Liz Ireland (20 page)

And what a patient schemer he was. Right up until the moment they’d been dancing, he had probably been trying to gauge what the quickest way to get her out of town was. Instead of food, he’d probably set off immediately in search of her father. And she’d been mooning around like a lovesick puppy—just like Jim, Pitt and all the others said!

The humiliation of it all almost made her want to give up the fight. Almost.

“I can’t go back to the ranch,” she said, more to Pendergast actually than to her father.

Nevertheless, it was her father who answered. “Yes, you can. Tomorrow I’ll send Buck to town to pick you up, and you will come back to the ranch, for good.”

It was like a death sentence. And Pendergast was still standing mutely behind her father, the smug executioner.

Suddenly her anger was at a boiling point. “All right, Father, since I don’t have a choice.” She couldn’t blame her father too much, since she’d known all along he’d be furious if he found out the circumstances under which she’d been staying in town. She stepped past him and narrowed her eyes angrily at Pendergast, a worthier target for her wrath. “Don’t think I’ll forget this. Or forgive. Ever.”

Pendergast’s eyes widened, confused. “You don’t think I...” He shrugged haplessly and attempted a smile. “I just brought you a piece of cake.” He held out the chocolate wedge as though it would solve all her problems.

But the last thing Cecilia wanted was a peace offering from this man, this snake who had been using her, duping her. She looked at the mouth-watering cake again and became even angrier when she felt her stomach rumble. Putting her heart’s need for revenge over her stomach, she snatched the napkin and cake out of Pendergast’s hand.

“Maybe it will make you feel better,” he said in a lame attempt to soothe her temper.

Her eyes glistened. “I know exactly what will make me feel better, Pendergast.”

He raised his eyebrows with interest, but curiosity turned to panic in his eyes as he watched the cake arc its way through the air. With the giddy energy of someone who knows she’s making a scene but is beyond caring, Cecilia aimed straight at the bridge of his nose and smiled joyfully as the cake hit its target with a satisfying
splat.
Pendergast stepped back, wiping the hard sugary icing from his face with the backs of his hands.

When he blinked at her in surprise, the whites of his eyes shone through the icing like a second-rate actor’s in a minstrel show. Cecilia almost laughed. Almost.

“Don’t you dare double-cross me again, Pendergast,” she warned. “Don’t even cross my path, do you understand? I never want to see you, ever!”

* * *

Jake decided a quick stop by the water pump was in order to wash up. Luckily, the clearing was empty of people, so no one was there to remark on the cake he’d gotten in the kisser.

As he left the lights of the party behind, his legs fell into a faster walk, and then a run. He wasn’t certain what had gotten her so riled up, but he couldn’t allow Cecilia to leave town thinking the worst of him.

This crazy mix-up would have to happen just when things were going so well between them!

The house was dark when he trotted up the porch steps; from the tiny entrance hall he could just see a glow of light coming from Cecilia’s little room behind the kitchen. Like a moth, he swerved through the darkened rooms toward that light, taking note of the hodgepodge of sounds he heard. Bangs. Curses. Sniffles.

He slowed as he approached her open doorway. Inside the tiny room, which was lit only by one flickering tallow candle, Cecilia had been throwing all her worldly goods into the tiny valise that rested on her bed. Her eyes were red, her cheeks tearstained. She wasn’t one to suffer in silence, either. As his frame filled up the doorway, she let out a last muttered curse.

“Damn.” Without having to look up, Cecilia knew Pendergast was there. She sank down next to her travel bag, about as close as she’d ever come to feeling utterly defeated. “Why’d you have to follow me?” she asked petulantly.

“Why did you run away?”

“You know why!”

Jake stepped carefully toward the bed. “If you think I had anything to do with whatever angered your father, you’re wrong.”

“Ha!” Cecilia snapped. “You started planning the day you blew into town. For weeks you’ve been sweet-talking me, haven’t you, just so you could get me where you wanted—on a ranch twenty miles away!”

He had suspected she thought something along these lines, and given the messed-up way they had gone about getting to know one another, he was hardly surprised that she would be suspicious of him. Tonight, however, as they danced, he had begun to hope they had moved beyond that. She could have at least given him the benefit of a doubt.

