The Outlaw Takes A Bride (The Burnett Brides) (15 page)

For the first time since before he left for the war, he had found a woman who interested him. She was not only beautiful but intelligent, and he was attracted to her in ways he’d never even thought about. And now he was going to take her to her new husband, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do but hand her over and say good-bye. Life could be so unfair.

“So, are you looking forward to meeting your new husband?” he asked, his curiosity prompting the question.

He couldn’t help but wonder about the man who would have all Tanner’s fantasies come true. The man probably thought that because she was a mail-order bride, she was homely, but was he in for a surprise.

“I’m a little nervous.” She shrugged and absently ran the comb through her hair. “This is a new beginning for me. I’m twenty-seven years old, and this is a chance for me to start my life over. It’s an opportunity for me to finally have the family I’ve always wanted.”

Her words surprised Tanner. He never would have guessed she was the same age as he. She looked young but somehow worldlier than her years. Part of him was a little jealous. He’d like to have a second chance at his own life. There were things he would have done differently.

Something in her past had brought her to the decision to move miles away from Georgia and leave everything she’d ever known.

“What made you think you needed a second chance to begin again?” he asked. “Not enough husband material in Jonesboro, Georgia?”

“As a matter of fact, there wasn’t. Besides, why shouldn’t I start somewhere fresh?” She stopped brushing her hair and stared at him. “The war took away the only life I’ve ever known. It changed me in ways you’ll never understand.”

“The war changed us all,” he replied gruffly, thinking of how his own life had been affected.

Sitting in the chair before the mirror, she turned and faced him. “Did it change you, Tanner?”

He gave a short, sarcastic laugh. “Yeah, I used to be a choirboy.” His brows drew together in a frown. “Don’t ask. There are things about me you don’t want to know.”

She frowned, his response obviously irritating her. “Look, you’re not the only one who has had to face things in life that you’d rather forget. I may not have been in the army, but I fought a battle just the same,” she said, gripping the handle of the hairbrush.

Her response irritated him. What kind of battle could she have fought? Oh, yes, the blockade had kept her from getting the latest fashions from Paris.

“The war ended almost ten years ago,” he said. “Get over it.”

Her hazel eyes had darkened and flashed sparks of irritation at him in the lantern light. “The fighting may have stopped and Reconstruction has long since begun, but the healing is far from over.”

He was getting to her, and for just a moment it felt good.

“How could a rich little plantation owner’s daughter be ruined by the war?” He dropped his boot on the floor. “I guess it did wreck your social calendar for several years.”

Her eyes narrowed. “You have no idea what happened to me during the war. I wasn’t exactly sitting at home darning some poor soldier’s socks.”

“That would easily have gotten you a marriage proposal. Socks were a valuable commodity during the war. There’s nothing worse than having tired, wet, cold feet.” He was weary and he didn’t want to argue with her, but he was enjoying their verbal wrangling. The frustration of the last few weeks seemed to be building to a level he wasn’t sure he could control. And suddenly he’d found a way to express his disturbing response to Beth.

Her face tightened as if she were clenching her teeth.

“If you think that my life has been easy, you’re wrong. Making the decision to leave my home, everything I knew and come west, was by far the second-hardest decision I’d ever made.”

“What was the first? What dress to wear at your debut?”

Sparring with Beth felt good. She was the first woman in years that had managed to make him feel something besides pure lust. It made him feel really alive, and that scared the hell out of him. The farther he pushed her away, the safer he’d be.

“No, the hardest decision concerned my family home. Whether to let the Yankees or the scalawags take it.”

The memory of his family’s ranch came to mind. What if he’d been forced to give it up?

Suddenly, he knew that the decision had been intensely painful for Beth, and for a moment he didn’t like what he was doing. But he didn’t dare try to comfort her. His gaze was steady as he stared at her and raised his brows expectantly. He stood and tugged on his shirt until the garment came free of his pants.

“No more talk of war. I’ve tried my damnedest to erase those years from my memory,” he said, walking across the room.

“Maybe you should just accept what happened. Maybe then it wouldn’t bother you as much,” she said, pulling the brush through her hair.

He turned and faced her in his stocking feet. “I’ve seen things, done things, you could never understand. And you think I should just accept them?”

She took a deep breath and released it slowly. “I’m sure you’ve done things you’re not proud of, but that doesn’t mean people can’t change. Everyone has the power to become different.”

She glanced into the mirror and pulled the brush through her hair, her movements jerky and ragged.

“Maybe I don’t want to change,” he said, knowing it was a lie but unable to admit the need to exorcise his demons to her.

Beth stared at him, her large hazel eyes round with sympathy, and seeing his greatest fear reflected in her gaze, he wanted to do anything to alter her opinion of him. The thought of her having pity on him was just too much to bear. He didn’t need anyone’s sympathy or compassion, especially hers.

“Everyone has things in their past they’d rather forget I have a fair idea of what you might have done,” she said.

He laughed, his voice twisted and filled with pain. “You have no idea. And I’m not going to enlighten you. You’re some lily-white debutante whose life was destroyed by the lack of an available husband. You’re looking for a man to take care of you; that’s why you became a mail-order bride.”

“That’s not fair!” she said. “My choices were limited, to say the least.”

“So why did you wait so long?” he questioned. “The war has been over for ten years. Surely you could have found someone before now?”

She swallowed nervously. “I had my parents to take care of, and there was Pinewood, our plantation, to see about. Then Mother became sick, and I had to care for her.”

“Excuses, lady. You could have married.”

“Why didn’t you?” she said, her voice loud and strident.

