Lover in the Rough

by Elizabeth Lowell

  “You’ll have to stand in line,” said a voice from behind Tim, a voice that was quiet and cold.

  Both Tim and the drunken Todd froze, pinned by the promise of violence in the voice. Reba felt like laughing and crying at the same time. She wanted to call out to the man but she still didn’t know his name.

  The stranger entered the room with a silent, predatory stride. He grabbed Todd, pivoted smoothly, and slammed the larger man against a wall. Todd swore and shook his head, suddenly sober and more than a little afraid.

  “I won’t break your neck right away,” continued the stranger in his soft, deadly voice. His hands were a steel vise clamped on Todd’s throat. “First I’ll break your fingers. Then your thumbs. Then every bone all the way up to your shoulders. One by one. By the time I get around to breaking your neck you’ll thank me for it. Hear me, loverboy?”

  Todd made a strangled sound that could have been yes.

  The stranger turned his head and looked at Reba. The harsh lines of his face changed. “Did he touch you, chaton? ”

  She shook her head, unable to speak for the emotions seething through her, emotions triggered by the deadly stranger and the soft French word that meant both kitten and a set stone, things small and precious and vibrant with life. Chaton.

  The stranger turned back to Todd. “Keep pushing, loverboy. You’ll get there.”

  Fingers dug into flesh with cruel skill. The stranger pivoted again, then released Todd with a force that sent him staggering through the open office door. The man watched in silence until Todd blundered through the shop and out the front door. Then, with his back still toward Tim, the stranger said coolly, “Unless you’re planning to use that blackjack, put it in your pocket.”

  Tim looked at Reba.

  “It’s all right, Tim,” she said quickly, not looking away from the stranger, as though she were afraid he would disappear as unexpectedly as he had appeared.

  The stranger turned around to face Tim, waiting for the younger man to decide. Tim gave the man a long, assessing glance, then slipped the blackjack into his back pocket with an easy gesture that suggested the weapon could reappear very quickly.

  As the blackjack disappeared, the stranger’s posture shifted subtly, relaxing the disciplined readiness of his body. “Why don’t you introduce us, Tim?” he said, gesturing to Reba. An odd smile curved lips that were no longer thin and hard.

  Startled, Tim looked at the stranger. “Hey, you told me she knew you!”

  “She does,” said the man, laughing softly. “She just doesn’t know my name.”

  Tim looked at Reba in disbelief.

  “I’m afraid he’s right,” she said. “It’s a long story. . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Tim made an exasperated noise. “Reba Farrall, meet Chance Walker. Chance, Reba. Now would one of you two kindly tell me what the hell is going on?”

  Chance smiled, ignoring Tim. “Hello, Reba Farrall,” said Chance in his deep, intriguingly accented voice. He pulled Reba’s desk back into place with an easy motion, then plucked the Tiger God from her grasp. He turned the statue over in his hands, admiring the play of light across its surface. “Would have been a shame to bend this over loverboy’s thick skull.”

  Reba laughed a bit wildly. “I thought the same thing when I grabbed it.”

  Chance looked at her, missing nothing from the shimmer of dark blond hair to the sensual curves lying beneath black silk. “You’re like the night,” he said quietly, “made to wear black. Beautiful chaton.”

  Reba felt the compliment radiate through her, changing her. She had never considered herself pretty, much less beautiful, but when Chance looked at her, she felt she was the most exquisite woman ever born. Tiger God smiled at her with sensual fire in his eyes.

  Tim cleared his throat. Reba realized that she had been staring at Chance. Reluctantly, she turned to Tim. “Chance—that is, Mr. Walker—”

  “Chance,” corrected the Tiger God firmly.

  “Chance,” she murmured, savoring the unusual name.

  Tim cleared his throat again.

  “Chance discouraged Todd once in Death Valley,” said Reba quickly. “Afterwards, Chance let me . . .” Reba looked helplessly at Tim, not knowing how to explain that she had wept out her grief for Jeremy in a total stranger’s arms. “I was missing Jeremy. Chance . . . understood. Oh, damn,” she said suddenly, impatient with evasions. “I crawled into his arms and cried like a baby! He was very patient and gentle about it, more so than I deserved.”

