The Barons of Texas: Jill (14 page)

Suddenly she saw Colin, and her heart began its now all-too-familiar thudding. He was as devastatingly good-looking and charismatic as ever in a black tuxedo, one hand slipped with casual elegance into his trouser pocket, the other holding a drink.

He was facing her, with three women arranged in a semicircle in front of him, and he was laughing at something one of them had said. But she could tell his laughter was only a facade. She wouldn’t have
been able to realize that before their time on the island, but she could now.

Watching him, she turned hot, then cold, then hot again. Lord, could she do this? Her palms were clammy. Her heart was pounding so hard she was sure the fast rhythmic movement was visible through her skin. And if even one more physical symptom struck her, she reflected with a mixture of amusement and terror, she would probably have to seek medical help.

But she wouldn’t allow herself to take the easy way out and confront him later in a more casual environment. She drew a deep breath and called on every ounce of courage she could muster. She had a formidable job ahead of her.

With a small prayer, she unwrapped the shawl from around her, turning it into a mere accessory, instead of a cover-up, by draping it over her forearms and letting it fall down the back to beneath her hips.

She started toward him and knew the moment he saw her.

He stiffened, and his smile vanished. Curious, the three women turned to see what or who had caught his attention, and as she neared, it was their greetings that helped alleviate his conspicuous wall of silence.

“Jill, we were wondering if you were going to make it tonight.”

“You look wonderful. The new way you’re wearing your hair is very becoming.”

“My
word
, that dress is gorgeous, though not your usual style at all. What’s happened? You must have gotten a complete makeover somewhere.”

Still as stone, Colin trained his icy stare on her.

She could now completely understand and empathize with Billie Holiday’s lament of unrequited love.

Refusing to be intimidated, she stared right back at him. “Actually, yes, I did—with Colin’s help.”

“Really?”
As if choreographed, all three women looked from her to Colin and then back to her.

She nodded. “Even to the point of buying me clothes. He thought I was dressing too primly and decided I needed to wear more revealing clothes.”

“Softer.”
The one word sounded as if it were strangling him. “And I never bought you
that
dress.”

One of the women looked at Colin. “Do you mind me asking why you were, uh, making over Jill?”

He didn’t answer, continuing to glare at her, so
she
answered. “It was a business bargain we made, wasn’t it, Colin? And as most business deals are, this one is private. However, I will tell you that part of the deal involved lessons.”

Ravenous curiosity now etched the faces of the three women.

“Lessons?” one of them ventured.

Jill nodded. “Actually, the lessons could best be summed up with the phrase,
how to torture Jill
.”

With a soft curse, Colin grabbed her hand. “Will you ladies please excuse us?”

With open mouths, the three women nodded in unison.

Tightly gripping her hand, Colin strode toward the rear of the room and the exit, but that didn’t fit into her plans. Not yet. Besides, now that the three women were out of the picture, his control had slipped enough for her to see he was practically foaming at the mouth with anger. It would be safer for her to stay within sight of people.

She wrenched her hand from his and stubbornly
halted. He had no choice but to stop and look back at her.

“I’d like to dance,” she said.

“What gave you the impression I
care
what you’d like to do?”

He made a grab for her hand again, but she slipped away to an empty space at the back edge of the dance floor, bordering an area close to a wall that held only tall plants and offered a certain degree of privacy. When she turned around, he was there, and she offered up a grateful prayer that he had followed her.

“What in hell is holding that dress up?” he asked, his voice as sharp as razor blades, his eyes as dark as midnight.

With a smile, she moved into his body and slid her arms around his neck. “Willpower,” she whispered into his ear.

He yanked her arms from his neck and pushed her away. “I don’t know what kind of game you’re playing, unless you’ve got some demented idea of trying to make Des jealous, but it isn’t going to work. He’s not here.”

She shrugged, and the action lifted one breast until the top edge of her nipple’s rose-colored areola appeared. His gaze followed the movement, and she saw him swallow hard. “I didn’t expect him to be.”

