Virgin Seduction

by Kathleen Creighton

She had gone on to study the photograph albums alone after that, and if she felt disappointed it was because she wished she could ask Cade, as Betsy had suggested-about many things. She liked listening to Betsy talk about Cade's background and family, but she wished she could have talked of those things with her husband instead.

  Someday he will talk to me. I must believe that. And maybe then I will understand why he does not want to love we.

  Cade returned on Friday, just as Rueben and Betsy were about to leave for the weekend. They were all in the kitchen when he came in. Betsy was showing Leila the food she had prepared for their weekend meals, and Rueben was sitting at the small kitchen table drinking a glass of sweetened iced tea. Cade nodded at Rueben, who nodded back.

  "Huh," said Betsy as she closed the refrigerator door with a loud smack, "what're you doing home so early?"

  Even Leila recognized the sarcasm, and not for the first time she thought how different Rueben and Betsy's position in this house was from that of the servants back home in Tamir.

  Cade pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. He looks very tired, Leila thought, watching him draw a hand over his eyes and rub them briefly. Her heartbeat stumbled as those deeply shadowed eyes slid past her…but when he spoke his words and half smile were for Betsy. "Got any more of that tea?"

  Betsy gave him a look, but did not say anything as she took a glass from the cupboard and poured tea fro the pitcher in the refrigerator. Then she handed the glass to Leila. Leila took it, not comprehending; she had not asked for tea. Betsy jerked her head toward Cade and made a motion with her hand that he could not see.

  Then she understood. Of course-she was to serve her husband. What a lot I have to learn about being a wife, she thought. When it came to food and drink, Leila was accustomed to being served, not the other way around.

  Her heart hammered and her hands shook as she placed the glass of iced tea on the table in front of her husband. His eyes flashed briefly at her from their shadows as he mumbled, "Thanks." Leila nodded and retreated until she felt the cold edge of the tile counter at her back. She slumped against it because her knees felt weak and she was grateful for the support, but she remembered her pride and straightened just in time. A daughter of Sheik Ahmed Kamal does not slump.

  Betsy asked again why Cade had come home so early, and what his plans were for the coming weekend. He took a long drink of iced tea before he answered. "I thought I'd fly out to the ranch…do some repairs. That was more than a little bit embarrassing last week, having the power go out, with a client."

  Leila felt strange, as if she were standing all alone on a great empty stage, and thousands of people were looking at her. She heard herself say in a loud, clear voice, "I would like to go with you." The strangeness dissolved and she saw that there were only two people looking at her-Cade with silent shock, and Betsy with a little smile of approval. Rueben, with his back to her, drank tea with a noisy clanking of ice cubes.

  Leila stepped forward, and her stomach quivered with butterflies. "I would like to see this ranch that I have heard about," she said, and there was no quiver at all in her voice. "I would like to see more of Texas."

  Cade was opening his mouth to speak, and she knew that he was going to say that she could not go. She did not know what she would do if he told her that. I will not be left alone again, she thought, trembling now with anger. Anger and a new determination. I will not be abandoned again.

  "That's a good idea," said Betsy. Cade shut his mouth on whatever it was he had planned to say and glared at the short, brown woman. She glared back at him. Her arms were folded on her great soft bosom, and her round face looked as though it had been carved from wood. "You should take your wife-show her the ranch. Have a nice weekend together-just the two of you."

  The silence in the kitchen was profound. It seemed to Leila that they must all hear each other's hearts beating. Then Rueben gave his shoulder a hitch and said, "Yeah, you should take her."

  Cade flashed him a look of pure shock. Leila held her breath while seconds ticked by. She knew that this was important-maybe the most important moment of her life, a crossroads. If he refuses me, she thought with cold resolve…If he leaves me again…

  His eyes came back to her. She felt them as a strange kind of heat, a melting fire that spread through her chest. "It's pretty primitive out there," he said. "Not very comfortable. Are you sure you want to go?" And she knew that she had won.

  She gave a happy sigh. " Very sure."

