A Light For My Love (21 page)

That made China look at him, but he was
concealed by lacy shadows the curtains made and she couldn't see
much except the gleam of his white teeth.

"You're just as muleheaded as you were seven
years ago. I remember you sitting right here in this alcove,
insisting on having your own way."

She was disconcerted by the abrupt shift in
the conversation. There were things about that day she'd tried not
to recall, but one thing in particular she'd been unable to forget.
The memory of his kiss had developed a life of its own that she
could not conquer. She attempted to move away from him, but the
settee wasn't very long.

Glancing at her skirt, she retorted, "Perhaps
not quite so muleheaded, Jake. After all, I swore you'd never set
foot in this house again. But you're here, just the same."

He drained his glass and set it on the table
next to him. "Still, I didn't expect to ever see you again. So I
left you something to remember me by."

Oh, hadn't he, she thought.

He reached over and lifted her hand from her
lap. He held it open, palm up, in his own. She was transfixed.

"I wanted to take my belt off and strap you,
I was so angry. I thought you were a spoiled, snotty brat who'd had
an easy life." He paused, then added, "I didn't know then what
would happen to all of us."

She couldn't see his face, just his blond
head bent over her hand. He held her fingers open with his own,
then raised her hand to his mouth as though he would drink from it.
The startling feel of his lips on her palm, soft and warm, made her
suck in a breath. He kept his face turned down to her hand and
murmured, "I also thought you were the most beautiful girl I'd ever
seen. And since I couldn't strap you, I kissed you instead."

That voice, she thought, with a kind of
dreamy anguish. It was how warmed honey would sound if it could
speak—rich, lulling, so hard to resist.

She knew she shouldn't let him do this, lean
toward her, take her face in his hands. But she
was
letting
him do it. She smelled brandy and Jake and new fabric, all jumbled
together. And just like she had upstairs earlier this evening, she
watched his lips near hers, slowly, and his eyes drift closed. This
time she didn't pull away, because, God help her, she wanted him to
kiss her. She wanted it very much.

Jake wondered vaguely if he'd lost his mind,
giving in to the soft temptation of her and the darkened, intimate
alcove. It would bring more trouble than good. But she was here and
he wanted to hold her, he wanted to touch his fingertips to her
cheek . . . he just wanted her. He slid his hand to the base of her
head and cradled it as he would a newborn's. Her fragrance was
subtle, but its spice and the scent of her skin filled his head as
he inhaled it. Feeling her inexperience and shyness as his mouth
consumed hers, he was both moved and heartened. He was almost
certain she'd had no other man, and that was gratifying, but he
knew that also meant she'd been alone all these years. Just like
him.

China felt his arm encircle her and pull her
against the wall of his chest, while his other hand moved from her
head down her shoulder to rest on her ribs. Surely he would feel
her heart thudding, even through her stays. As if she had no will
of her own, she leaned into his embrace. At that, the kiss
deepened, moist and hot, and she heard a low, urgent sound in his
throat. His lips left hers and traveled over her cheek, to her
temple, to a spot just below her ear, leaving a trail of soft, rich
kisses, before returning to her mouth. His hand slid up from her
ribs to the swell of her breast, supporting it for an infinite
moment with a touch that was both weightless and demanding, burning
like fire, wanting more—

China struggled out of his arms and leapt
from the settee. "No. You won't do this," she said with a strangled
voice that shook with panic, and fear of her own fervent reaction.
"
We
won't do this." Agitated, she turned to run away.

"China, wait—" He tried to grasp her wrist,
but she wrenched her arm out of his reach and hurried through the
parlor. She heard his tread behind her. When he caught up with her
and gripped her shoulders, a little cry escaped her, as if a trap
had sprung, capturing her. The tulle lining in her gown's enormous
puffed sleeves scratched her arms under his hands. He turned her
around, his features etched with an intense, powerful longing. As
little as she knew about men, for a lucid instant she sensed that
it wasn't lust she saw in his eyes. That almost made things
worse.

