Bewitching: His Secret Agenda

by Carla Neggers

  Finally Win just threw back the covers and climbed into bed with her. She stared at him. He grinned. “After getting into that snow cone you call a guest bed and standing here for ten minutes, I’m about to freeze.”

  She stuck out a toe and found his calf. “You don’t feel cold to me.”

  “You’re in the wrong place,” he said, a little raggedly.

  “Oh.”

  Even with the cold wind, Hannah had the curtainless windows in her bedroom open. Win said, “I guess I should have brought my own flannel nightshirt.”

  “Do you have one?”

  He sighed.

  “Well, they are toasty.”

  “I prefer,” he said, “other methods of staying warm.”

  “Like electric blankets, I suppose. I don’t believe in them, myself. I won’t say they cause cancer, but they sure do waste electricity, and they’re not very romantic. But I guess if you’re allergic to down, or maybe if you turn down the heat in the house so low that you can justify the use of electricity...”

  “Hannah.”

  “You had other methods of staying warm in mind?”

  “Yes.”

  That silenced her. He looked so damned tempting and rakish beside her, a man who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. Herself included? Did she dominate his list of wants tonight? But he was more complex than that. They were more complex than that.

  But she didn’t want to dwell on complexities now.

  She moved closer, and he touched her mouth with his fingertips, just grazing her lips. “What do you want, Hannah Marsh?”

  Without speaking, she caught up the hem of her nightgown and lifted it over her head, the cool night air hitting her warm skin. She tossed the nightgown onto the floor.

  His black eyes were on her. She met his gaze head-on, without flushing.

  “I’ve dreamed about this moment,” she said honestly.

  “So have I.”

  His mouth closed over hers, his hands skimming the soft flesh of her breasts, tentatively at first, then more boldly. She took a sharp breath when his thumbs found her nipples. The ache inside her was almost more than she could bear. But he didn’t pause, merciless in his teasing and stroking, never letting up with either his mouth or his hands. She didn’t want him to.

  Still, it was a game two could play.

  She reached forward blindly, a little awkwardly, but without embarrassment, until she felt him, already hot and ready, and before she could pull back or even hesitate, he thrust himself hard against her hand.

  “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you,” he whispered. “Never.”

  He drew back, just for a moment, sliding out of his shorts, then rolling back to her so that their bodies melded, so that she could feel the long length of him against her. She felt sexy, aroused.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he whispered, before he began a deep, hungry, evocative kiss. He trailed his fingertips down her spine, captured her buttocks in his palms, then skimmed the curve of her hips until he found the hot, moist, ready center of her.

  “Win...I...”

  “It’s okay,” he whispered, “it’s okay.”

  And it was. More than okay.

  “I don’t know if I can last....”

  “That’s two of us.”

  But he hadn’t finished.

  “You’re not going to have mercy on me, are you?” she said playfully, already knowing he wouldn’t.

  She let him roll her onto her back. He moved on top, his torso raised while his eyes seemed to absorb every inch of her. She splayed her fingers in the hairs on his chest, feeling the lean muscle, then let them trail lower, until they closed around his maleness. He thrust against her with a rhythm that was as primitive as the crashing of the waves upon the rocks outside her window.

  His mouth descended to hers, tasted, then moved down her throat, tasted some more, and to her breasts, tasting and nipping. She wouldn’t release him. Then he moved down her abdomen, tasting and licking now, not stopping.

  “Let yourself go,” he whispered. “Just let go.”

  As if she could stop herself.

  But then she realized she’d never felt anything so erotic, so achingly pleasurable as his caresses.

  He drew away from her, only for a moment to take precaution, before coming inside her, hard and fast, murmuring his encouragement, his love, until her cries mixed with those of the cormorants and the seagulls and finally his body quaked with hers, rocking, shattering.

