Deep Purple (39 page)

For Amanda it was like coming home. A sense of belonging pervaded her, especially when she walked through the fortress
’s courtyard to her great-grandmother’s bedroom. It was an austere room, almost like a nun’s and cool and musty from disuse. Religious tin paintings graced the walls, and a bed and handmade bureau occupied the otherwise bare room. She could imagine Dona Dominica waiting there for Don Francisco, as Catherine must have waited for Lorenzo.

Nick did not seem to find it strange that she wished to stay in that room rather than in a much nicer guest room provided in the castle proper. When she and her father joined him for Thanksgiving dinner that night in a dining room tha
t would seat at least fifty, it seemed completely right to her that she should be there.

After dinner a retainer, an old Mexican man, served liqueur in the parlor that housed Paul
’s growing art collection. “He brings a painting home from almost every country Roosevelt sends him,” Nick said, adding grimly, “which are becoming fewer in number as Hitler’s armies march across Europe.”

He paused and looked at her father. “
That brings me to something else I wanted to talk to you about. Eventually we will become officially involved in the war. I'm sure you’ve already experienced some anti-Japanese sentiment. But it could—and will—get much worse. I fear for Mandy’s safety."

Her father set his cup on the round marble-topped coffee table. “
I also, Mr. Godwin. But there is nowhere we can run and hide. And this is my country now."

“
If war comes, promise me you’ll accept my protection— promise me, Mr. Shima, that you’ll bring Mandy here.”

Her father rose. “
No, that I cannot do. I submitted to this one visit to Cristo Rey, Mr. Godwin, because I hoped to quench my daughter’s unnatural thirst for the Stronghold. I am hoping she will see that it is only a pile of rock and wood that with time will be nothing but rubble.”

He left the parlor then, his stooped shoulders carried wi
th dignity. Nick crossed to her and took her cup from her trembling hands. He set the cup on the coffee table. “Your father is right, you know."

When he pulled her to her feet, an intense urge to flee the room that was dominated by his presence swept over
her. But he held her tightly to him. “Isn’t this what you wanted? To tempt me, to make me half mad with wanting you?”

She tried to push him away, but he ground his fingers into the soft flesh of her buttocks and pulled her against him. “
Can you feel what you do to me?” he asked thickly. He jerked one of her flailing hands down and pressed it against him, and the rock-solid bulk frightened her. She was no match for Nick. The balance of power could easily shift in his favor.

When she would have wrenched free,
he lifted her in his arms and carried her through the
zaguan
out into the courtyard He reached Dona Dominica’s old bedroom and set Amanda down, pinning her against the door. “No!” she hissed. “Leave me alone! ’ ’

“
It’s my time now,” he rumbled. His hand slipped down to the fork of her legs in a half-slap and half-caress that did not cease until he heard her groan. Then he released her abruptly. “Sweet dreams!” he snapped and stalked off into the darkness.

She hated him! Hated him! She rolled restlessly in
bed from her right side to her left. The itch between her thighs was unbearable. Damn Nick Godwin! He had known, and she hadn't, that a man could make a woman burn like that! It was unfair— and cunning of him. Surely this hunger for what he could give her would leave her system. If she could just hold out against him.

At last she went to sleep and awoke in a vile, ruffled mood. Now she knew why the female scorpion stung her mate to death. She dressed in khaki pants and a beige cotton shirt and headed out to
the stables that had been built after the old ones were torn down to make way for the addition to the Stronghold. Apparently Paul retained only three horses in his absence, but they all appeared to be thoroughbreds. She chose a stocking-footed chestnut that took her out to the Cristo Rey wildlands and away from Nick Godwin.

She rode southeast toward the Fort Huachuca military post
— toward the craggy foothills and rock-strewn arroyos that her mother and grandmother must have often ridden. Her long hair blew out behind her, and though the early morning temperature was still cool, in the fifties, the sun warmed her face. Beneath her thighs she could feel the heaving barrel of the animal as it galloped unrestrained.

Once the friskiness was out of both the horse
and herself, she settled her mount into an easy canter, always heading southeast. It was not as if she expected, at twenty-four, to see the Ghost Lady—as she had at six and seven. She did not scout out every lonely, twisted Joshua tree in some eerie expectation of an apparition.

Still, seeing the lone rider and horse loping toward her was like
deja vu
. She pulled up on the chestnut and sat waiting for her past to approach. When the horse was close enough she saw that the rider was a man of perhaps forty-five or fifty—a handsome man, in a dignified sort of way, with silvery hair and mustache.

“
Hello,” the gentleman said, moving his black mount alongside hers. "You must be Amanda.”

She canted her head, puzzled. Swiftly she scrutinized the ascetic features
—the high brow, the contemplative eyes, and the refined line of the lips, so unlike Nick’s more carnal, unforgiving features; yet she knew the man was his stepbrother. “You’re Paul, aren’t you?”

