The Year of Luminous Love (16 page)

She lay awake in the dark shaking, waiting for him, her stomach sick and her brain in turmoil. She couldn’t live this way anymore. She had to get away.

Or die trying.

Ciana shut down the house for the night. Alice Faye had gone to bed long before, weaving up the stairs to her bedroom on the upper floor. Ciana’s bedroom was on the ground floor, in what had once been the maid’s quarters, renovated to her liking years before. She was undressing when the house phone rang. Who in the world? Her friends called her cell. She snatched up the receiver. “Beauchamp residence.”

“Miz Ciana? This is Bill Pickins. Hate to bother you, but I don’t know who else to call.”

“It’s all right. What’s wrong?”

“It’s my trainer, Jon Mercer. He’s in a bad way.”

Her heart seized. “What happened? Is he hurt? Sick?”

“He had to put his horse down today. Animal stepped in a gopher hole at a full gallop. Broke its leg so bad that Mercer had to put the horse out of its misery.”

“He … he loved that horse.” Tears stung her eyes. “How can I help?

“He’s holed up in the bunkhouse, drunk. His heart’s broke clean in two and I’m right worried about him.” Bill cleared his throat. “I’m thinking the situation needs a woman’s touch. My Essie’s visiting her sister this week, or she’d handle it. I’m no good at talking a man down from this kind of hurt. I tried calling Miz Arie first, but her mama says she’s back over in Nashville ’cause one of her little patients is dying and was asking for her.”

Ciana felt bruised, petrified. If Arie went to Nashville to be with a dying child, she didn’t need to know this about Jon right now. “It’s okay, Mr. Pickins. I’m on my way.”

By the time she arrived at the ranch, Ciana was tied in knots. What could she say? What words did she have to help him? She got out of the truck and walked to the bunkhouse, where each hired hand had a small private room. Jon was in unit six—Arie had told her and Ciana hadn’t forgotten the number. She rapped on the wood door.

From inside, a gruff voice shouted, “Go away!”

She took a deep breath. “It’s me, Jon. It’s Ciana.”

No response. She tried the doorknob and found it was unlocked. She opened the door and stepped inside to a room lit by a small lamp on a bedside table. Jon sat propped on the bed, wearing jeans but bare-chested and barefoot. A fan circulated warm, stuffy air from the foot of the bed. He held a jelly jar of amber liquid. A half-filled whiskey bottle rested on the floor. Pain, unmasked and raw, shadowed his face.

Her heart ached for him. “Hey, cowboy.”

He tipped his head to one side, raised his glass to her.
“Well, well, looks like Bill’s called in the cavalry. Have you come to save me?”

She walked to the bed and stood looking down at him. “I’m right sorry about your horse—”

“Bonanza,” Jon interrupted. “He had a name.”

She felt stupid for not being more sensitive. “Will you tell me about it?”

“What’s a man say when he’s killed his best friend?”

“He recognizes that it was an act of mercy.”

Jon took a gulp from his jelly jar. “I raised that horse from a colt. His dam rejected him, and I hand-fed him until he could make it on his own. He followed me everywhere if I didn’t tie him up. He was a great horse.”

Pity for Jon, for Bonanza and for the loss swarmed Ciana’s heart. She stood woodenly by the bed, still looking for words to comfort him but not finding them.

Jon cocked his head. “Sit down. Have a drink.” He scooted over, patted the rumpled sheets next to him, and poured more liquor into the jar. She hesitated. He said, “Can’t give comfort looking down on someone, Ciana.”

She sat, facing him sideways, watching beads of his sweat trickle downward, where they got caught in his chest hair. Heat rose to her cheeks. He had been wearing more clothes on the summer night they’d first met. Now, in spite of the circumstances, their proximity, his bare skin and hardened abdomen, felt more intimate than when she’d lain in his arms.

He held out the jar to her. “I’m sharing.”

“No thanks.” She felt the fan ruffle her hair from behind. “Want to tell me what happened?”

“We were chasing a spooked cow. Bonanza hit a hole, went down. He was in a world of hurt, thrashing on the ground and
screaming. Ever hear a horse scream, Ciana? Bad sound.” He paused, sipped from the jar.

“You couldn’t let him suffer.” She glanced across him to the far side of the slim mattress. She saw a long-nosed revolver, a Colt .45. Her stomach clenched. Deep down she knew this was the gun he’d used to put down his horse. Just how depressed was he? Could he be trusted with the gun tonight? He was in pain and drunk too. Drunk people did stupid things. She braced her arm on the far side of the bed, leaning across his hips as casually as possibly when he raised the jar to his mouth. Her palm inched over the sheet until her fingers closed over the cold metal.

With a quickness that stunned her, Jon’s hand clamped around his wrist. “What are you doing?”

She startled. “Um … thought I’d move your gun.”

“You thinking I might shoot myself?”

She felt color drain from her face. “Thought I’d just move it out of harm’s way.”

“Let go of it.”

She didn’t. “Just a precaution.”

