When Night Falls

by Cait London

  The word quivered in the air, as if Roman had asked for little, but this was important enough for him now to bend his pride. “Dammit, Shell. I am really sorry. I’ll do the best I can from here on out to be a father to my daughter.”

  He hadn’t looked at her, that muscle in his cheek contracting. “I’m not like my mother. I don’t run off when things get rough—I wouldn’t have run then either…if I had known.”

  “I don’t know what is right now,” she stated honestly, feeling the storm wrap around them just as fiercely as their emotions.

  “Neither do I. But I want to try.”

  Her life was so safe now, but Roman wasn’t. She believed him and yet she feared Dani’s reaction; the tempest of father and daughter could rock all their lives. Her link with Dani was tenuous at best, the teenager ready for flight.

  Roman was right about one thing—he understood Dani’s wild side better than Shelly did. “I’ll think about it.”

  Clyde lifted his face to the wind, inhaling the dampness of it. Excitement throbbed in the storm, because tonight he felt the strength of gods swelling in him; he tasted revenge. Once he had been powerless and ridiculed, and now he was strong. Those who had taken what was his would pay.

  While the thunderstorm raged outside, rain slashing at the windows, Uma sat in candlelight, folding laundry and brooding about Mitchell’s so-called dinner invitation. As often happened in Madrid, telephone service was out, and with the violent weather outside, Mitchell couldn’t possibly expect her to arrive at his house.

  She hadn’t had dinner with a single man, other than Everett and her father, in her lifetime. The situation would have been far too uncomfortable because Mitchell wasn’t an easy man to understand; she was better off staying at home and catching up on laundry and dusting.

  Dusting was therapeutic, the scent of lemon polish filling the room, the old heavy antique furniture from the 1880s gleaming in the candlelight. After her father’s ancestors had staked their land rush claims, the furniture had followed in wagons. It was old and dear and she loved easy nights when she could wear old clothes, have a glass of wine, and polish the old wood.

  She smiled to herself, wrapping the safety of the house around her. Her father was thrilled with his Arizona friend’s collection, swapping stories and pots, and his visit might take at least two months as they scouted possible historical sites. No doubt her father would hear of Mitchell’s pickup cruising beside her this morning, and that she had gone to the ranch with him—and then, and then there was certain to be another revival of the “damned Warrens” and the Lawrence feud with them.

  Uma pushed away the future discussion with her father. When he’d had his heart attack, her move back into the house had served their purposes—she’d needed some thinking room in her marriage—but the silent understanding was that once she was uncomfortable, she might move. Clarence’s expectations and most of Madrid’s were that she would remarry Everett.

  Everett deserved better. She’d just have to work more on finding him someone to date, a wifey sort of woman—just as she had been. She reached for the pad on the sofa beside her and wrote, “Charis Column, due next week—Expectations: Wifey or Partner or Single Lane?”

  Mitchell was definitely an alpha-single male. He clearly wasn’t going to move into the intimacy lane. Next to her note, Uma added, “He who wants sex alone may not be partner material.” Many of her notes sounded like fortune cookie readings, but it was true enough.

  Sexual need fairly hummed from Mitchell. The problem was, she was picking up those vibrations, and they had moved restlessly within her.

  Did she want a life partner, or even a temporary one? She added to the note, “One must understand one’s self prior to a relationship, the goals and expectations. What are they?”

  She shook her head and folded a fluffy seafoam-green bath towel, running her hand across the soft texture before slapping it on the stack near her. Mitchell wasn’t pushing her around, making her feel unneighborly.

  Making her feel. Her hand shook as she reached for the laundry basket at her feet.

  She wondered what it would be like—

  A shadow moved on the front porch, and in the flash of lightning a man’s large form was silhouetted in the glass of the front door. Uma’s hand went to her chest, the rapid fearful beat of her heart. Lauren had been killed, and the murderer of that man had never been found…

  “Uma, open this door,” Mitchell’s deep voice demanded after the next roll of thunder.

