Midnight Flame (45 page)

“How do you know that, Miss Know-It-All?”

“Let’s say that I have a woman’s intuition. I know that Jim Castille is the man you love and that he loves you.”

“I hate Jim Castille!”

“Look into your heart,” Laurel told her softly. “You’ll find the truth there.”

Laurel got up and made a move to touch Lavinia, but Lavinia swiped at her. “I wish you’d never come here!” she cried and ran from the room with tears in her blue eyes.

Tears stung Laurel’s eyes as well. She felt Lavinia’s pain but could do nothing to help her. Somehow, some way, Lavinia had to face up to herself. Suddenly very tired, Laurel went upstairs and had Rosita bring her supper to her room. Then she undressed and slipped nude between the sheets to wait for Tony’s return.

~ ~ ~

Lavinia kicked aside her gown, not caring that it landed in a heap beside the foot of her bed. She finished buttoning the last button on the front of her blue-and-white-checkered blouse and impatiently tucked the shirttail into her denim pants. After sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling on her boots, she pulled the pins from her hair and allowed the red strands to hang in wild abandon down her back. Before she left her room, she surveyed her reflection in the mirror and smirked with satisfaction.

No more acting the lady for her, she decided. She had done more than her share of acting in New Orleans to entice Auguste St. Julian, but she would be damned if she wasted her time on Tony Duvalier, who clearly wasn’t interested in her. She wouldn’t dwell on the man for one more minute. Winning him over with ladylike etiquette and lowered lashes accomplished her nothing. He loved Laurel, and he could have her. Any plan of wooing him away from Laurel and of claiming the Little L for herself by enticing him into marrying her were now buried. But she was vexed and angry that Tony didn’t want her. She felt her charms were slipping, and slipping badly.

She sneaked out of her room and took the backstairs to the yard. A full moon cast silvery fingers across the landscape as she headed toward the corral. From the hands’ bunkhouse a distance away, she heard the sound of male voices, laughing and raised in rowdy song, drift through the quiet night. No one seemed to be outside, and Lavinia was glad.

Buck had warned her to stay away from the white stallion in the corral, but Lavinia felt ornery enough not to heed anyone’s orders. So far, no one had been able to tame the horse because the horse reared up and threw his rider every time.

“I’m going to tame you,” Lavinia whispered to the horse as she stopped by the corral gate. “For once I’m going to succeed where others failed. We’re going to be good friends, boy.”

Cautiously, Lavinia opened the gate and stepped inside. The stallion appeared oblivious to her, but Lavinia knew he sensed her intentions. His ears perked up, and the muscles in his flanks stiffened. She spoke in a low, soothing voice as she inched closer to him. By the time she lifted herself onto his back, she thought he had come to trust her.

“There, boy, this isn’t so bad. You’ll get used to me in time.” She patted his soft mane, feeling a thrill of triumph surge through her. She had won! The stallion was hers!

“Lavinia! Get off that horse!”

Jim Castille’s voice cut through the night. Lavinia turned in the direction of the sound at the same moment the horse reared up. One second she was on his back, the next she was on the ground beneath the powerful hoofs. A sudden, searing pain shot through her right shoulder, and she knew she would be trampled to death, but then she felt strong arms pulling her away from the animal. In a haze of pain, she watched Jim quiet the horse.

Rising to her feet, she clutched her aching shoulder. Jim escorted her outside the gate and shut it with a thud.

He turned to her, his brown eyes filled with fury. “Don’t you know you could have been killed? That horse wouldn’t let a man ride him. What makes you think you could tame him?”

“Damn you to hell, Jim Castille! I mounted him. The animal accepted me, but you had to scream at me and you spooked him. He was fine until you yelled your fool head off.”

“Listen to me, you silly fool, you were inches away from being trampled. If I hadn’t come along when I did, you would have been hurt really badly, if not killed. You’d have been thrown whether I was there or not. What in blazes are you doing out here at this time of night?” He didn’t wait for her answer. In aggravation he grabbed her arm, not prepared for Lavinia’s yowl of pain.

