by Cara Lyle
“You’re going to pursue her. I can see that you are.”
“Yes.”
“Then I must insist on conditions.”
“Which are?”
“That you in no way coerce her.”
“I would never.”
“Knowingly—no. But you do. You can’t help it.”
“The second condition?”
“Don’t hide what you are. Who you are. Tell her. And soon.”
He weighed her conditions and was about to agree when the door behind them opened.
“Excellency, Señora…”
The doctor bowed to him and then looked to his mother.
“The young lady has refused the sedative. I have left it on the table. However, if she is restless, do encourage her to take it. Otherwise, I would not worry about her.”
“And her memory?” he asked.
The doctor waved his concern away. “It will correct itself after some rest.”
“So,” his mother said as she followed the physician to the door. “Bold and tough?”
The captain returned to Miss Loudoun’s room to find her sitting up in bed, her face pale and her eyes anxious.
“My horse. Tell me Jose Torres has taken her in.”
Torres, the stable owner just outside the town.
“My sergeant has taken her to the garrison stables. She’ll be well tended. I promise.”
“Thank you, sir,” she replied with a pretty smile.
“It is your due, querida,” he said as he approached her bed, scanning the shadowed corners for hovering servants. He saw trust in her eyes where he should have seen wariness of him and his intentions. As for himself…
From that first evening in the café, he had known she was trouble. She had looked like trouble. A smiling ingénue with heart-shaped face and large blue eyes. Wild, willful…
And mine.
He settled on the bed, his left thigh to her right one. He leaned forward. He touched her brow, his fingertips gliding over strands of dark hair gleaming in the low light. He was drawn to her, his instinct demanding he connect, pull her into him…
Time is against me.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
The captain drew back. “Your brother is on the way.”
When she flicked a glance at him, he saw neither relief nor pleasure in her eyes but a flash of anger. “Which brother?”
He studied her lips, so soft…but shifted back to her eyes and to a look of guilt.
“You have more than one?”
“Yes. I have four.”
Four? Merde !
“I don’t know which brother. I will ask Colonel Pérez. It was he who made the call to your embassy.”
She opened her mouth to form the word “why” which gave him the chance he needed, the answer to the shortness of time. He leaned into her, gazed into her eyes, not to admire but to capture her attention, to imprint her with his consequence…and to stop that ticking clock.
Startled, her breath caught, her expression one of surprise. And he watched her, patient as a hunter must be, and waited for her surrender.
When it happened—the deep sigh, the eyes fluttering closed, her mind unhitching—he knew he had stopped that ticking clock. He kissed her, taking care to keep the kiss soft, unthreatening. To impose his will slowly, repeating to himself that he must not overwhelm her. No, not just yet.
But it was he who lost control as the subtle tension that held him together, relaxed and lost its grip on that other part of him. It started as surging waves. It ended with a pop in his head and it was done. His undivided self became two. One the civilized man he pretended to be. The other, the uncivilized dragon he really was, who without a qualm reached out, probed the boundaries of his prey and wrapped himself around her. Capturing her.
A blast like a victory horn echoed in his head.
She pushed against him, eyes flaring wide.
“Was that you?”
“No. I am certain it was you,” he replied, easing off the bed. Satisfied.
And gloating.
Chapter Two
The captain went away and when he left, the lovely room seemed bare and stark and she felt more than alone. She felt lonely. Accustomed to four brothers breathing down her neck and fifty employees underfoot and pretending not to be, this loneliness frightened her.
But the news that one of her brothers was on his way angered her because it meant he would be taking her home. Ending her adventure. Ending her time in Spain… Which led her to thinking of the captain and this new emptiness in her heart. What it meant, she didn’t know. What it was, she dared not explore. But whatever it was—was it worth staying for? To find out where it led?
She slept and when she woke she found him again sitting on the bed, his left leg against her right one.
What should I do about him? She sighed and put off thinking about it. It felt so good just having him close.
“I’ve brought you dinner. It’s one of my mother’s concoctions. Chicken stock, basil, lemon and garlic.” He glanced at her, saw her doubts. Glanced at the cup. “It’s quite all right. I can attest to the provenance of this soup and to the fact that it has been steeping since 1945.”
Smiling at his joke, she accepted the cup but refused his assistance. She was no Camille.
“Are you afraid of your brothers?” he asked taking the empty cup and set it aside.
“Afraid? No.”
“Then why are you not happy about one of them coming for you?”
“They’ll never let me out of their sight now. They’ve never let me do what I want. Not even now that I’m nineteen and an adult.”
Pale eyes watched her. Placing a hand on the mattress, he leaned toward her, his face so close she could see a new growth of black whiskers and an old scar that looked like the slash of a knife. She grew aware of his smell, dark like the earth and tangy like a northern wood. Moss, bark and a millennium of fallen leaves.
Eyes closed, fixing that smell in her mind, she felt him ease her into the pillows. She let him. She wanted to know him. But when she felt him place both his hands in the pillows, one to the right of her head, the other to the left, panic set in.
“What?” she asked her eyes popping open.
