Silver Miracles (17 page)

She reached around the back of his head and held him closer to her, arching into his mouth. Chase Colfax was a silver-haired demon who had walked out of the moonlight on that long-ago magical night to possess her, and there didn’t seem to be any help for her.

Chase’s mouth released her nipple to trail up to the base of her throat. One hand still gently stroked her breast, while he murmured into her skin, "Are you going to breast-feed our son?"

"Son?" Trinity managed to question raggedly.

"We’ll have a daughter next time," he whispered promisingly, arrogantly, his lips wandering up to take control of her mouth.

No! her brain screamed. She couldn’t let this happen! How could she have forgotten how he had tried to buy her . . . and, once she had agreed to their affair, how quickly he had gotten tired of her . . . and, most of all, how he had humiliated her with his sexual games of domination the night before he had gone to Europe.

"Stop it!" she cried, as she pushed him away with all her strength.

Chase’s words were a harsh gasp as he pulled back. "What’s wrong? Did I hurt you?"

"Yes ... No ... Oh, just go away!"

"Trinity, what’s wrong? Tell me."

"You’re what’s wrong," she lashed out bitterly. "You, Chase Colfax. You take and you never give . . . but you’re out of luck this time, because I’m through giving to you. Now, just go away and leave me alone!"

Trinity turned and began to cry. Bitter, unhappy, dejected tears coursed down her face, and she couldn’t really have said why. She was only dimly aware of Chase shoving all the boxes and clothes off the bed and of the mattress dipping with his weight. Great convulsive sobs wracked her body until she felt herself being pulled into Chase’s arms.

"Sssh, Trinity. Hush, now. You’re going to make yourself sick." His voice flowed with the soft velvet of someone trying to tame a wild animal, but it made no impression on her.

She hit out at him with all of her strength, beating against his chest with her fists. "I hate you," she yelled, "I hate you! I don’t want you to touch me ever again. Get out of my house and get out of my life!"

He pulled her tightly against him so that her arms were trapped between them, holding her so that she couldn’t struggle. "I know, baby," Chase murmured softly, "I know. Just be still now. I don’t want you to hurt yourself."

"I hate you, Chase Colfax," she repeated, sobbing with frustration. "I hate you. I’ll always hate you. Just leave me alone!"

Trinity could never remember afterwards how long she cried or how often she told Chase that she hated him. The only thing that she could recall was how Chase held her in his arms all night long, rubbing her back comfortingly with his hands, soothing her with the warmth and strength of his body, quieting her with the gentleness of his words.

The next morning, Chase had already left for Dallas when she awoke—but he came back that night.

#

In the days that followed, Trinity’s health returned, and with it, her objectivity. On the surface, nothing had changed between her and Chase. He continued to take care of her, the house, the farm and Stephanie with the same ready, unembarrassed solicitude that he had shown in the past.

And, of course, this didn’t include his own work. Trinity assumed that he had been able to keep abreast of his business concerns without too much trouble. It was funny that it had never occurred to her before that, by moving in to take care of her, he was putting his work in second place.

But then again, a lot of things hadn’t occurred to her. Completely well by now, Trinity began to take note of just what was going on around her, and what she saw shook her badly.

If ever a man had had the opportunity to turn his back on a situation and leave, it was Chase Colfax. Trinity certainly hadn’t shown a great deal of gratitude for his help and concern. As a matter of fact, she had told him innumerable times to leave.

So why had he stayed? And why did she suddenly care that he had stayed?

Months before, Trinity had set out to teach Chase how to let his guard down and leave it down, how to open up and show his love more—all with the hope that he would fall as deeply in love with her as she had been with him. Was it possible that she had succeeded?

Putting her fixed ideas about Chase aside, she endeavored to look at their situation from a different perspective. If the thousand and one things Chase had done for her over the past weeks didn’t prove that he loved her, what would?

Another relevant and very disturbing question that had to be asked was: Could it be remotely possible that she still loved him?