Her face grew white, and her eyes looked like huge blue circles. For an instant her knees buckled beneath her. Jim caught her and scooped her up into his arms.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were hurt?”

“You didn’t—give me—a chance,” she gasped out. “You’ve got a big mouth.”

“Kick me next time,” he whispered next to her ear and carried her to his bunkhouse.

“Believe me, I will,” she said with conviction.

Barely a minute later, Jim gently set Lavinia on his bunk. He lighted the lamp and surveyed her. She looked like a little girl with her hair all a tumble. A wave of affection for Lavinia swept through him unbidden, but Jim repressed it. She had hurt him too much.

“Let me take a look at your arm,” he said brusquely.

“I don’t need you to look after me. I don’t like it here anyway. I’m going back to the house.” She started to get up, but sank down on the bunk as the pain shot through her and made her dizzy.

“Lie down, Lavinia.” Jim plumped up the pillow and helped her lie down. “Your arm might be broken. Can I take a look at it?” His voice was suddenly gentle, and Lavinia nodded. “You’ll have to take off your blouse.”

Lavinia’s eyes bored into Jim’s. “Could you please undo the buttons? I can’t…”

He nodded in an impersonal way, but Lavinia noticed his hand trembled when the buttons began to give. In the lamplight he swallowed hard as his fingers grazed the swell of her breasts, the soft flesh of her stomach. When the last button was undone, Lavinia sat up for Jim to help her remove the right sleeve. Then she attempted to pull the blouse across her full right breast as a sort of shield.

Jim shook his head in amusement. “I’ve seen more of you than that in the past. No need to hide from me. You don’t have to play the modest lady with me.”

Lavinia flushed. “You should know all about ladies,” she snapped. “You trail after Laurel like a little lost puppy with its tongue hanging out. And what makes you think I want to be a lady anyway? Or that I care what you think about me? I don’t give a damn for your opinion. If your preference is for a lady, then you’d better seduce Laurel fast, because I think Tony may have already beat you to it.”

She would have said more, but a throbbing ache caused her to be silent when Jim bent down and examined her arm and then made her move it. “No bones broken,” he said. “Just a slight sprain. I think you’ll live.”

“No thanks to you!”

“You can be a shrew.”

“And you can be a bastard.” Lavinia tried to pull her blouse on, but she had trouble getting her arm into the sleeve and was forced to accept Jim’s help. His hands felt warm, and an uncomfortable heat gathered in her abdomen and spread to her lower body, causing her to practically spring from the bunk. She knew that melting sensation well. She had felt it many years ago when she and Jim had made love. During the intervening years, Lavinia had had quite a few men, but none caused her to feel the way Jim could with only a touch. She must get away from here, she told herself. Otherwise, she would be unable to resist Jim, and too much had happened between them for her to ever let him love her again.

“You’re in the devil’s own rush to get out of here. What’s the matter, Lavinia? My humble place isn’t good enough for you?”

She didn’t stop as she made her way to the door. “You’re not good enough for me anymore. Go find Laurel and bring her here. Most men want ladies, and you’re no different. I’m tired of being a lady, acting like some priss with lace on her drawers. Being a lady has gotten me nowhere.”

Lavinia’s hand clasped the doorknob when Jim’s came down gently upon hers and stilled her.

Turning her face to his, he showed in his expression all the passion she felt. “What makes you think I want a lady, Lavinia? Maybe you’re all the woman I’ve ever wanted.”

The throbbing pulse at the base of her throat matched the irregular beat of her heart. She gasped when a second later Jim enfolded her in his arms. Guttural sounds of pleasure escaped unwillingly from her when he picked her up, carried her to the bunk, and placed her gingerly on the spot she had just left.

He joined her, stretching his long body beside hers, careful not to disturb her arm. His hand slid beneath her blouse and stroked the soft curve of her waist and moved upward to find the swollen tips of her breasts. His touch felt like fire upon her skin, and she shivered with the deep, burning ache of wanting him again and knowing that she wasn’t going to fight him.

