The Lancaster Men (11 page)

The glint in his eye warned her to expect an entirely different form of punishment. Until this moment, Shari hadn’t believed he was capable of using physical force. Now, she was conscious of his sheer brute strength. She started trembling, even though part of her knew he wouldn’t hurt her.

“I don’t think you know what you’re saying,” she murmured in an effort to appeal to the reasonable side of his nature.

“I’ve been saying it for a long time, but you haven’t been listening to me,” Whit accused. His arm circled her waist to hold her within its steel band while his fingers caught a handful of black hair in their grip. “You’ve been expecting too much from me, Shari. I’m a man—with the most human flaw of all—the desire for a woman. Is that what a brother would feel toward you?”

“No.” She had to swallow to ease the tightness of her throat, a tightness that came from the intimate contact with his body.

Her legs felt weakened by the imprint of his thighs; muscled columns of male power. The wall of his naked chest loomed large, dwarfing her smaller frame.
What little space separated her from it didn’t lessen the potency of all that hard, tanned flesh. With each breath, she was drugged by the musky, male scent of his body.

“I can’t pretend to be your brother anymore,” he murmured and Shari found herself watching his mouth, unnerved by its masculine shape. “This charade had to end sometime.”

She had just begun to realize it was moving closer when he eliminated the last inches to capture her lips. The safe, secure relationship she thought she and Whit had always possessed was shattered into a million pieces. She was in the arms of a stranger.

Initially, Shari was too stunned to resist the hungry plunder of his mouth. Then his mobile occupation of it left her too dazed by aroused sensations to consider it. The tantalizing probe of his hard tongue sent shivers of excitement licking through her veins. Whit breached her defenses with almost no effort.

Never in her wildest imagination would she have believed these earthy desires could burn with heat that seemed to melt her bones. Crazy, wild longings were building within her and she fought to keep them down.

With no need to subdue a resistance she wasn’t offering, his hands began to wander over her shoulders, hips, and spine, restlessly exploring her curves and fitting her more fully to his length. The stimulation of their touch seemed to destroy what grip on reality she still maintained.

Her lips were suddenly cooled, exposed to the air when his mouth trailed across her cheek to the
hollow below her ear. He caught the lobe of her ear between his teeth, nibbling at it with sensuous ease. Shari couldn’t stop the shudder that quaked through her. His warm breath stirred her ear, starting more tremors.

“Would a brother make you feel like this?” Whit challenged huskily, revealing his awareness of the desires he was arousing within her.

“No.” Her voice was hoarse, and she hated him for forcing her to admit that she was enjoying the sensations he was creating.

Shari discovered his hands had worked their way inside her robe. The looseness of her pajama top gave them easy access to her bare skin. The air was stripped from her lungs when his hand caught the fullness of a breast in its palm. The ache inside her was so intense that she wanted to cry out but she didn’t have the strength.

“Would he touch you like this?” he demanded as he nuzzled her cheek, coming close to her lips yet resisting their parted invitation.

“No.” Her answer verged on a whimper as her hands trembled over the flexed muscles of his shoulders.

Whit rubbed his mouth over her lips, enjoying their feel without taking them. “Would a brother be crazy to explore every inch of you?” His heated breath filled her mouth but this time he didn’t wait for her admission. “I’m not your brother, Shari. I’m not going to let you pretend anymore that I am.”

“Don’t.” She wasn’t sure what she was protesting.
His continual teasing of her lips or his determination to turn her into a quivering mass of desire.

“Do I have to take you to bed to convince you?” he demanded roughly.

There was a cold run of ice through her veins as she suddenly realized how easily that could happen. Seduction required a willing participant, and she had shown herself to be willing. To make matters worse, she was more than half-convinced Whit would be the ideal lover. She was instantly repelled by that incestuous thought.

Violently, she pushed away from him, holding the front of her robe closed with one hand and raising the back of her other hand to her mouth. She scrubbed it across her lips in an effort to erase the taste of him.

Her gaze studied him with a new perception. There was no attempt on his part to bridge the distance between them. His male virility was a very obvious thing to her now. Whit stood there, with his hands at his side, looking back at her. His bare chest rose and fell with the ragged tempo of his breathing.

