by Diana Palmer
“Where will you go?” he asked solemnly.
“Home,” she said. “Back to my father’s ranch. I never should have left it.”
He jammed his hands into his pockets and his jaw tightened. “I thought I might write another book,” he remarked. “I enjoyed this one, and I’m getting a little old for test flights.” He eyed her speculatively. “We made a good team, Kate.”
Her eyes misted over. She nodded. Her slender hands closed the suitcase.
“You could come back to work for me,” he persisted gently.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t!” she said quickly, and her pulse ran wild.
“Why not?” he growled. His eyes flashed fire at her. “Don’t you feel guilty enough anymore?”
She winced, and he caught her by the arms, holding her in front of him as he read the wounding in her tormented pale eyes.
“Oh, God, is that how you used to look when I lost my temper with you?” he asked in a haunted tone, his face contorting with the memory. “Kate, gentle little Kate, I’m not going to hurt you anymore. You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
“I’m not afraid,” she said quietly, but her body was trembling, and he must have been able to feel it.
He smiled half-heartedly. “Are you sure? You’re trembling….” The smile faded as he caught her eyes and read them. “You trembled like this the last time I held you,” he recalled softly, his brows knitting. His hands tightened on her arms. “It wasn’t fear then, either. Kate…!”
She pulled away from him. “I…I’ve got to get to the airport,” she said quickly.
He studied her in a silence tight with emotion. “Come walk with me. One last time, Kate, and I’ll let you go.”
I’ll let you go. Her eyes closed against the finality of those quiet words. But I don’t want you to let me go! she thought miserably. If only I were older and more sophisticated and rich…
“All right,” she agreed softly.
The lake was quiet. Not even a motorboat was stirring, and far away there was the silvery cry of seagulls against the horizon.
Inevitably, they came to Cambridge’s land as they walked, to the log where Kate was sitting that long-ago day when he ran her off the beach. She dropped down on it and crossed her arms over her knees as she reached down to pluck a blade of grass to worry in her nervous fingers. She couldn’t imagine why he wanted to talk to her, why he was behaving so strangely. He didn’t seem to want to hurt her, now. But…why?
He stood at the lake’s edge with a cigarette in his big hand, staring out across the choppy waters of the lake to the thick pine trees on the shore across the cove.
“It’s been a long time since we found each other here,” he remarked quietly.
“I was just thinking that,” she remarked. Chill bumps were rising on her arms, because it was fall weather and the air off the lake was chilly.
“I threw you off my property,” he recalled with a smile, “And you didn’t even bother to argue with me. I took that for arrogance, little one, but it wasn’t, was it? You aren’t the argumentative type.”
“I was afraid to argue with you,” she admitted softly.
He turned. “Am I such an ogre, Kate?” he asked her. His eyes swept over her hunched body. “You’re cold!”
“It’s all right,” she murmured. “Just a chill.”
He threw down the cigarette and sat next to her on the log, folding her against his big, warm body.
“Better?” he asked at her ear.
Better?! It was heaven, or as close as she ever hoped to get on earth. Her eyes closed and she savored the feel and scent of him. Unconsciously, her cheek nestled lovingly against his broad chest.
“You’re very warm,” she murmured softly.
“You’re soft,” he mused. “Like a warm feather pillow. You may look thin, but you don’t feel it.”
She smiled in spite of herself. “Skinny was how you put it.”
His arms tightened. “Don’t remind me of what a fool I was,” he muttered. “I feel bad enough about it already.”
“Why should you? I deserved it.”
“No,” he corrected. “No, Kate, you didn’t. I should have known weeks ago. The signs were all there. But I was blind, in more ways than one.”
“You didn’t tell me on the phone that you could see again,” she whispered.
“It was going to be a surprise,” he told her. “I left Yama in New York, and I’d planned…well,” he sighed, “never mind. It was a surprise, all right, but not the one I had in mind. I couldn’t wait to see you—really see you. I dreamed of what it was going to be like when I walked in the door. And then I had to go blow hell out of my own dream with the first words I said to you.” He sighed heavily. “Kate, if there was any way I could take it back….”
“It isn’t wise to try and go backward,” she said.
“I suppose not.” He rocked her gently in his arms. “Why are you going away?”
“I…well, I don’t work for you anymore, and…” she faltered.
“I thought you enjoyed living with me,” he mused. “Part of the time, at least.”
Her eyes closed. “I did,” she admitted. “But it’s over now. You’d never forget…”
His finger came down to cover her soft mouth and he looked down at her quietly. “Kate, I forget everything when I hold you,” he said solemnly. “My God, honey, if you go now, I’ll need a reason to get up in the mornings. I’ll need a reason to breathe!”
She stared at him incredulously, not sure that she wasn’t hearing things. “But you’re a millionaire,” she whispered. “I’ve got nothing…!”
“Neither have I, without you,” he said shortly. His eyes burned over her face. “I have nothing unless I have you, is that clear enough? What the hell does money matter? Wouldn’t you like to live in a cave with me, Kate? Wouldn’t you live in a cave with me if I’d been a poor man?”
Tears trembled in her wide, soft eyes and started to overflow. She couldn’t even manage an answer through the lump in her throat.
“When Maude told me about you this morning, I wanted to cut my throat,” he said tightly. “Remembering what I’d said and done to you, and that look I couldn’t understand in your eyes before you walked away from me—as if you could forgive me for killing you!—it hurt like hell…God, Kate!” he groaned, his eyes narrow with pain.
