Tempestuous/Restless Heart (9 page)

Christian groaned low in his throat. Gently he pinned Alex against the counter, flanking her legs with his own. He ran a hand over her short hair, down the sleek column of her throat, down to cup her small, full breast through the loose black polo shirt she wore, and groaned again as her nipple budded beneath his thumb.

“Oh, Alex,” he said, his voice low and hoarse, tortured and ecstatic.

He wanted her with a fierceness he hadn’t experienced since his youth. Just one touch, one taste, and he was hard and straining against the fly of his jeans. He tilted his hips into hers, letting her feel what she was doing to him, letting her know in no uncertain terms what he wanted. Just the thought of her tight, hot warmth closing around him bumped his pulse up another notch. The idea of having her naked and willing in his arms sent heat flaming through him.

He kissed her again, this time seeking entrance to her mouth and all the warm, honeyed delights he knew he would find there. Alex sagged against him for just a second or two, giving in to what she had forbidden herself—the comfort of being held, the electricity of desire, the building sense of urgency.

Feelings she had denied for so long rushed to the surface with overwhelming force, and panic was not far behind. She pulled away from him quickly, almost frantically.

“No,” she said in a tortured whisper as old feelings of guilt and shame swirled with disappointment and despair inside her. She pushed Christian back with her palms splayed across his chest. She couldn’t bring herself to look up at him, afraid of what she might see in his eyes. She focused instead on her fingers and the royal blue jersey beneath them.

“Alex?” Christian asked, stunned by her sudden change of heart. She had been responding so sweetly, her body arching into his, her mouth wild and sweet.

“No,” she mumbled again, tears choking her as she stumbled for the door. She pulled up in the doorway, fighting her own urge to flee. Chest heaving, she swallowed hard and said, “I… have to get back to work.”

Christian watched her go, utterly confused and utterly frustrated. He wasn’t used to having a lady fight off the pleasant temptation of desire. Why had Alex? She was single, unattached, definitely attracted to him. There was no earthly reason why they shouldn’t simply enjoy the mutual magnetism. And yet there had been the unmistakable bleak look of self-recrimination in her expression before she’d turned and run.

He had a strong urge to go after her, but he fought it. She obviously wanted time alone. He would give her the chance to sort out her feelings. Going back to the cupboard, he poured himself another cup of coffee and drank it as he mused about the whirlwind of a woman’s emotions.

Ry stomped into the dispensary, grumbling. “Can you believe that Tully Haskell? Called to try to sell me that daughter of Abdullah when he knows damn well she isn’t sound. As if I’d ever buy anything from him.” He poured himself a cup of coffee and jabbed his friend with a pointed look. “I wouldn’t buy a talking dog from Tully Haskell for a nickel, if it sat right up and called me sweetheart. What’s the matter with you?”

Nothing Alex Gianni couldn’t fix in the course of a long, hot night, Christian thought ruefully. “Nothing,” he said. “Just pondering the fact that women are impossible to figure out.”

“Well, hell,” Ry growled. “I could have told you that.”

six

ALEX LEANED AGAINST THE DUN MARE’S
side, her eyes drifting shut as sleep beckoned. For the fifth day she had risen at five a.m. to see to some of her own chores before leaving to ride Christian’s horses. She would be home by noon, grab a quick bite, and play with Isabella for a few minutes. Then it would be back in the saddle, riding her own string of six horses in training. Then came after-school riding lessons for three students, evening chores, supper, Isabella’s bath and bedtime, another hour in the barn to tend to the mare’s injured foot, book work until she dozed off, a few hours’ fitful sleep, and the process would start all over again.

Charlie had been a big help with chores and grooming. She would have been an even bigger help if Alex would have allowed it. But Alex was determined not to become dependent on having a stable hand. It was her place, not Christian Atherton’s. The idea of accepting help from him made her uncomfortable. Old instincts died hard. The one that told her men didn’t do favors without expecting something in return prodded at her like a stone in her shoe.

She wanted to trust him. He deserved to have her trust him. Experience had bred caution in her, taught her not to give her trust so easily. She had learned to look for subtle signs of a person’s trustworthiness—the way his contemporaries related to him, the way his employees regarded him. Christian was widely liked by his peers. The people working for him respected him because he treated them well. There were no sidelong, furtive looks following him down the aisle after an order was given. By all signs large and small he was a good man. A tad too sure of himself and inclined to play the rake, but a good man where it counted.

Sighing, Alex bent to check the temperature of the water the horse was soaking its abscessed hoof in. She added a little from the steaming bucket she had carried down from the house and tossed in another handful of Epsom salts. The mare, a boarder’s field hunter, dozed. Alex resumed her casual position against the horse’s side and let her mind wander back over the past few days.