The answer had to be yes. Always truthful, even to a fault, Trinity had to admit that she had never stopped loving him. Chase had hurt her badly, but he hadn’t destroyed her love for him as she had once tried to convince herself.

Only one question remained to be asked: What was she going to do about it?

That stumped Trinity. She had been very explicit when she had yelled at Chase that she hated him and had ordered him out of her life. She had also told him that she didn’t want him to touch her again, and as far as she knew, he hadn’t. She went to sleep alone and she woke up alone. The indentation on his pillow was the only tangible evidence that he had shared her bed in the night.

But he hadn’t gone away, and therein lay her hope.

She started making her plans. Since Trinity had started feeling better, Chase had been flying into Dallas once a week, usually on a Friday.

Trinity knew that Chase, if he followed his schedule, would be going into Dallas on Friday. She surreptitiously arranged beforehand for Stephanie to spend the night at Sissy’s and managed to badger Mangus into preparing dinner and leaving early. By Friday afternoon, everything was ready but Trinity.

Though she didn’t have a shy bone in her body, Trinity felt quite timid about what she had planned for this night. The dinner was simmering in the oven, Stephanie had been picked up an hour ago and now Trinity was lying in the bathtub, uncharacteristically indecisive about what to wear.

The trouble, as she saw it, was that nothing looked good on her anymore. Her stomach was getting larger every day. She looked down at herself. I look like a beached whale, she thought, disgruntled.

All at once Trinity smiled at herself. She shrugged her shoulders philosophically, and got out of the tub. After all, she reasoned, it was a small price to pay for having Chase’s baby.

Applying lotion to every part of her body, she suddenly laughed out loud. Despite everything, she felt better than she had in a long time. The good food and the long rest had really paid off, and she knew she would have a normal, healthy baby. Stopping to put her hand on her stomach, she ventured aloud to the empty room, "Maybe it will be a boy, after all."

Opening the closet door, the first thing that she spied was the silver-green dress that Chase had asked her to try on the night he had brought all of the clothes home.

Trinity put it on. Her breasts had grown larger, and she had begun to wear a bra. However, this dress had an empire waist and gave enough support so that Trinity decided not to wear one for this evening.

The dress fell to her ankles and had a low, scooped-out neck and long, floating sleeves. Her hair hung clean and shining past her shoulders. Feeling pretty for the first time in weeks, she waltzed out to the living room to wait for Chase.

He arrived shortly thereafter, calling out her name as soon as he came through the back door.

"Trinity?"

"I’m in the front room, Chase."

Bursting into the room, his jacket thrown over his shoulder and his shirt unbuttoned to the waist, he looked tired and worried. "Where is everyone? Why are you here by yourself? Is everything okay?"

Trinity held up her hand, ticking off the answers to his questions on her fingers. "Everything is fine, Stephanie is spending the night with her cousins and I told Mangus he could leave as soon as he finished preparing our dinner."

After he tossed his jacket on a chair, Chase rested his hands on his hips with a disapproving look on his face. "Mangus should never have left you alone. His orders were to stay here until I got back."

Trinity shrugged casually. "I countermanded your order."

His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "What’s up?"

Suddenly Trinity was uneasy. The last thing she wanted was for Chase to be tied to her solely for the baby’s sake and vice versa. After tonight, the only reason she would accept for the two of them staying together was love. Could she have been wrong about Chase’s loving her? There was a distinct possibility that she had. However, either way, it was time to find out.

"Dinner," she responded lightly. "Are you hungry?"

"Not very." Chase sank down onto the couch, leaning his head against its back. He eyed her intently and commented very softly, "I knew that dress would look beautiful on you."

Her cheeks colored slightly as she fingered the material nervously. "It’s a lovely dress."

A glimmer of amusement flashed into his eyes at her obvious embarrassment, then they lowered to where her rounded breasts thrust above the low neckline. They lingered . . . and darkened.

Trinity chewed nervously on her lower lip. Oh, God, she felt so dumb! What was she doing? This was even harder than she had imagined. She knew she should say or do something to break the silence.

