The Barons of Texas: Jill

by Fayrene Preston

  One of the women looked at Colin. “Do you mind me asking why you were, uh, making over Jill?”

  He didn’t answer, continuing to glare at her, so she answered. “It was a business bargain we made, wasn’t it, Colin? And as most business deals are, this one is private. However, I will tell you that part of the deal involved lessons.”

  Ravenous curiosity now etched the faces of the three women.

  “Lessons?” one of them ventured.

  Jill nodded. “Actually, the lessons could best be summed up with the phrase, how to torture Jill.”

  With a soft curse, Colin grabbed her hand. “Will you ladies please excuse us?”

  With open mouths, the three women nodded in unison.

  Tightly gripping her hand, Colin strode toward the rear of the room and the exit, but that didn’t fit into her plans. Not yet. Besides, now that the three women were out of the picture, his control had slipped enough for her to see he was practically foaming at the mouth with anger. It would be safer for her to stay within sight of people.

  She wrenched her hand from his and stubbornly halted. He had no choice but to stop and look back at her.

  “I’d like to dance,” she said.

  “What gave you the impression I care what you’d like to do?”

  He made a grab for her hand again, but she slipped away to an empty space at the back edge of the dance floor, bordering an area close to a wall that held only tall plants and offered a certain degree of privacy. When she turned around, he was there, and she offered up a grateful prayer that he had followed her.

  “What in hell is holding that dress up?” he asked, his voice as sharp as razor blades, his eyes as dark as midnight.

  With a smile, she moved into his body and slid her arms around his neck. “Willpower,” she whispered into his ear.

  He yanked her arms from his neck and pushed her away. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, unless you’ve got some demented idea of trying to make Des jealous, but it isn’t going to work. He’s not here.”

  She shrugged, and the action lifted one breast until the top edge of her nipple’s rose-colored areola appeared. His gaze followed the movement, and she saw him swallow hard. “I didn’t expect him to be.”

  His hands clenched into fists at his sides. “Where have you been for the last five days? I know you weren’t at the Double B, because I called Des.”

  “Really? Why were you looking for me?”

  “Because…” He stopped and briefly closed his eyes. He must have suddenly realized how he appeared—tensed, almost white with fury, as if he was about to strike her.

  He roughly pulled her to him, though not close enough that her body was touching his. “Because,” he said in a lower voice, “I called Des to tell him to expect you.”

  “How thoughtful, but not at all necessary.”

  A vein throbbed at his temple. “And then I called to make sure you’d arrived safely.”

  She shrugged again. “I never said I was going to the ranch.”

  “The hell you didn’t. You told me you’d called Molly to arrange a charter for you.”

  “That’s right. To Uvalde. I decided to spend a few days visiting Tess and Nick.”

  “You …?” His teeth clamped together.

  “It’s a good band, isn’t it?” They were playing a blend of oldies and newer songs, and at the moment a romantic ballad that Elvis had once recorded, “And I Love You So.” She doubted Colin was even hearing it. She reached up, slid her arms around his neck and began to dance, moving against him to the song, though he remained still.

  “What are you doing?”

  She pressed her body closer to him and whispered into his ear, “If I remember correctly, Lesson Number Three. Dance very close to your partner, so that if you want to carry on a conversation, you can press your mouth to his ear.” She waited a beat and received no response. “Am I doing it right?”

  A growl rumbled up from his chest, and he slid his hand down her spine, encountering nothing but perfumed skin. He yanked one of her arms from around his neck, so that he could hold her hand out from their body. “It’s more conventional for two people to participate in a dance.”

  “More fun, too.”

  His face tightened until he looked like a violent storm cloud about to burst. “Okay, I’m only going to ask you once more, Jill. What are you doing? And do not say dancing or attending a party. You know exactly what I mean, so tell me.”

  Once again she put her mouth to his ear. “I’m putting into practice what you taught me. Lesson Number One was dressing in a softer style and showing more flesh. I believe I accomplished that tonight, don’t you?”

  Almost involuntarily, it seemed, his hand slipped past her waist down to the edge of her gown, then, just for a moment, he allowed his fingers to dip beneath the fabric to caress one round buttock. He jerked his hand back as if he’d touched fire.

  “Damn it to hell, Jill. You’re not wearing any underwear.”

  “The outline of any kind of undergarment would have shown through and ruined the line of the dress. You taught me that, remember?”

  He uttered a low, violent string of oaths.

  If he was suffering, so was she, Jill reflected ruefully. Being in his arms again, inhaling his musky scent, feeling his hands on her—it brought back all the needs and desires she had felt for him that last night on the island. Even now, heat was crawling through her veins and gathering between her legs. But there was no way she could stop now. “Lesson Number Two was allowing your date to help you in and out of the car, which obviously isn’t applicable for tonight. And …”

  “Never mind.”

  The band switched to “Layla,” one of the most passionate love songs in the history of rock and roll, playing a bluesy version that was close to the same tempo as the song they had danced to in the club. In every way, the song couldn’t have been more appropriate.