His hands clenched into fists at his sides. “Where have you been for the last five days? I know you weren’t at the Double B, because I called Des.”

“Really? Why were you looking for me?”

“Because…” He stopped and briefly closed his eyes. He must have suddenly realized how he appeared—tensed, almost white with fury, as if he was about to strike her.

He roughly pulled her to him, though not close enough that her body was touching his. “Because,” he said in a lower voice, “I called Des to tell him to expect you.”

“How thoughtful, but not at all necessary.”

A vein throbbed at his temple. “And then I called to make sure you’d arrived safely.”

She shrugged again. “I never said I was going to the ranch.”

“The hell you didn’t. You told me you’d called Molly to arrange a charter for you.”

“That’s right. To Uvalde. I decided to spend a few days visiting Tess and Nick.”

“You …?” His teeth clamped together.

“It’s a good band, isn’t it?” They were playing a blend of oldies and newer songs, and at the moment a romantic ballad that Elvis had once recorded, “And I Love You So.” She doubted Colin was even hearing it. She reached up, slid her arms around his neck and began to dance, moving against him to the song, though he remained still.

“What are you doing?”

She pressed her body closer to him and whispered into his ear, “If I remember correctly, Lesson Number Three. Dance very close to your partner, so that if you want to carry on a conversation, you can press your mouth to his ear.” She waited a beat and received no response. “Am I doing it right?”

A growl rumbled up from his chest, and he slid his hand down her spine, encountering nothing but perfumed skin. He yanked one of her arms from around his neck, so that he could hold her hand out from their body. “It’s more conventional for
two
people to participate in a dance.”

“More fun, too.”

His face tightened until he looked like a violent storm cloud about to burst. “Okay, I’m only going to ask you once more, Jill. What are you doing? And do
not
say dancing or attending a party. You know exactly what I mean, so tell me.”

Once again she put her mouth to his ear. “I’m putting into practice what you taught me. Lesson Number One was dressing in a softer style and showing more flesh. I believe I accomplished that tonight, don’t you?”

Almost involuntarily, it seemed, his hand slipped past her waist down to the edge of her gown, then, just for a moment, he allowed his fingers to dip beneath the fabric to caress one round buttock. He jerked his hand back as if he’d touched fire.

“Damn it to
hell
, Jill. You’re not wearing any underwear.”

“The outline of any kind of undergarment would have shown through and ruined the line of the dress. You taught me that, remember?”

He uttered a low, violent string of oaths.

If he was suffering, so was she, Jill reflected ruefully. Being in his arms again, inhaling his musky scent, feeling his hands on her—it brought back all the needs and desires she had felt for him that last night on the island. Even now, heat was crawling through her veins and gathering between her legs. But there was no way she could stop now. “Lesson Number Two was allowing your date to help you in and out of the car, which obviously isn’t applicable for tonight. And …”

“Never mind.”

The band switched to “Layla,” one of the most
passionate love songs in the history of rock and roll, playing a bluesy version that was close to the same tempo as the song they had danced to in the club. In every way, the song couldn’t have been more appropriate.

The dress and her lack of panties prohibited her from spreading her legs and straddling his as she had done that night, though Lord knew she was burning to. But the famous melody and words, combined with the heavy, sensual beat, compelled her to move her pelvis back and forth against his.

He gripped her shoulders, attempting to hold her away from him. “Don’t
do
that.”

“Why?” she asked, continuing. She needed the contact. She needed to feel the familiar hard ridge of his sex against her. She needed something to stop the nearly unbearable hot achiness building inside her. “It’s what we did at the blues club.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“Damn you, Jill.” He tightened his grip on her and pushed her away.
“Stop it.”

She glanced around, but everyone was engaged in other activities, and no one seemed overly curious about the two of them, though heaven knew how they could miss what was going on. She could no longer control her breathing. She wasn’t sure she would be able to control herself at all if she didn’t get some relief from the way she was feeling. But she forced herself to remember why she was doing this in the first place.

