Schulze, Dallas (10 page)

“Thank you for the dance, Miss Adams.” Bishop interrupted her
refusal. Lila’s eyes jerked back to his but he didn’t meet her look. With a
shallow bow, he turned and walked away, leaving her standing in the middle of
the dance floor with Eustace Smith. Lila’s eyes followed his tall figure, her
companion forgotten even as he led her into the dance.

For the rest of the evening, Bishop kept his distance. In Lila’s
experience, no matter how large the crowd at any gathering, as a rule, you saw
the same people over and over again. And she certainly saw Bishop quite often.
But only from across the room. Several times she saw him on the edge of the
dance floor as she swept by in another man’s arms. And more than once she
thought she saw him watching her. But he didn’t approach her and Lila’s pride
wouldn’t let her approach him. She’d already teetered on the edge of brazenness
once tonight; she wouldn’t do it again.

She drank champagne and chatted with her brother’s guests as if
she hadn’t a care in the world. But in the back of her mind, she kept
remembering those moments on the dance floor. She couldn’t put a name to what
had passed between them, but she knew she hadn’t imagined those moments of
awareness. That sense of connection was like nothing she’d ever known before.

It made no sense, of course. She told herself as much as she
sipped a glass of champagne. It was ridiculous to think that she had some
special, mystical connection to Bishop McKenzie. No matter how well he managed
to don the veneer of civilization, the man was essentially a ruffian. Certainly
he was nothing like her dear, sweet Billy.

The thought of her dead fiancé made Lila’s fingers tighten around
the stem of her glass. A familiar tangle of emotions rose up inside her—love
and grief; anger that he had died; guilt that she was still alive. And, more
recently, a deep resentment that, alive or not, her own life seemed to have
ended with his.

Lila swallowed the last of the champagne in her glass. She was
aware of a not-unpleasant buzzing sensation in her head. Setting the glass down
on a table, she turned to survey the ballroom, her eyes automatically seeking
Bishop’s tall figure. The big doors that led into the foyer had been pushed
open to allow the party to spill into the rest of the lower floor and Bishop
stood in the open doorway. But even as she saw him, he turned and left the
ballroom.

He was leaving. Lila knew it as surely as if he’d told her so. He
wasn’t just slipping out to smoke a cigarette or joining the card players in
the library. He was leaving the party. And tomorrow he was leaving River Walk,
going back to wherever he’d come from.

It took Lila a moment to recognize the emotion surging up inside
her. Fear. When he left, she’d be alone again. Enclosed in the glass cage that
was Billy’s memory, forever barred from life by his death. A small voice inside
whispered that she was being ridiculous but it was drowned out by the
conviction that Bishop held the only key to that cage.

Driven by that conviction, Lila moved toward the doors through
which he’d disappeared. Her progress was slowed by the necessity of exchanging
light conversation with half a dozen acquaintances on the way. By the time she
was finally able to slip into the foyer, at least thirty minutes had passed
since Bishop left the reception, but her sense of urgency had not diminished.
She hurried across the foyer, her skirts rustling with the quickness of her
pace.

It wasn’t until she’d reached the second floor and was moving down
the hallway toward the room

Bishop had been given that it occurred to her that she didn’t have
the slightest idea what she was going to say to him. She could hardly expect
him to understand something she didn’t understand herself. But that didn’t stop
her from knocking on his door.

When there was no immediate response, she wondered if he’d gone
outside after all. She sucked in a quick breath when the door opened abruptly
and Bishop stood framed in the opening. He’d discarded his jacket and tie and
wore only trousers and a white shirt, the top three buttons of which were
undone, exposing the strong column of his throat and an intriguing wedge of
skin dusted with black hair. He looked even bigger than he had in the ballroom.
Bigger, darker, more dangerous. Lila stared at him, her thoughts scattered.

“Miss Adams.” Just a statement of her name, without inflection.

Lila swallowed and tried to summon up a calm smile, not an easy
thing to do when a dozen butterflies seemed to be fluttering frantic wings in
the pit of her stomach.