  The dress and her lack of panties prohibited her from spreading her legs and straddling his as she had done that night, though Lord knew she was burning to. But the famous melody and words, combined with the heavy, sensual beat, compelled her to move her pelvis back and forth against his.

  He gripped her shoulders, attempting to hold her away from him. “Don’t do that.”

  “Why?” she asked, continuing. She needed the contact. She needed to feel the familiar hard ridge of his sex against her. She needed something to stop the nearly unbearable hot achiness building inside her. “It’s what we did at the blues club.”

  “That was different.”

  “How?”

  “Damn you, Jill.” He tightened his grip on her and pushed her away. “Stop it.”

  She glanced around, but everyone was engaged in other activities, and no one seemed overly curious about the two of them, though heaven knew how they could miss what was going on. She could no longer control her breathing. She wasn’t sure she would be able to control herself at all if she didn’t get some relief from the way she was feeling. But she forced herself to remember why she was doing this in the first place.

  “What’s the matter, Colin? You can dish it out, but you can’t take it?”

  He shook his head as if trying to clear his mind. Abruptly he wrapped his fingers around her wrist, dislodging the shawl from that arm, and pulled her out the exit door and down the hall. The end of her silver-and-aqua shawl trailed on the floor after them.

  He shoved her into a deserted service corridor and up against a wall, pinning her there by holding each of her wrists on either side of her head. “Why are you practicing the lessons I gave you on me when it’s Des you want?” His voice was raw; his hands on her wrists were trembling.

  She wrested her wrists free, planted her hands flat against his chest and pushed him a step away to give herself some breathing room. “First of all, I don’t want Des. Not anymore. And secondly, I wanted to find out if what you taught me would be good enough to make a man forget a woman he’s been in love with for a
long while.”

  “You wanted…?” He looked thunderstruck.

  “Well, is it, Colin? Can I, using your lessons, cure you of her? Can I make you forget her?”

  His brows drew together. “Who?”

  She lifted her chin. “The woman you’re in love with. The woman who broke your heart. The woman who doesn’t return your love. The woman you told me about at the blues club,” she prompted, wondering why he wasn’t getting what she was saying. “You asked me if I had ever loved a man the way Billie Holiday was singing about, so I asked you the same thing.”

  “Right,” he said, slowly nodding, obviously remembering now. “And I said maybe. I said maybe, Jill. I didn’t say yes.”

  “But it made so much sense. I mean, I’ve watched women throw themselves at you for the past two years, yet you’ve remained politely but firmly unattached. When you said ‘maybe,’ I decided the reason was because you were already in love with a woman, and that she had either broken your heart by turning you down—which, by the way, I can’t imagine—or that she was nearby, but for some reason she wasn’t in love with you.”

  “You got all of that out of my maybe? And then for some reason decided to see if you could make me fall out of love with her?”

  She nodded, watching him carefully. He still seemed astounded, yet his anger was fading.

  “Why, Jill? As an experiment? Just to see if the lessons really worked? Or for the kick of it?”

  “No,” she said slowly, knowing she was about to leap off a cliff with no assurances about where she would land. The old Jill would never have even contemplated such a leap. The new Jill, with her heart bursting with love, did it. “Because I realized when I was at Tess’s that I have totally and completely fallen quite madly in love with you.”

  For several long moments, it didn’t seem as if he breathed. Finally he drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled it. Golden lights began to glitter in his eyes. “Okay, well, here’s the answer to your question. You can’t cure me of my love for the woman I’ve been in love with for the last two years. No one can.” With his hand he tilted her face back up to him and smiled tenderly down at her. “Because it’s you, Jill. I’m totally and completely in love with you—quite madly, as a matter of fact.”

  She looked at him in disbelief. Her heart gave the expectant thud, then soared. Colin brought his mouth down on hers, kissing her with the same ferocity with which he had kissed her on the island, and as his tongue drove deeply into her mouth, his hands moved up and down her spine, then dipped beneath the low back of the dress to cup and grip her firm, round bottom. Clinging to him, she became lost—in time, in place, but most of all in him.

  Colin drove them to her home as fast as was possible. Inside, on the bed, he pushed the dress off her shoulders and down to her waist, and she lifted her hips to pull it the rest of the way off. Impatiently and with shaking hands, he undressed. Then she was straddling him, sliding downward until he was completely sheathed inside her body. An exquisite pleasure immediately flooded through her, engulfing her, making her shudder, making her moan.

  She felt free at last. She no longer had to censor what she felt. She never would again. Loving Colin had given her the freedom of feelings at long last released.

  They made love slowly, exquisitely, and completely, their love for each other spilling over into their actions. Every second, every sound, every sensation, was savored. Every caress and every touch was cherished. Until finally, they climaxed together and the world crashed around them.

  Later, as she lay beside him, he ran his hand over her still-trembling body. “I’ve been half out of my mind with worry about you. Molly wouldn’t tell me where you were.”

  “That was my fault, not hers. I needed the time to try to figure out some things.”