"God, I'm sorry, China. I didn't mean to
scare—"

Her breath came in jerky spasms. "We are
business partners," she reminded him, her hands trembling, her
whole being trembling, "and that is what we will remain, Jake.
That's all."

Jake leaned against the parlor doorjamb and
watched her hurry down the hall to the stairs. Uttering a bitter
curse, he pounded a tight fist against the wood. Then he went back
to sit before the dying fire, elbows on his knees, head in his
hands.

*~*~*

It took some sinuous maneuvering, but China
managed to unhook her taffeta gown by herself. It was late and she
didn't want to wake Gert to help—and who else was there to ask?
Jake? She choked back a hysterical laugh. Her shaking hands didn't
help matters either, as she stood with her back to the cheval
glass, twisting to see over her shoulder. Free of the thing at
last, she watched it fall in a midnight blue heap around her
ankles. Snatching it from the floor, she draped it over the chaise
longue. Then she hurried to remove her corset, swamped by a feeling
of imminent suffocation from so many hours of confinement and the
exertion of running up the stairs.

But no amount of maneuvering would take
Jake's image from her mind. She sat at her dressing table to remove
the pins from her black hair and paused to stare at the reflection
of her still-flushed cheeks in the mirror. How on earth had she let
him take her hand and kiss her and—

And, worst of all, even though it had been
momentary, proud Miss China Sullivan had fallen prey to his charms,
as so many other women had. She was just one more female to him.
But the feel of his soft lips lingered in her palm . . . she slowly
closed her fingers around it, remembering the potent sensation, the
slight rasp of his beard on her skin, the sudden intake of her own
breath. And the kiss that followed, his warm hand on her br—

Interrupting the thought, she impatiently
released the gentle fist she'd made and scowled at herself in the
glass. At least she had more sense than Althea Lambert; China would
never allow Jake Chastaine and his hand-kissing tactic to fool her
into believing he was any different from the irresponsible
womanizer he'd always been.

She stood and changed into her nightgown,
then climbed between the cold sheets of her bed and turned down her
lamp. Although the night was quiet, the churning turmoil of her
emotions sharpened her senses and made the likelihood of sleep
remote. Every creak in the joints of the big house caught her
attention, and the faraway lowing of a foghorn seemed louder than
usual. When she closed her eyes, she could see only his face, fixed
like a portrait on the inside of her lids. Opening them, the
ceiling loomed above her, dressed in lacy shadows from the corner
street lamp, like the shadows the alcove curtains had cast on
Jake's strong features. Without thinking, she slowly raised her
hand and pressed her palm to her lips.

Suddenly three soft raps sounded on her
bedroom door. She lay frozen, holding the breath she'd inhaled,
listening. She knew without doubt, without responding to the
summons, who stood on the other side of that door. It was easy to
complete the details of his likeness in her mind's eye: tall,
slender, hair the color of summer wheat and old gold coins,
long-lashed jade eyes. And, with a chill glimpse of destiny, she
knew what might happen if she answered. So she waited tensely in
the darkness, every muscle as tight as a banjo string, for the
summoner to go away.

Finally she heard Jake's door close on the
other side of the hall. Releasing the breath caught in her chest,
she rolled over and punched the pillow under her head. After a
moment she threw off the covers and padded silently to her door.
She turned its key, not really sure if she was locking him out or
locking herself in.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The next morning, Jake slouched down the back
stairs to the kitchen, grumpy and taciturn. Before he reached the
door, he detected the scent of hot biscuits and coffee. Aunt Gert
hailed him as soon as she saw him, her ceaseless cheer blasting him
like the noonday sun. The glare of it almost made him flinch.

"Well, here's our shipping baron now," she
teased loudly from her post at the stove. "Did you have a good time
at the party, Captain Chastaine?"

Jake grunted unintelligibly and snagged a
buttermilk biscuit from the table, sidling around Susan Price to
reach the blackberry preserves on the other side. Susan turned her
unblinking pansy eyes on him—if he had been a more superstitious
man, he would have sworn those eyes were trying to steal his
immortal soul. He cut the biscuit in half and smeared the preserves
on both surfaces, then mashed them back together to make an oozing
sandwich.

