Nan Ryan (38 page)

“That was different! I was … I … if you are not out of here in one minute, I’ll wake Malcolm.”

“No, you won’t.” Johnny rose unhurriedly from the bed, stood unceremoniously pulling his discarded trousers up over his slim brown hips.

“I will! You won’t get away with this! You’ve gone too damned far this time!”

Johnny calmly buttoned his pants. Then turned back to face her. “Funny, I was thinking that I didn’t go quite far enough. I should have put—”

“Shut your filthy mouth!”

Johnny shrugged. “I brought you something.”

“I want nothing from you except your immediate and lasting absence from my life.”

Johnny picked up the nightgown from the chair back where he’d draped it. He held it out and said, “Sweetheart, a woman throws her nightgown out on the lawn, a man might think it’s an invitation of sorts.”

Her eyes narrowed with new anger, Nevada snatched the gown from him and bounded off the bed. Clutching at the covering sheet, she stood glaring up at him. “What I do or don’t do with my nightclothes is none of your business, and let me assure you that there are
no
invitations of any kind extended to you. Ever!”

“A shame it is too,” said Johnny, thinking she surely had to be the tiniest, the cutest, the most desirable woman who had ever ordered him out of her bedroom on a rainy night.

“Get the hell out of here!”

“I’m going,” said Johnny, “and it’s just as well. I don’t want to make love to you here.” He took a step closer to her, stood looming over her. Nevada swallowed and took a step back. Johnny reached out, gently grasped her bare shoulders, and pulled her up on tiptoe. He said, “But I’ll be waiting, darlin’. Waiting for you to come to me.”

“Stand on your pointed head until I do!”

Johnny grinned as a flash of lightning lit her angry face. Waiting until the booming thunder had dissipated, he said, “And you will come, Nevada. Maybe not tonight. Maybe not tomorrow night. But you’ll come. And when you do, I’ll make slow, sweet love to you till dawn.”

“Get out of here this minute!”

“There are so many ways I want to love you, sweetheart. So much I want to teach you.”

“You can teach me nothing!” she snapped. “I’ve been around!”

He chuckled. “Around what?”

“You’re forgetting I am an engaged woman and Malcolm—”

“Has never made love to you.”

“That’s not so! He … we—”

“And he’ll never make love to you the way I will. Never.”

“That’s revolting. You’re revolting. Dare you—”

“Don’t dare me, darlin’. You do and I won’t wait. I’ll take you right here, right now.” His hands slid up to enclose her raised face. “And that’s not the way I want it to be.”

She tried to pull free, but he wouldn’t let her. He framed her face securely in his brown hands and wouldn’t allow her to look away. He made her look straight into his hot dark eyes. In a voice as hot and dark as his eyes, he said, “I don’t want to take it from you, sweetheart. I want you to give it to me.”

“Never!” she managed weakly.

“Soon,” he murmured, kissed her, and was gone.

36

The rain stopped at daybreak.

Its cooling effects lasted for only a couple of days; then the broiling summer weather returned with a vengeance. Another long sweltering week went by with no relief. The mercury climbed up past the hundred-degree mark and lodged there.

It was, however, the perilous and potent heat of another kind that plagued Nevada most. Johnny’s arrogant prediction that she would come to him made her furious, but it frightened her as well. She wished that he would grow unbearably restless and leave St. Louis. She wished that her wedding date was not still six long weeks away. She wished that there was no need to wish.

She would not go to him! She wouldn’t. She didn’t care how many hot nights she lay awake fighting the almost overwhelming desire. It meant nothing. Nothing. If she felt a physical hunger for Johnny instead of Malcolm, it was because she had been intimate with Johnny. Once she was Malcolm’s wife and he made sweet, satisfying love to her, she’d never again be tempted by Johnny’s brand of base animal passion.

When she was a happily married woman, Mr. Johnny Roulette could live out there in the
garçonnière
forever, for all she cared. His presence would no longer be a threat. She’d be safe at last.

