by Anne Mather
‘And we both know you’re no saint, don’t we?’ whispered Joanna, through dry lips. ‘Go on, Cole. Do it! Put us both out of our misery!’
Cole’s hands tightened, and for a moment she thought he was going to make good his threat. And then they gentled, smoothing the skin of her throat, and tracing the pulsing veins that had risen, threadlike, to the surface. ‘You know what I really want to do with you, don’t you?’ he muttered, his breath wafting across her face, only lightly tinged with the alcohol he had consumed. His hands slid down, over her quivering shoulders, and found the rampant fullness of her breasts. He squeezed them hard, through the slippery silk of her wrapper. Then he bent his head, and sucked one of the button-hard peaks into his mouth, suckling it through the cloth, and sending a wave of longing surging into her thighs.
She thought she was going to collapse, her knees felt so weak. But, as if sensing this, Cole put his hands beneath her bottom, and lifted her into his arms. Her legs curled automatically about him, and she wound her arms around his neck. The feel of his smooth skin felt so good beneath her hands, and when his tongue probed her lips she met it with her own.
‘God, I want you!’ He shrugged off his shirt, and his bare chest was unbelievably sensuous against her aching nipples. She wanted to tear off the wrapper, and rub herself against him. As it was, the damp cloth only sensitised her awareness of the masculine beauty of his body.
His tongue invaded her mouth, sliding across her teeth, and caressing the moist inner shell. Its greedy possession imitated the thrusting arousal of his body, and she could feel his swelling hardness rising beneath her hip.
When he carried her to the bed, and came down on top of her, she stopped trying to analyse what was happening. Perhaps he was doing this because he hated her. Perhaps he was using her to assuage his lust for Sammy-Jean. But she didn’t care. What he was doing to her was what she wanted him to do to her, and the reasons for his urgency didn’t really count. She wanted him—on her, and in her, melding their bodies together, and bringing her to a peak of fulfilment only he could achieve. She wanted to hold his sleek length inside her, the fullness of him stretching not just her muscles, but the limits of her consciousness. And she wanted to feel the liquid heat of his seed, lubricating the dryness of her soul.
And he was hungry for her. Of that, there could be no doubt. To her relief, the silk wrapper was quickly thrown aside, and his teeth tugged painfully at her nipple, as his hands fumbled awkwardly with his buckle. She wanted to help him, but he wouldn’t let her. Instead, he dealt with his own belt and zip, while his mouth roamed freely over her flesh.
‘Watch me,’ he ordered once, when her drifting senses caused her eyes to close. ‘Look at me!’ And she did, as he nudged her thighs apart, and poised, erect and glistening above her. Then, groaning with satisfaction, he eased himself into her tight sheath, allowing her muscles to close about him with an eagerness she couldn’t hide.
It was a frantic loving, a desperate meeting of souls, whose only outward connection was through their bodies. Yet it was a spiritual blending, too, a magical experience, when the pounding desire of possession became an urgent invocation of the sublime.
The end came all too soon. Driven to the heights of passion, it was far too tempting to tumble over the brink. Cole wanted to prolong it. She knew that by the way he tried to pace himself. But with her legs around his waist, and the luscious beauty of her mouth luring him on, the needs she was creating were too powerful to subdue. Besides, the desire to reach that tantalising peak was dragging every ounce of strength from him, and when he felt her wild convulsions he couldn’t prevent his own explosion. A shuddering wave of tension swept through him, and then he slumped heavily on top of her.
And it was while they were lying in the sweat-slick aftermath of their lovemaking that Cole’s door opened. Until then, Joanna had scarcely been aware that the lamps were still on, or that anyone could come into the room and find them. Besides, it was so late. She had believed everyone was in bed. But it was Cole’s father who stood in the doorway, and for a moment she saw that his face was as shocked as her own.
Cole’s reactions were slower, more lethargic—even defiant, Joanna admitted now. At his father’s hoarse exclamation, he didn’t immediately spring up from the bed, as she might have expected. Oh, no. He merely rolled on to his back beside her, and turned hooded eyes in his father’s direction. ‘What do you want?’ he demanded tersely. ‘We’re trying to get some sleep.’