“I wanted to assure myself that the servants had seen to your
needs,” she said, grabbing the first—-and only—thought that came to her.

There was a moment of dead silence and then Bishop’s brows rose in
slow comment. Lila flushed but forced her expression to remain serene. She was
his hostess, after all. At least until tomorrow when Susan would be his
hostess. Unless, of course, one considered Susan his hostess from the moment
she’d exchanged wedding vows with Douglas. Lila frowned a little as she tried
to work her way through the social rules governing this particular situation.

“An odd time to be checking up on the servants, isn’t it?” Bishop
asked.

Of course it was.
“Not at all,” she said
calmly. “You’ll be leaving us tomorrow and I just wanted to make sure your stay
had been pleasant.”

He looked at her, his blue eyes hooded and unreadable. Lila fought
the urge to fidget with her fan and returned his look calmly, as if there were
nothing unusual about a young, unmarried woman leaving a party to knock on a
gentleman’s door in the middle of the night. Bishop seemed to come to some
conclusion because he stepped back from the door and gestured to the room
behind him with one hand.

“Everything is in order but you’re welcome to see for yourself.”

Lila hesitated a moment, aware of warning bells going off
somewhere inside. Something told her that a step through that door was fraught
with hazards she hadn’t considered. Her life might never be the same again. It
was that thought that made the decision for her. Because, no matter what else,
the one thing she knew was that, if her life remained the same, she wasn’t
going to have a life at all.

She stepped into Bishop’s room, hearing the door shut behind her
as if closing out the world. She turned toward Bishop. He reached for her,
drawing her into his arms, and she went willingly.

Lila came awake with a start, her heart pounding.

So powerful had been the dream, which was not really a dream but a
memory, that it took her a moment to separate the past from the present. She’d
tried so hard to forget that night, had blamed her incredible behavior on the
champagne, on the heat in the ballroom. On Bishop.

Bishop. She closed her eyes as her memory rushed back with
unwelcome speed and clarity. The endless journey by train with him sitting
silent and uncommunicative across from her, their arrival at the hotel in St.
Louis last night and her immediate collapse into bed.

She opened her eyes and stared at a hairline crack in the plaster
ceiling. Sunlight poured into the room through the open curtains. From the pale
quality of the light, she guessed that it was still quite early. Bishop hadn’t
told her how long he planned to stay in St. Louis, which was no surprise,
considering he hadn’t told her anything else either. The thought of getting on
a train again made Lila shudder. If she was lucky, they’d be stopping over here
for a few days. If she was extraordinarily lucky, her new husband would be
content to keep his distance, the way he’d been doing.

She sat up—or tried to. Her head had barely come off the pillow
before something caught at her hair and tugged her back down. Startled, Lila
turned her head to discover the source of the problem and found herself staring
into Bishop’s sleepy blue eyes.

Loose, her hair fell almost to her hips. Normally she braided it
before she went to bed, but she’d been so tired last night that she hadn’t
bothered. Now it spilled across the pillows and sheet in a tumbled wave of deep
auburn. Following the path of that wave, she saw it disappear under Bishop’s
shoulder. He was lying on her hair. She’d never given a thought to the
possibility of such a thing happening. But then, that was understandable,
since, aside from that one night she’d tried so hard to forget, she’d never
shared a bed with someone. There was something shockingly intimate about the
sight of her hair caught under his shoulder—his
bare
shoulder.

Lila swallowed hard, her eyes widening as she considered the
implications of what she was seeing, which was a great deal more than she
wanted to see. Bishop was lying on his side, one arm thrown over the top of the
covers, which were shoved down almost to his waist. His chest was bare and she
gaped at the mat of black, curling hair that covered the solid muscles there.
Though she struggled not to, she couldn’t help but remember the crisp feel of
that hair beneath her fingers, against her breasts. Breathing just a little too
fast, she slammed a door on that memory. If his chest was bare, what about the
rest of him?

