Eyes of the Cat

by Mimi Riser

  “A week ago, I’d probably have agreed.” Alan moved one deliberate step toward her.

  Tabitha moved a more deliberate step back.

  “But a week ago, I hadn’t seen you,” he finished softly, that unbelievable something peaking around the edges of the veil once more.

  It rooted her to the floor.

  “This is preposterous,” she whispered. “There’s no such thing as…as…”

  “Love at first sight?” he offered helpfully.

  “Exactly!” she gasped out, finding her legs as he grabbed for her. She struggled to keep them working while backing down the length of the room in front of him. “You’re mistaking an…an animal attraction for something more.”

  “I don’t think so. I’ve experienced enough ‘animal attraction’ in my life to know the difference,” he said at the exact moment Tabitha felt the wall bump her spine.

  Pressing into it, she held her breath as he leaned forward, planting a hand by each of her shoulders, caging her between the cool adobe and the hot circle of his naked arms and chest.

  “And I don’t think you’re finding this nearly as difficult to believe as you’re pretending.” He locked the cage with his gaze.

  What a horrible thing to say!

  Horrible, she realized with a small, sick shiver, because in a way…it was true. Not true that she actually believed any of this nonsense. She didn’t even think he believed it. It was merely the latest battle ploy, his diabolical version of what people called sweet talk, the sort of blarney men had been using to finagle women ever since Adam decided he needed to repay Eve for the apple episode. But why, in the name of sanity, did she suddenly want to believe it?

  Those eyes… Damn, he was doing it again!

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She shoved anger in front of herself like a shield. “You don’t know anything about me!”

  “Aye. Perhaps you’re right,” he agreed with the same innocence the spider must have used when inviting the fly into his parlor. “But that’s part of the excitement. ’Twill be such an adventure probing into your secrets.”

  Tabitha’s knee shot up so fast, he barely made the dodge away from it in time.

  “Whoa— So you did know what you were aiming for the other night. I didn’t think you’d realized where you hit me,” he said, an insufferable amusement widening his eyes.

  Hers narrowed into smoldering lines.

  “I didn’t then. This was just a lucky guess.” She frowned, wishing her aim and timing had been as lucky. “But as long as we’re on the subject, what about your secrets? Care to tell me why your wife was running away from you? Or shall I try to guess that one, too?”

  The question was out before she had time to consider how hateful it might sound—and how dangerous the answer might be to herself—one of those unfortunate cases of the mouth being quicker than the mind. Why on earth had she asked it? Because the subject had been roiling in her consciousness since dawn? Or had it simply been a verbal attempt to slap that devilish grin off his devilishly handsome face?

  Whichever, it had been remarkably effective—unfortunately—about as effective as using a battle-axe to lance an annoying blister. Alan’s amusement vanished faster than money from a drunken sailor’s pocket. And with it, went the air space between them.

  “I’m becoming a wee bit weary of your questions, lassie. And that one happens to be based on a lie. Heather had no need to run from me. I’d have willingly let her go anytime she asked me,” he growled, yanking Tabitha into his arms.

  Some girls have all the luck, she mused perversely, while feeling like she’d just been hauled into a furnace. But as long as she was going to be taxed for asking, she may as well get an answer for her trouble. The question did carry a certain relevance to her own safety. A hot, suffocating relevance.

  Battling for breath in that crushing embrace, she gasped out, “All right! But she was murdered for some reason, wasn’t she? If it wasn’t because she was running away, why then? Why was she killed?”

  Alan’s whole body clenched, like a fist ready to swing. Then his arms dropped, releasing her so unexpectedly she staggered back against the wall.

  “You’d do better to ask Uncle Angus, since he’s the one who found the body…with her murderer hovering near.” He sighed, sounding suddenly more tired than Atlas had after his first millennium of holding up the world. “The old ox said that for one God awful moment he thought it was me standing there. But I was miles away at the time. That’s why she was killed. Because I’d ridden out before dawn that day, without telling anyone.”