He smiled. “
It seems we’ve met before—about fifteen years ago, wasn’t it? You were just a—”

“
Tomboy,” she supplied, matching his friendly smile. “Yes. Though I'm surprised you would remember.”

“
Nick never let me forget. It was beyond his realm of comprehension that a girl like you existed.”

“
He talked about me to you?”

“
He still does. And I must confess, Amanda, that I was prepared not to like you.”

Her eyes opened wide. “
Nick’s description was not flattering, I take it?”

“
On the contrary, he's quite infatuated with you.” Paul leaned forward on the saddle horn. His eyes swept over her with the practice of a man who has met and entertained many women. And yet there was a sadness in them, and she instantly guessed he still mourned his dead wife. “Shall I be blunt?” he asked.

"By all means.”

“I envisioned you as a homewrecker. Oh, I know Nick’s had other women in his life since he and Danielle have gone their separate ways. But you’re the first woman he ever brought to the Stronghold. When he called Washington and asked me to fly down to meet you over the Thanksgiving weekend—well, I was quite prepared to dislike you. In fact, I had almost decided not to come and only at the last minute changed my mind.”

She bristled.
‘‘'What's between Nick and myself is not quite what it seems.”

Paul chuckled. “
So I’ve learned. Nick informed me—in his most irritating manner, this morning—that you have no interest in becoming his mistress. At first I marked this as a feminine ploy calculated to snare my stepbrother. Then Nick told me that you believe your grandmother was the rightful heir to the Stronghold.”

‘‘
Not believe—I know." She shrugged. ‘‘But there is no way I can prove it.”

“
So you will settle for tormenting Nick?”

“
To match your bluntness, yes.”

“
Marvelous. My stepbrother deserves to have some of his male arrogance deflated. And you seem to make the perfect adversary. I'm going to like you very much, Amanda Shima.”

CHAPTER 51

A
manda and Paul rode back to the Stronghold together, friends now, talking of trivial things. Nick was in the stables checking out the shoe of the third horse. At their approach he set the hoof down and rose, brushing off the dust and hay from his jeans. The way they hugged his hips, the way the plaid cotton shirt stretched tautly across the enormous bull-like shoulders, was too much. His raw masculine virility was blatant, overwhelming.

He raised a brow when Paul helped her down from her mount. “
So she's beguiled you also?" he asked his stepbrother with a half-grin, half-sneer.

“
So much that I'm setting myself up as her protector."

Nick glanced at her but only said, “
Watch out, Paul. She stings.” He took the saddle from the stable railing and slung it over his mount. “Either of you want to join me?” His mocking look challenged her, and she was relieved when Paul answered first. “Not me. I’ve got some briefs I’ve got to cover before Monday.”

“
I need to check on Father,” she hedged.

Paul retreated to the library that was in the Stronghold
’s new addition, and she played a game of chess with her father before he retired to his room for a nap. The rest of the afternoon she spent exploring the Stronghold. Her hands ran lovingly over the pockmarked walls, and her eyes committed to memory the tree-shaded courtyard and the old one-eyed adobe ovens. One did not see those reminders of an Old World’s Shangri-la any more.

Nick found her in the kitchen looking over the copper and wooden utensils that had to be almost a hundred years old. “
Didn't the Bible warn against idol worship?” he asked gruffly.

She whirled, and he trapped her against the butcher-block counter, hands at either side of her hips. “
Isn’t that what you’re doing—making an idol of this place?”

“
And what did the Bible have to say about adultery?” she snapped.

The door opened, and Paul stuck his head inside. “
Oh, pardon me. What I was going to say can wait until later, Nick.”

“
No, that’s all right,” she said. “Go ahead, Paul.” She glared at Nick. “We’re finished.”

Paul saved dinner from being an uncomfor
table challenge between Nick and herself by keeping the conversation on light topics. Only once did he become serious, when he addressed her father on the war.

“
I think you should know. Mr. Shima, though it is still highly confidential, that the United States is imminently prepared to enter the war against Japan. Even at this minute our forces are on standby alert at Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines. Japan has been building up her arsenal in the Pacific. I think you can appreciate how this could affect you and Amanda. Nick and I’ve talked about the results here in the United States—about what a declaration of war against Japan could mean to you—but Nick tells me you refuse to accept his aid.”

“
That is so,” her father said.

Nick sat opposite her, sayin
g nothing. The smoke from his after-dinner cigarette veiled his gambler’s eyes, but she knew that he watched her. What had prompted him to speak to Paul? Or was Paul speaking purely out of his own concern now?

Paul leaned forward, his handsomely aristocrat
ic face set in solemn lines. “I hope you'll reconsider, Mr. Shima. Nick is here close by, where he could do something immediately if the need arose.”

‘‘
We appreciate your concern,” was all her father would say. She knew he was too proud ever to accept help. And then again, she did not think he really believed—nor did she—that anything could occur in America so catastrophic as to reduce them to begging for help.