  Fearing that he might be hurt, or struck by lightning, Uma hurried to the door.

  Holding a big cardboard box covered with painters’ plastic under one arm, Mitchell stood towering over her, his hair plastered to his head, his black silk shirt damp against his chest, revealing the powerful width of his shoulders and chest. A blast of wind and rain tore at him and his hair caught the wild tempest; the man and the primitive elements seemed to be one. “Mitchell! What on earth are you doing out on a night like this?”

  He smiled tightly at her and then stepped into the house, gently shouldering Uma aside. His foot kicked the door closed behind him. “Did you really think a little bad weather would keep me from you?”

  Still wrapped in his dark mood, his plans for easing into a very personal relationship with Uma waylaid, Mitchell took one look at her wide gray eyes, her slightly parted mouth and lower, to where the men’s large T-shirt pressed against the twin shape of her uptilted nipples and draped loosely to her upper thighs. They were smooth and slender and probably very soft and with the candlelight behind her, he could see every curve of her body, the gentle flare of hips, and the place where her thighs met, and the wind swirled around him to press the thin material against her breasts.

  Her hair was free and fragrant and waving to her shoulders, just the way he’d imagined it would be when he loosened that prim little knot on top of her head, or eased his fingers through those braids, the sensual softness dragging against his skin.

  He forgot the danger, a chilling new discovery that murder still lurked in Madrid; he knew only what he wanted and had to taste.

  “There’s only one way to see if I’m reading your look right.” Mitchell placed the box on an elegant little carved walnut table, steadied it with one hand, and then reached for Uma with the other. He caught the back of her neck, tugged her to him, and brought his other arm around her, drawing that soft, curved body closer against his.

  For a moment he couldn’t breathe. She felt so right, a part of him, flowing and soft and warm. He’d wanted that body heat and more, but he hadn’t expected the tenderness that came with it, pulsing along between them.

  She angled her face up to his—stubborn, strong, and defiant. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t make your dinner invitation, such as it was. And the phones were out,” she said very properly.

  Uma’s cheeks began to color, her eyes flashing beneath the shadowy lashes. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?” she demanded huskily, as her eyes traced his hair and her hands reached to smooth it back. “You’re all wet. You’ll probably catch cold and summer colds are really bad. I’m not taking care of you.”

  She fascinated him and Mitchell couldn’t resist kissing her just a little, beside that soft mouth and then on the other side to see how she would react. She quivered and heated beautifully, her breath catching. The sensual package was all there, warm and trembling and aching—his instincts told him that he could make love with her.

  But would she regret it? He couldn’t take the chance.

  Taking a long, deep breath, Mitchell pushed down his instincts to take her and worry about the consequences later. He couldn’t resist kissing the soft palm that cradled his cheek.

  “I’ve been cooking all day,” he said quietly, watching her, feeling her heart beat against his chest, and raised a hand to open on her back, pressing her lightly against him there. He should be warning her of the danger in Madrid, the fear that the sound of thunder could cover a spray of bullets from a
Browning automatic rifle, a favorite of Clyde Barrow’s. Lonny’s report of the ballistics check had proved the Warren windmill had been laced with the same, a few dug from the weathered wood.

  And the bullets Roman had dug from beneath the ivy on Shelly’s back door matched Clyde’s favorite Colt Model 1911 .45-caliber automatic. A thunderstorm had erupted the night Shelly had gotten her scar; it could have been the graze of a bullet fired at the same time, too. The murdered Pete Jones’s skull damage matched that type of handgun.

  And Mike, an expert at that period of guns, wasn’t talking.

  Mitchell should tell Uma that someone had recently sabotaged the steps at the old garage and sawed the rungs of his ladder.

  Instead, all he could think of was the woman in his arms—holding her, loving her. “Spaghetti. It’s all I know how to make. I made plenty of it when Roman and I were on our own. The salad is a premix, the dressing is bottled.”