Now Joanna pushed herself away from the bathroom basin, and walked wearily into the bedroom. And, as she did so, she realised it was the first time she had actually recalled the exact words Cole had used to his father that night. What had come afterwards had been so horrible that she hadn’t been able to think. And time, and the desire not to remember, had erased the whole scene from her mind.
For Ryan had come to tell his son that Nathan was dead. He had been pulled out of the river an hour before, and his mother had insisted that Cole’s father should be informed. In addition to which, the sheriff wanted him to go down to the morgue right away, to identify the body. Sarah was too distraught to see her son right now, and Ryan had agreed to do it. But he wanted Cole to go with him. He needed his eldest son’s support.
And Cole had gone, Joanna remembered, leaving her to pull herself together, and return to her own room in a daze of disbelief. Nathan dead! She couldn’t believe it was true. And why had he died in the river? For God’s sake, couldn’t he swim?
Her mind skimmed over the awful events of the next few days. If she and Cole had ever had a chance of regaining what they had once had, Nathan’s death had destroyed it. She couldn’t help blaming him for the way he had treated his half-brother. And she positively despised Ryan for his selfishness and blatant lack of feeling.
And then, at the funeral, something even more dreadful happened, something that had Joanna packing her bags, and swearing she would never set foot on Tidewater land again. Sarah, racked with grief, and driven to the edge by her son’s untimely demise, had accused Ryan Macallister of causing it. He had hounded her son, she said, ever since he discovered that Joanna and Nathan were friends. He had accused him of seducing his brother’s wife, of taking revenge for his own unhappy circumstances by destroying his brother’s marriage. And Joanna had encouraged him, Ryan had added. Like took to like, he had sneered, with a scathing reference to Joanna’s dark colouring.
Of course, Ryan had denied it. Red-faced and blustering, angry, now, that he had submitted to his son’s conviction that they should attend the funeral, he had lashed out at anyone who had argued with him. But Joanna had seen his guilt, and despised him for it. And despised Cole, too, for letting it happen to a man who had been so kind, so gentle, so totally lacking in the arrogance his father had in such abundance.
For months afterwards, long after she had returned to London, and resumed her life there, Joanna tortured herself with thoughts of Nathan on that night. She couldn’t believe it had been an accident. She had seen him fishing in the river so many times, and she was sure he would never have drowned unless he hadn’t wanted to live. And, of course, she had blamed herself, not only for exposing Ryan and causing him to turn on his son, but also for being the unwitting tool his father had used against him. She could never forgive Ryan. Never. The problem was, did she want to forgive his son?
CHAPTER TWELVE
IT WAS years since Joanna had been on a horse. She had learned to ride as a child, and, when she first went to live at Tidewater, she had occasionally ridden with Cole. But only occasionally. After her illness, and their subsequent estrangement, she had had no heart for such a pursuit. It would have seemed too much like pursuing him, and her pride had balked at the idea.
But, after a sleepless night spent reliving the past, she once again found herself in the saddle. Cole had had a beautiful pearl-grey mare readied for her, and the animal shifted a little nervously as Joanna settled herself on its back. She knew that horses, like other animals, co
uld sense nervousness in humans, but in her case it wasn’t fear of riding that upset her stomach. It was her unwilling awareness of the man riding beside her. And the uneasy realisation of how attracted to him she still was.
Not that Cole seemed aware of her. He appeared cool and detached, totally in control of his own destiny. Leather-clad thighs moulded the sides of the huge blood bay he was riding, and his booted feet rested confidently in the stirrups. He was wearing a cream shirt, opened down the front to allow whatever breeze there was to cool his skin, and a broad-brimmed hat tipped forward to shade his eyes.
He looked lean and hard, and intensely male, his relaxed hands resting on the reins, nevertheless exuding an unmistakable sense of power. Sometimes, seeing him like this, feeling what his sexuality was doing to her, Joanna wondered how they had ever drifted apart. But then she remembered Nathan, and Sammy-Jean, and her weakness became a hurtful core of indignation.
