Harden

by Diana Palmer

  “It isn’t that,” he said heavily. “And we can’t get a divorce on our wedding day.”

  She gnawed her lower lip. “No. I guess not.”

  “We’ll stay for a couple of days, at least. When we’re home…we’ll make decisions.” He turned, picked up his clothes, and went into the bathroom to dress.

  She changed quickly into a simple long cotton gown and got under the covers. She closed her eyes, but she needn’t have bothered, because he didn’t even look at her as he went out the door.

  The rest of their stay in Cancun went by quickly, with the two of them being polite to each other and not much more. They went on a day trip to the ruins at Chichen Itza, wandering around the sprawling Maya ruins with scores of other tourists. The ruins covered four miles, with their widely spread buildings proving that it was a cult center and not just a conventional city. A huge plaza opened out to various religious buildings. The Mayan farmers would journey there for the year’s great religious festivals; archaeologists also assumed that markets and council meetings drew the citizens to Chichen Itza.

  The two most interesting aspects of the ancient city to Miranda were the observatory and the Sacred Cenote—or sacrificial well.

  She stood at its edge and looked down past the underbrush into the murky water and shivered. It was nothing like the mental picture she had, of some small well-like structure. It was a cavernous opening that led down, down into the water, where over a period of many years, an estimated one hundred human beings were sacrificed to appease the gods in time of drought. The pool covered almost an acre, and it was sixty-five feet from its tree-lined edge down limestone cliffs to the water below.

  “It gives me the screaming willies,” a man beside Miranda remarked. “Imagine all those thousands of virgins being pushed off the cliff into that yucky water. Sacrificing people because of religion. Is that primitive, or what?”

  “Ever hear of the Christians and the lions?” Harden drawled.

  The man gave him a look and disappeared into the crowd.

  If things had been less strained, Miranda might have corrected that assumption about the numbers, and sex, of the sacrificed Mayans and reminded the tourist that fact and fiction blended in this ancient place. But Harden had inhibited her too much. Sharing her long-standing education in the past of Chichen Itza probably wouldn’t have endeared her to the tourist, either. Historical fact had been submerged in favor of Hollywood fiction in so many of the world’s places of interest.

  Miranda wandered back onto the grassy plaza and stared at the observatory. She knew that despite their infrequent sacrificial urges, the Maya were an intelligent people who had an advanced concept of astronomy and mathematics, and a library that covered the entire history of Maya. Sadly Spanish missionaries in 1545 burned the books that contained the Maya history. Only three survived to the present day.

  Miranda wandered back to the bus. It was a sobering experience to look at the ruins and consider that in 500 B.C. this was a thriving city, where people lived and worshiped and probably never considered that their civilization would ever end. Just like us, she thought philosophically, and shivered. Just like my marriages, both in ruins, both like Chichen Itza.

  She was somber back to the hotel, and for the rest of their stay in Cancun. She did things mechanically, and without any real enjoyment. Not that Harden was any more jovial than she was. Probably, she considered, he’d decided that there wasn’t much to salvage from their brief relationship. And maybe it was just as well.

  When they got back to Jacobsville, Theodora insisted that they stay with her until their own home was ready for occupancy—a matter of barely a week. Neither of them had the heart to announce that their honeymoon had resulted in a coming divorce.

  Evan, however, sensed that something was wrong. Their first evening back, he steered Miranda onto the front porch with a determined expression on his swarthy face.

  “Okay. What’s wrong?” he asked abruptly.

  She was taken aback at the sudden question. “W-what?”

  “You heard me,” he replied. “You both came home looking like death warmed over, and if anything except arguing took place during the whole trip, I’ll eat my hat.”

  “The one that could double as an umbrella?” she asked with a feeble attempt at humor.

  “Cut it out. I know Harden. What happened?”

  Miranda sighed, giving in. “He’s still in love with Anita, that’s all, so we decided that we made a mistake and we’re going to get it annulled.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Annulled?” he emphasized.

