Perfect Family (32 page)

Her gaze wandered over to his house beyond the barn, the small but well-tended manager's house. Ben kept close by, happily sniffing the intriguing smells of other animals. He barked at the soft whinny of a horse.

The door of the house opened, and she saw Ross standing in the doorway, Timber next to him. He was still wearing the dress shirt but the tails were loose, the sleeves rolled up and the neck unbuttoned. The dog's ears were cocked, his body alert.

She would dearly love to have a photo of them together like that.

Jessie tried to resist and turn away, but then Ben with a loud happy bark tore off toward them, his tail wagging frantically. Her shy dog. Her cautious dog.
Her Judas goat
. She followed.

Ross appeared bigger than life in the moonlight. His deeply tanned skin stretched over high cheekbones with an austerity lightened only slightly by thick dark eyelashes. Those lashes were half lowered, giving him a lazy look. But there was nothing lazy in his stance, in the energy that radiated from him.

Her gaze studied his face, the slight dent in his chin that gave him just the faintest hint of vulnerability, the lips that were sensual, too sensual. They were curved into a question now. She wondered what they would look like in an honest-to-God smile. She'd never quite seen one.

Timber sedately flicked his tail in a semblance of welcome as Ben wriggled ecstatically. He seldom saw other dogs and now he was making an abject idiot out of himself. She was afraid she would do the same.

She hesitated at the bottom of the two steps that led up to the porch. “Thank you for coming tonight.”

He watched her for a moment, then stood aside, inviting her inside. The dogs followed. “I ended up enjoying it. I like Elizabeth.”

“I noticed.” She wished he'd said he liked
her
. But then his eyes were saying it. They were roaming all over her, apparently approving. “I liked her, too,” she added hurriedly, afraid he'd detect a hint of jealousy.

He didn't smile, but he took a step closer.

All her senses began to react again. Traitorous body. Her heart pounded harder. Her nerve ends tingled. Desire eddied deep inside. She feared that she was standing there like a fool, staring up at him.

But he had a gleam in his eyes, too.
Not now
. He'd said those words earlier, and they echoed in her mind. Had he meant never? Or just that moment this afternoon? She sought frantically for something more to say. She did know she didn't want to leave. “Do you see her often?”

Ross shrugged. “Not recently. She used to come here on vacations as a girl. She read every single minute she wasn't on a horse.”

Words. Questions. They always seemed to resort to that, Ross and she. They'd been protection against deeper feelings, against the heated recognition that always played between them.

“She never married?” She continued to play the game.

“She was engaged. Two days before the wedding, her fiancé died in an automobile accident. I don't think she ever got over it. She rarely comes here anymore,” he said.

Feeling like a three-year-old under his gaze, she reminded herself of her suspicions that he was hiding something she needed to know. She tried to summon up the anger she'd felt earlier but it melted under his gaze.

But now she had another little tidbit of information, thanks to eavesdropping, and she couldn't stop herself from probing again. “Have you ever heard of a book connected to my father?”

His eyes narrowed. “I don't know what you mean.”

She hesitated. He was not relaxed any longer. She saw the tension in him, tasted it. Felt it. Why? “I heard Marc and Alex talking.”

He hesitated, obviously trying to decide what to say. Finally he shrugged, and she knew she was going to get part of a story. If not all of it.

Ross looked resigned. “The family legend has it that Heath supposedly left a clue as to where the bonds were located, that he meant them to belong to the family once the company succeeded. The money was only a loan, a way to get him inside the oil venture.” He paused. “I think he was just trying to justify a theft.”

Her legs swayed under her. Her heart seemed to stop for a moment, then beat frantically. Breath caught in her throat until she felt she was suffocating.

“That's why they came looking for me,” she said after a moment. “I thought … it was the ranch.” But she had hoped a little bit had been for her. For her father.

“Not Sarah,” he said gently. “Nor, I think, for most of the others.”

