Suddenly...Marriage!

by Marie Ferrarella

  Desire leaped, landing with both feet inside of him, claiming his resolve, his restraint. Claiming everything and demanding tribute. Immediately.

  His mouth raced along hers, covering her face, her shoulders, her throat, with a network of kisses that pulled her tightly into the same web in which he found himself.

  She was his, his for the taking. And he had never felt so humbled, so thrilled, over any acquisition in his life. His own heart was pounding as he felt her fingers fumble with the buttons on his shirt.

  Mine.

  The single word throbbed in his brain.

  Chapter Eleven

  He couldn’t do it.

  Heaven help him, he couldn’t make himself do it. Grant couldn’t make himself take what was being offered to him so beguilingly. Couldn’t take it because it was being offered to him. Frustration warred with disbelief, taking a back seat to an emotion he wasn’t familiar enough with to put a name to.

  He should probably have his head examined, Grant thought. It was obvious that there was a malfunction of some sort in his synapses, destroying the working part of his brain. Why else would he be saying “no” when everything else was begging him to say “yes”?

  Struggling with a baser, needier part of himself, exercising self-control of which a superhero would have been envious, Grant placed his hands over Cheyenne’s and stopped her fingers from unbuttoning his shirt, from skimming along his burning skin.

  Calling himself every kind of fool in the book, Grant gently moved her hands aside.

  Dazed, her body throbbing and feeling as if it were on fire, Cheyenne looked up at Grant with wonder and confusion in her eyes. The silent question urged an explanation from him.

  “I think we’d better stop here.” She would probably never know, never even begin to guess, what this cost him, he thought. Even now, his gut twisted in protest. Sir Galahad hadn’t been noble, he’d been a damn gelding to have walked away time and again from the finest that Camelot had to offer.

  She wasn’t going to retreat. She wasn’t, Cheyenne told herself sternly. Not after coming this far. “Why? Am I doing something wrong?”

  Wrong? He’d never been involved in anything that had seemed so right. But it wasn’t himself he was thinking of right now. It was her and what it would do to her if he allowed this to continue.

  “No, but I am.” He wanted to touch her, to hold her, but he couldn’t allow it. He couldn’t say this to her if he touched her, if he felt her soft skin yielding beneath his palm. “This isn’t right. You don’t want this.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  The urgency of her feelings was barely suppressed in her voice. Through trying to play games with herself, through trying to deny her feelings, she knew that she wanted this very, very much. To have him make love with her even if she couldn’t have him love her. She would settle for that, because she needed it. Needed to feel his touch, needed him to make love with her.

  She felt like a woman on the verge of an explosion.

  He couldn’t let her make this mistake, not when he had engineered the deck to be stacked against her.

  “Now,” he agreed. “You want this now because I’ve been trying to seduce you all evening. Because I’ve been trying to seduce you ever since I watched you walk toward me in the restaurant. But not because you had any choice in the matter.”

  She didn’t understand what he was getting at, only that he was refusing her. Something cold began to spread through her—cold and hurtful. “You’ve changed your mind?”

  He saw the flash of hurt in her eyes and wanted to take her into his arms to soothe it away. But he’d only negate what he was trying to do, what was costing him so much to do.

  Instead, he tried to make her understand. “Oh, I still want you, want you so bad, my gut feels as if it’s been set on fire. But I don’t want you on my conscience, Cheyenne. You made it perfectly clear what you wanted out of a relationship and that’s not what I’m offering.”

  Did he think she was a mental incompetent, that she hadn’t taken that into account? That she hoped to dazzle him so much that he would drop to his knees and instantly propose? Did he think she was that much of a fool?

  Her hands clenched at her sides, she raised her chin. “I know that.”

  He searched her face, wanting to assure himself that it was all right. That she understood he was doing this for her, not himself. If it were strictly up to him, he would have been indulging himself in the fantasy that had haunted him ever since he’d first seen her.