  She colored. “Yes, well, for a man who seemed to be bristling with desire, he sure changed.”

  “You do know that he’s a virgin?” Evan asked.

  She knew her jaw was gaping. She closed her mouth. “He’s a what?”

  “You didn’t know,” he murmured. “Well, he’d kill me for telling you, but it’s been family gossip for years. He wanted to be a minister, and he’s had nothing to do with women since Anita died. A ladies’ man, he ain’t.”

  Miranda knew that, but she’d assumed he had some experience. He acted as if he had.

  “Are you sure?” she blurted out.

  “Of course I’m sure. Look, he’s backward and full of hang-ups. It’s going to be up to you to make the first move, or you’ll end up in divorce court before you know it.”

  “But, I can’t,” she groaned.

  “Yes, you can. You’re a woman. Get some sexy clothes and drive him nuts. Wear perfume, drop handkerchiefs, vamp him. Then get him behind a locked door and let nature take its course. For God’s sake, woman, you can’t give up on him less than a week after the wedding!”

  “He doesn’t love me!”

  “Make him,” he said, his eyes steely and level. “And don’t tell me you can’t. I saw him when you were late getting back on that killer stallion. I’ve never seen him so shaken. A man who can feel that kind of fear for a woman can love her.”

  She hesitated now, lured by the prospect of Harden falling in love with her. “Do you really think he could?”

  He smiled. “He isn’t as cold as he likes people to think he is. There’s a soft core in that man that’s been stomped on too many times.”

  “I guess I could try,” she said slowly.

  “I guess you could.”

  She smiled and went back inside, her mind whirling with possibilities.

  The next day, Miranda asked Theodora to take her shopping, and she bought the kind of clothes she’d never worn in her life. She had her hair trimmed and styled, and she bought underwear that made her blush.

  “Is this a campaign?” Theodora asked on the way home, her dark eyes twinkling.

  “I guess it is,” she sighed. “Right now, it looks as if he’s ready to toss me back into the lake.”

  “I’m sorry that I mentioned Anita on your wedding day,” the older woman said heavily. “I could see the light go out of you. Harden and I may never make our peace, Miranda, but I never meant to put you in the middle.”

  “I know that.” She turned in the seat, readjusting her seat belt. “Does Harden know anything about his real father?”

  Theodora smiled. “No. He’s never wanted to.”

  “Would you tell me?”

  The older woman’s eyes grew misty with remembrance. “He was a captain in the Green Berets, actually,” she said. “I met him at a Fourth of July parade, of all things, in Houston while my husband and I were temporarily separated. He was a farm boy from Tennessee, but he had a big heart and he was full of fun. We went everywhere together. He spoiled me, pampered me, fell in love with me. Before I knew it, I was in love with him, desperately in love with him!”

  She turned onto the road that led to the ranch, frowning now while Miranda listened, entranced. “Neither of us wanted an affair, but what we felt was much too explosive to… Well, I guess you know about that,” she added shyly. “People in love have a hard time controlling their passions. We were no differen
t. He gave me a ring, a beautiful emerald-and-diamond ring that had been his mother’s, and I filed for divorce. We were going to be married as soon as the divorce was final. But he was sent to Vietnam and the first day there, the Viet Cong attacked and he was killed by mortar fire.”

  “And you discovered you were pregnant,” Miranda prompted when the other woman hesitated, her eyes anguished.

  “Yes.” She shifted behind the wheel. “Abortion was out of the question. I loved Barry so much, more than my own life. I’d have risked anything to have his child. I didn’t know what to do. I got sick and couldn’t work, and I had nowhere to go when I was asked to leave my apartment for nonpayment of rent. About that time, Jesse, my own husband, came and asked me to come back to the ranch, to end the separation. Evan was very young, and he had a governess for him, but he missed me.”

  “Did your husband love you?” Miranda asked softly.