“What’s the matter, Colin? You can dish it out, but you can’t take it?”

He shook his head as if trying to clear his mind.
Abruptly he wrapped his fingers around her wrist, dislodging the shawl from that arm, and pulled her out the exit door and down the hall. The end of her silver-and-aqua shawl trailed on the floor after them.

He shoved her into a deserted service corridor and up against a wall, pinning her there by holding each of her wrists on either side of her head. “Why are you practicing the lessons I gave you on
me
when it’s
Des
you want?” His voice was raw; his hands on her wrists were trembling.

She wrested her wrists free, planted her hands flat against his chest and pushed him a step away to give herself some breathing room. “
First
of all, I don’t want Des. Not anymore. And
secondly
, I wanted to find out if what you taught me would be good enough to make a man forget a woman he’s been in love with for a long while.”

“You wanted…?” He looked thunderstruck.

“Well,
is
it, Colin? Can I, using your lessons, cure you of her? Can I make you forget her?”

His brows drew together.
“Who?”

She lifted her chin. “The woman you’re in love with. The woman who broke your heart. The woman who doesn’t return your love. The woman you told me about at the blues club,” she prompted, wondering why he wasn’t getting what she was saying. “You asked me if I had ever loved a man the way Billie Holiday was singing about, so I asked you the same thing.”

“Right,” he said, slowly nodding, obviously remembering now. “And I said
maybe
. I said
maybe
, Jill. I didn’t say
yes
.”

“But it made so much sense. I mean, I’ve watched women throw themselves at you for the past two
years, yet you’ve remained politely but firmly unattached. When you said ‘maybe,’ I decided the reason was because you were already in love with a woman, and that she had either broken your heart by turning you down—which, by the way, I can’t imagine—or that she was nearby, but for some reason she wasn’t in love with you.”

“You got all of that out of my
maybe?
And then for some reason decided to see if you could make me fall out of love with her?”

She nodded, watching him carefully. He still seemed astounded, yet his anger was fading.

“Why, Jill? As an experiment? Just to see if the lessons really worked? Or for the kick of it?”

“No,” she said slowly, knowing she was about to leap off a cliff with no assurances about where she would land. The old Jill would never have even contemplated such a leap. The new Jill, with her heart bursting with love, did it. “Because I realized when I was at Tess’s that I have totally and completely fallen quite madly in love with you.”

For several long moments, it didn’t seem as if he breathed. Finally he drew a deep breath and slowly exhaled it. Golden lights began to glitter in his eyes. “Okay, well, here’s the answer to your question. You can’t cure me of my love for the woman I’ve been in love with for the last two years. No one can.” With his hand he tilted her face back up to him and smiled tenderly down at her. “Because it’s
you
, Jill. I’m totally and completely in love with
you—quite madly
, as a matter of fact.”

She looked at him in disbelief. Her heart gave the expectant thud, then soared. Colin brought his mouth down on hers, kissing her with the same ferocity with
which he had kissed her on the island, and as his tongue drove deeply into her mouth, his hands moved up and down her spine, then dipped beneath the low back of the dress to cup and grip her firm, round bottom. Clinging to him, she became lost—in time, in place, but most of all in him.

Colin drove them to her home as fast as was possible. Inside, on the bed, he pushed the dress off her shoulders and down to her waist, and she lifted her hips to pull it the rest of the way off. Impatiently and with shaking hands, he undressed. Then she was straddling him, sliding downward until he was completely sheathed inside her body. An exquisite pleasure immediately flooded through her, engulfing her, making her shudder, making her moan.

She felt free at last. She no longer had to censor what she felt. She never would again. Loving Colin had given her the freedom of feelings at long last released.

They made love slowly, exquisitely, and completely, their love for each other spilling over into their actions. Every second, every sound, every sensation, was savored. Every caress and every touch was cherished. Until finally, they climaxed together and the world crashed around them.