The Best Way to Lose (17 page)

“You waited until there was a fence between us before you told me that. You know why, don’t you? Because you don’t trust me enough to wait until you had climbed over it.” There was a sharp bite to his tone. “Before you implant some noble interpretation in your mind about the reason I stopped, I’ll explain. It’s simple, really. Rape wasn’t what I had in mind. I was thinking more along the lines of spending a solid week in bed with you. It’d take at least that long to take the ache out of my system, and even then, it wouldn’t be enough.” Pilar blanched slightly, unnerved by his candor. His mouth twisted into a cold smile at her reaction. “That’s more in keeping with my crass character, isn’t it? It rather wrecks the genteel image you tried to give me, doesn’t it?”

“Not in the way you think.” But it was a subdued response as she stepped onto the bottom wire to crawl over the fence.

Trace didn’t help her this time, leaving her to manage on her own. But he waited, impatience seeming to ripple under the surface, his silence like an angry riptide. When her feet touched the ground on the other side,
Pilar turned to face him, raising her chin slightly.

“Someday maybe you can explain to me why you feel you have to deny that streak of decency,” she stated and started through the tall grass toward the car.

In a stride Trace was walking abreast of her and the impersonal touch of his hand was on her back, lightly steering her across the field. His chin was thrust forward at a hard, decisive angle while a grim silence ruled his expression. When they reached the car, he opened the door for her and held it. The steely gleam in his eye bothered her, and he hesitated at climbing in.

“All right, Pilar,” he said in a kind of challenge. “If that’s what it takes, we’ll do it your way.”

“What do you mean?” She eyed him, leery of his mood and his statement.

“I got your signals crossed and thought you wanted to be rushed into an affair. I forgot that the first time you only had in mind a one-night stand.”

“Did you have to bring that up?” She resented his reference to that disastrous night when she had secretly wanted to be seduced. “So much for your claim that it was forgotten,” she declared bitterly and quickly slid into the passenger seat.

The door was pushed shut. Her darting gaze watched Trace walk around the hood of the car to the driver’s side. He climbed in and angled his long body in the seat to face her, an
arm resting on the top curve of the steering wheel.

“Be honest with yourself for once, Pilar,” he insisted curtly. “You haven’t forgotten it anymore than I have. It’s colored every meeting we’ve had since it happened. After reaching that physical level, it’s pretty damned hard to back off to innocent hand-holding.”

“Trace—” Pilar struggled for some kind of denial while she stared straight ahead.

His thumb and forefinger caught her chin and turned it so she had to look at him. Within the deep intensity of his gaze, there was a gentleness that caught her.

“All right.” The phrase of concession seemed to be forced from him. “You want to be courted,” he stated. The line of his mouth was straight with the fierce check he had on his emotions. “I’ll try.”

There was a silent acknowledgment within her that Trace was right. She wanted to be courted, but not for the reason he probably suspected. There was no doubt in her mind that a strong sexual attraction existed, but she needed time to judge for herself whether it was right to let it develop into anything more.

His thumb slowly rubbed itself across her mouth, then followed the curved outline of her lips while his gaze tracked its movements with a disturbing interest.

“There’s a brutal irony in this, Pilar,” he murmured. “I refused to compete with my
father when he was alive. Now I’m in a position where I have to compete with his ghost.”

“No.” The denial rushed from her, bringing a quick frown to her forehead.

His mouth twisted a little. “The hell it isn’t so. He’s haunting us, in one way or another.” With her chin still resting on the crook of his finger, Trace leaned forward and took a kiss from her lips, as if making sure it was his image in her mind. Then he asked, “Will you have dinner with me tonight?”

“Yes.” After the tantalizing warmth of his kiss, her acceptance came as easy as breathing.

“Good.” He pulled back and squared around to start the car. “Where would you like to go? You name the place.”

“There’s a wayside restaurant on the highway not far from here. I’ve stopped there before. The food was always good. I’m not really dressed for anything else,” she said in a subconscious defense of her choice.

“That’s no problem.” Trace gave her a considering look as the car started forward. “We can always stop by Dragon Walk so you can change clothes before we go out to eat.”