“The answer to your question.”
“Question?”
“You wanted to know which brother. It’s Griffith.”
She groaned.
“You don’t like him?”
She felt his lips lightly brushing her cheek. Her breathing faltered, jangling her nerves.
“It’s not that.”
“Then what?”
“Griff is the bane of my existence.”
He was so close, surrounding her and blocking the light from the lamp. “How so?” he asked.
“He’s a tyrant.”
“Hmm, protective,” he replied teasing her lips, then slowly dragging the tip of his tongue along her lower lip. It tickled. She jerked her head aside but his arm was planted right up against it and so she could not escape. He caught her mouth, pressed his lips to hers, held them and gently nuzzled. He raised his head at last and considered her expression, a sudden wariness in her eyes.
“I can well understand why that is. You are quite…yes, quite worth protecting.”
She stared at him. From the pot to the frying pan? Not so good.
“So you think he is the one thwarting you,” he stated.
“Yes.”
“Why do you think that?”
“I don’t know! Maybe because he’s thirty-eight. A widower who thinks that gives him some kind of right. Besides, he’s like the local law…which probably accounts for his too-close acquaintance with the word—no. ‘No, Brie, you can’t go camping this weekend. No, no game this Friday. Word is that Purvis is out on bail, so no window-shopping in Spokane—or whatever else he’s heard.
“Then there’s the Great Battle of the Mini-skirt of 1967. And the not to be forgotten there-will-be-no-dancing edict because he’s
Presbyterian to his bones. And when I told him I wanted to attend an out-of-state college—that too was a no.”
“But here you are. He must have said yes…”
Her gaze slid away and he saw guilt in her eyes. With a finger on her chin, he turned her back, gently nudged her face up.
“Now…let me guess. Hmm…I am betting that you didn’t inform them.”
“Damn right I didn’t.”
“So this is like—forbidden fruit?”
How does he know?
He smiled and lifted one of those devil’s brows. “So what did you tell them? Or did you simply take off?”
She snorted. “I’m not that much a fool,” she replied huffily. “I passed a brochure by Griff’s nose, one of those boring museum tours I’d picked up in Spokane. I gave him the checks to sign…” She flashed him a look. “Making sure that he didn’t get too close a look at the Pay to the Order—”
He reacted in spite of himself. Brows went up and his jaw dropped open.
“We-ell…it was that or never getting past Moscow, Idaho!”
And never crossing his path. He shut his mouth and concentrated on soothing her temper, distracting her with kisses. Kisses he scattered along her brow, taking the risk that her arousal would drive his own too far, until she moved her head so fast that she gasped. He flinched, caught unawares, not by arousal but by her pain lancing down his back.
“Querida! You hurt!”
She did not answer for a few moments.
“Never mind,” she said her breathing short. “Did he have a message? Like maybe…he’s coming to shoot me.”
“No,” he replied. He placed a hand on her forehead, his large palm covering both forehead and eyes.
She relaxed and he felt the lancing pain ease to a dull ache. As she relaxed so did he.
“So what did Griff say?”
The clock ticking in his head, he had no interest in talk. Instead, he wanted her right earlobe. It beckoned him. Small and pink, he was desperate to nibble at it…but knowing he might cause her pain…
He gave in to her need. He slid a hand behind her neck, slid it down a ways until he found the offended nerve points, the muscles bunched up and tender, and massaged, soothing her, watching as her breathing eased and witnessing the hundred signs of her turning soft and compliant. She fell into that curious state, rigid in mind but helpless in his arms.
“I am told,” he whispered in her ear, “that he will be landing at Málaga Airport tomorrow morning.”
She shivered.
“Querida…” he breathed. She shivered, a balm to him. “I want you to let go.”
“Let—go? I can’t.”
“Try.”
“I don’t think…”
“Try…”
“Noo…oooh… Oooh my…Lord!”
She let go then and in just the way he wanted. She writhed. And he thrilled. And settled in to complete his conquest. Nipping at her throat, licking and tasting, savoring—playing the beast to her quivering maid—and knew that he had her.
Bridget could not hold out. The colors of the world burst out of the gray and turned a sparkling white, the texture rising from the barely noticed to exciting and sensuous. Stroking her. His voice was soft, low. His tone like heady wine—intoxicating as it burrowed deep into her consciousness—and slowly herding her toward some edge.
Gasping for air, writhing in a wash of fiery satin, she fell.
But he caught her between his large hands. He gripped her head. He teased her lips apart. It was not a kiss. Who would call what he did a kiss? It was an invasion. An assault of her nerves. His tongue swept past her lips, explored then plunged to the back of her palate to a spot so sensitive she jumped out of her skin. But he held her head and did it again.
When Presbyterian guilt reared up to demand she resist and save herself—it was too late. The dam of need and want had burst and swept her up and tossed her into the raging torrent. She had no fear of it. Why fear exultation?
As the roaring torrent ebbed and what was left subsided to a merry hum, she discovered her body no longer ached. She was drifting on a cloud. She was seeing the sky and soaring into the deepest night and beyond—to the stars. She urged him to keep going but he turned away, intimating that he would do so one day—when she agreed to belong to him.
