Tempestuous/Restless Heart

by Tami Hoag

  “Do what?” Alex asked, a strange kind of foreboding flooding her. She stood a step or two back from Christian, unable to go to him because of Braddock.

  “Robert,” Christian said in a warning tone. He held himself absolutely still, as if that would somehow make Braddock lose interest and wander away. “Now is not the time.”

  “The time for what?” Alex’s dark brows drew together in confusion and apprehension.

  Braddock waved off his friend’s suggestion as he took a gulp of champagne. “I’m a gentleman,” he said, his voice slurring a bit. “A gentleman always makes good on his bets.”

  With his free hand he dug a wad of bills out of his pants pocket and stuffed them messily into Christian’s breast pocket.

  “One iceberg properly melted. You have my congratulations.”

  Suddenly the truth dawned, descending on Alex with a wave of numbing cold. Unfortunately the pain cut through it quickly, and she was besieged by equal blasts of hurt and humiliation. She had been the object of a wager. A challenge. A stray female to be speculated over and made sport of.

  The other shoe had dropped with a resounding thud.

  She stared at Christian, not wanting to believe the guilt written all over his face. She loved him. He had battered down every defense she had. He had bullied and begged and bribed her into falling in love with him. And it had all been a game to him.

  “Alex—” he began, reaching out toward her. The look in her eyes was ominous.

  “You bastard!” She spat the word and slapped him across the face as hard as she could.

  “Alex, wait!” he called, all too aware of the crowd that was staring and straining hungrily for any tidbit of gossip. Damn them all to perdition. What he had to say was no secret. “Alex, I love you!”

  His words wrenched away the last shred of her control, and the tears she had tried so hard to hold at bay spilled over their barriers and streamed down her cheeks as she pushed her way through the crowd. Love. There wasn’t any for her here. There wasn’t any for her anywhere. She should have known better.

  “Damn you, Braddock!” Christian wheeled on his fellow trainer.

  Robert’s brows rose over slightly unfocused eyes. “What’d I do?”

  “Ruined my entire bloody life, that’s all!” Christian bellowed. He pulled the prize money out of his pocket and threw it to the floor like so much scrap paper, then stamped on it with his elegant black Italian shoes.

  “You mean you really do love her?” Braddock asked in classic bachelor amazement.

  “I really do love her, you imbecile!”

  “Well, shoot, Chris,” he whined. “That’s no fun.”

  Christian’s hands lifted, intent on throttling the life out of his friend. He groaned with the effort to hold himself back, torn between sweet revenge and cursed respectability. Then his gaze caught the nearly full champagne glass Braddock held, and his hands changed their course.

  With one he snatched the glass from Robert’s hand. With the other he hooked the front of the man’s trousers. The chilled champagne went down inside Braddock’s pants in a freezing golden stream, but Christian didn’t waste an extra second to catch the look on Robert’s face. He had to find Alex.

  nine

  ALEX ABANDONED HER SHOES AS SOON AS she had pushed through the party crowd. Barefoot, she ran across the lawn, away from the tent, away from the house. Her first impulse was to run to the stables, but as she caught sight of the lights she remembered that they were full of show horses and dozens of grooms. She veered instead for the row of dark buildings that sat behind the Hill mansion, the plantation dependencies that had been preserved for their historical value. Reaching the second one, which had once been the kitchen, she stopped running and slumped against the end of the brick building. With the moon on the other side she was swallowed up by the shadow the building cast. Enveloped in darkness, hidden from prying eyes, she was free to cry out all the hurt.

  Why did this have to happen? She’d tried so hard to avoid being made a spectacle of again. Hadn’t she? She couldn’t think of a single thing she’d done to attract attention to herself since she’d moved to Briarwood. She hadn’t gone asking for men to call on her. She’d done just the opposite, avoiding them, trying to discourage them.

  And they had seen her as a challenge.

  It was her fault.