‘You need a hat,’ he informed her, appraising her outfit of pink cotton cut-offs and a loose-fitting man’s shirt with some contempt. But what did he expect her to wear, for heaven’s sake? she asked herself resentfully. She hadn’t known when she flew out to the Bahamas that she would end up riding trail in South Carolina. ‘You don’t want to get heatstroke, do you?’
Joanna shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t have thought you’d care,’ she countered, realising she mustn’t let him guess how he disturbed her, and adopting an appealing smile. But Cole only swung down from the bay, and strode back into the stables.
He emerged a few moments later with a rather worn and spotted stetson, and jammed it on to the pommel in front of her. ‘Put it on,’ he ordered, grasping the bay’s reins and resuming his seat in the saddle. ‘It’s not pretty, but it should serve the purpose.’
‘Why, darlin’, are you sayin’ that ah’m pretty?’ Joanna goaded him, examining the hat with some disdain, and Cole’s mouth compressed.
‘Do you need me to tell you that?’ he retorted, skilfully turning the tables, and Joanna pulled a face at his back, as she reluctantly tried the hat for size.
It was a close fit, and it immediately dislodged the knot she had made of her hair for coolness. The silky strands came tumbling down about her shoulders, and, hearing her gasp of irritation, Cole glanced round.
‘Having problems?’ he enquired sardonically, and, refusing to give him the satisfaction, Joanna shook her head.
‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ she said, bundling all her hair inside the stetson, and jamming it on her head. ‘By the way, where’s Henry? Or am I not allowed to say hello to him either?’
Cole managed not to utter the retort that was evidently trembling on his lips, and instead he kicked the bay into motion. ‘Henry only works here afternoons,’ he said, as Joanna hastily nudged the mare into following him. ‘He helps his mother at the guest house mornings.’
Joanna blinked. ‘The guest house?’ she echoed. ‘Sarah works at a guest house?’
‘She runs a guest house,’ Cole corrected her shortly. Ignoring her look of surprise, he cast an expert eye over her handling of the mare. ‘You fit for a little cantering?’
Joanna’s hands tightened on the reins. ‘Anything you like,’ she declared absently, still mulling over what he had said about Sarah, but when Cole gave the bay its head she was forced to put her thoughts on hold. She hadn’t forgotten how to ride, but she was out of practice, and her thighs jarred uncomfortably as she tried to find the rhythm.
They crossed dew-soaked paddocks, where the scent of the grass rose pungently to her nostrils, into rustling woods, where the sun’s rays filtered through the boughs. The mare’s hoofs crunched on cones and rotting leaves, and caused a startled jack-rabbit to scoot across their path. Birds sang; bees buzzed around a hive of wild honey; and the moisture rose from the forest floor to soak her perspiring skin.
They emerged into fields that stretched towards other forests of oak and palmetto, rich agricultural land, extending into undulating hills. But, instead of cotton fields as far as the eye could see, Joanna saw acres given over to corn and cattle, and orchards of fruit trees, with the mist rising from them.
Cole reined in the bay to guide the animal between rows of sweet-sprouting sugar cane. Insects buzzed about them, making Joanna glad she had remembered to cover the most sensitive parts of her body, and also giving her a reason for wearing the disgusting hat. She was even glad she was on horseback, when she remembered the spiders that thrived in the cane fields. And every time one of the swaying stalks touched her sleeve she brushed away another imaginary horror.
It wasn’t until they came out of the sugar cane that she realised where they were. She had been disorientated by the changes that had been made at Tidewater, and it was with some surprise that she saw they weren’t far from where the shacks had been situated. She could hear the river, too, and her nerves tightened with remembered pain. Was Cole so insensitive? she wondered. Didn’t he understand that this was the last place she wanted to see?
But Cole was already some distance away from her, the bay trotting across the rough turf that separated Tidewater from the cluster of dwellings at Palmer’s Point. He didn’t look back, and she had only two choices: either go with him, or go back to the house.
And, because the prospect of returning to the house was even less attractive to her, she urged the mare after him. But resentment built as they cantered down the slope, and she glimpsed the roofs of the buildings below them.
