Reba found herself staring at the front door which had closed behind his departing figure. ‘How could you just let him walk away like that?’ she demanded furiously.
Eliot shrugged. ‘He’s not my responsibility.’
Outraged, she stared at him in disbelief. ‘Neither were you his, but he came to help you anyway. How could you send him away? Anything could happen to him out there!’
A short silence followed, and Eliot’s face took on a sneer. ‘It seems to me you’re altogether too concerned about a worthless relative of mine. What goes on, Reba?’
Instantly her lids lowered, shielding her expression. ‘Nothing goes on, except natural concern for another human being. You shouldn’t have done it, no matter what your feelings are.’
He didn’t like her reproof, and his mouth thinned. ‘Well, I’m damn sure I’m not going out there to call him back now! Neither are you!’ he declared, catching her by the arm when she took a step towards the door. ‘You heard the man yourself. He said he wouldn’t have stayed anyway.’
She shook off his hand, while admitting it was true. Hunter wouldn’t have stayed where he knew he wasn’t wanted, and it was only her natural fear for his safety which had made her so ready to go after him. Thinking logically, she recognised that the storm was still in its infancy, giving him plenty of time to reach his house before the worst hit them. Hunter knew what he was doing. He would be safe enough.
However, as the eerie darkness of the storm deepened into the darkness of night, the worst that she could imagine paled beside what was actually happening. The continuous noise of wind and rain, which grew in intensity as the hours went by, was punctuated by rolls of thunder and creaks and groans of tortured trees. But it wasn’t until Reba heard objects flying about, crashing into whatever stood in their way, that worry turned to real fear.
Here they were, safe in their brick house, but the only thing protecting Hunter from the force of the elements was a rickety wooden structure which had barely taken her weight, let alone the pounding it must be receiving now. Unable to sit still, she had gone to her room, pacing up and down, her mind plagued with visions of his mangled body lying within the wreckage of his house.
She halted before the shuttered window. If anything happened to Hunter she wouldn’t be able to bear it. The world was only livable-in for knowing he was in it somewhere, alive. In that instant she knew she had to go to him. Her dread of the thunder was nothing weighed against the awful possibilities. She had to know he was all right, or be there with him if something happened.
Hurrying back downstairs, she found a torch in the kitchen, and a raincoat in a closet in the hall. Then, before anyone could suspect what she was doing and attempt to stop her, she slipped quietly out of the front door.
The full force of the storm didn’t strike her until she stepped away from the protection of the porch. Then the wind hit her like a truck and she barely kept on her feet. Bending double, she struggled towards the track, finding small relief once she was in its inadequate shelter. She was already drenched, the over-large raincoat clinging to her legs as she tried to hurry along in the meagre light thrown by the torch. Every time something crashed into the forest beside her she jumped, but when a palm crashed across the path ahead of her she screamed, the sound instantly taken away on the wind.
It was a nightmare journey, but she refused to turn back, scrambling over fallen trees, uncaring of the grazes her legs suffered. She only knew she had to get to Hunter. How long it took she never knew, but by the time she reached the sloping path down to his hut, she was exhausted. But at least, even to her inexperienced eye, the building looked intact. The only worrying thing was that there was no light breaking through the cracks in the shutters.
Her heart clenched. Where was he? Had he even made it back here? Biting down her fear, she fought her way up on to the veranda. When the door refused to open, she pounded on the wood with fists and torch.
Gasping for breath, she called out his name. ‘Hunter! Damn you, Hunter, you’ve got to be all right! Hunter!’ His name ended on a strangled cry as the door was pulled away from her and light spilled out, blinding her.
‘What the hell——?’ Hunter’s voice was shocked into silence as he stared at her. ‘I don’t believe it! Get in here, you little fool!’ he snapped angrily, grabbing a handful of sodden raincoat and pulling her inside, shutting the door on the unruly elements.
Reba took a staggering step before sinking tiredly to her knees. She felt quite light-headed, now that the constant battering of her body had stopped. Above her head, Hunter was muttering darkly.