  She turned and pressed herself against the wall, the rough brick biting into her cheek and palms. And she sobbed, torn by abject, soul-wrenching misery. She sobbed for the things she’d lost, for the heart that lay broken in her breast, for the love she had that never seemed to find a worthy home. And she cried harder because she didn’t understand the reasons why. She had never meant for any of it to happen. She tried to be a good person, tried to mind her own business. But why did these things keep happening to her then, if it wasn’t something she did or said or thought?

  Wiping back one wave of tears she looked down at the dress she wore, barely able to see the outline in the dark of the shadows. A hundred women could have worn it and felt special. She felt tainted, ashamed that she had ever put it on. She pushed her palms down the front of it, cringing as if it disgusted her, as if she could push it away and have her old baggy clothes magically appear in its stead. But the dress remained, tangible evidence for the old recriminations that came flooding back to ring in her ears.

  “You’re too flamboyant, Alexa.”

  “You’re too sassy, Alexa.”

  “You were asking for it.”

  “But I wasn’t!” she whispered in tortured anguish, pressing her hands to her face as the tears came fresh and hot.

  She sobbed until she had no tears left to shed, until her head was throbbing and her eyes ached. And then she just stood there, exhausted, nothing left of her inner wall of strength but rubble. She sagged against the brick, not caring that it cut into the bare skin of her back, listening to the cicadas sing in the hot, fragrant summer night.

  In the distance she could hear the band playing, the sound rising above the murmur of the crowd. The low thrum of the bass, the vibrant wail of the singer’s voice, an occasional crash of a cymbal. Closing her eyes, she relived the dance she’d shared with Christian. For five glorious minutes she had been deliriously happy and in love, soaring higher than she ever could on a horse. And an instant later it had all come crashing down. The heart that had been bursting with joy now lay in a cold, crumbled ruin. The love she had been so ready to give was back inside its little locked box, not to be taken out again for a long, long time.

  There were no more tears. Only a pure, piercing ache from which she knew there would be no escape.

  The sound that came to her from nearby didn’t penetrate immediately, not until she heard the low, rough voice of a man swearing under his breath. He’d bumped into something in the dark and was cursing. Alex brought herself to attention, her whole body straining to hear. He was at the first building in the row, the icehouse. She couldn’t see him clearly but was able to distinguish his shape as he moved along the back side of the building where the darkness was intensified by a row of tall crape myrtle shrubs.

  Her traitorous heart gave a lurch at the thought that it might be Christian coming to find her. She dismissed both the thought and the sentiment as she inched along the wall intending to slip around the front side of the kitchen, where she would be completely out of view to the man who was approaching. Christian wouldn’t come skulking up the back of the buildings if he was looking for her. He would come striding up the path like a prince, demanding in that autocratic tone of voice that she come out of hiding. At any rate, he wouldn’t come looking for her. His game was up. Anyone else who had a reason for stalking around in the shadows Alex had no desire to meet.

  She glanced at the bright moonlight that fell on the path. She would be in plain sight for an instant as she moved around to the other side of the building. Old instincts of flight and self-preservation rose up inside her as the crape myrtle trees rustled just fifteen feet
away. She realized with a stroke of chilling fear just how vulnerable she was, far removed from the party and the safety of the crowd. Beyond these unused buildings lay nothing but dense forest. Christian, if he even cared, had probably decided she’d caught a lift home. No one would miss her until morning.

  Swallowing down the knot of fear in her throat, Alex took one last glance in the direction of the man and slipped around the edge of the building. As she turned to run she slammed head-on into a wall of masculinity. Gasping, too terrified to scream, she bolted backward only to be caught in his arms and held.

  “Alex!” Christian exclaimed, his relief plain in his voice. “Thank God! I’ve been searching everywhere for you!”

  She said nothing but darted a nervous glance in the direction of the icehouse. Whoever had been there was gone. The trees were still. It had probably been one of the gentlemen too impatient to wait in line for the rest room.

  “Darling, we’ve got to talk.”

