Tempestuous/Restless Heart (12 page)

The pair of them turned a lot of heads. It became apparent very quickly to Alex that more than one of the ladies in attendance coveted her date. Feminine gazes followed them with interest and envy, clinging to Christian’s elegant person. He either didn’t notice or had grown so accustomed to female scrutiny that it no longer fazed him. It certainly fazed Alex. She didn’t like the idea of other women homing in on her date. And she felt a horrendous surge of jealousy when she realized that more than one of those ladies probably knew Christian on intimate terms, given his reputation.

I’m in love with him
, she thought with renewed wonder as she watched him laugh at something Carter Hill had said. She’d known it for days, of course. If she was honest with herself, she would have to say she’d been in love with him since that day in the meadow, or even before that. She’d been attracted to him from the first. The day he’d held her after she told him about her past had tipped her heart over the edge. How could she not love him when he had given her the kind of unqualified support not even her husband had been able to manage? He hadn’t rejected her or blamed her or found her fundamentally flawed in some irreparable way.

He had told her he loved her, but she hadn’t quite let herself believe it. Words like love came easily to men like Christian. And a part of Alex just couldn’t quite believe her life could include the handsome, wealthy son of an earl. It was just too good. What had she done to deserve him? She kept thinking there had to be a catch, that eventually the other shoe would drop. But what if he really meant it? What if what they had between them was truly something special?

A shiver of hope ran through her, pebbling her skin in spite of the heat of the Virginia evening.

“All set for tomorrow, honey?” Tully Haskell’s voice boomed down on her from above.

Alex jolted out of her trance and turned to look up at him. Tully’s version of black tie was a black, western-cut suit and a bolo tie snugged up to his flabby throat. The overall effect might have been trendy and stylish on a younger, trimmer man. Tully tainted it toward the vulgar. He clutched a champagne glass and one of his omnipresent cigars in one hand, leaving the other free to pat Alex’s bare shoulder.

She moved away from his touch on the pretense of changing position and gave him the most businesslike smile she could scrape together. “I hope so, Mr. Haskell. Duchess will handle everything well. I’m afraid we may be asking Terminator to do too much too soon.”

“Nonsense,” Tully barked, his mouth tightening, eyes flashing for the briefest instant.

Alex didn’t miss the look, though she erased it quickly. Tully didn’t like her questioning his authority. He had been determined his horses would perform in the Green Hills show. They were his ticket into the realm of the sport’s elite. He didn’t care how his decision affected the horses. With Tully the end always justified the means. So went the relationship between owners and trainers. Some were reasonable and understanding. The majority wanted miracles worked at bargain rates.

“Don’t you look pretty tonight, Alex,” he said, eyeing her appreciatively. “By golly, I believe this is the first time I’ve seen you dressed up like a woman. Looks damn good on you.”

The backhanded compliment couldn’t inspire a thank you from Alex. Every doubt she’d had about wearing the dress rushed back to her with a vengeance. Instead of feeling lovely and special, she felt cheap. She was suddenly overcome by the feeling that the makeup she had applied so sparingly was as overdone as a ten-dollar tramp’s.

Christian turned toward her to say something, but the words died on his tongue as he took in the look on her face. All he had to do was glance up to find the root cause of her tension.

“I say,” he drawled, lifting his nose in disdain. “Aren’t they checking the invitations at the gate?”

“Read it and weep, you arrogant limey bastard,” Tully growled, plucking his engraved invitation out of the inner pocket of his jacket and waving it tauntingly in Christian’s face.

“Really,” Christian said, putting on every snobbish air that had been bred into countless generations of Athertons, “the alarming decline of social standards is truly appalling.”

Haskell sneered at him, handing his champagne glass to a passing waiter without even glancing at the man. “Yeah? Well, I don’t give a rat’s rump what you think. Eat that with your tea and crumpets, your lordship, while Alex gives me the pleasure of this next dance.”