  Angling away, he raked long fingers through his hair. “Heather was running, you see. But not from me. Angus says she thought she was running away with me.”

  He uttered the words so softly, Tabitha wondered for an instant if she had misheard. Then the meaning of all he’d said struck home, and she landed back against the wall with a jolt, her legs feeling about as solid as shadows at noon.

  So that guess had been right, too… She didn’t know why the realization should have blindsided her like this, since it was pretty much what she’d already assumed. But there are sometimes miles of meandering road between assuming a thing and knowing it for sure. Perhaps because certainty had such an inescapable, final ring to it… Like death bells, she thought, going rigid as Alan pivoted back to face her.

  “No more questions now,” he said. “I’ve run out of answers for today.”

  “I’ll supply the answers, then.” Tabitha dug her fingernails into her palms in a painful effort to resist the draw from those hypnotic eyes. “All you have to do is tell me whether or not I’m right.”

  She knew she was right, though. Extrapolating from the few clues she was sure of, she had just pieced together the entire puzzle with mathematical precision, as if she’d been solving an algebraic equation.

  “Tabitha, I’m in no mood for games,” Alan warned, his gaze pressing her harder against the wall.

  “Neither am I. This isn’t play! That man who came after me this morning at the Garcia ranch… He’s the one who murdered your wife. Isn’t he?”

  His eyes beamed down pure danger. “Your surprises never cease, do they?”

  “That’s how he was maimed,” she hurried on, before her nerves choked her. “He pretended he was you to lure her away, but she discovered the truth, and while he was attacking her, she bit his nose off.”

  It’s what I’d have done to Dunstan that night, if I’d had the chance.

  “Bit his… Are we talking about the same person?”

  What? He wasn’t going to quibble over details, was he?

  “You know we are.” She refused to be sidetracked. “Forget about the maiming, if you want. That could have happened some other way, I suppose. The point is—”

  “The point is, you were probably blinded by the sun this morning,” Alan cut her off. “But since you obviously feel you’ve worked out everything else so neatly, why don’t you finish the story for us. Explain why our murderer pretended to be me, in the first place.”

  Tabitha locked her knees for security and drew a deep breath to steady herself. This was the part that had been the easiest to figure, once she had been certain who the man was. It made such sense. Such perfect, pathetic, painful sense.

  “He wanted her because she was yours,” she answered, seeing in her mind the image of two identical little boys constantly warring over toys. “I imagine he always wanted whatever you had. He grew up resenting you because an accident of birth made you the clan’s laird instead of him.” She shook her head. “How much did he miss the honor by? Minutes? An hour maybe? It must have been too bitter a pill for him to swallow. He eluded Angus and ran off after the murder to escape punishment—right? And since then, he’s apparently formed his own band of criminal misfits. This way he gets to be a leader, after all—regardless of his unlucky birth position.”

  “What the devil are you talking about?”

  “That you’re the older,
of course.” Her brows pulled together with suspicion. Surely he wasn’t going to try to deny this, was he? Not when it was so blatant.

  “Older?”

  Something in that husky tone made her skin crawl. What was going on here? She knew she was right. If the two men had been bronze statues, they’d have had to have been poured from the same mold. They were replicas of one another. What else could they be but…

  “He’s your twin brother. He must be,” she insisted, a desperate edge sharpening her voice.

  The broad chest in front of her suddenly heaved with a sigh that sounded like it came straight from the lungs of hell.

  “I wish he were. As difficult as that would be, it would still be easier to deal with than the truth,” Alan said wearily. “But he’s not my brother, twin or otherwise… He’s my father. And he hardly needs reasons for what he does—none beyond the tortured visions of his own mind. He’s insane.”

  Chapter 10

  “I liked my explanation better—it made more sense,” Tabitha muttered to herself.

  The news Alan had just dropped sat between them like a ticking time bomb. She kept waiting for something to explode. Herself, perhaps? By rights, shouldn’t she be stark raving hysterical after what she’d heard? But the only emotion she could manage was a brooding annoyance with a world that put grim truth before good, clean logic.

