Devil in Disguise (14 page)

“And I’ve rebelled against the notion of marriage since I was a teenager.”

“Maybe it’s better this way, then. The absurdity of how it all happened. It’s marriage on your terms.”

“Maybe,” Rachel conceded. “It still feels weird.”

“Want to listen to the radio?” he offered

“Sure.”

The only station they could find was country, but the tune was catchy, and the singer’s bass voice rumbled so low Rachel could feel it in her own belly. She rolled down her window, closed her eyes for a moment, and allowed the music to take her on a journey.

Conrad sang along softly, surprising Rachel with his own lovely deep voice. He tapped out a beat on the steering wheel, relaxing into
an easy smile. The first previously unknown fact she discovered
about her new husband was that he was a country music fan.
Eventually, Rachel caught on to the chorus and tentatively joined in with her own mezzo-soprano.

The music, the night, the wind all carried away any unease. Suddenly, they were back to that magical place where no one else in the world existed or mattered except Rachel and Conrad, two halves of a whole who’d found each other again.

They drove halfway to the cabin and checked into a chain hotel for the night. It might not have been the Ritz, but it was clean and
comfortable, and Rachel had a sneaking suspicion the
accommodations
were about to get a lot sparser, so she should enjoy it while she could.

When at long last she was standing alone with Conrad in their
room, Rachel was overcome with an inexplicable shyness. He looked so completely tempting with his suit coat tossed over his shoulder and his tie loosened. The top button of his shirt was undone, and she
could catch a glimpse of the base of his throat. She wanted him, but wasn’t sure how to bridge even the short distance between them; she was rooted to her spot.

He seemed to sense her mood, and she wondered if even he was experiencing a touch of bashfulness, too. There was something about the expectation of the evening that was making her a nervous wreck.

“It’s been a while.” She finally broke the silence, deciding it was best to just get it out there in the open.

“For us or in general?” He sought clarification.

She looked at him incredulously. “There hasn’t been anybody since you.” The thought had never occurred to her that there might have been for him.

“Me either,” he quickly added. “I can imagine where your mind was headed by the expression on your face. But you have no idea how relieved I am to hear you say that.”

“What are you saying? Did you expect me to jump right in bed with someone else?”

“You’re a beautiful woman. There had to have been men who tried.”

“Yes, but there’s this magical word in the English language: ‘no.’ It holds great power.” Rachel crossed her arms and leveled her haughtiest gaze on him.

“At least we’re not nervous anymore.”

Rachel took a deep breath to verbally annihilate him but erupted with laughter instead. “True. Fighting always was our second-best pastime.”

Conrad must have decided it was time for their first-best
pastime because he swept her into his arms. There was no hesitation in his
kiss, and his touch ignited something in Rachel. Suddenly her need for more of him was greater than her desire for air. She needed to taste that spot at the base of his throat, the one that had been
taunting her since he first loosened his tie.

Her main focus became getting that damned shirt and tie off him so she could have deliciously free access to the location in question. She was rewarded by the sharp intake of his breath when her tongue grazed his skin.

He held her closer, encouraging Rachel to wrap her legs around his waist so he could carry her to the bed. She would have let him carry her anywhere at that particular moment, just so long as she could continue to explore his collarbone and throat. Her hands
trailed up and down his arms, savoring every contour of every muscle.

His patience reached its bounds, and he took his turn to explore. His hands, his mouth, his tongue, each wreaked their own havoc as
they traced a fiery path on her skin. His strong, dark hands stood in stark contrast to the delicate white material of her dress as he carefully slid it over her head. He paused to drink in the sight of her;
she kissed
each of his fingers, marveling at how perfectly formed his hands
were. When she was trembling from the desire that had snaked its way around her senses, she sank her hands in his thick, soft hair and
pulled him to her, claiming his lips as her own.

She couldn’t get close enough. She couldn’t feel enough. His broad hands spanned her back, pulling her closer still. For all the dreaming about him that she’d done, she’d forgotten. She’d forgotten what it felt like to have a thousand nerve endings explode with pleasure at the same time. She’d forgotten what the phrase “dizzying heights” meant. She’d forgotten what it felt like to yearn
for something so badly it caused sweet pain.

It came crashing back to her now with all its glorious paradoxes: silken steel, tender ferocity, languid urgency. French blended with Koasati as he told her over and over again how much he adored her in both his native tongues.

When neither had anything left to give, they lay wrapped in each other, a tangled pile of arms and legs, each absentmindedly stroking the other’s skin. Rachel’s heart soared. She’d never been
happier. In the still of the night, though, she couldn’t help the fears that wound their way through her mind. Playing house with Conrad Langston might
keep her worries at bay most of the time, but here, when there was nothing else to drown those worries out, she was forced to admit she’d never been more afraid of what the future would hold.

MAYBE IT WAS TERRIBLY SHALLOW OF HER,
but Rachel delighted in the fact that her husband had washboard abs. She didn’t
even try to resist the urge to touch them, simply because she didn’t have to any longer. A nicer wife would have been content to watch her husband, to let him sleep in. But there was something very
beautiful about the lines of his muscular form, and that beauty beckoned her to trace her fingers along each contour. When she moved on to the enticing V of his hips, his hand flew up to catch hers.

“
Diable
femme
,” he accused tenderly, pulling her fingers to his lips.

“What?” She batted her eyelashes innocently. “I was just
admiring. That hardly makes me a devil woman.”

“Is that what we’re doing? Then it’s my turn.” He rolled her onto her back and set about showing her just how much he admired her. What started out as tenderly tracing curves soon flared into something more.

They got a later start to their day than either intended. By the
time
each had sufficiently admired the other, they’d missed breakfast. They might have made it on time if Conrad had put a shirt on instead of padding around the room in jeans that hung on his hips in such a ridiculously tantalizing way. So really, it was totally his fault that Rachel’s stomach was growling as they climbed in the
truck.