  Afterward, in the stillness, she noticed the wind had died down, too, and the waves were making a gentle swishing sound, as if they had all the time in the world to get wherever they were going. Hannah listened to the ocean for a long time and smiled at the man beside her.

  A Harling. In her bed.

  “Do you suppose,” she said, “three centuries of Harlings and Marshes are already planning ways to haunt us tonight?”

  He grinned back at her. “If they are, we’ll be ready for ’em, don’t you think?”

  After making love with him, Hannah figured she was ready for anything.

  * * *

  IN THE MORNING the only sign he’d been there was the blazing fire in the living room.

  She was ordinarily not a heavy sleeper, so Hannah assumed that either their lovemaking at dawn had knocked her out or that Win had sneaked out on her very, very quietly. She made herself a pot of coffee, added another log to the fire, and told herself she didn’t regret last night. If she had to do it over again, she would. The giving and taking, emotionally and physically, had been mutual, real, if also fleeting. She had decided last night to let tomorrow bring what it would.

  And it had, hadn’t it?

  She called him a host of names, dumped the trash and changed her sheets, wanting a fresh start.

  The name-calling didn’t work. She kept seeing his dark eyes on her, hearing his deep laughter, feeling the strength and warmth of his arms around her. She kept remembering the things they had told each other in the night, about growing up and climbing trees and finding a rare piece of glassware at a yard sale for two dollars and not being able to take it, having to tell the new widow who was selling off her stuff to pay her property taxes with what it was worth. Mostly they had talked about little things. There had been nothing about Thackeray Marsh or old Jonathan Harling, nothing about the Harling Collection, the ransacked apartment, the missing diary or the Declaration of Independence.

  “Oh, Hannah,” Win had said, stroking her hips, the inside of her thighs. “There’s never been anyone remotely like you in my life...never.”

  She remembered how she’d responded. Hotly, eagerly, more boldly than on the occasion of their first lovemaking, she had shown him where to touch her, let him show her where to touch him. They had made love with abandon. Without thought. Without inhibition.

  Without commitment?

  “Hannah, Hannah...I’ll never stop wanting you,” he’d added.

  He had been inside her then, thrusting hard yet lovingly, and she’d had her hands on his hips, urging him on, thinking that her ache for him would never end, never be satiated, that he’d collapse first. But he hadn’t. He’d murmured his encouragement, urged her to let go...and she’d felt his satisfaction when she’d exploded, rocked and moaned as he kept going....

  Now, in the bright, cold light of morning, Win Harling was gone. Calling him names wouldn’t bring him back or make her hate him.

  Or regret a single second of what they’d done last night. It had been a deliberate, conscious, mature choice on her part. She’d known the potential consequences.

  Just as she knew that, come what may, there would never be another man for her. Win Harling was it. She wasn’t the sort of woman who jumped into bed with one man one night and just hoped for the best.
She had gone to bed with him because she had wanted him and only him.

  Now she had to pay the price.

  “Damn,” she swore under her breath. She grabbed a sweatshirt, anxious for the solace of the sea, the rocks, the tide...for the solace of Marsh Point itself.

  Outside in the chilly air, the dew soaked into her sneakers and she saw that his Jaguar was gone, too. It wasn’t as if he’d ducked out for an early walk and planned to be back soon.

  She didn’t know if he planned to be back at all.

  “The scoundrel,” she muttered.

  But what had she expected? She’d seen the two sides of Win Harling: the black-eyed rogue who’d chased her down in Boston and the sophisticated gentleman who hadn’t pressed himself upon her yesterday, despite his plain sexual need. Had the rogue made love to her last night? The gentleman? Or some combination of the two?

  “What does it matter? He’s gone now.”

  She began her litany of names again, but none of them made her feel the slightest bit better.

  CHAPTER TEN

  AT SOME GREASY-SPOON diner not more than two miles from Marsh Point, Win and his uncle Jonathan sat over weak coffee and runny eggs. “You need to let me sort out this mess on my own,” Win said in an attempt to reason with the old man.