‘I thought I told you to stay indoors? What the hell did you think you were doing?’ he demanded fiercely, squatting down beside her and tipping her head up rather ungently.
Reba blinked again as the light shone in her eyes. ‘I know what you told me, but I was worried about you!’ she snapped back, recovering some of her strength. ‘Take that light away!’ she grumbled, trying to push it away.
He resisted her by holding it beyond her reach. ‘I’m trying to see if you’re OK.’
‘Of course I’m OK,’ she scowled, then winced as her movement to brush her hair from her eyes brought a dart of pain. She took her hand down and stared at the blood on her fingers.
Hunter drew in a hissing breath. ‘Sure you’re OK. You’re a mess, and you’ve probably got concussion, but Reba Wyeth is OK!’ he rejoined sarcastically, rising and dragging her to her feet by dint of putting a hand under her arm.
Having come all this way, she didn’t appreciate her reception. ‘Stop shouting at me!’ she ordered and, much to her surprise, burst into tears.
It must have surprised Hunter too, for he said nothing for a moment, then very gently steered her into the nearest seat. When next he spoke, his voice was gentler too. ‘You’re crazy, do you know that?’
Sniffing, she felt about her for a handkerchief, failed to find one, and wiped her eyes on her sleeve. ‘Thanks a bunch!’
‘For God’s sake, Reba, you could have been killed, and for what?’ he asked, easing her hair away from her face so that he could examine the wound.
‘So could you, that’s for what!’
Blue eyes, unbearably close, stared into gold. ‘Such concern,’ he taunted, but it wasn’t a taunt, and her cheeks flushed.
She looked away, shrugging diffidently. ‘Wasted on you, obviously. I should have known this ruin wouldn’t dare fall down on the likes of you, Hunter Jamieson!’
‘However it looks, structurally it’s quite sound,’ he informed her, and she jumped to her feet, her head narrowly missing his chin.
‘Good, then I can go back again, now I know you’re all right.’
Hunter was before her in a flash, barring her way. ‘Not so fast. You’re going nowhere.’
He could be the most insensitive brute! ‘You can’t stop me!’ She squared up to him, and he laughed, albeit grimly.
‘If you leave, then I’ll only have to go after you, to make sure you are all right, which would then leave you worrying about me again. We’d end up doing this trip all night in the teeth of a storm. Maybe that appeals to you, but it doesn’t appeal to me. So you’re going to stay here, where I know you’re safe, until the storm is finally over.’
‘That could take hours!’ she exclaimed, not really knowing why she was fighting, when leaving was the last thing she had thought of doing when she made her way here. But Hunter had a way of making her say and do things she’d never intended.
‘I’m sure we can find something to do to while away the hours,’ he mused suggestively. ‘But first we’ve got to get you into some dry clothes and see to those cuts. Come along.’
Reba obediently rose to her feet. She knew she wasn’t going anywhere, and wouldn’t be even if there hadn’t been a storm. Right or wrong, this was where she wanted to be. Her fear of the possibility of losing him had told her that. In the end, the decision had been taken out of her hands, and she would deal with the future when it hap
pened.
CHAPTER NINE
HUNTER led the way into another room, which was as sparsely furnished as the first. By the lamplight she could see it was a bedroom, but there wasn’t even a mattress on the bed. Surely, she thought, he didn’t sleep on the floor? Yet before she could comment in any way, he propelled her to a corner of the room where a trap-door stood open, light gently flowing upwards from it.
‘After you,’ he urged politely, and because she instinctively knew he was expecting her to refuse, she carefully reached for the top step of the ladder with her foot, and climbed down. Hunter followed her much more agilely, closing the trap-door behind him, sealing them into the underground room.
Reba looked around her by the light of the two lamps, one of which stood on a table. She discovered the missing mattress at once, set up in one corner, together with a couple of blankets. The look she gave Hunter when he joined her was wry.
‘Quite a home from home.’
‘Welcome to the storm-cellar. My grandfather must have had it built into the hillside for just such occasions as these,’ Hunter responded with a grin, hanging the lamp from a hook beside a primitive book-case.