Alarm slammed Alex’s heart against her breastbone like a paddle ball. Dance with Tully Haskell? Let Tully Haskell put his meaty paws all over her? Her throat constricted as she fought the urge to gag. The last thing she wanted to do was let down the trainer/owner barrier she had struggled to maintain, even if it was only long enough for one brief turn around the dance floor. But how could she refuse the man without offending him?

He reached for her wrist, but Christian stopped him, his fingers closing forcefully on Haskell’s forearm. All traces of the dandy fell away from Christian like a crumbling shield. He radiated power and authority. The intense dislike he felt for the older man was more than evident in the curl of his lip and the steel in his eyes.

“Not if you value your precious, tenuous standing in this group,” he said with deadly quiet.

There was no need for him to raise his voice, Alex thought with awe. The force of his personality was enough to turn the heads of a number of people nearby. Haskell might have been physically larger, but he was no match for Christian in this kind of a fight, and the quick darting of the man’s dark little eyes betrayed the fact that he knew it.

Contempt added another facet to Christian’s expression as he spoke again. “My connections make yours look like so many knots in a ratty bootlace, Haskell. I wouldn’t think twice about getting you chucked out of here for trying to steal my date.”

“Why don’t you let the lady decide?” Tully said, his eyes sliding to Alex with a mean gleam in them.

It was a classic damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t situation. Alex looked from one man to the other and took the only option that made any sense at all.

“If you gentlemen will excuse me, I have to go powder my nose.”

She crossed the lawn with the steady flow of guests going to and from the Hills’ red-brick Georgian mansion. Taking her time, she browsed through the entry hall, eventually making her way to the line for the rest room, where she exchanged idle chat with several ladies about the ruinous effects of heat and humidity on hairdos. When she hiked back toward the tent some time later, her heels punching down into the finely manicured lawn, she hoped cooler male heads had prevailed.

Tully had taken root where she’d left him, no doubt awaiting her return. But before he could spot her, Christian intercepted her and steered her in a different direction.

Alex frowned at him, her full lower lip pouting in disapproval. “I wish you wouldn’t bait Haskell that way.”

Christian made a face. “He’s a pompous, over-blown bully—”

“Who pays his training bills on time.”

“You know how I feel about that.”

“Yes. And you know how I feel about it.”

“Then there’s no point in discussing it, is there?” He shrugged off his bad mood and treated her to one of his fabulous smiles, complete with twinkling blue eyes. “You can’t blame me for wanting you all to myself, can you, darling? You are, by far, the most dazzling beauty here tonight.”

“You’re a liar,” Alex said, sparkling at his compliment, “but I love the way you do it.”

“Do you?” The heat in his gaze went up ten degrees as he pulled her closer, one hand settling possessively on the small of her back. “Well, we both have something to look forward to later on then, don’t we?” he murmured, the slow curving of his mouth so frankly sensual, it made Alex’s pulse rate pick up a beat. He stared at her as if there weren’t two hundred other people milling around them talking and laughing, as if he wanted to take her right there and then and make wild, sweet love to her.

Alex’s nerve endings hummed with sexual awareness. All it ever took from him was a look, a word, a touch, and she was on fire for him. It was an addiction, an obsession, and she was powerless to stop it, helpless even to fight against it.

“Dance with me,” he commanded, taking her hands in his.

Alex glanced toward the band. “But there’s no one else dancing.”

“Good.”

He led her onto the dance floor, not allowing her to bow to her fears of drawing attention to herself. Still holding her hand, he leaned toward the female singer of the group, a woman with Jessica Lange’s looks and Bette Midler’s voice, and whispered a few words in her ear. When he drew back, the woman was smiling warmly.

“Everyone is staring at us,” Alex muttered as Christian drew her reluctant body into his arms. She held herself formally stiff, refusing to snuggle against him the way he wanted her to.