In wonder, she gazed at him, her body mellow and mind drifting…so very relaxed that she never blinked at the sight of him, a man subsumed into a light brighter than fire. Flame-like tongues of fire danced about him. They flared up and out, the shape, when she examined it, put it together, looked vaguely dragon-like.
Good God…
With a half-smile, a knowing smile, he eased away but did not let her go. She saw far into his eyes. Felt herself caught up…bound to him. And in a flash of insight, understood what he had done. He had conquered her and staked his claim.
It made quite good sense—if you’re a dragon.
But a man? What nerve!
* * * * *
When she woke, she found her brother sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, dressed in dark suit, polished shoes and his work-hardened hand gripping his Western hat. She saw worry in his eyes and anger in the tightness of his face.
“I’m told you’re black and blue from that fall,” he said, his tone grim. “So I’ll wait ’til we get home. But I promise you Brie that I’m gonna give you the thrashing you deserve.”
She sat up abruptly. “I’m not going home.”
Her brother did not hear. He stood. He paced the floor and unloaded his anger, poisoning her warm fuzzy world. He had never tolerated her defiance.
“You are coming home with me. Do you hear?”
“No.”
He flinched. Turned back around, his blue eyes too sharp. She knew the signs. He was about to explode.
She didn’t care. “How does it feel, huh? To have that word—no!—thrown back at you?”
He moved close to the bed with hands fisted at his sides. She was suddenly afraid and pulled back. As a child, he had often swatted her bottom but had never harmed her. Yet seeing him like this, balled up and angry, she was no longer sure of him.
“I am nineteen years old, Griff. So back off.”
Then like a child, she raised the covers over her head and closed her eyes wishing he’d just go away.
* * * * *
Half an hour later, shaved, showered and in a clean uniform, Captain de Saa faced an unhappy Griffith Loudoun. They had gathered in his mother’s library, he behind the desk and his mother sitting by the window, observing.
“She refuses to leave with me. Explain that, will ya?” the American groused.
“Frankly—”
“She lied. She sneaked behind our backs. She tricked me into co-signing her checks. I’ve put men behind bars for pulling that stunt!” The rancher-lawman looked at him, the glint of anger turning his blue eyes the color of steel.
“May I suggest…”
“That I’ve got my work cut out? Yeah, I know. Obviously we did something wrong.” Loudoun hung his head. “We tried, you know. God, we all did.”
The captain gave up and settled in to listen to Griffith Loudoun explain their parents’ death, Bridget’s mad antics after that and the measures he and his brothers had taken to keep her in harness—Loudoun’s words.
He felt a small measure of sympathy for the man. But as Bridget wanted to spread her wings and the brothers were resisting, his sympathy would only go so far.
“Perhaps you tried too hard?” he suggested.
“And have her go off on her own? Just like she’s done?” Loudoun scrubbed his face. “God…just thinking of what might’ve happened if you hadn’t been there.”
“Exactly…” And he was glad for his own peace of mind, to have witnessed the arrest of the would-be thief, a drifter working at Jose Torres’ stables.
“I have to take her home. Even against her will. She’s just a girl!”
It was this statement that finally roused his m
other.
“I would remind you, sir,” she said, setting her book aside and coming to her feet. “That she is no longer a girl. She has a goal and wants to complete it.”
“A goal?”
“Discount it, sir. Force her home and she will never forgive you.”
Loudoun shrugged.
“She might even run away.” His mother’s pale eyes watched him dispassionately. “Are you willing to risk that?”
“No! Of course not. But what can I do? She’s a kid thinking she’s all grown up. Jeezus! What’s with this Moorish king moaning about something he should’ve fought for? To my way of thinkin’, he deserved to lose!”
“To her it’s a grand adventure.”
“An adventure…my foot!”
The captain heard his mother sigh. He knew that sigh.
“Then I suggest you prepare yourself for open rebellion, Mr. Loudoun.” She cocked her head and listened to the sounds beyond the door. “If I’m not mistaken, she’s about to launch its debut.”
The brother turned to him. “What would you do if she were your sister? Let her continue on her own? I can’t do that. I don’t think you could either.”
“True. But there is another way.”
“What?”
“Allow her to stay.”
He caught a glint of suspicion in the American’s eyes. He could see his mental wheels churning thoughts.
He chuckled and flashed a smile. “No, don’t worry. I’m posted in Madrid. But there is my mother…”
Blue eyes turned sharp but the American got no chance to voice his suspicions. The door opened. The majordomo stepped aside to let Bridget Loudoun pass. But Bridget did not enter. She stood just in the doorway, her color high and bright blue eyes sparking.
His wild woman was angry the captain thought at first and then changed his mind. No, she’s more than that. She’s furious. And magnificent. Every man cell in him thrilled while his dragon self wanted to roar.
“Griff!”
Her brother was across the room. Hands on his hips, he looked her up and down, examining her attire—jeans, blouse and boots. And glared at her. Bridget glared right back.
“What are you doing out of bed?”