She had done her best to avoid Christian the remainder of her first day at Quaid Farm—not because she had been afraid of him, but because she had been ashamed of herself for letting something get started that she couldn’t finish. It was best for both of them that they not exceed the bounds of friendship.

Guilt made a return visit now as she recalled how Christian had finally caught up with her as she’d been about to leave.

“Alex, I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

The wind riffled that one roguish strand of hair that fell across his forehead, and he shrugged, a gesture that was the embodiment of male confusion. “Obviously, I upset you…” He let the words trail off, at a loss for the reason.

Alex shook her head and stared down at the gravel of the drive.

“I’m the one who should apologize,” she said. But the explanation didn’t come. Like a logjam trying to move through the narrow neck of a river, the words and reasons stuck in her throat and built up until she could feel the pressure of them.

“I get very high marks for listening,” he said softly, his cultured voice as warm and comforting as flannel on a damp fall day.

Alex just sighed and shook her head again, slowly, regretfully It was a story best left untold, for everyone’s sake.

She repeated that to herself now as she leaned against the dun mare. It had become a litany in the last few days as Christian had done his best to charm her and she had done her best to resist him. A litany with dwindling conviction behind it. Conviction that ebbed during the course of long, lonely nights.

Her shoulders jumped and fell with her breath as she rested her cheek against the horse’s side and closed her eyes. She was so tired. Physically tired. Tired of the sleepless nights. She had been born with emotions that ran high and close to the surface. She was tired from having to suppress them. Tired of altering herself into some pale, unnoticeable, inoffensive imitation of her former self, and afraid that in the end she would become someone even she didn’t recognize.

“How are all my stars?”

The bellowing voice jolted Alex from her trance. She jerked awake with a gasp and a start, spooking the mare, who bolted, overturning the bucket. Tepid water sloshed out, soaking Alex’s sneakers and washing across the cracked concrete floor of the barn’s aisle in a dark stain.

“Didn’t mean to startle you there, sweetheart,” Tully Haskell said with a rather unconvincing gleam in his cold little eyes. He rolled a fat, inch-long stub of a cigar between his thumb and forefinger.

“Mr. Haskell,” Alex said, automatically putting up the shield of cool control. She righted the bucket and set it aside. The dun mare stood at attention, but didn’t show any signs of coming unglued. A good attitude to adopt, Alex decided. “What brings you out this way so early in the morning?”

“Does a man need an excuse to call on a pretty gal these days?”

Alex bit back the retort that was burning on her tongue. It seemed enough punishment for Tully that she did not respond to his sexist remark with a becoming blush and batting eyelashes. He frowned briefly, then ducked under the cross tie, coming close enough to make Alex want to step back.

“I’m out this way to check on a project. My company is building a two-hundred-fifty-thousand-dollar house on Valley Road, and I don’t trust the lazy bastards on the crew to get it right.” He jammed his cigar stub between his teeth, but it had gone out and acted only as an ugly accessory to his fleshy face. “You gotta stay on top of employees.”

Gritting her teeth, Alex moved past him to unhook the horse from the cross ties. “I hope you don’t mind if I work while we talk. I have to leave in a few minutes.”

“You’re working too hard for such a little gal. Ought to have a man around here, don’t you think?”

She muttered a few words in Italian as she put the mare back in her stall.

“How’s that?”

“Nothing,” she answered, fairly certain he wouldn’t want to hear that she thought his brain resided in a much lower region of his body than his head.

“Anyhow,” Tully went on, never terribly concerned with what anyone else was thinking, “I just swung in to check with you about next weekend. You’re taking the horses to Front Royal?”

“Yes. I’ll be leaving early Saturday morning.”

“And you’re staying in what motel?”

“I’m… staying with an old girlfriend,” she lied smoothly, her deep-seated sense of caution asserting itself. She let herself out of the stall and leaned against the door, staring in at the unremarkable mare because she didn’t want to look at Tully. She disliked him intensely and wasn’t all that sure of her ability to keep it out of her expression.

“Hmmm,” Tully mused. “Well, fine.” He planted a big hand on her shoulder and shot her a wink and a grin that was meant to bring a teasing quality to his next words. “I’ll be there to give you a kiss in the winner’s circle.”

Alex barely suppressed the urge to gag at the thought. She gave him a pained smile and shot the bolt home in the mare’s stall with unnecessary force. “I’ll see you in Front Royal then, Mr. Haskell.”

“You can count on that,” Tully said.