“Is that really what you think? That all along I’ve just been trying to get rid of you?”

“Think?” Cecilia scoffed. “I know!” She’d had the same objective in mind for him!

Pendergast stepped forward, clamped his hands on to both her arms and pulled her to her feet. There wasn’t much space to maneuver in the little room—just a couple of feet between the bed and the washbasin—and Cecilia found herself smack up against his chest. Releasing his hold only enough that he could tilt her chin up with one hand, he looked into her eyes. His coal dark gaze was intense.

“Why would I want to do that?” Jake asked, his voice dropping low. His lightly stubbled jaw worked from side to side with tension. For the first time, he wished he was truly Uncle Thelmer, who would have known exactly what to say to a woman. He searched for pretty words that would win Cecilia over without putting his pride on the line, but none came to him.

She smirked as another tear welled precariously in the corner of one eye. “That’s an easy one. Ever since you came here, I’ve been nothing but trouble for you.”

“You’ve troubled me, all right.” He pulled her closer still, until he could smell the sweet scent of her hair. “You’ve deviled my thoughts, day and night. When I left, I felt you tugging me back the whole time.”

The space between them seemed to disappear without either of them moving a muscle. Cecilia’s breath caught in her throat. What magic had closed the distance? Not quite able to trust this sudden change in her adversary, she pulled back but remained locked fast in his arms. In defiance of his superior strength, she turned her profile to him.

“How can I trust you?” she asked.

A shudder rippled through her body when she felt a soft husky whisper in her ear. “The same way I know I can trust you, even though you’ve had me figured out for weeks now.”

Her head snapped back and beheld mischief mixed with desire dancing in his eyes. He was admitting he wasn’t who he said he was! As her eyes focused in on his, her hands held fast to his strong shoulders. “You’re wrong. I don’t know who you are at all.”

The words, every syllable laced with wonder, shocked her even as they issued from her lips; shocked her because she had to confess that though she knew very little about this man, his presence had shaken the very foundation of her world.

“Don’t you?” he countered, his head dipping down to impart little nips to her neck.

Her nails dug into the crisp ironed fabric of his shirt. “I don’t know your name, Pendergast.”

His throat emitted a chuckle and his hands moved down to encircle her waist. “You just said it.”

Cecilia clutched to the last shreds of her skepticism. “Your
real
name,” she said. As he bent lower to kiss the little valley where her collarbone dipped down, her head lolled backward. His lips were doing powerful things to her, and she strained to keep a grip on her sanity. “And I don’t know where you came from....” She gasped as she felt the topmost button of her dress pop loose from its confinement. Swallowing hard against the parched feeling in her throat, she continued, “I don’t know what you do....”

Except that he was doing wonderful things to her now. One by one the little round buttons came undone and the skin below was thoroughly lathed and tended. The tedious job of fastening those buttons always took aeons; never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that unfastening them could be such a pleasurable task. Her hands moved from his shoulders, roving over the short cropped hair at the nape of his neck. She tried in vain to steady the uneven tripping of her heart.

Jake nuzzled against the ridge of her camisole. Leaving Cecilia standing, he swung around to sit on the edge of her bed, his eyes remaining at eye level with the soft swells of her breasts. When he looked up into her face, the blue pools of her eyes were shimmering with new depths of emotion, and the desire he saw there made him find words, ones that came from the depths of his soul.

“I think you do know me, Cecilia,” he said, his voice a rasp. “Same as I know you.”

She shook her head, but there was a glint of understanding in her expression.

“You know that I’ve fallen for you when every gut instinct told me you were trouble,” he insisted. “Isn’t that how you feel?” He pushed the top of her camisole aside and traced the ridge of her breast.

She let out a soft moan and her fingers played through his hair. The feel of her hands nearly drove him wild. “Yes, you’re trouble,” she said, her voice surprisingly low and raspy. “You’re a liar.”

“You’re beautiful,” he whispered.

“You’re low-down and mean.” She leaned forward and rubbed her lips across his temple. “You have a wicked sense of humor.”

