Scarlet Lady (13 page)

“Contrary to what you may think, Katie, I’ve made love to damned few women here. It’s more a matter of being prepared for a situation before you get in trouble. I learned that a long time ago.”

One by one, she unfastened the buttons of his shirt, her fingertips dancing across his skin like a skittish colt trying to make up his mind to accept a carrot. With one finger she drew a line across his breastbone and down to one hard nipple. “You’re talking about her, aren’t you, the girl who died?”

“Yes.”

“Did you love her?”

His simple yes said it all.

“And she loved you?”

“She said so.”

“So what happened?”

He waited a long time, then surprised himself by answering. “We were just lonely kids and we found a way to make that loneliness go away.”

“What happened?”

“She got pregnant. They sent her away.”

“And you?” Katie continued to play her fingertips across his chest.

“Me? I went crazy. Almost killed her father.”

“Did you look for her?”

“Yes. But I never found her.”

“And then she … died?” Katie asked.

“Yes. But I didn’t know it for a long time. Nobody bothered to tell me. That’s when I knew I didn’t want to belong to that kind of family. I left and I never went back.”

“What about your mother?”

“It was too late. I would only have hurt her.”

Katie laid her check on his chest, snuggling into the curve of his arm. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Losing someone you loved must have been hard.”

“That’s a surprising reaction. Considering your background, I would have thought you’d tell me we were too young to be in love. That I was foolish to think a high society girl like that could ever be in love with an outsider like me.”

He wouldn’t have revealed so much, but talking was the only way he could keep himself from rolling over and taking what she was so innocently offering.

“Why do you call yourself an outsider?”

“I was. My mother was from West Virginia originally. She always wanted to be a Southern belle, but her family was dirt-poor. I never knew my father. When she got pregnant with me, she ran away to Atlanta and went to work for my stepfather’s firm. When she caught my stepfather’s eye, she got smart. Marriage or nothing. He married her and took her to Charleston. She would have loved Carithers’ Chance.”

“So how did that make you an outsider?”

“Even now, Charleston is another world. If your
family doesn’t go all the way back to the original land grants, you’ll never belong.” He laughed. “Though she married my stepfather, who adopted me and gave me his name, Stewart, that didn’t make either one of us belong. In fact, I tried every way I could
not
to belong. Anything that made a family name more important than the person wasn’t something I wanted.”

This time it was Katie who felt the pain Montana had bottled up inside him. He was a victim of family, just as she was. The difference was that he’d turned his back on his and she’d taken on the weight of hers. In the end, the result was the same; they were imprisoned by their pasts. And each was alone.

She ought to get up and leave. She ought to be concerned about her brother instead of the man who could be responsible for his disappearance. Lifting her cheek from Montana’s chest, she studied his face in the darkness. As her eyes became accustomed to the shadows she could see that he was frowning, tension making lines like a caricature meant to show stern determination. She understood that kind of tension, she’d felt it so often herself and tried to contain it.

Her heart started to pound. Katie turned away, lying on her back, and instantly regretted the distance she’d put between them. “Don’t you ever wish your life had been different?”

“Wishing doesn’t make it so,” he replied gruffly. “It’s just an exercise in regret. And regret is destructive.”

“And how do you deal with regret?”

“I try not to put myself in that situation. If I want
something, I go after it. I may be sorry I got it, but I’ll never be sorry I didn’t try.”

Katie thought about that. There had been so many regrets in her life, many of them because she’d allowed herself to be turned away from what she truly wanted. And what she wanted now was this man. “Montana, will you kiss me?”

“For Christ’s sake, Katie, what are you asking? You’re playing with fire.”

“I don’t mean a passionate, run-for-the-hills invasion. I mean just a sharing, ‘I understand’ kind of kiss. Please?”

He was going to regret it. But he couldn’t refuse. Slowly, he turned on his side, lifted himself to one elbow, and looked down at her. The darkness added a dreamlike surrealism to the room, almost as if it weren’t really happening. “This isn’t smart, you know.”

“Probably not. But maybe I’d like to do something that isn’t smart. Maybe I’m tired of being careful. Maybe, for once, I’d like to be a little wild and crazy.”

“I’m not sure I know what an ‘I understand’ kind of kiss is.” He lowered his face until their lips were only a breath apart.

“Improvise,” she whispered, reaching up, and pulled him down.

Their lips touched, lightly. He only meant to linger for a second, then pull away. But that was before he touched her and felt the shattering of his control. Eagerly she returned his kiss, parting her lips, using her tongue to draw quick little swirls on the inner lining of his mouth.

She moved herself snugly beneath him as her fingertips danced up and down his back. It was as if she’d been freed, as if the cork had been removed from a bottle of champagne, allowing it to explode.

Montana tried to draw back, but she was having no part of that, and this time it was he who shifted his body so that he could touch her the way she was touching him. He still wasn’t certain what an “I understand” kind of kiss was, but he knew that even if their thinking processes weren’t in complete agreement, their bodies were.

He moved away. Their gazes locked, the air between them crackling with desire. She was so beautiful. He couldn’t hold back a smile.

“Don’t smile at me like that, Montana.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s different. It’s a real smile, not a pose. I don’t want to think of you as real.”

“Are you saying you can deal with whatever this is between us as long as you see me as some smooth-talking devil who seduces the innocent bystander?”

“Yes.”

Then slowly, with both of them aware of what he was asking, he lowered his mouth again. No matter how they justified it, the feel of her in his arms was so right. As he leaned in to touch her mouth with his, he saw a flash of uncertainty for a second in her eyes; it disappeared as their lips came together and he deepened the kiss.

