From This Day Forward (30 page)

She sniffed loudly, taking a quivering breath. "You didn't hurt me."

He kissed her cheek, her mouth, her tears salty on his lips. "Don't cry, Caroline. I'm sorry."

"Jason," she said, her voice shaky, lifting her head to look into his eyes, "you didn't hurt me."

The sincerity in her voice did nothing to allay his fears. He touched her cheek with his thumb, wiping away the tears that clung there. "The baby...."

"The baby is fine," she assured him with a tremulous smile.

She kissed him lightly on the lips, and he wrapped a hand around her head in an automatic gesture, instinctively eager to deepen the kiss, damning himself for wanting her again. She pulled away and he released her.

"Then why are you crying?" he asked.

She settled beside him, her fingers burrowing in the hairs on his chest, her breasts soft and full against his side. The pressure began to build between his legs again as his breath grew thick.

"Why?" he asked, fighting the desire awakened by her feminine form pressed so intimately against him.

"I don't know," she said with a sigh that he could only interpret as contentment. "It was so... perfect, so devastating. Besides, I'm always on the verge of tears these days. I can't explain."

Her hand on his chest became more demanding, massaging him in a way that stirred him to renewed hunger. Grabbing her hand, he brought it to his lips, kissing it softly. "Caroline, don't
             
"

His voice fled him as she moved her leg over his, pressing her womanly curves against him. She wanted him again, and he wanted nothing more than to oblige her, but the fear congealed inside him, now that he could think clearly again. "I might hurt you, Caroline."

"You won't hurt me, Jason. It's all right," she assured him, kissing the hollow at the base of his throat, rubbing her hand over his sensitized nipple.

"The baby," he sa
id thickly, running a hand caressingly
down her back, over her hip, between her legs.

Caroline gasped at the fire that blazed through her body at his touch. She'd never wanted anything as badly as she wanted Jason right now, and she knew that he wanted her as well, even before he rolled her onto her back and pinned her to the bed.

"You make me crazy," he murmured, his voice and his face hard with passion, his hands all over her, eliciting the sweetest responses from her willing body.

This time he held back, controlling himself with an iron restraint until she'd reached fulfillment, before finding his own release.

Caroline fell asleep with a smile of contentment on her lips, knowing they had crossed an important threshold. A closeness, an intimacy that went beyond the physical, had fused them together. Tomorrow they would start anew. Tomorrow he would tell her he loved her, and they would begin to build the kind of home their child needed and deserved. Tomorrow....

But in the morning when she awoke, he was gone and the room echoed with an empty longing that reduced her to tears once again.

Chapter Sixteen

Jason's shoulder throbbed
from swinging the ax. He'd been at it since sunrise today, as he had every day for the last four weeks, working frantically beside his men to build a fire break between the good trees and those overrun by fungus. But at least physical strain blocked the mental anguish of seeing his dreams destroyed.

Every day more infected coffee trees, sometimes whole groves, were discovered and had to be isolated and then destroyed. He'd have to sacrifice at least two hundred acres of trees in order to save the rest, and even then there was no way to be sure his efforts would stop the fungus from spreading.

Fungus needed two things in order to grow—a damp, warm environment and plant life to use as a host. It couldn't spread across charred earth, unless, of course, it did so through the air.

Then there was the chance that other trees
had
already
been infected but hadn't been discovered yet, in which case his efforts might well be for naught. The only thing he knew with any certainty was that if he did nothing, he would lose his entire
fazenda
—everything.

Damn! If only he'd returned from Manaus when he should have. He'd been so preoccupied with Caroline and her treachery that he neglected the
fazenda
,
something he could never afford to do with the jungle lying in wait to regain anything it could of its lost territory.

Wiping his brow with his bare arm, Jason choked on the smoke that filled his lungs. It added to the misery of the sweltering afternoon. A brief shower earlier had done nothing to lessen the oppressive heat. Instead, it had intensified it by adding even more moisture to the already sodden jungle. Three of his men had succumbed to the heat, and he'd taken them to the house to be treated by Caroline.

His mood suddenly grim at the thought of his wife, he attacked his task with renewed vigor. Taking a deep breath, he suppressed the bitterness boiling inside him with a supreme effort. In less charitable moments, he blamed Caroline for his own folly. If not for her, he never would have gone to Manaus in the first place, much less stayed there for two months. But it wasn't her fault, not really. He should have known better than to allow anyone into his life. If he'd learned nothing else, he should have learned that lesson well.

"We need to talk," she'd said that morning.

"Not now, Caroline, I don't have time," he'd told her harshly before fleeing back to the orchards.

After nearly four weeks of allowing him to hide, she was suddenly eager to talk. What had been going through that devious, intelligent brain of hers? Caroline with something on her mind was a daunting prospect.

"Patrao."
Ignacio's voice penetrated Jason's thoughts. "What are you doing?"

Jason looked down at the sapling he'd hacked into mulch. Blood roared through his veins, and his chest heaved with suppressed anger.

