Feeling desolate, Rachel looked down at the bracelet shining on her wrist. He told me he loved me, she reminded herself, in firm desperation. And Joanna said his promises could be accepted as truth.
Rachel’s throat closed over a sob as she tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and remembered the sweet intensity of his lovemaking, the glorious demands his body had made of hers.
She was now completely confused.
• • •
Athena drank her tea slowly, watching her mother’s face over the rim of her cup. She had recounted the horrible death pangs of her marriage, embellished the details she particularly hoped would incline Joanna toward sympathy, and shed a number of wistful tears.
“You should have written,” Joanna scolded, even though there was a flash of the old, selfless love in her blue eyes.
Athena executed a rather tragic sigh. “I didn’t see any point in alarming you, Mama. You were so far away—you and Papa would have worried.”
Joanna shook her head. “If there is one ability you have never lacked, Athena, it is that of looking after yourself.”
Stung, Athena thrust aside her cup and saucer and tried to block the angry words that were rising, like steam, within her. She was only partially successful. “Who is that young woman, Mother? Why is she staying here?”
Joanna’s voice was annoyingly fond. “Rachel is Griffin’s friend. And I think he has very serious intentions toward her.”
The news came as a brutal shock to Athena; while she had felt an immediate dislike for Rachel, she had never dreamed that the naive thing could be any kind of threat. “That isn’t possible,” she protested, in a harsh whisper, her cheeks warm with sudden color.
But Joanna was nodding. “Yes, Athena, it is possible. He’s coming back for her on Thursday or Friday, in fact—in spite of Jonas Wilkes, Griffin plans to take Rachel to Providence with him.”
Athena felt doubly wounded. “Why would that concern Jonas?” she dared, after a long, groping silence.
Joanna sat back in her chair and folded her arms. The brown silk of her blouse gleamed in the afternoon sunshine streaming in through the dining-room windows. “Griffin tells me that Jonas fancies himself in love with Rachel—as if Jonas Wilkes could possibly love anyone.”
Athena’s throat worked spasmodically for a moment, before she managed to bring herself under rigid control. “That’s it, then—you know Griffin opposes anything Jonas wants. They’re like oil and fire, those two. If Griffin has declared some affection for this Rachel person, it is only because he loves to nettle Jonas!”
Joanna’s spoon clattered as she stirred lemon into her second cup of tea. “Nonsense. Griffin’s feelings were clear to anyone who took the trouble to look. Both your father and I knew immediately that he adored Rachel.”
“No,” said Athena, shaking her head once in feverish denial.
But Joanna surveyed her without pity. “Don’t tell me you’ve come all the way home from Paris just to chase after Griffin Fletcher; if you have, you’re letting yourself in for a nasty shock. I do believe he hates you.”
Athena grappled for the bright hopes she had nursed all these weeks just past, but they were suddenly elusive. “I want Griffin, Mother,” she said, as a headache began at the nape of her neck and climbed, pounding, to her temples. “And I will have him.”
Joanna raised her teacup in a toasting gesture that bordered on mockery. “So the sheep woos the raging panther. Or is it the other way around, Athena?”
Athena leaned forward, her lower lip trembling, her hands clenched together in her lap. “You hate me, don’t you, Mother? You hate me because I disgraced your precious good name!”
Without warning, Joanna’s hand lashed out, made sharp contact with Athena’s face. The cold silence that followed found Athena reeling, inwardly, in shock. Never, even during the worst of times, had her mother struck her.
She was just recovering when Joanna went ruthlessly on. “You disgraced yourself, Athena—not your father and I, not Griffin. Yourself. Furthermore, you know that I do not hate you—you are my only living child and, God help me, I love you very much. All the same, it would behoove you to remember that I, unlike some people, see through your theatrics and your simpering witchery, Athena.”
“Mother!”
But Joanna’s face was hard, implacable. “Tread lightly, Athena. Sooner or later, we are always compensated for the things we’ve done, and in kind. Your compensation might be evil indeed, my dear, because Griffin Fletcher had done nothing to deserve your cruelty. Nothing but swim against the tide of your formidable will.”