  Tim looked dubiously at the man who had efficiently, ruthlessly reduced a large meaty drunk to a sober mound of hamburger. “ ‘Gentle,’ you say. ‘Patient.’ Yeah, sure. Glad I didn’t meet anyone as gentle and patient as Chance while I was working my way through school tending bars.”

  “That where you learned about blackjacks?” asked Chance.

  “Yeah.”

  “Some bartenders prefer a gun.”

  “A blackjack is more selective,” said Tim dryly.

  Chance nodded, approving of the younger man. He glanced at Reba. “Is he yours, chaton?”

  The question was so soft, so unexpected, that it took a moment for Reba to realize its meaning. “Tim? Mine? Good God, no! He has a wonderful wife.”

  Chance turned and held out his hand to Tim. “Glad to meet you, Tim. And bloody glad you’re married.”

  Tim laughed abruptly. “So am I. I’d hate to get between you and something you want.”

  “Tim!” said Reba, shocked at Tim’s blunt assessment of Chance Walker.

  “That’s all right,” said Chance. “I like a man who’s smart enough to come in out of the rain.”

  Tim grinned and shook Chance’s hand. “Glad to meet you, Chance. You’re the first man I’ve seen who might give my hardheaded boss a run for her money. Bonne chance,” he said, mangling the French words almost beyond recognition. At the pained look on Reba’s face, Tim translated quickly, “Good luck.” He hesitated. “Did I just make a bilingual pun?”

  “No. My brother was the one called Luck.” Chance’s face was serious, his silver-green eyes narrowed against memories that didn’t please him.

  “Was?” asked Tim.

  Chance said no more. Tim didn’t ask again. There was something about Chance Walker that flatly discouraged questions.

  The buzzer sounded. Tim looked through the shop and saw a petite, red-haired woman waiting patiently at the front door. He hurried forward, grinning like a kid.

  “His wife?” asked Chance as Tim left.

  “Yes. Gina’s a gem,” said Reba. “She only has one failing,” added Reba wryly. “She makes every other woman around her look like a three-legged giraffe.”

  In two gliding strides, Chance was so close to Reba that she could feel the warmth radiating from his body. “Not every woman,” he said, smiling.

  Reba looked up at him, remembering the moment she had been wrapped in his arms and his male heat had made her want to melt and run like gold in a jeweler’s crucible. The feeling had haunted her at unexpected moments, sending sensations through her that made her quiver invisibly, as though fine wires were tightening deep inside her body.

  She had never felt like that in a man’s arms before. She had married a man interested only in virginal responses. After the first few weeks of marriage, her husband’s embraces had become infrequent, almost indifferent. Since her divorce she had dated many men but found none whom she trusted enough to respond to physically. She had begun to wonder if there were something wrong with her . . . until a single kiss from a stranger taught her more about being a woman than years of marriage had.

  And for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why she responded so intensely to Chance Walker. She’d dated more handsome men, men with more wealth, more social grace and position, but it was only this rough stranger whose kiss had gone beyond her polished exterior to tap the molten core of woman beneath.

  “What are you thinking?” Chance asked, watching the play of expressi
ons across her face as he gently eased his fingers into her hair, caressing her cheeks with his hard palms.

  Sensations shivered through her, making her breath catch. She considered evading his question with half-truths or simple silence. Then she decided that Chance Walker would hardly be shocked by anything she said or did. He was obviously a man who had seen and done it all. Several times.

  “I was wondering why you’re so attractive to me,” she said simply.

  His thick moustache shifted and gleamed in the office light as he smiled. “And you to me, chaton.”

  She stared into the green-silver depths of his eyes, then his black lashes swept down. He took her lips with a devastating blend of hunger and gentleness. She felt the comb holding her coiled hair loosen and slide away, giving his fingers free access to the silky warmth of her unbound hair. The tip of his tongue traced her mouth, teasing her until she sighed and opened her lips.