When she had envisioned this quiet dinner for the two of them, Trinity had thought it would give her the opportunity to sort things out with Chase, to find out just where she stood. But she had forgotten to figure out how to go about it, and evidently, he wasn’t going to make It easy for her.

Chase’s eyes came back to her face, but he didn’t say anything. He just continued to watch her with his intriguing blue eyes.

Fidgeting under his gaze, she asked brightly. "How was Dallas?"

His lips twitched. "Dallas was fine, Trinity. And the weather is hot. And the grass needs mowing. Now . . . what else would you like to talk about?"

Trinity jumped up and walked over to him, eyeing him hesitantly.

"Chase?"

"Yes, my love?"

Trinity’s heart jumped into her throat. He had called her his love, and that had to mean something. But even if it didn’t, he had unknowingly given her the courage she needed.

Sitting down beside him, she took his hand and placed it on her stomach. "Do you feel that, Chase?" His hand stiffened in surprise for a moment, but she pressed it more firmly into the soft, rounded flesh of her belly. "That movement is the baby you and I made together."

"Trinity ..." Her name came out as a thick, strangled gasp, and he straightened.

She kept his hand pressed against her body. "The first night that I saw you, Chase, I thought you were the hardest, coldest man I had ever met." Trinity felt his hand flex involuntarily against her. She continued. "Nevertheless, it didn’t seem to matter. There was something about you that kept pulling me toward you. We’ve come a long way since that first night, and we’ve been through a lot. . . but there’s still something about you that I can’t ignore.

"I told you then that I don’t play games, and that was the truth . . . so I’m going to lay all my cards on the table. I don’t know any other way to do it." Trinity paused and looked at him. "I love you, Chase Colfax. I’ve loved you for an awfully long time without knowing if you could ever come to love me. But now I need to know what you’re feeling. I’m asking if you feel the same way about me."

She stopped speaking because she could feel the trembling that had started in Chase’s hand. Trinity took her hand off his and waited.

He took a deep, shaky breath and laughingly shook his head. "Oh, Trinity. You sure do know how to knock a guy’s feet out from under him. You’ve never minced words with me . . . but you never told me before that you loved me."

"Would it have made any difference?" she asked quietly.

"I don’t know. Maybe. Maybe not." He grinned at her ruefully. "I guess there were some things I had to learn for myself. When I first saw you bathed in that haunting silvery light down by your pool, I couldn’t believe that you could be real, and I had to find out." His hand pressed softly into her. "When I kissed you, I found out that you were not only remarkably real, but that you were someone I had to have very badly. The night that you came to my house for dinner and we made love, I discovered that having you once just wasn’t going to be enough. My craving for you seemed to be bottomless.

He gave a short, self-derisive laugh. "Yet, you didn’t play by the rules. Hell, I found out there weren’t any rules where you were concerned. You never did one thing that I expected you to do.

"When you finally came to me with your conditions for our affair, I agreed gladly because I thought that at last I’d get enough of you. Only, once again, you surprised me. I discovered that if we made love one thousand times, I still wouldn’t have my fill of you.

"You never left without my wanting you to come back . . . and that scared me. One of your conditions was that you would set the time limit. Not being able to guess what you’d do next, I realized that I could lose you very easily. My trip to Europe was just around the corner, and I hated the very thought of being apart from you for any length of time.

"You see . . . I wasn’t sure you’d be there when I got back. I had finally discovered what you meant when you said you didn’t really have me. I certainly didn’t have you—not really—in the way that mattered most."

His hand rubbed gently over her stomach. "I became irritable and impossible to be around, and in my agony of wanting you, I decided to stamp my possession on you in the only way I knew how. At least in bed. I could make you do what I wanted—or at least, I thought so.

"But that backfired on me, too. I couldn’t even face you the next morning, I was so disgusted with what I had done, I hated myself for days afterwards. Finally, in Europe, I couldn’t take being away from you anymore, and I had to face the fact that I was hopelessly and irrevocably in love with you and had been since the first minute I saw you.

"So I called you and asked you to fly to me. You refused, and I had to wait until I could get back, to explain why I had done what I had.