A Light For My Love (16 page)

But his hand wasn't cold. And as soon as they
touched, a loud spark fired between them from the static he'd
created, making her jump back.

"Oops, sorry," he said, and pushed his hand
toward her again.

Hesitantly, she put her hand in his and
watched his long fingers curve around hers. She noticed odd little
details—the gold hair on the back of his wrist, the angry-looking
scar that ran between the first and second joints of his thumb. He
pumped her hand a couple of times, his grip warm and sure and firm.
But when he should have let go, he didn't. Instead, he brought his
other hand up to completely enclose her own. Startled by the
contact, she looked into his face. His eyes on hers were searching
and intent, and she saw a low flame burning in them that was
distinctly unbusinesslike. She was swamped with a sudden longing to
lean against his wide chest and feel his arms enclose her, while
his hand cradled her head against his shoulder. She suspected that
she might come to regret this agreement.

With no small effort, China escaped his warm
grasp. "We can talk about the details tomorrow," she said and rose
from her chair. She walked out of the kitchen to go back to the
parlor, her head high, her pace dignified.

But in her heart she was running like a
rabbit, running from the spark he'd just ignited within her.

CHAPTER SIX

Late that night, Jake sat at the desk in his
room making a list of the people he wanted China to invite to
dinner. He decided to start with three names to keep the evening
manageable, both for himself and for China. He hated asking for her
help. It made him feel like a beggar. Please, Miss Sullivan, ma'am.
But he wasn't having any luck on his own, and he was out of
ideas.

Huh, he'd have bet anything that she'd
intended to refuse his proposition. She'd worn a stubborn, superior
face while he talked. He got the feeling she saved that look just
for him. Fully expecting her to say no, he'd tried to appear
indifferent while he waited for her answer, but his heart was
pounding in his chest. He didn't want her to realize that he was
placing his entire future in her hands. Then when she agreed, he
wasn't certain he'd heard her correctly.

He studied his broad pen strokes under the
harsh lamplight. There was a lot riding on this piece of paper and
ink, but there was nothing more he could do until morning. He laid
the pen aside and turned down the lamp. Yawning, he rubbed his eyes
with the heels of his hands. When he took out his watch and opened
it, it chimed one bell—midnight straight up. This had been a long,
tough day. He felt as wrung out as he did after facing down a
hurricane at sea. But it was ending a lot better than it had
started.

He stood and stretched his back, pulling his
shoulders first to the right, then to the left, trying to ease the
stiffness in his tired muscles. The fire had burned down and he
went to the fireplace, pulling off his shirt over his head, to stir
the remaining low red embers. This was a night for warm quilts and
a warm bed.

The wind wailed against this corner of the
house, making the walls creak. There was only one sound in the
world more lonely, Jake thought, and that was the low moaning of a
foghorn. He'd listened to that most of his growing-up years, lying
in the dark in the same run-down house on the Columbia River he'd
visited this afternoon. Lying in the dark, surrounded by the damp
and the smell of the river, trying to escape the sound of Pop's
snoring in the other room by imagining a better future, a nice
home, maybe even a wife. Jake shook himself from his reverie. He
had the
Katherine Kirkland
, and she was his focus now.

He turned to glance at the huge bed behind
him, and like a reflex reaction, China's face came to his mind
again. She was so damned prickly, she was almost impossible to talk
to. Before he'd left Astoria, she'd regarded him only with
long-suffering exasperation—when she wasn't ignoring him.

For his own part, he had harbored confused
feelings for her: lust, anger, longing.

Since then, he'd lost himself in the bodies
of vague, unmemorable women in ports around the world. He sought
them out on nights that were too long, when sleeping alone had
seemed unbearable. He paid to lie with them, fostering the thin
hope that satisfying his body might also fill the aching loneliness
he sometimes felt. More often than not, the scheme failed. Maybe
because he always made a special point of avoiding any woman with
black hair . . .

