Rexanne Becnel (8 page)

When Lacie did open her eyes, however, reality seemed truly remorseless, for it was the shadowy image of Dillon Lockwood that she first saw. He was leaning against a fencepost, smoking a thin-rolled cigarette, and watching her with his predatory stare. She was so taken by surprise that the grain bucket slipped from her suddenly nerveless fingers and rolled noisily among the chickens. Their startled cackling quickly died down, but Lacie’s racing heartbeat only increased its frenetic tempo.

“Good morning,” he called softly. “Sleep well?”

Lacie bristled. Even in making a casual greeting he obviously found it impossible to be pleasant. How did he think she’d slept after that dreadful scene in the bathing room?

Gritting her teeth she bent down to retrieve the bucket. “I slept rather poorly, as you no doubt can guess. You, on the other hand, probably slept just fine, considering that creating havoc seems to be your greatest pleasure in life.”

His slight smile, coupled with a prolonged perusal of her casual attire, only caused her temper to simmer even hotter.

“Would it please you to know that I, too, tossed and turned upon my bed—”

“Good!” she cut in emphatically. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.” She turned toward the gate.

“But don’t you want to know why I could not sleep?”

“No!” But she stopped short when he put his hand on the gate and opened it for her.

He tossed down his cigarette then and looked steadily at her. “It was you,” he said, ignoring her words completely. “Every time I closed my eyes, I had a vision of your smooth pale shoulders and your lovely, delicate neck.”

At Lacie’s gasp of surprise and her stunned expression, his grin widened. “It’s not often that I see a lady at her bath and then adjourn to my room all alone. May I say, Lacie, you made a most “delectable picture last night.”

“You—you may say no such thing!” she stammered, truly mortified now. She tried to dart through the gate and get away from him, but his quick sidestep only brought them face to face.

“Ah, but it’s true, Lacie. Even when I did manage to sleep, it was only to dream of you.”

“Oh, you must be quite mad to say such things!”

“Is it mad to speak the truth? I think not. You know, if you would just be honest with me, we would get along so much better.” His eyes lowered from her angry eyes to her shocked, rounded lips.

“I don’t want to get along with you,” she snapped, even as a flush began to color her cheeks. “All I want is for you to leave this place.”

“I’m not leaving here until I get what I want,” he said quietly as his expression grew more serious.

“You’ll never prove I’m not Frederick’s widow. Why don’t you just give up now and save yourself a lot of trouble!”

“Ah, but it’s really no trouble.” So saying, he took a thin wisp of her long dark hair and wound it about his finger, all the while staring deeply into her eyes. “I think I shall enjoy every minute of it.”

Lacie’s stomach tightened at that, and her heart seemed almost to stop in her chest. What did he mean?

But even without being told, she knew exactly what he meant. It was no longer enough for him to simply get Sparrow Hill. No, now he wanted her as well. He wanted to humiliate and degrade her because she had dared to oppose him.

With trembling fingers she tugged the lock of hair free of his grasp. “Then I shall do everything within my power to make sure you do
not
enjoy it,” she countered as bravely as she could.

At that he laughed. “Lacie, Lacie, you are at your most charming when you are up in arms against me! Anger suits you far better than that cold politeness you affect.”

“Oh, you are impossible!”

“At least your anger is an honest emotion.”

Unable to bear even one more word of his taunting, Lacie tried to slip past him. He anticipated her move, however, and quickly blocked her way. To her dismay, he now had her backed against the fence, trapped by his arms on either side of her. In the tense silence that followed, she was wholly conscious of his nearness; all her senses were aware of him as she’d never been aware of any man before. He smelled of soap and tobacco; he radiated a disturbing warmth. She could hear his steady breathings—she fancied she could hear his very heartbeat.

Distrusting her own reaction to him, she tried to look away. But with a finger beneath her chin, he kept her face turned up to him and kept his face within her vision.

“Now perhaps you’ll show me another honest emotion,” he murmured.

“No, don’t!” she whispered, fearing what was to come. She tried to avoid his devastating touch, but his hand was firm at her cheek as he held her still for his kiss.

