Tallchief for Keeps (12 page)

Somehow she managed the evening, taunted by Alek wearing Una’s bright shawl around his broad shoulders. Folded triangularly, the fiery red-and-gold point shot off one shoulder, the fringes dancing as he moved. He wasn’t prettily handsome, his features too rugged. The scars on his cheek and lip enhanced his masculinity, and the soaring scar in his eyebrow needed a woman’s touch to smooth it.

Looking like a dangerous pirate, he caught
the attention of a lush brunette, who snagged his arm. He smiled down at her, and the woman issued an open invitation by leaning closer and licking her glossy lips. A blonde slid her hand through his other arm, and Alek laughed outright at something she said.

The blonde pushed her breasts against him
and spoke intently. Alek leaned down to listen, the woman’s red lips almost touching the earring—LaBelle’s earring—and Elspeth found her hand curled into a fist. His hand rested on the woman’s waist—

Elspeth lifted her head. He had held her only minutes ago, his tall body rigid and trembling against hers. Now he had another body against him and another one just as willing. Alek’s charm flashed across the room to Elspeth, and she tossed it back with a light “no, thank you” smile.

He said something to the women and moved purposefully through the gallery crowd toward Elspeth. She wouldn’t move away from his advance; she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. When he came to her side, she leveled a cold look at him. A swaggering, arrogant, hot-for-sex pirate was exactly what she did not want in the arena of her life.

Alek placed his hand on her waist and walked her across the gallery. As they stood in front of “Untitled,” his hand dropped an inch lower to rest on her hip, fingers splayed possessively. Pushing, she thought. Always pushing.

“Untitled’ is very erotic. What about titling it ‘The Second Encounter’?” Alek had loosened the top buttons at his throat. Elspeth recognized the mark on his skin; caught in her startling passion, she had nipped at him.

Alek rubbed his temple, fighting a headache. He was tired and drained, fighting years of sleeplessness and the constant need of Elspeth. The steady sensual humming in his body wasn’t helping his concentration. He clicked off his computer laptop and stood, stretching cramped muscles. Dressed only in his shorts, he padded to the bed in the gallery’s lower apartments and lifted the shawl against him. He had pushed Elspeth too hard, and tonight the walls had gone down. Whatever Elspeth felt about him, there was no mistaking her passion or her need to take him down. It had frightened and angered her, raising the color in her cheeks and deepening her smoky gray eyes.

He loved her.

He’d begun to hunt her with rage
and
then a clinical, cutting revenge, tethering her with the contract Along the way, he’d fallen in love with her. Maybe he’d always been in love with her since that haunting night in Scotland.

A noise drew him to the empty, darkened gallery. Elspeth, wrapped in an old flannel robe, stood before “Untitled,” studying her work. Wool drifted from her hand, as though “Untitled” had drawn her from her weaving.

Alek closed the door, allowing her privacy. He drew the shawl across his cheek, pressing it against his face. The merino wool was soft and light with a life of its own…he wanted Elspeth to want him as much as she wanted the shawl. If he came to Elspeth now, he’d want to make love with her, and though tonight had shown him a flash of her passion, he wanted more than a quickening from Elspeth.

He wanted her awakening.

“All right, Alek. You’ve had your fun. I’ll buy Una’s shawl. How much?” Elspeth leaned back against the van’s passenger seat and faced the passing scenery. After a week of press interviews and parties, they were on their way to the first exhibit in another gallery.

She could have walked out, dismissing the contract. But she was a Tallchief, bred to honor commitments. Until her obligations were met, Alek had her within reach. He’d waited, and now they were alone. Alek rubbed LaBelle’s earring. “The shawl is not for sale.”

When she turned to him, her sunglasses like mirrors, Alek placed a dried apricot against her lips. Elspeth had her vices, he’d discovered, and dried apricots were definitely a priority. Hand-feeding Elspeth was an experience he savored. Or was it torture to watch her lips curve around the morsel, her teeth bite into it? She’d actually taken what he had offered. He rubbed her lip with his thumb and sucked an orange tidbit into his mouth. “The shawl requires the legend.”

“It’s my heritage,” Elspeth muttered around the apricot.

“So’s the legend. They’re a package deal. You give me one, and I give you the other.”

“The Paisley mills in Scotland produced excellent work from the early 1700s on. The shawls are pure art. Only a—”

“I admire art,” he stated,
comfortable with whatever names she would call him.