  “So you understand?”

  Cheyenne felt shaken down to her very toes. “Not you. I don’t understand you at all. But I think I understand my mother a little better.”

  “Oh, God, Mamma, I never knew you felt this awful. I’m so sorry I didn’t try to understand more.”

  Dragging a hand through her hair, she took a deep breath. It didn’t help. She couldn’t stop the trembling she felt inside. Trembling not over what she’d almost done, but what Grant had done to her. He’d reduced her to a mass of palpitating desire and needs, deliberately hooking her and reeling her in, only to cut her loose at the last possible minute.

  The rotten snake in the grass. He was telling her that, at bottom, this was nothing more than what she had always stayed clear of. A one-night stand. All he wanted was a one-night stand with her. And then they would incline their heads politely and go their separate ways, perhaps not even acknowledging one another the next time they met in a crowded room.

  In his own mind, she supposed he saw himself as being noble. Cheyenne felt tears forming and struggled to keep them away.

  “You surprise me, O’Hara,” she said hoarsely, wishing she could put a more sarcastic bite to her voice. But this was the best she could manage if she wanted to keep the tears from surfacing.

  “You?” He laughed and there was a trace of astounded bitterness in the sound. “I sure as hell surprised myself.”

  “I guess you have more moral fortitude than you thought.” He wasn’t fooling her, she thought. She saw through this ruse. Should have seen through it all along. But her own weakness had blinded her. That, and his charm. “Either that, or you didn’t want me as much as you claimed.”

  Anger flared in his eyes like a match struck in the dark. He was trying his damnedest to do the decent thing, to let her go. If he had to argue about it, he’d show her just how “little” he wanted her.

  “Don’t push it, lady. One thing I never do is lie. I don’t say things because they’re expedient, or because they’re what someone else wants to hear, just so I can get my way.”

  His hands raised before him, he began to back away toward the door. With his hands raised, he couldn’t touch her the way every fiber of his body was begging him to do.

  “Now I’m going to get out of here before my ancestors stop rolling over in their graves and rise up to give me a swift kick in the right direction.”

  Her heart felt as if it were going to crack inside her chest. “Which would be...?”

  Grant glanced toward the bed in the next room. “I think you already know the answer to that.” And then he closed the door behind him, leaving quickly before he could change his mind.

  Cheyenne stood there, her hands at her sides, staring at the door for a long time. She was too numbed, too stunned to move, and completely at a loss as to what to think or how to feel.

  Relief didn’t seem an appropriate enough reaction. Only anger was. But at what, and at whom, she couldn’t begin to say.

  All she knew was that she was alone.

  He had to be an idiot.

  A completely, unadulterated, A-one, first-class idiot. The most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on, who wasn’t just an empty shell but an intelligent woman with substance and a sense of humor, had all but handed herself to him on a silver tray and he had pushed the tray aside.

  Grant stalked into the elevator and punched the button for Cheyenne’s floor.

  He was miles past being an idiot. There were design
er shoes out there that were smarter than he was.

  After an hour of telling himself that he had done the good and noble thing, Grant had given up the argument. He was going back to Cheyenne, ready to rescind, to grovel, perhaps even to beg. Certainly to tell her that he’d been certifiable when he’d refused to make love with her.

  And he would be certifiable if he couldn’t convince her how wrong he’d been. How right they were to take pleasure when it was right there before them.

  Grant shook his head in disbelief at his own act of utter stupidity. People went their whole lives without finding the kind of electricity that snapped and crackled between them, and they had just stumbled across it. But he had turned his back on it, thinking it was the only fair thing to do.

  It wasn’t fair; it was stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  Rehearsing what he would say to her, his brain only finding vague snatches that made any sense, Grant knocked on Cheyenne’s door. He felt like a man about to enter the bowels of a coal mine without the benefit of even a candle to light the way. But he was here and he wasn’t turning back. Not this time.