All she had to do was make it through six more weeks. Only six weeks. Nevada began to mark off the days like a prisoner whose sentence was finally growing short.

But until she was free—married—Johnny’s lurking sexuality posed a constant danger. It seemed he was everywhere Nevada turned. Lounging, grinning, waiting. He flirted outrageously and teased her unmercifully. She grew increasingly short tempered and no one—except the devilish Johnny—knew exactly what was bothering her.

Putting it down to understandable bridal jitters, the family, the staff, and her friends were tolerant and went out of their way to be sensitive to her mood swings. Everyone, that is, except Johnny Roulette.

Johnny knew Nevada was on the edge and he wanted it that way. She had held out far longer than he’d expected and he admired her surprisingly strong will. But her commendable resolve made him want her all the more. With each passing day he became more intrigued, more determined. And there were moments when he admitted to himself that he was just a trifle jealous.

Jealous? He jealous? The word and the emotion were foreign to him. But he
was
jealous. Jealous to think that the tempting Nevada would soon be another man’s wife. Not that he loved her, certainly not But dammit he was the one who had found her on the river. Took her right out of a brothel, dressed her, educated her, launched her. Did he make all those sacrifices to have her end up married to Malcolm Maxwell? Preposterous!

Nevada didn’t want to go.

She had told Malcolm as much, but he had simply shaken his head and said, “Dear, we must attend the Ledet party. Why, Denise Ledet is your dearest friend. Her feelings would be terribly hurt if we didn’t show.”

“But, Malcolm, it’s so hot and I—”

“Marie, we’ve promised the Ledets.” He never noticed how Nevada rolled her eyes when he added, “And Mother and Miss Annabelle have promised to go along with us.”

So here she was on the night of the party, so listless and lifeless she felt she surely couldn’t endure it. And it was all his fault. Johnny’s.

She’d had no rest. Every night without fail he waited down there in the heat, in the darkness, prowling, watching, waiting for her. The glow of his cigar in the blackness signaled his constant, dangerous presence. Each night she had stood at the open French doors of her too warm room and watched him lounging about just outside his
garçonnière
, either draped lazily on the white wicker lawn furniture or standing there on his small veranda, leaning a bare shoulder against a white porch column.

Nevada shook her head as if to clear it, looked at herself in the free-standing mirror, and gave her elaborately dressed hair one last pat. Glancing down at the low square neck of her shimmering blue silk gown, she thought that the occasion called for some adornment. The beautiful diamond-and-sapphire necklace Johnny had bought for her in London would be perfect.

She debated for a moment. She rarely wore it because Johnny had given it to her.

Well, the hell with him! It was a stunning necklace and would look just right with her dress. She would wear it to
the party
.

Taking it from a velvet box placed underneath her lingerie, she draped it around her bare throat and hooked the clasp behind her head.

The gems glittered and winked and took her breath away. Maybe she shouldn’t wear it, after all. Someone was sure to ask where she had gotten it Well, the hell with them too! she thought, picking up her net gloves. Forcing herself to smile, she went downstairs to meet the others. Praying, as she descended, that Johnny would have the good grace to stay away from her at the Ledets’, if he showed. Which was doubtful.

She still couldn’t believe that Denise’s indulgent parents would allow their foolish daughter to invite Johnny Roulette to a gathering of St. Louis’s select. Surely he would not attend, knowing how the gentry viewed him.

Downstairs, they were all ready and waiting: Malcolm, Quincy, and Miss Annabelle. Her hand around Malcolm’s bent arm, Nevada went down the walk toward the waiting carriage.

Observing her fiancé’s classic profile, she began to feel a bit more content. Malcolm was a tall, attractive man and he looked especially handsome with, his face all scrubbed and his light chestnut hair brushed and his custom-cut clothes fitted superbly to his slender frame.

Her hand tightened on his forearm.