Pilar had an answer ready for that. “I’d rather stop somewhere on the way home. It’s been a long time since breakfast. By the time we drove all the way back and I changed clothes, it would be late.”

“Whatever you say,” he returned smoothly.

At the restaurant Pilar caught a glimpse of her reflection in the glass panes of the window front as they entered. After nearly all day exposed to the summer elements, she was a disheveled mess. Before they were seated at a table, she excused herself to go to the ladies’ room and make the necessary repairs to her appearance with the odd bits of makeup in her purse.

When she rejoined Trace, her lips were shining with a fresh application of gloss, there was a dusting of blush on her cheekbones, and her dark hair was brushed until it glistened with blue-black lights. He was seated at a small table in a quiet corner of the restaurant. His gaze moved appreciatively over her, warming her in a way that was vaguely exciting.

“That was worth the wait,” he murmured.

“Flattery won’t get you anywhere.” But there was a slightly pleased smile on her face as she picked up the menu that had been left at her place setting.

“I’ve tried nearly everything else. It was worth a chance.” There was a dancing gleam in his glance, wicked and lively.

She pretended to study the menu. “What are you going to order?”

“I’m afraid what I want they don’t have on the menu.” It was in the suggestive tone of his voice that what he wanted was her.

Her gaze stayed glued to the menu print, but there was an odd little leaping of her pulse.
“You’re not making this easy, Trace.” It was a low, taut murmur of protest.

“I don’t want to make it easy,” he replied. The table between them was small and narrow. It was unavoidable that their knees and legs would touch and Trace took full advantage of even this inadvertent contact. “I want to make it hard, so this farce can’t continue for long.”

“And what makes you so certain it won’t become a tragedy?” Pilar challenged.

His expression became serious. “I’m not. And neither are you. That’s why you want to turn the pages so slowly.”

“And you don’t.” She couldn’t help searching his face.

A reckless smile played with the corners of his mouth as he took her hand and wrapped it in the largeness of his. “No, I don’t. I want to jump ahead and read the end.”

There was a marveling shake of her head, a gesture tinged with a certain wryness. “I swear, Trace Santee, you love taking wild risks.”

“I like knowing where I stand. I can take a ‘no.’ It’s the maybes that are killing me.” His thumb was absently rubbing circles in the center of her sensitive palm. It made her feel all raw inside. “There’s only so long you can postpone a thing.”

“I know.” There was a breathiness to her voice and a lack of will to draw her hand away.

“How much longer do you think I’m going to have to be content with just holding your hand, Pilar?” he questioned huskily.

“Some relationships never progress out of that stage.” She deliberately withheld any commitment to the future. It wasn’t wise. There was too much chance that the whole thing would blow up in her face tomorrow.

“I won’t buy that.” His gaze traveled with familiar intimacy over the front of her blouse, the material lifting with the quick rise and fall of her breasts. “It isn’t your hand you want me to hold.”

His remark only increased the inner agitation she was trying to conceal. “I wish you would stop making love to me with words,” she protested.

“I prefer the alternative to that myself.” His smile was slow. “But this is the closest you’ve come to admitting that you do, too.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth.”

The overhead light was suddenly blocked from their table. Pilar looked up, so oblivious to her surroundings that she hadn’t noticed the man who had approached. The minute she recognized him, instinct pulled her hand away from Trace’s.

“I hope I’m not intruding.” The action didn’t go unnoticed by Payne Forrestown, the corporate attorney for the Santee Line. There was a knowing light in his eyes as his glance went from one to the other. “I noticed you sitting here and thought I’d say hello.”

“That was thoughtful of you, Payne.” Trace
leaned back in his chair, aloofly studying the man. “I’d invite you to join us, but there’s only room for two at our table.” The message was clear that he wanted to keep it that way.

“That’s quite all right. I have to be on my way,” the lawyer assured him. “I had to spend the day in Jackson, so I need to get home. I only stopped in for coffee. It’s quite a coincidence seeing the two of you in such an out-of-the-way place.”

