Texas Rose (5 page)

Justin, Justin, Justin, she struggled to remember.

It did no good.

Her heart started racing from the moment contact was made. Damn it, why couldn't she have more control over her own body? She was attempting to prevent World War Three back home—why couldn't she keep that foremost in her brain?

But it wasn't her brain that was the problem, it was the rest of her, and the rest of her had missed him something awful. Missed him even as she'd told him goodbye on the back steps of the library. The place had been her choice because it was nice, safe, neutral territory where she felt he couldn't suddenly vent his anger or, worse, sweep her into his arms and do exactly what he was doing right at this moment.

Melting her in the heat of his kiss.

Damn it, why couldn't she remember what Justin looked like? She was supposed to be thinking of her brother, not of what it had felt like to make love with Matt.

She had nothing to cling to, nothing to extinguish the fire that was springing up in her loins, nothing to cool the heat that was surrounding her, making her long for what had so recently been hers.

Matt had somehow pulled her into his arms when she wasn't looking and now it wasn't just their lips that were touching, but their bodies, too. She could feel his hard contours pressed against her soft, willing curves and all she could think of was the last time they had made love.

All she could long for was the next time.

But there wasn't going to be a next time. Ever. Why couldn't she remember that? Why was she betraying herself and everyone who mattered like this? She was supposed to be the strong one. Still waters ran deep and all that.

Still waters—nothing. She was sinking and sinking fast.

He wanted to take her, right here, right now, on this finely covered table amid the dishes of half-consumed chicken and untouched dessert. Rose was the only sustenance he needed or would ever need. He'd been hungry all these days without her and now he desperately wanted to fill himself with the taste, the smell, the touch of her.

She wanted him. Matt knew that, felt that. He had all the proof in the world right here in her lips, in the way her body leaned into his.

She wanted him.

But why was she trying so hard to deny this rare thing they had together? Why was she so bent on resisting him? And why had she run away?

It didn't make any sense to him.

The hell with sense, with decorum. They were alone together, beneath the stars, twenty stories above an improbably lush park in the heart of the busiest city in the country. He'd heard the front door close, knew that Beth Wainwright wouldn't be back for hours. She'd assured him of that.

They had time to make love. He had time to convince her that she belonged to him, and he to her.

Fear washed over Rose, chasing away some of the more erotic feelings skewering her. Fear had been summoned by those same erotic feelings. This couldn't go any further. She was going to lose it at any second and she knew it. Matt had always had this power over her, right from the very beginning.

Right from the first time he'd kissed her and stolen any inclination toward resistance she'd had.

Well, it couldn't happen again. She wouldn't allow it. She'd grown up a great deal in the last few months, especially the past six weeks. And now those consequences that had once been nebulous ghosts on the horizon had become a solid reality that threatened to come down and smother her.

Desperate to break free before it was too late, Rose wedged her hands against his chest. It took her a second to summon her breath, which had evaporated in the heat of the moment.

“All right,” she declared, “I let you kiss me. Now will you go?”

Matt held her fast, unwilling to let her or the moment go. “You didn't ‘let' me, Rose. You wanted me to kiss you.”

She threw herself into the role of the contrary little witch and doubled her fists to beat on him. “You egotistical—”

Releasing her waist, he caught her by her wrists
before she made contact. His eyes stopped her far more effectively than his gesture.

“You wanted me to kiss you,” he repeated, “almost as much as I wanted to kiss you. Why don't you just stop playing these games and come back with me to Mission Creek?”

With all her heart, she wanted nothing more.

Didn't he see how hopeless all this was? Even without the baby to complicate things. “So I can do what? Meet you in out-of-the-way places and steal a few minutes together?”

He didn't want things to change. They'd been so good. “What's wrong with that?”

With a sudden jerk, she pulled away her hands. “Everything. Look, that kiss proved nothing except that I'm physically attracted to you. I'm attracted to chocolate, too, but if I give in to it too much, I break out. So I keep consumption down to a minimum.”

He tried to make sense out of what she was saying and came up short. “So you're telling me what? You want to see other men?”

She latched on to the excuse. Anything to keep him from taking her into his arms and kissing her again. Because this time she wasn't coming out again. “Yes, tons and tons of other men. Now will you go?”

