A Man for All Seasons (7 page)

After dinner, he'd taken her back to his apartment. Up until then, there had been brief, clinging kisses and love play that neither of them carried to the inevitable conclusion. He still hadn't believed her rape story, although the woman he was getting to know didn't seem the sort to tell lies. He'd reminded himself that plenty of women who looked innocent, weren't.

His suspicions increased when she went with him to his apartment. She hadn't protested being alone with him. He'd put on some slow dance music and shed his dinner jacket, moving her close to his crisp, white cotton shirt. Against it, he could feel the soft press of her breasts under the thin fabric. He hadn't felt a bra, and that had aroused him, quickly and uncomfortably.

But instead of backing away, to keep her ignorant of the effect she had on him, he'd let her feel it. He could still remember being surprised at the faint shock in her wide, dark eyes, the tremor that ran through her. She'd started to speak, but he bent and took the husky words right inside his hungry mouth.

He was slow, and deliberate, and thorough in his ardor. Her innocence was no match for his years of experience with women. He had her on his couch in no time, bare to the waist. While his mouth fed hungrily on her small, firm breasts, his hand had been under that silky fabric and the soft cotton briefs she wore under them.

She'd been fascinated by what he was doing to her. He could see it in her eyes, feel it in the nervous hands that clung to him as he undressed her. His shirt had been off, drawing her fingers to his broad, hair-roughened chest while he suckled her.

He'd wanted her for months. During that time, he hadn't seen any other woman. He was aching, and he'd abstained while they were dating. It was inevitable that he was going to lose control.

She'd protested, once, weakly, when his hand went between them to the fastening of his slacks and undid it, so that he could push them away. But his knee had
edged between her soft thighs and his mouth had moved back to cover hers, tenderly. When she felt him at the veil of her innocence, she stiffened a little, but her body was hot with desire, her hands were biting into his back, her mouth was moaning under the devouring pressure of his hard lips.

“Oh God, I need you,” he ground out as his lean hips began to push down. “I need you so much. Don't…fight me, honey. Don't fight!”

But his huskily whispered plea fell on deaf ears when he pushed again. She cried out, frightened and in pain.

“Too fast? I'll be careful,” he said at her lips. “It's been a long time, hasn't it?”

“Marc…I haven't ever been with anyone!” she sobbed.

He only laughed softly. She'd been with the boy she accused of raping her when she was fifteen. She was no innocent. But he was careful with her just the same. He didn't want to turn her off, not when his own body was racked with desire.

He wrenched off the trousers and his boots while his mouth worked on her soft belly. He aroused her all over again, determined to make her want him as much as he wanted her, to stop her feeble protests, her lies.

She was shivering, begging him, when he finally slid
between her long, trembling legs and positioned himself against her. He looked into her wide, dazed eyes.

“I'm going inside you,” he whispered blatantly. “I'm going deep inside you, Josie. Now. Now…now!”

His body was shuddering with each quick, hard motion of his hips, and he felt the pleasure rising in him. But he couldn't penetrate her. She was sobbing, shivering, her voice at his ear whispering ardent encouragement, her hands on his buttocks, pulling, pleading.

“Damn it…!” he growled, frustrated, blind with desire. He gathered his strength and pushed as hard as he could.

She cried out and came right up off the couch, frantically pushing at his hips, her eyes blind, not with desire, but with honest, terrible pain.

It took him several seconds to realize what was wrong. He was shivering with desire, aching for satisfaction. But her body resisted him, and suddenly he realized why.

His lean hand moved suddenly. He touched her intimately, and found a barrier so formidable, so noticeable, that he froze above her in total shock.

“You're a virgin,” he whispered, wild-eyed.

She swallowed, embarrassment flooding her. She
looked down, at his blatant arousal, and gasped. She'd obviously never seen a man…like that!

“You miserable little tease,” he burst out furiously. “Damn you!”

He dragged his body away from hers, too far gone to care that she was shocked by his nudity. He dressed in silent rage, barely aware that she was crying and had pulled her dress up over her to conceal her own nudity in shame.

