by Laurie Paige
“That will have to hold me until later,” he said, and left the room before he made a bigger fool of himself.
He wasn’t sure what he was going to do about his marriage or his bride, but lingering in a bedroom wasn’t the best place for clearheaded thinking about it.
Isa changed her silk blouse for a warm sweater before going down to dinner. The temperature had dropped as the clouds moved in and hovered over the Tahoe basin.
“Snow before morning,” Zeke predicted as they lin- gered over brandy and coffee in the study. “Will the plane be able to get out of the airport?”
“Probably not. The passes will be closed, too. We might have to stay an extra day.” Harrison glanced at Isa.
She curled deeper into the recliner, thinking of being snowed in with him. Except her musings didn’t run to two other people being present. If only…
No, she couldn’t afford to think like that. She had to live in the real world. And that included the night ahead of them.
A lump of apprehension formed in her throat. She sipped the brandy, letting its warmth dissolve her fears. She took another drink, then another. Ken refilled her glass.
“Thank you.” She smiled, at him, her one possible friend in this house. She raised the glass to her lips, saw her husband scowling at her from across the room, and lifted the snifter in a mock toast. His eyes never left hers as he toasted her and drank at the same time she did.
Shivers ran over her. She was cold inside. Outside, too. Her hands felt like two blocks of ice. She wished the night was over and done with.
The grandfather clock bonged eleven times.
Harrison came to her and expertly removed the glass from her numb fingers. “Run along to bed, darling. I’ll be up in a minute.”
He pulled her to her feet and sent her on her way with a pat on her behind. She gave him a fierce glance to let him know she wouldn’t be patronized, then smiled graciously at Zeke and Ken.
“Good night,” she said gaily. “Don’t keep him up too long.” She gave Harrison a you-naughty-boy smile.
Zeke chuckled. “Watch out for that little filly, boy,” he advised. “I don’t think she takes easily to a man’s hand.”
Harrison’s smile was like his drawl—sort of lazy, amused, in control. “She’ll learn to take mine.”
Isa drew herself up with great dignity. “I’m not a horse to be reined to any man’s bidding.”
Zeke cackled with merriment. “Just like my Abby, as independent as a fox, but she tamed down gentle enough once we married.” His laughter faded to a smile that brought a pang to Isa’s heart.
With Harrison’s hand on her elbow, she strolled to the stairs. He made sure she had hold of the banister before he let her go. Head high, she marched up to them, aware of her husband’s gaze burning over her as she ascended.
Crossing the sky bridge, she realized she needed the support of the banister. She was definitely woozy.
She giggled. Tipsy on her wedding night…and scared of her husband. That thought sobered her. She wasn’t scared of any man. And she wouldn’t be told what to do.
Chin set in determination, she washed up and changed into her long-sleeved, fleecy nightgown. When she turned down the bed and climbed in, she had an- other rush of apprehension. She quelled it fiercely.
Men were an unreliable lot at best, but neither her father nor her fiancé had frightened her. Neither would her husband.
When she stretched out on the bed, her heart beat very fast, and her mind rushed crystal clear over trou- bled thoughts.
Harrison entered the dark bedroom more than an hour after his bride had retired. He’d deliberately stayed with the men downstairs. He flipped on the lamp on his side of the bed, not sure what to expect. He wasn’t even sure his wife would be here.
She was.
Looking like an angel, she slept deeply, her face beautiful in repose. That artfully controlled expression was gone. In its place was the person she hid from the world.
Her slumber was restless. Under the faint, bluish tinge on her eyelids, her eyes moved in REM sleep. A frown furrowed her brow.
It came to him that she rarely frowned…and neither did she smile or laugh uninhibitedly. Control. She was always under the watchful eye of self-control.
But then, con artists had to be careful not to give themselves away before they played their hand, he re- minded himself as the anger surged anew at her angelic appearance.
“You’d make a hell of a poker player, lady,” he muttered.
Her eyes opened.
“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”
He noted she awoke instantly, her mind alert and knowing where she was with no confusion. Alarm flashed in her eyes and was instantly gone, replaced by that bland, watchful expression that gave nothing away. He wondered what she’d felt when they’d nearly made love.
“Did you fake it?” he asked her, as if continuing a conversation they’d begun earlier.
His ego wanted to deny that a woman could fool him that completely, but his innate honesty forced him to admit the possibility.
“Fake what?”
“The passion. The way you melted in my arms. The way you touched me. The way you wanted me.”
He studied her as she blinked up at him, her gaze wary, her thoughts obscured by the veil she kept be- tween her and the world.
“Don’t you know?” she finally asked.
He shook his head. “But I will. Before the year is up, I’ll figure out what makes you tick. And then…”
Fear raced along Isa’s backbone like a mouse scurrying from a cat. She held her breath for an instant, then regained her faltering courage.
There was nothing he could do, not even in a forced marriage, to make her run.
As he leaned over her without speaking, she found herself trapped in his gaze. Her thinking processes fal- tered, then halted. While not movie-star handsome, her husband was incredibly attractive in her eyes.
