by Ann Major
She yanked her fingers away, but not before his had touched them. Her face was as vividly red as a bush fire. He was afraid she might pop a blood vessel if he delayed her exit a second longer. Still, under the circumstances, a parting shot was irresistible.
"You know what they say?" he whispered silkily.
"No. And I can tell by your smirk I don't want to know, either!"
He studied the curve of her full, lush lips. He longed to kiss her. It would be so easy to pull her into his arms. So easy to see if he could turn her blazing anger into blazing passion.
"I'm going to tell you anyway," he said. "They say the second seduction is usually easier—the philosophy being that a fallen temple is more easily plundered. Anyway... I'm looking forward to your stay at Jackson Downs. You said you were writing a book. When you're not doing that and I'm not fighting thieves and murderers, I'll have more than enough time..." The passion in his dark, hot look mesmerized her, and she swayed toward him. His voice was low and charged with emotion as he finished his taunt. "More than enough time to take a tour of the temple...and explore all its charms before conquering it completely and making it mine."
Her face went as white as the painted boards behind her. Her mouth was trembling with rage.
She was as exquisite as rare porcelain.
He was filled with an overpowering urge to seize her, to taste her. Would she melt in his arms? Or would she fight? Either activity would have been most enjoyable.
"You look faint," he murmured solicitously, staring sympathetically at her.
"I've never fainted in my life!"
"Still, you'd better get out of the heat."
When he opened the door, she stormed inside.
He heard her brisk footsteps leaping up the stairs, taking them two at a time, and he obligingly slammed the door after her.
Then he sank down in his wicker chair and chuckled softly.
She would be his.
Correction. She already was.
She was just too stubborn to admit it.
And when he was through with her, he would force himself to turn his back on her, as once she’d rejected him. He imagined himself in that pleasant moment—satisfied, proud, thoroughly finished with her. In control.
Then a cool wind whispered across the veranda, and the shadows from the rain forest crept across the lawn.
Now that she had gone inside he felt alone, and the same dismal darkness that had filled his heart for the past ten years filled it now—jealousy, rage, love and betrayal. Most of all there was an all-engulfing sensation of hopelessness.
In an attempt to improve his mood, he told himself it was time she paid for what she had done.
Seven
Damn her. It was time he seized control.
For two days Jess had sulked. For two days Tad had endured nothing except stony silences from her, nothing except dark, closed looks of deep animosity every time he attempted to break through the barrier of her tenacious will and tease her. When he addressed her, Jess would answer him only if Meeta was nearby. Then Jess would point her pretty chin high in the air and say in her sternest, bossiest tone to Meeta, "Tell Mr. Jackson thus-and-so." Before he could reply, Jess would turn on her heel and huffily march away to some safer quarter.
For two days Jess had clung stubbornly to her anger.
Despite his frustration, Tad couldn’t help feeling pleased by her reaction. Could a woman stay mad so long over so little if she were not deeply involved? Every time he was with her, he had felt a new and furious tension in her.
Was she was mortally afraid of having her temple sacked? Or did she want it sacked and hate herself for wanting it? Naturally the second analysis appealed to his conceit the most, and he couldn’t help chuckling at the delicious thought.
But enough was enough. He was tired of her sulky silences and pointed chin in the air when he baited her. On that third morning, he stomped through the house looking for Jess.
Instead he found Meeta in an emerald-and-gold sari feeding a mulish Lizzie in the kitchen. Lizzie always bounded out of bed before dawn, only to pout and be difficult. "Purple!" Lizzie screamed. Only when Meeta smeared grape jelly on her eggs did Lizzie poke at her eggs with a fork.
Sugar and eggs. It was disgusting. He was surprised Bancroft allowed such a diet.
"Where’s Bancroft?" he thundered, his deep voice unusually resonant in the quiet house.