“Of all the low-down, dirty things to do to a man, that is the lowest!” he accused. “You're no better than a woman who does it for money, but at least she doesn't get a man hot and then turn off him like that. Get dressed,” he said tersely, leaving the room.

He waited in the kitchen while she dressed, too overcome with shock and anger to think rationally. His body was in anguish. Josette had led him on deliberately, knowing that she couldn't be intimate with him. That barrier wouldn't break without some surgery. She had to know it. Then it hit him, like a board in the face. She was a virgin. There was absolute proof of it.

That was when he knew the boy in Jacobsville had lied on the stand when he was accused of raping a fifteen-year-old Josette. That was when he knew, with absolute certainty, that she'd been assaulted with the
intent of rape. But the barrier had stopped him. As it stopped Marc, that night…

A horn blew, bringing him back to the present. The light had changed and he was sitting there, staring into space. He grimaced at his memories and put his foot down on the accelerator, shooting forward.

He could still see Josette's shocked, shamed face. She'd cried and cried, still aroused, and ashamed as well, fascinated and humiliated. Nothing he said then could have erased that expression from her face, and he knew it, and didn't speak. He'd said far too much already, things he couldn't even take back now. She hadn't been able to meet his eyes, and tears poured down her cheeks. He wanted to explain why he'd been angry, why he'd said such terrible things to her. But she wouldn't speak, wouldn't listen, wouldn't look at him, and the words died unspoken.

It had occurred to him then that she was probably remembering the rape attempt, that his ardor had reminded her of the most distasteful experience of her life. He'd lost control of himself almost at once, something that had never happened before. She'd let Marc undress her and touch her, and she'd been willing, apparently, to give herself to him. Except that she knew she couldn't have intimacy with any man. So maybe
she was a tease. Maybe she was getting even with him, finally, for testifying against her when she was fifteen. That growing suspicion had kept him quiet when she came to the kitchen doorway, fully dressed.

He'd taken her home in a painful silence. He wanted to apologize for helping the boy's defense attorney get her case thrown out of court when she was fifteen. He wanted to apologize for not believing her.

Those harsh words he'd spoken to her, even in memory, had the power to make him sick. She was a virgin, and he'd treated her like a criminal. He should have known that she wasn't the sort of person to lie. When had she ever lied to him, during their months of dating, enjoying each other's company? He'd misjudged her horribly, and then her strict upbringing had probably left her with feelings of guilt because she'd let him go so far. Her natural, sweet ardor was a gift. He wanted to tell her that. He wanted her to know that he didn't blame her for what had happened. But he didn't trust people. She might have done it deliberately. He couldn't be sure she hadn't. He cut off the engine in front of her home and faced her.

But before he could say anything, she'd turned her head toward him. “Don't ever call me. Don't ever come near me again,” she'd choked, her voice breaking on the
words as she glanced in his direction, but not meeting his gaze. “It was just sex, wasn't it? It was just sex you wanted, all along, and you thought I'd be easy because you thought I was easy at fifteen!”

He remembered glaring at her with mingled frustration and anger. “You're a damned disappointment, that's what you are, Josette. You led me on deliberately tonight, knowing I couldn't have you. It was revenge for not believing you in Jacobsville, wasn't it? It was payback, pure and simple.”

Her face had flamed scarlet. “You started it!”

He didn't like remembering that. “You didn't fight very hard, did you? But don't worry, I won't be back. I don't have any desire to see you again. You never were woman enough for me in the first place!”

And he left her, with those cold, heartless words, driving away before she even reached her front door.

After that, he'd gotten drunk. A few days later, he'd resigned his Ranger job and accepted one with the FBI. Josette had accepted a date with Dale Jennings to go to a party Bib Webb was throwing. In fact, Silvia Webb had put her on the guest list at Jennings's request. Soon afterward, there was a trial, a speedy trial because Bib Webb's opponent had suddenly dropped out of the race
at the last minute and Webb had been elected lieutenant governor.

During the trial, Josette was made out to be a liar. Marc hadn't provided that information about the rape trial. But Bib Webb had remembered hearing about it, and told the prosecuting attorney. Josette thought it was Marc. He hadn't gone near her because he couldn't bear the condemnation in those soft, dark eyes every time she looked at him. Then, the longer he'd waited to apologize, the more impossible it had become. In the end, he didn't contact her again. Not at all. He just left town for good.

