Betina Krahn (7 page)

That primal and exhilarating exertion, however, had proved all too brief. Now he found himself feeling hot and
sweaty and a little foolish. Checking his coat, vest, and tie, he found them all in good order. His relief was short-lived.

What the hell was he doing, involving himself in something he knew nothing about and putting himself and his business of the evening at risk? He should be trying to think of something clever and conciliatory to say to Diamond Wingate when Vassar introduced them.

Sorry about that cousin of yours, a few days back. I don’t usually go around dropping children on their … heads
.

I hope you didn’t take my irritation personally. I always get a bit testy when a wall falls on me
.

Thanks for the new clothes, Miss Wingate. Now, how about a few hundred thousand in cash to line the pockets?

He winced at the sardonic edge of his thoughts. He’d rather chase strays in a four-day rain than face that woman again and eat the crow that he knew would be on the menu between them.

“Oh, yeah, McQuaid,” he muttered. “You’re in for a real good time.”

Twice he paused to dust the toe of a shoe on the back of his trouser leg as he stalked back up the drive. Then he looked up and found none other than Philip Vassar hurrying down the drive toward him.

“If you’re looking for your gatecrasher, he’s probably half a mile away by now,” Bear called, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “I tossed him out on his ars—posterior, and when he got a look at your men, he took to his heels.”

“You? You’re the gentleman?” Vassar halted for a moment, then broke into a huge grin. “In the right place at the right time … eh, McQuaid?” He clasped Bear’s hand and clapped a hand on his shoulder, urging him toward the house. “Not quite the sort of introduction I had in mind, but it should prove memorable, nonetheless.”

“Introduction?” Bear felt his stomach tightening.

“Charging in to her rescue … chivalry makes a damn
fine reference,” Vassar said with a ghost of a smile that became more substantial as Bear shook his head and seemed confused. “You mean you honestly don’t know who you rescued?” He chuckled at the irony. “That was Diamond Wingate.”

Bear felt himself walking and heard himself speaking, but it seemed to be happening to another man as Vassar led him up the drive. All he had seen in the flurry and the darkness was a fancy female dress, the top of a light head, and a twisting, thrashing form. That was Diamond Wingate?

A small knot of gentlemen standing near the front steps parted as they approached, revealing a frilly bustle, shining red-gold curls, and a curvaceous figure wrapped in embroidered peach-colored satin. Diamond Wingate turned as he approached, and he halted … might have decamped altogether if Vassar hadn’t had him by the arm.

“Here he is, Miss Wingate,” Vassar said with suppressed excitement. “Your very own paladin. May I present Mr. Barton McQuaid of Montana.”

Bear scrambled to recall both his manners and his fevered impressions from the tailor shop. Damn. Had she looked like this at Martene’s place? Most of what he recalled from that encounter was the feel of his blood pounding in his veins, the preparatory tightening of the muscles over his belly, and the humiliating rush of unwelcome heat into his lips.

He had been so wrought up—caught between the ache in his head and the urge to throttle her precious “cousin”—that he had neglected to capture the details of that strawberry-blond hair, silky skin, and full, ripe-for-mischief mouth. It was all coming back to him now, however, including the memory of her noteworthy curves. He summoned the nerve to meet her gaze and recognition pelted him like cold rain.

It was her, all right. He’d know those lightning-blue eyes anywhere. Especially the
lightning
part.

“I believe I owe you a debt, sir,” she said coolly, offering her gloved hand, and he tried not to seem reluctant to take it.

“Pleased to have been of service,” he heard himself say. The very next moment his throat filled with raw, elemental heat and he couldn’t have uttered another word if his life depended on it.

For a long moment they stood hand in hand, eyeing each other, confronting each other both in memory and in present fact. Scarcely a breath was taken around them as the others tried to discern what was happening.

A throat-clearing rumble finally intruded. Diamond recognized Hardwell’s general-purpose reminder and came to her senses, jerking her hand away.

