The Wedding Ransom (20 page)

She didn’t need time; she needed him, more of him. She needed to satisfy the hunger burning in his eyes. She wanted to give back. Instinctively, Maggie arched up to meet his thrusts. “Look at me,” she demanded. “Rafe, look at me. At who I am.”

He did. He looked at her and never looked away. And when he poured himself into her, her name was on his lips. “Mary.”

~~~~~~~~~~

A long time later, when pulses had calmed and heartbeats had slowed, Maggie lay snuggled up against Rafe. Filled with tender joy, she drew lazy circles in the whorls of his chest hair and asked in the softest of whispers, “Rafe? Why Mary?”

He wore only a lazy smile and a sheet as he turned his head and pressed a kiss to her temple. “That’s simple, sweetheart. Snake has his lass and Ben his Mary Margaret. Lucky has his Magpie and Gus his Maggins.”

His eyes glowed like a pirate’s treasure in the lamplight as he added, “Mary is mine.”

~~~~~~~~~~

Maggie dreamed she was down in the cenote. Her arm lay trapped beneath the treasure chest that was filled with rocks. She yanked and she tugged, but it wouldn’t come loose. Then a noise sounded. A loud rumbling…snore.

Maggie’s eyes flew open. For a second her mind remained a blank. Then, like a dam bursting, memories came flooding back to her. She realized her arm wasn’t trapped by a treasure chest filled with rocks, but instead by the man whose bed she shared.

Oh, my. She wrenched her arm free. The body beside her mumbled sleepily then settled back into a snore. Oh, my heavens.

She’d actually done it.

Maggie rolled off the bed and onto her feet in a swift, smooth movement. Moonlight beamed through the unshuttered window, illuminating the broad washboard torso against which she’d lain mere seconds before. A dozen different images from the previous night flashed through her mind, and Maggie swallowed hard.

She bent and grabbed her dress up off the floor where it had fallen, then winced in the darkness at the unaccustomed soreness between her legs. She wasn’t a virgin any longer.

No regrets, she’d told him. Well, she had kept that promise. At this particular moment, she was feeling all kinds of different emotions, but regret wasn’t one of them.

Rafe Malone, I’m glad it was you.

In that moment, it was the one thing—the only thing—she could say for certain. Her mind was mired in confusion as she quietly donned her clothing. Whereas the need for comfort had brought her to this room hours before, now the need to escape sent her tiptoeing across the wooden floor toward the door. Cautiously, she turned the knob. The click of the latch sounded loud as cracking thunder to her ears.
Please don’t wake up
, she thought, glancing back over her shoulder at Rafe. She couldn’t face him now.

She wasn’t certain she could face herself.

Soundlessly, she pulled the door open. She slipped out into the darkened hallway and pushed it shut behind her. Standing frozen, she listened for signs of stirring elsewhere in the hotel. All quiet, thank heavens.

Maggie returned to her own room, but at the doorway she paused. Her thoughts were all jumbled, her emotions a wreck. As much as she wished to escape to the forgetfulness of sleep, she knew the effort would be useless. She might as well take a walk and think her troubles through. Or at least make the attempt.

As she stepped from the hotel, nighttime wrapped around her like a moonlit sea. The light dew moistened her feet. She breathed deeply of the magnolia—scented air and exhaled in a trembling sigh. “Well, St. John?” she asked herself softly. “Which subject do you want to tackle first? Rafe Malone or Andrew Montgomery?”

A rueful smile twisted her lips. Considering she’d already tackled Rafe, so to speak, perhaps she should begin with him.

Maggie walked toward Papa Ben’s rose garden, trading the perfume of the magnolia for that of the tea rose. She sat on the wooden bench and propped her feet atop a rock. She wiggled her toes and recalled how at one point during the second time he’d loved her, Rafe had kissed them one by one.

Maggie felt her cheeks warm at the thought. She’d acted the brazen hussy tonight in seeking out his bed. Her classmates at Mount Glazier School for Young Ladies would be completely scandalized. Maggie was scandalized, and she’d had a more progressive upbringing than most.

She couldn’t believe she’d actually gone through with it. She’d acted on instinct, not thought. What was it about Rafe that caused her to do that? Despite what had happened—or almost happened—in the Caribbean cave, she never would have guessed she’d go to him the first night back at Bliss.

Of course, she never would have guessed she would need comforting so much, either.

