Nan Ryan (34 page)

“I’ll go, Malcolm,” she offered.

“No, no. Stay just as you are. Won’t take me a minute.” He kissed her cheek, rose, and was gone.

Nevada sighed, leaned back in the comfortable old settee and dreamily closed her eyes, then opened them. And gasped with shocked dismay when she saw the flare of a match at the far east corner of the porch. Horrified, she watched the orange circle of illumination light the dark, smiling face of Johnny Roulette.

Up off the sofa in a flash, she stormed over to him. He was lolling there in a cane-bottomed chair, tipped back against a porch column, the newly lit cigar stuck between lips that were lifting into a devilish smile.

“How long have you been here?” she demanded. “You’ve been spying on us, haven’t you! Answer me—how long?”

“Long enough to feel a bit sorry for you, my dear.”

“I beg your pardon!”

“Those kisses.” He shrugged wide shoulders. “Even from here I can tell they left something to be desired.”

“That isn’t true.” She quickly denied it. “Th-they were wonderful kisses. Kisses of deep devotion. You’re … just … jealous.”

“Jealous?” He laughed softly. “Surely you jest.” He came to his feet and stood towering over her.

“I am not.” She tipped her head back, looking up at him. “I actually do believe you’re jealous, whether you’ll admit it or not.” She gave him a smug smile.

“Nope. I’m really not.” Johnny took the cigar from his mouth and sailed it across the lawn. He reached out, put a hand to her shoulder, grinned, and said, “Now if good old Malcolm had kissed you like this …” And before Nevada could stop him, he had pulled her up against him and his lips were on hers. He caught her with her mouth wide open and took full advantage of it. While she struggled and whimpered and shoved impotently on his hard, ungiving chest, Johnny kissed her with a power and passion that was so blatantly sexual, Nevada felt the heated blood surge through her veins despite all her efforts to remain unaffected.

With one muscular arm hooked firmly around her, he held her soft curves against his unyielding length and kissed her hungrily, aggressively, his tongue plunging deeply, rhythmically into her warm wet mouth. And when, finally, she had quit struggling and her moans of outrage had changed to soft little sighs of excited bliss, Johnny took his lips from hers, smiled down into her lovely, upturned face, and said, “Now, if Malcolm had kissed you like that, then I might be a tiny bit jealous.”

He released her, stepped agilely down off the porch, and walked away without a backward look.

Stunned, shaken, Nevada stood there looking foolishly after him, her heart pounding, her wits scattered.

“Bastard!” she finally muttered bitterly under her breath. “Blackhearted bastard!”

“What, dear? I didn’t understand you.”

Nevada turned about to see Malcolm, a tray holding two tall, frosty glasses in his hands.

“Nothing, Malcolm.” She smiled and came to join him. “I didn’t say a thing.”

He held up the tray. “Iced lemonade, darling. This should cool us right down.”

32

The Missouri summer kept growing hotter.

The final days of May were more like August. Dry and scorching hot. No rain for more than three weeks had caused old Jess’s well-tended lawns to fade and lose their rich emerald-green beauty. The tall, waxy hedges turned yellow, leaves curled up and fell to the parched earth. Beneath the troubled bushes a carpet of brittle dead leaves covered the crusty ground.

Even the mighty Mississippi was suffering the effects of the rainless weeks. The wide waterway was no longer bank-full and riverboat pilots complained that new sandbars were rising up daily out of the murky stream.

At the Lucas Place townhouse Nevada followed the example of Quincy and Miss Annabelle. She took to the privacy of her bedroom in the hottest part of the afternoons and stripped down to her underthings. Still she was too warm. And in her discomfort she found it extremely exasperating to see Johnny Roulette working outdoors, barechested and bareheaded, beneath the beating rays of the fierce summer sun, a wide grin on his olive face as though he was enjoying himself.

“The big fool,” she muttered to herself one blistering afternoon as she stood just inside the open French doors of her bedroom, wearing nothing but her lacy chemise. Johnny was out there in the yard again, raking dead leaves, carting them away, hauling buckets of water for the thirsty rosebushes. Doing all the hard, heavy work while old Jess, a sweat-stained slouch hat on his graying head, sat in the shade and grinned and pointed and issued orders. He the boss, Johnny the laborer.