A new intensity awoke inside him. He burned with the unexpected need not just to be inside her, but to make love to her. He sought the smooth silk of her
neck, her shoulders, sliding his hand lower, shoving the tube top down so that he could reach the small firm breasts that pressed against his palm, exploring, claiming her with his touch.

He slid his knee between her thighs, nudging that part of her that responded and invited entrance. Montana wanted her with an urgency he might have found unsettling if he’d allowed himself to admit it. Instead he felt her turn to liquid beneath him, asking, offering, giving back touch for touch as she pushed his shirt from his shoulders. Then it was gone and she’d pulled away, planting kisses down his chest and back to his face.

On the verge of losing control, Montana rolled away and stood. “Are you sure about this, Katie?”

There was only a brief hesitation. “Yes.”

Then slowly, Montana unzipped his trousers, peeling them and his briefs down his legs as he framed what he was about to say. “This probably isn’t the smartest thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “I want you like I’ve never wanted a woman since”—he swallowed Laura’s name and said—“I was a kid. But I won’t go any further unless you tell me. I said you needed rest, and if you tell me, I’ll put my clothes back on and leave right now.”

Leave?
Katie felt a sudden breath of cold air. No matter how hard she’d tried to hold them close, people had been leaving her all her life. First her father, who turned his back on her offer to help him in the business, then an accident took both him and her mother, and finally Carson’s disappearance. She was in dangerous territory here, but she’d been pushed as far as she would go.

Just once she’d stand firm. Just once, she’d get what she wanted. This was a man who wasn’t refusing her, who wanted her, who was ready to take what she had to give.

“I want you, too, Rhett Butler Montana.”

“Maybe we’d better talk about it,” he hedged.

“No talk. No conditions. No tomorrow. Just tonight, my gambling man.” She held out her arms.

She heard him as he opened the drawer to the table by the bed and withdrew the protection he promised. She swallowed a moment of panic as, moments later, he lay back down, pulling her gently into his arms. He touched her, tracing the curve of her shoulder, across her neck, and over the top of her breasts. In the time it took for her to take a deep breath, he’d rekindled the low flame smoldering just beneath the surface, turning it into a raging wildfire.

Someone was moaning. She thought it was herself, but it might have been him. He bent his head, taking her nipple into his mouth, pulling on it, nuzzling it, then moving to the other. Every place he touched burned, sending out uncontrollable nerve spasms to her lower body. He slid his leg over her and she could feel him hard and pulsating as he nestled between her legs and rubbed himself against her.

“Montana,” she whispered urgently. “Please!”

Then he was inside her, his fingertips digging into her hips, lifting her as he plunged into her again and again. Over and over they rocked against each other, fell away, and met once more. Then they were both flying,
shooting through time and space like a comet, burning white-hot, disintegrating as it fell. Until there was nothing left but the afterglow.

And the perfect sense of togetherness that might never again be so real.

SEVEN

Montana slept for a short time, then lay in the darkness with his arm around Katie. He felt extraordinarily happy, almost euphoric. But this feeling of fulfillment was different. It was more than simply sexual pleasure, it was a kind of contentment that was new.

He could hear the slowing of the paddles as the boat headed toward the shore. The lights of the wharf peeked beneath the door to the deck and through a small cut-glass half circle at the top, creating a kaleidoscope of color across the bed and the woman he held. He’d known she was beautiful and stubborn that first night. He’d known she had a good mind. But beyond that, her loyalty and commitment to her brother stunned him. His stepfather had paid lip service to family and tradition, but what he’d really been concerned about was appearances. It was all surface, and when it came down to a choice between loyalty and reputation, family lost.

Katie really cared. She was a forgiving, loving person.

Even so, she was like two people living in the same body. The forgiving, loving sister and the conniving, relentless gambler with an uncanny ability to win at blackjack and poker. If she couldn’t do it honestly, she’d been prepared to cheat. But had she? He was beginning to question his own conclusions. Was he ready to forgive her, to excuse her actions? Looking at her face, innocent in sleep, he still found it hard to believe the marked cards. Even in the worst of his own miserable past, he’d never stooped to dishonesty.

Or had he? His loving Laura had been a secret thing. He’d known that it wouldn’t be permitted. Was what he’d done any more honest than what Katie had done?

“Katie.” Even as he whispered her name she moved, smiling as if she were dreaming. Having a brother like Carson, she certainly deserved good dreams. But he couldn’t see those in her future. If he called in Carson’s IOUs, she’d lose her home, or, and he smiled at this thought, at the very least she’d have a new roommate.

Roommate?
That idea sent a ripple of pleasure down his backbone. Having a roommate like Katie was a fate Montana could consider. But if he didn’t get busy and find Carson, she’d probably challenge him to another hand of poker with the IOUs as the stakes. Seeing how smooth she’d been in their last game, he wasn’t sure he wanted to play with her again.

At least not poker.

First he’d find her brother, then he’d force him to work off those IOUs on the boat.

No, giving Carson a job in his casino would be like putting the fox in the henhouse. Carson needed to stay as far away as possible from any kind of game of chance. Besides, he had no intention of calling in Carson’s bad debts. He’d rather hold on to the IOUs. Maybe that would act as a deterrent.

But that wouldn’t stop Katie. Carson was family. And a family debt was her debt. She’d go out gambling again, if not at his place, somewhere else. His mind went round and round with that thought. If she cheated on another boat, she might get caught. Still, there’d be no stopping her. Unless …

It had been staring him in the face from the moment Mac called. Carson’s IOUs were the motivation for Katie, and Katie had become Montana’s primary concern. If they were satisfied, all this would end. She’d relinquish her claim on the
Lady
and go back to the hospital to do the kind of work she ought to be doing. Of course he’d keep Carson’s marker for the plantation for now. He wanted to be a landowner for a little while longer.