Perhaps after the party she could persuade him to take her for a long romantic drive, just the two of them. Ride up to the river bluffs and watch the steamers glide beneath the high Eads bridge with all those twinkling lights strung along its steel double decks.

She was smiling by the time Malcolm, now seated beside her in the carriage, graciously leaned down to arrange the skirts of her pale blue silk gown around her slippered feet But before he could raise his head, her smile had disappeared.

A lone horseman was coming up the pebbled drive toward them and Nevada knew who it was. Johnny, on a sleek black horse, smoking a cigar, rode directly up to the carriage. He turned his horse around so that he was facing Nevada.

Without taking the cigar from his mouth, he said with quiet sarcasm, “You folks don’t mind if I accompany you to tonight’s party?”

From that point, Nevada’s evening was spoiled. Johnny cantered his horse alongside the landau like a protective outrider. Only there was nothing protective about him. He was a smiling handsome menace and Nevada was relieved when finally the lights and music of the Ledets’ Thirteenth Street mansion greeted them.

Malcolm swept Nevada up the steps of the imposing brick residence. In the huge entrance hall with floors of white Italian and black Belgian marble, Mr. and Mrs. Davis Ledet warmly welcomed their guests. After handshakes and cheek kisses, a uniformed butler escorted them straight through the house and outdoors onto the broad back terrace.

The party was elaborate. A pink-and-white striped square tent covered fully one third of the vast yard. Underneath its tall canopy, tables and chairs were set up for dining. Small square tables were set for two, huge circular ones for six or eight, and long rectangular ones for a dozen. All the tables were draped with pink damask cloths. Baby-pink roses in gleaming crystal vases served as the centerpieces. Soft light from pink Japanese lanterns, strung the length of the terrace, cast a lovely pastel glow over everything.

An orchestra, partially concealed behind a dense growth of fuchsia azalea bushes, played music for dancing. A large polished wooden pavilion, constructed specifically for the party at much expense, covered a great expanse of the lawn and offered guests as fine a dance floor as could be found anywhere—and right out in the open under the summer stars.

The lovely party was soon in full swing and Nevada, seated at one of the round pink tables, sipped champagne and sampled the beef Wellington, her wary gaze occasionally sweeping the laughing, milling crowd for the dark face she did not wish to find.

And as she anxiously watched, she nodded and smiled and half listened while Denise, seated beside her, leaned close and whispered excitedly about Johnny. “… and if he does ask me to dance, I shall press myself to him closely … have looked everywhere and still have not seen him … a friend of Mother’s heard he was coming and made her husband stay at home so she could … if I can persuade him to take a stroll … know a private place behind the carriage house … hope he’ll kiss me passionately and …”

Denise was so preoccupied with telling Nevada all her passionate plans that she failed to see Johnny enter the huge pink tent, survey the crowd, smile, and move slowly forward. But Nevada saw him and braced herself. With measured grace he made his way past the pink-draped tables and for a time she was certain he was headed directly toward her. She relaxed a little when she determined that he did not intend to join them.

Malcolm, interrupting Denise’s prattling to ask if he might be excused for a moment, drew Nevada’s attention away from Johnny.

“You don’t mind, do you, dear?” said Malcolm, “I see a couple of old acquaintances I’ve not seen for—”

“No. No, Malcolm, go on, of course,” said Nevada.

Miss Annabelle and Quincy soon drifted away as well. The other diners sharing the round table decided to dance or circulate. Only Nevada and Denise remained. That’s when Nevada looked up and saw him. Johnny, seated sardonically apart at a table for two, smoking a cigar. Calmly watching her. Waiting.

His black eyes calmly regarding her, Johnny could hardly keep from smiling. He was amused by Nevada’s acting as if she was unaware of him. She was catlike, pretending aloofness when what she craved was a good stroking. And she would get just that from him.

Nevada was in agony. Any minute Johnny would rise and come over. Or Denise would spot him and invite him to join them. It never happened. He stayed where he was. Malcolm returned. Denise left them. And Nevada calmed down.