  “What’s there to say?” Alex asked tiredly. “It seemed pretty self-explanatory to me. I won you a nice wad of money. You should be happy.”

  “Oh, hang Robert and his stupid bet,” Christian said fiercely, unwittingly tightening his grip on her upper arms. “It’s got nothing to do with us.”

  “Oh, really?” Alex arched a brow. Her tone was one of icy sarcasm. “I think it’s got quite a lot to do with me. The Italian Iceberg—isn’t that what your pals call me?” she asked bitterly. “You’ll be quite the hero with them now, won’t you? But of course, you’re already a legend among their ranks. How many notches on your bedpost are there now that you can count me?”

  “Dammit, Alex, stop it!” Christian said, shaking her. “It’s not like that!”

  She stared up at him as she wrenched herself free of his hold. “Isn’t it?”

  “I forgot about the bloody bet as soon as I’d met you.”

  “Sure, you did,” she said with a sneer. “That’s why you were so insistent about me going out with you. That’s why you hounded me until I agreed to come to this stupid party with you.” She enumerated his sins, ticking them off one by one on her fingers. A new supply of tears rose as she glanced down at herself. The shimmer of sequins and taffeta was like moonlight reflected on a lake. “Your pride must have really been on the line for you to go to all the trouble of buying this dress. You had to have lost money on the deal.”

  Christian ground his teeth at her stubborn refusal to listen. It pricked his pride to think how quickly she’d believed the worst of him, how quickly she had discounted everything that had passed between them. “Do you honestly think if I’d remembered the bet, I would have subjected you to that scene on the dance floor?”

  “No,” she murmured and smiled ruefully at his sigh of relief. “You’re much too British for that. You might be a bastard, but your manners are impeccable.”

  “Alex—”

  “Frightfully bad form on Robert’s part, though, wasn’t it?” she said, mimicking his upper-crust accent.

  Christian’s broad shrug was a gesture of supplication. “Alex, what do I have to say to make you believe me when I tell you I love you?”

  “There isn’t anything you can say. I’ve seen just how much you love me—enough to bet me to win.”

  She reached behind her to the nape of her neck, unfastened the heavy gold chain of her necklace, and held it out on her upturned palm for Christian to take. The fight draining out of her, she murmured, “I’ll send the dress back tomorrow.”

  Christian looked at the coil of gold and dark stones in her hand but didn’t reach out for it. His heart ached abominably. There was a horrid pressure behind his eyes. Gads, this love business stank to high heaven! His life had been so much less complicated before. There was a great deal to be said for being a carefree bachelor. Affairs were light and fun with clean breaks at the end of them. There would be no clean break with Alex. It would be ragged and bloody, and when Alex left, she would be dragging his heart with her by the ties of love that had bound him to her. He’d never felt so desperate in his life.

  He stared into her eyes feeling bleak and lost and guilty. Guilty! Blast it, he hadn’t known what guilt was until he’d met Alex! She had him feeling it on a regular basis. Why should he want to go on enduring that?

  Because he loved her.

  He loved her, and she was going to walk away.

  She had managed to arrange her face into the cool, emotionless mask he remembered from when they’d first met. Slowly she turned her hand over, and the necklace spilled to the ground in a river of glimmering gold. He watched it fall and felt it in his heart when it hit the grass.

  “Alex, don’t do this.” He whispered because he didn’t trust his voice. He kept his head down and his eyes trained on the ground, because he didn’t know what would happen to him if he watched her turn and go.

  “Just tell me one thing,” Alex said, needing to know more than she needed to flee. “Is there something about me … something I did… ?”

  The only thing that could have cut through Christian’s own pain was Alex’s. His concern for her had overridden his own selfish needs almost from the first. So his head came up at the strain in her voice, the uncertainty, the hurt. Each of those emotions was reflected in the depths of her wide, dark eyes. Her lush mouth trembled with vulnerability.

  Good Lord, she was blaming herself for this fiasco! If he ever got his hands on Robert Braddock again, he wouldn’t try to keep from throttling the bastard, he’d do the job proper, then dance on his grave.