“Y-You almost sound as though you hope I’ll be destroyed,” Athena whispered, aghast.
“On the contrary, I hope you will be spared. But I don’t think that’s very likely. I must admit, you have met your match in Miss Rachel McKinnon, my dear.”
Athena was considering this almost inconceivable possibility when Rachel herself appeared, looking small and frightened and hopelessly untutored in the ways of the world. Her bright purple eyes were fixed on Joanna’s face.
“I-I think perhaps I should go back to Miss Cunningham’s—”
Before her mother could speak, Athena floated to her feet, all gracious solicitude, and smiled winningly. “Of course you won’t leave, Rachel! Tomorrow is my birthday, and there’s bound to be a party. You wouldn’t want to miss that would you?”
The wretch’s confusion was balm to Athena’s chafed spirit. Oh, Griffin, you magnificent idiot, she thought. What you feel for this orchid-eyed woman-child is pity, not love.
Joanna spoke suddenly, her tone sharp. “There will be no party, Athena.”
But there would; Athena knew it for a certainty. Never, in all her life, had she ever been denied a single desire—and the party would be no exception.
Calmly, Athena turned and swept out of the room to prepare. Once people had been invited, there would be nothing her mother could do except be gracious.
Chapter Twenty-four
It was very dark outside.
Jonas looked up from the accounts spread over the surface of his desk and frowned. The lace curtains billowed at the window, and for one insane second, he thought he heard his name on the nightwind.
He stood up, strode to the window, and lowered the sill with a resounding crash. He had to stop being so superstitious, he told himself. He’d done nothing that he hadn’t had to do.
But when the door of his office opened abruptly behind him, Jonas tensed.
McKay was standing there, looking as stupid as ever, and much too pleased with himself. “You got a telegraph letter here—that lawman-storekeeper just gave it to me.”
Jonas was alarmed, and suddenly glad of any company—even McKay’s. He held out his hand for the message, unfolded it, and read, JUNE 5 MY BIRTHDAY. COME CELEBRATE. ATHENA.
Certain that there must be some mistake, Jonas scanned the hand-copied telegram again. There was no mistake; Athena was in Seattle and, from the looks of things, up to her usual no good.
Jonas groped for his desk chair and fell back into it, stunned. He wouldn’t have believed she had the audacity to come back, not after all that had happened.
But what an opportune time she had chosen! Jonas sat back in his chair, kicked his feet up onto the desk, and laughed, low in his throat. “Bring some brandy, McKay—and some extra glasses. Unless I miss my guess, we’ll have company within five minutes.”
McKay brought the requested items grudgingly, probably resenting the task. Jonas dismissed him with a curt nod, cupped his hands behind his head, and waited.
He’d been wrong about the time element, but that was all. Half an hour had passed when he heard the front doors open in the distance, and then, from the stairs, the outraged approach of not one set of boots, but two.
Jonas smiled. So Field Hollister had been invited, too. Well, that was like Athena—the more the merrier.
Griffin entered the office with as much decorum as he’d bothered with downstairs
, sending the heavy door crashing against the inside wall. In his right hand was the telegram, and in his face was murder.
“What the hell is going on?” he shouted.
Field flushed with embarassment and laid a restraining hand on Griffin’s shoulder. “Will you just calm down?” he hissed.
Griffin shrugged the hand away, never once averting his ominous gaze from Jonas’s face. “If this is one of your tricks, Wilkes, I swear—”
Jonas smiled, brought his hands from behind his head, and folded them calmly in his lap. “I’m as surprised as you are,” he said. And then he pulled his own message, which he suspected was a duplicate of the others, from his shirt pocket and tossed it onto the desk.
Griffin picked it up, consumed it in a glance, and flung it down again. He swore hoarsely, and turned his back.
“You’re going, of course?” asked Jonas affably. “It will be The Event of the year, I think.”
“I don’t believe this,” Griffin raged, in an undertone that was somehow far more threatening than a shout would have been. “I don’t believe it!”
