The Thawing of Mara (12 page)

"I was just wondering," he spoke at last, "whether you were beginning to believe you were invincible because you've repulsed so many assaults in the past."
 

The surroundings and all the talk about the battle had lulled Mara's senses, but now they came to full alertness. Annoyed with herself for permitting Sin to make a personal comment, she turned toward the car.

"From here we'll drive to the national cemetery where Lincoln made his address," she told him.

The restraining touch of his hand on her arm halted Mara and her gaze lifted in cold challenge from his hand on her arm to his face. One side of his mouth curved upward in amusement. She silently cursed him for being so damned impregnable.

"You remind me of a turtle." Sin eyed her steadily. "The minute anyone approaches, you withdraw inside your armored shell." Something flickered in his look that tripped up the even rhythm of her heartbeat. "But beneath its hard exterior a turtle is very vulnerable."

Entrapped by the light in his eye, she wasn't aware of his hand moving to slide inside her coat and across her stomach. She drew a sharp breath of unwilling enjoyment as his other hand pushed its way inside her coat to spread his fingers over her skin.

Before the cold air could penetrate the opened front of her coat she was drawn against the warmth of his solid frame. Her hands came out of her pockets to grip the bulging muscles of his arms in a halfhearted attempt at resistance. His mouth covered hers with sensual perfection.

The subtle pressure of his kiss sent all repressions fleeing. At his invitation Mara responded freely, her lips parting under the provocative insistence of his. His experience was devastating to her previously unbreached defenses.

An exploding desire flamed through her nerves, her body quivering in the pleasurable after shock. The intimate caress of his hands over her soft flesh was igniting new sensations that fevered her racing pulse. Under his touch, her breasts seemed to swell to fit the cup of his hand.

When his mouth moved slowly across her cheek, the warmth of his breath fanned her already hot skin. Sin paused near her ear to nip sensually at the lobe, then explored the pulsing vein in her neck all the way to the sensitive hollow of her throat. The quivering weakness he evoked was delightful.

A car went by. Had there been more? In her shattered condition, Mara wasn't sure. It gradually penetrated her dazzled mind that they were standing out in the open, in plain view of anyone who drove past.

Her sense of propriety struggled with her new, wildly sweet emotions and won. Twisting her head toward her shoulder, she blocked his stirring exploration of her neck and throat. She didn't have the strength nor the will to slip out of his arms, but she was able to elude the attempt of his compelling mouth to retake possession of her lips.

"Stop!" Her husky voice betrayed the disturbed state of her senses, a condition that didn't improve as she felt his lips moving against her silky hair. "Sin, people can see us!"

After an instant's hesitation he slowly lifted his head, his hands sliding to her waist. Mara felt the tenseness of his muscles, his reluctance communicated to her along with the sheer power of his control. She kept her face averted from his much too observant slate-blue eyes, not wanting him to see how thoroughly he had conquered her.

The awareness of his gaze and the touch of his hands were too unnerving. She pushed at his arms, wanting to be released, but lacking the will to achieve freedom on her own. As his hold loosened, she turned away and put distance between them with a hurried step. She pulled the front of her coat together as if by doing so she could erase the invasion of his hands.

But nothing could erase the way he had aroused emotions she had intended to remain forever dormant. A spurious glance in his direction caught his calculating look. Sin was aware of it: she could read the knowledge in the provocative depths of his eyes. Never had she felt so transparent and never had she loathed the sensation more.

As she walked swiftly to the car, she stared blindly in front of her and refused to let her gaze wander to Sin. She was inside the car before she realized she had climbed in on the passenger side. Rather than admit she had been too shaken by his embrace and its aftermath to know what she was doing, she stayed where she was.

When she reached out to pull the passenger door shut, Sin's hand was there to temporarily halt hers. "Aren't you driving?" His voice was too bland for the words to be an inquiry. It was much too knowing.

Mara wouldn't look at him. "You drive." A tug of the door pulled it out of his yielding grasp.

Her hands were clenched tightly in her lap, betraying the strain she was under, as Sin walked around the car to the driver's side. After starting the motor, he paused to look at her.

"You'll have to give me directions to the cemetery. I don't know how to get there from here," he said.

Mara still wouldn't meet his gaze as she stiffly faced the front of the car. "We aren't going to the cemetery, The tour is over, so you can drive me home."

She half expected an argument or at the very least some taunting comment, but there was none forthcoming. Sin shifted the car out of parking gear and turned it onto the road. As they drove away, Mara turned her head to look out the side window at the field of Pickett's charge paralleling their route. She knew what it was like to believe yourself invincible, only to be defeated by a superior force.

The drive back seemed extraordinarily long. With each passing mile the silence grew more oppressive and the atmosphere more charged. The air seemed to crackle with the volatile undercurrents. Sin Buchanan was the epitome of everything Mara detested in the male gender, and the intensity of her dislike increased with each minute she was forced to endure his presence.

The wooded landscape became more familiar as they approached the red brick farmhouse. When it came into sight, Mara's nerves seemed to scream with relief. But Sin didn't slow the car at the driveway. Instead he continued along the graveled road.

"You've missed the driveway." Mara turned in her seat to look back at it. "Where are you going?" Her tone hovered between an accusation and a demand, desperation gnawing at her stomach.

His gaze left the road long enough to slide over her face in quick assessment. "You seem shaken by our…tour." Deliberately he hesitated over the cause and chose the wrong reason to prove he knew the true one. "I thought we'd have some coffee at the cottage so you could have time to recover."

 
Mara was fully aware of what would happen at the cottage. His seduction of her would continue, this time in total privacy and before she had a chance to recover her equilibrium. Conscious as she was of the crazy upheaval the prospect was igniting within her, there was no way she was going to accompany him to the cottage.

