Laughter rumbled in his chest. “And if I give you my word, how do you know I’ll keep it?”
She looked directly into his sparkling blue eyes. “Because I trust you. If you say you will do something, you will do it. If you say you won’t, you won t.
Her answer silenced him.
“Mr. Montana? Do you give me your word?”
He realized he had to give her some sort of reply. But since she trusted him, he wouldn’t swear not to touch her. He had every intention of touching her.
Only after a long moment did he think of what his promise would be. “I give you my word, Miss Worth, that I won’t throw my hat on your pillow ever again.”
With that, he vanished down the hall.
Ten miles out of Wild Winds, Roman stopped beside a grove of majestic live oaks that, because of the long, thick Spanish moss that draped from their branches, resembled wizened men dressed in gray robes. Beneath the rustling trees, winecups, sleepy daisies, and patches of bluebells created a dazzling rainbow of burgundy, yellow, and blue.
“Oh, Mr. Montana, thank you ever so much!” Theodosia exclaimed as she stopped her wagon.
“For what?”
“How sensitive of you to reflect upon my fondness for wild flowers and choose this particular spot for our picnic.”
He stared at the flowers so intently that they became a blur of color before his eyes. Had he picked this spot for her? Was it some sort of deep-down consideration toward her that had caused him to stop here?
Well, hell, he could like flowers too, couldn’t he? Just because he’d never sought them out on purpose before didn’t mean he didn’t like being near them.
“Those are Callirhoe digitata, Eustoma grandiflorum, and Xanthisma texanum,” Theodosia announced as she climbed out of the buckboard and gazed at the thick mass of flowers. “I do believe I shall collect a few specimens to study when I have a bit of spare time.”
Her scientific jargon aggravated him further. “You aren’t the only person in the world who likes flowers, you know,” he told her, determined to set her straight and himself as well. “And that’s what they are. Flowers. Ordinary, everyday red, yellow, and blue flowers. And any fat, shiny, black bugs you see crawling around here are beetles. And those clouds up there are just puffy white clouds. And before you analyze my mood, let me tell you that it is not roinous, got that? It’s sour. It’s just a plain old sour, rotten, bad mood.”
She watched him dismount. After a moment of contemplation, she thought of a few possible reasons for his sudden irritation. Instantly, she tried to think of a way to lead him into telling her himself. And as she thought, excitement slid through her.
There was very little she enjoyed more them delving into the heart of an enigma, which Roman Montana certainly was.
And yet an enigma did not wholly describe what he was to her. Beyond her intellectual interest in him lay something else.
Something emotional.
“What are you thinking about?” Roman demanded.
Calmly, she peered up at the sky. “The clouds. You’re right. They are not cirrostratus. They are cumulus and often appear around midday on a sunny day. They are much lower than cirrus clouds, but should they become bigger and rise higher, they could turn into storm clouds. I won’t worry about a possible storm, though, because you will undoubtedly hear and smell one before the clouds give notice.”
She removed John the Baptist from his cage. After slipping the glittery bird collar around the parrot’s neck and attaching the leash to it, she faced Roman. “And as for your mood, I wouldn’t describe it as roinous at all. It is definitely jaculiferous.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You may look for the definition in a dictionary.”
“I’m not in the habit of carrying a dictionary around in my saddlebag, Miss Worth.”
“More’s the pity, Mr. Montana.”
He stormed through the sea of wild flowers and stopped before her. “I don’t need your pity.”
“How fortunate, for I pity you not at all.” She removed a large basket from the back of the wagon and walked John the Baptist through the flowers. “Jaculiferous describes something that possesses spines,” she said, and set the basket beside the trunk of an oak. “Like a porcupine.”
“I’m in a porcupine mood?”
She laughed softly. “I only meant that your mood is spiny. Prickly.”
“Means the same thing,” he muttered. “Sour, rotten, and bad.” He grabbed a blanket out of the wagon and joined her by the tree.