He had a broad, high forehead with a stubborn wave of dark hair falling across it. His eyebrows were dark and thick. When he grew old, they would become bushy and rather formidable. She would trim them for him so he wouldn’t scare the grandchildren—
“What?” he asked, as if sensing her troubled thoughts.
She shook her head. His grandchildren wouldn’t be hers.
Freeing one hand from the covers, she brushed the shiny lock of hair from his forehead. His face was sculpted in hard angles that flowed into the flat planes of his cheekbones. The set of his chin indicated a firm will, that of his mouth a wry sense of humor. All in all, it was a face filled with intelligence and resolve, a face that could be trusted….
She dropped her hand to the sheet, feeling herself dangerously close to being feminine and foolish.
He caught her hand and laid it on his chest. “Touch me,” he ordered in a soft voice that was almost a caress. “It’s the one thing between us that’s right.”
She pulled free. “I can’t believe you’d want me to after…after today’s events.”
For another ten seconds, he stared at her without a word. “So it was all a pretense,” he said, the cold fury returning. He got up from the edge of the bed and walked out.
Isa waited, her body tense, her senses alert for his return. She waited for hours. He didn’t come back that night.
Chapter Five
“How long will this snow keep up?” Zeke asked. He paced to the broad window and watched the huge, feathery flakes tumble from a bed of clouds.
“According to the weather station, it’s supposed to start clearing by noon,” Ken reported.
The crusty tycoon trudged back to the hearth, where Harrison had built a fire right after breakfast. “How about a game of poker? Anyone want to take me on?”
No one answered.
“I will,” Isa decided, laying the magazine aside. She wondered if Harrison had spent the night in the study. If so, there had been no sign of it this morning.
“Cards
are in one of the drawers,” Harrison told them, pointing to a game table at the back of the room.
She and Zeke moved over to the table. They checked the side drawers. Isa found the playing cards. She re- moved them from the box, shuffled, then fanned them three times and slid them over to Zeke to cut.
“Name your poison,” she invited. “Five-card draw? Seven-card stud? One-eyed jacks wild?”
Zeke flicked her a calculating grin. “You name it, little girl. I want to see your game.”
“I only play for matches.” She swept the cut deck toward her and readied one card. “Anyone else want in?”
“I’ll be the bank,” Harrison decided. He removed stacks of colorful chips from another drawer and counted out an even number for each player.
“I’ll pass,” Ken said, nose buried in a report.
With expert skill, Isa dealt the cards and put the rest of the deck aside. Zeke tossed an ante chip in the middle of the table. She did likewise. He beat her four hands straight.
Then she really began to play.
She took three hands, then he hit a flush. She folded and let him take the pot.
“Dang it, girl, why didn’t you at least call?”
“I couldn’t beat you.”
“You didn’t have anything?” He reached for the cards she’d tossed facedown on the felt and flipped them over. “A pair of jacks. You had a pair of jacks and didn’t bet them?”
Isa gathered the cards and fanned them into each other. When she looked up, she spoke in a menacing drawl like a gunslinger in a B Western. “Where I come from, mister, a man could lose a hand for less than that.”
All three men looked suitably startled by her re- minder of the rules. She smiled coolly and dealt the cards.
Three hours later, the hallway clock bonged noon. Isa had a big stack of chips in front of her. Zeke had five left. He shoved them into the middle.
“Last hand,” he said. “Winner take all.”
She laughed softly and slid all her chips forward. Her opponent tossed three cards down and took three. She discarded two and drew two.
“Okay, girl, let’s see what’s making you so happy,” he barked at her, sounding like a wheezy old guard dog.
By now, Ken and Harrison were both engrossed in the play of the two experts. In spite of Isa’s steady wins, it was obvious that Zeke was no greenhorn at the game.
She spread out the five cards. “Ace-high straight.”
Zeke threw his cards down with an irritated whack. “You’ve been reading me since the fourth hand. What did I do to give myself away? What’d I do?” he de- manded of Harrison when she wouldn’t tell him.
Harrison considered, then shrugged. “Sometimes you draw the cards closer when you have a good hand.”
Zeke gave a disgruntled snort. “Is that it?”
“That’s one thing.”
“You mean there’s more?”
Isa nodded in the face of his disbelieving scowl. “Your lips are softer when you have a good hand, harder when you don’t.” She put the cards away. “Look, the sun is breaking through the clouds. I’ll pre- pare lunch, then maybe we can go.”
She left the men in the study, Zeke still growling about his loss and arguing whether he gave his hands away or not.
“Lips! Who can tell anything about lips? They’re on a person’s face. Hard, soft, so what? Who can tell whether lips are hard or soft?”
“Isa can,” Harrison said, following Isa into the kitchen. “So can I,” he murmured to himself.
His bride barely looked his way before she began putting together ham-and-cheese sandwiches. She used the last of the kosher dill pickles from the jar and sliced the last apple as a side dish.
“That was impressive playing. You could take it up as a living,” he suggested.
“No, thanks. Life is precarious enough.”
He stuck his hands in his back pockets to keep from reaching for her, to stop her busy hands from touching anything but him. “Where did you learn?”
He probed for information, curiosity eating at him. Well, hell, a man ought to know something about his wife.