  Why wasn’t she answering? How could she sleep at a time like this? He hadn’t even made an attempt to go to bed, knowing it was useless. Everything was so tightly wound within him, he was ready to blast off, not sleep. Venting the frustration galloping through him, Grant pounded on the door. “Cheyenne, it’s me, open the door.”

  Still nothing.

  He didn’t understand. Why wasn’t she answering, at least to keep him from waking up everyone else?

  Maybe something was wrong.

  Maybe—

  He stopped conjuring up excuses and went to get the concierge. If something was wrong, he needed a key to get into her room.

  The lobby was almost deserted when he got off the elevator. Grant quickly hurried to the front desk. The young, slightly balding clerk looked up at him with mildly sleepy eyes.

  “I think the lady in suite 2111 might be ill. She’s not answering her door and—”

  The desk clerk successfully stifled a yawn. He’d been on duty less than an hour and this was his second agitated hotel guest. Why weren’t these people asleep in their beds where he wished he was?

  Calling up a screen, he glanced at it just to make certain he wasn’t mistaken. No, there it was, white on blue. “The lady in 2111 isn’t answering her door because she’s checked out, sir.”

  “Checked out?” Grant echoed incredulously. “But that’s impossible.” There had to be some mistake. “I just spoke with her not more than an hour ago. I—”

  The clerk wasn’t a man who liked to argue. He could see this needed visual verification. With the greatest of diplomacy, the man turned the swivel monitor around to face his hotel’s guest.

  “See for yourself, sir. She checked out not forty-five minutes ago.”

  Grant stared at the line the desk clerk was indicating, his brain refusing to process the information he saw there. But he had to. Cheyenne had left the hotel. Just like that. Without a word, without a goodbye or a gotake-a-flying-leap. Nothing.

  Grant collected himself, knowing he must look to the clerk like some wild-eyed madman. “Did she say where she was going?”

  The clerk turned the monitor back around to face him. “No, sir.”

  Grant nodded. He didn’t remember turning away and walking to the elevator. But he must have, because he found himself standing before the silver doors.

  His mind dashed futilely in several directions at once, gaining no ground. He thought of calling Riley and having him bring around the limousine. Grant wanted to do something, to go after her. But where did he begin? Had she gone to the airport to grab the first flight back to L.A.? If so, what terminal, what flight?

  But she hated to fly, so maybe she took the train back, or a bus line.

  There were too many possibilities and too little time to follow them up. The odds were against him finding her before she left New Orleans.

  Maybe she wasn’t even going to L.A.

  Blowing out a breath, he felt as if he wanted to hit something, to feel his knuckles come in contact with something solid and to have the pleasure of pummeling it.

  He strode back to the elevator, shaking his head. Now he was getting violent. What next? He’d never felt such deep, gut-wrenching anger consuming him before, never felt as if he’d wanted to take his aggressions out physically.

  The silver doors closed, sealing him into his own personal hell as he rode back up to his floor.

  Maybe it was better this way, he told himself. Maybe fate, or destiny, or whatever it wanted to call itself, was stepping in to stop him from making a stupid mistake. He’d already sensed that Cheyenne Tarantino wasn’t like the other women he’d encountered. This one could knot up his insides, get under his skin and in the way of the rest of his life.

  Look what the woman had already managed to turn him into and he hadn’t even slept with her yet.

  He’d get the annulment. He was better off not seeing her again, certainly not making love with her and perhaps getting himself hooked on something that...

  That what? he demanded to himself sharply, getting off on his floor. That gave him pleasure, made him happy?

  Just what the hell was he saving himself from?

  Grant muttered a ripe curse as he let himself back into his room. He felt as if someone were playing Ping-Pong with his brain.

  Time. He needed time to clear his head. Time to think like a human being and not like a walking hormone. That was all this was about, he insisted, slamming the door behind him. Hormones, nothing but hormones. The sooner he got that into his head, the sooner he’d get over this whole episode and get on with his life.