“So they are,” he said with an arrogant shrug. “Let them look their fill. What do I care? I only have eyes for you.”

Looking up at him Alex nibbled at her lip, destroying her lipstick and not caring. She knew what he was saying, and she loved him for it. He didn’t care who saw them or who knew about her past or what they thought about it. Her importance in his life far overshadowed theirs.

The band started the number with the slow, bluesy strains of a piano. And Alex’s eyes filled with tears as the singer’s voice started in, strong and smoky, singing from her soul. “When a Man Loves a Woman.”

Christian began moving, sensually, drawing Alex to him with his body and with the intensity of his gaze. His hands splayed over her hips, guiding her, inviting her.

As the drum and bass joined in, Alex slid her arms up around his neck and began moving with him, without reservation, without a thought to what anyone else might be thinking.

Everyone else had ceased to exist, had faded away into the heat of the night. There were only Christian and herself and the sexy, heartfelt music that surrounded them with its sensual, steady beat. There were only the two of them and the music and the feelings that flowed between them and twined around them. And when the song faded away, she leaned up into his kiss, giving him her thanks without words, giving him her love.

What better time to tell him, she thought as her feet settled onto the floor. Her heart thumped with anticipation as she looked up at him. Her hands twisted themselves into a knot. “Christian, I—”

“Well, by golly, you did it, pal,” a slightly inebriated Robert Braddock said as he slapped Christian on the shoulder. “Honest to Pete, I didn’t think even you could pull it off, but you did.”

“Do what?” Alex asked, a strange kind of foreboding flooding her. She stood a step or two back from Christian, unable to go to him because of Braddock.

“Robert,” Christian said in a warning tone. He held himself absolutely still, as if that would somehow make Braddock lose interest and wander away. “Now is not the time.”

“The time for what?” Alex’s dark brows drew together in confusion and apprehension.

Braddock waved off his friend’s suggestion as he took a gulp of champagne. “I’m a gentleman,” he said, his voice slurring a bit. “A gentleman always makes good on his bets.”

With his free hand he dug a wad of bills out of his pants pocket and stuffed them messily into Christian’s breast pocket.

“One iceberg properly melted. You have my congratulations.”

Suddenly the truth dawned, descending on Alex with a wave of numbing cold. Unfortunately the pain cut through it quickly, and she was besieged by equal blasts of hurt and humiliation. She had been the object of a wager. A challenge. A stray female to be speculated over and made sport of.

The other shoe had dropped with a resounding thud.

She stared at Christian, not wanting to believe the guilt written all over his face. She loved him. He had battered down every defense she had. He had bullied and begged and bribed her into falling in love with him. And it had all been a game to him.

“Alex—” he began, reaching out toward her. The look in her eyes was ominous.

“You bastard!” She spat the word and slapped him across the face as hard as she could.

“Alex, wait!” he called, all too aware of the crowd that was staring and straining hungrily for any tidbit of gossip. Damn them all to perdition. What he had to say was no secret. “Alex, I love you!”

His words wrenched away the last shred of her control, and the tears she had tried so hard to hold at bay spilled over their barriers and streamed down her cheeks as she pushed her way through the crowd. Love. There wasn’t any for her here. There wasn’t any for her anywhere. She should have known better.

“Damn you, Braddock!” Christian wheeled on his fellow trainer.

Robert’s brows rose over slightly unfocused eyes. “What’d I do?”

“Ruined my entire bloody life, that’s all!” Christian bellowed. He pulled the prize money out of his pocket and threw it to the floor like so much scrap paper, then stamped on it with his elegant black Italian shoes.

“You mean you really do love her?” Braddock asked in classic bachelor amazement.

“I really do love her, you imbecile!”

“Well, shoot, Chris,” he whined. “That’s no fun.”

Christian’s hands lifted, intent on throttling the life out of his friend. He groaned with the effort to hold himself back, torn between sweet revenge and cursed respectability. Then his gaze caught the nearly full champagne glass Braddock held, and his hands changed their course.