“Because I’m not the marrying kind.” He continued on, wanting to hurt her for making him feel, for making him want things he knew he could never have. “I’m not the kind of man a woman wants to tie herself permanently to.”

“Even men who aren’t the marrying kind fall in love and marry eventually.” She stood and walked to his side, her white nightgown flowing around her hips. Her eyes flashed indignantly at him. She stopped right before him. “I’ve waited years for a husband. To have someone to wake up in my arms each morning, a baby to rock to sleep. Isn’t this what all women dream of? So why am I so bad for wanting the same things?”

“You’re not as long as you know I’m not good husband material.” He took a deep breath and tried not to reflect on the circles of pink that he could see through the material. “But you think you can soothe my hurts and make me care about you enough that I’ll change my ways.”

He watched as a rosy flush covered her face. Her hands were clenched at her side.

“I don’t give a fig about your hurts.”

Tanner didn’t want to stop. He wanted to inflict on her the pain she had made him feel. “You think that beneath this rough exterior there’s a man worth saving, worth turning into a husband. You’re wrong.”

God, how he wanted her even when she was pushing him, making him feel things he’d long forgotten. He still wanted to feel her arms around him even as he was trying his best to push her away.

“I have a man waiting for me. Why would I want a coldhearted bastard like you?”

“Because the man you have waiting for you doesn’t make you feel like this.” He pulled her in his arms, and she struggled against him.

“I don’t want to feel this,” she whispered her voice emphatic.

“Oh, yes, you do.”

“Bastard!”

He laughed. “Call me that again—later.”

Tanner lowered his lips to hers in a kiss that was both torture and pleasure. Torture because he could never have her and pleasure because nothing could stop him from taking her.

His kiss was rough as he held her face between his hands, holding her immobile as he took her lips between his own. With a sense of urgency, he traced her mouth with his tongue as if to burn the feel of her lips into his memory.

He’d resisted her for what seemed like forever, and he refused to wait any longer.

His hands became tangled in the mass of curls that hung almost to her waist, and he clenched them, holding her even tighter. Savagely, he slanted his mouth over hers. She was stiff and resistant, and he stroked her tender lips until they were pliant and yielding beneath his. Reluctantly, she wound her arms around his neck.

She tasted of peppermint and soap, of hidden pleasures and forbidden desires. She leaned into him, meshing her body against his until she suddenly broke away from his kiss.

“Coldhearted bastard!”

“You bet I am,” he said sealing her lips with his once again.

He lifted her up in his arms and carried her the few short steps to the bed, where he gently laid her down, mindful of her shoulder.

Her eyes were dilated, her cheeks flushed, and her look was filled with a passion he could no longer resist. He ran his finger down her cheekbone. “I’m going to show you just how bad I can be. I’m going to make love to you tonight, and then in the morning nothing will have changed between us except we’ll know each other intimately.”

“Selfish, coldhearted bastard,” she said, breathless.

His mouth greedily consumed hers before she convinced herself or him that this was wrong. He didn’t want to think how wrong the joining of their bodies could be. He didn’t want to be rational. He didn’t want to feel anything but her body surrounding him.

Urgent and hungry for Beth, Tanner plundered her lips, devouring her with a fierceness that drove him blindly. He could no longer deny he needed her in his arms, needed her to comfort him the way only a woman could.

Surrounded by the scent of her, the consequences of his life seemed a hundred miles away. The smell of lilacs and roses, the taste of fresh mint, tempted and teased him. As his body sank onto the mattress beside her, he was filled with a sweetness he’d never before experienced.

A sense of belonging and of nostalgia overcame him that reminded him of home.

Home. That faraway place that he’d run from as a teen-ager, that place to which, as a man, he dreamed of returning but knew he never could.

His tongue swept the inside of her mouth, and all thoughts of right or wrong were quickly dispelled. He’d wanted this woman since before the accident on the stagecoach. He’d spent the last weeks caring for her, sleeping in a chair by the bed watching her and longing for her too long not to take advantage of this moment.

He would grant himself this night, this one brief moment of insanity before he took her to her soon-to-be husband. And though it was wrong, he could no longer resist. Tonight would be just one more sin against his badly tarnished soul.

But this woman had aroused more feeling in him than anyone since Carter. He deserved this brief respite to last him the rest of his life.

Beth ran her hands across his shoulders, down his back, to the edges of his shirttail. She reached under his shirt, and he felt the hot branding of her fingers trailing up his naked back. The touch of her hands massaging and coaxing his flesh left him gasping with need.

While his lips caressed hers, his hand moved to her breast. He touched her hardened nipple, stroking the tip until she moaned with pleasure and arched her back. Ever mindful of her shoulder, he unbuttoned the front of her nightgown and opened it. Her creamy white breasts lay exposed before his eyes, her pink nipples lay puckered in a rosy shadow.

Unable to resist the velvety delight, he brushed his lips across the furrowed kernel. She moaned a deep, throaty sound that only encouraged him. His tongue circled her areola, leaving a warm, damp trail across her breasts.

His hand skimmed down her stomach and over the material of her nightgown, pulling the burdensome garment out of the way until he reached her drawers. He continued the forbidden path down to the slit in the material between her legs. He slid his fingers into her moist, womanly center and gently massaged the velvety folds.

She clung to him, and he relished in the feeling as he coaxed her intimately with his fingers. He didn’t understand why this woman made him feel so much. But the world seemed intensified whenever he was with her, and for a man who never wanted to feel again, she left him reeling with emotion.

Her hands fisted around the sheets as he stroked her until she was shivering with the need for her release. She tossed her head from side to side, her hair splayed across the pillows as she called his name.