by Janet Dailey
Reese flicked an angry and impatient glance at the housekeeper and took another step toward Kit. “Will you —”
“Don’t come near me!” she ordered in a hoarse, raw voice. “Don’t you ever come near me again!”
There was strength in her legs again and pride in her erect carriage. She walked hurriedly to the screen door and out onto the porch. Kit didn’t stop until she reached her house, and even then continued straight to the privacy of her room. Her grandfather stared after her, then looked in the direction of the Big House.
KIT SAT ASTRIDE HER HORSE, letting instinct keep her in the saddle. Work, the ranch, the land … that was all she needed, she assured herself, but the aching pain inside of her echoed the call of another need.
In the past week she had slept little, eaten less, and driven herself harder than ever before. She avoided the others, stayed to herself, working from sunup to sundown. She was becoming gaunt, hollow-eyed and bone-weary, but it was better than feeling and remembering.
Kit hadn’t spoken to Reese since she had exchanged those few bitter words with him in the hallway of the Big House. Where he was concerned, she had developed a sixth sense that warned her when he was near, giving her the time to elude him.
Three times he had either come to the house or attempted to approach her in the yard when others were around. Each time she had walked away from him, aware that it angered him and that the others had begun speculating about her actions. Twice he had attempted to follow her when she rode out onto the range, but her familiarity with the land allowed her to lose him before he could catch up with her.
There was no chance that Mrs. Kent had kept silent about what she had seen. Kit could guess what the housekeeper had assumed. Although her grandfather had become rather blind to what went on around him since his wife died, Kit suspected that he knew or guessed something had gone on between her and Reese. But he didn’t question her although a couple of times she had caught him looking at her with a deep sadness in his eyes. It made her feel even cheaper and more wretched than before.
She approached the ranch yard through the concealing shelter of the cottonwoods along the Little Missouri River. The afternoon sun was casting long shadows from the buildings. Kit reined in her horse, a chestnut this time. She was giving the bay gelding a rest. Nobody was stirring in the yard.
Her timing seemed to be perfect and everyone was out. A glance at the Big House told her that even Reese’s car was gone. Yet Kit was still wary and rode up to the rear of her house so the building would shield her from the view of anyone watching from the Big House.
Dismounting, she dropped the reins and the chestnut willingly began cropping the grass about his feet. Kit dragged herself up the steps to the house, marveling at how much physical abuse the human body could withstand and continue functioning with a semblance of normality.
Entering the house and walking into the kitchen, Kit stopped at the sink. She turned on the cold-water faucet and reached for a glass. It was hot and her throat was dry, her body parched. As she filled the glass she heard the creak of the rocker in the living room.
“Nate?” she called. “I just stopped by to tell you not to bother to fix me any supper. I’m going out again and it’ll probably be late when I get back.”
“Isn’t it always?” a male voice answered dryly.
Kit froze, the water running over the top of the glass. She knew that low voice. It haunted her like a tormenting ghost. She had heard it in the whisper of the wind through the grasses or in the rippling rush of water. It came to her in the silence of sleep, warm and caressing and seductive.
Jerkily she set the glass down on the counter without easing her thirst and turned off the faucet. She didn’t risk a glance in Reese’s direction as she started for the door and escape. But he had already guessed what her reaction would be and was there to block her way.
“Not so fast, Kit,” he warned.
Kit could lift her gaze no higher than the buttons of his shirt stretched taut against his chest. But that sight was equally as unnerving as meeting his gaze. Her hands had explored that hard muscled flesh and the finely curling hairs below his throat. Physically he destroyed her. Kit’s senses remembered that rapturous devastation well.
“Get out of my way, Reese.” His given name came easily to her, but thankfully, she had trained her voice not to reveal her emotions.
“Not until we’ve talked.”
“I don’t have anything more to say to you, so please get out of my way,” Kit repeated the commanding request.
“I have more I want to say to you and you are going to listen. Let’s go into the living room, shall we?” Reese took a step toward her and Kit retreated instinctively. He stopped and she saw the hand at his side double into a fist. “My God, Kit,” he breathed angrily. “I’m not going to attack you.”
She flashed a wary look at his face and had to fight to keep from reeling from the aggressive sensuality etched in the male lines, darkened by anger. His hazel eyes blazed over her, taking in the gauntness of her slender shape and the smudges beneath her brown eyes. Her mask was firmly in place and he could see nothing of the trembling that was going on inside.
“I can’t be blamed for questioning your reason for wanting to see me,” she retorted.
“I came to talk. I’ll accomplish it peaceably, with your permission, or by force without it. But don’t make me touch you, Kit,” he warned.
There was an elemental crackling in the air between them. Kit knew there was cause for his warning. Even now, with this cold war between them, the physical attraction ran high — on both sides, she suspected. It would never end with a simple touch and that was what Reese was telling her.
“Shall we go into the living room?” He repeated his earlier request.
Kit pivoted in compliance. “Where’s Nate?” she demanded, knowing he wouldn’t be there when she entered the room. And he wasn’t.
“He’s gone to town on an errand.”