“I thought I was supposed to be healing,” Conrad mused,
handing her a drive-thru cup of coffee.

“Did I hurt you?” Rachel blanched.

“No, not at all. I was teasing,” he rushed to assure her.

“That was not very gentlemanly, then.” She pursed her lips and gave him the evil eye.

“No, but that was a cute face.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so she changed
subjects. “How far is the cabin?”

“A couple of hours, but we’ll want to stop for supplies before we get there.”

“Just how remote is this place?”

“Don’t go outside alone at night.”

“Will ghosts get me?” Rachel teased then stopped short, feeling like a total heel for not remembering that his parents had been
murdered at the cabin years ago. “Sorry.”

“No worries.” He reached out to brush her cheek tenderly with his thumb. “Some people think it’s weird that I kept the cabin, but I wouldn’t have if it bothered me. I don’t think about it so much as where they died. It’s one of the few places where I can still feel them. Besides, if I’d sold it then, I wouldn’t have it now, and it’s the perfect place to lie low for a while. Not even Rick Sinclair will be able to find it without help.”

“I’m such an idiot.” Rachel was furious at herself.

“For marrying me, maybe. But in all other regards, not at all. It really is okay.”

“I wish you’d stop telling me I was stupid for marrying you.”
Rachel frowned at him but finally let go of her guilt just the slightest bit.

“But to answer your question, it’s not ghosts that will keep you in at night,” he said. “It’s the gators.”

“Excuse me?”

“Alligators.”

“I heard you,” she snapped.

“Then why did you say ‘excuse me’?”

“Because it seemed the thing to say. I was in shock. Gators?”

“This is Louisiana,
mon amour
.”

“I know this is Louisiana, but would alligators really come up to the cabin?” Rachel struggled to wrap her brain around what he was telling her.

“They won’t come in if you remember to close the door.”

“Excuse me?”

“Was that a real ‘excuse me,’ or an in-shock ‘excuse me’?”

Rachel punched him in the arm.

“I thought it was a valid question.”

She sucked in a deep breath, her jaw twitching as she tried to control the anger bubbling inside her. Honest reflection told her it
was fear more than anger, but she wasn’t about to share that with Conrad.

“So other than being stuck inside all night because of gators, is there anything else I should know about your family’s cabin? Please, and I mean please, tell me it has indoor plumbing.” Rachel had
sudden
visions of being bitten on the rump by an alligator while trying to straddle an outhouse hole.

“It has indoor plumbing,” he assured her. “Now.”

“Now? As in, there was a time it didn’t?”

Conrad answered with an amused smile.

“Hot water?”

“Another improvement I made. I put solar panels up last
summer, so I have power.”

“If you left to put solar panels up, why did you go back to the casino? You said yourself no one could find you at the cabin.”

He glanced over at Rachel but didn’t answer. His silence
reminded her why he’d stayed.

“That’s right, you stayed to protect me.”

“I didn’t do a very good job of it, did I?”

“I disagree. I’m sitting here, aren’t I?”

Conrad rewarded her with another smile, letting the subject drop. Rachel kicked off her shoes and leaned against the door,
twisting in the seat so she could put her feet in his lap. It might not
have been the safest way to ride, but she was feeling a little wild. Besides, it couldn’t be any more dangerous than bunking with gators.

The wind tugged her hair out the window, feeling delightful as it stroked her cheek on its way by. The day’s radio selection was rock
n’ roll, garage band style. Rachel smiled, rather enjoying the many sides to Conrad Langston. The miles of blacktop passed quickly, almost too quickly for Rachel’s taste. Before she was ready, they
were at a little
country store, loading up their shopping cart with staples. Conrad tossed in a pocket knife as an impulse buy, earning an arched
eyebrow from Rachel.

“I thought you might like your own,” he offered by way of explanation.

“Thanks.” Rachel wasn’t sure what else to say to that, and she wondered what on earth she would need a pocket knife for.

“They come in handy,” he promised her, accurately guessing at the meaning behind her expression.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“You’d be surprised the size of gator you can take out with one of those.”

Rachel paled. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Yes, I’m joking.”

“That’s not cool, Conrad. Not cool at all.”

He merely smiled in response.

They were soon back in the truck, but it was infinitely less pleasant bumping along dirt roads than it had been tooling along the highway. Still, the bayou had an ethereal beauty to it, almost making up for the stifling  air that was so thick it clung to their skin.

Conrad hadn’t been joking when he said his place was difficult to find. The cabin itself sat precariously over the water, at least in Rachel’s opinion. It was completely surrounded by the lush greenery of the Louisiana wetland. Even the truck disappeared in the foliage once parked.

Rachel set about unloading groceries while Conrad opened the
cabin up for use. She had never seen a kitchen so tiny or a cabin so
sparse. Aside from the miniscule refrigerator, stove, and sink, the cabin held a king-size bed, a trunk at the foot of it, and nothing else. There was a screened-in porch that hung completely over the water. That, naturally, had chairs.

Rachel eyeballed the only seating the cabin had to give,
wondering what the odds were that it would collapse into the bayou at some point, offering her up as gator dinner. The screened-in porch’s door led to a wooden dock, which led even farther into the water. Tied to the dock was a boat that looked small enough to be fair game for a decent-sized reptile.

The cabin was tidy, even by Rachel’s standards. It was obvious to her that Conrad had taken great pride in caring for it throughout the years.

“How much of the land around here is yours?” she asked,
slightly in awe at yet another side to her husband.

“About a hundred acres.”

“Really? That has to be worth a lot, even in today’s market.”

“I suppose it is. It’s been in my family for generations.”