  “Next time you need time like that, tell me, okay?”

  “Okay, although it won’t happen again. Everything is finally crystal clear to me.”

  “Thank God.” He reached for her hand and kissed it. “So when did you decide to give up on trying to get Des?”

  “Almost as soon as you started those damn lessons. I couldn’t keep my mind on Des. In fact, after that first night at the blues club—No, it started even sooner than that. It started the morning I woke up and discovered I had slept the night through in your arms. I couldn’t get that intimacy out of my mind, or your scent, or the way you looked in those briefs. Then you proceeded to send one shock after another at me.” She lightly laughed. “There were times when, if you had said ‘Des,’ I would have said ‘Des who?”’

  “Lord, I wish I had known. It would have saved me a lot of agony.”

  “And if I had known, it would have saved me the same torture. But you gave me no sign—” she paused and thought “—other than what I thought was normal for a man in close proximity with a woman.”

  He groaned, and she lightly hit him. “You have to understand, I didn’t know a lot about men other than in business. I also didn’t know about love.” She gave an embarrassed little shrug. “The way I was raised—”

  Two fingers quickly covered her lips. “You don’t have to tell me. I know. Des, remember? He said your dad kept you girls on such a regimented schedule that you rarely saw him or his father, which might have given you at least a glimpse of kindness and love.” His lips curved. “Except he did mention something about William’s housekeeper sneaking you a cake on your birthday.”

  “Yeah, that was pretty much it.”

  “That was cruelty, plain and simple. From what I’ve heard, your father was a monster.”

  She sighed, then rolled over until her head was resting on his shoulder, her hand lying lightly on his chest and her leg thrown over his. “No more. That’s all in the past. From this moment forward, we can make the future what we want it to be.”

  A shudder wracked his body, and he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “One thing. What about your ambition to gain control of the company?”

  She fell silent for several moments, and when she at last spoke, her voice was soft. “You have to understand—for so long, my part of the company was all I had. And because of the competitive way we were raised, it was natural for me to want control. But it’s simply not important to me anymore, not in any way. And you know, during the last couple of days, when I thought about it, I realized that my sisters and I have never disagreed on anything major concerning the company, anyway. For all our competitiveness, our bottom line has always been what’s best for the company.” She shifted so that she could look up at him. “Thanks to you, I have so much more now. I’ve learned what true happiness really is. It’s all about loving and being loved.”

  He bent his head and gently kissed her. “You can’t even imagine how happy I am at this moment.”

  “Yes, I can, because I feel the very same way.”

  He smiled down at her, then let his head fall back to the pillow. “So tell me about this future of ours. Do you have any specifics in mind regarding what you want?

  “Yes,” she said slowly, thoughtfully. “I want to love you and be loved in return, every single moment of the rest of our lives. I want to make our houses into real homes, homes that will not only make us feel comfortable and safe, but be a sanctuary, a retreat from the rest of the world. And I want babies—lots of happy babies who will be so loved they’ll never have to think that they have to prove themselves to us.”

  His hand moved caressingly over her arm. “Anything else?”

  “Yes. There’ll be a garden in every one of our homes where irises from Tess’s garden will grow and our children will play.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I want you to take me to East Texas so that I can see where you grew up and meet your family.”

  “Anything else?” Amusement was creeping into his voice.

  She looked up at him. “I’ll want to continue to work of course. But I won’t eat, sleep and drink it as I have in the past. For that, I’ll have you.”

  His smile broadened, an
d he tightened his hold on her waist. “Anything else?”

  She lightly laughed. “That’s all I can think of for now.”

  “What? Nothing else? Are you sure? In my opinion, you’ve forgotten one very important thing.”

  Her brow creased as she tried to figure out what it could be. “What?”

  “Doesn’t marriage figure into your wishes anywhere?”

  She sat straight up. “Oh, my goodness, yes.” She looked back at him. “Yes. But—”

  He pulled her back down to him. “No buts.”

  She struggled to breathe, because suddenly he was holding her so tightly, but she managed a grin. “I guess I sort of took that for granted. But now that I think about it, I guess I should ask if that’s what you want, too.”

  He gave a loud shout of laughter. “Honey, I’ve waited for you for over two years. The whole point of working with you on the land development deal in the first place was to give us an excuse to be together. And the whole point of the lessons was to get you to fall in love with me. You’re never going to get away from me now.”

  He had called her honey. Contentment flooded through her, and with a secret smile, she snuggled against him. “Just think of all the fun we have ahead of us, teaching each other new lessons.”

  He rolled over on top of her and slipped into her. “Let’s start with a lesson about trying to learn to get enough of each other.”

  She closed her eyes and gasped with pleasure as he pushed deeper and deeper into her, until he couldn’t go any farther. “I’m positive that’s one lesson we’ll be trying to learn for the rest of our lives.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-1114-1

  THE BARONS OF TEXAS: JILL

  Copyright © 2000 by Fayrene Preston

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 300 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017 U.S.A.