Heart of Ice (7 page)

Jack perked up. “Yes. What I can’t understand is how he expected to get away with it,” he said, forgetting his dessert as he went into the subject.

Egan matched him, thought for thought, and the ensuing conversation fascinated Kati. She listened raptly, along with everyone else at the table except Jennie—who looked frankly bored to death.

“You know a hell of a lot about politics for a rancher, Mr. Winthrop,” Jack said finally, on a laugh.

“I took my degree in political science” came the cool reply. “Ranching pretty much chose me, rather than the other way around. When my father died,
there was Ada and my mother to look after, and no one else to assume control of the property. There was a lot of it.” He shrugged. “The challenge is still there,” he added with a smile. “Cattle are a lot like politics, Mr. Asher. Unpredictable, hard to manage and sometimes just plain damned frustrating.”

Jack laughed. “I imagine so.”

“Oh, can’t we stop talking about such boring things?” Jennie asked in a long-suffering tone. “I want to go to the theater, and we’ve got tickets to that hit musical on Broadway. We’ll be late if you talk all night.”

Egan gave her a look that would have stopped traffic.

Jennie flushed and cleared her throat. “I mean, whenever you’re ready, sugar,” she said placatingly.

Kati lifted her chin with faint animosity. She’d have told him where to go, instead of pleading with him like that. He knew it, too. Because he glanced at her and caught the belligerent gleam in her eye, and something wild and heady flashed between them when he smiled at her.

Her lips trembled, and she grabbed her coffee cup like a shield.

“See you later,” Egan told them, picking up the tabs. “My treat. I enjoyed the discussion,” he told Jack.

Before anyone could thank him, he and Jennie were gone and Jack was shaking his head.

“And I thought he hated me. My God, what a mind. He’s wasted out West.”

Ada beamed. “He was offered an ambassadorship, did you know?” she asked. “He knows everybody in Washington, right to the top. But he turned it down because of mother and me. Since then, he’s given everything to the ranch.”

“Not quite everything,” Marshal murmured. “His girl was a knockout.”

“I’d have liked to knock her out,” Kati muttered, flushing at Ada’s shocked look. “Well, she must have bathed in perfume; I could hardly breathe,” she said defensively.

But Ada only grinned, and Kati hated that knowing look. So she was jealous! She caught her breath. She was jealous? Of Egan? She picked up the untouched wineglass and helped herself.

Egan wasn’t home when they finally got back to the apartment, and Kati could just picture him with that sizzling blonde. It made her ache in the oddest way. She took a shower and got ready for bed and then paced and paced around her room.

“Is something bothering you?” Ada asked minutes later, coming in to check on her. It wasn’t like Kati to pace. “You’re getting to be as bad as Egan about wearing ruts in the carpets.”

Kati lifted her shoulders helplessly, grabbing at the ribbon strap that kept sliding off. The green gown was far too big, but she liked its roominess. “I’m just restless.”

Ada studied her friend quietly. “He’s a man,” she said softly.

Kati blushed all the way down her throat and turned away.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that,” Ada said hesitantly. “But, you see, I can’t help noticing the way you look at him. And the way he looks back. Normal people don’t fight like the two of you do. Anything that explosive has to…well, there has to be something pretty powerful to cause it, don’t you see?”

“I hate him,” Kati said through her teeth. “That’s powerful, all right.”

“But you want him.”

Kati’s eyes closed. “Tomorrow is Christmas,” she said. “The day after, he’ll go back to Wyoming and I’ll go back to my sordid books, and we’ll both be better off. There’s no future with your brother for any woman, Ada, and you know it.” She turned around, her face stiff with control. “He’s not the happily-ever-after kind.”

Ada looked worried. “He says that, but no man really wants to get married, does he? It kind of takes the right woman.”

Kati laughed huskily. “A woman like Jennie. She suits him just fine, doesn’t she?” she asked venomously.

Ada shook her head. “She numbs the hurt, that’s all. He’s a lonely man.”

“He got hurt once and never wants to be again, is that how it goes?” Kati asked.

“I don’t think Egan can be hurt, Kati,” came the soft reply. “He doesn’t let anyone close enough. I know less than nothing about his private life. But I think he’s more involved with you right now than he’s ever been before.”

