Noelle

by Diana Palmer

  She glared at him. She didn’t want to go back. On the other hand, Mrs. Dunn had been kind to her. It seemed shabby to go away just before the woman’s birthday, without even a good wish. She wasn’t going to admit that she wanted to stay, or that it pleased her very much that Jared wanted her to go home with him, even if only for his grandmother’s birthday.

  “I suppose one more day wouldn’t matter,” she began.

  “Good.” He picked up her bag and caught her arm to help her up. He nodded politely toward the gaping people in the depot and led Noelle out the door.

  They walked half a block in silence, although she noticed that he refused to let go of her elbow. He seemed to think she might escape.

  “That man who was sitting next to me told me you were a captain in the Rangers,” she remarked.

  He nodded.

  She waited, but nothing else was forthcoming. She stopped dead, forcing him to. Her green eyes were still full of exasperation and anger. “And?” she prompted.

  His hand tightened on the grip of the valise as he looked at her face and knew a relentless hunger for her. She was asking for more than an answer. She was asking for total honesty. He didn’t know if he could give her that.

  Her thin shoulders fell. “Let me leave, Jared,” she said quietly. “I already have my ticket. This is useless. Hopeless.”

  She reached for the valise, but he wouldn’t let go.

  His jaw tautened. “No.”

  She let out a furious breath. “What’s the point of my staying?” she demanded. “It will be just as it was before. You reminded me only the other day that you only married me because of the scandal. I’m sparing you a loveless marriage. So why won’t you let me go?”

  His chest expanded for a long moment and he stared at her rigidly. His teeth clenched. He couldn’t get the words out.

  “Is it the blemish on your reputation that concerns you?” she demanded. “Will it affect your practice if I leave you? Is that it?”

  He didn’t speak, or move.

  She threw up both hands. “Jared!”

  The hand that had been holding her elbow let go of it and came up, so slowly, to touch her flushed cheek. He traced it softly, his brows drawn while he searched her wide, green eyes.

  “I was a killer before I was a lawman,” he said huskily. “I was an outlaw. I ran with bad men. It was only a quirk of fate that landed me in the Rangers, and even there, I killed. What you see now is only the facade of respectability. Under it, I’m…still what I was, Noelle. I haven’t really changed at all. The past doesn’t die. There are always people who’ll remember.” He remembered painfully what Beale had said about the tragedy of his wife. “As you saw today, I haven’t truly escaped what I was. I couldn’t bear to have you hurt because of something I did years ago.”

  She had no idea what he meant. She didn’t speak, or move, for a minute, while his words rang in her numb mind.

  “You think that I’m afraid because I know about your past?” she said slowly as she realized what he was saying. “Is that why you spoke of a divorce?”

  “I offered you a divorce so that you could marry Andrew,” he said flatly.

  She gasped. Her eyebrows rose. “Thank you very much! And when did I say that I wanted a mealymouthed coward for a husband?”

  His shoulders shifted and he glared at her. “You never told me that he came back because of Miss Beale. I thought he came back because he realized what a mistake he’d made by letting you go.”

  “He didn’t exactly let me go,” she reminded him. “He ran like a scalded cat.”

  He stared down at her with no expression on his face. “He seemed to be all that I wasn’t,” he replied. “You never knew me, until today. At the beginning, you were infatuated with Andrew, who was young and dashing and cultured—all the things I never was. I lived like a desperado, Noelle. I was a bad man. I ran with wicked people. I don’t even know who my father was! And it seemed that you felt nothing but pity for me.” He smiled faintly. “You were forever fussing about my leg, or trying to open doors for me. Even last night, you offered yourself to me because you sensed somehow that I needed comforting. You pitied me.”

  She let out the breath she’d been holding. She was astonished. He had no idea what she felt for him. “Pitied you? You thought that I…pitied you? You idiot!” she burst out, suddenly enraged that he should mistake her feelings for him so badly. “Oh, you idiot!” She hit him. She hit him again, barely registering the shocked look on his face when she jerked off his hat and threw it on the sidewalk and stomped on it several times. “Of all the incredible, unbelievable, totally irrelevant reasons to want to throw a woman out of your life. You idiot!”