‘If you’re so sure the building is safe, what are you doing down here?’ Reba wanted to know, thinking how cosy it was—how intimate. Even the violence still going on above them seemed a long way away.
‘It would be no safer than any house if a tree fell through the roof,’he countered reasonably from over by the makeshift bed, where he hunched over a holdall. When he rose, he held a shirt in his hands. ‘This will have to do until your own things dry. I don’t have many clothes with me. You’d better dry yourself on one of the blankets first.’
‘While you do what? Stand and watch?’
Hunter tossed her the shirt. ‘You’re forgetting I’ve seen you with no clothes on before,’ he observed drily, bringing colour to her cheeks. ‘However, I am willing to turn my back, providing you’re quick.’
‘Thank you,’ she drawled acidly, but the moment his back was turned she stripped off the sodden clothes, tossing them into a corner before rubbing herself dry on a blanket. The rough texture quickly heated up her blood, but not nearly so much as the shirt did when she pulled it over her head without having to undo the buttons. The shirt was silk, and its the softness had an erotic appeal which was not lost on her.
Nor on Hunter, as he turned from the table where he had been pouring two cups of coffee from a Thermos. ‘It looks better on you than it ever did on me,’ he observed appreciatively.
‘I wouldn’t know. I’ve never seen you in anything other than jeans and T-shirts,’ she shot back, rolling up the sleeves which were far too long, aware as she did so that Hunter was taking full advantage of the view of her long tanned legs revealed by the shirt, which ended at mid-thigh. As a covering it was decent, but highly provocative.
‘You know something, tiger-eyes, you take far too much at face value. Wearing jeans doesn’t mean a man can’t afford better. Not even a millionaire would wear a tux to sail a yacht!’ he said tersely, and, picking up a box from the shelf, walked over to her. ‘Sit down and let me look at those cuts.’
He was right, she had made rash assumptions, but that was because she had been looking at a man, not at a wallet. At the time, she had not been looking for a wealthy man, so it had never occurred to her that she had found one. Disheartened, Reba sat on the mattress, and Hunter stood over her. He cleansed the cut on her forehead first, quite detachedly, as if touching her was nothing special, whereas Reba found that the gentle touch of his fingers sent frissons of awareness through her system. It made her very conscious of how little she wore, and how close he was. She could feel the waves of heat coming off him, smell the fragrance of him as he concentrated on what he was doing, and she had to bite down hard on her lip not to reveal her reaction to his closeness.
‘It’s superficial, nothing more than a scratch. You’ll be back in front of the cameras in no time,’ Hunter pronounced finally. ‘You will be going back to work, I take it, now that you aren’t going to be Mrs Eliot Thorson the Third?’
She jumped, glancing up in surprise. ‘How did you know?’
In answer he briefly picked up her bare left hand before dropping it back in her lap. She should have known he wouldn’t miss the absence of the ring.
Her heart contracted. He had been so sure, and, despite her words, she was here, fiancé-less. ‘Are you going to crow?’
‘Why should I?’ he countered smoothly, irritating her hugely.
‘Because you’ve won,’ she bit out thickly.
His eyes met hers briefly, and all the knowledge was there. ‘I didn’t doubt I would. Did you?’
It hurt, because she had fought so hard to make it different. Yet here she was. Back where she had started, only minus the one thing she wanted most. But thinking about that wouldn’t help, and she chose instead to challenge his first statement.
‘Who said I was ever going to give up working?’
Hunter knelt down beside her. ‘Let me see your legs,’ he ordered, tutting when she stretched one out and he saw the scratches. He began to clean them carefully. ‘A lot of wealthy men wouldn’t want their wives to work. Eliot would be one of those, I think.’
Reba had to swallow to moisten her throat in order to answer him, because one of his hands, steadying her leg, was high up along the back of her thigh, and with the other gently stroking the cotton wool, wonderful things were happening inside her.
‘A-And what about you? Would you let your…?’ His thumb moved, making her jump, bringing vivid blue eyes up to hers. It was hard to go on in the face of the glow which began in his eyes, but somehow she managed it, however falteringly. ‘W-Wife w-work?’