“It’s all right,” she said gently, sitting quietly in his arms, watching him intently, her heart bursting with the joy of loving him.
He searched her eyes for a long time with an unblinking curiosity that made ripples in her bloodstream.
“All that love I see in your eyes,” he whispered huskily, “is it all for me, Kate?”
Her face went scarlet and she tried to hide her eyes from him, but he turned her face back.
“I’m years too old for you,” he observed. “Bad tempered, spoiled for my own way. And you’re just a baby. It might just be infatuation, Kate.”
“Why don’t you say what you mean?” she asked, lowering her eyes to his brown throat. “You don’t want a little nobody like me who….”
“Don’t you ever say that again!” he said harshly, catching her chin in a vi-celike grip to force her face up to his blazing eyes. “You’re not a nobody. You’re my woman. You’re the only thing in the world I give a damn about.”
She gaped at him, feeling her jaw drop at the content of the statement, and the ferocity with which he said it.
“Don’t look so dumbfounded,” he growled. “My God, I wonder which of us was the more blind? Didn’t it ever occur to you that I already had a secretary? You intrigued me from the first minute. I heard your voice and I had to have you. There was no book. I don’t even have a publisher, I did it to keep you busy. And when you got tangled up with that damned reporter, I could have broken your neck for you. I took you to St. Martin for reasons that didn’t have the first thing to do with work. But then I got to thinking about how young you were, and about the fact that I might be b
lind for life, and I got cold feet.” He sighed, turning his gaze out toward the lake. “The fall was a blessing in disguise because it made an operation possible that restored my vision. I couldn’t wait to get back to you. They wanted to keep me another three or four days but I dismissed myself and came anyway.” He looked down at her hungrily, and his eyes said it all. “I needed to see you, to be near you, to touch you. It’s been hell being away from you, milkmaid. I never meant to let you get that close. God knows, I fought it every step of the way, even to inviting Anna down for a few days. That backfired, too. She only made me appreciate you more. I wondered when I kicked her out why I’d ever been taken in by her.”
She stared up at him with her heart shimmering in her eyes. Unbelievably, he seemed to be telling her that he loved her. A shudder of pure delight ran the length of her soft body.
His eyes darkened suddenly as he caught the intensity of feeling he read in hers. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said huskily.
Her slender hands linked behind his head. “Don’t look at you like what?” she asked, trembling with mingled excitement and fear. The hunger she read in his eyes was monstrous, and she wasn’t confident about her ability to satisfy it.
His big hands went to her back, lifting her up against him gently. “You’re asking for trouble, milkmaid,” he whispered at her mouth.
Her fingers dug into the thick hair at the nape of his neck. “I don’t know very much,” she murmured against his broad, hard mouth. “You’ll have to teach me.”
A shudder passed through the hard hands at her back. “What a delicious thought,” he laughed softly. “The darkness and you in my bed, loving me…”
“Garet!” she gasped.
His lips parted hers expertly, hungrily. “Tell me you love me.”
“Oh, don’t you know how much?” she whispered fiercely.
“Not yet,” he murmured. “Show me.”
“Like this?” she asked, rising in his arms to press her mouth long and hard against his.
“More like this, little innocent,” he murmured wickedly, and proceeded to teach her how very intimate a kiss could be.
She blushed when he finally stopped long enough to catch his breath, but a new, soft light was in the eyes that worshipped him openly.
“I’m going to marry you, Kate,” he said unsteadily. “No half measures for us.”
“Garet, what if I don’t fit into your world?” she asked seriously.
“We’ll make one of our own,” he replied simply. He brushed the wild hair away from her cheek with a tender hand. “I want a son with you,” he said huskily. “I want a houseful of children.”
Her eyes sketched his face. “Dark-haired little boys with green eyes….”
He crushed her mouth under his, roughly, hungrily, possessively. “Don’t tempt me,” he said tightly. “I want you like hell.”
“I wouldn’t stop you,” she said softly. “Anything you want, Garet. Anything.”
He smiled down at her. “I know that. I want you, for keeps. I could walk through fire to get to you.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “Let’s go and tell Maude, before things get out of hand. I want you in white when you walk down that aisle to me, as old-fashioned as that may sound.”
She smiled back. “Maude will be glad to know you didn’t drown me in the lake.”
“She knew better than that.” He laughed softly. “The first thing she said to me this morning was that I had a nasty way of treating the people who love me most. When she made me understand who you really were, I couldn’t get to you fast enough. You’ll never know how I felt when I walked into that room and you backed away from me.” His eyes searched hers. “I wanted to go through the damned floor. Kate, I didn’t hurt you, did I? Nothing was broken…?”
“You didn’t push me,” she said gently. “I’m just bruised.”
“Later, I’ll kiss them all better,” he promised.
“Oh, you can’t,” she said without thinking as her hands went to her blouse.
“Oh, can’t I?” he murmured with a glint in his eyes. “God, I’m glad I can see, now!”
She blushed to the roots of her hair and ran ahead of him up the beach.
Far away, on the porch of her cabin, Maude Niccole watched the two of them running along the lake’s edge. There were tears in her eyes as she went inside to put on the coffee.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-4234-4
BOUND BY A PROMISE
First published as a MacFadden Romance
by Kim Publishing Corporation.
Copyright © 1979 by Diana Palmer.
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