Night Flower (Gone-to-Texas Trilogy) (29 page)

      
“I don't think an annulment would be a wise idea…or perhaps even possible in another year,” she replied carefully, her heart still a bit tender, rebelling over what she was about to say.

      
He lifted one arched brow sardonically now. “Perhaps you'd care to explain that?”

      
“You're being obtuse, Leandro, and that's not like you,” Larena said impatiently. “There's something between you and Melanie—some very strong attraction that neither of you can deny. The incident on the hillside certainly proves that! But it's more than just a physical attraction, I think. She's bold and bright, educated and outspoken. She's seen the world, Leandro—the whole world outside my small one here in San Antonio. So have you.”

      
“Yes, I've seen it; but there's much I didn't like about it, that's why I came home,” he replied darkly.

      
“Still, for all you've endured, you've survived, Leandro; and so has your wife. She can match your fire and your intellect. I—I could do neither. You'd grow bored with me and I...I fear I'd grow frightened of your passions and ambitions.” She faced him squarely, trying to hide her pain beneath a facade of reasonableness.

      
“Tell me you don't love me, Larena,” he commanded softly.

      
“Tell me you feel no passion for your wife,” she countered.

* * * *

      
On the long ride home, Lee mulled over Larena's words. The things Charlee had said to him returned to haunt him, as well. He reassured himself Larena and Dulcia were not alike. Certainly, he did not relish a return to the childish pouting and frigid timidity Dulcia had exhibited during the brief course of their marriage. But they had both been so young then, he excused. Larena would never shrink from him—or bore him. And he knew he didn't want a wife who challenged his every male prerogative the way Melanie surely would. Let Jim Slade and Rafe Fleming put up with that insanity!

      
“No, I want a woman who knows her place—gracious, genteel, patient, and loving, someone to raise my children and make a home for us—not some hoyden in riding skirts out chasing renegades!” He shouted the words to Sangre, kicking the stallion into a gallop for the ranch.

      
Melanie had not seen Lee leave that morning and assumed he had gone to work stock with his men. She had ridden to the newspaper office, worked on her society column, stopped by to visit Father Gus's children and get a report from Lame Deer, then headed back to Night Flower early, wanting to bathe and change before Lee arrived home. She wanted to leave him in doubt as to whether or not she'd even left the ranch. Let him ask her for an itinerary, if he dared!

      
On the way home, the skies opened up in a sudden fall shower. It was a mud-spattered, bedraggled
Señora
Velasquez who trudged into Kai's spotless kitchen late that afternoon, requesting a bath. He cheerfully put water on to warm and sent Manuel, their young houseboy, to haul it to her room when it was hot.

      
Stripping off her sodden clothes, Melanie hummed softly as she pinned the waist-length coil of night-black hair up on top of her head in a haphazard knot. With rain-curled tendrils falling free of the pins, she looked like a pixie, young and vulnerable. For several moments, she stood poised in front of her mirror, surveying herself from the crown of her head down to her toes and back up.

      
Gingerly, she ran her hands over her cool skin, still damp from the long rainy ride. She seemed pale golden in the flickering candlelight, her satiny skin in contrast to the gleaming jet of the hair on her head and at the juncture of her thighs. Melanie inspected critically. She was short, a scant five feet, with fine bones, but her body was curvy and lush. She touched her breasts, which were full, like ripe melons. Despite their heaviness they stood proudly upthrust. Her hips flared out from a minuscule waist and her legs were delicately tapered with slim ankles.

      
I am pleasing to look at,
she said to herself, trying to convince herself it was all right to possess feminine allure. She examined her face, which appeared younger in the mirror's dimly reflected light. She could see the resemblance to her beloved papa in the aristocratically formed brows and nose, the firm chin. Yet the slanted cat-gold eyes that stared back at her and the high Cherokee cheekbones were pure Duval.
I won't ever be like her—never!