"I thought I'd made it clear before, Mr. Buchanan, that I don't want…coffee with you. Turn the car around and take me home," she ordered in a frigid voice, iced by an admitted fear of what might happen.

"Mr. Buchanan?" He arched an amused eyebrow in her direction. "I much prefer it when you call me Sin. You had no difficulty with the name earlier."

Had she called him Sin? With hot awareness Mara realized she had, and his arrogant reminder of the fact increased her anger.

"Turn the car around, Mr. Buchanan." She stiffly reminded him that he hadn't complied with her order and addressed him formally to affirm her previous usage.

With an expressive shrug of his shoulder, Sin used the lane to the cottage to turn into and reverse the car. His manner suggested he felt there would be future opportunities to pursue his objective, namely her.

"If you want to have coffee at the house, that's all right with me," he said, slowing the car this time to turn into the driveway. "I only thought you wouldn't want Adam to see you in your present state."

"Adam has nothing to do with this. And I'm not inviting you in for coffee. Why should I?" she challenged. "I don't even like you!"

The car had stopped beside the house. As Mara turned to open her door. Sin's hand captured her chin and twisted it around so that she faced him.

"At the moment, it's yourself that you're not liking very much, not me," Sin informed her with an indolent tilt of his mouth.

Before she could jerk away, he was planting a hard, punishing kiss on her lips for lying to herself. The searing fire of his mouth was removed without her having an opportunity to resist it. That knowing light was in his eyes as he surveyed her widened look.

It goaded her into responding, "Don't ever come up to the house again unless you're invited…or it's in connection with some business about the cottage."

With the cold order issued, Mara climbed out of the car and slammed the door. Her shoulders were rigidly squared and her spine ramrod straight as she walked to the house. She didn't look back when she heard Sin backing out of the driveway. She knew his expression would be one of amusement.

Inside the house, she had barely had time to take off her coat before her father was calling, "Mara, is that you?"

Irritation rippled through her. She was not being allowed even a moment to gather her composure. Smothering a sigh, she draped her coat over a hanger and hung it up. Adam was bound to ask about the tour and Sin, and attempting to postpone his questions would only heighten his curiosity.

"Yes, it's me, Adam," she answered, her voice raised to make herself heard.

Knowing he expected her to come to his room, she started in its direction. In front of a mirror, she paused to glance at her reflection. The slight flush to her complexion could be blamed on the cool temperature outside, but she could think of no excuse for the troubled darkness of her brown eyes or her still unsteady pulse. She hoped they were two things Adam wouldn't notice.

"You're back early, aren't you?" He frowned curiously when she appeared in the doorway to his bedroom.

"As chilly as it was outdoors, we didn't spend much time walking around. A driving tour of the battlefield doesn't take very long," she offered an explanation.

"Even driving you made record time," Adam went on. "You couldn't have taken Sin on a very comprehensive tour."

"I skipped a few places," admitted Mara, trying not to be to defensive. "He wasn't all that interested in the tour to begin with."

"Where is Sin?" Adam glanced behind her as if expecting to see him. "Didn't you invite him in for coffee?"

"Certainly not!" She snapped out the answer, her memory too fresh with Sin's invitation, supposedly for coffee.

"That wasn't very considerate." The sharpness of reprimand was in his voice.

"Why? He had his tour." And more, she could have added, because he'd had more than she had intended him to receive.

"I would have thought you'd feel a certain sense of obligation—" Adam began.

Provided with the opening, Mara attacked in order to divert the conversation. "You know nothing about obligation, Adam. That and 'duty' and 'loyalty' are three words that aren't in your vocabulary."

His handsome features hardened in anger. "No? I think I have a better understanding of their meaning than you do."

"Ha!" It was a contemptuous sound. "I suppose the way you were able to twist their meaning is what enabled you to desert mother and me."

"I never deserted either of you," he retorted harshly. "My sense of duty and obligation is what prompted me to make your future and your mother's secure from financial worries. Rosemary always came first in my loyalty and devotion because she was the mother of my child—you."

"You can't expect me to believe that," Mara hurled at him. "Your attempts to justify the way you behaved are sickening!"

"If you're sickened by anything, it should be what you've become," accused Adam.

"What I've become?" Mara repeated with haughty disdain.

"Yes, you with your high-and-mighty airs. You've put yourself up on some pedestal and encased yourself in marble." His brown eyes regarded her with disgust. "You have no feelings, no emotions, no heart. If you weren't my daughter, I would despise you. As it is, I can't make up my mind whether I pity you or myself."

Mara whitened under his stinging attack. "I don't need your pity," she countered.

"No, you don't need anything," Adam agreed in a colder tone than he had ever used. "And I thank God I'm not you. Because I need, and I feel, and I'm alive. But you're a bitter shadow of a woman with no substance and no value."
 

"How can you say such things to me?" Tears burned the back of her eyes, but she refused to let them escape.

"It hurts, Mara. Believe me, it hurts to say it." There was pain in his face. "I'd give anything if I had a daughter who would run to this bed and fling herself in my arms, a daughter who would cry and ask, 'Daddy, why did you leave me when I loved you so?'"

A tightness gripped her throat. "How would you answer that?"

"I don't know." Adam gave her a level look. "I've never had a daughter who came to me and asked that question. Only a daughter who's capable of love and emotion could ask it. If she were capable of feeling, she would probably understand my answer."

"What you mean is she'd be gullible enough to be taken in by your lies." Despite the bitterness of her answer, Mara was being torn in two. His words were appealing to the emotions Sin had aroused. She felt herself weakening. The instant the words were out, she heard herself retracting them. "I didn't mean that, Adam." Turning away from him, she managed a confused, "I don't know what I mean anymore,"