  * * *

  The twin-engine Cessna 310 arrowed upward through the East Texas haze and leveled off above the outer limits of Houston's suburbs. This early in the morning there were no thunderheads to reckon with, so Cade set a course straight across the checkerboard of farmland and small towns toward the hill country west of San Antonio. Flying time to the ranch was anywhere from an hour and a half to two hours, depending on wind conditions.

  He looked over at his passenger. She hadn't said much since he'd buckled her into her seat, just kept looking out the window with her face pressed right up against the glass. Reminded him of a little kid staring through the walls of an aquarium, oblivious to everything except what was going on in the alien world on the other side.

  Not completely oblivious. As if she sensed his look, she glanced over at him. "America is so…big," she said, her voice breathless and wondering. She sat back in her seat with a happy-sounding sigh. "It is just as I imagined. And all of this-" she turned once again to the window, as if she couldn't help herself "-is still Texas? It must go on forever!"

  "Not quite," said Cade dryly, "but just about."

  She was silent, gazing down on the crazy-quilt landscape. Then she said, "I understand why you felt 'cooped up' in Tamir."

  Cooped up. He felt a strange little shiver go through him-not déjà vu, exactly, just an instant of total sensory recall. Hearing those words, for a moment he was back there in Tamir with Leila, the night of the state reception. She was flirting with him on the terrace overlooking the sea, and he was feeling again that unnerving and mystifying sense of accord with a woman as exotic and alien to him as anyone he'd ever met. Thinking about it, and about everything that had happened to him since, he wondered now if it had all begun with that moment. He sure as hell hadn't felt like himself since.

  "Yeah," he said in a gravelly voice, "Pretty hard to feel cooped up out here."

  "You would think so…" Her voice was wistful and soft, and he wondered how words so gentle could cause such a fierce and painful wound, right in the vicinity of his heart.

  There was no more talking after that. Leila gazed out the window and Cade was left alone with his remorseful thoughts. And some that were wistful, too. He kept thinking about those days and nights in Tamir, remembering the gardens, the scent of flowers and the music of fountains, a princess's enchanting smile. And it seemed to him that there had been a magical innocence about that time, remembered, like a fairy tale from his childhood, with a sense of regret, an awareness of having had something precious that was now lost. Something he wished he could find again, and had no idea how.

  Time went quickly, and in no time at all the Cessna was circling over dun-colored hills dotted with gray-green live oaks and darker splotches of juniper. There was the pale ribbon of road-smoother-looking from up here than the corduroy it was-and the landing strip with its wind sock hanging limp at this time of morning. Cade pointed them out to Leila-the maintenance shed next to the runway, then the slate-gray roof of the farmhouse, and on the other side of the house, shielded from the landing strip by a grove of live oaks, the barn and corrals. She didn't reply, just gazed down at everything in silent awe.

  And suddenly, in his mind he could hear Betsy saying, "…show her the ranch. Have a nice weekend… Just the two of you."

  Just the two of us. The whole weekend.

  The knot in his stomach felt a lot like fear.

  Chapter 10

  Well-this is it." Cade dropped the key into his pocket and pushed open the door
, then reached around it to a light switch. "Okay-at least we have power." He looked sideways at Leila and made a motion with his head. "Sorry about the mess. I wasn't expecting to bring company this trip, or I'd have had Mrs. MacGruder -that's my next-door neighbor-she takes care of things here for me-feeds the horses, things like that. I'd have had her come in and clean."

  "I can clean," Leila said, stepping over the threshold. She heard Cade make a disbelieving sound as he picked up the thermal cooler containing food that Betsy had sent with them and followed her into the living room. She tore her gaze from the room to give him a look. "Do you think I cannot? Because I am not required to clean does not mean I do not know how."

  "Oh yeah?" Cade lifted a skeptical eyebrow at her as he passed. "So tell me-where did you learn how to clean house?"

  "Well…not house, exactly." Her smile was brief and distracted; there was so much to see. "In boarding school, we were required to clean our own rooms and make our beds, so I do know how to sweep and dust. Frankly, it is not that difficult."