      
A jagged streak of lightning hit the ground outside the house and the wind gusted furiously. Glad of the thick walls and the beckoning hot bath, she let herself sink into the steamy water for a brief respite of blissful relaxation. Before Genia went to set the table for dinner, she had placed fluffy towels and rose-scented bath oil beside the tub. Melanie poured a generous dollop of the oil on the water, laid her head back on the rim of the heavy brass tub, and dozed.

      
Lee bypassed the kitchen and headed straight for his room, intent on getting out of his ruined suit. As if the day hadn't been disquieting enough, he had to soak his best dress clothes. He peeled off his jacket and shirt, then sat down to struggle with his boots. After getting them and his hose off, he stood up and reached for the buttons at his fly, only to hear a crash of glass coming from the end of the hall.

      
The damn storm must have forced the latch on a bedroom window. He walked swiftly and silently to Melanie's room, cursing her for leaving the window unattended. “She probably forgot to lock it,” he muttered, shoving open the door. He stood frozen at the sight that greeted him.

      
The gust of wind had torn open the casement window and Melanie was startled awake. After gathering her scattered wits, she began to rise from her tub when she heard the door open. Lee stood in the doorway, bare-chested and barefoot, clad only in a soaked pair of black dress pants. His eyes glowed like onyx coals as they raked over her shivering body. She reached for a towel, then thought better of it and submerged herself beneath the sudsy water, all the while returning his stare like a small wild thing hypnotized by a savage predator. He said nothing, just continued to look, as her enormous gold eyes did the same.

      
Melanie watched in fascination as small droplets of water slipped from his head to fall glistening onto the corded muscles of his shoulders, then catch once more in the black curly hair on his chest. His desire was obvious as his wet pants clung to his body. Passion was reflected with equally startling clarity in his face. Slowly, he stepped inside the room and closed the door.

      
Attempting to keep her body submerged, Melanie reached out again to snatch up a towel; but before she could open it, his bronzed fingers circled her wrist, stopping her. He took the towel and unfolded it. Then, bemused, he held it up for her, as if performing the duties of a lady's maid. “You'll freeze if you stay in that water,” he whispered, the hoarseness of his voice apparent even over the noise of the storm.

      
The towel was large and offered her more protection than the now cold water. Lowering her thick fringe of black lashes to hide the warring emotions in her eyes, Melanie grasped the edge of the tub and rose, allowing him to enfold her in the linen, then quickly broke free of his hold, clutching the towel securely around her shivering golden body.

      
He smiled like a wolf. “There's nothing I haven't already seen, Melanie,” he said in that same disconcerting whisper.

      
Part of her felt a kindred flare of desire leap between them. She wanted to shed the fragile protection of the towel and fly into his arms, yet she held back. He desired her; but he did not want her as his wife, only as a beautiful, available vessel to assuage his lust.

      
“No, Lee. We had an agreement,” she said, her voice strangling as she fought the tremors of desire pulsing through her.

      
“A man can't be expected to resist such temptation, Melanie—naked, smelling like night flowers, looking at me with those golden eyes, waiting for me,” he replied, advancing on her slowly.

      
“I wasn't waiting for you!” she cried.

      
“And I suppose you weren't looking at me, either!” He laughed silkily. “Your face gave you away, just as your body gave you away that day on the hillside.” One lean brown hand took a tumbled ebony lock of hair and twisted it softly around his wrist, pulling her nearer.

      
“I'm not your whore, Lee! You can't just barge in here and expect me to melt in your arms like...like...” her voice trailed off in whispering humiliation.

      
“Like an octoroon placée?” he taunted.

      
As if struck by the lightning raging outside, Melanie stiffened and yanked the curl from his hand. “You
do
think of me that way—not as a wife but some expensive harlot! Only remember your bargain, husband,” she hissed. “If you don't want children kissed by the tar brush—or worse yet, with Indian blood, then don't touch me or I'll give them the proud Velasquez name as surely as I'm Lily Duval's daughter!”