The first brush of his lips was so light, so fleeting, that it could hardly be termed a kiss. Yet its impact was profound. She wanted to flee. She wanted to stay. She wanted to melt into the ground and disappear. She wanted to fly above the clouds and soar forever.

Then his lips moved more firmly against hers, and every conscious thought fled her mind. His mouth was at once soft and firm, sure and tentative. Its warm pressure was sweet, yet wickedly dangerous.

She had been kissed before, by three different suitors, in fact—all respectable citizens of Kimbell. But those kisses had been no more, she now saw, than the mere press of flesh against flesh. But this…

When his lips began to tease the corner of her mouth, she let out an involuntary moan. But when his tongue slid silkily along the crevice of her lips, she pulled back in alarm. All her nerves seemed to be clamoring. From heart to belly to knees, every part of her was hot and trembling and out of control.

“Stop…please, stop,” she whispered in a faint, wavering voice.

“We’ve hardly even begun,” he answered, his warm breath stirring her hair. Then his hands slipped around her, and she was pulled intimately against him. For a moment they stood that way, fitted together almost naturally, it seemed. She had only to drop the bucket and slide her arms up around his neck to be perfectly cleaved to him.

But there was nothing perfect about what they were doing, she realized. Nothing.

“No, no!” She twisted away from the disturbing feel of his body pressing against her, and as his grasp loosened, she backed away from him.

“You—you—” Lacie fumbled for words as she stared wide-eyed at him. No man had ever taken such liberties with her. Never. If one had, she would have slapped him soundly for it. Yet this man…

“Why the shocked look, Lacie? After all, you
have
been married, haven’t you?” He gave her a mocking smile. “You can’t be a stranger to a man’s attention—although I’ll be the first to admit Frederick and I were cut from different cloth.” His eyes were warm and alive, their green depths lit from within as he stared at her with a half-smile curving one side of his mouth.

Lacie fought to catch her breath and somehow slow the frantic pounding of her heart. He had done it again: he had unnerved her completely and taken control of the situation. But how in heaven’s name was she to defend herself against such unfair tactics?

“A different cloth entirely,” she managed to get out, ignoring his other taunts. “Frederick never demanded—he asked. He never forced himself on me like—like some beast might. He was gentle with his kisses.” It was all pure fabrication. She knew it as she said it. Yet she could think of no other way to put him off.

But he only laughed, as if he saw right through her. “Such a little liar. Did no one ever warn you that in the end your lies will trip you up? Yours already have.”

At those infuriating words, Lacie turned abruptly from him and began quickly to march toward the house. She would not bandy words with this insufferable man a second longer. He had insulted her. He had kissed her—

“May I have that bucket? My horse needs grain.”

In an instant she whirled around and heaved the bucket at him with all her might, wishing more than anything that it would hit him on the head. She didn’t know whether to be chagrined because she had missed him entirely, or because she had succumbed to such unladylike behavior. But when he began to laugh she let out a frustrated oath. Then she turned and ran as fast as she could back to the house.

Dillon remained next to the fence, staring after Lacie until she had disappeared around a tall clump of pink and white oleander bushes. Then, with a thoughtful expression on his face, he picked up the much-abused bucket and made his way slowly into the barn.

Leatrice Eugenia Montgomery—Kimbell—was hardly what he had expected.

Granted, she’d looked exactly the part yesterday when he’d arrived during her little social. Prim. Grim. Laced up tighter than a drum with those ridiculous spectacles sliding off her nose. Her chilly reception would have been enough to freeze any man’s blood.

Yet his own blood was hardly chilled right now. When she was Lacie, she was another creature altogether. Softer, volatile. It took very little to trigger that temper of hers, and it was his profound pleasure to set her off. Actually, to do so was a good idea, for when angry, people often revealed far more than they intended. Eventually he would provoke her into saying something that would unravel her deception once and for all.

But why had he kissed her? he asked himself.

Dillon scooped a goodly measure of grain into the bucket, then closed the feed-room door behind him. He entered his big stallion’s stall and gave the horse a friendly rub between his ears. As the magnificent animal dug eagerly into the meal, Dillon leaned back against the plank walls of the stall, his mind still on Lacie.