Shari suddenly realized that this night could never be forgotten. They could never go back to the comfortable, secure relationship she’d known. Her stepbrother was lost to her forever. Her heart was twisted by the loss.

“Why did you do this?” she accused with a broken sob. “Why did you ruin everything?”

“Shari.” Whit took a step toward her, his hand reaching out.

With a little cry, she pivoted away from him and
ran to the door. Her shaking hand fumbled with the doorknob. For a panicked instant, she thought it was locked. Then she pulled it open and raced down the corridor to her room.

Whit was coming after her. Shari could hear the long strides of his footsteps. Breathing in sobs, she made it inside the room before he could catch up with her. She leaned against the door to keep him out and shakily turned the key in the lock.

The doorknob was rattled but it refused to turn. Her legs didn’t seem to want to support her and Shari continued to lean against the solidness of the door. Tears ran silently down her cheeks as she closed her eyes.

“Shari, let me in.” His voice was pitched low and she knew he didn’t want to waken the other sleeping members of the house.

“No, I won’t.” Her voice rasped out the refusal.

“Shari, please,” Whit insisted in a fierce whisper, but she wouldn’t answer him. She couldn’t trust him—not anymore. She waited through the lengthy pause, knowing he hadn’t left. “Are you all right?” he asked finally.

“No,” she answered in a sobbing laugh. “I’m not all right.” Shari closed her eyes tightly. “Go away. I don’t know you.”

“Yes, you do,” he replied. “It’s yourself you don’t know.”

With that, Shari heard him walk away. She didn’t draw a breath until she heard the door to his room shut. She stumbled to the bed and threw herself
across its length to cry silently for the friend and “brother” that had been taken from her.

In the past, it had often seemed that Whit was her only ally at Gold Leaf. Now Shari couldn’t depend on him. She became withdrawn and quiet, almost as if she had gone into mourning. She associated with the Lancaster family only when the occasion demanded it, such as mealtimes. She took part in little of the conversations that went on, and ignored attempts by the elder Lancaster and Rory to include her.

Whit rarely spoke to her but his gaze seemed to be constantly on her. Any time he was in the same room with her, Shari was unsettled and on her guard. It seemed impossible to escape the tension. He electrified the air until it almost hurt to breathe.

Only with her mother did Shari find any kind of relief. She stayed long hours at the hospital with her. Even when she was released on Monday and came home, Shari rarely left her mother’s side. A practical nurse, hired by Frederick Lancaster, took care of all Elizabeth’s medical needs but it didn’t matter to Shari that her presence wasn’t needed every minute.

For more than a week, this continued. Once the routine was started, Shari didn’t know how to break it, even if she wanted to change it. Which, she kept telling herself, she didn’t. Whit’s behavior had been unforgivable.

If she needed proof of that, she had it every night. She kept reliving that evening in her dreams. When she’d wake from them, Shari would remember everything in vivid detail. They disturbed her sleep
to the point that rest was denied her. Each morning she awakened later and later.

The summer sun was blazing through her window when Shari dragged her tired eyes open and rolled over to look at the clock on her nightstand. She groaned at the time, the clock’s hands showing it was going on nine. She was simply going to have to start setting the alarm, something she’d never had to do in her life.

Sitting up, Shari swung her legs over the side of the bed and paused in an attempt to clear her head of sleep’s cobwebs. There was a knock at her door. She looked in its direction, comforted by the knowledge it was locked. It was always locked now.

“Yes?” Her voice was groggy with sleep. “Who is it?”

“It’s me, Rory,” came the cheerful reply. “Are you up?”

“Yes.” In a manner of speaking she was, although she wouldn’t describe herself as being alert.

When he tried the door and discovered it was locked, Shari pushed off the bed and grabbed her robe from the foot. Her legs carried her woodenly to the door while she shrugged into the robe and securely tied the front.

Rory knocked again. “Hey, Sis. Open up.” He sounded puzzled.

With a turn of the key to unlock it, Shari pulled the door open. “What did you want?” She didn’t bother with any preliminary greetings as she lifted the heavy weight of her hair away from her neck to rub the taut cords.

He was frowning. “How come you locked the door?”

