Dust Devil (34 page)

“
I’m—I’m
sorry, Renzo.” She swallowed hard, resolutely marshaling her
defenses, compelling herself to continue calmly, coolly. Because what
could she hope for, what could they have between them now, when it
was too late? “But I’m afraid that’s just not
possible. I’m...involved with someone. We’ve been dating
for over two years and he’s... asked me to marry him.”
None of which was a lie exactly, Sarah assured herself, even if the
way she had said it had been deliberately misleading. She still
couldn’t seem to think straight, to believe this entire
conversation was actually taking place, to comprehend the
hitherto
unknown, unsuspected things he had told her. She knew only that she
had wronged him terribly. She feared he knew it, too, and was playing
some sort of horrible game with her.

“
I
see.” Renzo’s eyes were hooded, so she couldn’t
guess his thoughts. But the muscle in his jaw had started to twitch
again, and she could feel the tension that coiled in his long, lean,
hard body. His corded thigh was taut against hers. He drank the last
of his Scotch, lit another cigarette. Then, after a moment, he
glanced at her again and smiled—a smile that didn’t quite
reach his narrowed eyes, which glinted like shards in the dim
lamplight of the Grain Elevator. “Congratulations. Anybody I
know?”

She
didn’t want to tell him. He could see that plain upon her face,
which had always been easy for him to read, he had known her so long
and well, so deeply and intimately. And he hadn’t needed to ask
who the man in her life was. Renzo knew the name she was going to
speak, even before she spoke it. His gut twisted inside him at the
knowledge, roiled violently with rage and jealousy, even as he
steeled himself to show no emotion outwardly, not even by the merest
flicker of an eyelash, when she answered.

“
Yes,
you know him,” Sarah admitted reluctantly. “It’s
Bubba... Bubba Holbrooke.”

“
Uh-huh,”
Renzo drawled.

Sarah’s
skin crawled at his response, so the fine hairs on her nape and arms
stood on end. For in that moment, in the half light, he suddenly
looked and sounded to her so much like Papa Nick that the resemblance
was uncanny, frightening. Renzo despised Bubba. He always had. He
certainly would not ever stand idly by and permit Bubba
to
rear Alex. She had made another awful mistake, she realized numbly,
deceiving Renzo about Bubba. Who was it who bad written,
Oh,
what a tangled web we weave... ?

“
Look,
Renzo, it’s been... good seeing you again, but I really
do
have
to be leaving,” she declared, gripped now by the same dark,
unsettling sense of premonition that, like a serpent, had wrapped
itself insidiously around her last night, when she had sensed him
watching her from the trees at the edge of her lawn.

“
All
right. I’ll walk you out to your car, then.” Opening the
folder the waitress had brought back to the table, he figured in the
tip, then signed the credit-card slip and tore off his receipt,
putting both it and his American Express card into his wallet. “Let’s
go.”

“
It
really isn’t necessary for you to see me to my Jeep,”
Sarah told him as they headed for the stairs that led down to the
ground-level portion of the restaurant and club, she praying all that
while that she wouldn’t run into anybody she knew, Bubba
himself or someone who would tell Bubba she had left the Grain
Elevator in Renzo’s company. She hadn’t forgotten Bubba’s
wild threats, how he had said he would kill Alex’s father if he
ever learned his identity. “I assure you I’m perfectly
capable of looking after myself.”

“
Yeah,
I’ve noticed there’s a hard, cold edge to you these days,
Sarah, that you didn’t used to have. I don’t like it
much,” Renzo remarked as they stepped outside into the muggy
night air, started toward the halogen-lit parking lot.

“
Well,
I don’t really care what you like or don’t like anymore,
Renzo,” Sarah lied. “That’s my Jeep over there.”
She pointed to the British-racing-green vehicle, with its gold
pinstriping, striding toward it quickly, having to force herself not
to run, so he wouldn’t know how scared she was, how much she
longed to make good her escape from him before the dark, terrible,
volatile thing she felt seething between them exploded. “Good
night, Renzo. Thanks for supper,” she called over her shoulder.

He
caught her before she could get the Jeep door unlocked, abruptly
spinning her around and pressing her up against the vehicle before
she even realized what he intended, his eyes nearly black—and
gleaming in a way she remembered only too well. It was the only
warning she had before he fell upon her blindly, his strong hands
tangling roughly in her mass of hair and his mouth seizing hers
hungrily, his tongue inexorably forcing her lips apart and thrusting
deep.

Wildly,
Sarah fought him, pummeling him with her fists. But she was no match
for his strength and determination. He captured her wrists easily,
one hand pinioning them behind her back while the other imprisoned
her by the hair again holding her face still for his kisses. He took
her mouth savagely, until at last, she was kissing him back
feverishly, opening her lips pliantly to his, whimpering low in her
throat with the desire and need that had like a wildfire erupted
within her, setting her aflame. At that, his breath harsh and
labored, Renzo released her. He stared down at her intensely, avidly,
triumph and satisfaction glittering in his dark eyes as he drew the
pad of his thumb slowly, tantalizingly, along her lower lip, bruised
and swollen from his kisses, a single drop of blood from his teeth
beaded there.

