by Diana Palmer
“I still owe for it! It was a lot of money!”
He smiled pleasantly. “I’m sure you can explain it to the insurance company. Atmospheric pressure? Termites…?”
She was stuck for a reply when he turned and went into the kitchen.
She went up the staircase, smoldering. It had been an upsetting day all around, and it wasn’t improving. Her mind whirled with questions and problems.
At first, she hadn’t wanted to take the muscle relaxants, but she got sore as the night wore on. Finally she gave in, downing them with a sip of cooling hot chocolate. She put on her gray satin pajamas and climbed under the covers. Minutes later, she was asleep.
But then the dreams started. Over and over again, she could see herself in the sports car, but in Switzerland. She’d been speeding around the Alps with skill and ease until she was almost at the bottom of a mountain. She’d hit a patch of ice and all her experience at the wheel hadn’t been able to save her. The car, that time, had rolled. And rolled. And rolled.
She was pitching down the side of the white mountain, sky and snow combining in a terrible descent. She waited for the impact, waited, screaming…
Hands lifted her from the pillow, gently shaking her.
“It’s all right,” someone said. “It’s all right. Wake up, Shelby, you’re dreaming.”
She snapped awake as if a switch had been thrown in her brain. Justin was holding her, his black eyes narrow with concern.
“The car…” she whispered. “It was pitching down the mountain.”
“You were dreaming, little one,” he said. He smoothed the dark tangle of her hair away from her flushed cheeks and her shoulders. “Only dreaming. You’re safe now.”
“I always was, with you,” she said involuntarily, leaning her head on his shoulder. She sighed heavily, relaxed now, secure. Her cheek moved and he stiffened, and she realized that she was resting on bare skin, not a pajama top.
The light was on and he was sitting beside her on the bed, his dark hair tousled. She almost lost her nerve when she lifted her cheek away from his muscular upper arm, but she breathed easily when she saw that he was only bare from the waist up. He was wearing dark silk pajama trousers, but his muscular chest was completely bare. Thick black hair curled down to the low waistband of the pajamas, and the very sight of him was breathtaking.
Shelby felt her breath catch at all that masculinity so close to her. She knew without being told that he wasn’t wearing anything under those trousers, and it made her feel threatened.
“Did you take those pills the doctor gave you?” he asked quietly.
“Yes. They made the aching stop, but now I’m having nightmares.” She laughed jerkily. She pushed back her thick cloud of hair, glancing up at him apprehensively. “Did I wake you?”
“Not really.” He sighed. “I don’t sleep well these days. It doesn’t take much to wake me. I heard you scream.”
She didn’t sleep well, either, and probably for the same reason. She locked her arms around her knees, curling up to rest her forehead there. “Today’s accident brought back the wreck I had in Switzerland,” she murmured drowsily. “I was concussed and I kept drifting in and out.” She moved her forehead against the soft satin. “They told me I called for you night and day after they brought me to the hospital,” she said without meaning to.
“Me, and not your lover?” he asked coldly.
“I’ve never had a lover, Justin,” she said shyly.
“Sure. And I’m the king of Siam.” He got to his feet, looking down at her half angrily. She was lovely in those satin pajamas. He’d never thought about what she wore to sleep in, but now he was sure he’d think of nothing else. The jacket was low-cut and he’d had a deliciously tempting glimpse of her firm breasts when she’d first come awake. They were small, he thought speculatively, but perfectly formed if their outline under that jacket was anything to go by. His eyes narrowed and he had to pull his gaze away, because he wanted to look at them with a hunger that made him go rigid.
He turned away. “If you’re all right, I’ll go back and try to sleep. I’ve got an early appointment in town at the bank.”
She watched him go with a deep sadness. The distance between them grew all the time, and she was making him unhappier by the day. “Thank you for coming to see about me,” she said dully.