Nick and Paul lingered over after-dinner liqueur to talk, and she and her father excused themselv
es to retire for the evening. She thought for certain she would have no trouble sleeping. Lying in bed, she wondered how her grandmother had kept warm during the winter months when the weather happened to be harsh, for there was no fireplace in the room. She snuggled deeper beneath the comforter, though it was not really cold.

She could just imagine a warming pan at the bottom of the bed, or maybe even a hot brick or hot-water bottle . . . just as she could imagine the footsteps of Law Davalos passing outsi
de her grandmother’s door . . . as she suspected Nick's would.

But the footsteps never came, and the hours ticked by. She was wretched. It was Nick's fault for pounding this feeling, this miserable, debilitating desire, into her.

At last she bounded from the bed and stormed out of the bedroom without even bothering to throw on the rose-pink robe that matched her pajamas. The nippy night air cleared the cobwebs from her mind but not the heat from her body. Overhead the sky was studded with diamonds. Yet she cared not, nor did she notice the fragrant scent of the oleander that mixed with the fecund odor of the warm earth drifting from the courtyard.

She stalked down the open portico to Nick
’s room and rapped on the door. It opened immediately. The room was dark, but she could still make out that he wore only his jeans. His bare skin glowed where the black hair did not whorl about his chest. He stood back, saying nothing, and let her pass by him. Closing the door, he flipped on a dim lamp.

She whirled on him. "I
came to tell you that it’s not worth it! Staying here at the Stronghold is not worth putting up with you! I want to leave—first thing tomorrow morning!”

He looked at her face framed by the sleek midnight hair that brushed the curve of her hips. “
How can any woman fire me up the way you do, standing there in those damned virginal pajamas?”  He turned away and sat down on the edge of the tumbled bed. ‘‘All right,” he said, as he removed first one boot, then the other. ‘‘Paul’ll take you back tomorrow.”

He st
ood up and began to unzip the jeans. She froze. That terrible gnawing was still between her legs. Dammit, why did she have to want him every time she was around him? He made her behave just like the animal he was. Well, she had more self-control. She'd show him she was stronger, more civilized! She refused to move while he stripped out of the jeans. Then she audibly gasped in the tense silence of the room. He wore no undershorts! He was exposed, engorged!

He never took his eyes off her the entire time.
‘‘I know why you came,” he grated.

She pivoted and streaked for the door, but he reached it with her, trapping her. Too proud to scream, she stood rigid as his hands divested her of the pajama top. It dropped to her bare feet. He scooped her up and crossed to
the bed, dumping her on it. She glared up at him with eyes that would have slashed him to ribbons had they been stilettoes. He jerked the bottoms off and stood looking down at her naked body.

She knew she should spring up now, run, naked, from the room whi
le she still had a chance. “You beast! You damn rutting bull!”

He ignored her and mounted her, tearing into her. A soft moan escaped her lips as the pain winged through her. She tried to shove away the torso that plunged and hammered at her. But there was
no halting it. And then she didn’t care. The pain was gone, and he was giving only pleasure. It was all wrong, but it didn’t matter. Not at that moment. Only the intense, breathtaking sensation. The terrible, engulfing need. He drove into her and pulled back, and she followed, not wanting to lose him. And then he would slam against her again.

She hated him! Hated him! Still, she could not help herself. Helplessly she followed his lead. Had to. The whole room was afire with their sa
vage battle of desire. She was afire. Only he could quench it.

She exploded, tightening about him, drawing him into her. And he exploded. “
Dear God,” he whispered, his breath hot against her face, “it seems like I’ve waited forever—for eternity—for you. ’ ’

She looked up at him
—at the strength in the contour of his bones, the roughness in the shadowy stubble of his jaw. Nick Godwin was very real, a very powerful force out of the present, not the past. Yet it was the past that had bound her to him.

She rolle
d away from him and sat up. Her hair curtained her perfect breasts, but her nipples, still aflame with passion, thrust through the silky strands. “You’ve raped me,” she said tonelessly.

The tender look that had eased the harsh lines of his face faded. His
muscles bunched, but he only said, "Did I?”

She rose to her feet, standing as proudly as a high priestess. “
I warned you I would have my revenge. Now I shall.”

The eyes shuttered over. Once more they were the politician
’s unrevealing eyes. “Oh? How so?”

“
Do you seriously think you can take a mistress and not have it affect your political career?” she raged. “The public would never elect to the legislature a married man who’s keeping a mistress. And I plan to let your constituents know that I’ve been your mistress! I’ll tell every nauseating detail!”

The smile that slowly creased his face frightened her. “
That is where you’re quite in error, Mandy. The public couldn’t care less if I keep a mistress. What they would never countenance is my making the mistress my wife. That is a social
faux pas
. And you would never be anything but a mistress, my dear, because you can be bought. Your price is high, but you can be bought.”