Her jaw set in keen annoyance, Nevada lifted her heavy, wilted hair up atop her head and stood there thinking the relentless sun would soon fell Johnny. Surely a man who never did any manual labor, never lifted anything heavier than a deck of cards or a pair of dice—or a woman’s skirts—could not hold up to such strenuous, punishing exertion in the intense heat of the day.

Especially not near-naked as he was.

Nevada wrinkled her small nose and her blue eyes narrowed. Johnny had cut the legs off a pair of trousers not directly above the knees but high up on his hard brown thighs. So now to her dismay—to say nothing of Quincy Maxwell’s—he worked right out there in plain sight wearing nothing but the indecently truncated pants.

A sheen of sweat covering him from dark head to bare toes, he went about his work with an easy offhand grace in every movement. The lean and rippling muscles, starkly male and powerful, pulled and stretched and glistened. The midnight-black hair, as wet as if he’d just stepped from his bath, fell in damp curls over his forehead and clung to the back of his neck. The modified breeches, offensively tight and sweat-dampened, adhered to his hard belly and lean buttocks.

“Show-off!” she muttered to herself. “No modesty whatsoever. It’s downright disgusting.” But she continued to stand there and watch the disgusting, immodest show-off, even as a fine sheen of perspiration covered her own hot body and caused the satin-and-lace chemise to stick to her flushed skin.

With thumbs and forefingers, Nevada pulled the chemise’s bodice away from her sticky flesh and blew down inside the extracted fabric. The rush of air on the perspiration-soaked skin felt most refreshing, so she continued, deriving what little respite she could from the damnable heat.

The sound of singing, very near, caused her to stop. Her head snapped up. She listened, looked frantically about, and spotted the top of a ladder leaning against the balcony’s top railing. Horrified, she saw first Johnny’s dark head and then his bare brown chest come into view, a pair of shears in his hand.

Those flashing black eyes looked straight at her as he snipped at a dying morning-glory vine, his deep baritone voice growing louder:

Frankie and Johnnie were sweethearts,

Oh Lordy, how they could love …

Nevada slammed the French doors closed so violently, the glass shuddered in the panes. Not bothering to find the drapery pull, she yanked the heavy curtains together as though the demons of hell itself were hot after her.

With the closing of the doors and draperies, she’d shut out the sight of his mocking dark face, but she could still hear that deep voice singing a song aimed at reminding her of the one night she wanted to forget.

Clasping her hands to her ears, she fled to her dressing room, but even there she heard the last lines of the refrain:

He was her man,

But he was doing her wrong.

It was more than an hour later when Nevada, freshly bathed, her mood lightened, came downstairs. She paused midway down to neatly tie the bow at the center of her low bodice. She had been looking forward to this afternoon for days. Denise Ledet was to return to St. Louis after two weeks in New York City with her folks. And she had promised Nevada that she would come right over and share all the news of her exciting trip.

Nevada was very eager to see her friend, but she began to frown as she reached the bottom of the stairs. A problem she hadn’t thought of before suddenly plagued her. What if the sweating, half-naked Johnny was still out there strutting around? Like it or not, women—all women—found him attractive. What if Denise saw him and …

Nevada crossed the foyer, slipped out the front door, and walked onto the broad gallery. She listened, she looked, she even called his name. She swept down the porch steps and walked around the house. The ladder was gone. So was Johnny.

Double-checking, making sure, Nevada—wishing she had put on her bonnet—made a thorough search of the grounds and did not encounter her tormentor. She even went so far as to walk out to the
garçonnière
to look for him. She knocked on his door, called out, peered inside, and finally gave a great sigh of relief.

She hurried back to the main house, secure in the knowledge that he was gone. She knew Johnny. He was already downtown at some smoky old card parlor. Obviously his luck had turned. Since the day of the three-card monte game, he had been elegantly turned out once again. New summer suits and expensive tailored shirts and Italian shoes. And the gleaming gold studs.

