Higher Than Eagles (Donovans of the Delta) (2 page)

“No.” Her shiver mocked the lie. She wanted to scream; she wanted to run. But she could do nothing except stand and wait for the hot pleasure of Jacob’s touch.

“Black becomes you, Rachel.”

“Thank you.” She could barely speak above a whisper, for now his hands were on the back of her sequined gown. The metallic hiss of the zipper was loud in the charged quiet of the room.

“Are you still in mourning?”

“No,” she whispered.

His strong, blunt fingers were on her bare skin now, trailing fire in their path. Her reaction was so strong, so unexpected, that for a moment she thought she had been transported back in time. A lethargy stole over her, and she tipped her head back on her limp neck.

 The room seemed to spin, and nothing existed for her except Jacob and the ecstasy of his touch.

“Awww, Rachel.” Jacob turned her easily, sliding her dress over her shoulders as he pulled her into his arms. He bent over her, his breath hot against her skin.

“No,” she whispered. But it was too late. Both of them knew it was too late.

His mouth descended on hers, and her eager response thrilled him. She molded her body to his, trying in one desperate moment to wipe away the six years that had separated them.

His mouth roused her almost to the point of frenzy. An aching longing filled her.

“Oh, Jacob,” she murmured against his lips.

In answer to her plea, his mouth left hers and roamed down the side of her neck. He planted fierce kisses at the base of her throat. Hauling her closer, he fitted her hips close to his.

She was drugged by him, drowning in him. Another moment of this insanity and she would be lost. There would be no turning back. She pressed her face into his shoulder. “Please, Jacob.”

He lifted his head and looked deep into her eyes.

“Please what? Please do or please don’t?”

The remoteness in his voice chilled her.
How could love have grown so cold?
she wondered.

“Please let me go.”

He pulled her dress back onto her shoulders, walked away, and straddled a chair. The small room vibrated with his presence. Across the tiny space that separated them, she could still feel his body heat.

Turning her back to him, she sat at her dressing table and picked up the nearest thing she could find—her hairbrush. Anything would serve to calm her shaking hands. Glancing up, she saw his reflection in the mirror. There were laugh lines around his eyes that hadn’t been there six years before, and fine lines of stress bracketing his mouth. He looked more bronzed, more solid, and more dangerous, as if being in constant peril had toughened him.

“I let you go a long time ago, Rachel.”

She dragged the brush through her hair, taking her time before answering. She had to do it right; she had to send him away from Biloxi.

“I let you go,” he continued, “the day you betrayed me by marrying another man.”

Her control snapped. She whirled around on her stool and shook the hairbrush at him. “I betrayed you? If I remember correctly, you had a choice, and you chose to live in constant danger rather than with me. You left me, Jacob. I didn’t leave you.”

He was shocked at her intensity. “I didn’t leave you, Rachel. I went to Arabia on business. As I recall, I asked you to go and you refused.”

She closed her eyes, willing herself not to dredge up the past. Nothing would be accomplished by doing so.

“Yes, I did. I refused.” She faced the mirror again and began brushing her hair. “It’s over and done with. Let the past stay buried.”

She shivered as his bold gaze raked over her. The air seemed to pulse between them, heavy and electric with emotion.

“I’m not here to relive the past.”

“Then why are you here, Jacob?” She laid the hairbrush on the dressing table and turned to face him with quiet dignity. “After all these years, why are you here?”

“I have to know the truth.”

All the color drained from her face. Jacob half rose from his chair.

“Rachel? Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She lifted her hands and pressed them against her hot cheeks. “It’s the pressure, I suppose. Death leaves so many loose ends.”

Jacob felt the anguish rise within him. He needed no more reminders that for the last six years Rachel had belonged to another man, had kissed another man, had slept in another man’s bed. He willed himself to sit calmly in his chair.

“I’m sorry, Rachel. It must be hard for you.”

“Yes.” She smiled at him, grateful to be off the subject of the past.

“It doesn’t show. You look wonderful.”

“So do you. You must thrive on danger.”

“I always did, Rachel.”