But during the past seven years he'd just
about convinced himself that what he had felt for China Sullivan
was nothing more than a poor boy's fascination with a beautiful,
unattainable princess. Sure, he'd taken it hard when she rejected
him that day in the alcove—to a kid every one of life's bumps was a
soul-wrenching catastrophe. Now that he was grown, he'd acquired a
much cooler head, thank God, and a clearer view of things.

But tonight in the kitchen, when she'd lifted
her face to his, it had taken every bit of willpower he owned to
resist lowering his mouth to her moist coral lips. Her faint scent
of warm spice had drifted to him, nearly making him forget time and
place, and who they were. Luckily, he remembered before he did
something really stupid, and settled for holding her hand between
both of his own. As soon as he had a cargo for his ship, he'd be
leaving Astoria. He wasn't sure when he'd return. Or if he even
wanted to. He didn't need to drag more memories of China Sullivan
with him.

He sat on the edge of the mattress and kicked
off his boots and socks, then shed his pants, throwing them over a
chair. He climbed into bed and shivered. Jesus, it was a bitter
night. The sheets were icy on his long, bare frame, and he felt
goose bumps rise all over his body. He lay back against a pillow
with his hands clasped behind his head, and for a long time he
watched the tall, flickering shadows the firelight cast on the
walls. Outside, the wind moaned with a desolate voice.

When the faint tolling of the clock
downstairs marked the passage of a half hour, Jake sighed and
rolled over. He burrowed into the cold bedding, seeking comfort and
finding none. At length, he wrapped both arms around his other
pillow and hugged it to his chest, waiting for sleep to come.

Some nights were just too long.

*~*~*

The following morning after breakfast, Jake
and China agreed to hold their dinner party on a Saturday evening
two weeks hence. Or rather, China insisted on two weeks and Jake
conceded with irritable impatience. It would give her time, just
barely, to handle all the details she knew must be seen to for the
kind of evening he had in mind.

"Jake, think about what's involved. A dinner
party doesn't happen just like that," she said, snapping her
fingers. She watched as he paced back and forth past the fireplace
in the dining room, his hands clasped behind his back. With his
blond head bent and his eyes on the floor, the roll in his walk was
very obvious. She had no trouble envisioning him on the deck of a
ship, easily keeping his balance by adjusting his long-legged
stride.

"I don't need to think about what's
involved," he carped, throwing his arms wide. "That's your job. I
just don't understand what could take so long."

Truthfully, Jake knew he was in strange
territory with this stuff. The detailed habits and requirements of
the upper class had never particularly interested him. He'd always
lived by a more basic set of rules: eat when you're hungry,

work when you're supposed to, and sleep when
you're tired. Life wasn't always that simple, but enjoying himself
had never been as complex as these people seemed to make it.

Once again, he had no control, and he didn't
like the helpless feeling that gave him. He hadn't gotten more than
three hours' sleep last night; his thoughts had careened around in
his head like a ship with an unmanned helm, plaguing him with the
events of yesterday—Belinda McGowen, sickly and indigent; Dexter
Morrison and his condescending arrogance; Pop, still looking for a
fight after all this time; and China, with her small white hand
tucked into his for the space of a handshake.

He glanced at her now as she sat at the table
with paper, pen and ink, and ill-disguised exasperation. The tight,
high collar of her blouse was buttoned securely, like a fortress
against all intruders, and it gave her neck a long, swanlike
appearance. Seeing her like that, prissy and cool, made him think
of the manifold times he'd been in trouble at school, facing a
critical teacher who fixed him with a baleful, angry stare. The
salient difference, of course, was the rush of desire for China
whipping through him—the urge to pull her into his arms to see if
she felt softer than she looked, to sink both hands into her heavy
jet curls and pull her head back to make her look at him, see him
as more than the poor boy she had, by turns, disregarded and
disdained. Then, while her face was upturned to his, he'd cover her
soft lips with his own in a kiss that would melt her iciness and
make her ask him for more—

"Are you listening to me?" China rattled her
sheet of paper, yanking him back to the matter of the moment.