  No woman was going to mess up his life, not the way women had messed up his father’s. No siree, he was too smart to let that happen.

  Cheyenne slipped the silver tongue into the buckle, then dropped her hands in her lap. Her cold fingers knotted together as if they had a life of their own.

  She wasn’t sure whether she could ever forgive him, she thought, staring straight ahead of her as the plane taxied down the runway. As a matter of fact, she was sure of it. She’d never forgive Grant O’Hara for what he had done to her.

  He’d amused himself with her. Amused himself at her expense. He’d knocked her down several pegs. He’d pursued her so that she couldn’t think straight, made her so crazy with desire that she was ready to make love with him, to turn her back on everything she believed in, and then he’d flung it all back in her face with some paltry excuse.

  Didn’t want her on his conscience.

  Ha!

  Men like Grant O’Hara didn’t have a damn conscience. He’d gone through this elaborate charade—telling her he couldn’t think straight for wanting her so much—just to see if he could have her. And then when he had discovered that he could, he wasn’t even interested enough to go through with it.

  Well, she’d show him, she thought, looking out the window and seeing the ground become smaller. She’d show him all right. Wait until he saw the article that was going to accompany the photographs in Style. That would certainly hit him where he lived.

  She’d be careful to pick the most unflattering photographs. They’d accent the prose she intended to attach. She’d expose him for the sanctimonious, double-dealing snake that he was. Then readers would see just how high and mighty Mr. Grant O’Hara was.

  The words echoed back in her mind.

  Appalled, Cheyenne dragged her hands over her face. Oh, what was she doing? She couldn’t let her personal feelings color what she wrote, what she presented. This was supposed to be an unbiased interview and she was a professional, for God’s sake. She took pride in the fact that she was bound to the truth.

  Even if he wasn’t.

  Dirty, rotten cad. How dare he kiss her like that, make love to her with his eyes, with every movement of that strong, hard body—and then walk away, pretending he was doing it for her own good?

  Damn hi
m, anyway.

  She blinked back tears that she hadn’t even realized she’d been crying.

  Well, the least she could do was to stop payment on her check. She wasn’t about to pay fifteen-hundred dollars to be made to feel inadequate. There was no way she was handing over that much money to be the butt of a joke he was playing on her. She’d call her bank as soon as it was open and—

  And what? Tell them not to make payment?

  She couldn’t do that. The money was going to charity, not to him. She couldn’t take out her frustrations on some innocent child who could benefit from her inadvertent contribution. It wasn’t the child’s fault she’d been taken for a ride, duped like some addled, celebrity-worshipping groupie.

  It was Grant’s fault, but there was no way she could make him pay for it. No way at all.

  Brushing away her tears with the tip of her fingers, Cheyenne sank lower into her seat, more miserable than she’d ever been in her life. So miserable, she didn’t even realize the flight attendant was talking to her until the woman gently touched her shoulder.

  Stifling a gasp, Cheyenne bolted upright in her seat, straining against the seat belt.

  “Are you all right?” the woman repeated, looking concerned. “Can I get you anything?”

  No, I’m not all right, she thought. I may never be all right again.

  Chagrined, Cheyenne pressed her lips together and shook her head. “No, that’s all right. I just get nervous, flying,” she mumbled, and then realized belatedly that she had actually managed takeoff without feeling as if her stomach was going to bail out.

  Well, at least he’d done that much for her: kept her so preoccupied plotting her revenge that she hadn’t dwelled on the fact that she was afraid of flying.

  She’d send him a medal, she thought sarcastically. Tied to an asp.

  An understanding look entered the woman’s brown eyes. “The weather bureau promises clear skies from here to L.A.,” the attendant told her kindly. “There’s really nothing to worry about.” She peered into Cheyenne’s face. “Are you sure I can’t get you anything?”