  He buried his fingers in her hair, his hands gentle but so strong that she could not turn her head aside. Half in protest, half in response, she put her hands on his upper arms. Hard, powerful, as inflexible as stone beneath her hands, his arms told her much about the hunger and strength and restraint of the man holding her. He could have crushed the breath out of her, forcing from her the kiss he so plainly wanted.

  But he didn’t. He held her as though she were infinitely fragile. He coaxed rather than demanded that she share his pleasure in being close to her. She had never been held like that, with absolute strength and safety.

  When she felt the velvet roughness of his tongue against her own, her hands tightened on his arms. Tentatively, then with greater assurance, she responded, touching the smoothness of his lips, the serrations of his teeth, the sweet warmth of his tongue, all the fascinating textures of his kiss. She felt his body shift and tighten as one hand clenched in her hair and the other moved down her back beneath the heavy silk of her hair, molding her body against his for a long moment.

  With tangible reluctance, Chance lifted his head. His arms shifted, cradling rather than caging.

  “I’m too hungry to be teased,” he said in a husky voice.

  “I wasn’t—” she began breathlessly.

  “I know. But I was. I thought I’d kiss you once, just to see if it was as good as I remembered.” His eyes followed the soft line of her lips. “It was better. So much better that I want more.” He bent swiftly, taking her mouth in a fierce, penetrating kiss that made her cling to him for balance. “And then I want much more. I want to take off your clothes and shred them into pieces so small they would never be able to cover you again. I want to kiss you and feel you change beneath my mouth until you can’t breathe for needing me. And then I want to cover you, all of you, with your hair like hot silk between my fingers.”

  Reba closed her eyes and trembled as a strange weakness claimed her, his words like fire inside her. She looked up at him with dazed cinnamon eyes, unsure of herself, almost afraid of him. “Chance—”

  He kissed her gently, soothing rather than overwhelming her. “But I’ve shocked you and Tim enough for one day,” he said, smiling down at her crookedly.

  The world returned to Reba in a rush. She realized that she had been standing in her office with the door wide open, passionately kissing a man she barely knew. Scarlet stained her cheekbones.

  “The door,” she said, trying to step away from Chance.

  “Tim closed it,” said Chance, tightening his arms, holding her close. “A discreet young man, your Tim.”

  “Not mine. Gina’s.”

  “A good thing, too,” said Chance, biting her lower lip in a slow, gentle caress that made her weak all over again. “I’d hate to have to take such a nice young man out in the desert and lose him.”

  Chance was smiling but his eyes were cold silver.

  “Tim’s like the brother I never had,” said Reba, holding onto Chance’s hard upper arms, wanting him to understand. “That’s all he is.” Then she heard her own words and was divided between confusion and irritation. Why should she have to explain her friendships to Chance Walker? No matter how intense the feelings he evoked in her, she had known him only a short time. “Not,” she added evenly, “that how I feel about Tim is any business of yours.”

  “You don’t believe that, do you?” asked Chance quietly.

  Reba stared at him for a long moment, eyes clear and hard. Then she shook her head slowly, sending dark blond hair whispering over her cheeks. “No, I don’t believe that. But I’m damned if I know why. I don’t know you, Chance Walker. And when I’m with you, I don’t even know myself.”

  “You keep taking words out of my mind,” he drawled. “Shall we get to know each other by playing Twenty Questions over lunch?”

  Reba couldn’t help smiling at the idea of sharing a child’s game with a man called Chance. “All right. Me first, though,” she added, gathering up her hair as she spoke and twisting it expertly into a coil.

  “Why?” he asked, amused.

  “You’re bigger and a lot tougher than I am. I need whatever advantage I can get.”

  He put his hand on her cheek and looked at her searchingly. “Don’t be afraid of me, chaton.”

  Sensing the vulnerability beneath his quiet words, she turned her face and kissed his hard palm. “I’m not afraid of your strength. It’s your questions that I’m uncomfortable about.” She smiled at his startled look. “Don’t you have things you’d just as soon not talk about?” she asked, searching his clear, oddly colored eyes.