Lizzie dropped her spoon, and grape-spattered egg hit the floor. At this sudden eruption of sound in her peaceful kitchen, Meeta's liquid dark eyes rose swiftly to his. "Madam Doctor has gone swimming," she replied in a gentle, soothing tone.
Because it was impossible to shout at such a woman, he softened his voice. "Swimming? You let her go alone?"
Meeta nodded meekly. "I can't stop Madam Doctor."
Like most bullies, Jess always surrounded herself with human doormats who were too afraid of her to oppose whatever outrageous behavior she might dream up.
"Daddy, you’re being mean to Aunt Jess again!"
"Mean?" He lifted his eyebrows. "Me? I'm never mean."
"You are to her!"
Bancroft had turned his own daughter against him!
"You eat your eggs, young lady!" He grabbed the jelly jar. "Without anymore of this!"
Lizzie was screaming the frantic word "purple" as Tad stormed out of the house and ran down to the beach. At the edge he scanned the waves. An endless expanse of glimmering turquoise stretched toward the horizon where a red sun hung low.
Jess was nowhere to be seen. The sun was turning the water a vivid red. A tremor of anxiety traced through him as he searched for any sign of a swimmer. He was remembering another time, another woman who had supposedly gone swimming alone, a woman who had never returned. If he had to stalk the whole island looking for Bancroft, he would. And when he found her...
His eyes on the water, he began to stomp through the thick sand, mindless of it until the coarse stuff practically filled his boat shoes and ground painfully against his bare toes. Half an hour later, he was drenched with perspiration.
He was about to give up when he spotted her, dripping wet, kneeling in a spot of dappled sunlight where thick jungle and a jewel-red hibiscus grew to the beach.
He frowned fiercely, feeling so annoyed he probably radiated grumpiness. She had already been swimming! He felt the sick sensation in the pit of his stomach ease even as his temper worsened.
Bancroft's thick, lustrous gold hair was wet and lay glued against her neck. Water glistened on her golden arms. She wore a plain black suit. This scrap of thin, wet stretch fabric was plastered to her well-endowed curves so snugly little was left to his imagination.
He was struck anew by how lovely she was despite her bossy, hell-on-wheels feminism. Damn it. Why did she have to look so deliciously damp and flushed from her swim? She couldn't have been sexier if she were nude. He didn't know what he really wanted to do most—to throttle her or to enfold her in his arms and kiss her good morning.
Her fingers were sifting the sand that wasn't sand at all, but tiny pieces of coral. She held her hand to the sun and looked at all the strange patterns and shapes of the tiny broken pieces. Her snorkel and fins lay half buried beside her.
He moved toward her until his shadow fell across her, and she looked up to see him looming tensely over her. His mouth was tight, his expression grim.
The sand trickled through her fingers, some of the grains sticking to her wet skin.
His gaze flickered briefly across her lips, which were full and luscious. God, she was a beauty. Someday, when he was in the mood for that particular battle, he would tell her that it had always been his opinion that she'd make a perfect centerfold.
Her eyes were wide and dark and frankly curious.
"Hello, Jackson," she said. Those were the first words she had deliberately addressed to him in three days.
He felt a fresh surge of anger that she had been swimming alone. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
She glanced at him without even a trace of her former sulky attitude. "Swimming."
"Do you think I'm blind?"
"You asked."
"Don't you know anything, Bancroft? You shouldn't swim alone. Especially since you're a woman."
Usually she would have bristled at such a tyrannical tone. Usually she would have jumped at the chance to defend an attack against her sex, but she seemed in an odd mood.
"What’s it to you?"
“Nothing.” He shouldn't care, and the realization that he did terrified him.
She seemed worried about something. "You know, I—I usually don't have a superstitious bone in my body."
"I know."
"So this is going to sound ridiculous—coming from me."
"Well?"
"Something drew me to this place."
"Something drew you..." He started to shake like an engine about to explode. "Don’t be an idiot. This is where—" He stopped when he saw a small black face in the rain forest behind her. Then the child darted away.