Maggie lifted her head and gazed toward the moon. She exhaled a heartfelt sigh. How was she supposed to feel? Somehow, she didn’t expect most brazen hussies felt embarrassed. Maggie did, and her embarrassment dismayed her.

She was the granddaughter of pirates, not some simpering Southern miss. She’d chosen Rafe Malone to be her lover. She’d pursued him, seduced him. Sought comfort in his arms. So why did the memory of it make heat flush her cheeks?

Was she ashamed of what she’d done? Should she be ashamed? At school they had preached the religion of commitment. She didn’t want that, did she?

Well if she did, she’d made a mistake in choosing Gentleman Rafe Malone, adventurer extraordinaire.

But it hadn’t been a mistake. Making love with Rafe had been the most glorious experience of her life. He’d made her feel beautiful. He’d made her feel like a woman. He’d made her feel wanted, and she’d needed to feel that tonight, needed it like never before.

Because her parents hadn’t wanted her. Her father and her mother had given her away.

Maggie pushed off the bench and resumed walking. And what of Rafe? Had he truly wanted her, or had he simply slaked his lust? Did it matter?

It mattered. It shouldn’t, but it did.

Maggie’s pace sped up. She left the rose garden and headed down toward the lake, ignoring the ache in her knee and the occasional sting of stone and stick beneath her bare feet. She was so confused. What did she want from Rafe? Comfort, diversion from her problems, life experience? He’d given her all that. Why should it matter why he had done it?

Because to her peculiar, self-defined sense of morality, motives made all the difference. She’d used him, true, for comfort and escape, and for that perhaps she probably should feel shame. But in her defense, she’d brought more to his bed than her needs. She’d brought caring and respect and true, honest desire. And what of love?

No. She couldn’t think of that. She wouldn’t think of that. Nothing had changed. She still wanted peace and tedium. She wouldn’t love an adventuring man.

But deep in her heart a little voice whispered,
Maybe it’s too late, Maggie. Maybe you already do.

Anger flared inside her. He wasn’t a man she could love. She stopped her march abruptly and glared back toward the hotel, toward the dark window of Rafe Malone’s bedroom. He wasn’t an adventurer. He was a coward. This very night he had refused her grandfathers’ request for help. How could she forget that? How could she ignore his betrayal?

Because despite what he said, if Rafe Malone cared for her at all—if she mattered to him at all—he’d have granted her papas’ request. Instead he was leaving Lake Bliss.