  Or was that feeling merely a protective dodge away from the revised logic of the situation—from the little voice at the back of her brain that whispered, a bit too reasonably, that none of this should surprise her? It was such a minor modification of what she’d originally feared—that Alan himself was insane.

  So it wasn’t Alan but his father who was the demented one. But wasn’t insanity sometimes inherited? And since the son had received so many other traits from the sire, wasn’t it logical to suspect…

  “Yes, that would be your next line of thought, wouldn’t it? The only way you can explain this to yourself is to view me as a madman,” Alan said, as though he’d been reading her mind—or maybe only her expression. He stood staring at her, the expression on his own face an inscrutable stone mask. “Why is the truth so difficult to accept?”

  They were back to that again?

  Marvelous, Tabitha thought, her eyes widening and the explosion she’d been expecting threatening to detonate smack in the center of her skull.

  “What truth is that?” she demanded. “The truth that I’ve been kidnapped? Locked up? Galloped off? Galloped back? Drugged? Dangled from ramparts? Tricked into some ridiculous sham marriage? Beaten and nearly raped? Shot at? Chased by an insane murderer?” she strangled out, her tone climbing up the scale to shrillness. “You’re right. I don’t know why I should find any of this so difficult to accept. Forgive me for being dimwitted!”

  “Keep your voice down. You’ll wake the bairn.” His gaze darkened like thunderclouds gathering on the horizon. “I’d like to remind you that you’ve brought most of this on yourself. You left Abilene willingly. No one forced you to take Gabrina’s place. And as for the ordeal this morning, if you’d stayed put in this room like I bid you—”

  “If I’d stayed put, that baby you’re worried about waking would probably have died hours ago,” Tabitha cut him off like a lightning crack. “So we’d all better say a thankful prayer that I don’t give a rat’s red ass for your bloody bidding!” She stormed past him on the high horse of self-righteous anger.

  And was pulled off it as Alan’s hand shot out, locking around her wrist and jerking her back to his side.

  “That will be enough of that, lassie,” he warned, his voice stroking over her like a heavy caress.

  Enough? The word snapped something inside of her—something often called the last straw.

  Fighting for air in a room suddenly gone stifling, she whispered raggedly, “You’re right again. This is enough. I’m through with this whole impossible charade. I will not tolerate anymore. As soon as Kathy can travel, I’m taking her and Rosa, and the three of us are walking out of here. And if you don’t like it, you’d better be prepared to kill me. Because that’s the only way you’ll stop us.”

  Alan’s hand tightened convulsively until she could feel her own pulse pounding wildly into his palm.

  “You don’t mean that,” he said with deathly calm. But his grip gave him away. It was the grasp of a man who felt something slipping from his fingers and was trying anxiously to hang onto it.

  “The hell I don’t.” Her gaze met his like a wall of green flames. “You cannot keep me here any longer. I am leaving—either on my feet, or carried out in a box. Do you hear me?”

  “Aye, I hear. But I don’t believe it. And neither do you. You don’t want to leave me, Tabitha.” His thumb began a maddening caress on the back of her wrist. “This is just hysterics talking. You’re overwrought from seeing horrors this morn that no lass should have witnessed. That’s all this is.”

  “Rubbish!” She yanked free and retreated a quick step backward. She had suspected he was crazy, but she hadn’t thought he was stupid, too. Who was he trying to convince with this nonsense?

  Himself? She caught an unnerving glimpse past the veil in his eyes. It drove her another pace back. No! She wouldn’t fall for it. She needed out of this snake pit too much.

  “I am not hysterical! And, for your information, I’ve been through horrors before. What I saw at the Garcias’ was like a window into hell. But it was hardly worse than watching my home go up in flames while my aunt was still in it,” she strained out, feeling a scorching wave of heat as the memory of that blast washed over her.