With one he snatched the glass from Robert’s hand. With the other he hooked the front of the man’s trousers. The chilled champagne went down inside Braddock’s pants in a freezing golden stream, but Christian didn’t waste an extra second to catch the look on Robert’s face. He had to find Alex.

nine

ALEX ABANDONED HER SHOES AS SOON AS
she had pushed through the party crowd. Barefoot, she ran across the lawn, away from the tent, away from the house. Her first impulse was to run to the stables, but as she caught sight of the lights she remembered that they were full of show horses and dozens of grooms. She veered instead for the row of dark buildings that sat behind the Hill mansion, the plantation dependencies that had been preserved for their historical value. Reaching the second one, which had once been the kitchen, she stopped running and slumped against the end of the brick building. With the moon on the other side she was swallowed up by the shadow the building cast. Enveloped in darkness, hidden from prying eyes, she was free to cry out all the hurt.

Why did this have to happen? She’d tried so hard to avoid being made a spectacle of again. Hadn’t she? She couldn’t think of a single thing she’d done to attract attention to herself since she’d moved to Briarwood. She hadn’t gone asking for men to call on her. She’d done just the opposite, avoiding them, trying to discourage them.

And they had seen her as a challenge.

It
was
her fault.

She turned and pressed herself against the wall, the rough brick biting into her cheek and palms. And she sobbed, torn by abject, soul-wrenching misery. She sobbed for the things she’d lost, for the heart that lay broken in her breast, for the love she had that never seemed to find a worthy home. And she cried harder because she didn’t understand the reasons why. She had never meant for any of it to happen. She tried to be a good person, tried to mind her own business. But why did these things keep happening to her then, if it wasn’t something she did or said or thought?

Wiping back one wave of tears she looked down at the dress she wore, barely able to see the outline in the dark of the shadows. A hundred women could have worn it and felt special. She felt tainted, ashamed that she had ever put it on. She pushed her palms down the front of it, cringing as if it disgusted her, as if she could push it away and have her old baggy clothes magically appear in its stead. But the dress remained, tangible evidence for the old recriminations that came flooding back to ring in her ears.

“You’re too flamboyant, Alexa.”

“You’re too sassy, Alexa.”

“You were asking for it.”

“But I wasn’t!” she whispered in tortured anguish, pressing her hands to her face as the tears came fresh and hot.

She sobbed until she had no tears left to shed, until her head was throbbing and her eyes ached. And then she just stood there, exhausted, nothing left of her inner wall of strength but rubble. She sagged against the brick, not caring that it cut into the bare skin of her back, listening to the cicadas sing in the hot, fragrant summer night.

In the distance she could hear the band playing, the sound rising above the murmur of the crowd. The low thrum of the bass, the vibrant wail of the singer’s voice, an occasional crash of a cymbal. Closing her eyes, she relived the dance she’d shared with Christian. For five glorious minutes she had been deliriously happy and in love, soaring higher than she ever could on a horse. And an instant later it had all come crashing down. The heart that had been bursting with joy now lay in a cold, crumbled ruin. The love she had been so ready to give was back inside its little locked box, not to be taken out again for a long, long time.

There were no more tears. Only a pure, piercing ache from which she knew there would be no escape.

The sound that came to her from nearby didn’t penetrate immediately, not until she heard the low, rough voice of a man swearing under his breath. He’d bumped into something in the dark and was cursing. Alex brought herself to attention, her whole body straining to hear. He was at the first building in the row, the icehouse. She couldn’t see him clearly but was able to distinguish his shape as he moved along the back side of the building where the darkness was intensified by a row of tall crape myrtle shrubs.

