Angel’s curiosity nearly pulled her from the chair, but she somehow managed to stay put.
Roy laid the pen aside and straightened. “Mantorres, would you come over here.”
Rane turned, his eyes narrowed with suspicion as he walked to the front of the desk.
Horace placed his hand over the sheet of paper and slid it forward. “Here. This is all I can do for you now.”
Rane picked up the page and tilted it toward the light. Immediately, his gaze shot to Horace, questioning. “Is this your idea of a joke?”
Horace shook his head. “It’s no joke.”
“Well, then, you’re mistaken,” Rane said, “because you just got the last laugh.” His lips compressed as he crushed the paper in his fist and let it drop to the floor. Despite her father’s protests, he walked out the door and kept going.
Curiosity finally won. Angel stood and walked to the front of the desk. She picked up the wrinkled paper, straightened it, and saw that her father had signed and witnessed Horace’s last will and testament.
Chapter Twenty
Warm wind buffeted Angel’s face. She leaned into it and goaded her mare to a faster gait. From a distance, the Flying C looked more deserted than the Hacienda. The corrals stood empty, the gates ajar. She slowed to a walk when she reached the compound and listened. Only the chirp of crickets and the muffled plod of the mare’s hoofs on the softly churned earth came back to her.
She’d expected to see some of her father’s men. The gaping barn door and darkened bunkhouse told her they still hadn’t returned from the creek. Perhaps her father had summoned them to the Hacienda.
Will Keegan, along with a couple more of her father’s men, had arrived on the scene soon after Rane’s departure. Horace had been in a bad way by that time, and getting worse. Her father had sent her from the room to spare her from witnessing the man’s death. And she hadn’t argued. She walked out of Horace’s office and kept on going.
Now, she almost wished she’d stayed.
The sight of the big white house with all its windows darkened filled her with near despair. She had hoped to find a willing ear and solace in Carmella. The small window in the housekeeper’s downstairs bedroom stared back at her, as silent and lifeless as the rest of the house. Could the woman possibly have retired without knowing the outcome on such a night? More likely, she’d been afraid to stay alone.
Angel felt her way up the back stairs and crossed the hall to her bedroom. After closing the door, she sighed and leaned into the heavily varnished wood. A long night awaited. Exhaustion pulled at her, but the thoughts churning through her mind allowed no rest.
She crossed the room and dropped her hat onto the seat of a chair. Acrid sulfur filled her nostrils when she struck a match and lit the lamp on her bedside table. Moving to the solitary, south-facing window, she pressed her forehead to a cool glass pane and sent one last yearning look into the dark distance before she drew the curtains together.
The snap of the lock startled her. She whirled, her heart stampeding.
Rane stood just inside the door, watching her.
She clapped a hand to her chest. “You scared the life out of me!”
“It seems to be a habit,” he said, his expression as solemn as death.
She lowered her trembling hand, stepped away from the window and blurted the first thing that came to mind. “Did you see Carmella?”
“Yes, I saw her.”
“Where is she?”
“I would imagine she’s asleep in her room. Why didn’t you tell me she was here?”
“I haven’t seen you. Until tonight. And you’re a fine one to even try and suggest I’m the one who’s been keeping secrets.”
Angel shook her head, frowning. The conversation had gotten off on the wrong track. She didn’t want to argue with him. There were other issues more pressing. During the ride home, her thoughts had been consumed with all the different possibilities opened up by Horace’s revelation. If only Rane had stayed. After he’d bolted from Horace’s office, she’d been wretched with thoughts of him out there somewhere in the night, alone and hurting.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked.
“How could I tell you? Besides...would you have believed it?”
At a loss, unable to answer, she turned from him and stood before the dresser.
After a moment, she lifted her eyes and found his reflection in the mirror. He pushed away from the door and moved in close behind her.
“Would you have believed me?” he asked softly.
Her gaze met his in the silvered glass. “You never gave me the chance.”
