Eyes of the Cat

by Mimi Riser

  “Are you all right?” he asked, his husky voice barely more than a whisper.

  Staring up at him with eyes gone enormous, and unable to trust her own voice at all, Tabitha slowly shook her head. Then nodded it. Then shook it again. Then gave a half nod. Then…

  The fact of the matter was she didn’t know if she was all right or not. At that instant, she was still trying to figure out who she was, and what the words “all right” meant.

  Seeing the unveiled confusion in her green saucers, a genuine concern yanked down the veil in his eyes. She was lying propped against him, and with a low curse, Alan’s arms tightened around her.

  “I hurt you, didn’t I? I must have,” he said almost harshly. “Tabitha, I am so sorry. I never planned for it to happen this way. I wish you had let me stop. I could have made this so much easier for you in bed, with time to—”

  At the word “bed” Tabitha’s mind clicked into startled awareness. Why hadn’t they used the bed? She wondered and remembered all in the same horrified second.

  “Dear God— Rosa!” she gasped, cutting Alan off and bowling him backward as she scrambled out of his arms. Snatching the remains of her dressing gown off the floor, she fought her way into it and flew across the room.

  And breathed a grateful sigh of relief. Rosa was still sound asleep. She was unscathed by the…the…by what had… Suddenly, it was almost impossible to swallow or draw air into her constricted lungs.

  Merciful heavens—what have I done? She shuddered spastically. Or, rather—that frightful question once more—what had she been made to do?

  As if it really makes the slightest difference, she decided wretchedly, turning as sea green as the tattered robe she was huddled in. The damage had been done. Irrevocably. And however it happened, he was definitely the one who instigated it, her mind raged. Her eyes slanted to the tall, muscular figure approaching her.

  “Tabitha, I’m sorry,” Alan said softly. “I shouldn’t have let things get so far out of hand. But ’tis all right, dear. I’ll make it up to you, I promise.”

  Make it up to me… Her eyes went from saucers to dinner plates. Make it up to me? If that meant what she thought it meant…

  “Don’t touch me!” She ducked past him and darted to the opposite end of the room as he reached for her.

  “Tabitha—”

  “I’m serious. Don’t touch me, don’t look at me, don’t even breathe on me.” She halted him in his tracks with a dagger glare. “If you ever again even think of laying a finger on me, you’re a dead man,” she ground out. “I swear it. Touch me one more time, and I will kill you. If it takes my last breath to do it, I will see you eviscerated. And don’t tell me I don’t mean it!”

  “I’d not dream of it. I can see you’re quite serious,” Alan said in the same tone he had used on tiny Rosa. Raising his hands palms up and out, he began a cautious, step by step, journey toward her. “But you’re also a wee bit hysterical, dear. ’Tis understandable, mind you. You’re a high-strung lass to begin with and—”

  “You’re damn straight I’m hysterical!” Tabitha grabbed an earthenware water jug off a nearby table. “But I still know exactly what I’m talking about. And I am telling you that this farce is finished. It’s over. You’ve gotten what you wanted from me. You’ve had your fun now. So leave me be! And who the hell are you calling high-strung?”

  “My apologies. ’Twas a stupid thing to say.”

  The jug went barreling straight for his head.

  He caught it on the fly, setting it on the dresser he was passing by without spilling a drop or missing a step, his face a smooth mask of carefully controlled emotion.

  “But as for the rest of it, dear… Didn’t you get what you wanted, too?” One hand caught her wrist, neater than he’d caught the jug, as she tried to flee past him. The other hand clapped over her mouth. “Don’t scream. Or I’ll be forced to silence you with a kiss,” he warned softly. And instantly had to shift his grip to her waist as her knees caved out from under her. “Don’t faint either—unless you want me to explore some creative ways of reviving you.”

  “Any other instructions?” she blistered out the second she felt past the danger of swallowing her tongue.

  “Yes. I want you to answer my question.” Lifting her off her feet, he moved toward the burgundy armchair.

  “Put me down!”

  He obliged by putting her into the chair—after putting himself in it first.

  “I said, put me down.”