They were treading on shaky ground again. She decided to steer them to a safer topic. “And how is your family?”

“Well and happy and growing.”

“I hear your twin sisters, Hallie and Hannah, are both pregnant again.” Jacob arched one quizzical eyebrow, and she added, “Dad would never discuss the Donovans, but my friend Evelyn Jo keeps me informed.”

So, she cared enough to keep up on news of his family. The thought pleased Jacob so that he threw back his head and laughed.

Rachel joined him. It felt good to laugh again— especially with Jacob. But then, everything had always felt good with Jacob.

“Hannah takes great pride in saying that she started it this time. Their daughters were born only two weeks apart.”

“I know. I envy them.” She made herself remain calm as he studied her.

“You and Bob never had more children.”

It wasn’t a question; it was a bomb dropped into the silence between them. Rachel folded her hands carefully in her lap and looked at a spot on the wall behind Jacob’s head.

“You kept up?”

“No. Someone told me about your son . . . Mom, I think. She’s a hopeless romantic. She thought I still cared.”

“You don’t, of course.”

“No.”

Rachel looked him straight in the eye, but she couldn’t read his careful expression. She could only hope he was telling the truth.

“No, we never had more children.”

“You used to say you wanted a big family.”

“Bob was older.” She watched his face, praying he would believe her. “One seemed to be enough.”

Looking at her with her long honey-and-butterscotch streaked hair and generous mouth, Jacob held on to the absurdly jealous thought that Bob had been too damned old to perform more than one miracle. He even hoped that fathering one son had tuckered him out so much, he’d had to spend the next six years celibate, recovering.

“Did you love him?”

Rachel’s head went up in defiance. “I married him, Jacob. That’s all that matters.”

“No. It’s not all that matters.” He stood up abruptly and kicked aside his chair. “When I went to Saudi Arabia, I left behind a woman I loved, a woman I fully intended to marry. I want to know what in the hell happened.”

She rose to face him, regal in her rage. “What happened is that you and I fought over your bullheaded determination to do everything in the world you could to put yourself in danger. You seemed bound and determined to get yourself killed, one way or the other—in one of your damned fast planes or in some godforsaken part of the world fighting an oil field fire. I couldn’t go through that again.”

“I think we’ve had this conversation before. Are you going to let your mother’s untimely death rule your emotions for the rest of your life?”

“Untimely death!” She stabbed the air with her finger for emphasis. “Hers was a foolhardy death, one that never would have happened if she hadn’t been taking dumb risks in that air show, flying that old World War One plane with no more thought than she would have had flying a kite.”

“And so you wrote me a Dear John letter because of your mother.” His face was unreadable as he strode across the small space. “I don’t believe it, Rachel. We’d fought over my profession before. It was a difference we could have worked out.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “What happened while I was gone? What sent you running to Bob Devlin’s bed?”

Jacob was a worthy opponent, but Rachel was more than a match for him. She’d be darned if she’d be rattled by Jacob Donovan. And she certainly had no intention of ever telling him the truth.

Her eyes flashed fire as she squared off with him. “Love. Is that what you want me to say, Jacob? That I loved him?”

“Did you?”

“Yes . . . I loved him.” She felt no triumph at the pain she saw in Jacob’s eyes. But she’d endured pain too. Six years of it. And guilt, besides. But it was a small price to pay for sanity. She looked straight into Jacob’s eyes and sent home the last barb. “He was always there for me—and he was damned good in bed.”

Jacob loosened his grip. He began slowly caressing her bare shoulders. She felt his power, his turmoil, and his tremendous magnetism.

She toughened her mind even as her body began to go slack in his hands.

“You’d have me believe you couldn’t wait to climb into another man’s bed.” His hands continued their massage. Every nerve in her body was screaming. “After all we’d been to each other, all the promises we’d made, you want me to think you changed your mind and fell in love with somebody else—in two months time.”

Suddenly, the caressing stopped. Jacob released her and stepped back. “I don’t believe you, Rachel.”

She crossed her arms in front of her and gripped her own shoulders. They were still warm and tingling from his touch.

“Let it go, Jacob,” she whispered. “Please, just let it go.”