"China looked so lovely in her dress,
too—just like a princess. Didn't you think so, Jake?" Gert pressed
on, wielding her cooking spoon like a scepter.

Offering a noncommittal noise similar to the
last, Jake made a sour face and went to the stove to pour himself a
cup of coffee. He felt Aunt Gert peering at him sharply, but he
wouldn't meet her probing blue eyes.

"Well, I swear on Casey's bones," she said,
invoking their old dog's memory "A body would think you and China
had gone to a funeral last night, the way you two are acting.
Pinched up as a pair of tight shoes, the both of you. You're
mumping around, and she's upstairs complaining about a headache and
asking for a breakfast tray in her room. Don't young people know
anything about having fun anymore?"

It didn't seem to be a rhetorical question;
she turned on Jake like a white-haired terrier who wasn't going to
give up until she had an explanation. "Did you two have a
difference?"

Jake nearly choked on his coffee. As fond as
he was of Aunt Gert, he thought her mind usually had to struggle
just to stay even with itself. But now and then she showed a flash
of astuteness, and not always at the most convenient moment. An
irritable directive for her to keep to her oatmeal pot sprang to
mind, but he caught it before it slipped out.

Rather than answer a lot of questions and
suffer through another meal with Susan Price's eyes boring into
him, he turned and left the kitchen to return Cap's chair to the
back parlor. He'd meant to do it last night, but after Dalton
Williams arrived to deliver his speech, nothing that followed had
been part of Jake's original plan for the evening.

He hadn't expected to feel the possessiveness
toward China that had sprung to life despite his efforts to squelch
it. He'd not intended to arrange to be alone with her, or to kiss
her, especially after she'd so snippily forsworn him upstairs and
left with a swish of her skirts.

He let his gaze turn to the alcove. The
little nook was bright now, lit with feeble winter sun; it was no
longer the intimate, shadowed corner of last night. Jake's only
purpose had been to try to talk some sense into her about the
Sailors Protective League, to make her understand the possible
disaster brewing under the surface of her stubborn devotion. Of
course, that had been a waste of time and breath. But she'd been
there, mellowed with success and brandy, so beautiful it made him
ache to look at her. He hadn't meant to touch her, to cover her
mouth with his, but, well—damn it, how much was a man supposed to
stand? Afterward, he tried to apologize; he knew he had frightened
her, or insulted her, or both. But she would have none of it.

Still, he was certain that he'd felt her
response, the way her breath quickened when he kissed her palm, the
pounding of her heart under his hand for that brief instant before
she pushed him away. And if he was honest with himself, he couldn't
be altogether certain that another attempt at an apology had been
the only thing on his mind when he knocked on her door half an hour
later. The memory of her, so soft and fragrant and resting in his
arms for that moment, had led him to her room and then kept him
awake last night and deviled his sleep whenever he dozed off.

He muttered a vivid curse and hoisted the
leather wingback to his shoulder. He couldn't understand it, he
thought, carefully maneuvering around the other furniture and out
to the hall. She'd taken Olin Meredith into her home, a cranky,
profane old sea dog, and she worried and fussed over him like a
mother. She also had Susan Price living there, a very odd, nearly
destitute woman who gave Jake the creeps. Williams, a common
sailor, China idolized as if he were one of the saints on the
calendar. These were humble people; not a one of them had even a
big toe on the bottom rung of the social ladder, so he couldn't
accuse her of being a snob.

But Jake himself—he sometimes believed that
if he were to stagger to the door, wounded and bleeding to death,
China would order him to stay outside on the porch and die, and to
do it quietly, too.

He carried the chair to the back parlor,
carefully setting it down in the prints it had impressed into the
worn carpet. Briefly, he sprawled in Cap's chair and stretched his
legs out in front of him, feeling the cold surface of the
hard-finished leather through his dungarees and shirt. Well, she
could sulk in her room for the next month for all he cared, but he
knew that wasn't really her way. She'd come out.