She scarcely noticed the river, as she kicked the mare into a gallop and overtook him. She paid no attention to the mud-flats, where she had once spent so many hours, sketching the many birds that came to feed there. She didn’t even smell the salty tang of the ocean, or pause to admire the long white stretch of sand that edged the estuary. All she could think about was her own feelings, which reinforced her hostility towards him for bringing her here.
‘Is this supposed to be some kind of sick joke?’ she demanded, as she passed him, but Cole didn’t answer. And then, as the ground levelled out, she saw the cluster of dwellings immediately ahead of her.
Her astonishment was swift and genuine. The village was still there, just as she remembered. But the shacks had disappeared. In their place stood modern tract housing, mostly one-storey buildings, erected on piles for maximum coolness.
‘Some joke, hmm?’ murmured Cole, his stirrup nudging her leg, and Joanna gave an involuntary start. She had been staring at the bright borders of stocks and pansies that edged the squares of turf in front of each property, and the evidence of cultivation in the tent-like growth of bean-poles at the back.
‘Your father did this?’ she exclaimed, finding it difficult to associate the man she knew with what she was seeing in front of her, and Cole shrugged.
‘Is that so hard to believe?’
‘Frankly, yes.’ Joanna shook her head. ‘It’s incredible!’
Cole expelled a long breath. ‘Yeah, well …’ He shook the reins and sent the bay walking down the dusty lane between the houses. ‘As I said last night, I’ve got something to show you.’
‘And this isn’t it?’
Joanna was surprised, but Cole didn’t answer her. Their arrival had attracted attention, and a woman had come out on to the veranda of the house opposite and called to him.
‘Morning, there, Cole,’ she said, resting her elbows on the rail, and smiling down at him. ‘Somethin’ I can do for you?’
‘Morning, Susie,’ Cole responded, as relaxed and easy as she was, and Joanna shook her head. It wasn’t just the houses that had changed around here, she thought drily. And goodness, wasn’t that Susan Fenton, Billy Fenton’s mother?
‘You remember Joanna, don’t you?’ Cole was saying now, and Susan turned a friendly smile on the other woman.
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Hi, there, Mrs Macallister. I heard you were back at Tidewater. Guess you didn’t expect anythin’ like this.’
‘No.’ Joanna managed a rueful grimace. ‘How are you, Susan? You—er—you look
well.’
And she did. Whether it was the fact that Joanna hadn’t seen her for some time, she didn’t know, but the woman looked fit and healthy, and undeniably pregnant. And much too attractive to be looking at Cole like that, Joanna acknowledged tensely. How well did he know her? Had he, like his father, found diversion here?
‘Hey, I’m OK.’ Susan propped her hip on the veranda rail, and rested a complacent hand on the swelling mound of her stomach. ‘Never been better, as it happens. Since Cole moved us into these fancy houses, we all got no complaints.’
‘Since Cole——’ Joanna broke off and glanced at her ex-husband. ‘Yes, I see.’ She schooled her features. ‘When’s the baby due?’
‘In a couple of months.’ Susan grinned. ‘You sure I can’t get you anythin’? Some nice cold lemonade, maybe?’
‘No, thanks.’ Cole spoke before Joanna could say anything. ‘You look after yourself, right? And don’t let Jonas wear you out.’
Susan dimpled. ‘I won’t,’ she said. ‘See you later, Mrs Macallister. Y’all take care now.’
As they got out of earshot, Joanna nudged her horse nearer to Cole’s. ‘Jonas?’ she said, frowning, and Cole pulled a wry face.
‘Jonas Wilson,’ he told her evenly. ‘Her husband.’
‘But I thought——’
‘Bull’s dead,’ Cole intoned, acknowledging the greetings of several other women and children, who had come out on to their verandas to see what was going on. ‘You’ve been away three years, Jo. Things change. People change.’
‘Including your father?’ she queried, tugging on the mare’s reins, as a dusky-skinned little boy ran across her path. ‘Hey, isn’t that Georgie Davis? But no. It can’t be.’
‘Try his brother Bobby,’ said Cole laconically, leaning across to grasp her bridle. ‘I guess we walk from here. I’d hate for you to be the unwitting cause of someone’s death.’
