But what most enchanted herwas the beehive fireplace in one of the room’s rounded corners. It lent a warm, homey feeling to the room.
She felt his scrutiny and looked up to find him watching her. “Will you be comfortable here?” he asked, as if he actually cared. “I have a housekeeper who comes in for half a day during the week.”
She wanted to say that she loved it, that she could live in a place like this forever, but she managed to restrain her enthusiasm and equal his own cool manner. “It’ll do very well while I’m here.”
Nick jammed his hands in his pockets. “Come on, I’ll show you the—” The ringing of the telephone interrupted him. With a sigh, he rolled his eyes toward the beamed ceiling. “I sometimes feel as if a monitoring device announces to the public when I walk in that door.”
She watched him reach into an obscure alcove and withdraw the telephone. The direction of the conversation indicated that the call was from his secretary, so, not wanting to eavesdrop, she wandered into the adjoining room.
The bedroom was a continuation of the same adobe simplicity, with a portion of the walls extending two feet off the hard, mud-tiled floor to form a king-size bed covered with a large Navajo blanket. A hand-carved chest of Mexican pine was the only piece of furniture in the room.
She went to the far door expecting to find another bedroom but found instead a bath done in sea-blue tiles, with a sunken tub shaped in the form of a miniature lagoon. Above, a skylight filtered sunlight on the clusters of small trees and plants that rimmed the tub.
She was ready to strip there and soak her aching body, but Nick’s voice reminded her she was not alone. “It didn’t take your co¬worker long,” he said, coming to stand in the doorway. He leaned against the doorframe, blocking her movement so that she had to tilt her head to look up at him—and what she saw made her quake inside. Bright, glinting eyes, a hard mouth etched by two grooves that belied the smile.
“What do you mean?” she asked, damning her own betraying breathlessness.
Nick ran a fingertip along the short, straight line of her nose. “My secretary called to congratulate me. Our marriage has made headlines in all the state newspapers, thanks to Dee Morley.”
She desperately wished he would not touch her. She remained silent beneath his regard, uncertain how to respond to his news. After all, she thought, this was what Nick had planned, and it was too late for him to regret the marriage now.
“And we’re expected to attend a command performance next week,” he continued. “The governor’s wife is giving a dinner for the beginning of the Christmas novenas.”
“I see,” she said now, not really referring to the party celebrating the nine daily masses held before Christmas. The announcement of Nick’s marriage was one thing, she deduced, but to actually display his country-bumpkin wife to the ridicule of Santa Fe’s elite was quite another.
She brushed past him. “Maybe you can make excuses for me . . . tell the governor’s wife I’m exhausted.” She threw a haughty glance over her shoulder as she moved toward the door to the living room. “After all, isn’t that how a bride’s supposed to feel after her honeymoon?”
“Would you like that?” Nick threatened softly. “Would you like me to make love to you so that you’re too tired to even move off my bed?”
She spun around. “No!” Her fearful gaze went to the large, inviting bed. “And I won’t sleep there, either!”
Nick bridged the distance between them in two strides. He grabbed her forearms and drew her up against him. “Yes, you will, Mrs. Raffer. You will sleep there because I won’t have my housekeeper arrive every morning to find us sleeping apart. And you will attend the party next week. That was the idea of this miserable marriage—to convince everyone that we married out of urgent love.”
He released her abruptly. “I’m going into my office for a while this morning to catch up on things, and you can rest—alone in my bed!” At the front door he turned back and said, “Mrs. Martinez, the housekeeper, will be in around nine. Try to portray the happy bride.”
After he left, she threw herself across the bed, feeling anything but happy. It was almost noon when she awoke to the opening of a door. “Oh, senora, I did not want to disturb you.” A little white-haired lady with Mexican features peeked through the door. “Tomorrow I clean the bathroom.”
She raised on one elbow. “No, that’s all right. It’s time I got up.” She managed a sleepy smile. “You’re Mrs. Martinez?”