And to her despair, she had the sneaking suspicion he’d be taking a little piece of her heart with him.

~~~~~~~~~~

Rafe woke up alone.

He sat up in bed, gazed at the indentation of the pillow beside him, and two thoughts occurred almost simultaneously. First, he didn’t like waking up by himself when he’d fallen asleep entwined with Maggie, and second, he should probably count himself lucky to wake up at all.

Gus may have given him tacit instructions to have his way with his granddaughter, but Rafe didn’t want to think about the other buccaneers’ reactions. Especially Snake’s.

Rafe swung his legs over the side of the bed and rubbed his palm across his whiskered neck. He hoped his own razor would do the shaving today and not a pirate’s cutlass.

As a precautionary measure, he armed himself with his Texas Paterson revolver before making his way from his room. He halfway expected to find a lynch mob of four gray-haired raiders waiting for him. Instead, the hotel was quiet but for the faint scratch of pen against paper coming from Barlow Hill’s suite of rooms. Rafe stepped toward the sound, then stopped in the doorway. His fingers itched to draw his gun.

Hill looked up from the paper before him and slowly set down his pen. “Ah, Mr. Malone. Isn’t this handy. I intended to seek you out this morning.” He gestured toward a chair opposite the desk. “Please, come have a seat.”

All in all, Rafe would rather have eaten dirt than have visited with Hill, but he’d been a bounder himself long enough to know the importance of sizing up one’s enemy. This blackguard thought to blackmail Maggie into marriage. Well, he has another thing coming. Rafe crossed the room, took a seat, and waited for the other man to speak.

Hill flourished a faith-peddler smile. “I understand your business is horses.”

“Yep.”

“You’re a mustanger?”

“Nope. We breed horses to sell to the rangers. That and a racer or two. I own Brown Baggage.” Rafe waited for the spark of envy and admiration he normally saw in other men’s expressions when he mentioned the quarter-miler’s name, but Hill’s remained politely disinterested.

“I see,” he replied, obviously not seeing at all.

Hill’s failure to recognize the name of the fastest racehorse in Texas added to Rafe’s disgust. Every self—respecting Texian knew his horses. Along with being a scoundrel, Hill was an embarrassment. Maggie deserved much better.

Rafe knew that already, of course, and somewhere between midnight and morning, when she lay sleeping so sweetly beside him, he’d decided to help her get what she deserved.

Without robbing her father, that is. Rafe would dance a waltz in a rattlesnake pit before he’d break his word to Luke. Thank goodness he had another way to help her and those crusty corsairs.

He stretched out in his chair and crossed his boots at the ankles, his mouth twisting in a lopsided grin. Part of the fun of solving Maggie’s problem would be getting rid of the trouble named Barlow Hill. “So, are you in the market for horses? Is that why you wanted to speak with me?”

“Not precisely. Allow me to be blunt, Mr. Malone.” Hill cleared his throat. “I was told you are visiting Hotel Bliss to do some horse trading with Scovall and his friends. How that ties in with your decision to tag along on Miss St. John’s trip to New Orleans, I fail to see. That aside, you must be aware that I, not Scovall, own the hotel. I’m certain you’ll appreciate that I can no longer offer you unlimited hospitality.”

Rafe leaned forward and flipped open the wooden humidor on Hill’s desk. He extracted a cigar, stuck it into his mouth, and chewed thoughtfully on the end for a full minute. “Are you kicking me out?”

“I would not put it in quite so crass a manner, but yes, I guess I am.”

“You’re in luck, then,” Rafe said around the end of his cigar. Pushing slowly to his feet, he added, “I was planning on leaving today, anyway, so I won’t have to tell you no.” Hill’s eyes rounded in surprise.

Rafe removed the cigar from his mouth and placed both hands on the desktop. He leaned forward, pinning the scoundrel with his best I’m-a-dangerous—criminal gaze, and drawled, “Let me give you a little piece of advice. Before I took up ranching, I was both a lawyer and a thief. Those particular professions provided me the skills to get what I want and protect what I have—legally or otherwise. Now, you might have wrangled a deed on this bit of land, but you don’t own the people on it. So listen to me when I tell you to step with care around Miss St. John.”

“Are you threatening me, Mr. Malone?”

“No. I’m telling you you’ll live a much longer and healthier life if you keep those lips of yours to yourself.”

Hill wisely and fearfully shrank back in his chair. Rafe turned his back and moved to leave the room. At the doorway, the bravely whining sound of the other man’s voice made him pause.

“The lady and I have an understanding! I shall touch her however I wish, and you won’t be here to stop me.”

Rafe glanced back over his shoulder. “Have you ever taken a real close look at Snake MacKenzie’s cutlass? You could use the shadow of the blade to shave with.” With that farewell, he quit the room and left the hotel.

Spring had slipped into summer during his trip to the Caribbean, and despite the early morning hour, the day was already hot and muggy. Rafe broke into a sweat the minute he stepped outside. The weather didn’t improve his mood at all, and he was still stewing about Hill when he finally caught up with Maggie a good fifteen minutes later.

She and her pirate crew once again battled their way around their version of a golf course. Rafe watched her line up over her ball. When she waggled her hips he froze midstep, gripped by a fierce surge of desire.

“One look at her and I’m hard as a horseshoe,” he muttered beneath his breath. He’d have thought last night would have taken the edge off, but no. Today he wanted her more than ever before.

Having previously learned his lesson, Rafe waited for Maggie to finish her shot before advancing toward the group. He approached the grandfathers with a fair amount of trepidation, keeping his hands positioned to make a defensive draw should it become necessary. But other than a razor look from Gus, the marauders betrayed no sign of knowing where and how their beloved granddaughter had spent her night. And Maggie, well, she wouldn’t look at him.

Rafe didn’t like that any better than waking up alone.

He sidled up beside her. “Good morning.”

She didn’t reply, leaving that up to Lucky, who turned a fierce glower toward him and snapped, “There is nothing good about this morning, so shut yer trap.”

Must have hit one into the lake
, Rafe thought.

Without giving him so much as a glance, Maggie marched away from Rafe, headed for her ball. He watched her, irritated and annoyed, until he realized what likely put the starch in her step.