He bought himself some time. “No.”

“No?”

He sat again at the table, this time to cold chicken.
“I've still got a vacation to spend. And you're still my guide.”

She stared at him in disbelief. “But I just told you—”

“I know what you told me and I respect that you want to see other men. I can understand that.” Each word drove a knife through his heart, but he pretended otherwise. “There was no commitment to see each other exclusively,” he reminded her.

He didn't love her, she realized with a piercing pain in her heart. It was his pride that was hurt, his pride that had made him follow her, nothing more. And since he now had proof that she was still attracted to him, that was all he wanted.

The big, dumb jerk.

To keep up the charade and keep from telling her what was in his heart, he started to eat the dessert, not even certain exactly what it was he was consuming.

“You know, you really should have some of this. It's delicious.”

She fought the urge to take the pie and shove it in his face. “No thanks, I lost my appetite.”

With that, she left the terrace. Before he could see her cry.

T
ired, Beth still paused to press her ear against the door of her apartment before putting the key into the lock.

Frowning, she remembered that it was a fire door and as such, she wouldn't be able to hear anything going on on the other side—if there was something going on on the other side.

She'd finished teaching her class hours ago. Rather than go home, she'd gone out for cappuccino with several of her students afterward. There'd been a time, she fondly recalled, when she would have stayed out until the wee hours of the morning, partaking of something a great deal stronger than coffee. But sadly, she mused, everyone had to make concessions to age, even she.

Once the students had started to drift away, saying something about having to get up early for class or work the next morning, she had opted to do a little romantic research and taken a ride around the park in one of the horse-drawn carriages.

It was just as lovely as she remembered it. The last
time she'd been on a carriage ride around the park, it had been with her last husband, Edward.

The best of the lot had been last, she'd mused, sentimentality getting the better of her. He'd been a keeper. Had he not died of a heart attack, she knew they'd still be married.

She could wish her niece nothing better than to have a love like the one she'd finally found with Edward.

Rose had it right under her nose, Beth thought. That Carson boy had a great deal of potential. She could tell just by looking at him. By what she saw in his eyes. It was true, they were windows to the soul.

She wasn't about to allow something as idiotic as an ancient feud ruin it for Rose, or him, either. She'd taken an instant liking to Matt. But that might have been because he reminded her a little of her last husband.

Beth sighed as she put her key into the lock. Turning it ever so slowly, she cracked the door open just a little.

Nothing.

Still exercising caution and discretion, Beth opened the door a little more until she could finally manage to slip through. Tiptoeing in, she looked around, hoping to see clothes strewn around, littering the floor all the way from the terrace to Rose's bedroom.

There was no litter, no clothes. Everything was as neat as she'd left it.

Battling disappointment, Beth marched out to the terrace and found that the candles had been blown out and only one of the plates looked as if it had been eaten from. The other had a salad that had obviously been toyed with, but never seriously entertained.

That would be Rose's, she concluded.

Beth sighed. Candlelight, moonlight and music and still nothing. This was going to be harder than she thought.

Crossing back into the living room, she closed the French doors leading to the terrace behind her. The people from Claude's would be by in the morning to clean up and take the dishes. She was far more concerned with the state of things within her apartment than what was left out on the terrace.

Were they up? Holed up in their separate rooms looking longingly at the wall that divided them? She could just envision them, too stubborn to make a move, sick with love for each other.

It was a scene worthy of a play. Maybe she'd tackle it someday. Right now, she had to tackle the protagonists of her would-be drama and make them see the light.

Beth caught her lower lip between her teeth, nibbling as she debated which of the two to talk to tonight. Or if she should exercise restraint and just let things go until morning.

Letting things go had never been her way, but she
wasn't entirely governed by her emotions. She knew the danger of pushing too much, too hard.

Her debate was abruptly aborted by the sound of a door being opened down the hallway.

The next moment she saw Matt's tall frame emerge from the shadows. He was carrying his suitcase in his hand.

It looked serious. Beth was beside him in an instant.

She gave him a long, studied look, her eyes resting on the suitcase. “I hope you're one of those eccentric people who likes to hold their possessions close to them when they go out for a walk.”