“He’s never touched me,” she bit off.

“Yes, I know. I didn’t mean physically,” Ada said. “I mean emotionally. Don’t you realize that’s why he hits at you so hard?”

“He hits at me because he wants me,” she told the other woman bluntly. “He said so. He thinks I’m easy.”

Ada looked horrified. “Well, did you tell him the truth?”

“Of course not! I don’t owe your horrible brother any explanations—Let him just keep his disgusting image of me!”

Ada frowned slightly. “Kati, he isn’t a man to let go of something he sets his mind on. I think you’d better tell him.”

“Why bother? He’ll be gone day after tomorrow,” she repeated.

“Kati—”

“Go to bed and stop worrying about me,” Kati said gently, and hugged her concerned friend. “Egan and I will go on being enemies, because I won’t give in and he’ll give up. He makes a nice enemy.”

“You wouldn’t think so if he’d ever really been yours,” Ada replied.

“Anyway, we both need our sleep. It will all work out, somehow. Sleep well.”

Ada gave up. She smiled as she went out. “You, too.”

But Kati didn’t. Not until the wee hours of the morning. And Egan still hadn’t come home. He was with that blonde, kissing her with that wide, cruel mouth that had tormented hers so sweetly….

Something woke her. She didn’t know what. But she felt the light on her eyelids and the coolness of air on her skin, and her dark, drowsy eyes opened slowly.

He was standing beside the bed, wearing nothing but a pair of slacks, with his broad chest sensuously bare and a cup of black coffee in one hand. And he was looking at her in a way that brought her instantly alert and wary; his glittering silver eyes were on fire.

She frowned slightly as she realized that he wasn’t looking at her face. Her eyes shifted, and she noticed to her embarrassment that the loose gown had shifted in the night, leaving one perfect breast pink and bare.

Her hand went to jerk the bodice back up.

“No, Kati,” he said in a husky undertone, and his eyes went back up to hers. “No. Let it happen.”

He moved close, setting the coffee on the table. He dropped smoothly down beside her, and she hated the sudden weakness and hunger of her body as she stared up at him. Her hair was spread out on
the pillow like a ragged halo of red and gold, her cheeks rosy with sleep, her eyes sultry. And he looked just as disheveled, just as attractive to her, with his hair tousled, his muscular arms and chest bare and tanned.

His hands went under her head, both of them, and he eased down so that his chest rested on her partially bare one.

She gasped at the unfamiliar sensation of skin on skin, and her eyes dilated under the piercing scrutiny of his.

“I’m going to kiss you until you can’t stand up,” he said roughly, bending. “My God, I want your mouth…!”

He took it, with a hard, hungry pressure that frightened her. Her slender hands lifted quickly to his shoulders and started to push—until they discovered the rough silkiness of his skin, the power in his bunched muscles. She ran her hands slowly down his arms, feeling the tension of the hard muscles, and back up again, to the hard bone of his shoulders.

Meanwhile, his mouth was slowing, gentling. He lifted it so that it was poised just over hers, and he looked at her for a long moment.

“You don’t like it hard, do you?” he asked in a gruff undertone. “I do. Hard and hot and deep. But I’ll make the effort, at least.”

He bent again, coaxing her lips. It was an education in sensual blackmail. She lay tense under the crush of his torso, feeling each brief, soft contact like a brand.
Her lips parted because she couldn’t stop them, her breath was coming in short gasps and her heartbeat was shaking her. She hadn’t known that women felt like this, despite the novels that bore her name. All her research had come from books, from films and television and bits and pieces of gossip. But what Egan was teaching her bore no resemblance to any of that. He was making her catch fire, and she was moving and reacting in ways that embarrassed her.

“That’s more like it, baby,” he breathed. “Much, much more like it. Now,” he whispered, letting his hands slide down the long, bare line of her back, “now, if you want my mouth, come up and get it.”

Blind, aching, she arched up and caught his hard mouth with hers, kissing him with enough enthusiasm to make up for her lack of experience at this kind of impassioned caress.

She felt his tongue go into her mouth, and she moaned sharply at the intimacy.

He lifted his dark head as if the sound had shocked him, and looked down at her rigid, anguished features. His free hand tugged slowly at the other strap of her gown and his eyes followed its movement.