  Cade grunted. Through an open double doorway she saw him put the cooler on a table in what could only be the kitchen. "Well, I told you it was primitive."

  "I do not think it is primitive at all." Leila had visited some of the poorest parts of Tamir with her mother and sisters. She knew what primitive was. She clasped her hands together to contain her excitement. "I think it is…perfect."

  In fact, she had fallen in love with the house at her first glimpse of it. It was made of yellowish-brown stones, with a wooden veranda that ran straight across the front and a roof made of dark gray composition shingles, which Cade told her had replaced the original wooden ones. And the room she was standing in seemed so familiar to her she was sure she must have seen one just like it-perhaps more than one-in western movies. At one end there was a large fireplace made of the same stone as the outside of the house, with a sofa and several comfortable-looking chairs gathered in front of it. The floors were made of wood, covered with rugs made of cloth that had been tightly braided and then coiled. There was a set of antlers, perhaps from a deer, above the fireplace, and, oddly, the actual skin of a cow thrown over one of the chairs, like an afghan.

  She let out her breath in a happy gust. She thought it was just what a house on a ranch in Texas should be.

  She went into the kitchen where Cade was taking things out of the cooler and putting them into the refrigerator. He looked around at her, or rather, at the overnight bag that was hanging from her shoulder. "I'll show you where to put your things, and then we can have some breakfast."

  Leila nodded. Once more she was too busy looking to reply. The kitchen had white-painted cupboards and blue linoleum on the floor, and a yellow plastic cover on the table that was covered with tiny blue and white flowers. Directly opposite the wide door from the living room, another door with a window in the top opened onto what appeared to be a screened-in porch. Just to one side of the door, a window above the sink looked out on dusty-looking trees, and beyond that, the barn and corrals she had seen from the airplane. Her heart quickened when she saw movement in the corrals. Horses.

  "Bedrooms are in here." Cade was waiting for her in another doorway that opened off the kitchen to the right. He moved aside to let her pass, and she found herself in a small hallway with an open doorway- including the one in which she stood-in each of its four walls. Through one she could see a bathroom, with a deep iron tub with feet shaped like claws. The other two were bedrooms.

  "Take your pick," he said, waving her toward them. "I think they're both about the same."

  Leila peeked into both rooms, then walked through the doorway closest to her and placed her bag on the bed. She noticed that it was a much smaller bed than the one in Cade's room in Houston, but she did not linger and look as she had in the other parts of the house. There was nothing personal here, nothing to tell her which room Cade used when he visited the ranch. She felt a strangeness in being there with him so close behind her, and yet, so very far away. With so much unsaid between them there was awkwardness in the silence.

  But, she thought, that is why I am here, because these things must be spoken of-they will be spoken of. But not now. This is not the right time.

  Leaving her bag on the bed, she fixed a smile on her face and turned. "You said we could have breakfast? That is good, because I am hungry." She had eaten some toast with her one cup of coffee before leaving that morning, but it seemed a long time ago. "What must I do to help?" She felt strange little showers of shivers inside and rubbed her arms, though she wasn't cold.

  "You want to help?" Cade looked at her, again with that so superior half smile that so clearly said he didn't see how she could. Leila was beginning to be very annoyed by that smile.

  Back in the kitchen, he opened a drawer and took out a metal tool, which he placed on the countertop. Then he opened a cupboard and took out a large brown can. "If you want to help, why don't you open that while I get the coffeemaker going."

  Leila picked up the tool, which was unlike anything she had seen before. It had two legs that opened when she pulled them, like a pair of scissors. Obviously, she was meant to use the tool to open the brown can, which contained coffee, she could see that. I will not ask him. I will not

  My God, thought Cade, she doesn't even know how to use a can opener. He wondered if she'd ever seen one before.

  "It's…a can opener," he said gruffly, moving closer to her.

  She glanced up at him-a patient look, as if he had said something stupid. "Yes, I know. It is just that I have never seen one…like it…before." There was a smudge of color in each cheek, and he wondered if it was pride, or embarrassment.