Finding Beth in the living room had taken Matt by surprise. He didn't think anyone would still be up at this hour. But then, this was the city that never slept, he remembered. Obviously that went for some of its residents, too.

Because he wasn't familiar with all of her married names and didn't know which one she went by, he called her by the one he knew she'd once answered to. “I'm going back home, Miz Wainwright.”

Not without my niece you're not,
Beth thought.

She placed her hand over his on the suitcase, her intention clear.

“Give me the suitcase, boy.” She saw the resistance in his eyes. “I don't want to wrestle you for it, but I will if I have to. And don't look at me like that.
I'm not some weird old woman. And I'm a lot stronger than I look.”

Matt laughed. “I wasn't thinking of you as weird, or old,” he added. He knew vanity when he saw it and although hers had a strange sort of endearing quality about it, he sensed her feelings could be hurt when it came to her age.

Beth smiled broadly at him, patting his cheek.
Such a dear boy.
“I knew there was a reason I took to you so fast. Put the suitcase down, boy, and sit for a minute.”

He didn't like refusing her, but there was no point in his staying a minute longer. Rose wanted him gone and he wasn't about to beg her to reconsider. A man had his pride, after all.

“It's best if I go.”

She wasn't taking that as his final answer. “You young people, you're all in such a hurry to go someplace and then when you get there, it's never what you thought you wanted. Stay awhile. Just give things a chance.”

He had given things a chance, had taken a chance and come out here to coax Rose back. If she'd had any true feelings for him, she wouldn't have needed much convincing. That kiss on the terrace would have been enough. It had been for him. But maybe Rose was right, maybe it was all strictly physical. People got over physical attraction in time.

“I was wrong to come here.”

She shook her head adamantly. “No, you're wrong to give up.”

She sounded so convinced. Had Rose said anything to her? “What makes you so sure?”

Sitting on the sofa, she patted the place beside her. He had no choice but to take the seat—and hope she would say something to convince him.

“I'm old—Well, older at any rate,” she corrected. “And I've been around the block more times than you've got fingers and toes, boy. Besides that, I've become a great judge of people. I wasn't watching the two of you for a whole minute before I got hit by the force of what's between you.”

She was an actress and given to drama and exaggeration, he reminded himself, refusing to get his hopes up without some kind of real proof. There was no polite way to tell her, so he kept his peace.

“She told me it was over, Miz Wainwright.”

“Beth,” she corrected. “Calling me Miz Wainwright makes me think of my mother and I am
nothing
like my mother,” she assured him.

Her mother was conservative and straitlaced. She'd stood beside one man all of her life and even as her mother took her dying breath, Beth had never been sure that she had loved her father, but she had stood by him, borne his children and his verbal abuse stoically. At her mother's deathbed, Beth had vowed that that kind of life would never be for her.

“Go on, I didn't mean to interrupt you.” She smiled at him encouragingly.

He cited the evidence he'd gone over in his mind more than a dozen times tonight. “Rose said it was over. She said it here, she said it in Mission Creek. I've got no choice but to believe her.”

Beth countered simply. “What did her eyes say?”

He stared at her, confused. He'd expected her to make an impassioned plea on the side of romance, not this. “Her eyes?”

“Yes, her eyes. A body can say whatever they want. Words are cheap, boy. You'll come to know that if you don't already. But what they feel is in their eyes—unless of course they're with the CIA, the way Clarence was.”

The woman changed direction faster than a tennis ball in a championship match. “Clarence?”

The sigh that escaped Beth's lips was wistful and incredibly youthful. She was momentarily taken back to a time when she was not yet thirty, not yet seasoned in the ways of the world.

“Clarence Montgomery.” She winked bawdily. “James Bond could have learned a thing or two from him. I know I did.” She realized that she was going off on a tangent. “Sorry, didn't mean to get off the track. Where was I?”

“You were asking me if I had looked into Rose's eyes,” he told her tactfully.

She beamed. “Oh, yes.” She was looking up into his now. “Did you?”

Rose had eyes like wild violets in the field. They were absolutely mesmerizing. “That's where I got lost in the first place.” His mouth curved in self-deprecating humor. “Funny thing is, I might never find my way back.”

