by Janet Dailey
“Is there a reason why I shouldn’t be?” she countered. At the sudden clenching of a muscle in his jaw, she changed the subject. “I think Mother would like to congratulate us.”
“Of course.” The pressure of his hand on her waist guided her to the side of the bed where Tamara bent to kiss the flaccid cheek of her mother.
“You make a beautiful bride, Tamara.” Her mother beamed and glanced at Bick. “Make her happy. She deserves to be.”
“I promise you, Mother James, that I will do everything I can to make certain Tamara receives all that she deserves,” he replied, and Tamara was the only one who heard the alternate meaning in his vow.
“Time to cut the cake.” Sadie wheeled the trolly cart into the bedroom so Lucretia James could observe the wedding ritual.
Leaving her mother’s bedside, Tamara was escorted by Bick to the cart. The flat cake was inscribed with their names and decorated with ribbons and rosettes of frosting. Tamara’s hand shook slightly as she held the cake knife with its lace bow on the handle and cut the first slice. The flashbulb on Sadie’s camera went off when Tamara raised the piece of cake to Bick’s mouth and watched him take the bite.
Then it was her turn. She was nervously conscious of the tanned fingers offering the cake to her and the intensity of his watching gaze. Her attempt at a small bite resulted in a smear of thick, creamy frosting coating her lips. The cake tasted dry when she swallowed it hastily in order to lick the excess frosting from her lips. She couldn’t get it all and reached for a napkin stamped with silver wedding bells.
She never got the napkin to her mouth as Bick’s hand closed around her wrist to stop her. “No.” The soft word was followed by a gentle tug that brought her close.
Turning her slightly to block her from the view of the few wedding guests, he lowered his head and opened his mouth on her lips, his tongue darting out to lick away the frosting with infinitely thorough care. The pure sensuality of his action drew a sighing moan from her throat. She could taste the sweetness of melting frosting, unsure whether it came from his tongue or her own.
The minister coughed delicately and Bick pulled away, breathing in deeply for control. Scarlet flames stained Tamara’s cheeks, the embarrassed flush spreading down her neck.
“I’ll cut the rest of the cake now,” Sadie volunteered, stepping forward to pick up the knife. “Would you want to take a slice to your mother?”
“Yes.” Tamara seized the chance to escape the man whose caress nearly robbed her of any feeling of shame. It was unnerving to be infected with such wantoness, even if he was her husband.
Bick didn’t attempt to keep her at his side when she took the china dessert plate with its wedding cake and silverware to her mother’s bed. Aware that his eyes followed her, she sat on the edge of the bed to feed her mother the cake.
“You do love him very much, don’t you?” her mother stated.
Tamara didn’t argue. “Is it so obvious?” she said instead. Her mother’s sigh was a long, sad sound that made Tamara study her with anxious eyes. “What’s the matter, Mama?”
“I am happy, but”—she hesitated on the qualifying word—“but I just realized that I won’t live long enough to see my grandchildren.”
Tamara couldn’t smother the audible gasp as a rush of tears burned her eyes. “Oh, Mama.” She bit at her lip.
“Please don’t cry,” her mother scolded. “I am truly happy. There was a time when I thought I would never meet the man you would marry. I feel very lucky. You can’t know how relieved I am that you won’t be shouldering all this responsibility on your own anymore. There is someone to care for you now.”
“Someone to look after both of us,” Tamara corrected.
“Yes, that’s true. And don’t you go rushing and try to have a baby right away because of what I said,” her mother added.
“I won’t. Besides, Bick doesn’t want children right away.” She thought that was a safe guess, considering his apparent lack of trust in her.
“That is wise. It’s good to have time together first.”
Pop! The champagne cork sailed into the air. Tamara turned to look as Bick let the foam from the sparkling wine bubble into the first of a row of glasses.
“Set the cake on the bedside table and go drink your toast,” her mother ordered.
By the time Tamara had set the plate on the table and risen from the bed, Bick had crossed the room to bring her glass. The toast was a simple wish for their happiness, offered by Adam, but Tamara wondered afterward if the wish was truly simple.