      
He dropped his hands and clenched his fists in frustration. “I've never forced a woman in my life,” he gritted out. “I won't start now. Sleep in your cold bed and welcome to it!” He turned and stalked toward the door, then stood with his hand on the knob. “I'd close that window, unless you want to catch pneumonia and save me the trouble of an annulment!” With that, he slammed the door behind him with a crash that matched the raging elements outside.

* * * *

      
The sun shone with obscene brilliance the next morning, awakening Lee when it hit him full in the face. He was sprawled across his bed, covers kicked off, head throbbing wickedly from an excess of brandy. Very carefully he slid his legs over the side of the bed and then raised his upper torso, cradling his head like fragile crystal in his hands as he sat up.

      
After the disastrous scene with Melanie, he had stalked into the library, where he kept an oak cabinet stocked with fine liquor. He had no idea how he had negotiated the way between the library and the bedroom.

      
He sat in misery, contemplating the forthcoming year of living under the same roof with a gold-eyed temptress: smelling her perfume, watching her lithe little body as she moved through his house, imagining her as she had looked naked in her bath—or spitting at him in hate-filled defiance when he tried to touch her.

      
He rose and cursed his precipitous words and actions last night. He had said cruel, hurtful things to her—words he did not mean. No wonder she had refused him! She was his wife, and he was certain he had treated her worse than Rafe Fleming had ever treated her mother. But after the things Larena had said to him that afternoon and the months of celibacy since returning to Texas, damn, she had pushed him past the breaking point! To find his beautiful little Night Flower that way—it was more than any man should be asked to endure!

      
Lee considered his options. Hold to his plan for an annulment and send her away at year's end? Impossible. He dismissed the idea immediately. Try to seduce her and settle for the marriage Charlee and Larena seemed to think would be so good for him? But would it? Could Melanie ever become a dutiful, loving wife? Or would she always cling to her infuriating ideas about women and Indians?

      
Then, too, he had to examine his own prejudices. She flaunted her mixed blood, and as she said, it would be Velasquez blood if he lay with her. Did that matter to him? He didn't know; he honestly didn't know. The only thing he did know was that he wanted her as he had never wanted any other woman in his life.

Chapter Fifteen

      
The following week passed in stony silence. Only the barest civilities were exchanged between the honeymooners. Each spoke with Kai and Genia, using the hapless household servants as intermediaries whenever possible. Everyone was on edge waiting for something to happen. Then on the following Wednesday, Melanie returned from town with some news she had to share with her husband.

      
Lee was in his study having his before-dinner whiskey, a ritual that he indulged in liberally since his marriage, fortifying himself for the ordeal of sitting across the dining room table from his coldly hostile wife. When Melanie knocked on the door, he called absently for her to enter, expecting one of the servants. She stood poised on the threshold, watching him down a generous slug of amber liquid. As he stood by the large window, his tall, lean body was silhouetted in the twilight. She waited for him to turn, and when he did she could see surprise and some other darker emotion flash across his features.

      
“To what do I owe this honor?” he asked with a sardonic lift of his brows. “You only enter my domain to borrow books when I'm away.”

      
“You might try reading instead of drinking when you're in this room. You'd feel better in the mornings,” she answered acerbically.

      
“I can think of something else that might make me feel better in the mornings,” he replied with a slyly taunting lilt to his voice.

      
Melanie clenched her fists and stepped closer, daring him to persist with his innuendos. “I have to talk to you, Lee.”

      
“So, talk,” he replied, giving up the game and returning his attention to the sunset outside the window.

      
How to put what she had to say—to ask, really? She began carefully. “My family is leaving for Renacimiento the day after tomorrow. I've spent only a few hours with Mama and Papa and have hardly seen Norrie, Caleb, and Joey. Adam came to the
Star
and we've had lunch several times....” She hesitated, remembering the first day she and Adam had had lunch, when he introduced her to Jeremy Lawrence with such disastrous results.