She helped him spread the blanket over the bed of flowers. “You’ve torn your shirt.”
He noticed a large rip in his sleeve and shrugged.
“I’ve never loved a man.”
Her out-of-the-blue statement set his mind spinning.
“And since I have never loved a man, I have no idea what it’s like to want to marry. Tell me what it’s like.”
“Tell you? How the hell would I know?”
She kept her features blank, giving no indication that his response had provided her with the exact information she needed. “I cannot help the fact that I am a woman, Mr. Montana.”
“What?”
She knelt and began to lay out the food for the picnic. “I cannot change my sex, but if you like, we could discuss your untoward feelings for women. Perhaps we would then be able to determine the most appropriate way for you to overcome them. Surely you do not desire to spend your life disliking the entire female race.”
“What the devil are you talking about?”
She began slicing the bread, cheese, and apples. “You were in a fine mood this morning. But when I mentioned the consideration you showed by picking this spot for me, you exhibited sudden defensiveness and attacked me verbally. I believe your outburst stems from the fact that you did indeed choose this spot for me. You obviously realized that, and your own thoughtfulness toward me angered you. Such a reaction might have stemmed from the loss of a beloved sweetheart and your consequent refusal to be vulnerable to an amorous form of love again. However, when I asked you to tell me about romantic love, you demonstrated genuine ignorance of the subject. Therefore, I feel it safe to presume that you have not loved and lost a sweetheart. Sit down and eat your lunch.”
“You’re doing that psychology stuff again,” he bit out as he sat down beside her. “Well, I can tell you right now that—”
“Furthermore, you lied to me.” She handed him a piece of bread.
“Lied? But—”
“From what I understand, there is little you cannot do. Had you stayed in Oates’ Junction rather than following me, you would have found other work. However, you tried to make me believe that you followed me because of the money Dr. Wallaby would pay you. That was a lie. You came after me because you knew those gold thieves were planning to rob me and that they might very well have harmed me. Your worry over me more than likely bothered you immensely.”
“I needed the money, and that’s the end of it!”
She smiled sweetly into the dangerous glitter in his eyes. “You suffered a negative experience with a woman sometime in your past, and as we have just discussed, the woman was not your sweetheart. Said experience must have been truly painful because it has caused you to dislike all women. You allow yourself to indulge in sexual activities with them, but beyond that you want nothing to do with them. That is why your consideration toward me annoys you. Open your mouth.”
So startled was he by what she told him, he didn’t think twice before opening his mouth and accepting the slice of apple she put into it. “How do you—”
“Know? Why, you hinted at it the first night we spent together.”
He didn’t remember hinting at anything of the sort. “I did not—”
“Yes, Mr. Montana, you did.” She ate a bit of bread and cheese and shared some apple with John the Baptist. “You said you did not want a family.”
“What’s that got to do with—”
“Your
animosity toward women? Really, Mr. Montana, it’s quite elementary.”
“Nothing is ever elementary to you, Miss Worth! You don’t know what simple is! Everything you do, say, and think has to be connected to some sort of academic junk that normal people don’t know a damned thing about!”
Calmly, she waited for him to finish raving. “To have a family, you must have a wife. You are not fond of women, so you do not want a wife. Therefore, you do not plan to raise a family on your horse ranch. That is what you told me the night we spent in the woods. Would you care for some cheese?”
“What? No, I don’t want any blasted cheese! I want you to stop—”
“My goodness, what a temper,” she remarked, casually examining an apple seed. “From whom did you inherit that volatile constitution? Your father or your mother?”
“I wouldn’t know, and that’s the last question you’re going to ask me!”
She laid her hand on his knee. “I’m sorry.”
“You damned sure should be. Digging into a person’s mind is—”
“No, Mr. Montana. You misunderstand. I am expressing sympathy over the deaths of your parents. They must have died when you were very young, or else you would have remembered if one of them had the same temper you do. Or perhaps you never knew them at all. Whatever the case, someone else raised you. And I don’t think I am wrong in believing that that someone was a woman. Whoever she was, she was uncaring toward you.”