She couldn’t sit down. For this meeting she would need to be on her feet, mentally as well as physically. Reese didn’t avail himself of the chairs, either.
“An errand you arranged,” she accused.
“Yes. I noticed that you have been making a habit of slipping into the ranch in the middle of the afternoon when everyone else is gone or working elsewhere,” he admitted.
“So you found an excuse to get Nate out of here and waited for me to come,” Kit murmured.
“’did you really think you could continue to avoid me?” Reese jeered.
“Obviously it was wishful thinking on my part, wasn’t it?” She flashed him a bitter smile.
“Damn your coolness, Kit.” The muscles along his jaw flexed in his effort to retain control of his temper.
Her legs felt incredibly weak. So much for her hope to stand up to him. She badly needed the support of a chair. Kit walked to the nearest one, sinking into it with an assumed air of one wanting to get the whole discussion over with.
“What did you want to speak to me about?” Kit draped her arms along the length of the armrest and crossed her legs, hoping to appear indifferently interested in his answer.
It had the desired effect of hardening his gaze.
“As if you haven’t guessed,” he retorted sarcastically.
“Let me see, the last time we spoke we discussed your plans for Nate’s retirement. Is that why you’re here? To go over the details with me?” she challenged.
“You know damn well it isn’t.”
“The only other thing we talked about was your desire to buy this house and its property. Have you come to make an offer? I assure you, dear cousin, that we won’t sell at any price.”
“Cousin,” Reese repeated with a savagely amused curl to his upper lip. “Is that what you are going to try to use to keep me at arm’s length? Any blood relationship between us is down to a few corpuscles by now.”
He came to stand beside the chair. Kit had to force herself not to cringe from him. Sh
e stared at her fingers playing nervously with the protective doily on the opposite armrest from Reese’s side. She could feel his eyes studying her as surely as if he touched each feature of her face. In the end she could stand it no longer and pushed out of the chair to put a safer distance between. Hugging her arms about her, Kit turned to face him.
“There isn’t any relationship between us, Reese. And there isn’t going to be one,” she stated.
“Liar.” The confidence in his taunting reply shook Kit to the center of her very vulnerable core.
She turned away, hugging her arms even tighter around her. “Get to the point, Reese. Say whatever it is you came here to say and get out!”
“You’ve crawled back inside that shell of yours again, haven’t you?” he accused in a disgusted sigh. “You had a taste of what it’s like to really feel something and it frightened you.”
“No, it sickened me,” Kit murmured tightly.
“Would you look at me? I don’t like talking to your back,” Reese snapped.
Kit didn’t move. She preferred it this way. She could pretend she was listening to a disembodied voice. It helped her to block out his presence to the rest of her senses.
“I said, look at me!” Her elbow was seized and Kit was spun around to meet the sorely tested patience in his expression.
She jerked away, trembling violently in reaction. “Don’t touch me!” she cried, feeling the crack in her very thin and very brittle poise.
Swearing under his breath, Reese revealed his aquiline profile as he looked away to rake his fingers through the rumpled thickness of his hair. Kit felt her heart skip a beat.
“God,” he muttered, “this isn’t going at all the way I planned it.” He turned back to her, lifting his hands to hold the air on either side of her, obeying her request not to be touched while instilling the sensation. “When you told me that story about the baron being your father, I —”
“You don’t believe me. You think I was lying.” Kit stiffened. “I’m sorry I can’t offer you any proof, but —”
“I believe you,” Reese corrected firmly.
“Now you feel sorry for me and maybe just a little bit guilty,” she flashed.
“Yes, I felt sorry for you.”
“Thanks,” Kit lashed out at him with sarcasm, “but I don’t need your pity or sympathy or compassion!”
“I understand you a lot better now. I know why you are so hard and tough, why you’ve buried yourself inside that shell. It makes you feel safe and protected. It keeps people from getting too close to you. And if you never let people too close, they can’t hurt you.”
“Please, I don’t need you to psychoanalyze me,” she retorted, closing her eyes, afraid of the way he was stripping away her defenses and exposing how insecure she was. “If that’s all you came to say, just get out!”
“That isn’t all I came to say,” Reese answered. “It was quite a revelation the other day when I found the real Kit Bonner. I suspected there was a warm, loving core in you, but my expectations didn’t match the real thing. I don’t know for sure why you ran from the library as if you were being brutally assaulted. Whether —”
“You mean you weren’t going to seduce me?” Kit taunted, trying to combat the hot shame that flooded through her at the memory of that time.
“Damn it! Yes, I was going to make love to you!”
“Why? Because you found a love-starved little girl and thought you’d show her a bit of affection before you went on your way!” There were tears in her eyes as she shouted at him and the memory of her own abandoned behavior in his arms.
“I didn’t intend for any of that to happen!” Reese shouted back. “Do you think I want to get mixed up with a crazy little hellcat like you?”
“Good! Because I think I’ve made it pretty plain that I don’t want to get mixed up with you, either!” Kit was trembling. Everything inside her seemed to be caving in.
“That makes two of us, then, doesn’t it?” His harshly narrowed gaze caught the shimmer of tears in her eyes.