  She studied him, her brows lifting slightly, and he could feel the heat pulse from her, her bottom soft within the cup of his hands. “Your hands are wandering, Mitchell.”

  His smile mocked himself and his uncertainty. He wasn’t usually distracted from his logic, which told him that Shelly was definitely in danger, and by way of her friendship, Uma was included. She should be told and he’d planned to gently ease into—

  Ease into the woman, feel her close around him, heat him as he’d never been before… “I’m having a little problem, Uma. You’re it, and you know it.”

  “Your memo this morning wasn’t exactly a friendly invitation. And your technique is certainly to the point,” she whispered huskily.

  He thought of the floor and of the couch and of the upstairs beds and Uma beneath him. “Not exactly. There are detours I hadn’t expected.”

  He wanted her to want him just as badly. Why? Or did it really matter?

  “I’m damn fragile, Uma,” he admitted huskily. She could wind softly inside him, making him uncertain. He hadn’t been uncertain since he’d been the older brother, in a parental role, trying to manage a rebellious younger one.

  And he’d never had trouble with women, that is, wondering what they were thinking—because they hadn’t mattered. “I suppose this intimacy thing is going to be a big deal and this just might be my first time in that neighborhood.”

  Her eyes widened at that, and pricks of electricity skittered between them. She cleared her throat and shook her head, and he felt that quiver run the length of her body. All his sensual antennae leaped in response.

  The moment hovered tantalizingly between them, then Uma said softly, “How nice of you to bring dinner. Please excuse me while I change into something more appropriate.”

  That wasn’t what Mitchell had hoped for, that cool, ladylike withdrawal, but Uma was setting her own terms and he wasn’t forcing her. He nodded and lifted his hands away. “Yes, of course.”

  She hadn’t moved away from him, and he understood that she was considering—what? Intimacy? Sex? If there were negotiations to be made, conditions set, he would rather take on a boardroom of difficult stockholders.

  “If you don’t mind, we’ll have dinner here, on the coffee table,” Uma said. “This is an old house, and there is a slight draft in the kitchen and dining room. Candles do best here when the electricity is out. I’ve never liked kerosene lamps. I’ll be right back.”

  “Yes. Your shirt…is all wet…from me.” He allowed himself a long, slow look down her body, to the breasts he ached to taste, and lower to the dark V between her legs.

  Her breath caught again and that little quiver almost tipped him over the edge, his body aching to hold hers, to slide within the warmth—

  She looked down and then up to meet his eyes. “I think your blush just hit your forehead and is rising to your hairline,” he couldn’t help saying.

  “And you’re enjoying yourself. You’re smirking. Please excuse me.” The dismissal was there, with just a touch of anger, wrapped in the invitation of a perfect hostess.

  When Uma turned, Mitchell enjoyed the view of her hips moving beneath the light cloth, the shadows making his mouth dry and his body harden. The night wasn’t turning out at all and Mitchell frowned as he walked to the couch and grabbed a towel from the laundry basket. He swiped it around his face and hair and tossed it back—the edge tipped a small pad and it toppled to the carpeting. He picked it up and “Charis Notes,” written in Uma’s handwriting, caught him.

  Click. Well, well. Uma was just chock-full of surprises, wasn’t she? Mitchell replaced the pad where it was and began unpacking the dinner he had prepared. All he had to do was to study the book she had written, treating her as she suggested. Okay, so he had one basic priority—sex. But good sex. The kind that both of them would enjoy slowly, thoroughly and—Mitchell didn’t turn when he sensed her returning to the room. He continued laying out the dinnerware. Now that he knew her game, he could play it back to her.

  “Mitchell?”

  “Umm?” He’d study intimacy; he’d—

  “One who wishes more conversation should come upstairs to bed.”