Stunned into silence, Roman stared into her eyes, wishing he could see the astonishing brain behind them. He’d told her so little, and yet she’d discovered the truth.
But not all of it. There hadn’t been an uncaring woman; there had been three. He didn’t like remembering them. And what he liked even less was being forced to remember them.
The memories made him recall his own stupidity.
Theodosia watched him squeeze his piece of bread into a dough ball. “It wasn’t my intention to make you angry,” she said softly. “I only wanted to know more about—”
“Angry?” He pitched the bread ball into the woods. “Are you kidding? I’m having the time of my life! Doesn’t everyone enjoy having their past guessed at, carved open, and discussed by people who don’t care that it’s none of their business? I know you’re afraid of lightning, but have I tried to find out why? No, because it’s none of my business. Personally, I think being afraid of lightning is stupid. I can see being nervous about it, but you fall completely apart! Still, it’s none of my business, and besides that, Miss Worth, I don’t really give a damn!”
She watched the fire of fury come into his eyes. But behind the flames there glowed another emotion.
Sorrow glimmered through his wrath. His buried grief unsettled her far more than she thought reasonable. How was it possible for her to feel such profound concern for a man like Roman Montana? Besides the fact that she’d known him for only days, he wasn’t at all the sort of man she ever imagined herself caring for. Not that she’d planned on involving herself with any man at all, she amended. The Brazilian research was all that mattered to her. But if she had considered love and romance, surely she would have sought a man whose academic background equaled hers.
Disturbed by the intensity of her own emotions, she quickly gathered the remains of the lunch and packed them away. “I suppose our feelings are very similar, really,” she announced in the most normal voice she could muster. “I have not found a reason to cease fearing lightning, and you have found none to alter your dislike toward women. It occurs to me now that I have no right to question your feelings when mine parallel them. Therefore, please nurture your loathing for women, just as I will undoubtedly maintain my dread of lightning.”
She picked up the basket with one hand, her parrot with the other, and stood. “There is one point I shall add, though. My terror of lightning hurts no one but myself. However, your hostility toward women will be a source of great pain for any unsuspecting woman who might fall in love with you.”
He rose from the ground and loomed above her. “Let me save you the task of tricking me into telling you what I think about your point. Women don’t fall in love, Miss Worth. They fall in want. Now, there’s some food for your hungry little analytical mind, isn’t there?”
She met his blazing gaze straight on. “A veritable banquet.”
He didn’t miss the oh-so-slight tilt of her beautiful lips. No doubt she thought she would win their verbal sparring.
He vowed she wouldn’t. “Eat hearty.”
“I shall stuff myself until I cannot hold another bite.” She crossed to the buckboard and deposited the basket in the wagon bed and her parrot on the seat. “And when I am hungry again, I assure you, Mr. Montana, I shall come back for more.”
He picked the blanket off the ground and joined her by the buckboard. “The kitchen is closed.”
“Ah, but the cook often forgets to lock the door.”
He stepped nearer to her, close enough that her breasts touched his chest. “You’d be entering at your own risk. The cook needs fire to work. It’s hot in there.” Slowly, he raised his hands and curled them around her hips. “It might melt you.”
Exquisite heat flashed through her.
The second he saw her flush, he set about showing her just how hot the fire really was.
His lips came down on hers hard. His tongue slid deeply into her mouth, then he withdrew it only to thrust it between her lips again and again and again. Each time he entered her mouth, he pulled her toward him. His hands kneading her bottom, his thighs pressing against hers, he circled his hips upon hers in a rhythm he knew her body would recognize and imitate.
Theodosia began to move. Against him. With him, to the cadence he’d set. She trembled. She rocked and wavered.