Her traitorous heart gave a lurch at the thought that it might be Christian coming to find her. She dismissed both the thought and the sentiment as she inched along the wall intending to slip around the front side of the kitchen, where she would be completely out of view to the man who was approaching. Christian wouldn’t come skulking up the back of the buildings if he was looking for her. He would come striding up the path like a prince, demanding in that autocratic tone of voice that she come out of hiding. At any rate, he wouldn’t come looking for her. His game was up. Anyone else who had a reason for stalking around in the shadows Alex had no desire to meet.

She glanced at the bright moonlight that fell on the path. She would be in plain sight for an instant as she moved around to the other side of the building. Old instincts of flight and self-preservation rose up inside her as the crape myrtle trees rustled just fifteen feet away. She realized with a stroke of chilling fear just how vulnerable she was, far removed from the party and the safety of the crowd. Beyond these unused buildings lay nothing but dense forest. Christian, if he even cared, had probably decided she’d caught a lift home. No one would miss her until morning.

Swallowing down the knot of fear in her throat, Alex took one last glance in the direction of the man and slipped around the edge of the building. As she turned to run she slammed head-on into a wall of masculinity. Gasping, too terrified to scream, she bolted backward only to be caught in his arms and held.

“Alex!” Christian exclaimed, his relief plain in his voice. “Thank God! I’ve been searching everywhere for you!”

She said nothing but darted a nervous glance in the direction of the icehouse. Whoever had been there was gone. The trees were still. It had probably been one of the gentlemen too impatient to wait in line for the rest room.

“Darling, we’ve got to talk.”

“What’s there to say?” Alex asked tiredly. “It seemed pretty self-explanatory to me. I won you a nice wad of money. You should be happy.”

“Oh, hang Robert and his stupid bet,” Christian said fiercely, unwittingly tightening his grip on her upper arms. “It’s got nothing to do with us.”

“Oh, really?” Alex arched a brow. Her tone was one of icy sarcasm. “I think it’s got quite a lot to do with me. The Italian Iceberg—isn’t that what your pals call me?” she asked bitterly. “You’ll be quite the hero with them now, won’t you? But of course, you’re already a legend among their ranks. How many notches on your bedpost are there now that you can count me?”

“Dammit, Alex, stop it!” Christian said, shaking her. “It’s not like that!”

She stared up at him as she wrenched herself free of his hold. “Isn’t it?”

“I forgot about the bloody bet as soon as I’d met you.”

“Sure, you did,” she said with a sneer. “That’s why you were so insistent about me going out with you. That’s why you hounded me until I agreed to come to this stupid party with you.” She enumerated his sins, ticking them off one by one on her fingers. A new supply of tears rose as she glanced down at herself. The shimmer of sequins and taffeta was like moonlight reflected on a lake. “Your pride must have really been on the line for you to go to all the trouble of buying this dress. You had to have lost money on the deal.”

Christian ground his teeth at her stubborn refusal to listen. It pricked his pride to think how quickly she’d believed the worst of him, how quickly she had discounted everything that had passed between them. “Do you honestly think if I’d remembered the bet, I would have subjected you to that scene on the dance floor?”

“No,” she murmured and smiled ruefully at his sigh of relief. “You’re much too British for that. You might be a bastard, but your manners are impeccable.”

“Alex—”

“Frightfully bad form on Robert’s part, though, wasn’t it?” she said, mimicking his upper-crust accent.

Christian’s broad shrug was a gesture of supplication. “Alex, what do I have to say to make you believe me when I tell you I love you?”

“There isn’t anything you can say. I’ve seen just how much you love me—enough to bet me to win.”

She reached behind her to the nape of her neck, unfastened the heavy gold chain of her necklace, and held it out on her upturned palm for Christian to take. The fight draining out of her, she murmured, “I’ll send the dress back tomorrow.”

