After the Music (10 page)

Chapter Five

Tugging on a pair of gray slacks with a pullover V-necked striped top and boots, Sabina went downstairs the next morning, expecting to find Al at the breakfast table. Instead, she found only Thorn.

He was sitting at the head of the table, toying with a napkin, obviously waiting for something or someone. He was in denim today, rugged looking, a cowboy from out of the past. His shirt was half open in front, and she could see dark skin and a feathering of body hair. She remembered her own voice pleading with him to touch her. Her face flamed, her heartbeat shook her. She wanted to run.

His blue eyes jerked up and he found her watching him. "Sit down, songbird. Juan's just bringing breakfast."

There was no way out. She pulled out the chair next to his and sagged into it, turning over the cup in her saucer as Thorn poured hot coffee into it from the carafe.

"Cream or sugar?" he asked:

"I take it black," she said. "Caffeine keeps me going on tour. But I've never had the luxury of cream and sugar,"'

His eyes wandered over her shoulders, her bare arms. "Is that how you stay so thin?"

"I'm not a heavy eater," she said. Her eyes focused on the coffee cup, until he reached out unexpectedly and tilted her chin; up to his probing stare.

"It isn't fair to Al," he said quietly.

"What isn't?" she stammered.

"Wearing that," he said, indicating the engagement ring, flashing in the overhead light. "Not when you can want another man the way you wanted me last night."

"I did not-" she began defensively.

"Don't." He touched her mouth with a lean forefinger, and his eyes were stern and narrow. "Don't lie. I could have taken you if he'd waited another half hour to come home."

"Leave me alone, Thorn!" she burst out.

"I won't," he promised. He leaned back in his chair and lit a cigarette. "I can't. You won't take advice. So you can take the consequences."

"What are they?" she returned. "A night in your bed?"

"I'd love that," he said with genuine feeling as his eyes wandered hungrily over her face and made her flush with embarrassment. "It's been a long time since I've wanted a woman the way I want you."

"I'm not like that," she said with quiet pride.

"Yes. That makes it worse." He sipped his coffee. "Where are you from, Sabina?"

"New Orleans. Why?"

"How did you meet Al?"

"Jessica introduced us."

He shot her a piercing look. "Nice girl, Jessica. Did you know that she's in love with my brother?"

Her cheeks burned and the cup almost overturned in her hands.

"I see that you do," he persisted, leaning forward to flick ashes in the ashtray. "Doesn't it bother you, hurting her?"

"What do you care about Jessica's feelings? I didn't think secretaries mattered in your world."

"I don't like that," he said coldly, and his icy, pale blue eyes glittered. "I'm no snob, songbird."

"Oh, but you are, Mr. Thorndon," she assured him bitterly. "You have deep prejudices."

"Only about a certain type of woman, which has nothing whatsoever to do with breeding," he returned.

"Breeding," she scoffed. Her eyes lit up. "You'd probably just as soon breed people the way you breed bulls. You keep a portrait of a Hereford bull over your living-room mantel, but I don't see any pictures of loved ones on your walls. Don't people count with you, oil baron?"

His jaw tightened as he crushed out the cigarette. "You never will, honey," he said in a voice as smooth as silk. "Physically, maybe, but no other way."

"Thank God," she replied fervently.

His temper flared, but at that moment Al chose to join them at the table.

"Morning," he said with an ear-to-ear grin. "Breakfast ready?"

"Juan!" Thorn roared, his voice deep and piercing.

"Si, senor, I bring it now!" came the quick reply from the kitchen.

"When Thorn growls, everybody jumps," Sabina murmured dryly, with a pointed glance in Thorn's direction. "You may learn how, before it's over," he warned her. "You two aren't arguing, are you?" Al asked Thorn. "Future in-laws ought to get along."

If looks could kill, Al would have dropped dead from the impact of Thorn's angry glare.

"Don't listen for wedding bells too soon, brother," he warned Al. "There's plenty of time. You're young."

"Who made you wait?" Al asked him with a calculating stare. "Remember that stacked blonde you wanted to marry, and Dad threatened to disinherit you? You ran off with her, but he followed and propositioned her, right in front of your eyes. He told her that you wouldn't inherit anything if you married her, but that he had plenty of money, and she switched loyalties on the spot. Is that why you're so worried about me making the same mistake?"