Lila jerked her eyes back to his face, too shocked to speak. He
looked back at her, as if... as if there were nothing extraordinary about his
presence in her bed. As if he had a right to be there. As if he planned to stay
there.

“Let me up.” She grabbed a handful of her hair and tried to jerk
it out from under him, almost frantic with the need to put some distance
between them.

“Hold still,” Bishop ordered sharply. “You’re going to end up bald
as an egg if you don’t stop struggling.”

“Let me go!” There was a razor edge of panic in her voice. She had
to get away.

“Give me a second,” he snapped.

He sat up. The covers fell around his hips and Lila saw nothing to
reassure her about his state of undress. She swung her feet off the edge of the
bed and then stopped. When she got up, he’d see her in her nightgown, an
intimacy she had no intention of permitting. A quick glance told her that her
robe was draped over the arm of the room’s one thinly padded chair, well out of
reach.

“Close your eyes,” she snapped, clutching the covers against her
chest.

“Close my eyes?” Bishop repeated the question on a note of
disbelief. “We’re married and you’re pregnant with my child and you’re asking
me to close my eyes?”

“Close your eyes,” she said between gritted teeth. She didn’t need
to be reminded of the situation.

“There’s enough cloth in that thing you’re wearing to make a blasted
circus tent.”

“Don’t curse. And a gentleman should never refer to a lady’s
intimate apparel.”

“Intimate apparel?” Lila looked over her shoulder in time to see
Bishop arch one dark brow derisively. “I’ve seen nuns wearing less. And I never
claimed to be a gentleman.”

“You certainly couldn’t do so with any truth.” But her sarcasm was
perfunctory. She swallowed, fighting down a sudden wave of nausea. Not now. Oh,
please, not now. This had been happening sporadically for the last month, this
sudden violent illness that hit as soon as she set foot out of bed. Please, not
this morning. But beads of sweat were breaking out across her forehead. Her
stomach rolled and she swallowed. Bishop must have seen the color drain from
her face. “What’s wrong?”

Lila was beyond appreciating the sharp concern in his voice. She
swallowed again, trying desperately to delay the inevitable. Her stomach
twisted and, with a groan, she lunged from the bed, her state of dishabille
forgotten as she ran for the dresser and the china bowl on it. She just made
it, dropping to her knees with the bowl on the floor in front of her as her
stomach heaved again.

Bishop was beside her in an instant. He caught her hair in one
hand, holding it back from her face and wrapping his arm around her shoulders,
supporting her trembling body.

“Go away,” Lila groaned between heaves. “Please go away.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” he told her, his impatient tone at odds with
the gentleness of his touch. “I’ve seen people throw up before.”

“I don’t care what you’ve seen. I want you to go away.” She’d
never been so humiliated in her entire life. Being ill was bad enough, but to
have him there made it ten times worse.

Ignoring her, Bishop held her until her stomach had finished its
tantrum. By the time the bout had passed, Lila could only lean weakly against
his knee with her eyes closed. She wanted to order him to leave again, and, at
the same time, she wanted to turn into his arms and sob like a child.

“Rinse your mouth.”

Lila opened her eyes to find the china pitcher in front of her. “I
can’t drink out of that,” she protested automatically.

“It’s clean. Rinse your mouth.”

His tone was so matter-of-fact that Lila forgot her embarrassment.
Too weak to argue, she did as she was told.

“Do you want to go back to bed?” Bishop brushed wisps of damp hair
back from her forehead.

“I want to die,” she muttered.

“Not today,” he said heartlessly. He stood, drawing her up with
him.

Lila leaned against him, gathering her strength for the trip back
to bed. But when she swayed, he slid one arm under her knees and lifted her off
her feet, carrying her as easily as if she were a child. At five feet eight
inches, it wasn’t often that she felt small and helpless, but Bishop made her
feel almost fragile. The fact that she rather enjoyed the sensation did nothing
to improve her mood.