  “Alex, the bet was nothing more than an idiotic challenge between two overgrown adolescents who should have had sense enough to know better. I didn’t see the harm in it. I thought we’d get to know each other, go out, have a few laughs. I didn’t count on falling in love with you. I’ve never been in love,” he admitted plaintively. “I’d say it’s bloody awful right about now, but I do love you, I can’t stand the idea of you not believing me!”

  She wanted to believe him. In spite of all the pain and all the doubts, Alex knew she wanted to believe in him. It wasn’t a comforting thought. He’d made a fool of her. He’d made her doubt herself. He’d crushed her heart.

  Memories came back to make a bid on Christian’s behalf. He had listened to the story of her ordeal with compassion and sympathy. He’d held her while she’d cried. He had reawakened her to the joys that could be shared by a man and woman. He’d made her feel like someone special again, like a woman, like someone to be cherished and delighted in instead of someone to be ashamed of and embarrassed by. He’d held her in front of everyone in their world and made it more than clear that his feelings ran deep, that he didn’t care who knew it or what they thought.

  When a Man Loves a Woman.

  Heaven help her, how badly she wanted that to be true.

  She looked up at him with her heart in her eyes, the moonlight catching her full in the face, stark and white, hiding no secrets, hiding no tears. Christian stepped closer, holding her gaze with his. He lifted his hands to cup her face, his thumbs gently brushing along her cheekbones. Moving closer still, he slid his palms slowly down the column of her throat, over her shoulders, and down her bare back. His fingers traced the low vee in the back of her gown and pressed gently, drawing her near.

  “I love you, Alex.” He murmured the words against her lips, feathered them along her cheek, brushed them across her forehead. He pulled her full against him in an embrace that was both fierce and tender and whispered into the lush, scented mass of curls atop her head. “Believe me. Please, believe me.”

  Alex pressed her cheek to his chest. Through the warm, damp fabric of his dress shirt she could feel the solid strength of him. She could hear his heart beating a little quickly as he waited for her answer. Wrapping her arms around his lean waist she hugged herself to him. It might have been smarter to walk away. It might have been safer to leave him. But the thought of living without him, of going back to the life she’d had before him, was so cold and lonely. I
f there was a chance he could love her, she needed to take it.

  “Alex?”

  He whispered her name so softly, she might have imagined it. “Yes,” she answered, just as softly. “I believe you.”

  The music drifted from speakers that were built into the bookshelves in the bedroom wall. Soft, smoky, sexy, as hot as the night itself, it twined around the couple dancing in the dark, weaving them into the magic, seeping into their souls.

  When a Man Loves a Woman…

  Christian had left his coat tossed carelessly in the back seat of the Mercedes along with Alex’s panty-hose. His tie was gone, as were the studs from his shirt front. The garment hung open, exposing the smooth, hard planes of his chest. Alex arched herself against him. Her arms were wrapped around his neck, his banded around the small of her back, lifting her into him. Together they swayed to the sensual beat. Thigh brushing thigh, breast to chest, every move was a caress, each caress leading to another, with no sound except the music and the soft rustle of fabric.

  The moon spilled its silver light through the sheer curtain at the window. The breeze stirred the curtain to a dance of its own. The sultry heat that hung thick in the air was as much a product of the mood as it was of the sun. It rose from their entwined bodies, from the intensity of their gaze, as Christian looked down into Alex’s face, and Alex tilted her head back and stared up into Christian’s hot blue eyes. It steamed around them as Christian settled his mouth against hers in a deep kiss.

  Tongues dancing, twining, sliding over each other, they tasted and savored the flavor of love, a flavor made sweeter by having nearly lost it. Alex let her hands set off on an exploration of Christian’s chest, taking joy in the simple pleasure of touching him. As the angle of the kiss altered, she slid her fingers over the slick hot skin of his belly, dipping inside the opened waistband of his black trousers, teasing.