by Diana Palmer
As if he sensed her presence—because he couldn’t have heard her quiet steps above the wind as she joined him on the balcony—he turned suddenly and looked right at her.
She didn’t say a word. She moved beside him and stared out over the ocean, enjoying the sound of the wind, and farther away, the subdued roar of the surf.
“You’re very quiet,” he remarked.
She laughed nervously. “That’s me. I’ve spent my life fading into the background of the world.”
He gave her an assessing gaze. “Maybe it’s time that changed.”
Her heart skipped a beat as she looked up at him in the dim light from the office. His dark eyes met hers and held them while the wind blew around them in a strange, warm embrace.
He made her think of ruins, of mysterious places in shadow and darkness, of storms and torrents of rain.
“You’re staring,” he pointed out huskily.
“I’ve never met anyone like you,” she said unsteadily. “I’m just a small-town country girl. I’ve never been anywhere, done anything really reckless or exciting. I’ve never even been in a casino before in my life. But…but…” She couldn’t find the right words to express what she was feeling.
His chin lifted and he moved a step closer, so that she could feel the strength and heat of his body close to her. “But you feel as if you’ve known me all your life,” he said huskily.
Her eyelids flickered. “Well…yes…”
He reached out with one big, powerful hand and lightly brushed her cheek with his fingertips. She trembled at that whisper of sensation and shock waves ran down her slender body into her sensible stacked high heels.
“Oh, boy,” he ground out.
“What’s wrong?” she asked in confusion.
“And I’m old enough to know better, too,” he said, obviously thinking out loud. He looked confounded, even irritated, so she wasn’t really prepared when he suddenly reached for her.
His big arms lifted her up against him as his head bent. His dark eyes riveted on her soft, parted lips. “What the hell. It’s midnight and you’re about to lose a slipper…”
While she was trying to puzzle out the odd remark, his head bent, and his hard, warm mouth moved into total possession of her lips.
Instinctively she started to struggle, but his mouth opened and she gasped at the unexpected flood of sensation that left her trembling. But not with fear. She melted into the powerful muscles of his chest and stomach, and drowned in the clean, spicy scent of his skin. She felt the sigh of his breath against her cheek while the kiss went deeper and slower and hungrier…
In a daze of longing, she felt his arms crushing her against him while his face slid into her warm throat and he stood there in the wind, just holding her. His arms were warm against the chill of the wind coming off the ocean. She should have protested. She shouldn’t be behaving this way with a total stranger, she shouldn’t even be here with a man she didn’t know.
But all the arguments meant nothing. She felt as if she’d just come home after a long and sad journey. She closed her eyes and let him rock her in his big arms. It was an intimacy she’d never felt in her life. Her mother had never been affectionate with her, even if Barb had. But that was in the past. Now, just the act of being held was a new experience.
Marcus was dumbfounded by what he’d done; by what she’d let him do. He knew by her response to him that she knew next to nothing about men. She didn’t even know how to kiss. But she trusted him. She didn’t protest, didn’t fight, didn’t resist. She was like a warm, cuddly kitten in his arms, and he felt sensations that he’d never experienced before.
“This was stupid,” he said after a minute, the strain audible in his deep, raspy voice.
“You don’t look like a stupid man to me,” she said dreamily, smiling against his shoulder.
He drew in a long breath and slowly put her away. His eyes were as turbulent as hers.
“Listen,” he began, his big hands resting involuntarily on her shoulders, “we come from different worlds. I don’t start things I can’t finish.”
“Well, don’t blame me,” she said with dancing eyes. “I almost never seduce men on dark balconies.”
He scowled. She had a quick mind and a quirky sense of humor. It didn’t make things easier. She appealed to him powerfully. But he was at a point in his life when he couldn’t afford attachments of any sort, especially her sort. She was more vulnerable than she might think. What he had to do might put her in the path of danger, if he kept her around. And he was in a bad place to start looking for romance.
“Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind being seduced,” he said. “But I’m not available.”
She felt embarrassed. She stepped back, flushing. “Sorry,” she stammered. “I didn’t think…!”
“Don’t look like that,” he said harshly. He turned away from the embarrassment. “Come on. I’ll have Smith drive you back.”
“I could get a cab,” she said, wrapping the tatters of her pride around her like an invisible cloak.
“Don’t be absurd,” he said, his voice curt.
Delia couldn’t hide her discomfort at the thought of enduring the drive back to Nassau in the company of Mr. Smith.
“Surely you aren’t afraid of him?” Marcus drawled softly. “You aren’t afraid of me, and I’m worse than Smith in a lot of ways.”
Her eyebrows arched. “Are you, really?” she asked in all honesty.
He chuckled in spite of himself. “You don’t know anything about me,” he murmured as he studied her with indulgent amusement. “That’s kind of nice,” he added thoughtfully. “It’s been a long time since anybody was as comfortable with me as you seem to be.”
“Now you’re making me nervous,” she told him.
He smiled. It was a rare, genuine smile. “Not very, apparently.”