“Si, senora.” The old woman’s eyes twin¬kled. “And you are seiior Nicholas’s esposa, his new wife, no? I read about it in the papers.” Her knotted brown hands clasped together. “So romantic! I told Senor Nicholas it was time he settled down. Time for marriage and babies, I told him. He needs someone to love him and take care of him.”
She hated to deceive the well-meaning housekeeper. “Yes, I love him,” she managed to say convincingly, then added, “Very much.”
Later, after Mrs. Martinez had helped remove the brace, Julie took a long bath. She could all too well imagine Nick’s magnificent body stretched out in lithe relaxation in the sunken tub. Across from the tub on an inset counter were Nick’s brush and comb and shaving cologne. Hanging on a hook was his short terry-cloth robe. All about her were his personal effects to constantly remind her of him her every waking hour.
And her hours of sleep had been haunted by images of him—his brown hands adjusting the brace about her shoulders, tying her hair in pig tails, stroking her body with suntan cream. There were images of his handsome face—fierce with passion, gentle with concern, and hard with derision. And then there were the images of his body, which she had glimpsed but never known.
All these images rose up together to mock her now. For she feared that if she were not careful she would fall in love with Nicholas Raffer . . . against her will, against her better judgment, against all logic and reasoning. But then love never was logical, she cynically told herself as she got out of the tub and dried off.
She looked into the mirror above the bath-room counter. “You, Julie Raffer, are a fool,” she said aloud, testing the sound of her new name. “You have married a man who doesn’t love you.”
She slipped into her brace, knowing dismally that she would have to wait for Nick to fasten it for her. Over the brace she put one of the sundresses he had bought her in Cozumel, a lavender-colored one with white lace trimming, then brushed her hair until it curled at the ends.
When Nick came home two hours later she was grating cheese for the topping of a chicken-and-noodle casserole she had prepared. He looked from the neatly set table for two to the steaming casserole pan she had just removed from the oven.
“I—I thought you might be hungry,” she said. “And there was just the canned chicken to fix. I hope you don’t mind.” Why had she not considered that he might not like chicken casserole, that he might have preferred eating out?
“It smells delicious,” Nick said tonelessly and tossed his briefcase on the couch. “I’ll wash up.”
She finished sprinkling the grated cheese on top of the casserole and was pouring tea into the glasses when Nick returned. He held out a chair for her at the dining table, and she took the seat, careful not to brush against him.
But he did not let her escape so easily. “Just a moment,” he said, his hands grasping her shoulders. “Your brace needs to be fastened.” And once more she had to suffer through the exquisite agony of his touch.
After they had begun eating, Nick said, “I looked up your address and had my secretary send a truck over to pack your belongings. Your clothes should be here tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Nick. That was kind of you.” Was that her voice sounding so polite and calm?
He shrugged. “It was Sheila’s idea.”
The casserole stuck in her throat. “Sheila?” she asked, knowing exactly who Sheila was.
Nick’s gaze met hers across the table. “A friend who stopped by to offer her congratula-tions.” He took a drink of te
a, then said, “She reminded me that since our marriage was so. . . sudden, you’d be needing your clothes.”
“That was thoughtful of her,” Julie said sweetly. “I’m sure she didn’t want me running around naked in front of you.”
Nick looked up. A sardonic grin creased the comers of his mouth. “You sound jealous, Mrs. Raffer.”
“I’m not! Mr. Raffer!”
He laughed but let the subject go at that, which infuriated her that much more. She wanted to ask him if he was going to continue to see Sheila, but knew she had no right to question him. His marriage to her was an arrangement of convenience, she reminded herself, not love.
Nick built a fire in the fireplace while she cleaned up the dinner dishes, and she heard him a few minutes later running water in the tub. She realized it would soon be bedtime—and there was just one bed. As each minute passed, she grew more nervous, once almost breaking a glass she was washing in the slippery, sudsy dishwater. She stalled as long as she could, hoping Nick would already be asleep by the time she finished.