  "It's, uh…pretty much just your classic can opener." He edged closer still. "They're kind of a basic necessity around here, since about the only things we can leave in the house are canned goods. Power's unreliable, so we can't leave anything in the freezer. And then there are the mice…"

  "Mice?" She was gazing at him, not with the maidenly horror he'd expected, but with a bright and childlike delight. "Oh, do we have mice? I would very much like to see one." She tilted her head and dimpled thoughtfully. "I do not think I have ever seen a real mouse before."

  Why am I not surprised? Cade thought. Aloud he muttered, "They're a damned nuisance."

  "Perhaps you should keep a cat."

  "Who'd take care of it when there's nobody here?"

  "Perhaps…your neighbor, what was it? Mrs. MacGruder? Since they must come to tend the horses anyway?" Her eyes were wide and ingenuous. He wondered how he'd come to be close enough to her to see himself reflected in their depths.

  "What, once a day? Nah-animals need attention. You can't just leave them on their own all the time."

  "Oh yes," she said softly, "that is true." And she looked at him just long enough before she said it that he felt a mean little stab of guilt.

  "Here, why don't you let me do that?" he said roughly, reaching for the can opener.

  She held it out of his reach. "No. I would like you to show me how to do it." And she added as a breathless afterthought, "Please."

  Cade was awash with feelings he didn't know what to do with. Part of it was anger, or something close, and part was the kind of thing he imagined he might be feeling if he were trapped on a rocky shoal with the tide rising fast. And part of it, if he was honest with himself, was just plain old sexual excitement. It was her body heat, her woman's scent, partly familiar, partly exotic. He should never have let himself get so close to her. He was having trouble keeping his breathing quiet so she wouldn't hear how fast it was. He hoped she couldn't hear his heart hammering.

  "Okay, here's what you do-here, let me show you." He reached again for the can opener.

  And again she pulled it away, out of his reach. "No-I want to do it. Just please show me how."

  What could he do? Gingerly as a rattlesnake wrangler, he reached across her and covered her hands with his. "First you have to open these up…" God, he could hardly breathe.
"Then, you chomp down on the edge of the can-like this, see? That little hiss means you broke the seal. Then, you turn this…"

  He felt like he was going to pass out, honest to God-just like the way he felt when he hadn't eaten in way too long. Only he didn't think he'd ever known hunger quite like this, couldn't remember ever wanting a woman the way he wanted this one. No, not wanting, needing. Like, if he couldn't have her right now, this minute, he might keel over right there on the floor.

  It occurred to him that her hands weren't moving.

  "I think we are finished," she whispered, and she was looking at him, not the can.

  Oh, yeah, Cade thought, we're finished, all right. All his high-minded resolve? Dead…cooked. This was going to happen, and there wasn't a thing he could do to stop it.

  It had come down to a matter of seconds…heartbeats. He could feel her heat and her scent seeping through his shirt and into his skin. His nerve-endings were learning the shape of her breast. She looked up at him and he stared down at her parted lips, and his throat was parched, thirsty almost to the point of madness for the taste of her.

  The taste of her. He remembered it now. Oh yeah, it all came rushing back to him. And he knew in that moment that he'd never stopped thirsting for the taste of her.

  He made a sound…whispered something, maybe her name. His head dropped lower, closing that taunting distance between himself and the thing he craved…

  A loud banging noise made him jerk upright with adrenaline squirting through his system like ice cold fire. The door-dammit. Someone was knocking on the back porch door.

  A moment later, before the shock of that had begun to subside, there came a lighter tapping at the kitchen door. It opened, and a short, bandy-legged man with a completely bald head and cheeks as red as Santa Claus stuck his head in. His neighbor, of course. Deb MacGruder.

  "Hey, how you folks doin'? Heard you come flyin' in."

  It was impossible to stay irritated at ol' Deb, who had to be one of the nicest people ever put on this earth, and Cade didn't even try. Hoping he didn't look or sound as jangled as he felt, he invited the man in, introduced him to Leila and relieved him of the plastic grocery bags he'd brought with him.