It also made Linc painfully aware of the precise area where he was most different from Holly. It was the one difference she seemed to be avoiding.
It was also the only difference that really mattered to him at the moment.
Holly shifted again. Putting a knee on either side of Linc’s legs, she removed the clip that held her hair in place.
“Do you like the feel of my hair on your bare skin?” she asked, guessing the answer but needing to hear it anyway.
“You know I do.”
“You never told me, not in words.”
There are so many things we haven’t said in words, Holly thought uneasily.
Shaking her head, she bent over and let the silky black mass of her hair tumble across his legs.
Linc drew in a swift, hissing breath.
“Now I really know how much you like it,” she said, shivering in response. “I like knowing, Linc.”
The towel barely covered half of his long, muscular thighs. She turned her head and bit him just above one knee. She liked the feel of his strength beneath her teeth, against her tongue.
He made a throttled sound.
“Another place where we’re alike and yet different,” Holly said. “Your thighs are so hard when you tense them, so powerful even when you’re relaxed.”
“I’m not relaxed now,” Linc said through his teeth.
She looked at the towel tented over his blunt arousal and smiled slowly.
“I like that, too,” she whispered.
Her hands moved upward, following the clean line of his legs beneath the towel. She separated the folds of cloth until he wore only the black fall of her hair across him.
Then she straightened slowly, letting her hair move over his changed flesh in a long, silky caress.
“God . . .” Linc said, his voice gritty.
“Different,” Holly murmured.
She traced the outline of his arousal with a fingertip.
He shuddered heavily.
“Why are all the words to describe our differences either clinical or crude?” she asked softly. “Why aren’t there any words to equal your beauty?”
His only answer was a groan that was also her name.
“You’re beautiful to me,” Holly said. “As beautiful as I am to you. But there are no words . . .”
Her hands moved up the hard curve of Linc’s thighs until she surrounded him. Slowly, she bent down.
“Listen,” she whispered.
With gentle care, she tasted all of his masculine textures as he had often tasted her own femininity.
Linc’s breath came in with a harsh sound, caught in his throat, and stayed knotted there.
Holly sensed the elemental hunger that exploded through him. She felt it in the heat of his flesh, the violence of his pulse, and the shudders of raw need that tore through his strength.
Then she heard her name in the long rush of his breath.
“Am I hurting you?” she asked.
His answer was a groan and a movement of his hips that silently pleaded for more, not less, of her loving.
“Yes,” she whispered. “I’d like that, too.”
The differences that made Linc male fascinated and compelled Holly. She couldn’t explore them enough. The soft heat of her mouth surrounded him with sultry, intimate caresses.
His body corded. He cried out wordlessly, telling her of the intense pleasure she was giving him.
An answering storm of desire broke over Holly, nearly overwhelming her. She moved up Linc’s body like a cloud over a mountain, covering him with moist warmth.
With exquisite slowness, she began to join herself to him. Together they shared the fierce lightning that lanced through him when he was first kissed by flesh even hotter and more sultry than her mouth.
For a timeless moment Holly held both of them in that first instant of contact, unmoving, suspended in the still center of a passionate storm. Then she blended her body totally with Linc’s, matching the urgent rhythms of his need with her own, letting the storm break over both of them until neither knew who was cloud and who was mountain, for both were fused by lightning into an ecstatic whole.
When the last, distant tremor of the sensual storm finally faded between them, Holly stirred against Linc’s chest.
“I love you,” she said softly.
She sought his luminous eyes beneath the dense shadows of his lashes.
“Do you finally believe that now?” she asked. “I love you.”
His eyes shut. His fingers closed around her chin so tightly that she cried out in surprise and protest.
“Linc—”
“Don’t talk about love.”
His voice was low, deadly.
Fear engulfed Holly. Her fear was all the more terrible because she had allowed herself to believe that Linc had accepted her love in the passionate certainty of their storm.
She tried to speak, couldn’t, and tried again. Finally she forced words through a throat that was tight with fear.
“That’s like telling me not to breathe,” she said.
Tears rained silently down her cheeks onto his hand.
“Loving you is the most—” She gasped and stopped speaking as Linc jerked his hand away.
Holly watched him lift his fingers to his lips, tasting her tears as though not able to believe in them, either.
“Why won’t you believe me?” she asked despairingly. “If I were just plain Holly, would you let me talk about love?”
Linc’s face changed. For the first time he showed the grief and regret that were like knives turning in his soul.
It was no less painful for her.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” she asked in a raw whisper. “I’m not Holly to you anymore. You never call me niná.”
His eyelids flinched but he said not one word.
“What am I, Linc?” she continued relentlessly. “What horrible thing have I done that you won’t even let me say the word love?”
Linc closed his eyes, shutting her out.
“There’s no point in talking about it,” he said. “You can’t change what you are.”
“And what is that?”
“A beautiful, selfish woman.”