With the last dish put away and the kitchen gleaming brighter than in any cleaning com-mercial on television, she could delay no longer. The bedroom was already darkened, and Nick’s long frame was silhouetted on the bed. She held her breath, hoping he was indeed asleep, since he had not slept at all the night before.
Quietly she undressed in the dark. Struggling out of her clothes took longer than usual, and it was not until she was clad only in her panties that she realized she did not have a gown. In Cozumel she had slept nearly nude, but she had been alone. Here in Nick’s house, though . . .
She was still holding her clothes before her, caught in her dilemma, when his voice reached her out of the dark. “Julie, come to bed.”
It was a command. she stiffened. Her hands balled into fists. “I’ve nothing to wear to bed.” Why did her voice sound like a croak?
A short laugh and a shift of the mattress. She could make out now that he had raised on one elbow. “I stopped wearing pajamas when I was ten, Julie.”
Her knees were weak with the confrontation she had been expecting for so long. She had planned to be firm and unyielding. She drew a deep breath, and this time her voice was steadier. “I’ve never slept with a man before—nude,” she added, for she remembered she had slept with him that once in his cabin.
“I’m not any man,” he said. “I’m your husband.”
Her anger was her defense. “And I’m not any woman you can easily bed. I’m a partner in a deal we made, Mr. Raffer!”
“Ah, yes. You haven’t let me forget, have you? Perhaps I should remind you again that I said I wouldn’t force you to do anything. What happens will be of your own choosing.”
When she still hesitated, he snapped, “Good grief, get a shirt of mine out of the chest if it’ll make you feel any safer. But, Julie . . . that shirt won’t make a darned bit of difference if I decide to change my mind about my promise.”
She knew she was being silly, old- fashioned some would call her, about a piece of fabric. After all, Nick had seen her nearly naked, dressed only in her panties and bra. Still, she felt safer, from her own desires if nothing else.
More by touch than by sight she made her way to the chest of drawers and pulled out the first item her hand grasped, a jersey shirt. It was only after she had struggled into the shirt that she realized the clinging material surely revealed her outthrust nipples; she was grateful there was no light in the room.
She slid beneath the sheets, keeping to the far side of the bed. A bed had never felt so comfortable, she thought. But, as tired as she was, she could not sleep. For more than an hour she lay there, afraid to make the slightest movement and draw Nick’s attention. Then, by the time she at last heard his steady, rhythmic breathing of sleep, her mind was too obsessed with the thought of the man himself.
She tossed and turned, and rolled and wriggled, until her head was reeling in its efforts to keep from thinking the same thought, to keep from seeing the same images. At last she gave in and let her fantasy take over. And her fingers. Stealthly, they stoled out to barely graze his jawline. Instantly, her hand was mancled by his grip. Her lids fluttered open to find Nick’s dark face over her own.
“Mrs. Raffer, are you a hypocrit that you can deny you want me,” she heard the sardonic grin in his voice, “and yet satisfy yourself when you think I’m sleeping.”
“I . . I . . ”
“You what?” He pulled her against him, and she could feel his angry breath on her nose.
“I want to know more about you,” she said hoarsely. “Within safe limits.” She added, amazed by her immediate inventiveness.
“Know . . . or explore?” His demanding hands held her body captive. “Well, I can set the safe limits, if that’s all that’s bothering you. Just use the safe word, ‘stop.’
“What if I say the word now?”
“Then you truly are a hypocrit.” With infinite leisureliness, he lowered his mouth to hers. She sighed, letting herself feel the hard-soft touch of his lips. Languorously they scouted the contours of first her mouth, then her eyelids, her cheebones, and back to her mouth. She was chained by his kisses of passion. She should have struggled from the arms that embraced her. She should have called out the safe word, but the could not bring herself to miss out on the exquisite feelings starbursting throughout her body, even down to her toes and up to her scalp. The scalding kisses at the hollow of her neck, between the valley of her breasts, alongthe smooth curvature of her rib cage, made her forget everything until she was aflame with want of him.