He grinned. “You make me want to do wicked things.”

Cecilia shook her head. He was shrugging off every doubt she had about him as if none of them mattered, and as he traced a pathway over the center of her stomach through her sheer undergarments, she began to ignore her doubts about that, as well. He was right; against all her better instincts, she wanted him. Only...

She licked her dry lips. “I know I shouldn’t trust you. You told my father—”

“Cecilia,” he interrupted in a whisper, dragging her onto his lap. His mouth once again caressed the tender skin of her neck. “Why would I want your father to take away the person I care most about having near me?”

For a long, agonizing moment, their gazes met and held. He cared for her...the words, spoken in such hushed reverence, repeated again and again in her mind, and created a combination of joy and fear and desire inside her that she had never experienced before. A heat from deep inside her started radiating outward until she felt as though every inch of her skin was on fire.

He cared for her....

“Pendergast.” The only name she knew him by came unbidden to her tongue, and when he looked up, she smiled in affirmation. “I didn’t want to leave you,” she admitted. “That’s why I was crying.”

She was crying now, Jake realized, and he kissed the stray tear away. She turned her head toward him and their lips met in an explosion of feeling. Cecilia opened her mouth to his, and their tongues intertwined with pent-up relish. Within moments, the camisole was unlaced, the corset beneath unhooked and pushed away. Freed, Cecilia arched needfully against Pendergast—although needing just what, she wasn’t sure. When she found herself lying halfway beneath him on the mattress, however, she welcomed the weight against her lower body.

Suddenly, she wanted to touch him as he was touching her. Her hands moved boldly to unbutton his shirt, though anxious fingers trembled as they worked, revealing a solid muscled chest liberally dusted with dark hair. Candlelight danced across the bronzed skin, and she angled her head to discover the taste and texture of him. His hands skimmed down her back as she explored, pushing her clothes away until she was completely exposed from the waist up. And with little effort and less resistance from her, he began doing away with the rest of her garments, as well....

“You’re beautiful,” he said, his voice a deep caress as he gazed at her naked body. Cecilia was speechless, but felt none of the shame she suspected she should feel. She was too overwhelmed with longing to care about modesty.

She reached up her arms to encircle his neck and brought his head down to hers. As they kissed, she experimented moving against him, tentatively at first, and then more aggressively. Her hands skimmed the firm corded tendons in his neck, the broad musculature of his shoulders and chest, tapering down to the jagged violence of his gunshot wound’s scar. White heat built up in her core until it was almost painful; she longed for friction, for release, and her hands traveled down his body in search of both. They got as far as Pendergast’s belt buckle when suddenly he groaned.

“Cecilia, you don’t...” Jake gritted his teeth as he felt the last of his restraint slipping away. “I want you. Do you understand?”

She nodded and hugged herself tightly against his chest. “Oh, yes...I need you.”

Control snapped as the words he’d longed to hear reached his ears. Leaving Cecilia only long enough to dispose of his clothes and boots, he returned to her feeling more aroused than he could ever remember. And yet he knew that for Cecilia’s sake, he needed to go slow. He eased his body on top of hers gingerly, and the feel of her soft skin came close to driving him mad, especially when she arched against him, testing.

Cecilia gasped as she felt the evidence of his arousal brush against her thigh, and her eyes flew open and met his reassuring gaze. “Trust me,” he whispered, his husky voice underscored with an urgency that made her blush. It was the same urgency she herself felt.

Trust me....

She swallowed hard, knowing they were both on the brink of something irrevocable. Her whole body ached with need, but still she knew what he meant. He wouldn’t blame her for turning away from him, painful though it would be. Pendergast was still a mystery to her, as were the intimacies between men and women, yet she realized she had never wanted anything as forcefully and deeply as she wanted him now. Maybe she never would.

She looked into his eyes again, strange and dark in the flickering candlelight, and saw longing and tenderness mixed in equal parts. She had only to say the words, or to say no.

Cecilia hesitated only long enough to lift her lips to his for a brief kiss.

“I trust you,” she whispered, surrendering herself to his embrace.