  Or was the scorch from Alan’s body as he gathered her against his chest?

  “Tabitha…”

  She shoved him away.

  “No! I don’t need pity—especially not from you. Don’t touch me! And don’t call me hysterical! I am far beyond hysterics at this point. What I am is fed up. I mean it, I have had it up to here,” she hissed, stretching her arms as far over her head as they would go. The action popped open her dressing gown, but she was too furious to notice.

  Or realize how the gesture accentuated every sensuous curve of her figure.

  Or see Alan’s rough intake of breath as he stared hard at those curves—and demonstrated one of the fundamentals of gravity, as the hardness of that stare swiftly drained downward into another part of his anatomy.

  Except somehow that escaped notice, too.

  “I will not be used anymore. There is no way you can make me. You can knife me, shoot me, strangle me—even torture me to death in your dungeon—but you cannot turn me into your toy! Do you understand?” She quivered before him like a leaf challenging the wind. “This game is over. Now. You are through playing with me!”

  “Through?” The storm that had been brewing in Alan’s eyes abruptly broke, drenching her in a steamy torrent of unleashed desires. “Through?” he repeated, his lips curling with an impossible devilment. “Lassie, I haven’t even begun.”

  It blew the last wispy shred of her tattered self-control straight over the edge. Blinded by a red-hot haze, Tabitha struck out, aiming to slap that exasperating grin into the next state.

  He caught her hand in mid-flight, jerking her half off her feet and full into his arms, crushing her against his chest. His mouth ground down on hers, smothering her protests with an all-consuming kiss.

  She resisted it for one…two…three furious heartbeats, but the kiss swept through her like wildfire, like he’d used a lightning bolt to set off a stack of sky rockets. Drawing a deep, shuddering breath, she suddenly exploded all over him, turning the previous fight to resist into a fight to see who could devour whom the fastest.

  Alan almost lost his footing in the battle. With blistering force, Tabitha drove him a dozen paces backward into the nearest wall. Her fingers raked through his hair, down his chest, over his taut stomach, and buried deep in the waistband of his trousers, where she began a mad tugging at the already strained front closures.

  He retaliate
d by pivoting sharply and locking her against the wall, instead. Her lacy undergarments and corset ties gave way before a few bulging, bronzed muscled rips.

  Kissing her like his life’s blood depended upon it, he grabbed her about the waist and began to lift her hips to meet his. She clutched at his shoulders and raised herself the last few necessary inches before letting hot instinct guide her downward.

  The shield of her virginity brought the action to a sudden halt. And jarred Alan back into some semblance of reason.

  “Tabitha—no—wait—not like this—not your first time,” he groaned, painfully breaking off the kiss. “It isn’t right… Please, dear, not…not now… Tonight… I want to be able to make love to you properly,” he begged, trying to push away from her.

  Nearly drowning in her own desire, she dragged him back. Properly? Who the hell worried about proper at a time like this?

  “Shut up, you idiot!” she gasped, and drove herself hard down.

  The contact jolted through them both, like a high voltage shock, almost throwing her off him. His arms tightened convulsively, holding her close while they waited a ragged moment for the smoke to clear.

  Such an ecstatically sweet burning…

  Tabitha clung to him like the sea hugs the shore. The sudden stab had been more like the answer to an undreamed of prayer than actual pain.

  And the movement, when it started, was like the dance of life itself. Like the spinning of the world on its axis, gaining power with every turn. It filled her like a sunrise, all rose and crimson and golden glow.

  Alan filled her. He was a blinding light blazing within and all around her, she thought dizzily, right before the world spun crazily out of control, and they collapsed together in a panting heap on the floor.

  …Ever so gradually, her heart rate calmed, and the spiraling room slowed back into focus. As the mist receded from her eyes, the first thing she saw was Alan’s hypnotically handsome face looming over her, an expression in his gaze like he’d just unraveled all the mysteries of creation, and was both reverently awed and deeply satisfied by what he’d discovered.