Mouth curving sensually, he abandoned one leg and reached for the other, but that scarcely helped the thudding of her heart. He was playing her like a musical instrument, knowing what he was doing to her, and using that to voice his triumph. ‘If it was important to her, yes. The need to work isn’t necessarily linked to the need for money, although that is the result. Most of us need to feel useful. We need to stretch ourselves, our minds. Some men climb mountains, others simply have to see a job well done. To know it’s helping his fellow man.’
‘Others design and build boats,’ she added, reminding him of what he had not told her.
Hunter tossed the used cotton wool aside, but didn’t release her leg. On the contrary, his hand began a hypnotic caress up and down her calf as he looked at her from beneath hooded lids. ‘Do you still hold that against me, tiger-eyes? Criticism from you is a little hard to take, you know. Talking of money, which we weren’t, what made you finally decide to ditch dear Cousin El yourself? Were you really worried about what I would say, or did you suddenly realise this way you get pleasure and profit?’
Pain seemed to lock itself round her heart at the mocking words, and it didn’t help to know that she had brought this on herself. He’d meant to hurt her, and she couldn’t bear it. ‘Damn you!’ she shouted, trying to pull free but failing.
‘More tears, tiger-eyes? Who are you kidding? You know what side your bread is buttered on, so don’t fool yourself this is true love!’ he jeered, and, as his scorn smote her, her temper snapped.
‘All right, I won’t!’ she shot back, and tried to kick his hand away with her free foot. But he saw the move coming and, with the speed of light, yanked the leg he was holding, which flung her on to her back. Before she could gather her scattered wits, he was leaning over her, pinning her down with the weight of his body, one muscular thigh clamping her legs.
Reba found herself unable to move, staring up into a face from which all amusement had vanished. All that was left was the smouldering look in his eyes, and that found an answering heat inside her, taking her breath away.
‘We always seem to end up fighting, when it’s the last thing I really want to do,’ Hunter murmured huskily, brushing away the tendrils of damp hair which clung to her cheeks and brow.
&
nbsp; It was so tender, so far from the anger she had just felt, that her will to fight melted away. ‘What do you want to do?’ she whispered, knowing she was inviting an answer which would lead down only one path.
Blue eyes dropped to her mouth, and her lips were already tingling before his lowered to nuzzle them, sipping at them with brief kisses, as if to sup too long would plunge them too soon into the intoxicating world of passion. In between, his words stoked a fire which had never gone out.
‘What do I want to do? I want to lose myself in you. I want to bury myself so deep inside you that no other man ever would, or ever could, displace me!’ he growled, and finally took her mouth in a kiss of erotic sensuality which proclaimed his intention of carrying out his promise.
Reba’s lashes fluttered down as her arms rose to close about his neck. If only he knew he was already there, an indelible part of her heart, soul and mind. Her love made her his, even if he didn’t believe in its existence, and words which spoke of possession, and not love, could not alter that by one iota. Pride was a bankrupt economy. She didn’t care why he wanted her, only that she wanted to be here. She could not refuse the only part of him that she would ever get. Time enough later for regrets, when she was once more alone.
So she kissed him back with all the generosity of her love, and felt the shock of surprise which went through him when her tongue stroked his. Hunter pulled away, frowning down into her shadowed golden eyes.
‘No fight?’
Reba licked her lips, her breathing growing steadily more erratic. ‘I want you too much,’ she responded honestly, giving the only answer he would understand.
Even in the subtle glow of the lamps, it was easy to see his eyes darken. ‘No protestations of love this time?’
‘Do we need them?’ The words came easily, and meant nothing. It was what she felt inside which counted.
Hunter shook his head, and his hand lowered to the buttons of the shirt, slowly opening them, his eyes never leaving her face and seeing the heat rise in her cheeks. ‘Just simple, honest passion? A slaking of mutual desire?’ he queried in an undertone, brushing the silk aside to reveal the taut arousal of her breasts.
The Bitter Price Of Love Page 14