"I didn't go far," Jess said. "I stayed in shallow water. Just a few feet away in that clear water, there are the most wonderful fish. They are beautiful colors and they all play around like friends."
"Friends?" He snarled the word. He remembered that other morning when he'd come to this same beach and the coppers had shown him the bits of rubber diving hose, all that had presumably been left of his wife.
A shadow must have crossed his face because Jess got up slowly and came to him. "Where did Deirdre die?"
For a long moment he stared at the sand, at the way bits of it were stuck to Jess's slim wet ankles, at the way her thighs glistened.
"Here?" she whispered.
He looked up at her, into her solemn, dark eyes. "Maybe. The coppers found her dive gear here."
She came to him and touched him gently on his arm, and he shuddered at even this light brush of her fingers. He sprang back from her.
He wanted revenge, power over her. Not to be made aware of her power over him.
"I sensed something," she said softly. "I don't know how, maybe it’s the twin thing, but I did."
"Supposedly she was scuba diving not far from here," he muttered.
"Alone?"
He nodded. "She did it often."
"You're sure? Did she have…a friend...on the island? Anyone she might have met…and gone out with?"
"You mean a lover?”
She nodded.
“Not that I know of…but maybe."
She was regarding him thoughtfully. "It's a dangerous sport even when you go with someone else. Why would she come here by herself? Why would she risk— No, I think she was with someone."
"I’m not sure. Didn't you know your twin at all, Bancroft? She always did what she wanted, without regard for the consequences." He stopped himself and wearily raked his hand through his hair. "Hell. What am I saying? I never understood her.”
“You married her.”
“Right.”
"Maybe you should have tried harder."
His mouth thinned. He turned away abruptly, not liking the sharp note of accusation in Jess's voice. He was uncomfortable talking about his marriage with anyone, especially Jess, the one woman who'd had a lot to do with setting his life on the wrong course. But Deirdre had talked too much, and to Jess. For the first time in a year, he felt the need to say something in his own defense. So instead of walking away and repressing his feelings as he usually did, he squared his shoulders and turned back to her.
"Look, I'm not in the habit of talking about my marriage. Not to anyone."
"I know that," she whispered.
"So, I don't know why I'm talking to you—of all people!" He stopped and clenched his jaw so tightly he could feel the muscles of his cheek jumping. "Whether you believe me or not, I swear I wanted to make her happy. I tried as hard as I knew how. Nothing worked. We both tried, but we never really touched each other as people. Not even in the beginning...before all the trouble."
"And I always thought you two were so happy back then."
"Happy?" Low, harsh laughter came from his throat. "We were in hell."
"But Deirdre told me—"
"Damn it! Forget what she said! She only wanted everyone to think we were happy. Especially you. Because of..."
Because of that night, he'd almost said, remembering the night when he'd made love to Jess.
He struggled to go on. "I wanted people to think we were happy, too. We had everything money could buy—rich friends, parties. At first Deirdre was insatiable for all the material comforts she'd grown up without. But eventually she wanted more than just the trappings of a successful marriage, and I couldn't give her that. There was an emptiness between us, a coldness, a void."
Feeling tortured, he stared past Jess. "She had other men. She kept a place in Brisbane and this cottage. Despite its vast size, Australia is a small country in a sense. Rumors got back to me. Sometimes she would stay away for weeks. Then she would come back and things would be better for a while. She would go out riding with me, pretend an interest in the operation of the station. She’d even work in the office, helping me. Then she’d grow bored and beg me to take her to Brisbane. If I took her, I couldn’t stay long enough to suit her because I’d worry about the station, so the inevitable dissatisfactions always returned.
“I was the wrong man. Our life was the wrong life. It got so I wanted to bury myself in my work and never leave the station. Lizzie was caught in the middle. Then the trouble started."
He stopped himself. "If you want to know the truth, the amazing thing about our marriage was that we stayed together ten years."