As he moved away from her he let his hand trail down her back. Alex jumped a bit, sure she felt him pinch her bottom, but when she wheeled to glare accusingly at him, he was sauntering away without giving her a backward glance.

Swearing liberally, she snatched up the empty bucket and stormed into the tack room, banging it against the wall as she went in an effort to blow off some of her steam. She cursed herself out of habit and Tully out of simple dislike. Why had she attracted the likes of him? Why couldn’t a dotty little old lady own A Touch of Dutch? She’d never been tempted to slap a little old lady. She’d never been nervous around little old ladies either.

And I won’t be nervous around Haskell, she told herself, relaxing with an effort. She didn’t have anything to worry about. She hadn’t encouraged his advances. He wasn’t likely to take them beyond the harmless flirtation stage.

Something scuffed the floor behind her, and she whirled with her heart in her throat, eyes wide, adrenaline pumping, instincts on red alert, only to find the source of her panic was the scruffy old barn cat. The bedraggled gray feline looked up at her, a freshly caught mouse drooping from its jaws. Then it turned and ran away, leaving Alex to lean weakly against the saddle rack, trying to put the memory that had shaken loose back into its sealed black box in her mind.

Christian steered his silver Mercedes carefully off the road and up the pitted, rutted stretch of gravel Alex called a driveway. Once in the farmyard he parked near the barn, briefly contemplating ramming Charlie Simmonds’s red-and-white motorbike where it leaned against the weathered side of the building. The only thing that saved him from doing it was the respect he had for his own vehicle and the distaste he had for facing Marcel, the Frenchman who serviced the machine at a specialty garage in Alexandria.

Charlie Simmonds was a blight on his life. He cursed the day her parents had met. It was because of Charlie he was feeling so guilty.

“Ought to be ashamed of yourself,” she’d said, screwing her face into a scowl that made her little eyes all but disappear. “Working herself to a limp frazzle, poor little miss. And for what? So you can lay around on your ruddy bum and watch. Selfish, selfish. That’s you all over. What a bloody crying shame it is. Better than the likes of you, that’s what she deserves, all right, poor little miss.”

Even now he growled at the thought of the dressing-down Charlie had given him the night before. She’d ridden up to the farm on her motorbike after evening chores for the sole purpose of giving him a tongue-lashing.

As a result he hadn’t slept a wink and had instead spent the entire night berating himself for being a devious, selfish, uncaring cad. These were not welcome feelings, but he couldn’t shake them. He couldn’t even find any comfort in the knowledge that he had never denied being selfish, that what Charlie called devious tendencies he considered clever thinking, that by uncaring she meant self-absorbed, which he had never denied either. He was a confirmed bachelor, for heaven’s sake! Those were all perfectly ordinary traits for a confirmed bachelor.

Grumbling under his breath, he climbed out of his sports car already dressed for riding in black breeches and a khaki polo shirt. His ankle was still sore, but it was nothing he hadn’t endured before. He merely ignored it as best he could as he walked into the poorly lit barn, limping slightly.

It wasn’t entirely his fault Alex was overworked, he told himself for the millionth time. He’d sent her a groom, hadn’t he? For all her cheek Charlie was a good worker. There was no reason Alex couldn’t have been making better use of her, no reason Alex should have to get up an hour early to do tasks Charlie could easily handle.

Stubborn, that’s what she was. Bloody stubborn. And a damned attractive trait it was. He ground his teeth at the thought. Where were these ludicrous ideas coming from? Full breasts were an attractive trait, not pigheadedness.

He turned in at the open tack-room door, alarm spurring his pulse into overdrive. Alex was bent over a saddle rack, her eyes squeezed tightly shut, her skin as pale as porcelain. He was across the small room in one stride.

“Alex!” He grabbed her upper arms, fearing she was ill or in pain. Certainly she looked weak.

Her eyes flew open, and the stark terror he saw there was like an electric jolt to his heart. In a purely instinctive reaction, she jerked back with enough force to pull him into the opposite side of the saddle rack.

“Alex, it’s me!” he said, not realizing his fingers were biting into her flesh. He’d never had a woman look at him with such pure horror. It was a terrible feeling. “For God’s sake, calm down!”

She stared at him for a tense moment as if she had no idea who he was. Then everything started to click into place. The fear left her eyes—but the general wariness didn’t. Her body relaxed visibly, her shoulders sagging. She started breathing again, slowly and regularly.

“Christian,” she said evenly. “You startled me.”

“Startled you?” he said, incredulous, still shaken to the core. “Frightened to death is more like it. What’s the matter? I came in and saw you bent over this saddle….”