She moved a little closer, tingling all over as she approached him. He made her hungry. She gazed up at him. “I think I’ve got it figured out, anyway.”
“Have you now?”
“You’re Mr. Smith’s boss,” she said.
He pursed his lips and started to speak.
“You’re a bouncer,” she concluded before he could get the words out.
He was actually dumbfounded. He just stared at her with growing amazement.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said firmly. “Somebody has to keep the peace in a place like this. Actually, my father was a deputy sheriff. I wasn’t even born until after he died, so I don’t remember him. But we still have his gun and gunbelt, and the deputy sheriff’s badge he wore.”
“How did he die?” he asked abstractly.
“He made a routine traffic stop,” she said quietly. “The man was an escaped murderer.”
“Tough.”
She nodded. “Mom was left with me and Barb, although Barb was sixteen at the time, almost seventeen.” She sighed. “Barb is beautiful and brainy. She married Barney, who’s worth millions, and she’s been deliriously happy ever since.”
“So it’s just you and your mother at home,” he guessed.
She grimaced. “My mother died last month of stomach cancer,” she said. “It’s why I’m here. Barb thought I needed a break, so she and Barney squared it with my boss at the dry cleaner—I do alterations for them—and then they dragged me on a plane. I hope I still have a job when I go home. Nobody seems to understand how hard it is to get work in a small town. I have monthly bills to pay and hardly any savings, so my job is very important.” She smiled ruefully. “Barb doesn’t understand jobs. She married Barney just out of high school, when I was two years old, so she’s never worked.”
“Lucky Barb.” He watched the expressions play on her delicate features. “I guess Barb helped when your mother was so sick?”
She nodded. “She paid all Mama’s medical and drug bills, and even for a nurse to stay with her in the daytime while I worked. We’d never have made it without her.”
“Did she do any of the nu
rsing?”
“She came and stayed with us for the last few months of mother’s life,” she said quietly. “She and Barney decided that it was going to be too much for me, so they even got nurses to do the night shift. But mostly it was Barb who nursed her, until she died. Mother didn’t want me with her. Barb and Mom were very close—it wasn’t like that with Mother and me. She didn’t like me very much,” she added bluntly.
He revised his opinion of the older sister. She’d done her part.
“Are you close, you and your sister?”
She laughed. “We’re closer than mother and daughter, really. Barb is terrific. It’s just that she thinks I can’t walk unless she’s telling me how to do it. She’s sixteen years older than me.”
“That’s a hell of an age difference,” he pointed out.
“Tell me about it. Barb’s so much older that I must seem more like a child than an adult to her.”
He scowled. “How old was your mother when you were born?”
“Forty-eight,” she laughed. “She said I was a miracle baby.”
“Mmmm,” he said absently.
“How old was your mother when you were born?” she asked curiously.
He chuckled. “Sixteen. In the old days, and in the old country,” he drawled, bending closer, “women married young. She and my father were betrothed by their families. They only saw each other in company of a dueña, and they were married in the church. The first time they kissed each other was on their wedding day, or so my father always said.”
She looked puzzled at the Spanish word he’d used for chaperone. “I thought you were Italian,” she blurted out.
He shook his head. “My parents were from the south of Spain. I’m a first-generation American.”
“Do you speak Spanish?”
He nodded. “But I read it better than I speak it. My parents wanted me and my brother to speak English well, so that we’d fit in better than they did.”
She smiled, understanding. She moved slowly back into the office and he followed, closing the sliding door onto the balcony.
“I’ll ride with you to your hotel,” he said after a minute. He picked up the phone and told someone to take over for him while he drove into Nassau and back.
She took one last look at the beautiful black and white quilt in its frame on the wall. “That really is majestic,” she remarked.
“Thanks. I’d love to see some of your work.”
She grimaced. “I don’t even have photos of it, like you do,” she said. “Sorry.”
“I may get down to Texas one of these days,” he said offhandedly.
She smiled. “That would be nice.”
He glanced back at her. “It might not be, when you know more about me,” he said, and he was suddenly very solemn.
“That isn’t likely.”
“You’re an optimist. I’m not.”
“Yes, I noticed,” she teased.
He chuckled as he opened the door to let her out into the hall.
Mr. Smith was waiting beside a huge black super stretch limousine in front of the hotel and nightclub.
Delia actually gasped. “You can’t mean to drive me back in that!” she exclaimed. “Your boss will fire you!”
“Unlikely,” Marcus said, with a speaking glance at Smith, who was trying not to laugh out loud. “Get in.”
She whistled softly as she slid onto the leather seat and moved to the center, to give him room to get in.
Smith closed the back door and went to the driver’s seat.
Delia was stagestruck. She looked around wide-eyed, fascinated by the luxurious interior. “You could go bowling in here!”
“It’s nice when you’re ferrying around a crowd of tourists,” he stated. “Want something to drink?”
He indicated the bar, where a bottle of champagne and several bottles of beer and soft drinks were chilling in ice.
She shook her head. “No, thanks. Is that television?!” she added, indicating a flat screen just in front of her near the ceiling.