  “You are down,” Alan pointed out, settling her more firmly onto his lap as she tried to shove free. “Tabitha, I am tired. I don’t feel like standing any longer. And I definitely don’t feel like chasing you all over the room. Now, sit still. If you don’t stop behaving like a child, I may start treating you like one and tan that charming backside of yours rosy red. Do you hear me, lassie?”

  It would have been impossible not to with his lips grazing her ear. Locked immobile in that maddening embrace and all but choking on her own rage, Tabitha clenched her teeth and squeezed her eyes shut against the frustrated sobs threatening to spill forth. Neither action helped.

  Feeling her trembling in his arms like a miniature earthquake, and having his shoulder spattered by hot, salty drops, Alan’s hold tightened into the Rock of Gibraltar.

  “My apologies, again.” He sighed. “You go ahead and cry if you want to. ’Tis a natural enough reaction for a lass who’s just lost her maidenhead. But the rough part is over, dear. It only hurts the first time. I can promise you nothing but pleasure from now on.”

  That helped even less.

  Suddenly feeling like a waterfall, and infuriated by her own lack of control, Tabitha was swamped by several drenching moments of gut-wrenching sobs. I’m doomed. This torment was never going to end, was it? It was only getting worse. He was going to keep her here until there was nothing left of herself that she could recognize—until she was sucked dry as an old eggshell. And he didn’t even seem to realize what he was doing. He used ridiculous, mundane terms like pleasure, as though that’s all the experience meant to him. And he was an absolute moron if he thought she was crying over a brief flash of pain that she’d scarcely noticed. Who noticed a simple sting when your entire being was going up in flames?

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about, or you wouldn’t say such asinine things,” she choked out toward the end of the tears, and felt her spine stiffen as Alan had the cheek to actually chuckle.

  “I know a good deal more than you seem to realize,” his musical purr played over her. “Thank you for answering my question, though.”

  “What question?” She sniffled irritably, trying to wrestle an arm free in order to wipe her face on her sleeve. Not an especially ladylike maneuver, but more gentile than a runny nose.

  “Here.” Loosening his hold long enough to fish a handkerchief out of his trousers’ pocket, he offered it to her.

  Tabitha grabbed both it and the opportunity to scramble to her feet, as he replied, “You’ve just assured me that you wanted what happened as much as I—”

  “I didn’t!” she said, halted in her flight by his words as much as the hand that closed over hers. I think I wanted it more, the back of her mind groaned, while at the same instant, the front portion insisted aloud, “I keep telling you, I’ve never wanted any of this!”

  “You could have fooled me on that a short time ago. I’m the one who tried to stop it. Remember?” he asked, deliberately bringing her hand to his lips and planting a warm kiss in the center of her palm.

  She jerked as though burnt. “You didn’t try very hard, did you?”

  He hauled her back onto his lap.

  “Listen, lassie, I am not going to sit here arguing something we both know is a lie.”

  “It’s the truth.” God, how she wanted, once and for all, to have everything out in the open, regardless of the consequences. “You know it is! I don’t want any part of this miserable charade. I never have. It’s all your doing. You’ve bee
n making me act like…like I w-want…want these th-things,” she stammered, forcing herself to meet his gaze without flinching. “You’ve been hypnotizing me.”

  For a suffocating moment, Alan’s expression looked as if it had been carved from wood. Then, with devilish slowness, the wood cracked into a grin that sucked the breath clean out of her.

  “I didn’t think you’d noticed.”

  The breath rushed back in—along with a renewed flood of fears. “Then you…you admit it?”

  “Aye. ’Tis what the old Highlanders would call the Come Hither. Shall I tell you a secret, though?” he whispered wickedly, cupping her face between his hands. “My come hither only works on you.”

  “Wh-what…” She went rigid as fear swung into complete exasperation. “Oh! How can you joke about it?”

  “’Tis no joke. I’m telling you the truth.” His hands gripped her face a little tighter. “And I’ll tell you something else, too. You’ve the come hither in your own eyes. But yours only works on me. We’ve been hypnotizing each other, dear.”

  If there was a “come hither” in Tabitha’s eyes, it instantly flipped into a freezing go-to-the-dickens.