Her words stopped when he flipped her over as if she were a calf he’d roped. His agility amazed her, and in one fluid motion she found herself stretched out on the bed, with Jon straddling her and holding her wrists over her head with one hand. The gun was lost with the movement. She bucked her body but couldn’t budge him. “Let go! I’m not your enemy.”

“You were stealing my gun.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m just going to take it with me. I’ll return it in the clear light of day.” She attempted to scoot from under him but couldn’t.

The bedside lamp threw light on his features, etching his
anger in clear, clean lines. “Know what I’m thinking?” he asked.

Her heart hammered, alarmed at the way he was staring down at her. “That you’d like to shoot
me
?”

A half smile turned up one side of his mouth. He leaned lower, hunger filling his green eyes. “I’m thinking I’d like to finish what we started at the beginning of the summer.”

His mouth came down on hers. She struggled, tried to twist away, but soon found herself as lost in his kiss as the first time. She stopped fighting and tasted the heady, smoky flavor of the whiskey on his tongue, felt his hard body as he stretched out along the length of her. She thrust herself upward, this time not to remove him but to mold into him. He released her wrist and she flung her arms around him, worked her fingers down his broad back, felt gooseflesh rise on his taut skin. His mouth traveled down the side of her neck, and his tongue darted into the rise of her cleavage. Ciana gasped.

He broke off and rose up, his expression burning into her. She couldn’t control the pounding of her heart, the roughness of her breath. She didn’t want him to stop touching her. She let him unbutton her shirt, peel it away.

In his soft Texas drawl, he whispered, “I want you, Ciana. I love you. God help me. I’ve never said those words to another woman, and that’s the truth.”

Her heart believed him. “Not even your mama?”

His half smile appeared, and he nuzzled her neck. “Not since I was ten.”

“Long time passing.” She could hardly swallow.

He searched her face like a man taking a long, slow drink of water, studying every feature as if memorizing each one. He tangled his fingers into her hair and drew his thumbs down
her temples and onto her cheeks. He bent lower, whispered, “Close your eyes.”

She did as he asked and seconds later felt his lips on her eyelids in a kiss as soft as a flower petal.

His lips trailed downward to caress her mouth, draw in her tongue.

An aching tenderness bled through her. Her chin trembled and tears gathered in her eyes. There was no firestorm now, only a slow, delicious sense of belonging. This time, when their kiss broke, he traced the path of her tears with his mouth, drinking in each drop. Her arms tightened around him. She loved him too. But when she gazed upward, a face formed in the shifting shadows of the ceiling—Arie’s face. Ciana sobbed aloud and pushed Jon away. Her voice broke as she whispered, “No.”

Looking confused, he watched her weep as she tugged her unbuttoned shirt together and closed her arms across her chest. Jon flipped himself onto his back in the bed, taking long, ragged breaths.

“I … I can’t. I’m sorry …,” she said, tears running freely.

“Don’t say that, because I don’t want you to be sorry.
I’m
not sorry.”

She rose up on her elbow to peer down at him, wiping her cheeks, feeling coolness from the fan where only his warmth had covered her moments before.

His arm was thrown across his face, hiding his eyes in the crook of his elbow. “Just go,” he said.

Shakily, Ciana eased off the bed and stood on rubbery legs. “Jon—”

“Go!”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen. I only came to … to help.”

He said nothing.

At the door, she looked over her shoulder to where he lay unmoving. He was beautiful to her, a temptation too strong for her to resist forever. “Why is it that we end up this way when one of us is drunk?”

“I’m stone-cold sober now,” he mumbled.

She had no comeback for him.

Ciana slipped through the doorway and hurried to her truck. She drove home fast along dark country roads, without regard for traffic rules, pushing the old truck hard, ignoring the engine needle pointing hot on the temperature gauge. Her teeth chattered, not from cold, because the night air was sticky, but from what had almost happened between her and Jon Mercer. He’d said he loved her. She knew she loved him, but so did Arie, her friend, and friends didn’t betray friends. An impossible situation. Crying hard, she pressed her boot harder onto the gas pedal, racing temptation and memories that chased her like screaming banshees.

“How’s Cory?” Arie asked at the nurses’ station, still breathless from the breakneck drive to Nashville and the footrace from the parking lot to the pediatric floor.

“Arie! Thank heaven you’re here. He’s so scared and he keeps asking for his mother. And also you. Thank you for coming.”

Arie nodded. “Where’s Lotty?”

“She’s in Idaho on a concert tour, but she’s chartered a private jet and is flying home now. Cory became sick at home, and his au pair brought him into the ER this afternoon. His doctor checked him in a little while ago. He’s having a terrible reaction to his chemo.”

“And his daddy?” Arie knew that Lotty and her movie-star husband had split two years before, but certainly he’d be wanting to be with his son.

“In Poland shooting a movie. We haven’t been able to reach him yet.”

Arie’s nerves tightened. “Is he aware of what’s going on?”

“It’s touch and go.”

Arie rubbed her eyes, weary to the bone. She didn’t want to be the person with Cory if he died. She didn’t have the strength, the fortitude to be his pillar if he slipped away in the night before his mama arrived. Still she knew she couldn’t abandon him either. No one should have to face death alone, least of all a child.