She saw his arm move and felt the brush of his fingertips against her hair. She closed her eyes as the ticklish sensation wound through her. He moved closer. A touch of warm breath replaced his fingers. He leaned in and pressed a lingering kiss to the nape of her neck.
“I need you tonight, mi ángela. Please don’t turn away from me.”
The rich, dark seduction of his voice, so full of need, stroked more deeply than his hands or his lips ever could.
She turned.
Gently, he cupped her face, his shadowed eyes searching hers, as if he tried to see into her very soul.
“I shouldn’t be here,” he said. “It’s risky.”
“I don’t want you to go.”
She lifted on tiptoe and pressed her mouth to his. For several seconds his lips remained firm, then he softened, and she opened to him, like a budding rose beneath the sun, and offered all she had to give.
The smell of burnt gunpowder clung to his clothing. But the taste of him, the wildly intoxicating essence of him was pure Rane. His tongue glided between her lips to join with hers as he applied gentle suction. A low moan that sounded part pleasure, part protest rumbled in his throat.
She sensed him pulling back from her, even before he ended the kiss. Too quickly, he released her and stepped away, out of reach, putting distance between them once more.
Bewildered, she watched him pace to the far side of the room. He reached up, as though agitated and jabbed his fingers through his hair, already in wind-blown disarray. Then he shuddered. She couldn’t even begin to guess at the agonizing memories trapped inside his head. He’d been only fourteen when he watched his mother die and buried her with his own hands. Tonight, he had relived it. Emotions too long held at bay seemed to be clawing to the surface.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have left the Hacienda like that.”
“You think I should have stayed.” The way he said it, flat, emotionless, his voice held neither question nor statement, but both seemed implied.
“He was dying, Rane.”
“What did you expect me to do, wait around for it to happen? Why? I was never anything more than dirt beneath his feet.”
For a moment, his dark gaze bored into her. He looked away, but not before she saw the telltale tightening of his lips.
“So, tell me. After I left, did he suddenly have a change of heart?”
While he kept his voice emotionless, there was an underlying edge to his words and she knew, although he would never let on, he was hanging on her answer. She fervently wished she could summon the courage to lie.
His heavy-lidded gaze flicked in her direction once more. For an instant, a phantom of his old smile touched his lips. It did nothing to dispel the cold darkness in his eyes. “I didn’t think so.”
He switched his attention to the carpet and shook his head. An empty chuckle slipped from his lips. “I never truly believed he would admit it. Not even to me. All these years, I’ve waited. Now that it’s done, it’s time to move on.”
Move on. Panic seized Angel. He was there to say goodbye. Her mind reeled at the prospect.
“But what about the Hacienda?” she clamored, grasping at straws, any reason that might hold him.
“What about it?”
“You’re his son, Rane. His only heir.” She reached into the pocket of her riding skirt and held up the sheet of paper she’d
rescued from the floor of Horace’s office. “Look. He put it in writing. He’s leaving the Hacienda to you!”
“¡Sangre de Cristo!” He crossed the room with quick strides and snatched the document from her hand. “Don’t you understand? This is his idea of a joke. His own retribution. He’s left me nothing except his debts. Well, no, thank you!” He tossed the will onto the dresser.
“You were born there,” she persisted. “It’s where you spent your childhood.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “as an outsider.”
Before he could move away again, she reached up and slid her hands inside his collar. Against her fingertips, his skin sizzled, his pulse throbbed wildly at the side of his throat. Somehow, she had to comfort him, alleviate his pain. She wanted to hold him there. With her. Forever.
“What about me?” she demanded, though she feared his answer.
He grew so still, she thought he had stopped breathing.
“Are you just going to ride away from me, too?”
His chest quickly rose and fell. “Aren’t you forgetting? You asked for no promises, and I made none.”
“To hell with all the things we didn’t say! I love you, Rane! Don’t you know that by now?”