He paused with his hand on the doorknob, his gaze concerned. “You’d die before you’d do it, I know,” he said slowly. “But if you get frightened again, you can double up with me.” He laughed coldly. “It’s safe enough, in case you’re worried. I won’t risk my ego again with you.”
He was gone before she could contradict him. She winced at the pain those words had revealed. She felt worse than ever, knowing how she’d hurt him.
And it was so unnecessary. All she had to do was tell him. For God’s sake, she was twenty-seven years old! Yes, and sheltered to the point of obsession by her money-hungry father, who’d been afraid to lose her to a poor man. She’d never even been kissed intimately until the night they got engaged. She wondered if he knew that.
He probably didn’t, she decided. She got out of bed and turned on the light, heading for the door. Maybe it was time she told him.
Chapter Six
It didn’t occur to her until she was out in the hall, barefooted, at Justin’s door, that three o’clock in the morning wasn’t the best time to share intimate secrets with a man who’d gone starving for physical satisfaction since his marriage. She hesitated, nibbling her lower lip. The light was still on in his room, but it was pretty quiet in there.
She frowned, wondering what to do, and brushed back her unruly hair with a sigh.
“He’s not in there,” came a soft, deeply amused voice at her back.
She whirled to find Justin behind her, holding a jigger of whiskey. “What are you doing out here?” she asked.
“Watching you prowl the halls. What were you planning to do, go in there and rape me?”
She burst out laughing. It bubbled up from some unknown place, and her eyes twinkled up at him. “I don’t know how,” she confessed.
He actually smiled. She was pretty when she laughed. She was pretty any way at all. He lifted the whiskey ruefully. “I thought it might help me sleep,” he said.
“I’m afraid nothing’s going to help me,” she murmured. She shifted from one bare foot to the other, aware of his curious scrutiny and her own loud heartbeat.
“Do you want to sleep with me?” he asked.
She flushed. “That wasn’t the only reason I came.” She glanced up and then down again at his own bare, very big feet. “Did you know that nobody had ever kissed me intimately until you did?”
He blinked. “You came down the hall at three o’clock in the morning to tell me that?”
She shrugged. “It seemed pretty important at the time,” she said. She looked up at him sadly, her pale green eyes searching his lean, craggy face, his sensuous mouth, the firm, hair-roughened muscles of his chest and stomach. “It’s amazing,” she murmured, her eyes fascinated by the bare expanse of brown muscle.
“What is?” He frowned, watching the way her eyes went over him. It was disturbing. Surely she knew that.
“That you don’t have to chase women out of your room with a broom handle,” she murmured absently.
His eyebrows arched. “Have you been into my brandy snifter?”
“I guess it sounds that way, doesn’t it?” She raised her eyes to his. “Can I sleep with you, Justin? I’m still pretty shaky. If…” She cleared her throat and looked away. “If it won’t bother you too much, I mean. I don’t want to make things any worse for you than they already are.”
“I’m not sure they could get worse,” he said quietly. He searched her wide, soft eyes. “All right. Come on.”
She followed him inside. She’d never been in his room before, although she’d been by it a number of times and had peeked in curiously.
The furniture was old. Antique, like that in t
he house she’d grown up in. She wondered if it went far back in his family, if he’d inherited it from his parents. She smoothed her hand over a long bedpost, admiring the slickly polished wood of the four-poster and the beige and brown striped sheets on the bed.
“I didn’t think you liked colored sheets,” she said conversationally. “Maria said you didn’t.”
“I don’t,” he said curtly. “Maria does. She swears that she lost all the white sheets and had to replace them.”
“Well, these are nice,” she murmured.
“Climb in.”
He held the top sheet back and let her slide under it. “I’ll adjust the air-conditioning if it’s too cool in here to suit you,” he offered.
“No, it’s fine,” she said. “I hate a hot bedroom, even in winter.”
He smiled faintly. “So do I.” He turned off the light and came back to the bed. The mattress lowered as he sat down, obviously finishing off his whiskey.