“Selfish? Because I won’t shrug off my responsibilities and break my contract with Roger?”
“Yes.”
Linc’s tone was like his certainty, unshakable.
“No,” Holly countered, her voice flattened by despair. “Quitting wouldn’t change anything.”
“The hell it—” he began.
“I’d still be beautiful,” she said over his words. “And deep inside, you’d still distrust and hate me for that, wouldn’t you?”
Beyond the window lightning arched invisibly and thunder muttered among clouds. The drapes swelled into the room, twisting sinuously in the wind.
Holly shivered, but it wasn’t the tropical storm that chilled her.
Slowly Linc opened his eyes.
“I . . . don’t hate you,” he said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Holly,” he whispered.
“Just as you don’t believe I love you.” She laughed oddly. “In time, we may both be right.”
“Quit your job.”
“No.”
“Does turning on every man in sight matter that much to you?” Linc asked roughly. “Isn’t what we just had enough to satisfy you?”
“I don’t give a damn about turning on any man but you.”
Holly’s voice was so soft, so absolutely certain, that even Linc had to admit she believed her words.
“Then quit modeling,” he said.
“And prove how selfish I am.”
Again her voice was soft, certain.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he demanded.
“Selfish people make others pay for their pleasures, right?”
Linc nodded curtly.
“Being with you is the greatest pleasure I’ve ever known,” Holly said. “Replacing me w
ould cost Roger a year of advertising time and millions of dollars. Why should he be the one to pay for my pleasures?”
Linc’s face went cold.
“That’s a lovely way of twisting words to suit your purposes,” he said. “But I shouldn’t complain if Roger gets the benefit of your talents. He’s certainly given you—and me—the benefit of his.”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
Linc smiled.
The bitter curve of his lips chilled her.
Suddenly she was certain that she didn’t want to understand Linc’s meaning. But it was too late.
He was already talking, breaking apart her world.
“It’s quite simple,” he said. “In the five days I wasn’t with you, Roger taught you more about making love than most women learn in a lifetime.”
Holly went white.
“Not that I’m complaining,” Linc said with a shrug. “You’ve stayed in my bed while I’m here. What more can I ask of a beautiful woman?”
Holly retreated from Linc until his hands caught her, held her with careless strength.
“Don’t do this to me,” she whispered, feeling herself breaking. “Let me go.”
One of his eyebrows lifted in cool inquiry.
“Why?” he asked. “Is Roger finally getting impatient?”
“I’ve never been Roger’s lover.”
Holly’s voice was thin, patient, as distant as an echo.
Linc can break my world, she told herself wildly, but not me.
Not me!
I won’t break, not even for him.
“I said I wasn’t complaining,” he repeated.
“Damn you,” she whispered savagely. “If I’ve pleased you in bed, congratulate yourself. You’re one hell of a teacher.”
She watched disbelief cross Linc’s face and felt the same knives of regret and rage turning in her that she had sensed earlier in him.
“I came to you a virgin,” she said, “something you didn’t believe until too late. I can hardly come to you each time a virgin, and you won’t believe in my love.”
Her laugh sounded like a sob.
“You told me to trust you, Linc. And I did. Twice. You have yet to trust me, really trust me, once.”
“Holly,” he began.
No words followed, nothing but an agonizing silence.
“Tell me that you trust me,” she coaxed. “Tell me that you love me. Just a little, Linc. Just a beginning.”
Breath held, aching, she watched his eyes, his lips, the shadows of emotion tightening his face into harsh planes.
She heard all her worst fears confirmed in his silence. When she spoke, her voice was terribly controlled, almost gentle.
“Never mind, Linc. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
His hands tightened on her arms. He sensed her despair and anger as clearly as he felt the emotional storm seething just beneath his own control.
“Holly, don’t do this,” he said, echoing her earlier plea.
“Do what? Tell the truth?”
“What truth is that? Love?” he asked, his voice like a whip.
“This truth,” Holly said. “Somewhere deep in your mind you’re certain that loving a beautiful woman means destroying yourself. Given that, I can’t blame you for not loving me. You’re strong. You want to survive.”
Again Linc’s eyelids flinched, an involuntary reaction to his pain.
And to hers.
“But I do blame you,” Holly said distinctly, “for taking revenge on me for something I never did, never would do, never could do to you.”
She paused, listening to the thunder outside as though it was another voice.
Then she looked at Linc. A last flicker of hope moved in her eyes when she saw his turmoil.
“It isn’t revenge,” he said finally.
“You don’t trust me, so you can’t love me. It might as well be revenge.”
“I don’t blame you for what my mother and stepmother did.”
“No, you simply think that I’m like them because I’m beautiful. I thought that I could change your feelings.”
Linc looked away, unable to bear seeing his pain reflected in Holly’s golden eyes.
She laughed sadly.