  Uncle Jonathan shook his head, soaking up a pool of egg with a triangle of pale white toast. “It’s not your mess.”

  “Look...”

  “I’m here, Winthrop. Make the best of it.”

  It was pointless to argue and Win knew it. Shortly after crawling out of Hannah’s bed that morning and building a fire, he had slipped out to refill the wood box. He had planned to spend the morning with her, going over all the details of her trip to Boston, her research into Priscilla Marsh and Cotton Harling, her discovery of the possible existence of the Harling Collection. Everything. In turn, he’d tell her what little he’d learned from Uncle Jonathan.

  Instead, out in the woodpile, he’d caught his uncle prowling about Marsh Point. Why the crazy old coot hadn’t fallen and broken his hip in a tide pool was beyond him. Now there was nothing to be done but gather his things and cart Uncle Jonathan off to town, before one of the Marshes awakened and called the police.

  So far, his uncle had yet to satisfactorily explain what he was doing in Maine. He had, he’d said, taken a bus from Boston and then a cab out to Marsh Point that had cost him double, he insisted, what it should have. He’d spent the night in a “disreputable” motel and had risen early and sneaked onto “the disputed property,” where Win had found him.

  “Has your apartment been broken into again?” Win asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Did you find the Anne Harling diary under a couch cushion or something?”

  “Nope.”

  “Uncle...”

  “That cottage where I found you,” Jonathan said, pouring still another little plastic vial of half-and-half into his coffee. “Hannah Marsh’s, isn’t it?”

  Win sighed. “Yes, it is.”

  “She and you...slept together, did you?”

  “Uncle Jonathan, you know I don’t discuss my private life.”

  The old man grunted. “I’ll wager you did more than sleep. My word, Winthrop. Falling for a Marsh.” He let out a long breath. “No wonder I had trouble sleeping last night.”

  “You had trouble sleeping,” Win muttered, controlling his growing frustration with difficulty, “because you know damned well you should have been home in your own bed. Uncle Jonathan, there’s nothing you can do here except cause trouble. Go home.”

  The old man slurped his coffee and said, without looking at his nephew, “I wasn’t the one who slept with a Marsh last night.”

  Win was at the end of his rope. “Cotton Harling and Priscilla Marsh lived three hundred years ago. I won’t let them dictate to me what I should do with my life. And I don’t give a damn whether we have a legitimate claim to Marsh Point or not. I don’t even give a damn if Hannah would lie to her grandmother to get her hot little hands on the Harling Collection! You,” he said, knowing he was losing control, “are going back to Boston.”

  Looking remarkably unperturbed by his nephew’s outburst, Uncle Jonathan flagged the waitress for more coffee. She was back in a jiffy. Win let her heat his up. It was dreadful stuff. Almost worse than Hannah’s purple tea.

  Hannah, Hannah.

  He had to keep Uncle Jonathan away from Thackeray Marsh and Marsh Point, at least until he and Hannah had adequately compared notes.

  His uncle began again. “I talked to a friend of mine from Harvard who deals in rare books and documents.”

  Continually amazed by the variety of people Jonathan Harling knew, Win indulged him. “About what?”

  “The copy of the Declaration of Independence in the Harling Collection.”

  “Allegedly.”

  Jonathan waved off Win’s correction. “It’s worth even more than I had anticipated.”

  “You’d anticipated a lot. How much more?”

  “If it’s in mint condition...”

  “And if it exists.”

  Uncle Jonathan sighed. “It would be worth seven figures.”

  “Seven—”

  “A million dollars.”

  At that moment, with Win gritting his teeth at the figure his uncle had just named, Thackeray Marsh wandered into the diner.

  Directly behind him, spotting the two Harlings at once, was his cousin, the blonde and beautiful Hannah Marsh.