Very soon the conversation began to lag. Bick glanced at her mother. “I believe the excitement is beginning to tire you, Mother James. It’s time we left.”
“Yes, I suppose it is,” she agreed so concisely. “Your honeymoon is going to be very short. You will want to enjoy every minute of it.”
Bick swirled the remaining champagne in his glass with absent concentration. “Yes, we will. Unfortunately, the bridegroom has to go to work in the morning.” He drained the glass and tossed Tamara a veiled look. “But I think my bride would have been homesick for her mother if we had taken a trip.”
“We have been very close,” her mother said.
“We will always be,” Tamara promised.
The goodbyes began and a reissuance of congratulations. The ever-romantic Sadie even managed to shower them with a handful of rice as they walked out the door. As Bick helped her into the car, Tamara’s gaze was drawn back to the house. Even though Sadie had given up her apartment and moved in to be with her mother at night, she felt tugged in two directions. Despite her half-formed anxiety toward her marriage, Tamara couldn’t deny she was excited by the man who was her husband, but the feeling of responsibility for her mother was equally strong. Bick noticed the direction of her gaze and flicked a backward glance at the house.
“I wonder if your mother knows the lengths you are willing to go for her,” he mused with faint cynicism.
The comment was one that went over and over in her mind during the drive to his house. How much of her decision to marry was because of her mother and their resulting financial dilemma? Tamara realized that she wouldn’t have accepted this proposition from just any man. Her attraction to Bick Rutledge was volatile and strong, bordering on love. She had to admit that her acceptance was due, in no small measure, to the man who had asked her.
Bick stopped the car in a cul de sac culminating in front of a brick, pillared mansion in a plush, residential area. Its size was awesome compared to the home she had known much of her life. Tamara felt the intimidation of its subdued grandeur as she followed Bick to the white double doors of the front entrance. Unconsciously she edged closer to him.
As he unlocked the door, her gaze ran over the expensive blue material of his suit, cut to frame the broadness of his shoulders and tapering to the muscled slimness of his waist and hips. The sun glinted on his hair and bronzed the angled planes and hollows of his face. A grain of rice had become caught in the notch of his lapel. Her reaction was instinctive as she reached out to brush it away. At her touch, Bick turned his head sharply.
“Sadie’s rice,” she explained.
Continuing to hold her gaze, he pushed the door inward, then smoothly scooped her into his arms to carry her over the threshold. For a fleeting moment, held close to him with her arms around his neck, Tamara actually felt like a bride. Once inside the large foyer, he set her down.
The ceiling was all the way at the top of the second floor and a Y-shaped staircase opened onto the foyer, white wrought-iron railings curving to the base, where large black squares of tile alternated with white. Tamara looked around, feeling lost.
“Come,” Bick said, observing her expression and taking her hand. “I’ll give you a quick tour of the house. We won’t bother with the second floor.” He dismissed the staircase with a glance. “It’s where the guest bedrooms are.” He led her through an arched opening. “This is the formal living room. Through here is the family room.” His wh
irlwind tour was permitting her only a glimpse of each room, his hand pulling her on without giving her a chance to linger. “At the end of this hallway is the rec room, with a pool table, stereo, et cetera.” He opened a door for her to look in. “This is my study.” She glimpsed a wall of books, a desk, fireplace, and matching sofa and armchairs before he began to partially retrace their steps. “This is the dining room. Beyond that door is the kitchen. Downstairs is a sauna and exercise equipment. There’s a swimming pool in the backyard, too.”
“And you live here all alone?” Tamara remarked incredulously. A dozen people could live in the house without being on top of each other, she thought, as he led her down another hall.
“No.” He paused, his hand resting on a doorknob, and skimmed her face. “We live here all alone.” He pushed the door open and drew her inside, letting her step in front of him and bringing his hands up to rest on the top of her shoulders near her neck. “And this is the master bedroom.”