  He backed into a post and stood there, staring at her, shocked.

  “I never really cared for Andrew at all!” she raged, grabbing her valise from his numb hand. “I was mildly infatuated with him, until you came home and growled at me the minute I opened the front door. I was attracted to you the minute I saw you, and I spent weeks and weeks trying to understand why I was so happy with you and so miserable with Andrew. I could have died when Andrew made it look as if we were lovers. You married me, and I hoped— But you wanted nothing to do with me except that once, and never again. You said we only married to spare your grandmother a scandal. You said we had no future together.” Tears filled her eyes, so that she couldn’t see the joyous expression that suddenly claimed his face. “And I loved you so much, Jared, so much! Even when I thought you were an old, bookwormish milksop of a cripple, I loved you to distraction,” she whispered brokenly. “Do you think I care how bad you were twenty years ago, or what you did? I wouldn’t have traded you for a dozen Andrews, and today I was so proud of you that I could have cheered. How could you be so blind as to think your past would drive me away? Nothing could change the way I feel about you. Nothing!”

  The radiance on his face was blinding. “My God, Noelle,” he breathed.

  “But you don’t want me, Jared,” she continued miserably. “You don’t love me, and you never will. I’m not going to go on like this, eating my heart out day after day while you ignore me. I’m not going to stay here another day. In fact, I’m leaving right now!”

  She whirled and started back down the street toward the depot in a fine fury, while behind her, a lean face broke into a glorious smile. He left the hat where it lay, and, with eyes so wicked they would have made her blush, he started after her, laughing softly to himself.

  Chapter Seventeen

  NOELLE COULD BARELY see the sidewalk ahead for the tears, and she’d never been so miserable. But just as she reached the corner, she felt herself suddenly caught. Her valise was taken from her hands and left sitting on the sidewalk. She was turned and lifted completely off the ground in a pair of steely warm arms and cradled against a broad chest.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Jared said, meeting her shocked, tear-filled eyes.

  He started walking back the way they’d come.

  “My valise,” she said weakly.

  “Someone will return it. If they don’t, it won’t be any terrible tragedy.”

  “Mrs. Dunn, you’ve dropped your bag,” an amused loud voice called after them.

  “Keep it for her,” Jared called over his shoulder.

  “Yes, sir!”

  “Where are you taking me now?” she mumbled angrily, wiping away tears. “And just look at the damage you’re doing your leg! You have no business putting so much weight on it, just as it’s healing so nicely.”

  “Nag, nag, nag,” he murmured, without looking down at her. Her concern delighted him. “You shrew.”

  “You blackguard,” she countered. “Put me down.”

  “When we get home,” he promised.

  “Jared!”

  He did look down then, and the way he looked at
her made her blush. His pale blue eyes searched hers until her heart ran wild. She subsided without an argument, curving into his body as naturally as if she were made to fit it, her arms around his neck, her heart throbbing as she pressed close and clung.

  He actually shivered. His arms tightened as he walked, and she thought she heard him groan as he shifted her even closer.

  “I won’t live with a stranger who shares no part of himself with me,” she whispered miserably.

  “Hush,” he whispered back, his voice tender at her ear.

  She buried her soft face in his throat. “It would be kinder to let me leave,” she said.

  “Kinder for whom? I’d sooner cut off my arm than lose you,” he said roughly.

  She started. He sounded angry, but there was something under it, something she’d never heard in his deep voice.

  “Lost for words?” he taunted. “You were vocal enough earlier. And we’re here.”

  He walked up the short path to the house, up the steps. Mrs. Pate saw them coming and opened the door, grinning from ear to ear.

  “Coffee, sir?” she offered.

  “Oh, no,” Jared said, glaring at the burden in his arms. “Not just yet.”

  “Your grandmother is lying down.”