Jake pulled in a deep breath and strode away
from the fireplace, suddenly too warm. He harnessed his thoughts to
listen as she continued reading from the list she'd created while
they talked.

"The invitations must be written and sent,
the house needs to be cleaned, the menu planned, the food ordered.
I'll have to hire Mr. Frederickson to tune the piano—"

Jake halted and glanced up. "Tune the piano?
What the hell for?"

China wondered why he looked so furious. His
face was flushed and damp, his brows lowered. "Music, of course.
I'll have to play for the guests. Certainly the ladies will expect
it. Mr. Frederickson doesn't charge much, Jake."

"It isn't the money I'm worried about. But
Jesus, China, this isn't one of your tea parties. It's business.
Next I suppose you're going to tell me I'll have to learn to
balance saucers and cake plates on my knees." He squinted at her
suspiciously. "And what ladies do you mean?"

"Well, the wives. You can't send invitations
to a formal dinner like this and not include these men's wives. Not
only would it be rude, it would be improper."

"So now I have to worry about entertaining
the wives? Forget it." With a scowl, Jake flopped his big body into
the chair opposite her and crossed his arms over his chest. China
thought he looked like a youngster who'd been told he'd have to
spend the day visiting some musty, ancient relative instead of
playing ball.

Her exasperation increased incrementally. She
let a small frown develop between her brows, and she folded her
hands on the tabletop.

"You asked for my help, because, among other
things, I know what it takes to make this kind of function
successful." She sat taller in the chair, and her chin lifted
slightly as she looked at him. "By all means, if you feel that I'm
not doing as you'd like, perhaps you should offer your 'business
proposition' to someone who shares your philosophy." She sent him a
look of imperious dignity. "Whatever that may be."

He continued to glare at her for a silent,
tense moment, then she saw a glimmer of concession. Finally he
looked away. He had no other options, and they both well knew
it.

"Get the damned piano tuner, then. We
wouldn't want the ladies to be unhappy," he grumbled and rose from
the chair to begin pacing again. "What else has to be done?"

She continued down the list, talking about
hiring help to cook and serve—she could hardly expect Aunt Gert to
do that, getting the table linens sorted out, the silver polished.
"You need a haircut, and you have to buy a good suit and allow time
for the tailoring. You can see we'll need every day of those two
weeks."

"You should have a new dress, too, probably,"
he said, turning to her. "Get one made for yourself and buy all the
under—well, whatever else you need that goes with it." She thought
he actually blushed. "Have the bills sent to me."

China gaped at him in horror. In truth, she'd
been wondering what she would wear. Everything she owned was
threadbare or hopelessly out of date. But Jake's suggestion was
outrageous.

"You cannot buy a dress for me!" she
exclaimed. She gripped the pen so hard her fingertips turned white.
Seeing his stupefied expression, she continued hotly, "Don't you
dare stand there and pretend you don't know how improper it is to
buy such personal things for a lady. Like I was a—a strumpet, a
kept woman?" Remembering that frowzy female she'd seen him with
yesterday, she quivered with insult, and she threw it right back at
him. "I realize the women you consort with don't care if people
think that about them, or mind if men give them money, but I
certainly do!"

Jake's face clouded over with a dark
expression, and China felt a sudden tremor of fear lurch through
her. He walked around to her side of the table, his eyes like green
fire. She jumped to her feet, keeping the chair between them. He
towered over her with wide shoulders and muscled forearms that
flexed visibly below his rolled-up sleeves.

Jake let his gaze rake her plain, dark gray
skirt and dull cream blouse. Her breath caught in her chest. The
slow up-and-down look he gave her was more insulting than any she'd
ever known.

"What are you talking about?"

"I saw you yesterday outside the druggist's,"
she replied, not totally unaware of the shrewish tone creeping into
her own voice. "You gave that woman money and she threw herself
into your arms."

"You mean Belinda? She—"

"Oh, is that her name?" China went on,
astounded by her own behavior but unable to stop. "And she kissed
you too, right there on the street in plain sight! Heaven only
knows what else she gave you in exchange for that money."