Jonas braced his thumbs beneath his chin, fingers touching at the tips and splayed. It was all he could do not to laugh aloud. “How about you, Field? Will you forsake your devoted flock for a night of intrigue?”
Field’s reply was a scorching glare that just missed smelling of sulphur.
Allowing himself a cautious smirk, Jonas went on, addressing his words to Griffin’s taut back. “Rachel will understand about Athena,” he said reasonably. “Or have you already broken our bargain and declared your undying love?”
Griffin swung slowly around, and his eyes were glittering with an emotion Jonas wouldn’t have dared to recognize. “What I have or have not said to Rachel is none of your concern,” he said, in that same vicious monotone he’d used before. “But if you’ve had any part in this, I promise you, I’ll tear you apart!”
“A distinctly unpleasant prospect,” replied Jonas dispassionately. “This time, I’m innocent.”
Now, it was Field who turned away in an obvious effort to control himself.
Griffin’s eyes fell on the brandy waiting on the corner of Jonas’s desk. Briskly, he opened the bottle and poured double shots into two glasses, one of which he shoved at Field.
To Jonas’s enormous amusement, the pastor drank with unusual thirst.
But Griffin was perched on the side of the desk, swirling his own drink, untouched, in his glass. “What’s keeping you, Jonas? Why aren’t you on the way to Seattle to reclaim your woman?”
Jonas didn’t dare smile, though he wanted to. He wanted to so much that he ached inside. “I promised not to, remember?”
Griffin scowled. “I’m talking about Athena, and you know it.”
“I don’t want Athena, I want Rachel.”
A visible tremor moved in Griffin’s wide shoulders, made the brandy rise in small, amber billows in his glass. “You don’t want Athena. Now it seems to me that you once wanted her very much.”
Jonas shrugged. “So did you.”
Griffin downed his drink in one swallow, and a muscle tightened in his neck, creating an ominous, pulsing cord. When he looked at Jonas, there was a frightening smile twisting his features. “I’ve made love to Rachel,” he said flatly.
The words struck Jonas in just the way Griffin had probably intended them to. He felt a knotting sickness in his stomach, an ache in his jaw. “Liar!” he spat.
“Griffin, in the name of heaven—” Field pleaded, his own anger forgotten.
But there was no stopping him. “She was a virgin, Jonas.”
It wasn’t true that Rachel had surrendered to this man; Jonas couldn’t bear for it to be true. He fought to control his voice, his muscles, his emotions. “You’re lying, you bastard. You’re lying because you came back from your fancy San Francisco convention and you found your precious Athena cavorting in my bed!”
Griffin closed his eyes against the memory, but Jonas could see that it had followed him into the darkness. “Shut up,” he rasped.
Field broke in deftly, his voice calm. “Stop it, both of you. There is nothing to be gained by this.”
Hatred pulsed in the room, like an unseen entity, seeming to pound at the walls and ceiling.
It was Field, the eternal peacemaker, who plunged into the breach. “There is a simple way to defuse this situation, you know,” he offered quietly. “Both of you ignore Athena—pretend she isn’t back, pretend she doesn’t exist, for that matter. Stay away from the party.”
Griffin shook his head. “I’ll be damned if I’ll stay away and let that she-wolf tear Rachel apart.”
Field was clearly exasperated. “Griffin, you are assuming a great deal. It’s possible that Athena returned to Seattle for reasons that have nothing to do with you—and, thus, nothing to do with Rachel.”
Jonas relaxed, with considerable difficulty. “You’re wasting your breath, Field. It is inconceivable to our arrogant friend here that anything other than deathless passion would bring her home again.”
Griffin frowned at the glass in his hand, set it down with a crash. A moment later, he was striding through the office doorway. “I’ll see you at the party, Jonas,” he called, over his shoulder.
• • •
Outside, in the muggy night air, Griffin raised his face to the star-strewn sky and wished incongruously and fiercely that it would rain.
Field stormed to the hitching rail, untying his horse’s reins with quick, furious motions. “That was wonderful, Griffin,” he snarled. “‘I’ve made love to Rachel. She was a virgin, Jonas.’”