“Most?” she asked. “Whom do you not include in ‘most'?” Her mind was spinning ahead. The feeling of betrayal deepened. “You knew this when I told you about the burglaries. You didn't say anything.”

“It's legend, rumor, God knows what,” he replied slowly. “I've never seen the letter. I don't even know if it really exists.”

She turned away from him and fought back tears. She had never felt so alone. It was as if a starving man had been handed food, then had it snatched away as he was putting it in his mouth. She hadn't realized until Alex contacted her how strong, how deep, her longing was.

How much she'd hoped she'd found a family.

And now the dream had exploded. It was all lies. No one had been completely honest, not even Ross. Her throat constricted until she couldn't breathe.

She'd realized, of course, that her vote on the matter of the ranch was important to everyone. But this … lost treasure or whatever it was far outreached that. Her home had been burglarized, her office ransacked, even her hotel room searched. Too much to be coincidental. She felt a sense of danger, even of evil, wrap around her, and she shivered. Could she ever believe any one of them again?

The scars on her heart were tearing open. How many birthdays had she waited for her father to come home? How many times had he returned after she was asleep on the sofa? There was only that one good day, her sixteenth birthday, when he'd given her a locket and the book.

And now she'd been waiting again. Expecting. Hoping. She felt like that child on the sofa. Eyeing the door, knowing that after a certain hour her father would return drunk, that he would stagger to the bedroom without seeing her.

She felt a hand on her shoulder. “Jess?”

She turned and saw his blurred figure through tears that hovered in her eyes. “Don't,” she said.

Concern etched lines in his face, but she dared not believe them. She tried to turn to go, but he didn't let go. His hand was like steel around her wrist. The other touched her face and wiped away a wayward tear.

“Jessica, don't go now, not like this.”

“Everyone has lied to me about everything. Except you. You only
omitted
a few crucial details.”

“It wasn't my place,” he said, but his voice was low, even uncertain.

“And you make sure it isn't your place, don't you,” she said bitterly. “You make an art of being uninvolved. Why do you stay if that's the way you feel?”

A muscle quivered in his cheek, and his eyes hardened. He let her go.

“Damn you,” she said suddenly. “Don't you care about anything?”

His hand jerked out and pulled her into his arms. He bent his head and his lips sought hers, his mouth violent with need.

She felt the depth of that need, and her own, as desire swirled deep inside her and the very air was sucked from the room.

The need, the loneliness, the fear went with it. And they were the only two people in the universe.

nineteen

Ross hadn't meant it to happen.

Or maybe he had.

He only knew he couldn't let her go with so much pain in her eyes. He'd experienced the agony of betrayal himself. He knew she felt that, and worse, now …

And so he'd wiped the beginning of a tear from her face. And then he'd sought to silence the bitter words with a caress that turned into something else altogether.

He just hadn't realized how dangerous that was going to be. The electricity flared again, raw and bold and irresistible. It flashed between them like an exposed, snaking wire ready to strike and burst into flames. He knew he should move away from it, but he couldn't.
Not now
. He'd said those words because there had been no place up in the Saddle to make love. But it had also been self-protection. He'd meant
never
.

But never was here, and he didn't have an excuse. He didn't want an excuse. He wanted her.

And she wanted him. That was an aphrodisiac he couldn't resist.

He tightened his arms around her. He wanted to comfort. But he knew comfort would lead somewhere else. The desire between them was too explosive, the emotion too thick to disperse. They'd already stepped off the parapet into the abyss.

She shivered in his arms, and he was filled with a tenderness he didn't want, had tried to avoid. Tenderness led to commitment. Tenderness was weakening.

But now tides of it washed over him, through him. Reining in his own desires, he softened his kiss, seducing rather than taking.

Her lips parted then. Offering. Inviting.

He deepened his kiss, his tongue inching its way inside her mouth, searching, exploring, arousing. Need and yearning danced in a sensuous courtship.