  * * *

  HANNAH GLARED AT Win and his uncle, while Cousin Thackeray gave a victorious sniff. The two Harlings looked remarkably guilty. Still, Hannah felt a rush of excitement at seeing Win, though she had to fight back memories of last night. At the same time, she didn’t regret one nasty name she’d called him.

  “Thackeray Marsh,” Jonathan Harling declared, eyeing his contemporary with exaggerated disdain. “So, you’re still alive. I’d heard you were killed in the war. Nothing heroic, of course. Drowned stepping over your own feet.”

  Win scowled at his uncle who, Hannah was sure, had heard no such thing.

  It was equally clear that Thackeray wasn’t in the mood to help matters. “At least I fought in the war, instead of using privilege to get me a safe stateside job.”

  Jonathan Harling reddened and nearly came out of his chair, but Win clamped a hand on the old man’s arm and held him down.

  “Thackeray!” Hannah admonished her cousin.

  He gave her a smug look for her trouble.

  The diner was filling up with fishermen, in from their morning rounds. All we need now is to start a brawl, Hannah thought. “You two keep on like this,” she told the two old men, “and you’ll get us all arrested.”

  “Just stating the facts,” Cousin Thackeray said loftily.

  Jonathan Harling grunted. “A Marsh wouldn’t know a fact if it smacked him in the face.”

  “Perhaps,” Hannah said through clenched teeth, “we should go back to Marsh Point and discuss things.”

  Cousin Thackeray shook his head. “I don’t want them on my property.”

  “Your property,” Jonathan sneered. “Why, back in 1891—”

  Win cut him off, his eyes pinned on Hannah. “How did you find us?” he asked quietly.

  Before she could answer, Thackeray said, “That damned ostentatious car you drive sticks out around here like—”

  Now it was Hannah’s turn to do some cutting off. “My cousin found evidence of a prowler while on his morning walk and insisted it had to be a Harling. I indulged him in a spin around town, the result of which is our presence here.”

  “What evidence?” Jonathan demanded.

  Thackeray gave him a supercilious look. “Nothing you would notice. I, however, who was raise
d out here, wondered if an elephant hadn’t been through.”

  Win was on his feet, laying bills upon the table. His jaw was set, hard. He moved with tensed, highly controlled motions. An unhappy man. Obviously hadn’t got enough sleep last night. Hannah watched him, pleased with herself. At least she wasn’t the only one suffering.

  “Let’s go,” he said, taking in both Marshes and his uncle.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Cousin Thackeray replied, shaking his head. “I’m not letting you two sneak off before I get a chance to search your car and your persons.”

  “Fine.” Win’s tone was steely, but had no apparent effect on anyone. “You and my uncle can drive together. I’ll take Hannah.”

  The two old men argued all the way out to the parking lot, but Win was adamant. He opened the passenger door to Thackeray’s 1967 GMC truck and told his uncle it was his choice: he could be helped in or thrown in. Jonathan squared his shoulders and climbed in without anyone’s help. Thackeray muttered something about wanting to ram the passenger side of his truck into a tree, except for the fact that it had another five or ten years left in it, might even outlast him. Win just looked at Hannah in despair.

  “We’ll follow you,” he told his uncle and her cousin. “No tricks.”

  He turned away before either could say any more.

  Hannah had opened the passenger door to his Jaguar. “Any orders for me?” she asked coolly.

  He glared at her. “Just get in.”

  She did so, slamming the door shut. He followed. His tall, lean body filled the interior, instantly making her aware again of last night, of her unceasing attraction to this man. She tried not to show it.

  “I take it,” she said as he started the car, “that you found your uncle snooping around this morning and sneaked out.”

  A muscle worked in his jaw. “That’s about it.”

  “You made your choice, didn’t you?”

  “The way I see it,” he said tightly, rolling into position behind Thackeray’s truck, “I didn’t have a choice.”

  “I’m not saying you shouldn’t have gone with your uncle. All I’m saying is, a note or a quick goodbye would have been...courteous.”