  “That is the most preposterous thing I have ever heard.” Twisting free, she tried to lunge off his lap.

  His hands slipped to her waist, holding her square. “Not a bit of it. ’Tis quite logical, really.”

  “So was the theory that the world was flat. Let me go.”

  “Tabitha, you know what I’m trying to explain. And somewhere in that thick, bonny head of yours, you know I’m right. You’re not fighting me, dear. You’re fighting yourself. The sooner you admit it, the happier you’ll be.”

  “Let. Me. Go!”

  The iron grip relaxed and Alan’s arms dropped to his sides. “All right. You’re obviously in no mood to be reasonable, and I’m too weary to argue further. Go on, lass, get up if ’twill make you easier.”

  It won’t, she thought darkly. But it was a start. Scrambling to her feet before he could change his mind, she retreated several rapid steps out of range and stood trembling and glaring at him, like a dynamite blast waiting to go off.

  “Now then… Let me go.”

  Alan’s hands and eyes went pleading upward. “Is she daft?” he asked the ceiling. But when the rafters couldn’t provide an answer, his gaze leveled back on Tabitha. “Look where you’re standing, dear. I have let you go.”

  “Not far enough. I mean, let me go away from here. All the way. Let me wake up from this nightmare.” She clenched her hands in an unsuccessful attempt to keep her voice steady as his eyes raked over her. “Please, Alan—I can’t take anymore. I need out of this Bedlam. I need to go back to my own life. Please, let me go.”

  His golden gaze crystallized into a hard glow.

  “Never. And that’s the end of it. This is just foolish stubbornness, and I’ll hear no more. Do you understand me?” he said, the beginnings of exasperation roughening his voice. “And stop looking like a frightened child. It’s starting to grate on my nerves. You’re not Little Red Riding Hood, and I’m not the Big Bad Wolf. If I thought you were truly serious, I’d put you on the next train east—regardless of what it cost me. I’m not one to force my attentions on a woman who doesn’t want them. But that’s not the case here, because you do want them. You’ve proved that too well, too many times now, for either of us to doubt it. The fact of the matter is this, dear… There’s only one real reason why you’re still here. And it’s the same reason why you’ll stay.” He suddenly leaned forward, riveting her where she stood with an iron stare. “You don’t want to leave.”

  Didn’t want to… Foolish… Stubborn… Childish…

  The man was amazing. How had he managed to fit so many actual and implied insults into one short speech, Tabitha wondered, her color rising up the spectrum from a pale, nervous white to a blazing, defiant crimson.

  “Are you done?” she asked in a voice like a fuse being lit.

  “Only if you are. And I’m warning you, lassie, that you’d better be.”

  “Oh, I’m done all right. I’m so done that if I were a baking cake, I’d be burned to a cinder by now,” she said with a smile that ended at the lips. “I’m done with stupid castles and stupid traditions and stupid—”

  “Tabitha…”

  “And, most of all”—she skipped to the finish as Alan rose threateningly from the chair—“I’m done with being told what I think by a half-dressed, no-brain, pigheaded, egotistical barbarian who wouldn’t know a genuine thought if it jumped up and bit him on his stupid ass! I may only be…but… Stop that!” she snapped, as her train of thought was derailed by rich low laughter. “This isn’t funny!”

  “Isn’t it?” Alan chuckled. An insufferably amused sparkle replaced the warning in his gaze as his warm hands rested on her shoulders. “If you don’t like me being so charmed by it, stop being so irresistibly adorable.”

  “And you stop treating me like I’m no bigger than Rosa! I may only be eighteen, but I’m certainly no child, and I am definitely old enough to know my own mind. So stop telling me what I think!”

  The hands on her shoulders froze, along with his amusement. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me! I said, stop telling me what I…think.” A chilling confusion crept over her at the odd change in his expression. Alan was staring at her as though she had just slipped a knife between his ribs.

  “No…before that. How old are you?”

  “Eighteen.” Her eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why?”

  What difference did it make? Was this some new trick?

  Alan apparently thought so.