Actually he needn't have left San Antonio, because soon after the trial, Josette moved to Austin to work for Simon Hart, to get away from the publicity. Her mother had died of a stroke a couple of months later, and her father had died of a heart attack not long after that. There were no siblings.

She'd mourned both of them bitterly, and alone, because she had no family left.

Now here she was, back in Marc's life, and he had to try to keep his head around her, and not let her know how powerfully she still affected him. He wondered if she'd had something going with Jennings—or anyone else—since the trial. She seemed very self-confident,
self-assured, businesslike. But the one time he'd gone close to her—deliberately, because he had to know if he still affected her physically—he'd seen her blouse shake with the force of her heartbeat.

She was still vulnerable to him; a little, anyway. But she didn't want to be. Even if she didn't hate him, she was so remote she appeared disinterested. He wondered if he was ever going to get close to her again, especially now, with the two of them on opposing teams outside the investigation.

He
knew
that Bib Webb would never be a party to corruption or murder. He just didn't know how to make Josette see it. She was prejudiced, and maybe with good reason. Silvia had been vicious, sniping at her in the press and quoting things that her husband hadn't actually said about Josette's penchant for lying. It had turned Josette against Bib, and maybe that had been Silvia's intent all along.

When Silvia had seduced Bib into marrying her, against Marc's advice, years before to escape poverty, she'd been pregnant. But she'd lost the child while she was out of town. She was ambitious from the start, and she loved money. It was her own ambition that had first pushed Bib into partnership with childless widower Henry Garner, and her ambition that had been respon
sible for his election to lieutenant governor. It was her ambition that had him running for a U.S. senate seat that he'd privately told Marc he didn't really want.

Bib's idea of heaven was to spend his life selling farm equipment or working with the horses on his ranch. He loved the ranch. He loved the open country. He was more a cowboy than a diplomat or a politician, but that would never have suited Silvia. She wanted expensive clothes and jewels and the cream of society in her living room sipping imported champagne. Marc wondered how different his friend's life might have been if he'd never married Silvia.

But it wasn't possible to relive the past. If he could do that, he wouldn't have made the mistake of his life trying to seduce Josette Langley on his sofa.

 

Marc left his rental car at the airport and boarded the plane back to San Antonio, finding that he was the only passenger seated in that particular set of seats over the wing. He didn't mind that. He wasn't in the mood for a talkative companion.

He put his hat in the extra seat and leaned back with his arms folded and his eyes closed as the big plane took off and shot up into the blue sky.

Funny how many of his most vivid memories were
tied up with Josette Langley and her family, he recalled. He and her father had first become acquainted when he was a patrolman with the Jacobsville police force. He'd been trying to get a repeat DWI offender into an alcoholic rehabilitation clinic. The man had been a member of the Langleys' church, and Josette's father had intervened on his behalf. Marc and Mr. Langley had a lot in common, because Langley had started out to be a career policeman. But he felt the call to preach, and he'd quit his job and gone to a seminary to complete his education. Marc came to the house often to see Josette's father, and he got to know Josette as well. He thought of her as a cute and mischievous child; or, he had, until he'd seen her undressed in the company of a half-naked boy one unexpected night.

The boy had been very convincing. Josette had sneaked out of her house to meet him, he told Marc; she'd wanted him. She came on to him. But when he agreed and got enthusiastic, she started fighting and screamed rape, wasn't that just like a girl? Marc, to his shame, had believed him. He'd even felt sorry for him. So, despite his affection for the family and his friendship with Josette's father, he'd helped investigate the incident. The intern at the hospital where Josette had been taken that night gave a taped deposition, which stated
emphatically that there had been no rape—although not the reason why there hadn't. It had convinced Marc that Josette was afraid to tell the truth about what had really happened, for fear of hurting her parents. That was a common enough response for a girl who'd never done anything wrong in her life; in fact, Marc had recently seen such a case in court. The girl had tearfully admitted fault and apologized, and the case was thrown out of court.