  “Yes. That made it so much worse, you see, because he was jealous and overpossessive and overprotective—that’s why I left him in the first place. But perhaps the experience taught him something, because he never threw the affair up to me. He brought me back home and after the first few weeks, he became involved with my pregnancy. He loved children, you know. It didn’t even matter to him that Harden wasn’t his own. He never let it matter to anyone else, either. We had a good life. I did my grieving for Barry in secret, and then I fell in love with my husband all over again. But Harden has made sure since Anita’s death that I paid for all my old sins. Interesting, that the instrument of my punishment for an illicit affair and an illegitimate child is the child himself.”

  “I’m sorry,” Miranda said. “It can’t be easy for you.”

  “It isn’t easy for Harden, either,” came the surprising reply. Theodora smiled sadly as they reached the house. “That gets me through it.” She looked at Miranda with dark, somber eyes. “He’s the image of Barry.”

  “I wish you could make him listen.”

  “What’s the old saying, ‘if wishes were horses, beggars could ride’?” Theodora shook her head. “My dear, we’re all walking these days.”

  Later, like a huntress waiting for her prey to appear, Miranda donned the sexy underwear and the incredibly see-through lemon-yellow gown she’d bought, sprayed herself with perfume, and exhibited herself in a seductive position on the bed in the bedroom they’d been sharing. Harden made sure he didn’t come in until she was asleep, and he was gone before she woke in the morning. But tonight, she was waiting for him. If what Evan said, as incredible as it seemed, was true, and Harden was innocent, it was going to be delicious to seduce him. She had to make allowances for his pride, of course, so she couldn’t admit that she knew. That made it all the more exciting.

  It was a long time before the door swung open and her tired, dust-stained husband came in the door. He paused with his Stetson in his hand and gaped at her where she lay on the bed, on her side, one perfect small breast almost bare.

  “Hi, cowboy,” she said huskily, and smiled at him. “Long day?”

  “What the hell are you dudded up for?” he asked curtly.

  She eased off the bed and stood up, so that he could get a good view of her creamy body under the gauzy fabric of her gown. She stretched, lifting her breasts so that the already hard tips were pushing against the bodice.

  “I bought some new clothes, that’s all,” she murmured drowsily. “Going to have a shower?”

  He muttered something under his breath about having one with ice cubes and slammed the bathroom door behind him.

  Miranda laughed softly to herself when she heard the shower running. Now if only she could keep her nerve, if only she could dull his senses so that he couldn’t resist her. She pulled the hem of the gown up to her thighs and the strap off one rounded shoulder and lay against the pillows, waiting.

  He came out, eventually, with a dark green towel secured around his hips. She looked up at him, her eyes slitted, her lips parted invitingly while his eyes slid over her body with anything but a shy, innocent appraisal. The look was so hot, she writhed under it.

  “Is this what it took for your late husband?” he asked, his own eyes narrow and almost insulting. “Did you have to dress up to get him interested?”

  Her breath caught. She sat up, righting her gown. “Harden…” she began, ready to explain, despite her intention not to.

  “Well, I don’t need that kind of stimulation when I’m interested,” he said, controlling a fiercely subdued rage over her behavior. She must think him impotent, at the least, to go so far to get him into bed. Which only made him more suspicious about her motives.

  “You used to be interested,” she stammered.

  “So I did, before you decided that I needed reforming, before you started interfering in my life. I wanted you. But not anymore, honey, and all those cute tricks you’re practicing don’t do a damned thing for me.”

  He pulled her against him, “Can’t you tell?”

  His lack of interest was so blatant that she turned her eyes away, barely aware that he was pulling clothes out of drawers and closets. Tears blinded her. She hid under the covers and pulled them up to her blushing face, shivering with shame. This had been Tim’s favorite weapon, making her feel inadequate, too little a woman to arouse him. Her pride lay on the floor at Harden’s feet, and he didn’t even care.

  “For future reference, I’ll do the chasing when I’m interested in sex,” he said, glaring down at her white face. “I don’t want it with you, not anymore. I told you it was over. You should have listened.”

  “Yes. I should have,” she said hoarsely.