Beth patted his hand reassuringly. “You will, boy, but not if you go running off home.”

They could go 'round and 'round about this all night, but it still wouldn't change things. “I wasn't running. I was being realistic.”

She pinned him with a knowing look. “You were throwing in the towel.”

Matt shrugged and looked away. “Maybe I just decided that I didn't need that vacation, after all.”

The pressure of her hand over his caught his attention. “Maybe not, but you do need the woman. And she needs you.” She lowered her voice. “More than you'll ever know.”

Was Beth just spinning tales, or was this based on something, Matt asked himself. “Why? What did she say? Did she say something about me?”

He sounded positively eager. Beth was tempted, sorely tempted, to tell him everything. But that would be betraying a confidence and even for the best of reasons, she just couldn't let herself do that.

Besides, there were other avenues for her to try first. Like that lovely carriage ride around the park.

“I looked into her eyes,” Beth told him, resting her case.

Eyes again. The woman was beginning to sound like a Gypsy fortune-teller, except that rather than using tea leaves or cards, she resorted to eyes. Nice gimmick, but he wasn't buying it.

“Well, I'm afraid I don't have that gift,” he said, getting up.

She caught his hand so suddenly, she threw him off balance. With a quick yank, she pulled him onto the sofa.

“That's all right, Matt. I've got it for you. Stay,” she urged in the face of his reluctance. “At least stay the night.” Beth looked toward the pitch-black world just beyond her terrace doors. “This is no time to go running off in New York City. The place has been cleaned up, I grant you, but this isn't Mission Creek by a long shot. Don't go looking for trouble.”

Especially if trouble was only a few feet away, Matt thought. In the room next to his.

Still, the woman had a point about leaving in the middle of the night. He didn't even have a plane reservation. He'd need to make that before he left. “Maybe you're right.”

She was beaming again, delighted that he'd caught on so readily.

“Matthew, my boy, you'll discover soon enough
that I am
always
right. And when I'm not, I just make myself right.” She winked, making him wonder if she was kidding or not. “Now get to bed. I've got your itinerary ready for tomorrow and you're going to need your strength.”

He figured it was useless to repeat his plan to leave in the morning. He had an uneasy feeling Beth would confiscate his suitcase and his boots if he said that.

And maybe she was right. Maybe he was leaving too soon, giving up too quickly. Maybe he was running away at that. Running from something that he couldn't quite identify, but that scared the hell out of him because of its intensity.

Better to leave than to stick around. Relationships took too much trouble—had always been his motto. It wasn't anymore.

He nodded, temporarily surrendering. “All right, I guess I can stay the night.”

Rising to her feet, she picked up the suitcase that was beside the sofa. “And then some. Now go on, git,” she said in her finest Texas accent, pointing down the hall to his room.

He laughed and kissed her cheek.

“Good night, Aunt Beth.” Matt took the suitcase from her hand.

Yes, she thought as she watched Matt walk down the hall toward his room, it was going to be all right. She was going to see to it. Rose could be stubborn, but as Archy had once shouted at her while she was
still living in the same house as he, there was no one under the sun more stubborn than she.

 

Rose woke up feeling more dead than alive.

She'd spent the better part of the night tossing and turning, unable to sleep because of the man who was only a few negligible feet away from her bed. A man she wanted, despite everything she'd said to the contrary, in her own bed.

And then when she'd finally managed to doze off in the wee hours of morning, a bout of nausea had overtaken her, sending her running to the bathroom to commune, headfirst, with the porcelain bowl while simultaneously praying that Matt wouldn't wake up and hear her or suddenly be struck with the need to make use of the facilities himself.

She swore this baby was sapping everything out of her, making her look pale and drawn. Or was the hopelessness she felt whenever she thought of her situation responsible for the way she looked lately?

Rose sighed. She was just too exhausted to sort all that out today. She didn't feel up to dealing with anything, least of all with seeing Matt.

The knock on her door set her teeth on edge as if long, sharp fingernails scraped across a chalkboard in her brain.

“Go away, I'm dead,” she called, then pulled the pillow over her head, wishing her words were a prophesy. Could you die from misery?