  “You’re lying! You can’t be only eighteen,” he bit out, as his hands bit into her shoulders. “I saw your contract with that employment agency when I emptied your trunk that first night. It lists your age as twenty-two!”

  “What if it does?” she shot back, anger helping to brace her against that sharp hold. “They wouldn’t hire anyone under twenty-one and I…I was desperate for work,” she admitted, embarrassed by the memory of having to fib her way into a decent job.

  Suddenly ashen, Alan pulled back, as if she’d become too hot to hold. Perhaps she had.

  “Good God… No wonder you’ve been as frightened as a child. You are a child.” A stricken look widened his eyes. “Heaven help me, I’ve been robbing the cradle. You’re hardly more than a bairn!”

  He was calling her a baby? Now that was pushing things a bit.

  “There’s no need to be insulting about it. You’re acting like you’re Methuselah or something—when Lady Gabrina told me you’re only twenty-eight yourself. There’s only ten years between us. That’s scarcely any difference at all between a man and a woman. Lots of husbands are that much older than their wives,” she spouted indignantly. And immediately clapped a hand over her own mouth. “Good heavens,” she whispered, rapidly debating how much effort it would take to bite out her tongue. “What have I just said?”

  “You were implying that we’re man and wife,” Alan said wryly. “And I appreciate the thought, dear, believe me. But it comes a wee bit late…” His chest heaved with a sigh. “We’re not married.”

  Why is everything still in place?

  Tabitha stood staring in weak-kneed shock. To hear him actually admit that could only have preceded the world grinding to a jarring halt, spinning its entire surface out to the farthest reaches of deep, dark space. Couldn’t it?

  She shoved her toppled wits back under herself. “Well, of course we’re not married. Tell me something I don’t know, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Tabitha, you don’t understand. A traditional Highland handfasting—in other words, a marriage ceremony such as ours—is legally binding, so long as it occurs on MacAllister land.” His low growl rolled over her, bringing a new anxiety in its wake. “When the clan first arrived here years ago, fleeing British law in their native Scotland, they didn’t simply homestead this tract. They bought it outright from the Mexican gov
ernment, and set up what could almost be called a sovereign state. When Texas became a republic, it changed nothing, since this land lay outside its boundaries. But when the treaty was signed that turned the Lone Star republic into the 28th state, and the acres around ours started being settled, we nearly had a small war.

  “There was a fear, you see, that the United States wouldn’t accept clan customs as valid—which would have defeated the purpose of the MacAllisters emigrating in the first place. But the federal and state governments proved to be more interested in keeping the peace—and keeping this land within the Union—than they were in outlawing a pack of old Highland ceremonies. We have a special written provision under Texas state law that approves the legality of the MacAllisters’ private code and practices.”

  “No!”

  “Don’t argue with me, lass. Have I lied to you yet?”

  It was the quiet assurance of his tone that drove her anxiety up the scale to panic—that and the inescapable awareness that he was…was right. Alan did have an exasperating habit of omitting pertinent little facts, of evading issues, and giving replies that sometimes created more questions than they answered, but… No, he had never lied to her, she now realized. And that could mean…

  Unbelievably, her wave of panic gave way before a flash flood of… Relief?

  Tabitha shook her head. That couldn’t possibly be right. Something must have gone haywire with her internal sensing apparatus. There was no relief whatsoever in the knowledge that Alan really was her husband. Only the relief, perhaps, that condemned prisoners felt when the noose finally snapped their necks, and the awful wait for death was over.

  Unless… He had also been right about… And…

  She shook her head again. That couldn’t be it either, because this actually had nothing to do with Alan, as absurd as that seemed. The real heart of this dilemma was that matrimony itself was totally alien to her character. She had never, ever wanted to be anyone’s wife—not in the slightest—not even in her remotest dreams.

  Ah, but that’s the whole point, isn’t it, the little voice inside her head whispered. And for once in her life, Tabitha couldn’t argue with it. The suggestion made such simple, straightforward sense. It was almost too logical, this possibility. This remarkable, sun-bursting-through-the-clouds possibility that the real reason she had never wanted marriage was because she had never in her wildest, most far-flung fancies ever realized there was anyone in the world like Alan MacAllister.