“Do you want me, Kati?” he asked quietly. “Shall I get up and lock the door?”

Her mind cleared instantly with the words as she stared up into his blazing eyes. He was asking her a straightforward question, and the answer would have been an unqualified
yes
. But he was offering a quick, temporary merging of bodies that would shame her
when her sanity returned. And what in heaven’s name would Ada think?

As if he sensed the indecision, his hand stilled on her arm. “Second thoughts?” he asked softly.

“I…can’t,” she whispered, searching his narrow eyes.

“I understand,” he murmured, glancing toward the door with a wry smile. “We’re not likely to be alone much longer.”

He thought it was because of Ada, and it didn’t really matter, did it? Whatever the reason, the result was going to be the same.

He looked back down at her and shifted so that the thick hair on his chest rubbed against her soft bareness; he smiled at her reaction.

“Like it?” he murmured arrogantly, and his hand came up to tease the softness under her arm, making her gasp.

“You have to stop that,” she told him in a halting tone.

“Do I?” He bent and brushed his mouth lightly over hers while his fingers toyed with the silken skin and edged slowly, relentlessly, toward the hardening nub that would tell him graphically how he was affecting her.

“Egan?” she whispered in a voice that sounded nothing like her own. Her fingers lifted, catching in his hair, and her body was no longer part of her. It was his, all his, and every inch of it was telling him so.

His nose rubbed against hers as his mouth brushed and lifted; and his fingers made nonsense of principles and morals and self-respect.

“Kati?” he whispered, sensuously. He nipped at her lower lip. “Kati, take my hand and put it where you want it.”

It was the most wildly erotic thing she’d ever heard or dreamed or thought. Helplessly, she reached out for his hand and carried it to the aching peak, and pressed it there.

“Oh, God,” she ground out, trembling, her face pressing into his hot throat, her body shuddering with the force of her own hunger.

“Silk,” he whispered, his own voice rough and unsteady. “You’re silk. So soft, so whisper-soft.” His mouth found hers and he kissed her so tenderly that tears welled in her eyes, while his hand cupped and his thumb caressed, and it was the sweetest ache in the world that he caused her.

And then, all at once, the bodice was back in place, the sheet was over her and she was lying, shaking, in the bed as he propped up pillows and set her against them like a big doll.

“Ada,” he ground out, handing her the cup with hands that trembled.

Her own trembled, and between them they just got it steady as Ada opened the door without knocking and came in yawning.

“Morning,” she murmured, grinning at them. “I’ve
got breakfast. Bring your coffee with you. Thanks for taking it to her, Egan.”

“My pleasure,” he murmured, and went out without a backward glance.

“Bad mood again?” Ada grimaced. “I thought it might mellow him up if I sent him in with your coffee. I guess I goofed again. Well, hurry up and dress, I’ve got something special!” Ada added and went out the door laughing.

Kati sat there with tears suddenly rolling down her cheeks, so shaken and frustrated that she wanted to scream the roof down. She should have listened to Ada, she told herself. Ada had known what she didn’t—that Egan was relentless when he wanted something. And what he wanted now was Kati.

Chapter Six

A
da had made fresh croissants—so light and flaky they could almost fly—and she had real butter to go on them. But Kati didn’t taste anything she ate. She felt as if she were in the throes of some terrible fever, and every time she glanced at Egan, it got worse.

He was wearing a shirt and his boots now, with his dark slacks, and he was still beautiful. Kati could hardly drag her eyes away.

“You must have been late last night,” Ada remarked to her brother. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“I let myself be talked into going to a party after the show,” he muttered. “Damned bunch of freaks. It was like a drugstore in there.”

“You left,” Ada said with certainty.

“I left. And took Jennie with me. And she screamed bloody murder all the way back to her apartment.” He laughed shortly. “Which got her nowhere at all. She knew how I felt about that from the beginning, I never made any secret of it.”

“Things are different in the city, Egan,” Ada said sadly. “Very different.”

His head lifted. “Geography doesn’t change what’s right and what isn’t,” he said shortly.

“I know that,” Ada agreed. “I don’t like it any more than you do, but I don’t feel I have the right to dictate to the rest of the world. Kati and I just keep to ourselves.”