“It’s Denise, she’s here!” Nevada exclaimed happily when the Ledet landau rolled up the driveway at four o’clock.

“I’m as anxious to hear about the trip as you are, Marie,” said Quincy Maxwell, seated on a striped silk sofa in the large drawing room.

“I’m glad your dear friend has returned,” said Miss Annabelle, and quickly rising, stopped Nevada to retie the bow at her bodice.

The two young women hugged happily. After a half hour Miss Annabelle, knowing the two friends were eager to share secrets, suggested diplomatically, “It’s still quite warm this afternoon. You young ladies might find the gazebo a bit cooler. Minnie could serve you some iced tea and—”

“Yes!” It was Denise, dying to get Nevada alone so that she could regale her with tales of a young man she’d met in the big city. She jumped up. “Let’s go out, Marie. Right now.”

In seconds the two, holding hands and laughing, were crossing the sunny yard to the vine-covered octagon-shaped structure at the far edge of the property.

“Thank God for Miss Annabelle,” said Nevada. “Out here we can be alone.”

“And have I got lots to tell!” bragged Denise.

“Good. No one can hear us. They can’t even see us once we get inside.”

“Perfect,” said Denise as she stepped inside the vineenclosed white-latticed gazebo. “Just wait till you … you … For heaven’s sake … who …?” The talkative Denise was suddenly silent.

When Nevada stepped in out of the sunlight she saw the reason. There on a long padded chaise lay Johnny Roulette on his back sound asleep. He wore nothing but the skimpy cut-off tan trousers.

“Oh, good Lord!” murmured Nevada. “Come on, let’s go.”

Denise didn’t budge. Just stood there staring, her mouth agape, her eyes wide with interest. “N-no …” Denise managed weakly, mesmerized by the sleek dark skin, the massive chest, the long muscled legs of the handsome, half-naked stranger slumbering peacefully there in the afternoon heat.

“Denise!” Nevada scolded. “Let’s leave before he wakes up.”

Denise remained where she was. “Wh-who is this?” she breathed, and Nevada saw that her girlfriend’s scrutinizing gaze was drawn by the sweat-dampened thick curling hair covering Johnny’s broad chest. Denise swallowed as though her throat had gone dry; then her eyes slipped down to the long dark fingers laced atop a naked belly. And finally to the damp fabric stretched across slim hips and straining groin.

“I want to go back to the house this minute!” said Nevada, taking Denise’s arm, glaring down at the handsome man who looked like a huge sleeping cat—sleek and beautiful and dangerous.

At that minute those great dark eyes, half sleepy, half amused, came open. The wide sensual lips stretched into a quick’grin. “Surely,” Johnny drawled, his voice low, “you can stay long enough to introduce me to your friend.”

Denise gasped with pleasure and Nevada sighed with displeasure as the large, Umber man rolled nimbly up from the chaise and stood yawning and stretching unselfconsciously before them. Wishing to high heaven he were gambling downtown where he belonged, Nevada reluctantly made the introductions.

“Denise, this is Johnny Roulette, Malcolm’s stepbrother.” She shot a look at Johnny’s smiling face. “Johnny, this is Denise.”

Eyes shamelessly caressing his big, bare frame, Denise’s flushed face grew redder still when Johnny took her hand in his, leaned down, and brushed his lips to its back. “Denise, do you have a last name?” he asked, his dark eyes flashing with warmth.

“Ah … I … yes … it’s Ledet,” said the uncharacteristically tongue-tied, thoroughly enchanted Denise while Nevada ground her teeth.

“Miss Ledet, I do hope you’ll forgive my appearance. You see, I’ve been helping the gardener and I—”

“Oh, Johnny, you look … great,” trilled Denise.

Releasing her hand, he smiled and said, “Bless your heart, dear. Won’t you have a seat? I do so enjoy meeting Marie and Malcolm’s friends.”

As if Nevada did not exist, Denise dropped down onto the chaise. Johnny sat down beside her. Turning to him, she said, “Do you like dances, Johnny? My parents are planning a big party next month. I do hope you’ll come.”