His hands played with the back of her neck, and silken curls wrapped around his fingers. He wondered at their softness. There was nothing artificial about any of her. She was real and enchanting and challenging.

And hurting.
Remember that
. Remember that he knew things he could never share with her, and she might never forgive him if she ever learned of them. So why was his mouth pursuing the forbidden taste of her?

Yet he couldn't stop. He was lost in a sorcery he'd never known existed. Just as he'd never given tenderness, he had never received it either. Lovemaking had usually been a hot, frantic release between two consenting adults. Nothing more. But now he realized the magic of it, the sweetness that caring brought to a kiss, to a caress. He wanted to prolong every moment, relish every touch.

She snuggled against his body, and her arms clung around his neck. Her fingertips massaged the back of his neck in slow exquisite movements that ignited tiny explosions throughout his body. Heat radiated through their clothes, and they merged into one as much as their clothes allowed. Piercing streaks of raw need thundered through him.

He rained kisses on her face, tasting the saltiness of her tears. That touched him as nothing ever had before. She was such a intriguing combination of vulnerability and courage, of tenderness and toughness.

His hands moved to her back, massaged it in slow, sensuous movements. Then as her body burrowed even deeper into his, his hands pressed her hips up and tighter against him. The heat intensified between them. Match and kindling.

She trembled, and he remembered the rape. He took a step back. Jessie groaned in protest and looked up at him, her eyes glazed with desire.

“Jess?” he asked achingly, so soft he wondered whether she even heard.

She did. The word went straight to her heart. “Yes,” she said, the word trembling on her lips. She had not been intimate with a man since the rape. She just hadn't been able to do it. She'd thought she could, but when the moment came she'd always turned to ice.

But now she felt herself responding. Not only responding, but becoming an eager partner. There was no ice now, no hesitation, not even fear. Perhaps because he
knew
, and then he'd
asked
. Perhaps because his touch was so tender, and his fingers light and gentle. Perhaps because she'd never had this hunger inside before. The compelling cry of her body. She'd hadn't realized how strong desire could be, how irresistible.

“Yes,” she said again, hearing the hoarseness in her own voice.

He stared at her for a moment, his dark eyes boring into her as if they reached into her soul, still trying to decide whether she really meant it. Then he smiled, a crooked, wry sort of smile.

There was nothing at this moment but his head bending down to meet hers, his lips playing with hers with a sweet delicacy spiced by just a hint of restrained passion. But even as he obviously reined back the need in him, she felt it radiate in the shiver that ran the length of his body. The kiss intensified as their lips melded again in eager contest.

She found herself responding in ways she never thought she would, her body swaying against his, her lips playing against his. She felt his swelling manhood against her and wasn't repelled. She sought it. She sought
him
.

His hands moved again, touching, sparking blazes wherever they went. She was consumed with wanting and feeling, the anticipation of something grand and glorious. His lips left her mouth and nibbled her ear, his breath sending shivers of pleasure through her. He kissed the pulse at her throat, and she thrust her head up, feeling the tenderness in each caress.

Tremors ran through her body as his hands continued to stoke it, his fingers trailing heat wherever they moved. An odd pressure grew inside her.

His hands left her, and she felt bereft. But then they were unbuttoning her blouse, not hurriedly, not violently, but with a care and restraint that made
her
want to rush it.

Her blouse slid easily off her shoulders, then her bra. His head bent and his mouth touched her breast, his tongue teasing and nibbling. Her breasts hardened, ached, became so sensitive that the merest touch of his tongue sent shivers of want reverberating through her.

He straightened, and her gaze lifted to his. His eyes smoldered now, like dark fire. No mask now. No enigma. Just need.

He took her hand and led her into another room. His bedroom. She hardly noticed. All her attention was on him, on the way her hand felt in his, of the internal echoes from his touch.

Ross guided her to the bed, and she sat down. He disappeared for a moment behind a door and quickly returned. He stood before her. She saw the tension in his body, the strain in his face. “Are you very, very sure, Jess?”