Rexanne Becnel (13 page)

“Let me go!” she demanded in a voice that shook with both anger and fear.

“Why should I?” he murmured, close enough now that she felt his warm breath. “What could you possibly do about it? There’s no one nearby. No one to hear you or help you.” He paused, and a wicked gleam lit his deep-green eyes. “Actually, I thought you brought me here so we could be alone.”

That final remark was too much. With a sharp oath Lacie wrenched her arm free and, with one thrust of her booted foot, drove the horses slightly apart. When she saw he still held her reins, however, she quickly slid from her mount without a thought for the danger. Then she lit out running just as fast as she could, her plait loosening with every frightened stride.

A part of her knew it was useless. She could neither make it back to the house nor to the safety of the thickly wooded forest before he would be upon her. Yet Lacie refused to stop. Even when he called out to her in a loud chuckling voice, she would not slow her headlong flight. When she heard the thunder of his horse’s approach, she darted in a different direction. But like an experienced rider cutting a calf off from its mother, he deftly turned her, and then in one swift movement, he lifted her clear of the ground.

With a startled gasp she found herself seated firmly before him, held securely with one of his powerful arms around her as he turned the horse away from the bayou. For a moment Lacie could not speak. The hard gallop, followed by her futile attempt to outrun him, then this abrupt capture left her breathless. Only when she saw her mare now calmly grazing as they steadily rode away was she able to find words.

“What do you think you’re doing? Where are you taking me?” she cried as she struggled against his firm grasp.

“Sit still,” he grunted as he jerked her even more tightly against him.

His arm was around her waist, holding her in the most intimate manner against his chest and thighs. She was slightly off balance, with his face just to the side of hers. But when he looked down at her, she turned stiffly away.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Lacie muttered once more, holding herself as rigidly as she could, given their intimate proximity.

“I’m taking a ride, just as I’d planned,” he answered curtly. “Take off your hat.”

“What?” Lacie reached up to hold the plain straw brim.

“It’s poking me in the neck. Take it off.” When she only held tighter to it, however, his voice lowered threateningly. “Take it off, Lacie. For if you don’t, I surely will.”

“Insufferable high-handed bully,” Lacie muttered as she hastened to untie the ribbon bow at her chin and remove the hat. Toadying to him was the last thing she wished to do, yet she was hardly going to give him a chance to remove it for her. Oh, he would enjoy that, wouldn’t he! He seemed to derive his pleasure mainly from humiliating and tormenting her. However was she going to get rid of him?

The ride seemed interminable. True to his word, he set his well-bred mount to a steady ground-eating canter that quickly took them beyond view of the school. Despite her precarious perch, Lacie did not fear falling. She recognized him as a true horseman, and she knew he was not about to let her slip despite the horse’s rocking pace. No, it was rather his close hold on her that had her worried. That, and where he was taking her.

They were heading down a half-overgrown trail, one that she’d been told as a child had been a path for the Caddo Indians for centuries and centuries before. Of course then her childish imagination had been both fascinated and terrified by the thought of some tall black-haired savage lying in wait for unsuspecting schoolgirls. Now, however, as a schoolteacher she had to fear a far different sort of savage. As they moved out of the bright sunlight and into the shade of the forest, she spoke up once more.

“You’ve made your point, Mr. Lockwood. You’re stronger than I. You ride faster. Is there anything else you wish me to concede?” she added archly.

“Ah, there are a great many things I wish you to concede, Lacie,” he murmured, amusement clear in his voice.

“If you mean the school, you might as well forget it,” she snapped.

“Well.” He paused, and his arm tightened ever so slightly around her. “Perhaps we can find something else.”

She knew at once what he implied, or at least she had a general idea. But more outrageous than what he said was the strange knot that formed in her belly at his words. She had to forcibly squelch the uncomfortable warmth stealing over her and stiffen away from him.

“I’ll concede you nothing,” she muttered. She tried futilely to tug his arm away from her waist, and when that failed, she finally turned directly to face him.

“Look, this is accomplishing nothing. If you wanted to embarrass me, you’ve succeeded. Now, why don’t you let me down?”