“Truly grateful for your assistance, sir,” Hardwell declared, stepping in to offer his own hand. “I am Diamond’s guardian, Hardwell Humphrey. If there is anything I can do for you … anything at all …”

“You seem a bit flushed, my dear,” Vassar observed. “Perhaps you’d like a quiet place to rest and collect yourself.”

Diamond Wingate lifted her skirts and, with her guardian’s help, made her way up the steps. Watching the sway of her elaborate bustle, Bear scarcely noticed Vassar’s chuckle or the way he was being propelled toward the steps and the arched entry of the house. His wits had withdrawn to hold a tactical summit and the result was a frantic urge to abandon this whole idiotic scheme. He remembered her all too well. Clearly, she remembered him, too. There was no way he could approach her without getting his proposal tossed back in his face.

As they mounted the steps along with the arriving
guests, Vassar was drawn into conversation by an acquaintance and grabbed Bear by the arm.

“This is the fellow I wanted you to meet,” his host was saying with obvious pleasure. “Just in from Montana. A railroad man. Barton McQuaid, I want you to meet Mason Purnell, owner of our local dry-goods empire.”

“I haven’t even taken off my hat, and already I’ve heard how you set Miss Wingate’s pursuer out on his ear,” Purnell told him, offering his hand.

Bear could do nothing but accept that handshake and nod in a way that he hoped looked more modest than mortified. Over the next half hour, he gradually perfected that equivocal nod as he repeated it, again and again, over the firm handshakes of men, and the oddly clinging handclasps of women. Vassar steered him around the center hall, the drawing room, and the conservatory with proprietary pride, introducing him to everyone and answering discreetly the veiled queries about the “rescue” of Diamond Wingate.

Rescue. It took a few repetitions of the word for the reality of it to penetrate Bear’s defensive haze. He had indeed rescued her. It occurred to him that after such an “heroic” effort on his part, she could scarcely have spit in his eye and denounced him as a child beater. In point of fact, except for the heat in her eyes—more sparks than lightning, now that he thought about it—she had greeted him much as she might have anyone upon a first meeting.

A wave of relief sluiced through him. Then the hard part was over! He had not only met her, he had actually managed to even the score between them. He smiled and drew a deep, steadying breath. Now, all he had to do was be unfailingly polite and reasonable and accommodating … and get her alone somewhere for a quarter of an hour …

Soon everyone at Evelyn Stanhope Vassar’s spring party knew the identity of the tall, dark stranger Vassar was squiring around like a proud papa. Evelyn filled them in on the details.

“He is a railroad entrepreneur who has spent most of his time out West,” she told a group of local information brokers, while wearing an expression of the sort cats wear when fishbowls are found empty. “He is unmarried and, to the best of my knowledge, unattached. And it’s plain to see, as my Philip says, that he has a number of … 
assets
.”

The women gathered around Evelyn in the upper hall smiled at the way she rolled her eyes as she said it. One glimpse of the tall Westerner was all the matrons of Baltimore needed to appreciate the delicious versatility of the term their commerce-minded husbands used so matter-of-factly: “assets.”

Diamond Wingate, recovered and rounding the corner in the upstairs hallway, heard her hostess’s words but was not privy to the expression that accompanied them. Even
if she had seen it, she lacked the experience needed to understand the sort of attributes that more mature women might consider “tangible assets” in a man.

Evelyn read in the others’ faces that someone was approaching and turned to greet Diamond.

“Here she is.” Evelyn wrapped an arm around her shoulders and lowered her eyes and voice. “No one would blame you, dear, if you decided to retire for the evening.”

“And miss the delights you have in store for us?” Diamond said determinedly, eliciting a relieved look from her hostess. “I cannot allow one poor, demented man to send me scurrying into seclusion.”