Christian looked at the coil of gold and dark stones in her hand but didn’t reach out for it. His heart ached abominably. There was a horrid pressure behind his eyes. Gads, this love business stank to high heaven! His life had been so much less complicated before. There was a great deal to be said for being a carefree bachelor. Affairs were light and fun with clean breaks at the end of them. There would be no clean break with Alex. It would be ragged and bloody, and when Alex left, she would be dragging his heart with her by the ties of love that had bound him to her. He’d never felt so desperate in his life.

He stared into her eyes feeling bleak and lost and guilty. Guilty! Blast it, he hadn’t known what guilt was until he’d met Alex! She had him feeling it on a regular basis. Why should he want to go on enduring that?

Because he loved her.

He loved her, and she was going to walk away.

She had managed to arrange her face into the cool, emotionless mask he remembered from when they’d first met. Slowly she turned her hand over, and the necklace spilled to the ground in a river of glimmering gold. He watched it fall and felt it in his heart when it hit the grass.

“Alex, don’t do this.” He whispered because he didn’t trust his voice. He kept his head down and his eyes trained on the ground, because he didn’t know what would happen to him if he watched her turn and go.

“Just tell me one thing,” Alex said, needing to know more than she needed to flee. “Is there something about me … something I did… ?”

The only thing that could have cut through Christian’s own pain was Alex’s. His concern for her had overridden his own selfish needs almost from the first. So his head came up at the strain in her voice, the uncertainty, the hurt. Each of those emotions was reflected in the depths of her wide, dark eyes. Her lush mouth trembled with vulnerability.

Good Lord, she was blaming herself for this fiasco! If he ever got his hands on Robert Braddock again, he wouldn’t try to keep from throttling the bastard, he’d do the job proper, then dance on his grave.

“Alex, the bet was nothing more than an idiotic challenge between two overgrown adolescents who should have had sense enough to know better. I didn’t see the harm in it. I thought we’d get to know each other, go out, have a few laughs. I didn’t count on falling in love with you. I’ve never been in love,” he admitted plaintively. “I’d say it’s bloody awful right about now, but I do love you, I can’t stand the idea of you not believing me!”

She wanted to believe him. In spite of all the pain and all the doubts, Alex knew she wanted to believe in him. It wasn’t a comforting thought. He’d made a fool of her. He’d made her doubt herself. He’d crushed her heart.

Memories came back to make a bid on Christian’s behalf. He had listened to the story of her ordeal with compassion and sympathy. He’d held her while she’d cried. He had reawakened her to the joys that could be shared by a man and woman. He’d made her feel like someone special again, like a woman, like someone to be cherished and delighted in instead of someone to be ashamed of and embarrassed by. He’d held her in front of everyone in their world and made it more than clear that his feelings ran deep, that he didn’t care who knew it or what they thought.

When a Man Loves a Woman.

Heaven help her, how badly she wanted that to be true.

She looked up at him with her heart in her eyes, the moonlight catching her full in the face, stark and white, hiding no secrets, hiding no tears. Christian stepped closer, holding her gaze with his. He lifted his hands to cup her face, his thumbs gently brushing along her cheekbones. Moving closer still, he slid his palms slowly down the column of her throat, over her shoulders, and down her bare back. His fingers traced the low vee in the back of her gown and pressed gently, drawing her near.

“I love you, Alex.” He murmured the words against her lips, feathered them along her cheek, brushed them across her forehead. He pulled her full against him in an embrace that was both fierce and tender and whispered into the lush, scented mass of curls atop her head. “Believe me. Please, believe me.”

Alex pressed her cheek to his chest. Through the warm, damp fabric of his dress shirt she could feel the solid strength of him. She could hear his heart beating a little quickly as he waited for her answer. Wrapping her arms around his lean waist she hugged herself to him. It might have been smarter to walk away. It might have been safer to leave him. But the thought of living without him, of going back to the life she’d had before him, was so cold and lonely. If there was a chance he could love her, she needed to take it.

“Alex?”

He whispered her name so softly, she might have imagined it. “Yes,” she answered, just as softly. “I believe you.”