To avoid his questioning eyes, her glance strayed past him. A thousand fire bells went off in her head when Shari found herself looking straight at Whit as he came out of his room. She stiffened, all her defenses bristling into life.

His dark gaze seemed to bore into her for a long second, hard and unyielding, yet he offered no greeting and didn’t acknowledge her presence in any other manner. Rory turned to see what she was staring at just as Whit walked down the hall toward the stairs. His look was sharply curious when it returned to her.

Again, Shari couldn’t meet her half brother’s gaze and turned away from the door to seek refuge inside the room. It prodded her into remembering his question and she searched for an answer to discard his suspicions.

“I guess I got into the habit of locking it at college,” she lied, unable to identify Whit as the cause.

“You’ve sure been acting strange lately,” Rory declared. “You never used to sleep so late. I remember when you’d get me out of bed.”

Shari didn’t want to get into a conversation that analyzed her behavior. “What do you want?” She continued to keep her back on to him.

“I have an errand to run for Granddad, so I thought I’d see if there was anything you needed from town,” he explained.

“I don’t need anything,” she replied shortly without
turning around. “If that’s all, would you please leave? I want to get dressed.”

“That’s it, huh?” he challenged with exasperated patience. “No thanks for asking. Nothing. Just get out. I was trying to be kind and this is what I get for it.”

Guiltily, Shari turned to face him. “I’m sorry,” she apologized for her rudeness. “I guess I’m not awake.”

“That’s a convenient excuse.” His expression revealed that he didn’t believe her. “When we were growing up, I can’t remember you and Whit ever quarreling. But when the two of you have a fight, it’s a real dandy.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She paled at his statement. “What makes you think I’ve had a fight with Whit?”

“Aw, come on, Sis,” Rory reproved her attempt to deny it. “It’s as plain as the nose on your face. You don’t speak to him; you go all stiff and cold every time you’re in the same room together; and you’ve been walking around with a chip on your shoulder the size of a tree trunk. You’re taking your anger out on everybody around you, except Mom. How long is this going to go on?”

“I doesn’t concern you so just stay out of it.” Shari didn’t want to hear the things he was saying, but she couldn’t seem to close her ears to them.

“How can I?” He lifted his hands, palms upward, in a helpless gesture. “I’ve got the feeling I’m caught in the middle of somebody else’s war and I’m getting tired of being the innocent victim. I thought things
would be better if you stayed, but you’ve got everyone walking around on tiptoes.”

“It isn’t like that at all,” she protested impatiently.

“You wanta bet?” he challenged. “I don’t know what started the argument the other night in Whit’s room, but one of you has to make the first move. Why don’t you just tell him you’re sorry and end all this?”

Shari didn’t hear anything he said past the mention of Whit’s room. A chill ran down her spine. “How did you know I was in his room?” she asked in a stricken voice of alarm.

“I told you before that I can hear you guys talking,” Rory reminded her. “I can’t tell what you’re saying, but I can hear your voices through the wall. I didn’t realize you were fighting until you ran out of his room and I heard Whit come after you.”

A spasm of relief shook her. Shari didn’t want Rory to know—she didn’t want anyone to know what had transpired between herself and Whit. She didn’t examine her reasons for that, not caring whether they came from a lingering sense of loyalty to the Whit Lancaster she had once known or the guilt of her own initial, and not unwilling, role in the scene.

“What
did
you argue about?” Rory frowned. “It couldn’t have been about you going back to Duke University. That was already settled.”

“It’s none of your business,” Shari answered sharply.

A heavy sigh came from him. “At least you and Whit say the same thing.”

“You mean you asked him about it?” Shari wanted to be sure she understood him correctly.

“Yes, but he was just as closemouthed about the whole thing as you are,” Rory complained.

“Then why don’t you take the hint and stay out of it?” she suggested. “It’s none of your affair anyway.”

“I’m only trying to help,” he insisted in his own defense.

“Instead of being so concerned about the personal differences between Whit and me, you’d better concentrate on solving your own problems,” she said, finding a way to end the conversation. “Instead of standing here talking to me, you should be on your way to town to take care of that errand for Granddad. If you don’t, you’re going to be in trouble with him.”