“Don’t hurt me, Jim,” she breathed. “I couldn’t bear for you to hurt me again.”

“I didn’t hurt you years ago, and I never will. You believed a lie about me, something Seth set up to turn you and your father away from me. None of you let me explain anything, but I thought you’d listen to me.” He stroked her cheek with gentle fingers. “I sneaked back to the ranch to see you, believing that you didn’t think I’d stolen the money from your father’s desk. But when I sneaked in and asked Rosita if I could see you, she said you weren’t here, that you’d gone to Louisiana with your father and would probably be gone a long time. So, I left. You did think I stole the money, didn’t you?”

“Yes. But you didn’t. I know that now.” A strangled sob spilled forth. “If only I had trusted you, believed in you, everything would have been so different. I’ve done some terrible things since I left here with Papa … the men I’ve known—”

His lips silenced hers. “I don’t want to hear any more. What’s past is done. I haven’t led a spotless life either. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. But one thing I know and have always known, though I didn’t want to admit it. I love you, Lavinia, and I always will. No woman has ever had my heart and my love but you.”

“Me … too.” She choked on her words and would have said more, but at that moment Jim’s lips descended once more against hers, and she was lost in a spiraling labyrinth of desire. They removed their clothes and lay in each other’s arms, delighting in the feel and scent of one another. The years melted away with each kiss, each heated caress until both Jim and Lavinia blended into the light at the end of a velvet tunnel and found the rapture that had eluded them since the day they parted.

They lay spent in each other’s arms, listening to their twin heartbeats, thrumming in time to each other. Lavinia’s auburn hair, spilling across Jim’s chest like a red and gold fan, caught the lamplight. She lifted her face up to his and smiled.

“I never thought I could be this happy again.”

Jim squeezed her. “Me either.” A long silence stretched between them. Finally, he said, “Lavinia, I want to ask you something. You don’t have to tell me, because it doesn’t make any difference. But did you ever have a baby?”

Her breath died away. “Why?”

His hand massaged her abdomen. “There are faint marks a woman gets when she’s borne a child. I know a lot has happened in the past eight years, and I don’t condemn you, but … Hell, maybe I shouldn’t have asked. You’re starting to cry. I’m sorry.”

She sat up, shaking her long hair about her shoulders. She viewed him through a haze of tears and pain she thought she had buried along with her baby. “When I left here with Papa, I was carrying your baby, Jim. Papa sent me to Uncle Sylvester’s, thinking it would be better for me to have the baby there. But it was lonely. I was away from my home, my family … from you. It was awful, and I was sick most of the time. The baby was yours, and I so wanted that baby.” She sobbed the moment Jim sat up and enfolded her in his arms. “We had a baby girl. She was stillborn. The slaves helped me bury her in a little cemetery along the River Road.” Lavinia’s sobs gushed forth, and she found she couldn’t still them. For so long, she had held herself in check. Just to be in Jim’s arms, to know that he still loved her, was more than she could bear. She had never been able to unburden herself of this pain with anyone. Believing Jim was lost to her had made the baby’s death unbearable. But now, he held her and stroked her hair, his tears mingling with her own, and she felt cleansed of the past, of the pain. He kissed her when she began to grow quiet and held her face between his hands.

“My brave love. I never thought or imagined you’d gone through all that alone. I can’t make it up to you, but I’ll try. I will. We can have other children one day. Will you marry me, Lavinia? I love you so much that I hurt to think you might not want me.”

She threw her arms around him, and her face glowed with happiness and love. “Yes! Everything’s all right now. I love you, too. I do.” Lavinia rained warm kisses over his face, his body, until the flame was rekindled again.

As Jim lay later with her curled like a kitten in his arms, he didn’t think everything was fine.

Seth Renquist had spoiled their chance for happiness by framing him for a robbery he hadn’t committed. Because of Seth, Lavinia had been sent away to live in Louisiana and had borne a dead child among strangers. Perhaps if she had stayed at the ranch, if Seth hadn’t told Arthur he had stolen the money, Lavinia would have married him and not have been put under this terrible strain. Maybe their daughter would have lived.