It was larger than the living room in her own home, dominated by a queen-sized bed covered with a chocolate brown satin in contrast to the cream carpeting on the floor. A small divan and armchair occupied a corner, upholstered in complementing colors.
“Your clothes are in that closet and the drawers of that dresser,” Bick pointed, referring to the majority of her clothes that she had packed and sent with him the previous day. “That door leads to a dressing room and private bath with a sunken tub.”
Her gaze was drawn back to the bed. She was intensely conscious of his thumbs absently stroking the nape of her neck, making lazy circles that sent out sensual ripples undulating over her skin. She was caught by a yearning so strong, it was almost physical.
“Are you hungry?” Bick inquired, his head bending slightly to enter her side vision.
“Not particularly,” Tamara admitted, since the craving that was making her feel weak had nothing to do with food.
“Good.” One hand slid part way down the bareness of her spine and then Bick let his mouth take its place.
Drawing a breath in a soundless gasp, she felt the heat waves radiating through her body. The slow, silent release of the back zipper of her dress had her stomach tightening in delighted shock. As the material loosened around her bodice and waist, his hands moved to adeptly slide the dress from her shoulders and off her arms. The dress rustled into a soft heap about her feet and she was being turned around by hands that had returned to her shoulders.
The eagerness she felt seemed improper. She tried to conceal it as her gaze slowly worked its way past his buttoned shirt front to the knot of his tie and the tanned column of his throat. The firmly defined curves of his mouth were nearly her undoing, her attention lingering on them for a few heart-pounding seconds. Then her gaze traveled the last few inches to his eyes, dark green and burning into her with the impatience of his desire.
They blazed in dissatisfaction over the lace cups of her silk slip that concealed the swelling ripeness of her breasts from his view. When his critically inspecting gaze returned to her face, it swept over the silver-gold frame of her hair, drawn back in its sophisticated knot. Her heart was hammering so loudly, Tamara was certain he could hear it.
“Will you take your hair down for me?”
With a bobbing nod, Tamara agreed and wondered how Bick could speak so calmly when she was being rocked by the passionate upheaval going on inside her. His hands released her and she was free to move. It was a revelation to discover she could walk and the floor beneath her feet was actually solid.
Moving to the dresser and its large vanity mirror, she raised her hands to the back of her head to begin pulling out the pins that held her lustrous blond hair in place. Her fingers fumbled in their initial attempt before the first hairpin was deposited on the dresser top.
Bick watched her every move in the mirror with disconcerting interest. Tamara could see his reflection, too. Her pulse accelerated when he reached up to loosen the knot of his tie. Without taking his eyes away from her reflection, he pulled off the tie and shrugged indifferently out of his suit jacket. Tugging his shirt free from the waistband of his trousers, he began unbuttoning it.
When it had joined the jacket and tie on a chair seat, her hair was tumbling loose about her shoulders. Unconsciously Tamara was inhaling deep drafts of air, disturbed by the naked male torso joining her reflection in the mirror. Sun-bronzed skin was stretched tautly across bunched and sinewy muscles, broken only by a curling cloud of chest hairs.
Assailed by his potent masculinity, she fell victim to a feeling of inadequacy. Dropping her gaze, Tamara reached for the hairbrush on the dresser and began running the bristles through the length of her pale silk hair. Although she wasn’t looking at him, her peripheral vision saw Bick move to her side. Her brush stopped in midstroke when she felt his fingers on her hair, catching thick strands to inspect them. Tamara lifted her gaze to the mirror to find him studying her reflection.
“I knew you would look like this with your hair down.” There was that calmness of his voice again, so at odds with the ravishing message in his eyes. “Don’t wear it skinned away from your face anymore. Let it fall loose around your neck and shoulders.”
At this moment Tamara would have walked through fire if he had ordered it. Not trusting her voice, she inclined her head in silent agreement. The action freed the strand of hair from his fingers and Bick moved away. Her gaze followed him in the mirror. She was self-conscious about the excitement that raced through her veins when he paused beside the bed to strip back the covers.