For a long moment his direct gaze held with hers. Warm, fiery emerald clashed with dark, smoky gray. Then he smiled.

“It’s not my goal to embarrass you, Lacie. Besides, if there’s no one here to see you, why be embarrassed?”

“You’re here,” she retorted, but her irritation was giving way to a more confusing emotion.

“Now, how have I been embarrassing you? Making you angry, yes—I can see that you might be feeling a little angry right now. But embarrassed? It makes me wonder what else you feel toward me that you could be embarrassed.”

His casual tone only made things worse, but Lacie refused to examine any feelings she might have toward him. Most certainly she would never reveal them to him.

“I find it irritating—and embarrassing—to be manhandled as you have
repeatedly
done,” she snapped.

“I see.” But he made no attempt to comply with her request to be released. Instead, he turned the horse down another path, then crossed a small sandy creek. All the while Lacie was forced to sit there, fuming at his arrogant attitude.

Above them the branches of oaks and sweetgum interspersed with an occasional pine to create a living green canopy. Squirrels chattered and played, darting around the trunks and leaping from branch to branch, tree to tree. Birds flitted about, unconcerned with the passage of the horse and riders below. The calls of blue-jays and sparrows, mockingbirds and even the tell-tale sound of woodpeckers in the distance—the forest was alive with movement and sound in the warm May afternoon.

But Lacie could take no pleasure in the beauty that surrounded her. She was too uncomfortably aware of the man on whose lap she unwillingly sat. When the horse began to ascend a hill, she leaned forward, trying to avoid any closer contact with the broad muscular chest behind her. Dillon leaned forward as well.

“We’re almost there,” he said quietly, his lips too near her ear.

“Where?” she asked in spite of herself.

“It doesn’t have a name,” he replied in a voice that was a little more grim. “It’s just a shack.”

This must be where he grew up, Lacie realized when they approached a ramshackle cabin in a now-overgrown clearing. The roof had long ago caved in, and one corner of the narrow porch had collapsed where a falling tree had glanced off it. In the yard wild blackberry and elderberry had taken over what had probably once been an ambitiously planted rose garden.

Dillon stopped the horse before a vine-covered wall, and for a moment they both sat in silence. Lacie had not known about this out-of-the-way cabin, so near to Sparrow Hill, yet nonetheless a world away. In her mind’s eye she could see a dark-haired little boy there, drawing water from the well, playing with sticks and rocks and maybe even a puppy, while his mother tended to the roses that now grew in such untempered abandon. He had probably been happy here. But he had never had a father.

Maybe that was why he wanted Sparrow Hill. Not because it had been Frederick’s, but because it had been his father’s. He could never have back the childhood, but he could have the home he must have pined for back then. When he shifted in the saddle, then sighed, she could not deny the pang of sympathy that ran through her.

“How long has it been?” she murmured softly.

As if her words roused him from painful memories, Dillon stiffened. “Not long enough,” he muttered. Then he abruptly wheeled his tall stallion about and urged him forward. Although their pace was no swifter as they left than it had been coming in, Lacie was aware that he was more than anxious to be gone from the clearing. They did not speak on the ride out, but their silence was fraught with entirely different emotions than previously. Dillon was no less in command of the situation, but it was not quite the same. There were chinks in his seemingly invulnerable facade, weak spots in his tough hide. Yet Lacie found she could not fully savor that knowledge, for instead of satisfying her, it only softened her opinion of him.

You’re a fool, she told herself angrily.

But he’s hurting, she rationalized.

So what? He deserves to hurt. He wouldn’t hesitate to hurt us, to destroy everything that’s good about Sparrow Hill.

But logic did not hold when Lacie thought about the little boy he must have been so long ago. She knew what it was to lose a parent, to feel abandoned and lost in a world peopled only with adults who suffered too much over their own loss to ever recognize the child’s. She did not pause to consider her words.

“When did your mother die?”

She could not see his face, but she felt a slight tensing of his arm.

“A long time ago,” he answered curtly. “And yours?”