She stared at him, one sleek black brow lifted in disbelief. “You blockhead.”

“Sweetheart. Baby-doll.” Alek grinned when Elspeth’s mouth curved slightly.

“I’m not a baby-doll. You’ve got the wrong woman, Alek.”

“Have I?” Alek tugged her sunglasses away; he wanted to see her eyes, watch the color change shades with her emotions. When he told her what lay between them, he wanted to see her eyes. “I haven’t been with another woman since that night, Elspeth.”

Again Elspeth lifted a disbelieving, sleek eyebrow in his direction.

That grated. “You’re not making this easy, Elspeth. I’m sharing a bit of Petrovna insight here. My sex life is a private matter.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” she murmured too easily.

Alek passed a truck and, after checking his rearview mirror, swerved back into the lane. He glanced at her rigid expression, the set of her jaw. Elspeth had plenty to chew on; she might as well hear more. There was nothing like baring his soul to a woman who would walk away from him the moment she could. Okay, he was a sucker for pain, Alek thought as he plunged on.
^<4
I loved Melissa. I told her not to come to me, not to enter the war zone, but it was our anniversary and she wanted…us to be together.”

Alek tightened his fingers on the steering
wheel, his knuckles white with tension. He swerved to avoid a squirrel and dropped back into the terror years ago. “The rocket was a direct hit in the tiny room. It exploded instantly, and Melissa screamed. I’ll never forget the sound of—shrieks, blind, terrified, shrieks of pain—”

“Alek…” Elspeth touched his hand; he locked her fingers with his, bringing their clasped hands to his thigh.

He took her hand and brought her fingertips to his mouth. “Td seen everything by then—hungry orphans, starving elderly, mass graves in war-torn countries. Melissa’s dying was—”

“Alek, those things are in the past.” Elspeth’s voice | ran on a thin, trembling thread, snaring him with her emotions.

He kissed her palm, studied her slender, capable fingers. “The past is with us, just like my scars, and I want you to understand. After…I knew what I had to do, to hurt you…to make the break clean. You had your whole life ahead of you, and I had nothing.

I Maybe I got scared, so I said what I had to and left you.”

Her wary expression hurt him more than
he’d expected. He pulled a small, worn envelope from his pocket and handed it to her.

She carefully opened and eased a tattered woven swatch from the envelope. Her fingers trembled, running over the wool. “It’s mine. I was studying mordants to set the color and used copperas on this. The dye is a heather olive.”

“I found heather sprigs and the swatch
stuck to my clothing. The heather crumbled right away.” He’d crushed it, diving under twisted barbed wire. The swatch was all he’d had left of Elspeth, a silly little bit of cloth that had reminded him of life and tenderness and hope.

She looked down, then away into the mountains, the sunlight skimming her high cheekbones and sweeping down her bare throat. There beneath her lightly tanned skin, a vein pulsed heavily, and Alek prayed it was because she thought of him.

Six

A
lek, this isn’t working. You’re intruding into my life.
I do not like you acting as though I am your possession.
“The storm outside equaled Elspeth’s raw emotions. A week and a half of Alek invading her life, snaring her into sleepless nights, was taking a toll on her nerves. She opened the apartment door to Mark, who had returned to the gallery’s apartment with cartons of Chinese food. She helped him place them on the coffee table, then sat on the couch and began filling their plates.

She’d missed the closeness of a family, eating together and sharing small talk over the table.

Alek glanced up from his laptop computer, a
pencil shoved over his ear. In a startling change from whatever interested him to complete absorption with her, he spoke quietly. “I have to get this story done. Why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you? Don’t spare my feelings.”

“I
was
telling you, Alek.” Thunder crashed as he watched her with interest. “You’re steaming, Elspeth. Come on, let it all out.”

“Will you two kiss and make up?” Mark complained. “It’s safer out there in the lightning storm than in here with you. You’ve been like this since you got back from that last trip. Neither one of you look like you’ve had a minute’s sleep.”

Elspeth placed the points of her chopsticks on his chest. “You mutter when you’re distracted, Mark. Alek hovers. You both are—”

She inhaled a quieting breath and began again. “I am not used to being pampered…to being tucked in at night. He physically dragged me away from my I work and plopped me in bed, Mark. He brings me a breakfast tray in the morning. Alek actually told a very nice man that he didn’t deserve one of my hangings.”