She could have sworn she saw white-hot flames leap in the depths of his eyes. Just as quickly, they died. Suddenly he reached out, startling her, and clasped her face between his hands. “Don’t say it. Don’t even think it.”
Angel’s confession of love sent wild, desperate hope flaring in Rane’s heart. Vain longings. Dreams of things that could never be. He dashed them all with vicious, cold reality. She had her world, and he didn’t belong there. Gun for hire. Drifter. Even to the mixed blood flowing through his veins, he was all the things her father and his kind despised. His own father had scorned him. Eventually, she would reject him as well. She was meant for better things.
But her eyes, as they looked at that moment, would always haunt him. Blue as sapphires, she watched him through a sheen of tears that swelled and broke, streaking down her cheeks, wetting his thumbs. Heartbreak. His restraint, already tenuous, snapped and he roughly pulled her to him.
She clung, her strength bordering desperation. He brushed her hair with his lips, breathing in her scent. Subtle flowers. Warm female. Her taste, her smell, the feel of her body, all so familiar now. “Lo siento, mi querida.”
He could have spared them both and headed straight for the border. Impossible. He couldn’t go. Not without seeing her one more time.
Tender whispered words of comfort slipped easily from his tongue. He didn’t know when their desperate embrace changed, only that it did. With parted lips, he dragged over her skin, igniting heat that dried her tears and had her cleaving to him in a different way. He trailed from her cheek to her ear and felt her shiver.
“Just for tonight, Angel. I don’t want to spend this night alone.”
She captured his face between her hands and aligned her eyes with his. “Oh, Rane. For tonight, or a million nights, you never have to be alone.”
But he would be, his soul cried. After tonight.
He devoured the sweetness she offered with a hunger that only intensified each time they came together. Hands splayed against her back and rounded bottom, he pressed her closer. She shoved her hand between them and found his arousal. He sucked in a breath when she palmed his swollen head and squeezed. Raw pleasure leaped along his nerve endings, and he ached for more.
He melded the lower half of his body to hers and backed her against the dresser. A moan welled in her throat. He covered her mouth with his and smothered the sound, absorbed it with a deep thrust.
While she worked the buttons on his trousers, he opened her blouse, tugged loose the satin ribbons closing her camisole and released her breasts. He stepped back long enough to allow her to drop her split riding skirt to the floor, until she stood before him in only her gaping shirt and undergarments.
He lingered on her heavy breasts, then moved to her face. He wanted to absorb the sight of her. To remember.
The intensity behind Rane’s veiled gaze touched Angel’s soul with a longing sorrow that went beyond the physical. She swallowed against the teary, burning ache in her throat and reached up, threading her fingers into the silken ebony tangle of his hair. Urging him forward, she pressed a kiss to each side of his sensuous curving mouth.
His kiss scorched her, left her breathless. And then he lowered his head, and his heat seared her as he closed over the peak of one aching breast. He drew her pliant flesh deep inside his mouth. The tugging sensation of his suckling struck a sympathetic throb between her thighs.
He fumbled with the slit in her lace-trimmed drawers until he found what he sought. He sucked in a breath and cupped her, gently kneading. He moved upward and glided back down, parting her moist petals with two fingers. The heel of his hand dragged over her swollen bud with just enough pressure to send her straining against him.
Needing to touch him, to feel his feverish skin beneath her hands, she unbuttoned his shirt and stroked across his rigid muscles. A faint quiver ran through him. She knew he fought for restraint. But just then, she needed him to lose himself. She wanted to possess him. Needed him to take her. Only when he joined his body with hers did they form an unbreakable, perfect bond that made him truly hers.
“Love me, Rane,” she urged in a breathless groan. “Now.”
“Hold onto me,” he said, just as breathless.
Bracing her against the dresser, he lifted her leg and curved it behind his waist, leaving her open and positioned for him. His fiery heat, the hard thickness of him nudged through the opening in her drawers. She swallowed in anticipation and clung harder around his waist.