Lacie sighed in frustration at his caustic reply. Why had she thought they could ever have a normal, thoughtful conversation? Then she felt his face lower, and he rubbed his cheek against her loosened hair.

“We’re both orphans, aren’t we? Two lonely souls in a cruel, grasping world. Perhaps we should join forces, Lacie.”

His husky words, low and rumbling in her ear, caused Lacie’s stomach to tighten and her heart’s pace unaccountably to quicken. Then his lips found the soft, sensitive skin along her neck, and she could not prevent a gasp of surprise as all her senses jumped in alarm. She felt his fingers splay open to caress her waist. His well-muscled thighs shifted slightly beneath her so that she settled even more intimately against him. Even the slide of her own dark hair, caught between his cheek and hers, seemed suddenly sensuous, something she’d never quite felt before. Then his lips slid farther down her neck, warm and wet as they tasted her skin, and her head fell back against his shoulder.

It was a moment of wonderful madness, snatched from reality, almost like a dream. Yet it was no dream, and when his hand moved up to cup her breast, Lacie jumped in sudden alarm.

“No. No!” she cried, fighting her own lethargic response to him as much as his heated touch.

“No?” He pulled the horse to a stop just at the edge of the woods. “Why not, Lacie? For all that starched primness you display, I know there’s fire just below the surface.”

“You—you don’t know any such thing. Nothing at all!” Lacie stammered as she tried to gather her wits.

But he only chuckled. “I know you’ll come out the poorer for fighting me. Why not accept my offer? I’ll give you more money than this place is even worth. And you’ll give me…what I want.”

“You can’t buy me off!” she shouted, struggling to free herself of his grasp.

“Everyone can be bought off,” he answered darkly. “It’s just a matter of agreeing on a price.”

“Well, I can’t be,” she muttered furiously, seeking to squirm down from her perch on his lap.

“Oh, yes you can,” he stated grimly as he tightened his hold until she could hardly breathe. “I knew you were a liar—and a thief—when you said you were Frederick’s widow. And thieves always have a price. It’s part of their nature.”

“How many times must I tell you that I
am
his widow!”

“You can say it until you’re blue in the face, Lacie.” He turned her abruptly so that their faces were but inches apart. “But I know that Frederick didn’t care for women. That’s why he didn’t marry.”

“He surrounded himself with women. And girls,” Lacie countered. “He loved this school and everyone associated with it. For you to imply otherwise only proves you did not know him at all.”

He laughed at her then, a dark, troubled laugh. “Let me explain it better, my sweet innocent. My brother—” He paused, and his eyes flickered away from hers. Then, as if steeling himself for what was to come, he looked back at her with a bitter twist to his lips.

“Frederick fancied young men. It was something he abhorred in himself, yet he could not deny the fact.”

When Lacie only stared at him for a moment, perplexed by his strange words, his face grew grim.

“His lovers were not women, Lacie, they were men. He would never have desired to touch you as I just did.” He took a harsh breath, then squinted toward the horizon. “I have no doubt he liked you, but no better than I might like any one of my male employees. And as for the school, it was his protection. It kept him away from temptation and allowed him at least to live with himself.”

Lacie was too stunned to reply to his terrible revelation. She could scarcely believe her ears. A man might desire other
men
as lovers? It was too ludicrous to be true. And Frederick…A shiver of fear shook her as she tried to understand.

She did not struggle when he urged his horse forward, nor did she protest his snug hold as they crossed the field and approached the house. But all the while her mind whirled in complete bewilderment.

It was not true, she told herself. It could not be true. Frederick was too good a man to be involved in such…she shuddered.

Still, she sensed a disturbing grain of truth in Dillon’s words that she could not entirely ignore. Frederick
had
used the school as a buffer against the world—she had always sensed that. But she had thought it was only because he was a quiet man, not like his neighbors who cared more for hunting and fishing and shooting. He had just been different.

But what if it went deeper? What if what Dillon had said was true?

Not until Dillon pulled his horse to a halt before the wide porch steps was the silence between them broken.

“Perhaps now you’re ready to strike our bargain,” he said, sliding one long strand of wind-blown hair from her shoulder.