He felt her soften in his arms. His lips still molded to hers, he lifted her off the ground and gently sat her in the wagon. Drawing away from her, he smoothed the tips of his fingers across her forehead. “In this mind of yours are a thousand things. Lessons you haven’t forgotten. It’s time you learned another. Where there’s heat, there’s fire, Miss Worth. Fire burns”—he slid his fingers to her breast and traced the stiff circle of her nipple— “and it melts.”
Still shaking with unappeased desire, Theodosia watched him mount and urge his stallion back to the road. She longed desperately to call out a crushing comeback that would end the encounter in her favor.
But for the first time in her life, words failed her. Roman Montana had beaten her soundly.
Chapter Seven
Theodosia padded her sleeping pallet with every article of clothing she’d brought to Texas, but she could still feel the rocky ground beneath her. She’d never been given to cursing, but as annoyed as she felt now, several colorful epithets shot through her mind.
Across from the fire a few feet away, sitting upon his own pallet and leaning against a birch tree, Roman watched her struggle. “Something the matter, Miss Worth?” He laid down the sheet of paper he’d been studying and stuck his pencil behind his ear.
“Something the matter, Miss Worth?” John the Baptist repeated, then threw water every which way. “Where there’s heat, there’s fire, Miss Worth.”
Theodosia squirmed away from a rock pressing into her hip, only to move herself into a cluster that jabbed at her side. “You chose this spot out of pure spite, Mr. Montana. We have passed a multitude of grassy fields, leaf-strewn woods, and flowered meadows, and yet you deliberately stopped here in this—this boulder-filled pit to spend the night.”
“Boulder-filled?” Roman clicked his tongue. “That is a very poor choice of words, Miss Worth. The rocks around here aren’t any bigger than my fist. And this is not a pit. It’s a dried-up creek bed.”
“Nevertheless, you went out of your way to find the most unwelcoming site possible. And I assure you that I know why you did.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that you do. Hell, you know almost everything else about me, don’t you?” He picked up the paper again, upon
which he’d written the amounts of the savings he had in the eight different towns.
“Not only do you remain piqued over the fact that I learned a bit about your past this afternoon, but you also seek to prove to me that you have no consideration toward me whatsoever,” Theodosia continued, still shifting on her lumpy bed. “You knew I would have a wretched time trying to sleep on rocks—”
“Sleep in the wagon bed.”
“It is too small, and you know it.”
“Then get up and push the rocks away.”
“I have already attempted the process of elapidation, to no avail.”
Rubbing his chin, he stared at her. “Elapidation?”
“Elapidation is the clearing away of stones.”
He almost laughed. The woman had a brainy word for the simplest of things!
“Beneath one layer of rocks is another,” Theodosia said, “and then another, and then—”
“When this was a creek, it was called Bedrock Creek.”
“How utterly appropriate.” Completely frustrated, Theodosia sat up and swiped her hair out of her face. “And just how can it be that you are so comfortable?”
He picked up a handful of pebbles, and one by one, he flung them toward Theodosia. When he was finished, they lay in a neat pile in her lap. “Rocks don’t bother me. I’ve slept on them before and will probably sleep on them again. Why do you keep wearing that thick nightgown, by the way? It must be ninety degrees out here. Aren’t you hot?”
John the Baptist spat another stream of water. “Well, I bedded my first wench when I was fourteen,” he said, “and I ain’t let up since.”
At her parrot’s words, Theodosia rolled her eyes, then patted the velvet ribbons that closed the front of her flannel gown. “No doubt you would like me to sleep naked, Mr. Montana.”
“No doubt at all, Miss Worth.”
Roman Montana embodied the truest definition of rake, she thought while battling anger and desire. The moment an opportunity arrived for discussing or practicing anything having to do with sensuality, he seized it instantly. “I have never slept without a nightrail on, nor will I ever do so. And I would appreciate it if you would please refrain from mentioning intimate subjects such as my nightwear.”
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