“
You’re
not in love with Bubba Holbrooke, Sarah, my girl,” he muttered
thickly, one corner of his carnal mouth twisting into a mocking half
smile. “Any more than I am. You couldn’t have kissed me
like that if you were.”

Then
he abruptly turned on his heel and left her standing alone in the
darkness, tears seeping from her eyes to glisten like raindrops on
her pale cheeks, one trembling hand pressed to her mouth to prevent
herself from calling out his name, from calling him back to her.

The
music in my heart I bore,

Long
after ft was heard no more.

The
Solitary Reaper

—
William
Wordsworth

He
shouldn’t have left Sarah standing there alone in the parking
lot, Renzo thought fiercely. She had been crying. But if he had not
got away when he had, he knew he would within the next few moments
have been forcing her into her Jeep, forcing himself upon her,
whether she had wanted him or not. But she
had
wanted
him, had responded to him as passionately as she ever had. It was
that realization that had nearly proved his undoing. It had been as
though twelve years had not come and gone, as though all the old
magic between them had merely been sleeping, biding its time, waiting
to be reawakened. And by kissing her, he had stirred it to life
again, roused it so it had once more sprung full-blown into being,
engulfing him like the watery depths of the old quarry, so he had
ached maddeningly to bury himself in the sweetness and light that was
Sarah Kincaid.

She
wouldn’t have struggled against him for long, if she had even
struggled at all. Why hadn’t he just taken her? Because anyone
might have happened upon them in the parking lot? He could have
compelled her into his car and driven her to his loft. It was only
the pain in her eyes that had stopped him, the tears streaking her
cheeks. He had hurt her once, a long time ago, and the wound had gone
deep, plainly never healing. Tonight, heedless of the agony to them
both, he had brutally scraped off the scab, wanting, needing somehow
to hurt her once more, to make her feel something—anything—for
him again. She had just been so cool, so distant—calling their
love an infatuation, taunting him with Bubba Holbrooke, telling him
she didn’t care what he, Renzo, liked and didn’t like
anymore.

She
had infuriated him, prodded and provoked the devil in him, so he had
unleashed it in order that it could collect its due. He just hadn’t
known how doing so would shake him up as badly as it had shaken her.
How badly it would hurt him, as it had hurt her. He had behaved no
better than a ravaging beast, he reflected, angry at himself for
letting his violent emotions get the best of him. He hadn’t
meant his and Sarah’s first encounter to go as it had.

Disgusted,
Renzo stamped on the Jaguar’s accelerator, speeding recklessly
along the half-deserted streets of town, not caring if Sheriff
Laidlaw or Deputy Truett pulled him over and ticketed him. He was
spoiling for a fight, anything to rid himself of the unbridled
turmoil churning inside him. He almost headed for the highway,
intending to
seek
out someplace like Rowdy’s Roadhouse and get rip-roaring drunk.
But he knew that if he did, he’d only wind up in the end at
Sarah’s farmhouse, standing out on her lawn, shouting out to
her like a damned fool. Or kicking her door down. And he wasn’t
that far gone. At least, not yet. So instead, he veered down the dark
alley behind the newspaper building, pulled into the garage and
killed the roadster’s engine.

Minutes
later, Renzo was upstairs in the loft, stripping off his clothes in
the moonlit darkness, tugging on a pair of shorts to cover his
nakedness. The skylights and windows were all open—he didn’t
see any point in running the huge air conditioner when he was usually
gone most of the day, anyway—and the six old, metal-bladed
ceiling fans original to the place whirled steadily, so the loft was
cool enough, if a trifle humid. The Roman shades were all half drawn;
beneath them, moonbeams filtered in to dance diffusely on the highly
polished wood floor. From atop the antique sideboard that sat against
one wall, he took a bottle of Scotch and a glass. Flinging himself
down in a chair, he poured a drink, downed it. Then he grabbed his
pack of cigarettes, lit one, inhaled deeply.

He
was a fool. He should never have come back here, Renzo told himself
wrathfully. He had accomplished nothing—except to drive himself
crazy over Sarah again. It didn’t matter that he had never got
her out of his system. At least in Washington, D.C., he had been able
to live with himself, to block her out of his mind for long periods
at a time. Since he had returned to town, he hadn’t stopped
thinking about her. She was an obsession, pure and simple. He wished
to hell he had never seen her on the CNN news clip, had never
imagined her lying in Bubba Holbrooke’s arms, in Bubba’s
bed. If she married Bubba, Renzo knew he wouldn’t be able to
stand it, would be driven to some utterly rash and terrible act.

He
poured himself another drink, drew on his cigarette again. Then,
reaching abruptly for his saxophone, which sat in its stand to one
side, he began to play.

The
music that wailed into the night was wild and savage—and
achingly sad, the blues as Sarah had only rarely ever heard them
played. To her, they were always provocative, plucking deeply
responsive, emotional cords within her. But these blues were
something else, something
more—
raw,
atavistic pain and need, gut wrenching, soul stirring, crawling not
just inside her skin, but her very bones, her very essence, turning
her inside out, clawing and ripping at her heart, rending it to
shreds.