"It's time to rest. The men are already taking the siesta."

"I suppose you're right." He'd been so preoccupied he hadn't noticed when the men left the orchard to return to their homes for the noon rest.

He waited for Ignacio to walk away, now that he'd delivered his message, but the other man didn't move. He stood nervously by, and Jason sensed that there was more.

"Out with it, Ignacio," he said gruffly.

"The
Senhora
is here to see you," Ignacio announced.

"Here?" Jason asked in total disbelief. "Where?"

"At the
beneficio.
I told her to wait there."

"Damn! You should have told her to go back to the house!" Jason groaned, realizing how irrational it was to blame Ignacio for his wife's impetuousness. But if he'd wanted to see her, damn it, he would have gone to the house. How dare she invade his domain.

With a violent curse, Jason hurled the ax, embedding it into the trunk of a nearby tree.

Without a word, he stalked away in the direction of the
beneficio
where the one person in the world he didn't want to face waited for him. He hadn't set foot inside the house in four weeks, partly because of the frenzy of activity in the orchards, but also because he didn't want to face her and the inevitable recriminations.

He tried to close his mind against the memory of their lovemaking, but it was no use. He thought of it—of her—day and night, especially when he wasn't so exhausted that he fell into an immediate, deep sleep. And when he did manage to drive himself to exhaustion, she invaded his dreams with her eager sensuality.

It had meant nothing, their lovemaking, at least that was what he'd been trying to tell himself since that night. She'd been so soft, so alluring, so willing, beguiling him with her ardor. Her need had matched his that night. He had needed her; she had wanted him. Purely physical.

His heart thundering in his chest, he stepped into the open near the
beneficio.
His blood turned thick, pounding with involuntary gladness at sight of her. Vincente helped her step out of that damned two- wheeled cart his men had built for her while he was in town. The two-seater was low enough to the ground that she could easily get into and out of the contraption despite the awkwardness of her ever- expanding belly.

The short, narrowly spaced wheels made it easy to steer the vehicle through the jungle. And the fringed cover kept the blistering sun off her head when she wasn't protected by the jungle cover.

He had to admire her ingenuity, while he cursed her independence and his men for bringing her design to reality so eagerly—anything for
a
Senhora
.

As soon as her feet touched the ground, she turned and retrieved a large basket from the rear compartment.

Just looking at her made him feel things he'd vowed never to feel—tenderness, possessiveness, and a passion that went far beyond pure lust. She wore a brown cotton garment that Ines had constructed for her—a sort of shift with a white apron over it, wide enough around the middle to accommodate her widening waistline.

A wide straw hat shielded her face from the glaring noon-day sun and concealed her dark hair, but soft tendrils had come loose to frame her face in a way that made his throat catch as he walked slowly toward her. Her skin glowed with healthy color, and the rounded shape of her middle added to the alluring picture because he knew that his child grew inside her.

The emotions that assaulted him took him by surprise. He wanted to hold them fast, his wife and child, to protect them, but perhaps the best way he could protect them was to stay away from them, though the thought left him empty and desolate. If only he were a normal man who could give his family the loving devotion they deserved.

And then her gaze found him, and he thought he saw her face brighten before she blushed and glanced away, waiting for him to come to her. Her small, pink tongue flicked over her lips, and a jolt of desire surged through him, surprising him with its intensity.

Caroline noticed the darkly sexual expression that moved across his features for an instant, and her pulse raced in reaction. Perhaps she had only imagined it. How could he desire her when she looked like a cow that had been fattened all winter for the slaughter?

He looked tired, tired and angry and filthy from working in the orchards all day. He wore no shirt, and she found it difficult, if not impossible, to keep her gaze on his face, to keep herself from remembering the feel of that chest beneath her hand, against her breasts.

Of course, she knew the crisis in the orchards occupied most of his time and his attention at present. The smell of coffee burning permeated everything in her world. Smoke veiled the house in a constant gloom that suited her mood.

Never had she been so hot, so miserable, physically and emotionally.

Constantly close to tears and easily wounded, she felt the sting of his rejection more strongly than ever. She needed him to want her and the baby. They should be making plans, deciding on names. Next week she would enter her seventh month, and Jason still hadn't faced the issue of her pregnancy. She could understand his rejection of her, but how could he completely shut his child out of his life?

For four weeks, she'd been trying to reach him, to corner him so that she could talk to him. But he defeated her at every turn. She'd even thought of waiting for him in the hut where he slept, but she wasn't quite desperate enough yet to compromise Ines. Instead, she decided to come to the one place where he was sure to be—the orchards.

He stopped close before her, and Caroline had to fight her uneasiness in order to look into his eyes. She attempted a smile, but she knew it must look as artificial as it felt.

"I brought you something for lunch," she said, trying to sound casual, when all she could think about was their lovemaking—the power in his body, the gentleness in his hands, the concern he'd shown when he thought he'd hurt her.