His mouth was compressed grimly with the memory of that time.
Jess took hold of his wrist and laid her other hand palm-to-palm over his large brown hand. He felt her gentle warmth seeping into his skin.
"I—I'm sorry," she said. "I always thought..."
"Jess—" he began, shrugging his shoulders. "I shouldn’t talk about her when she’s not here to defend herself. Besides, there's no way you could possibly understand."
"But I do. When our parents divorced, Mother raised Deirdre, and I lived with Dad in oil camps all over the world. We didn’t have a lot growing up. She said she had to work to help Mother put food on the table when she was in high school. Deirdre always felt she could have been so much more, if she’d had more…while I thought we had enough. Daddy always took me to the library, so I had books. He tried to instill character and a sense of intellectual curiosity about the world. Growing up in third world countries, I was always aware that there were children who had less. I could too easily imagine their pain. Sometimes I would lie awake at night and wonder what would happen to us if anything happened to our parents. Would we starve? So, I read, seeking answers. Deirdre thought if she married a wealthy man, she’d be happy. I think she was impressed by your family, the Jacksons.”
“She thought ranching would be more glamorous than it is.”
“For what it’s worth, I haven’t solved the world’s problems. I haven’t even solved my own."
He saw her loneliness and her fear and her courage as a child. He sensed that she had known deep unhappiness in her own marriage, as well.
As always he felt the pull of that special something between them. More than anything he wanted to take her in his arms and bury his lips against her throat where her pulse throbbed unevenly.
She held her breath. So did he, inexorably drawn against his will. Silence crashed around them, and for one long, self-conscious minute they both stared longingly at one another.
Abruptly her brows knitted and she pushed him away, her fear of sharing any intimacy with him, no doubt, as great as his. Firmly she clasped her hands together and tamped down her feelings.
In her most matter-of-fact voice she said, "Jackson, you two stayed together because you were both too cussed and stubborn to quit. I was just as stubborn. That’s why I kept tramping around the world, telling mysel
f I was making a difference. There's not anything amazing about why you stuck with her. Not when you consider that you're about the most ornery and mule-headed person I've ever known."
His eyes flashed. "Oh, really?"
A gust of wind blew across the beach, and she shivered. He leaned down and picked up her towel, unfolded it and drew it gently around her shoulders. Her skin was icy cool beneath his hot fingertips.
He felt a rush of excitement. He wanted to draw her into his arms and warm her with his body heat.
"I hope you don't mind if I return the compliment and say that you are the most ornery and the most mule-headed person I've ever known too," he said lazily.
She smiled. "I know all about sticking to a plan long after I knew it wasn’t working for me."
"Truce?" he whispered.
There was a momentary silence as his eyes ran over her from the top of her golden head, down the thick, concealing drape of towel to her shapely calves and ankles. She had long slim feet. Elegant feet. He watched one of her bare toes curl and uncurl in the sand. Even her toes seemed sexy to him.
"Truce." She nodded. "For now. Until you misbehave again."
He watched the sexy toe bury and unbury itself in the soft, warm sand. It was a good thing the thick cotton towel he'd covered her with hid those parts of her anatomy that so tempted him and so embarrassed her.
"Knowing me, that won't be long," he said. "Only this time, you're going to misbehave, too."
"Not me. I always behave myself."
“Not with me.”
She shifted from one foot to the other, and the towel dropped a couple of crucial inches. He saw the erect button tips of her nipples straining against her thin black suit.
With shaking fingertips he jerked the towel upward to cover her. Again his hands brushed her body. Again he felt her cool skin, hotter now, beneath his unsteady touch.
It was becoming difficult to remember how she’d wronged him. Abruptly, he drew his hand away.
Watching him warily, she repeated herself. "Jackson, I'm determined to behave myself."
His gaze traveled over the soft roundness of a breast. "What if I tempt you to misbehave?" he muttered hoarsely as he grabbed her towel and ripped it off.