“I’ll never let it go until I learn the truth.” He turned and quickly left the room.

The sudden silence thundered around her. It would have been so easy, she thought, just to give in to him. But she had her son’s future to consider.

“Never,” she whispered fiercely. “You’ll never learn the truth.”

Only three people knew, and one of them was dead.

CHAPTER TWO

Jacob found her house on Wednesday afternoon.

It was the kind of house he’d always imagined Rachel would live in. The tall white columns and wide verandas were cool and elegant, just like their owner. Huge live oaks, draped with Spanish moss, guarded the front lawn, and a white fence protected the house from the busy boulevard that faced the gulf.

Rachel, in white shorts and halter top, was kneeling beside a bed of bright red petunias.

He stood at the gate, enjoying a stolen moment of watching her unobserved. Her legs were as long and luscious as he remembered, the here-to-eternity legs of a tall woman. And her skin was that special honey hue of blondes who spend just enough time outside to let the sun kiss them.

Jacob found himself getting nostalgic, remembering the good times they’d had. He remembered the exact texture of that golden skin, soft and satiny with an underlying firmness. He remembered how her eyes would darken from spring green to jade when he touched her.

Impatiently, he rammed his fists into his pockets. If he didn’t watch himself, he’d be so carried away by his Irish sentimentality, he’d forget that Rachel Windham Devlin had cast him off like an old shoe. Clenching his jaw, he strode toward her. If he’d known how fierce he looked, cocky and arrogant and solid and dangerous, silhouetted against the fiery sun, he’d have been pleased. Jacob, like all the Donovans, loved to make an entrance.

“Rachel.” The way he called her name was a command not a greeting.

Her head jerked up. Jacob had to give her credit. Except for the widening of her eyes, she seemed totally in control, royal even. He wanted to lean down and kiss that imperious look right off her face.

He stood over her, feet planted apart, blocking out the sun. “Doing a little gardening to ease your conscience, Rachel?”

She jerked a handful of weeds out of the ground before answering. “My conscience doesn’t need easing, Jacob Donovan.”

“Yes, it does. For all those lies you told me last night.”

Rachel grabbed at her flower bed again, but this time she came away with a handful of petunias. Oblivious, she flung them aside like so much crabgrass. “Nobody invited you here, Jacob. Go away.”

“Not until I get what I came for.”

Another handful of flowers bit the dust. “There is nothing here for you.” She swiped angrily at her cheek and left a trail of dirt. Damn Jacob Donovan for coming, she thought. She used to see him, standing just the way he was now, feet apart, looking for all the world like he’d conquered the universe, and she’d go limp with wanting. And now, six years later—she sneaked a peek at him—now, it was just as bad.

Madder at herself than at him, she snatched another handful of petunias and flung them into the dirt.

“Go away and leave me alone.”

“I’ll never leave you alone, Rachel.” He knelt beside her and stilled the hand that was hovering over another clump of flowers.

“Don’t touch me.”

She tried to jerk out of his grip, but he held her fast.

“Make no mistake, Rachel. It’s not you I want.”

Her heart slammed so hard against her ribs, she thought she would faint. Jacob’s next words restored her sanity.

“I want the truth,” he continued.

She saw a way out and took it. “You want the truth about why I jilted you?”

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll tell you. I didn’t love you enough, Jacob. I was too young. What we had was puppy love.” She forced herself not to waver under his stare. “The truth is I never really loved you.”

The smile he gave her was the most dangerous thing about him. “Is that why you’re mutilating your flower bed? You’re tearing up your flowers over a man you never even loved?”

She thrust out her chin. It was smudged, too, he noticed. He came dangerously close to kissing her. Instead, he laughed.

“Rachel, you are the worst liar on the face of the earth. You always were.” He released her and reached for an uprooted petunia. “You are also a bad gardener. Here, let me help you fix this flower bed.”

All she wanted him to do was go. She felt as if a hurricane had blown in off the gulf, and she was standing right in the eye. She snatched the poor wilted flower from his hand.

“Give that to me. My flower bed is no concern of yours.”