“Satellite television, satellite radio, CD player, phone…”
“It’s incredible,” she said softly. “Just incredible!”
“Your sister’s married to a millionaire,” he pointed out. “Don’t you get to ride in limos?”
She shook her head. “There wouldn’t be any need for her to drive down to Jacobsville in one. They fly to San Antonio and rent a car. At home, they’ve got a Jaguar sports car.”
“I thought you might visit her and ride in limos,” he teased.
“In New York?” she asked. She shook her head. “We’d usually go down to Galveston together for vacation on the beach. I’ve never been to New York, and since Barney travels so much and Barb goes with him, they’re rarely home. I don’t even go up to San Antonio unless I have to, when I buy supplies. I’m very much at home in the little house I shared with Mama. We have a handful of chickens and a dog named Sam.”
“Who’s looking after them?”
“A neighbor,” she said. “Although, Sam’s being boarded. He’s bad to get in the road. You have to watch him constantly.”
“What breed is he?”
She smiled. “He’s a German shepherd—black with brown markings. I’ve had him for eight years. He’s a sweetie.”
“Any cats?”
She shook her head. “Mama was allergic. We couldn’t even have Sam in the house.”
Smith was pulling out into the main road that led over the bridge to Nassau. Marcus leaned back against the soft leather of the seat. “I’ve never seen a chicken close up, except on television,” he remarked.
She grinned. “Come to Texas and I’ll let you pet one.”
“You can pet a chicken?”
“Of course you can,” she said, laughing.
He liked the sound of her laughter. It had been a long time since he’d done much of that. His life was lonely and dangerous, and he had a natural suspicion of people. He’d seen women who looked like virginal innocents roll a man and take everything he had.
“Why were you at the club in the first place?” he asked unexpectedly.
She sighed. “Because Fred said he wanted to talk some business with the manager of the casino and we might as well go there as anyplace else on the island. But he got cold feet and started drinking.” She was oblivious to the look on Marcus’s leonine face. “He’s mixed up in something illegal, I think, and there are some people he’s dealing with who want to hurt him.” She bit her lip as she looked up at Marcus. “I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that. The owner of the casino’s your boss, right?”
“Sort of,” he confessed.
“Well, Fred kept throwing back hard liquor until he could hardly stand up. I wanted to go back to my hotel by then, because he was getting really out of hand. I had to fend him off in the taxi, and when we got to the club, I was going to go inside and call a taxi to take me back. But Fred got angry when I said that, and reminded me that he’d bought me an expensive dinner. He said I owed him a little fun,” she added coldly. She grasped her purse tight in her hands and glanced at Marcus. “I guess I’ve led a pretty sheltered life until now. Do men really expect a woman to have sex with them just because they buy her a meal? Because if that’s the way of it, I’m buying my own dinners from now on!”
Her expression amused him. He laughed softly. “Well, I can only speak for myself, but I’ve never considered a steak currency for sex.”
She smiled in spite of her irritation. “It shows that I don’t date much, huh?” she said matter-of-factly. “Even after I was in high school, I had to fight Barb and mother to get to go out with a man. Mother would call Barb if anyone asked me on a date. They said men were devious and they’d say all sorts of things to get you into bed with them, and then they’d leave you pregnant and desert you.” She shook her head. “God knows where they got those ideas. Barb married Barney just after high school graduation, and Mother didn’t go out with anybody at all after Daddy died.”
&
nbsp; “She didn’t?” he asked abruptly, surprised.
“She was sort of old-fashioned, I guess. She said she and Daddy were so happy together that any other man she dated would fall short of that perfection. So she spent her time doing charity work and raising me.”
“I didn’t think there were any women like that left in the world,” he said honestly.
“What was your mother like?”
He smiled slowly. “She was the kind of woman who kissed cuts and bruises and made homemade cookies for her kids. She worked herself half to death to give us the things we had to have for school,” he added, his face taut.
“Was she pretty?”
“What a question. Why?”
“Well, you’re very good-looking,” she said, and then flushed as she realized she might be overstepping boundaries.
He chuckled. “Thanks. I think you look pretty good, too.”
“Oh, I’m plain,” she replied. “I don’t have any illusions about being beautiful. But I can cook, and I’m a fair seamstress.”
He reached out and touched a loose strand of her blond hair, contemplating the high coiffure she wore it in. “How long is your hair?” he asked suddenly.
“It’s to my waist in back,” she said self-consciously. “My boss at the dry cleaner where I do alterations says I look like Alice in Wonderland with it down, so I keep it in a bun or a ponytail most of the time.”
“You don’t cut it, then?”
She shook her head. “I look terrible with short hair,” she said. “Like a boy.”
Both thick eyebrows went up. “Excuse me?”
She shifted on the seat. “I’m rather bosom-challenged.”
He burst out laughing.
She was really blushing, now. “I can’t think of a better way to put it,” she confessed. “But it’s the truth.”
His dark eyes were kind and indulgent. “Men have individual tastes in women,” he said. “I come from a background where women have ample curves. They say it’s what we’re not used to that attracts us, and that’s how it is with me.”