Heartless

He got back in beside her, still wet, still mad, still uncommunicative. He fastened his own seat belt, made sure she’d done the same, started the engine and gunned the truck as he pulled back onto the highway and started toward San Antonio.

“The ranch is that way,” she said in a small voice, pointing behind them.

“I’m taking you home to San Antonio,” he said shortly. “You’re not staying down here overnight.”

She didn’t dare ask why. She averted her eyes to the road and wished things were the way they had been, before he’d said things neither of them would ever forget.

“What the hell were you doing on the ranch road in the rain?” he asked shortly.

She moved her purse in her hands. “Hoping we could make up.”

“Oh.”

She glanced at his taut profile. He wasn’t giving away anything with that expression. He was simply unresponsive. “Okay, I know,” she said with a long, wistful sigh. “I screwed up again. I should have waited for a sunny day. Maybe there’s a market for women who can’t do one single thing right. I might go into theater.”

He made a rough, amused sound deep in his throat. “I remember your one time on the stage.”

She grimaced. Yes. In tenth grade. She was in a play, with a minor role. She’d tripped walking to her mark, bounded into another actor and they’d ended up in a tangle on the stage floor. The audience had roared. Sadly the play had been a tragedy, and she had a monologue—left unspoken—about death. She’d left the stage in tears, without speaking her lines, and had been kicked out of the play the same night by a furious director. Jason had gone to see the man, who put Gracie right back in the play and even apologized. She never had the nerve to ask why.

She looked down at her lap. “Maybe I could get work as a mannequin,” she suggested. “You know—stand upright in a boutique and wear different things every day.”

He glanced at her. “Maybe you could take karate lessons.”

“Karate? Me?”

“They teach self-confidence.” He smiled faintly. “You could use a little.”

“I’d aim a karate chop at somebody, hit a vital spot and end up in federal prison for murder.” She sighed.

He glanced at her, but without answering. He turned on the radio. “I want to listen to the market report. Do you mind?”

“Of course not.” She did, but she couldn’t force him to talk if he didn’t want to. So they listened to stock prices until he turned into the driveway of the mansion in San Antonio and pulled up at the steps. He cut off the engine, went around the truck and opened her door. The rain had followed them. It was pouring down, and the driveway was almost underwater.

“I can walk,” she said quickly.

He raised an eyebrow and glanced pointedly at the several inches of water pooled on the driveway.

She was wet, but she didn’t want to ruin her new shoes. She bit her lip hard.

He gave her a quizzical look. “Some women are aroused by being carried,” he said in a worldly way. “You act as if I’m carting you off to a guillotine every time I have to do it.”

She swallowed uncomfortably. “It’s just…it reminds me of something bad. Most especially when it storms.”

“What?”

Her face tightened. “Just…something. A long time ago.”

He studied her, while rain bounced off his hat and raincoat, and he realized that he knew absolutely nothing about Gracie’s life before her mother married his father. He remembered having to lure Gracie out of her room with chocolates, because she’d been so frightened of him at the age of fourteen. It had taken him months to win her trust. He scowled. His father had never discussed her with Jason, except to tell the young man that Gracie would always need someone to look out for her, to protect her. That hadn’t really made much sense at the time.

“You keep secrets, Graciela,” he said deeply, using her full name, as he rarely did.

The sound of her name on his lips was sexy. Sweet. It made her hum with sensations she didn’t want to feel. She had nothing to give, and he didn’t know it. She could never let anything…romantic…develop between them. Never. Even if she wanted to. And she did. Desperately. Especially since he’d whispered those exciting, sensually charged remarks to her at the party.

She managed a smile. “Don’t you keep secrets, too?”

He shrugged. “Only about my breeding program,” he said drily, mentioning the genetic witchery and technological skills he practiced to produce better and leaner purebred herd bulls.

About women, too, she was about to say, but she didn’t dare trespass into his private life.

“Some secrets are better kept,” she said.

“Suit yourself.” His eyes twinkled. “You work for the CIA, do you?”

It was the first olive branch he’d extended. She laughed with pure delight. “Sure. I have a trenchcoat, a blindfold, a cyanide pill and the telephone number of a Russian KGB agent in my purse.” She gasped. “Jason, my car!”

“The wrecker will be right behind us. It’s going slower than we were. I told him to tow it up here and bill the ranch. Come on, baby. I’ve got more work to do before I can call it a night.” He sighed. “I was out looking for mired cattle, supervising two new cowboys who don’t know a bull from a steer, when a fence went down under a wash in the rain, and cattle scattered to hell and gone. I’ve got a full crew out trying to round them all back up. But the new hands need watching.”

“You hire men to work cattle and then you get out and do it yourself.”

He shrugged. “I’m not a desk sort of man.”

“I noticed.”

He reached in and slid his arms under her knees and her back and swung her out of the truck as if she was light as a feather. “You’re such a cat, Gracie,” he mused. “All sleek lines and light weight. You don’t eat enough.”

“I’m never hungry.”

“You run it all off.” He turned toward the house.

A huge flash of jagged lightning split the rainy, dark sky, startling Gracie, who suddenly clung to him and hid her face in his throat, shivering. “Oh, I hate lightning!” she moaned as the thunder rolled and rumbled around them. Her face moved again, just as his head turned, and her mouth brushed over his with the action. It was so perfectly synchronized that it seemed as if she’d timed the turning of her own head, to produce that sweet little caress to tempt him.

Jason’s tall, fit body contracted violently and he stopped in his tracks. He didn’t say a word, but Gracie could feel his breathing quicken. The soft contact had flamed through her young body. She wondered if it affected him the same way.

It became quickly apparent that it had. In the light of the wide porch, he looked down at her with pure heat in his black eyes. They narrowed as they fell to her mouth.

The lightning came again, and the thunder, but Gracie didn’t see it. She only saw Jason’s face as he stared at her with growing intensity. She could feel his broad chest against her breasts, moving roughly, as if he had trouble keeping his breath steady. Her heart ran away. The silken touch of her mouth on his had acted as a spark to dry wood.

“Jason?” she whispered, disconcerted by the harsh look on his face. He seemed angry out of all proportion to what had happened. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to…”

“Didn’t you?” he asked through his teeth as he stared right into her eyes.

His arms, steely and warm, contracted fiercely around her body. His teeth clenched as his gaze fell to her soft mouth. He hesitated, as if he were fighting a battle with his own instincts. But he lost it. Gracie saw with dawning shock the aching hunger in the black eyes that began to narrow and glitter as the storm broke around them.

“What the hell,” he muttered as he suddenly bent his head. “I’m already damned, anyway!” His mouth suddenly ground down into hers, parting her lips, as urgent as the lightning, as frightening as the storm as he gave in to a surge of desire so hot that he couldn’t breathe through it. His arms contracted hungrily, grinding Gracie’s slight breasts into the firm, muscular wall of his chest. He groaned against her lips and crushed her even closer, his brows drawn together in an agony of visible need as his mouth moved insistently on her lips, parting them.

She couldn’t believe it was happening. She loved Jason. She’d always loved him. But this was a side of him that she’d never seen before. The passion and expertise of the kiss were worlds away from her mother’s frightening lectures about how it was between men and women. Involuntarily her body reacted to the feel of him; her mouth warmed to the furious need in his kisses. She felt a shock of pleasure beyond anything she’d ever known as his mouth grew more demanding.

But she fought it. This was only how it began, her mother had told her, with fierce need that blinded a woman to the reality of a man’s desires. It began like this, but it ended in pain and humiliation and, ultimately, tragedy. Tragedy. Gunshots and the metallic taste of blood…