“I was very young, wasn’t I?” she whispered. “I didn’t realize that I might learn to hate before you learned to love. But I won’t stay around that long, because hating you would destroy me. There would be nothing left.”
Thunder curled through the room, sound without meaning.
Holly listened. Then she looked at Linc with eyes that no longer asked to be loved.
“I thought I could teach you about love,” she said. “But you were the teacher. You taught me about hate.”
“No,” he said, his voice rough with pain.
His hands rubbed over her chilled flesh, trying to bring back warmth. She neither moved closer to him nor pulled away.
It was as though he didn’t exist anymore.
“I don’t hate you,” Linc said. “I never meant to hurt you.”
Holly moved to get off the bed.
“No,” he said. “Let me hold you.”
Like a shadow, she slid beyond his reach even though he was still holding her.
“You can’t comfort me any more than I can erase the past for you,” she said simply.
Holly looked at Linc for a long moment. Although tears burned somewhere deep inside her, she knew she wouldn’t cry.
Tears were born of hope. She had none left.
Slowly his hands opened, releasing her.
Turning her back on him, she walked to the window and watched the clouds seethe with thunder and the rain that never came.
“Just chalk it up to a case of mistaken identity,” Holly said. “You thought I was your sweet niná, and I thought you were the Linc I had always loved. We were both wrong.”
She closed her eyes and waited.
Only silence answered her.
“Goodbye, Linc.”
She didn’t turn around again until she heard the door close behind the man she loved.
Twenty-five
Holly drove the Jeep with the leashed savagery that had become part of every movement she made during the last hundred days. Behind her a caravan of four-wheel-drive vehicles churned clouds of grit out of the dry, rutted road leading to Hidden Springs.
The time of summer thunder was over. It was as though the desert rains had been only a dream. The fragrant bloom of chaparral and flowers had come and gone as quickly as a blush. All that remained was the smell of heat and dust and drought.
The land was empty again, waiting in September’s burning silence for the more enduring renewal of winter rains.
Holly looked up to the mountains just once. Then she didn’t look again.
Barren, desolate, compelling in their power, immovable, unchanging, the mountains spoke far too eloquently of the man she had loved and lost.
She would not answer.
She would not even call his name in the silence of her own mind.
Behind Holly’s fast-moving Jeep, the Royce caravan dropped back farther with each minute. She didn’t notice that she was outrunning the rest of the crew.
If she had noticed, she wouldn’t have slowed down one bit.
She had argued violently with Roger about returning to Hidden Springs at all. As far as she was concerned, there was no need to be within a thousand miles of the place.
The Royce Is Romance campaign was already wrapped up. The Desert Designs campaign didn’t require a Hidden Springs location.
Any dry place would do.
Why not Egypt—history and pyramids and enigmas baking under the sun? she had asked Roger repeatedly.
He had insisted on the untouched, primitive splendor of Hidden Springs.
Holly had fought against it up to the point of breaking her contract. That she wouldn’t do. Her work was all she had left.
And Roger had known it.
He had won. The Royce Reflection was
on her way to the last place on earth she wanted to be.
But that was all that he had won from her. When he had realized that Linc was no longer part of her life, Roger had offered to fill the emptiness he saw.
Holly had refused with a polite, cool finality that was totally unlike her earlier unease at his proposals.
I’m flattered, but no.
Why? Roger had asked. You know I wouldn’t hurt you. I don’t have any bad habits and I’m certified free of anything more contagious than passion.
No.
Shannon, we would be good together.
Listen to me, Roger. If the subject ever comes up again, I’ll break my contract, leave Royce Designs, and never look back.
Shannon—
I’ve walked away from more in order to survive. Believe me.
He had.
The subject of an affair between Roger and the Royce Reflection had never come up again.
Nor was he the kind who held grudges. After a week of uncomfortable silence, he had resumed treating her with the easy, witty camaraderie they had enjoyed before.
The sands of Antelope Wash spun off the Jeep’s tires in dry fountains that were as harsh as Holly’s mood. Grit showered over the windshield, coating everything.
She ignored the sand and dust. She didn’t slow the Jeep’s hard-driving wheels by even a bit. She pushed the vehicle out to the edge of its performance and held it there with the same ruthless concentration she had used on everything in the last hundred days.
When she was in the grip of work or driving hard or pushing herself in some other way, she had at least momentary release from memories. It was as close to peace as she came.
But memories were always just beneath her Shannon mask, haunting Holly.
Linc had called her a week after Cabo San Lucas.
Holly, it doesn’t have to be like this.
Do you have anything new to say to me, Linc?
And as she had asked, hope was a terrible ache in her.
I want you, Holly. I can’t sleep for the hunger.
Want. Hunger. Those aren’t new, Linc.
In silence, both of them had heard the words she would never ask again.
Do you love me?
In silence, both of them had heard Linc’s answer.
Desert Rain with Bonus Material Page 23