  He froze and slowly placed the fork he had been holding onto the plate. Or he tried to put it there. The fork fell from his fingers onto the floor. When he straightened, he noted the candlelight moving up the stairs—with Uma. One who wishes more conversation should come upstairs to bed.

  Uma. Every molecule of his body locked onto that feminine scent, hardening, tensing. Mitchell sucked in the air he’d forgotten to breathe and rubbed his trembling hands against his damp jeans. He wasn’t prepared; he hadn’t read The Smooth Moves List. Trust Uma to waylay him, ruin his plans—

  With the certainty that she could interfere with anything he planned, Mitchell slowly began up the stairs.

  “Your father isn’t going to like this. For starters, he didn’t want me in the house, much less in your bed,” Mitchell said as Uma lay naked beneath the sheets. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. She wanted that heat and passion and the primitive instincts that drove Mitchell to her, and her to him. It was no impulse of the moment, rather, she had selected the man she wanted to share her bed and body—for the night.

  She trusted him. She’d known him all her life and Mitchell had always tried to do the right thing.

  He was her torment, and he would be her lover. She’d known that when he’d come through the storm to her. Did you really think a little bad weather would keep me from you?

  “I’ll tell Dad and protect you.”

  A man who had made his own way in a tough life, Mitchell snorted at the suggestion he couldn’t defend himself. He moved into the room, studying it in the flashes of light from the storm outside. He noted the sturdy Amish furniture, the clean lines of wood, and placed a hand on the chaise lounge she’d bought, just the thing to read by the window. “I expected something more feminine—ruffles, that sort of thing.”

  “I’ve had that all my life. I wasn’t certain what I wanted when I moved back here to take care of Dad. But I wanted something uncluttered, so that I could make up my mind exactly who I was as a woman, and what I wanted. It just seemed to stay that way. My office has more of the rest of the house. I wanted the comfort of having my mother and grandmother near. They taught me so much.”

  “Some people called your mother ‘the Keeper’ because she knew almost everything about their lives. Now you’re the Keeper, right? You know and you don’t talk.”

  She ached for him. He wasn’t ready to accept the truth, but she would offer that gift—“If a person comes to me and asks about their private family matters, I would tell what I knew. I would tell you about your family, if you wanted. How it was between Fred and Grace—”

  He cut her off with a curt “No.”

  She knew what he was thinking, a male uncertain of his position in her life. Lovemaking with Mitchell would change their lives forever, yet Everett would always be there. “No one has been in this bed but me, and Dani, when she stayed overnight. She was frightened of sto
rms just like this and Shelly was sick and needing rest. I enjoyed playing auntie.”

  “You would.” Mitchell’s dark eyes found her body, locking onto her body, heating it. “Do you know how badly I want you?” he asked in a low, rough tone.

  That was the glorious part—she did. Whatever ran between them was primitive and raw and real, her senses pulsing with it. Did he really want her, to consume her as his expression said he did?

  “You’re on your own, buddy,” she whispered into the shadows between them.

  “Am I? We’ll see, won’t we, unless you change your mind—and you can. I’ll understand,” he said, challenging her with a slow, seductive smile as he began to undress.

  There was the sensual impact, the desire, the heat and the hunger—and the endearing uncertainty. Mitchell wasn’t certain he was in control of the situation or himself and that would bother him.

  She realized that he would always challenge her, and that she would always rise to it. Whatever ran in him, the wildness and the strength, the sweetness and the tenderness, she wanted to ride on that river with him, trusting him as her body told her to. “I’m not changing my mind,” she stated huskily.

  Uma held her breath as Mitchell tossed away his shirt and unbuttoned his slacks, letting them slide to the floor with his shorts and stepping out of them. The flash of lightning hit him—all angles and strength, the desire hardening his face.

  Truth. It rode in the moment like the rising beat of the sensuality, pounding at her. Whatever happened after Mitchell’s lovemaking, she would remember that she wanted him as well.