  “Leave her there. We wouldn’t want the loud voices to upset her, would we, my dear?” Jared asked, with a mocking smile, as he carried a worried Noelle toward the living room. “Close the door behind us, if you would, Mrs. Pate.”

  “Of course, Mr. Jared.”

  Noelle was getting more confused by the minute. The door closed with a snap, and Jared walked toward the long, velvet-covered sofa. All at once, he dumped Noelle on it and bent over her with eyes that threatened violence of one sort or another.

  She lay there, waiting, uneasy, looking up at him with wide, uncertain eyes.

  “You little termagant,” he said huskily. “I should thrash you, I really should.”

  She swallowed, marshaling all the arguments she could find, only to discover seconds later that they were unnecessary. He bent and his mouth fitted itself slowly, tenderly, to hers. She stiffened only for a few seconds before her lips melted under his and her arms reached up to enfold him.

  She felt his chest pressing against hers, his mouth insistent on her parted lips, the rough sigh of his breath as he kissed her hungrily, without restraint. It was like no way he’d kissed her before, even when they were most intimate, even last night.

  His hands framed her soft face and he pressed brief, biting kisses on her mouth, kisses that grew rougher by the minute, until he kindled her body to passion.

  He groaned again harshly, and she found herself lying on the rug with Jared’s lean, powerful body totally against hers, his mouth invasive and insistent. His hands were in her hair now, tearing out pins, loosening the glory of her auburn hair so that he could ripple it through his hands.

  “Leave me, would you?” he growled at her breasts. “Try it. You won’t get as far as the front door next time.”

  She was breathless. She tried to speak, but his mouth covered hers again and she gave it up. She had no mind left to think with, anyway. Her hands tangled in the thick hair at his nape and she smiled under his lips as his body shifted hungrily onto hers.

  He felt a slight movement and lifted away only enough to catch his breath. His eyes were blazing with desire. “I’m not going to stop,” he said huskily. His hands reached under her to lift her skirts. “Now, laugh!”

  She gasped. “But…we can’t!”

  There was the metallic sound of a buckle hitting the floor and laughter in the mouth that was pressing her head back onto the floor.

  He imprisoned her mouth at the same instant his body invaded hers. She gasped and cried out, but when he moved again, her hips lifted up to invite him, welcome him. She moaned, shivering, as the quick, hard rhythm shattered every memory she had of that one intimacy. There was no pain—she noticed that at once—but the pleasure…

  She sobbed under his mouth as it came, washing over her in huge, crushing layers, each more intense than the one before. She thought that her body would be torn apart by it. And still his hands gripped her, jerked her hips into his. He laughed like a predator, deep in his throat, feeling her tension snap even as his built to flash point. He was still laughing when he shot off into the sun and his body convulsed helplessly in a maelstrom of heat and glory.

  She lay in his arms, shivering helplessly, clinging to him while the sun spilled into the room through the lacy curtains and made rose patterns on her fluttering bodice. Her nails were biting into his arms through his jacket and her body felt hot and throbbing.

  While she trembled, he quietly rearranged disheveled clothing and did up fastenings. All the while, he held her close, brushing tender kisses against her hot cheeks, her closed eyes, her swollen lips.

  When her eyes opened, he didn’t look in the least repentant for what amounted to a brazen act of sordid dimensions. She gaped at him.

  “I’m a brute,” he prompted. “Go ahead.” He smiled. “I’m sure you can think of several other adjectives.”

  She looked down at the rumpled folds of her dress and the wrinkles in his once immaculate white shirt where her hands had gripped him so fiercely as passion bit into her body. She flushed scarlet.

  “Have I robbed you of speech?” He bent and brushed his lips softly over hers. He laughed huskily and rolled her over onto her back. He leaned over her, and his eyes were blazing with feelings he couldn’t express in words.

  She was devoid of speech, all right. But a blind woman could see what his eyes were telling her. There was no more subterfuge, no pretense. Everything he felt for her was there, vulnerable.