“Can I continue?” he whispered agasint her ear. By now, he was half atop her.
She sighed tremulously and slipped her hand about his neck to draw his mouth down to hers. Her lips parted beneath the insistence of his own, and the probing kiss set a wildfire of desire in her so that she pressed against Nick’s long body seeking what only he could give her.
Somewhere in the passion-drugged recesses of her mind she slowly became aware that Nick had deftly stripped her of her clothing. She realized with terror that soon she would be another name to add to his list of conquests. Only the suddenness of her move permitted her to escape the hands that ravaged her. She jerked to a sitting position, clutching the blanket before her. “Stop! Stop!”
When she would have fled from the bed, Nick’s hand at her wrist held her imprisoned. “Love,” he said mockingly, “look where you are—on my side. You came to me. Your arms slid around me.”
“But you knew better! But you don’t know me, Mr. Raffer. I’m not one of your easy twits!” And with that she sprang from the bed, the blanket still clutched about her. “I’m sleeping on the couch from now on,” she told the darkened face,
But even on the couch she could not sleep that night with the memory of Nick’s soft laughter ringing in her ears and his burning touch still tingling her flesh.
Chapter Seven
“Ah, senora, you do not feel so well?” Mrs. Martinez asked, pausing as she polished the large rectangular glass coffee table.
“Just a little tired, I guess,” she said.
And it was true; she was not sleeping well at nights that past week, and she was rising extra early so Mrs. Martinez would not suspect she did not sleep with Nick. Worse, the couch was uncomfortable. Julie wished he would ask, even command, her to get back in his bed. But her pride forbade her—and fear.
For, once Nick claimed her body as his, she was afraid he would no longer want her. She saw the desire in his eyes, the hunger for her etched on his face . . . but after he possessed her, would he discard her along with all the other women he had known? All but Sheila Morrison, that was.
And the thought of Sheila Morrison reminded her of the Christmas party the governor’s wife was giving that evening. Nick had told Julie over breakfast that morning that not only would the state’s politicians be attending but also Santa Fe’s cultural element that so heavily populated that area—the artists and writers. Which meant, in Jul
ie’s mind, Sheila Morrison.
She sighed at the dismal prospect of meeting Sheila. Twice in the past week Julie had talked with Pam, and her friend had told her that the Sun planned full coverage of the gala event—photographs and the whole works. “No doubt Sheila Morrison’s gorgeous face will occupy every page of the society section,” Pam had said dryly.
Julie knew that Pam was dying for her to divulge all the details of her so-called romantic elopement, but her friend had only said, “I don’t believe it! Can you imagine, you made the catch of the year, Julie Dever—I mean Raffer!”
Even Jim had called that week to congratulate her on her marriage, and if there had been any bitterness or jealousy in his voice, he had hidden it well. He had also requested that she continue her editorial column until he found someone to take her place. But she quickly informed him she had no intention of giving up her job.
Nick would probably be just chauvinistic enough, she thought grimly, to resent her working—after all, a senator’s wife working might not make a good impression on the public! She hoped he did resent it; it was just one more reason to dislike him. As long as she could maintain an unfavorable image of Nick, she was safe from the danger of ever falling in love with him. Heaven forbid! She felt only a deep sympathy for the poor, hapless young women who did give their hearts to that unfeeling man.
She finished writing the thank-you notes for the wedding gifts that had begun arriving that week and had Mrs. Martinez help her remove the brace before the old woman left for the day. Since Julie would have to face Sheila Morrison that evening, she wanted to look her best, and she was still in the tub when Nick arrived home. She had only time to draw her arms across her breasts as he pushed open the door.
Made For Each Other Page 7
