San Antonio Rose (3 page)

For a split second she was tempted to turn and run for the safety of the house. She was terrified of talking to him, afraid she might inadvertently reveal something he could use against her. But telling herself that if she could just hold body and soul together for the next few minutes she’d have it made, she faced him with cool composure. “Hello, Rafe.”

“It’s been a while,” he said.

She nodded mechanically. “It’s good to see you looking so well.”

“Thank you.” He inclined his head at the compliment, but his mouth twisted into a mocking line that warned her he wasn’t going to make this easy for her. “Or perhaps I should say, ‘Thanks to you.’ ”

Jeannie ignored his thinly veiled gibe. In a way she’d expected it, or something like it. But she couldn’t ignore the fact that Rafe was every inch the man she’d foreseen in her first and only lover.

The midnight blue of his eyes hadn’t dimmed but, if anything, had become more vivid. So vivid in fact that looking into them was like receiving a jolt of electricity. Instead of serving as an insulating factor, those slashing jet brows and thick, sooty lashes intensified the force of the shock.

His features had the same bold chiseling and the same bronze coloring of her dreams,
though maturity had added an emphasis on virility rather than mere handsomeness. The grooves bracketing his sensuous mouth bespoke his determination to get ahead … and to stay there.

The way he was dressed was a stark contrast to the past. He’d discarded the faded jeans, chambray shirts, and mud-colored boots of a college student-cum-cowhand in favor of the pinstriped suits, power ties, and polished black Cuevas of the prosperous attorney she’d always believed he would become.

It struck Jeannie as supremely ironic that, in some ways, Rafe and she had exchanged places. He’d gone on to law school and a lucrative practice, while she’d put her own college education on hold until Tony was ready to start kindergarten. And even though she had her teaching degree now, she’d really done nothing with it.

Jeannie wasn’t sorry she’d made the sacrifice, however. Quite the opposite in fact. Her own mother had been ill for so many years before she died that she’d played only a shadowy role in her daughter’s upbringing. So she was truly grateful for the opportunity to have given her son the time and energy that she herself had been denied.

“It was a nice turnout,” Rafe said now, taking another stab at cordiality.

“Yes, it was,” Jeannie agreed, thinking that
if she could just skate over the thin ice of polite conversation with him, she’d be home free.

“And a beautiful day for it too.”

“Very.”

A shadow fell over his angular face as he studied her. “I’d say I’m sorry—”

“But it would be a lie,” she finished for him in a voice that was so soft it was barely audible.

A breeze redolent of regrets and roses swirled between them.

“How are your parents?” Though she’d never understood the reason for Maria and Antonio Martinez’s middle-of-the-night departure, Jeannie had fond memories of the Circle C’s former housekeeper and handyman.

“They’re retired,” Rafe answered tersely.

“And Olivia and Enrique?” She’d been exceptionally close to his younger sister, especially fond of his little brother, and extremely lonely after their sudden disappearance.

“Olivia is married and has two children.”

“Boys or girls?” Her conscience took pains to remind her that Tony didn’t even know he had cousins, much less know his cousins personally.

“One of each.” He smiled like the proud uncle he was, and she thought—not for the first time, and not without a measure of sadness—what a wonderful father he would
have made. “And Enrique will graduate from the university next month.”

That left only Rafe, and Jeannie realized that it wouldn’t do for him to know that she’d kept close tabs on him since he’d burst onto the San Antonio political scene a little over five years ago.

She read the newspapers, she watched television. She knew that he’d emerged as a strong, eloquent voice for equal justice and equal opportunity for his people. She also knew that given the hornswaggling nature of Texas politics, he would lose all credibility as a potential candidate for the state senate if it ever got out that the Hispanic hope of the nineties had fathered a child out of wedlock.

Rafe turned his gaze to Tony’s receding back. “Is that your son?”

Jeannie fought to control the panic suddenly clawing at her insides. “Yes.”

“Good-looking boy.”

“Thank you.”

He continued to monitor the trio’s progress as they climbed the porch steps. “Your husband must be proud of him.”

She breathed a sigh of relief when they disappeared inside the front door. “Webb isn’t my husband.”