  He felt wounded all over. She’d loved him, he knew she had, but she couldn’t just be his wife, she had to be a reformer, to harp on his feud with Theodora, to make him seem cruel and selfish. He’d been stinging ever since Cancun, especially since some of those accusations were right on the money. But this was the last straw, this seductive act of hers. He’d had women come on to him all his adult life, their very aggressiveness turning him off. He hadn’t expected his own wife to treat him like some casual stud to satisfy her passions. Was she really that desperate for sex?

  He turned and went out of the room. It didn’t help that he could hear Miranda crying even through the closed door.

  Evan heard it, too, and minutes later he confronted his brother in the barn, where Harden was checking on one of the mares in foal.

  The bigger man was taking off his hat as he walked down the wide, wood-chip-shaving-filled aisle between the rows of stalls, his swarthy face set in hard lines, his mouth barely visible as his jaw clenched.

  “That does it,” he said, and kept coming. “That really does it. That poor woman’s had enough from you!”

  Harden threw off his own hat and stood, waiting. “Go ahead, throw a punch. You’ll get it back, with interest,” he replied, his tone lazy, his blue eyes bright with anger.

  “She goes shopping and buys all sorts of sexy clothes to turn you on, and then you leave her in tears! Doesn’t it matter to you that she was trying to make it easy for you?” he demanded.

  Harden frowned. Something wasn’t right here. “Easy for me?” he prompted.

  Evan sighed angrily. “I wasn’t going to tell you, but maybe I’d better. I told her the truth about you,” he said shortly.

  “About what?”

  “You know about what!” Evan growled. “It was her right to know, after all, she’s your wife.”

  “What did you tell her, for God’s sake?” Harden raged, at the end of his patience.

  “The truth.” Evan squared his shoulders and waited for the explosion as he replied, “I told her you were a virgin.”

  Chapter 11

  For a minute Harden just stood staring at his brother, looking as if he hadn’t heard a word. Then he began to laugh, softly at first, building into a roar of sound that echoed down the long aisle.

  “It isn’t funny,” Evan glowered at him. “My God, it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Th
ere are plenty of men who are celibate. Priests, for instance…”

  Harden laughed louder.

  Evan wiped his sleeve across his broad, damp forehead and sighed heavily. “What’s so damned funny?”

  Harden stopped to get his breath before he answered, and lit a cigarette. He took a deep draw, staring amusedly at his older brother.

  “I never bothered to deny it, because it didn’t matter. But I ought to deck you for passing that old gossip on to Miranda. I gave her hell upstairs for what she did. I had no idea she was supposed to be helping me through my first time!”

  Evan cocked his head, narrowing one eye. “You aren’t a virgin?”

  Harden didn’t answer him. He lifted the cigarette to his mouth. “Is that why she went on that spending spree in town, to buy sexy clothes to vamp me with?”

  “Yes. I’m as much help as Mother, I guess,” Evan said quietly. “I overheard her telling Miranda that you’d never get over Anita.”

  Harden frowned. “When?”

  “At the reception, before you left on your honeymoon.”

  Harden groaned and closed his eyes. He turned to the barn wall and hit it soundly with his fist. “Damn the luck!”

  “One misunderstanding after another, isn’t it?” Evan leaned a broad shoulder against the wall. “Was she right? Are you still in love with Anita?”

  “No. Maybe you were right about that. Maybe it was her time, and Mother was just a link in the chain of events.”

  “My God,” Evan exclaimed reverently. “Is that really you talking, or do you just have a fever?” he asked dryly.

  Harden glanced up at the lighted window of the room he shared with Miranda. “I’ve got a fever, all right. And I know just how to get it down.”

  He left Evan standing and went up to the bedroom, his eyes gleaming with mischief and anticipated pleasure.

  But the sight that met him when he opened the door wasn’t conducive to pleasure. Miranda was fully dressed in a pretty white silk dress that was even more seductive than the nightgown she’d discarded, and she was packing a suitcase.