  His hand moved from her cheek as his face changed, all expression gone. He was again a stranger, hard and utterly assured, invulnerable. “Did you have any particular area of questioning in mind?” he asked, his voice uninflected.

  Chance’s black moustache didn’t disguise the harsh lines of his face or the unflinching intelligence that appraised her. Compelling, dangerous, a Tiger God hewn out of uncompromising stone.

  “No,” she whispered.

  Stillness pooled in the room for a long moment, then the coiled intensity slowly seeped out of Chance. He touched her cheek. “Yes, there are things I’d rather not talk about.”

  “And they’re the only ones that matter, aren’t they?”

  “Do you have a jacket?” he said calmly. “There’s a cool wind blowing outside.”

  Reba thought of repeating her question until she remembered his cold words to Todd. Keep pushing, you’ll get there. She wouldn’t push. Not yet. Pushing a man like Chance was not only dangerous, it was futile. She might as well go push a mountain. When he trusted her, he would talk freely.

  That is, if a man like Chance Walker ever trusted anybody. But he had to, for without trust nothing was possible, not pleasure, not friendship, and certainly not love.

  With a feeling close to fear, Reba realized that she wanted to know all of those things with Chance, and more—things for which she had no names, only a hunger as deep as the one he had revealed to her when he kissed her in the moon shadow of the dunes. The thought of such wanting was a shock to her, and the implications frightening.

  “I seem to have lost my comb,” she said casually, but the hand holding her hair had a fine tremor in it.

  Chance smiled and reached into the pocket of the tailored charcoal wool slacks he was wearing. He held out his hand to her. On his palm was the simple jet comb that had held her hair in place. “This one? Or”—he reached into the pocket of his pearl-grey chamois shirt—“this one?”

  His left hand held the polished ivory comb that she had worn in Death Valley. She looked up at him, remembering the night and the dunes where she had felt safe enough to let down the barriers she held against the world and cry in his arms until she was too weak to stand. Then his kiss, and the world falling away as they held each other and discovered needs and possibilities she had never before known.

  “The jet, I think,” Chance said when Reba didn’t speak. He fitted the comb into the shining mass of hair coiled on her head. He stroked her hair. “It’s a s
hame to imprison such beauty. But there are compensations.” His teeth moved delicately along the curve of her ear.

  She closed her eyes and trembled at the sensations he caused, a tightness going from her throat to her navel and beyond. When the tip of his tongue moved intimately, learning every contour of her ear, she made an inarticulate sound. Her hands went to his arms, steadying herself in a world that had suddenly begun to turn swiftly around her, throwing her off balance. She felt the tremor that went through him, the heat and tension of his body as it moved against hers.

  With a soft curse Chance held her at arm’s length. “Lunch,” he said in a husky voice. “Unless you’re on the menu . . . ?”

  “Why do I suddenly feel like I’m being stalked by a tiger?” Reba asked, laughter and something more serious rippling beneath her question.

  He chuckled. His lips brushed her temple. “Are there any restaurants around that serve live Maine lobster?”

  “You’re very good at changing subjects, aren’t you?”

  Chance smiled down at her. “If you don’t like lobster—”

  “I love Maine lobster,” she interrupted in an exasperated voice.

  “So do I, and I haven’t had any for seven years.” He laughed at the curiosity that leaped in her eyes. “You’d make a wonderful cat,” he murmured, “all tawny and supple, with a cat’s full share of grace and curiosity.”

  “Flattery will get you.”

  “Get me what?”

  Reba smiled like a cat and walked out of the office without answering.

  Three

  The restaurant was small, unobtrusive, and dedicated to the principle that customers preferred the management to spend money on food rather than fancy furnishings. As a result, Jaime’s was unknown to the tourists who sought out only the flashy and more famous watering holes. The atmosphere in the restaurant was convivial, the selection of wines limited but well chosen, and the customers more interested in conversation than in being seen and oohed over by strangers. Jaime’s had been one of Jeremy’s favorite restaurants.

  “What is it?” asked Chance quietly, sensing the change in Reba as she looked around the room.