“Oh?” His incisive eyes came back to her, and his black brow rose a fraction.

“But he wants to be.” She knew she was treading on dangerous ground, yet she couldn’t
stop herself. Angry embers of his betrayal still burned in her heart, and she wanted to hurt him somehow.

Rafe flinched, confirming she’d hit her target, then recovered in the blink of an eye. “You’re divorced?”

Jeannie extended her hand, hoping he’d take the hint. “Thank you for com—”

“Tell me about your husband,” he encouraged, ignoring both her outstretched hand and obvious dismissal.

“My husband?” She should have remembered he was a lawyer; he picked up on other people’s attempts to evade an issue.

“The man you eloped with,” he reminded her silkily.

“Eloped?” She shook her head in confusion. “Who told you I eloped?”

His voice deepened to a cryptic huskiness. “I have my sources.”

“Good for you,” she returned in kind, fighting the urge to tell him that his “sources” were either terrible liars or totally unreliable. But if she did that, she would have to tell him the rest of the story. And she definitely didn’t want to open
that
Pandora’s box.

“How did you meet your husband?”

“Check with your sources.”

Rafe frowned at her flippant response. “Why didn’t you keep his name?”

Jeannie forced herself to smile sweetly. “Am I on trial here?”

“I’m asking the questions.”

“I don’t have to answer them.”

His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Did he leave you, or did—”

Her eyes smoked with anger. “That’s none of your damn business!”

“You’re right,” he conceded reluctantly.

“I’m so glad you agree,” she shot back.

“The past is dead.”

But the past wasn’t dead. It lived and breathed, laughed and cried, ran and jumped and rode with all the rough-and-tumble energy of a boy who would soon be ten. And the one who knew this lied through her teeth.

“Yes, the past is dead.”

“As to the future—” he began.

Jeannie didn’t give him a chance to finish. She spun on her heels and started to stalk away. Unfortunately she didn’t get very far. Rafe came after her, grabbing her by the elbow and turning her back. She felt the sinewy pressure of his fingers through the silk of her sleeve and pulled free of his grasp. But her skin tingled with a delicious afterburn, as if it had total recall of his touch.

“Have you set a date?” he demanded.

“A date?” she echoed blankly.

The curve of his lips—she couldn’t call it a real smile—caused shivers to chase along her spine. “For your wedding.”

“Not yet.” The instant the words were out of her mouth, she wanted to bite her tongue.
Instead she tipped her chin and, in a voice as brittle as an icicle, said, “But I’ll be sure to send you an invitation.”

“You do that,” he countered, his voice as challenging as the gaze he fastened on her upturned face.

As an attorney Rafe had trained himself to step outside his own emotions and to think logically, to rein in his temper and let reason prevail. But logic proved a poor match for stormy gray eyes and satiny white skin. And reasoning simply failed him as he studied the full, velvety mouth that had given him so much pleasure and caused him so much pain.

Jeannie stood still for his disconcerting perusal as long as she could, then she backed up a step and said stiffly, “Well, I’d better go see to my guests.”

“Take off your hat,” he ordered with ominous softness.

She wasn’t certain she’d heard him correctly. “I beg your pardon?”

Rafe stepped forward, forcing her to tilt her head back. Jeannie froze. His face was so close, it nearly touched hers beneath the drooping brim. The woody scent of vetiver emanated from his warm skin. Her heart—the same heart that had beat so fervently for him eleven years ago—began racing again as his blue eyes raked her over the coals of yesterday’s desire.

She felt the rush of adrenaline through her
veins, heightening her senses. After all this time he still affected her—the masculine smell of him, the Dionysian force of him. She twisted her head away, then back, her lips parting with a protest that died in her throat.

“I want to see if your hair still catches sunlight.” Eleven years of longing vied with eleven years of loathing in his husky voice. But it was himself he hated at that moment, not her. And what he
really
wanted tingled in the space between their lips, sending a fresh flurry of tremors down her spine.

“Some things are better left to memory,” she said on a falling note.

“Not this,” he drawled as his hand found the small of her back and pulled her flush against him until she felt every rigid contour of his body.