“It would seem so, yes,” Pilar agreed, smiling a little too widely.

The waitress paused at their table. “Are you all ready to order dinner?”

“Yes, I think we are,” Trace stated.

“I won’t keep you,” the attorney insisted and began to withdraw. “I’ll be talking to you the latter part of this week, Trace.”

Those few awkward moments after his departure were covered by the business of giving their meal order to the waitress. A silence reigned for several long minutes after that. Trace was leaning sideways in his chair, rubbing the back of his knuckles across his mouth in a thoughtful attitude. He barely looked at her at all. Finally his hand came down and he idly began to turn a knife over and over on the table, watching it. The air seemed heavy with unsettled currents.

“Would you like to explain again why you didn’t want to go home and change clothes?” he challenged quietly.

“What?” She was confused as to the purpose of his question.

“Or maybe you’d like to explain why you wanted to eat here?” Trace suggested.

“It was close by. What is all this cross-examination?” Pilar attempted to laugh off the gravity in his look.

“Are you sure you didn’t pick this restaurant because it was out of the way—and there was very little chance we’d be seen together by anyone we knew?” He made his meaning clearer, the hard angle of his jaw standing out.

“Possibly,” she admitted, lowering her gaze to the tabletop.

“You were afraid people would start talking about us.” It was close to an accusation. “Does the idea bother you?”

“Let’s just say that I’d rather they didn’t talk until there was something to talk about,” Pilar replied defensively.

“Do you think there isn’t already?” Trace seemed to mock her, and she flashed him an angry look. “Oh, Pilar.” He shook his head in a kind of wry exasperation. “Do you think they haven’t been talking before? Do you think no one has noticed the way I look at you—the way I have been looking at you for God knows how long? Don’t you think they’ve guessed that I’d bed you the first chance I got?”

“But you didn’t,” she reminded him and ignored all the rest.

“Now who’s bringing it up?” he countered roughly. “I had a feeling that night that I’d
lose either way I went. Maybe I should have made love to you and let you hate me afterward. At least then it would have all been over and I wouldn’t still be here, going through this hell.”

“If you don’t like it, you can always leave.” Despite the shortness of her answer, she was holding her breath.

“I’m not ready to trade the hell I know for the hell I don’t know,” Trace replied and released a long breath. “Any hope you might have had about keeping this secret just went down the drain, you realize that? Men can be worse gossips than women. Payne is going to be sure that we’ve snuck out here because we have something to hide.”

“I don’t know why you’re so upset about it,” she said stiffly. “Other people’s opinions have never mattered to you.”

“That’s true. I don’t care what people say or think about me, but I can’t be sure you won’t let their talk influence you,” was his response.

“I can make up my own mind.” Pilar resented his implication. If she was so easily swayed by public opinion, she would never have married Elliot, a man over twice her own age, but she chose not to mention that to Trace.

“Well, you’re damned slow about it,” he muttered.

“That’s your opinion.”

“Pilar.” An amused patience ran thickly through his voice, at odds with his previous
curtness. “Don’t you know why I’m suddenly in such a lousy mood? You aren’t like me. The kind of talk that’s likely to go around will probably hurt you, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.”

“There’s nothing either of us can do.” But her resentment faded at his explanation. It was frustration he was voicing.

The waitress came with their salads, and there wasn’t as much need for conversation to fill the silences. They talked infrequently through the meal and during the drive over the final miles to Natchez. Trace pulled the car up to the curb in front of an apartment building and switched off the motor.

“Is this where you live?” Pilar knew she was asking the obvious but it seemed necessary to hold at bay the sense of intimacy that accompanied the cessation of movement and the silence of the engine.

“I don’t need much more than a place to sleep.” Trace shrugged and half turned in the seat to rest his arm along the back near her head. “I don’t suppose you’d come in for coffee.”

“No.”

“Pilar, I’m not a boy. I can’t be satisfied with holding hands all night long.” It was offered as an excuse as he cupped his hand to the back of her head and held it steady while he kissed her with slow, languid passion. “Neither of us is used to being satisfied with
just that.” He breathed the words into her mouth.