  She reached up and touched his mouth with her fingertips. “I love you,” she whispered.

  “Yes.” The smile faded as he searched her eyes. He pushed back her damp, disheveled hair. “I would have let you go, even to Andrew, if that had been what you really wanted.”

  “It wasn’t. I don’t want to leave you,” she said. “I don’t love Andrew, and your past doesn’t make the least bit of difference to me.”

  He drew in a long, slow breath. His fingers lazily traced her straight nose and her lips. “It did to me,” he replied. “At first, I didn’t know if you could live with it. Sometimes I have nightmares. That’s why I wouldn’t stay with you, the night we were intimate—or last night. I very much wanted to, you know.”

  “I had nightmares, too, after the flood,” she said gently. “If we sleep together, we can comfort each other.”

  He chuckled. “Imagine that.”

  She stretched and grimaced at the strain her muscles had taken. She looked at him and then around them and blushed again.

  “Yes, I know—it was shameful, on the floor in broad daylight. But I couldn’t wait long enough to get you upstairs,” he whispered mischievously.

  This dynamic, impulsive, mischievous and unconventional man was so foreign that she could hardly believe he was her husband. He fascinated her.

  He traced her swollen lips. “I lost control,” he said softly. “It’s been a very long time since that happened.”

  “Yes, well…I suppose…” She searched his eyes and felt breathless. “I loved it,” she whispered, and then hid her face against him.

  He laughed, rippling with delight. His arms held her close and he sighed with amazing contentment. “It tortured me, to feel such a need for you and think that you wanted Andrew. And then today, on the street, I expected you to shrink from me after the fight.” His arms tightened hungrily. “But you came to me, right to me. You were completely without fear.”

  “As so many others were not,” she said seriously, remembering. “They were afraid of you.” She sighed. “I was only afraid that the man would kill you.”

  “Perhaps you
’re forgetting that I would have killed Garmon if he’d reached for his gun again, and also without conscience,” he said, as if it worried him.

  She drew away from him and sat up on the rug, looking down at him with calm, loving eyes. “Can’t you really see the difference between yourself and a man like that?” She touched his face gently. “You were the only thing standing between Mr. Clark and death. You weren’t concerned about a big fee or making a name for yourself. You were concerned only about saving an innocent man. I could hardly say that you were without conscience, Jared.”

  He let out a long breath. The pale eyes that met hers were old and sad. He drew her soft hand to his lips. “Yet, I was,” he replied. “When I was a young man, living in Dodge City, I became involved with Ava, one of the saloon girls. She…” He stopped, grimacing. “I think you can imagine the relationship we had. I was very young, impressionable, and I fancied myself in love for the first time. She came to me with bruises and cuts and told me that she’d been raped and robbed. Without questioning her accusation, I went for the cowboy, called him out, and killed him. Only later, I found out that she’d lied. He’d done nothing except spurn her attentions. She used me to get even with him.” The pain of the confession was in his face. “I started drinking. Alcohol got a terrible hold on me, and I lost all reason. I got into one fight after another and eventually fell in with a gang of outlaws. A Texas Ranger sobered me up, dragged me back into the decent world, and got me to turn state’s evidence. I went with him to rout them, and most of them were killed. One got away, but he was caught and sent to federal prison for his crimes, where he died. I became a Texas Ranger and worked on the border, out of El Paso.”

  “You said you were in the cavalry,” she prompted, fascinated by what he was confiding in her. She knew instinctively that even Mrs. Dunn was not so privileged.

  He smiled. “A brief stint. I was in for two years and I served with the outfit that fought Geronimo in ’85 and ’86,” he said quietly. “But I grew tired of rules and regulations, so I mustered out and went back to the Rangers. Soon after that my mother, who had married Andrew’s father some years before, took ill and begged me to come home to her. She thought I was still living the wild life. She begged me to go East and read law, and to ease her last hours, I gave my word. I could hardly break such a solemn vow, and Ranger life was not much different from being a desperado in those days,” he added with a smile.