“You, uh, you do sleep in pajama bottoms?” she asked, grateful for the darkness that spared her blushes.
He actually laughed. “Oh, my God.”
“Well, you don’t have to make fun of me,” she muttered, fluffing the pillow before she laid her head on it.
“I always thought you were a sophisticated girl,” he said pleasantly. “You know, the liberated sort with a string of men on your sleeve and the kind of sophistication that goes with champagne and diamonds.”
“Boy, were you in for a shock,” she murmured. “Until you came along, I’d only dated one man, and the most he did was to make a grab for me and get himself slapped. My father was obsessed with keeping me innocent until he could sell me to someone who’d make him even richer. But you don’t know that, of course. You think he’s a saint.”
He switched on the light. His eyes were black and steady on hers, noticing the flush that covered her cheeks.
“Will you turn that off, please?” she asked tightly. “If I’m going to talk about such things, I can’t look at you and do it.”
“Prude,” he accused.
She glared at him. “Look who’s talking.”
He smiled ruefully. He cut off the lights, too. She felt the mattress shift as he lay back on it and pulled the sheet up over his hips.
“All right. If you want to talk, go ahead.”
“My father never wanted you to marry me, Justin, despite the show he put on for you,” she said shortly. “He wanted me to marry Tom Wheelor’s racing stables so that he could merge them with his and get out of debt.”
“That’s a hard pill to swallow, considering what I know about your father,” he said, remembering that it was her father’s money that had helped his family’s feedlot. He wondered if she’d ever found that out, and almost said so when he heard her sigh.
She shifted. “Nevertheless, it’s true. He was all set to ruin you if I hadn’t gone along with him when he cooked up that story about my marrying Tom.”
“You admitted that you’d slept with Tom,” he reminded her. His tone darkened. “And I know how little you wanted to sleep with me.”
“It wasn’t because I found you repulsive,” she said.
“Wasn’t it?”
Before she could say another word, he’d rolled over. One lean arm went across her body, dragging her against him. In the darkness, he sought her mouth with his and kissed her with rough abandon. Her hands went up against his hair-roughened chest, pushing at solid warm muscle, while his mouth demanded things that frightened her. His knee insinuated itself between both of hers, and she stiffened and pushed harder, fighting him.
He let her go without another word and got up. His hand flicked the light switch. When he turned toward her, his eyes were blazing like forest fires, his face livid with barely controlled rage.
“Get out!” he said in a biting fury.
She knew that she couldn’t say anything now that would calm him. If she tried to argue or smooth it over, she might unleash something physical that would scar her even more than his ardor had six years before.
She got out of the bed, her eyes apologetic and tearful, and did as he’d told her. She didn’t look back. She closed the door gently and, still crying, made her way down the long staircase.
Justin’s study was quiet. She turned on the light, went to the liquor cabinet, and with hands that shook, found a brandy snifter. She poured brandy into it and swished it around. She wanted to jump off the roof, but perhaps this would do instead.
The house was so quiet. So peaceful. But her mind was in turmoil. Why couldn’t he understand that violent lovemaking frightened her? Why wouldn’t he listen?
She’d pushed him away, that was why. She’d fought him. But if she hadn’t, and he’d lost control… Her eyes closed on a shudder. She couldn’t even bear the thought.
Her legs shook as she made her way to the sofa and sat down, her body bowed, her forehead resting on the rim of the glass. Tears blurred it. She sipped and sipped, until finally the sting of the liquor began to soothe her nerves.
When she realized that she was no longer alone, she didn’t even look up.
“I know you hate me,” she said numbly. “You didn’t have to come all the way down here to say it.”
Justin winced at the tears on her face, at the anguish in her soft voice. His pride was shattered all over again. But it hurt him to see her cry.
He poured himself another whiskey and sat down on the edge of the heavy coffee table in front of her. “I’ve been up there calling you names,” he said after a minute. “Until it suddenly got through to me what you’d said, about never letting another man kiss you intimately.”
