, like Helen, she was more interested in the Travers name and money than the man who went with it.’
There was a small silence, and so much that she hadn’t seen before was clear to Natasha now. No wonder Jay had been so ready to believe the worst of her…to believe that she was cast in the same mould as Helen and Jenneth.