Griffin stiffened at the angry mimicry in his friend’s voice. “All right. I shouldn’t have said it!”
Field swung up into the saddle, his horse dancing fretfully beneath him, as though it shared its master’s outrage. “How do you think Rachel is going to feel, Griffin, when she hears that from Jonas? And rest assured, she will!”
Griffin ached. There was no excuse for what he’d done, and he knew it. In return for a moment of delicious revenge, he had betrayed a woman as necessary to him as the breath in his lungs. “You know I wouldn’t hurt her, Field.”
Jaw tight in the moonlight, Field waited while Griffin untied Tempest and climbed gingerly into the saddle. “Be careful, Griffin. You know how you felt about Athena. If you risk facing her again, and you find out that things haven’t really changed—”
Griffin spat. “I despise her.”
“Do you?” retorted Field. “Well, keep in mind, my friend, that love and hate are sometimes almost impossible to untangle from each other. If you can’t offer Rachel honest, undiluted devotion, then let her go.”
They rode in silence for a minute or so, both listening to the steady cadence of their horse’s hooves striking the cobblestones of Jonas’s driveway.
But as they passed beneath the frame of the gate, and onto the road, Griffin’s irritation got the best of him. “You’re a hypocrite, Field,” he observed. “ ‘Honest, undiluted devotion’ is it? Is that what you’re giving the woman you love?”
To his credit, Field didn’t curse. “I love her more than my own life, Griffin, and you know it.”
“Then why don’t you tell the world? Why don’t you marry her?”
Field sighed, and it was a broken sound, a sound that made Griffin regret raising the subject at all. “She refuses to marry me. There doesn’t seem to be much point in ‘telling the world.’ She would be ruined, and so would I.”
With the heels of his boots, Griffin prodded his horse to a dead run. “You’re insane!” he yelled, into the wind.
Field’s half-wild pony caught up to Tempest easily. “Coming from you, that is praise indeed!” he shouted back.
Griffin laughed out loud. “So it is,” he retorted, reining in his horse again, slowing it to a canter.
Field followed suit. “You’re really going to that party, aren’t you?” he asked, his eyes searching Griffin’s face in the moonlight. “You’r
e going to stumble right into Athena’s trap, whatever it is.”
“Don’t worry, Field,” Griffin returned blithely. “I’ll come out with the bait.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“I was talking about Rachel.”
Field nodded. “I know. And I’m talking about Athena. Don’t underestimate her, Griffin. She brought you to your knees once before, and she could do it again.”
Griffin scanned the magnificent sky in exasperation and then, deftly, changed the subject. “How about a drink?” he said. “I’ll bet it would liven things up over at Becky’s Place if you walked in.”
Field laughed. “I’ve got better things to do, thanks.”
“Who knows, Field? You might save a few souls, or something.”
Hollister shook his head, laughed again, and prodded his horse into an answering run. Griffin turned onto his own property, thinking that maybe Field could see to the saving of Athena’s soul. Provided she had one.
• • •
Fawn Nighthorse lay still in the forbidden bed, waiting. Moonlight shafted in through a window, eerie and beautiful, bathing her bare skin in silver.
She sighed, then caught her breath as she heard a door open and close again. His name escaped her in a hoarse, broken whisper.
“No,” he said, from the bedroom doorway, but his voice was trembling, uneven.
Patiently, Fawn patted the bed, and after an obvious, interminable struggle, he came to her, stretching out, fully clothed, on the counterpane. He groaned as she unbuttoned his shirt, slid her hands gently over the strong, warm width of his chest.
Raising herself to her hands and knees, Fawn let the nipple of one breast trail slowly across his mouth. When she felt the responding flick of his tongue, she cried out softly, pressing her breast to his lips in a gesture of pleading.
But he slid from beneath her and sat up in the darkness, watching her. On her knees beside him, Fawn waited.
He was still for an eternity, it seemed, but then he traced the outline of one of her breasts with an index finger. Still kneeling, Fawn leaned back until her shoulders touched the rough, cool wall.
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