“I’m a scarlet woman, though,” she said bitterly. “I slept with Tom. I even told you so.”
“You’ve just told me that your father lied about it.” His black eyes narrowed. He took a sip of the whiskey and put the glass down. He knelt just in front of her, not touching her, his eyes on a level with hers. “I remembered something else, too. Just after you wrecked the car, you kissed me. You weren’t afraid of me, and you weren’t repulsed, either, Shelby. But you were making all the moves, weren’t you?”
Her eyes lifted to his. So he’d made the connection. She sighed worriedly. “Yes,” she said finally. “I wasn’t afraid, you see.”
“But up until then,” he added, his shrewd eyes making lightning assessments, “I’d been pretty rough with you when we made love.”
She flushed, avoiding his gaze. “Yes.”
“And it wasn’t revulsion at all. It was fear. Not of getting pregnant. But of intimacy itself.”
“Give that man a cigar,” she murmured with forced humor.
He sighed, watching her fondle the brandy snifter. He took it out of her hands and put it on the coffee table. “Get up.”
Startled, she felt him lift her from the sofa. He put her to one side and stretched out on the cushions, moving toward the back. “Now sit down.”
She did, hesitantly, because she didn’t understand this approach.
He took one of her hands and drew it to his chest. “Think of me as a human sacrifice,” he murmured drily. “A stepping stone in the educational process.”
Her lips parted on a sudden gasp as she realized what he was doing. Her eyes darted up to his, curious, shy. “But you…you don’t like that,” she said perceptively, because in the past he’d always made the moves, he’d never encouraged her to.
“I’m going to learn to like it,” he said frankly. “If it takes this to get you close to me, I’m more than willing to give you the advantage, Shelby.”
Tears stung her eyes. She bit her lower lip to stop its trembling. “Oh, Justin,” she whispered shakily.
“Can you do it this way?” he asked softly, his eyes black and alive with tenderness. “If I let you, can you make love to me?”
The tears broke from her eyes and ran down her cheeks. “I wanted to tell you,” she wept. “But I was too embarrassed.”
“It’s all right.” He put his big
hand over hers and traced the tiny blue veins in it. “I should have realized it a long time ago. I won’t hurt you. I’ll never hurt you.”
She laughed through the tears. Amazing that he should puzzle it out for himself. She smiled and bent hesitantly to his warm mouth and touched it with her lips.
Justin felt as if his heart were about to burst. God only knew why he’d never understood before. Obviously Wheelor had hurt her, and she’d drawn away from any further intimacy. He hated knowing that the other man had been her first lover, but he couldn’t stand by any longer and watch Shelby beat herself to death emotionally over it. They had to start someplace to build a life together, and this was the very best way.
He felt her soft, shy mouth with a sense of wonder. She still didn’t know a lot about kissing, and he smiled under her searching lips. He’d been celibate for a long time, but in his younger days, his lack of looks hadn’t kept him from getting some experience. He knew what to do with a woman, even if discussing such things in public made him uncomfortable.
He didn’t touch her. As he’d promised, he lay there with his body keeping him on the rack and let her soft mouth toy with his.
“Come closer,” he breathed against her lips. “You’re as safe as you want to be.”
“It isn’t hurting you?” she asked worriedly.
“When it gets that bad, I’ll tell you,” he promised, lying through his teeth, because it was already that bad.
She smiled, moving so that her soft breasts rested fully on his chest, her legs chastely beside his and not over them. There was a fine tremor in his lips when she bent again, but he still hadn’t tried to pull her down or to make the kiss more intimate.
Her hands moved into his thick hair, ruffling it, and her lips traced patterns on his face, loving its strength. He was so sweet to kiss. She laughed with pure delight at the new freedom to touch him as she’d wanted to for so many lonely years.
His eyes opened and he studied her curiously. “What was that all about?”
“If you knew,” she said, “how long I’ve wanted to do this…”