She piled the sandwiches on a platter. “I used to play against my father.”
“He must have been one hell of a player.”
“Why do you assume he was the better player?” She removed plates and mugs from the cupboard, then found a tray under the cabinet. “Sometimes it takes more skill to lose.”
“Ah,” he said. She’d learned early to conceal her abilities. He wondered what else she hid behind that smile that disclosed so little about her inner thoughts.
He found himself in danger of being fascinated all over again by the woman he’d married so precipitously. He wanted to know who the real woman was—the one who’d come apart in his hands and responded so beau- tifully to him that it still stopped his breath, or this cool poker player who shuffled the deck with easy skill and asked for no quarter.
The anger surged anew. He had a year. By damn, he would know her inside and out before twelve months had gone by.
With this thought in mind, he went to her. She was stacking sandwich plates on the tray. When he slipped his arms around her, she tensed, but wasn’t startled. She’d known he was near.
Good. He wanted her aware of his presence at all times.
“I missed you last night,” he murmured, nuzzling along her neck. He inhaled the warm, womanly scent of her. The blood rushed from his head to his groin in a dizzy sweep. It was enough to make a man forget what he was about.
“Where did you sleep?”
She immediately pressed her lips closed. He chuck- led. “Curious?”
“Not particularly. I just wondered.”
“On the sofa in the study with only a blanket and memories to keep me warm.”
He grinned when she gave a little unladylike snort at his bid for sympathy. He let his hands wander away from her waist. With his left one, he explored the gentle slope of her abdomen, letting the very tips of his fingers drift over the womanly mound.
She caught her breath, then exhaled slowly.
Letting his right hand glide upward, he paused below the tempting thrust of her breast. She stopped loading the tray.
He leaned into her, letting her feel the strength of his desire. A spark of triumph went through him when she trembled.
However, passion was a two-edged sword. He, too, was caught in the sensual snare he’d set, his body ach- ing.
“Look at me,” he demanded.
She tilted her head and looked over her shoulder at him. He brushed her mouth with his. A groan worked its way out of him.
“A taste isn’t enough,” he whispered against her lips.
He turned her without breaking the contact, needing the feel of her against him, breast to breast, thigh to thigh. Bending, he lifted her so that his erection snug- gled against the sweet indentation at the joining of her legs.
She drew back with a little sound of alarm. He reached up and cupped her face in his hand, holding her like a golden chalice, while he sipped the nectar from her lips. He kissed her until she stopped resisting and responded.
He broke the kiss with a muttered curse and pressed his face into the dark cloud of hair that fell about her shoulders. “My God,” he said, shaken right to the mar- row of his bones.
“Please.” She pushed against him, but her hands felt like butterflies fluttering over him, luring him deeper into the sensuous spell.
“Say, Harrison…uh, never mind.”
Harrison lifted his head and glanced around. Ken was beating a hasty retreat for the kitchen door.
“It’s okay,” he said in a forced drawl, feeling like the biggest of fools for having been caught kissing his wife in the middle of the day. His anger extended to himself, as he let Isa go.
Ken stopped at the door. “Zeke called the airport. His plane will be ready to go in an hour. The summit road is clear, too. I thought I’d head back if you don’t need me.”
Harrison cleared t
he huskiness of desire from his throat. “Yeah, it’s time we were getting on in, too. Isa has lunch ready. We’ll take off as soon as we eat.”
“Right. Shall I bring the tray?” Ken asked his host- ess, his eyes raking her over as if looking for wounds.
“Yes, please,” Isa answered. She reached for mugs and poured fresh coffee in them, then placed them on another tray along with spoons, the cream pitcher and a bowl of sugar.
Harrison was pleased to see her hands were shaky…just as his were. Getting lost in passion hadn’t been his plan, he reminded himself savagely. He’d wanted to test her a bit, to find out if her response had been faked or the real thing.
He’d learned one thing—his own was overwhelm- ingly real.
Isa stared listlessly at the road. A cold wind buffeted Harrison’s luxury sedan. Snow covered the sides of the hills and outlined each tree as they dropped over the summit and down into Eagle Valley. A panorama view of the desert opened before them.
The storm hadn’t reached this far. The exposed earth was dun colored. The clumps of sage were gray-green. When they descended to the floor of the arid valley, she looked back at the mountains. They seemed unreal.
Everything about the weekend seemed a dream. She glanced at her husband, lost in his own thoughts…grim ones, she was willing to bet. The weekend probably seemed like a nightmare to him. And it wasn’t over yet..
She sighed and faced the road leading to Reno. Now that she’d accomplished her goal, she was nervous and on edge. She didn’t know what Harrison was going to expect or demand from her. She hated being unsure.
Her life since her mother had died had been one un- certainty after another as she’d taken over most of the responsibility for her small family. She’d worked after school to make ends meet. That hadn’t left much time for dating. Until her last year of college, she’d never had a boyfriend.
Glancing at the stern profile of her new husband, she realized she had very little experience with men outside her own family circle. Her brief fling at a relationship had been a heady spring romance, more sparkle than true fire. Harrison was different, a man, not a boy, and not one who could be fooled by her silences and pur- posely blank expression.