Two
, however, had created a significant temptation to do just that. The first man, that poor inventor, had merely unsettled her. His rash demands were just another variation on what had become the central theme of her life: requests and propositions for money. It was the second, her tall, dark rescuer, who had sent her trembling into the house. That rude, irritating man from the tailor shop … for a second time she had found herself rattled by his overwhelming presence.

In the days since their encounter, she had systematically examined her response to him at Martene and Savoy’s. Her reaction had obviously been part shock at his high-handed treatment of Robbie, and part embarrassment at her unexpected encounter with a man in dishabille. Comforted by that analysis, she had used reason to defuse the volatile incident in her memory.

Occasionally, however, as she lay in her bed at night, she suffered a spontaneous recall of the sight of his hard, naked chest and felt again the confusion and guilty fascination she had experienced when looking at it. The stubborn persistence of that memory—and of her intensely physical reaction to it—hinted at a whole side of her and a whole range of experiences that she had never imagined
existed. And she would have been quite content to have continued on in blissful ignorance of them.

But, this evening, the gentlemen around her had parted and there he was again … looming big and dark, his eyes glowing, and his insufferable self-possession rolling over her like a sultry southern breeze. Suddenly she was all nerves and goose bumps again, caught between their current encounter and the potent memory of his naked chest in all of its voluptuous glory.

It took a while in the privacy of an upstairs bedroom for her to reassemble her poise. However gentlemanly he appeared, she told herself, she knew the truth of his character. She had seen him at his barest—literally—and knew that he was hot tempered, easily provoked, and alarmingly prone to physical violence. And while he might appear to make his baser impulses serve a noble purpose in public, and might even have managed to ingratiate himself with Philip Vassar, he would find her made of altogether sterner and more skeptical stuff.

As the ladies joined the guests collecting outside the doors to the dining room, she scanned the group for a glimpse of the big Montanan, telling herself it was simply that she was determined not to be caught unprepared again. When she didn’t see him, she heaved a quiet sigh.

Her relief was short-lived, however. She looked up a moment later to find the newly arrived Morgan Kenwood bearing down on her from the front hall. He was outraged at the news that she had been accosted on the Vassars’ front drive and vowed to be her protective shadow for the rest of the evening.

Evelyn Stanhope Vassar, always an unparalleled hostess, had truly outdone herself tonight. When the doors to the mirrored dining hall were thrown open, she led her
guests among long dining tables draped with snowy linen and adorned with cleverly crafted islands of fresh-cut flowers, silver candelabra, and sparkling crystal. Liveried waiters lined the walls, waiting patiently for the guests to file in and find their seats, and in the background, a string trio provided spirited baroque music to set a lively mood. It was enough to make everyone forget the talk of the evening and her tall, dark rescuer …

 … until Morgan escorted Diamond to her seat and she looked up from the script on her place card to find a pair of tawny gold eyes staring at her from across the table. Word of their pairing flew, and every guest filing into the dining room strained for a glimpse of Diamond Wingate and the big Westerner together.

Diamond scarcely noticed Morgan’s annoyance that he was not seated by her or that he located his place across the dining room, beside doe-eyed Clarice Vassar. She was too busy being utterly disinterested in the sun-bronzed face and broad-shouldered form that would be her unavoidable scenery throughout dinner.

“Diamond dear, I believe you’ve already met Mr. McQuaid,” Evelyn Vassar crooned as she swept by on her rounds as hostess. “He is from the Montana Territory, you know. A railroad man … a close business acquaintance of Philip’s.”

“Yes.” Diamond felt betraying heat flooding her face. “We’ve met.”

“We have, indeed.” Barton McQuaid responded with a knowing smile and a deep rumble that set her fingertips vibrating. “Glad to see you’re none the worse for wear, Miss Wingate.”

“There you are,” Hardwell broke in as he located his place, just down the table from them. “Nothin’ short of remarkable … the way you handled that lunatic, Mr. McQuaid.” He declared to the other guests around him:
“Picked him right up and shook him like a dog does a bone—never seen anything like it!”