She ached from the long day, traveling to the showing with Alek, and she…she didn’t want to share herself with Alek, who watched her carefully from what she ate to…Elspeth had just noted that his hair needed trimming and he’d lost weight. Alek Petrovna was not a man to care for himself, his needs untended. Her gaze skimmed him, from dress shirt to worn jeans and socks. He needed a shave and someone to care for him. She glanced at his rumpled shirt, opened at the collar and revealing a soft curl of black hair. She didn’t want to care—

“That
nice
man was trying to
pick her up. He stroked the painting, put his hands on it while he was looking right down her dress. We’re going back to Amen Flats.” Alek glanced down Elspeth’s loose pink sweater, her black slacks and her bare feet. Elspeth curled her toes, aware that Alek’s close inspection raised her senses to a danger level. With him, she felt feminine and cherished; she didn’t like the feeling, nor the sense that Alek wanted to make up for not being close when she needed him. Elspeth realized suddenly how empty her life had been since that night Thunder rattled the windows, storm clouds rolling across the sky outside, and she felt as fragile as the bouquet of roses Alek had ordered for the apartment. He’d also ordered the potted herbs running along the window, their scents giving her peace in an emotional war zone that was Alek. Restless now near him, she rose to cut chives, wash and chop them over their food.

Mark looked at her, then leveled a stare at Alek. “Elspeth, any time this jerk makes moves you don’t like and you want me to do something, I will. I’m pretty good in a gym.”

She had been afraid of this. Alek could shred Mark and walk away untouched. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I have brothers, remember? Alek is just going through a phase, and I can handle him.”

“A phase…and I am not your brother, sweetheart. We’re going home,” he repeated softly, watching her.

Mark’s expression said that he had an investment to protect, if not Elspeth. “Going home? She’s got two more showings in as many days.”

“Alek, I am honoring my agreement.”

“But you’d rather be home
and you
know it.” Alek eyed her, a muscle contracting along his jaw. “You were playing with something you have no idea how to control.”

She lifted an eyebrow. Who was he to tell her what she wanted and if she was flirting? “Don’t I?”

She’d scored a hit; Alek scowled at her. “We’re going home. Elspeth needs her family, and they need her. She likes to bake.” Alek frowned and continued typing.

Elspeth stared at him. There was no limit to his arrogance. How could he possibly know what she needed?

“That’s me, just the little homebody. I
love
to putter. Take me out of Amen Flats and I’m just lost without my puttering.” Again Elspeth enjoyed the quick flash of anger in Alek’s expression.

He reached for his cup of cold coffee, downed it and turned back to his computer. He’d ignore everything when engrossed with an article, and when he was hungry, he ate whatever popped into his hand from cold food to candy bars.

Elspeth finished her meal. Alek continued punching keys and ignoring the food that Mark was devouring. Alek fascinated her, from his high-hell moods to his tenderness with children and the elderly. Elspeth found herself picking up a sliced carrot with her chopsticks; she lifted the morsel to his mouth.

Alek stopped typing, clicked off the
machine and slowly turned to her. His lips opened, and Elspeth placed the sliced carrot within his mouth. He chewed and swallowed, and Elspeth slowly placed a chicken morsel to his lips. He fascinated her, restless and concentrating on his writing one moment and then easily managed by the offer of a food tidbit.

Big, tough, impatient Alek Petrovna sat quietly while she fed him, his eyes gleaming beneath heavy

_ sets of curled lashes. “I could
get used to this,” he murmured unevenly.

“Don’t. It’s either see that you eat vegetables or deal with Talia.”

“Okay. I’ll get you off the hook.” In a move that she had seen her brothers employ, he stretched his arms up and then laid one across the back of the couch. His hand settled on her shoulder; Alek’s thumb

‘lazily caressed her throat. Though she knew his intent, she tried to ignore the immediate response in her.

Finished with his food, Mark cleared away his dishes. “Just take good care of her, Alek. She doesn’t look any better than you do. The next time you decide to stake out a woman, count me out. I’m glad you got this one here, though. She’s fabulous. Elspeth? Call me if you need me—for anything. You’ve got my beeper number.” After a level, ominous look at Alek, Mark exited the apartment in a crash of thunder.