“Especially this!” she cried, determined to resist him even as the heat and the hardness of him revived passions that had too long lain dormant.

She tried to wrench free, but he held her fast. Then she wedged both of her elbows between them and bored the heels of her hands into his muscled chest, but he was not to be deflected.

Finally realizing that she was no match for his strength, she changed tactics. She looked around meaningfully, then lifted appealing eyes to his unrelenting ones. “Especially here.”

“Where better?” he growled as his mouth
ground down on hers in a kiss that was as much an affirmation of life as it was an act of reclamation.

The virile length of him burned into the vulnerable softness of her as his tongue flicked persuasively over her lips, delving into the corners, tracing the tight seam she made of them, outlining their shape with silken circles until they parted on a gasp of pleasure and he finally tasted her response.

Jeannie’s resistance melted into a rippling pool of pure longing as she wrapped her arms around Rafe’s neck and swam toward the sleek, wet spear of his tongue. Her head tilted back sharply, her hat fell off, and her loosely pinned hair cascaded to her shoulders.

Spring sang deep inside him when he caught the fine gold strands with his free hand and felt the sun’s heat captured there. Her heart tilted as she touched her tongue to his in a circling dance of rediscovery. Their bodies, having found the familiar fit of breast to chest and feminine softness to masculine hardness, swayed to a lovers’ refrain from another lifetime.

“Memory didn’t severe me well enough,” Rafe murmured as he raised his head and tucked a stray tendril that had escaped his grasp behind her ear.

But memory served Jeannie
too
well. She had a son to protect, and Tony’s interests took precedence over her own frail desires. Then there was Webb Bishop to consider. He was
the last of a dying breed, a man she could rely on when the going got rough, and she knew he was waiting at home for her to say the word.

Trembling with anger at her own traitorous arousal, she slapped that stirring hand away and stepped out of those strong arms. She picked up her hat and dusted it off, then hugged it to herself. Her somber gray eyes reflected the pain of what she had to say.

“Go away, Rafe.”

“We’ve got unfinished business, Jeannie.”

“No,” she denied with a vehement shake of her head. “It was finished between us eleven years ago.”

“Judging by the way you kissed me back,” he said softly, “we’ve only just begun.”

“Don’t confuse me with that starry-eyed girl you left behind,” she warned him tightly.

His blue eyes moved up and down her slender body in a way that made her wonder if she glowed with their electric force. “You’ve matured into a beautiful woman.”

“I’ve changed, all right.” The excitement sputtered as she reminded herself that time heals, but scars stay. “And so have my priorities.”

“Some things never change,” he said, rewording her earlier argument and using it to his own advantage.

The early April breeze, heady with the scent of yellow roses and the aura of youthful passions, ruffled his sable-thick hair. Sunlight
scintillated off the small silver earring that studded his left lobe. A mockingbird, perched on a nearby headstone of joined hearts, called to its mate.

“Why did you have to come back?” Jeannie could have been eighteen again, so wistfully did she ask.

“I had to see you.” A muscle jumped along Rafe’s clean-edged jaw. “I had to satisfy my curiosity.”

“About what?”

“About the man you married.”

She stiffened instinctively. “What about him?”

His lips quirked into a cynical smile. “I wanted to know what kind of man could make you forget me so easily.”

“Oh …” She swallowed, trying to relieve the sudden dryness in her throat.

“When I first found out you’d eloped—”

“Who told you I eloped?” She reiterated the demand she’d made of him earlier.

“What difference does it make now?”

“None, I guess.” Except she would have liked to know who’d spread that lie.

“Just believe me when I say I almost went out of my mind.” His mouth remained in its crooked line, bitter and mocking. “Half the time I was calling myself every name in the book for not telling Big Tom to go to hell, and the other half I was congratulating myself on getting rid of the original material girl. But mostly …” His gaze ran over her, as if the
memory were almost to painful to voice. “Mostly I was insanely jealous of the man who had you for himself.”

Caught in the emotion of both the moment and his moving admission, Jeannie almost blurted out the truth. But if his expression was anything to go by, Rafe wasn’t finished. And she wanted—no, she
needed
—to hear the rest of his explanation.