Setting the brush down, Tamara reached under her slip to remove her panty hose while he wasn’t looking, not wanting him to see how shamelessly eager she was to have him make love to her. But when she straightened, she discovered he had been watching her. It triggered nervous tremors that rippled out from the core of the quake that had started in her midsection.
“Do you think my haste to get you in bed is indecent?” Bick slowly began to cross the room to the dresser where she stood.
She wished he would smile to ease the tension that was tying her in knots because of his frankly sexual look. They were man and wife. This was their wedding night. The course of events was perfectly natural, yet the anticipation was so intense she ached.
Bick was standing in front of her before Tamara managed to get out an answer. “No.” Barely audible.
His hands moved to her ribs, gathering the material of her slip into folds and slipping it over her head. Her skin shivered in a sudden chill, but it was instantly warmed by the touch of his hands encircling her to unfasten the clasp of her bra and remove it, too. Tamara struggled to lift her gaze from the bareness of his chest. In the end his hands cupped her face to help her. The smoldering arousal that she saw in his eyes made her bones melt.
“Before I’m through, I’m going to know everything about you,” Bick declared under his breath. “Every intimate detail.”
A tiny sound came from her throat at the heady promise. It was the catalyst that unleashed his checked desire. As his kiss bruised her lips, his arms gathered her close. Tamara wound her arms around his middle to cling to him and caress the flexed muscles of his broad back. Their body heats combined in a fusion of bare skin, broken by the waistband of his trousers digging into her stomach.
Bending her backward, he shifted an arm downward to curve it across the back of her thighs and pick her up. His mouth didn’t cease its ravishment of her lips as he carried her to the bed he had readied for them. He paused to shed the last barrier, but the satin sheets didn’t have a chance to cool her bare flesh before he was stretching his length on the mattress beside her and covering her lips once more.
The pillow was withdrawn from beneath her head and Tamara was drowning in a sea of sensations, caught in a powerful undertow that gave her glimpses of heaven. His caressing hands and seeking mouth fathomed out the mysteries of her flesh until all the sensitive and vulnerable areas had been explored. Urged and aroused by his expert knowledge of the art, Tama
ra begged him with her lips, her hands, and her body to make love to her and end this feverish ache. Bick let her writhe and twist for a few minutes more before the cloud of dark chest hairs settled over her feminine peaks.
Bick lay on his side, the satin pillowcase cool against his cheek. Morning sunlight streamed over his shoulder to shine on the face of the woman lying beside him. Serene contentment was etched in her sleeping expression, her beauty pure and wholesomely earthy.
The bedcovers were down around her waist, but it was her face that Bick studied. She looked so open, so guileless, this enchantress in the guise of a woman who had trapped him in her spell. By possessing her body, Bick had thought to end his obsessive need for her. But having her once had only strengthened her hold on him. It had angered him into taking her a second time.
Then, in the night, he remembered waking, surprised and delighted to find a womanly shape nestled against him. But he wasn’t contented for long to have her merely lying along his side and he had kissed her awake to arouse the desire he knew lurked just below the surface.
The impulse was growing to do it again. Bick leaned toward the lips that were softly parted as if in unconscious anticipation of his action. He thought of the many things he had whispered to her when they had made love. A surge of male pride gave him the strength to resist the temptation of her lips.
She shifted slightly in sleep, turning from him and thrusting her breasts into the air. A swelling heat stirred in his loins and Bick rolled away to sit up on the side of the bed before the tide of lust overwhelmed his self-control.
Self-disgust filled him as he pushed from the bed and stalked to the bathroom. Bick ignored the luxury of the sunken tub for the punishing sting of a cold shower. Why had he bothered to marry her? Why hadn’t he simply installed her in this house as his mistress? What kind of a man was he to fall in love with a lying thief? A war raged in his mind as he tried to make excuses for what she’d done. The arguments for her guilt and innocence were equally balanced. The deciding factor was whether he believed her unsubstantiated story or the damning evidence. And Bick didn’t trust his feelings. They were too strongly influenced by his romantic attachment for her.