He had kissed her because—because her lips had been too inviting to resist.

No, that wasn’t it, he decided abruptly. He had only done it to infuriate her, just as he’d referred to how she’d looked at her bath in order to infuriate her. He’d wanted to keep her off balance and unsettled, and he’d succeeded.

For a moment, though, before she’d remembered to be angry and insulted, for that moment she’d responded to him.

Dillon grinned ruefully as he recalled the sweet feel of her body going soft against his. Where would things have gone if she’d not gotten so up in arms? For all that she was not really his type, she had felt damned good in his arms. And her lips…

A slow heat suffused him as he recalled the feel and taste of her rose-pink lips. They had been warm and soft, giving the lie to the cold, hard facade she tried to assume.

He should have pressed his advantage a little further, he told himself.

Then he straightened up and frowned. He had obviously been far too long without a woman if he was mooning after one Lacie Montgomery. She was either a liar and a thief, or else a cold-hearted witch who’d taken complete advantage of the ailing Frederick. In either event, she was trying to cheat him out of what belonged to him. Added to that, her pose of affronted innocence seemed highly unlikely for someone involved in such nefarious scheming. Besides, she was far from the type of woman who appealed to him. She was too slender and too plain, hardly the blond, blue-eyed beauty that he generally preferred.

Then, unbidden, a vision of her as she’d appeared last night came to him. Her shoulders had been so pale, her neck so delicately curved. The swelling of her breasts had belied her slenderness. Her eyes had been so wide with the longest, blackest lashes….

There was no denying that his restless night had been caused precisely for the reasons he’d given her. He’d wanted her in his bed then. And this morning he felt the same way.

Dillon shook his head in disgust and heaved himself away from the wall, then gave his horse a pat on the rump. He had a hard enough task before him to prove she was a fake. It would not help things at all to have her leading him about by the nose—or by anything else. He would just have to forget about last night—and this morning—and concentrate on the task at hand.

Unless, of course, he could turn the situation to his advantage.

A small smile quirked the corner of his mouth as he let himself out of the stall, then retraced his steps through the barn. Perhaps the best way for him to get to the truth would be to woo his “widowed sister-in-law.” Perhaps a few kisses—or even more—would aid his cause better than anything else. Whether she became angry and flustered, or soft and obliging, he could not really lose. One way or another, she would make a slip and he would be there, ready and waiting.

By the time he passed the chicken yard, Dillon was whistling under his breath. Whether she was a black-garbed widowed schoolmarm or a wind-blown, barefoot country girl, Lacie had better watch out. He was on to her game, and he fully expected to enjoy every minute of besting her at it.

Lacie slammed the kitchen door then slumped back against it. She was trembling from head to foot, confused by emotions that were too strong and too foreign for her to deal with. She took a long, slow breath, trying to slow her thundering pulse, but it did little good. Nothing she did could make her forget what he had just done. Nothing.

With a small cry of despair she pressed her fists to her eyes. That was what she feared most—that she would never be able to forget the unspeakably exhilarating way he had made her feel. So warm, so weak—not herself at all.

The sound of approaching footsteps suddenly caused her to back away from the door. Her eyes were wide and she was braced for the worst when the wood-batten door creaked open. When she saw it was Mrs. Gunter, however, and not Dillon, she nearly collapsed in relief.

“Oh, thank heaven it’s you!” she gasped as she sat down hard in a spindle-backed chair.

“
Ach
, and who else would be in the
Küche
at so early an hour?” the florid-faced woman asked genially. Then she gave Lacie a curious look. “
Und
why are you here, Lacie?”

Lacie looked down at her hands, which were knotted in her lap. Indeed, that was a very good question. Why had she run into the kitchen instead of back to the house?

Perhaps it was because she didn’t want to alarm Ada or Nina by her disheveled appearance and then have to explain what had gotten her so unsettled.

But more likely, she admitted to herself, it was that she thought no one would yet be in the kitchens and that she could be alone for a while and able to think through these terrible feelings that still assaulted her.