A groan seemed to come from somewhere deep inside his chest. In the next second, Kit found herself a prisoner in his crushing embrace.
“You’ve got your claws into me good, kitten,” Reese muttered against her hair, a throbbing note of desire in the sound. “I’ve told myself over and over again to forget about what happened. It was just a moment of passion that would have burned itself out anyway.”
A sob of pain came from her throat and Reese began raining rough kisses over her throat. There was such raw ecstasy in his embrace, sweet punishment in the suffocating pressure of his arms that denied her breath. She didn’t seem to need it. As if by osmosis she absorbed the vitality searing through him.
“When I see you walking around the ranch yard now in your men’s clothes, I remember the soft, unbelievably feminine shape they are hiding,” Reese murmured thickly, his hands exploring that very same shape with familiar intimacy. “At those times it’s the closest I’ve ever come to actually wanting to tear someone’s clothes off. You, my Kit, my kitten.”
He kissed her long and hard. Kit had neither the strength nor the will to resist. She submitted to his hunger, offering him the appetizer of her lips and knowing his desire was for the main course. She felt his trembling struggle for control as he tore his mouth away and forced her head against his chest. The erratic hammering of his heart sounded as loud as her own.
“I know I rushed you the last time, Kit.” His hands roughly stroked her hair. “You were such a fiery package of dynamite and you seemed to explode in my hands. I forgot about your innocence, that it was ail new and frightening to you, but I promise I won’t do it again. God!” His short, triumphant laugh held a ring of surprise. “I want to carry you out of here to my bedroom and keep you there for a week, a month.” Reese lifted her head, cradling her face in his hand. The sensually dark and dangerous look in his eyes stole the breath from her lungs. “I need you, Kit. And you need me.”
But not forever. He wouldn’t need her forever. And Kit knew she would. She recoiled from the knowledge and from Reese’s arms, turning her back on him and on the truth.
“I don’t need you,” Kit choked. “I don’t need anybody.”
“Everybody needs somebody in varying degrees.” His hands slid around her waist, crossing in front to cup her breasts and draw her back to his masculine length.
“Don’t worry, kitten.” Reese nuzzled her neck. “I’m not like your father. I won’t throw you to the wolves when I’m through.”
A bitter sighing laugh slipped from her lips. “What will you do with me when you’re through?”
The screen door slammed. It took both of them a second before either of them realized the significance of the sound. Reese was just lifting his head, his hands tightening on her waist to put Kit away from him when her grandfather appeared in the doorway from the kitchen to the living room. One look told the whole story. Kit wanted to die at the intense look of pain that flashed across his worn features. She swayed alarmingly and Reese’s hands stayed on her waist for support.
“I was afraid something like this would happen,” Nate said tiredly, staring at Reese. “When I saw you the first time I was afraid for my Kitty, especially when she reacted so violently to you. She usually doesn’t react one way or another to strangers. I tried to pretend it was because of who you were and not because you were a very virile man. Are you in love with my granddaughter?”
There was a fractional increase of the pressure of his hands on her waist, a stiffening, a hesitation. A black, yawning mist of pain began to swim in front of Kit’s eyes.
“Nothing has happened, Mr. Bonner.” By avoiding the question, Reese had given her his answer.
Prior to Reese’s remark, her grandfather had looked beaten, used up, old way beyond his years. Then a vigorous fire seemed to take possession of him.
“Nothing is going to happen, either!” he barked. “You sent me on a fool’s errand so you could be alone with my
granddaughter. Now I’ll thank you to take your hands off of her and get out of my house, or by God I’ll kill you like I should have done the other time!”
It was only Reese’s hands that kept her from falling into the black abyss before her eyes. When they were removed Kit felt herself slipping over the edge and gave a frightened cry, calling out as she became swallowed up.
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Chapter Eight
IT WAS TERRIBLE. She seemed to be tumbling in slow motion into the black, bottomless pit. Kit struggled to stop the fall, crying out for Reese to save her, Reese who had let her go. For a second she felt his hand catch hers, then it was gone. And the terror started afresh. It seemed to go on endlessly.
Other hands reached out to her, but they hadn’t the strength to help. Kit kept falling, falling. She had glimpses of Reese, but he was always out of reach, those strong, tanned hands beyond the grasp of her fingers. She could hear herself crying brokenly like a child. She never cried.
When Kit thought she would be forever lost in the swirling black void, the familiar pressure of his hand gripped hers, holding on and not letting her fall any farther. After that there was just a pleasant floating sensation that slowly and very gradually brought her to the surface.
Kit blinked her eyes and stirred. Gorgeously beautiful sunlight was streaming through the window, so glorious, so brilliant, so very different from the blackness she thought she’d never escape. A slight breeze blew away the last cobwebs. Suddenly it all seemed so crazy. Had it been a nightmare?
“Have you finally decided to come back to us?”
Kit turned her head, discovering it was resting on a pillow and she was lying in bed — her bed. Reese was sitting in a chair beside it. At the moment it seemed very natural for him to be there. When she looked at him he slipped his hand from the loosened grasp of her fingers and sat up straighter in her chair.
“What happened?” Her voice sounded funny, a little thick. “How did I get here?”