He filled her, slow and deep. And then deeper still, until his engorged sex nudged her womb and touched off waves of mind-numbing pleasure.
She nearly wept when he started to withdraw, until he surged upward again and set a torturous rhythm meant to drive her mad. As he moved inside her, she knew she would remember the elation, the ecstasy of this moment for the rest of her life. Moisture seeped from her eyes. Only now, her tears were shed in joy.
Her muscles tensed, wound tighter still when he moved harder within her. Faster. She met his thrusts, sending the lotion pots and perfume bottles standing atop the dresser into a jiggly dance.
His breath grated to a ragged pant, his motions grew jerky, out of control, telling her he was almost there. She hovered at the edge of bliss, needing only his hot, rushing release to send her free-falling through the white, blinding heights where he had lifted her.
****
Rane lay flat on his back with Angel draped halfway across his body and watched the circle of yellow and white lampglow fluctuate on the ceiling. The wavering light played hell with his eyes. Not to mention, he still felt half blinded in the aftermath of his and Angel’s last bout of lovemaking.
The first time they’d climaxed together with such intensity it nearly dropped them both to the floor. It wasn’t until after when he realized he’d taken her while still wearing his gun and holster.
The second time, they’d moved to her bed. Which proved to be no less strenuous. Or shattering. Now, he felt drained.
He was lost. Doomed by the love of a woman. This woman. Somewhere, somehow, she had breathed life into the cold emptiness of his heart, and he had given it to her.
But how easy it had been to convince himself the attraction went no deeper than physical lust. Angel’s fiery nature seemed to thrive on danger, which he amply supplied. Her forbidden beauty had lured him from the very first time he saw her. But it was her rare and caring spirit that finally captured him.
If he left—when he left—his heart would remain here, in Angel’s keeping. It was a sacrifice he was willing to make. He had no choice, because he lacked the willpower to stay away from her. With each tryst, they risked discovery, which would surely be her ruin. He’d harmed her too much already.
How much time had passed? He lifted his head. No c
lock sat on the dresser or anyplace else that he could see. He knew it had to be sometime after midnight. Each moment he lingered now, put them both at risk.
He dropped his head back on the pillow. “I need to go.”
She stirred. Her deeply drawn breath molded a bare breast more firmly against his ribs. She lifted her knee beneath the tangled sheet and raked her foot down his shin, turning the movement into a caress. “I don’t want you to go.”
“What would you do?” he asked. “Hide me here in your bedroom the rest of my life?”
A movement against his chest told him she was smiling. “Mmm. Now there’s an idea.”
“Seriously. I need to go. Before it’s too late.”
The sheet rustled, slithered up his legs and carried the earthy scent of their lovemaking to his nostrils. Angel slid to her side next to him, propped her head on her hand, and lay there looking down at him. “Rane, I—”
He pressed a fingertip to her lips. “Don’t say it, Angel.”
Sorrow smudged her eyes. She reached up and pulled away his hand. “Take me with you.”
The impulsive plea stopped him for a moment. “As much as the idea appeals to me, you know it’s not possible. Your father would come after us.”
“I don’t care.”
“Yes, you do. You know what it’s like to be on the run. It’s no kind of life.”
“What kind of life do you think I’ll have if you leave me?”
“Better than what I could give you.”
She shook her head. “No. You’re wrong.”
The argument would do neither of them any good. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said with finality. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed.
The bed springs creaked. “Fine, then. Just go!”
He stood and dressed, aware of her behind him, watching, and the muffled sounds of her sobs. He dared not look back. He was already dangerously close to doing something even more stupid than sneaking into her room tonight.
When he strapped on his gun, she scrambled up, taking the sheet with her, and came around the bed. Though her lips trembled, she didn’t speak. He reached out and caught a tear as it rolled down her cheek. Leaning in, he whispered, “Está bien, mi querida. Siempre,” and then placed one last kiss on her tremulous lips.
Angel In The Rain (Western Historical Romance) Page 24