"Go to hell," Thorn said softly. He got up from the table and walked off without a backward glance.

"How horrible," Sabina said under her breath. Her heart ached when she considered the pain Thorn must have endured at such a young age.

"Yes, it was, but he's let it lock him up for life," Al said quietly. "He's hardly human these days, all because of one woman who betrayed his trust. He's got to stop living in the past."

"He'll get even," she said.

He smiled softly. "Not in time," he promised. "Not nearly in time. Let's eat and we'll hit the trail."

They rode so far the ranch was out of sight. Thorn hadn't been seen since breakfast, and Sabina felt oddly sad that he'd gone without it. He must be starving. When they reached the fork in the trail, Al waved and rode on ahead. They'd agreed that if Thorn came looking, she'd say Al had decided to give his roan a workout and didn't want to force her to ride so fast when she was out of practice. She rubbed her arms, wishing she'd borrowed a jacket. It would be cold until the sun rose higher in the sky.

She reined in at the river that cut through the property and sat quietly in the clearing, watching the water flow lazily downstream. She got down to examine a set of tracks, and grinned to herself. Deer tracks. They must have watered at the river. Her grandfather had taught her how to track deer; she'd never forgotten. She felt like one of the old pioneers.

"Are you lost, city girl?" came a sardonic drawl from behind her.

She glanced around, not even surprised to find Thorn leaning over the pommel of his own horse, watching her.

"Nope. I'm tracking deer," she informed him.

He swung down out of the saddle, tilting his wide-brimmed Stetson at a jaunty angle over his eyes, and knelt down beside her. His batwing chaps spread out and his boots made a leathery creak with the motion.

"Tracks," he exclaimed.

"Sure," she told him. "That one's a buck. It's got a pointed, cloven hoof. The other is a doe; it's rounded."

"Who taught you that?"

"My grandfather. He used to take me tracking every fall, before deer season opened," she confessed. "At least, until he died." Her eyes grew sad with the memory. "At that time he was the biggest thing in my life. I worshipped him."

"What else did he teach you?"

"Oh, little things. How to tell when rain was coming, how to make things grow. He was a farmer."

Thorn got to his feet slowly, staring down at her with a confused expression. "You worry me."

"Why?" she asked, rising gracefully. "Because I know how to track deer?"

"Because you don't fit any mold I've ever seen," he said, lifting his chin and scrutinizing her. "Because I want you. I could almost hate you for making me vulnerable, even physically."

That was a shocking admission, but it was like him. He didn't pull punches. She wouldn't have expected it. He was a hard man, and it would have been someone like him a hundred years ago who would have tamed this land where they were standing, and fought off hostile forces, and made the fields green and bountiful.

"You're staring again," he said sharply.

"You're very much a man, Mr. Thorndon," she said, spellbound enough to be honest with him. "I've never met anyone like you before. The men in my world are shallow people. You're solid and honest. I meant it when I said I'd have liked you for a friend."

"No, you wouldn't," he said with a mocking smile. "You'd have liked me for a lover, and that's what we'd be already if you hadn't tangled yourself up with my kid brother."

"I don't think so," she returned. "I'm afraid of you. You take people over, you own them. I couldn't bear to be owned."

"I could make you like it."

And probably he could, but she wouldn't let herself think about that. Her gaze drifted beyond him, toward the meadow behind the banks that stretched to a long line of trees on the horizon.

"It's so lovely here," she said. "So quiet. How can you bear New Orleans after you've lived here?"

His jaw became taut. "I cope-with most things."

She turned back to her horse, but Thorn was in front of her before she got two steps, a solid wall she couldn't bypass.

"It's not that easy," he said, and his hard, lean hands caught her by the arms and held her in front of him. "Where's my brother?"

"He gave the roan its head. He'll be right back," she insisted.

"Not for a little while, Sabina," he whispered, leaning toward her. "Kiss me. I went to bed aching for you; I woke up hurting....Kiss me, damn you!"

His mouth pressed into hers, and none of the teasing foreplay of the night before was left between them. He lifted her against his lean, powerful body and his arms swallowed her while his mouth taught her new lessons in the art of intimacy. Suddenly, she felt his body harden against her, enticing her. Protesting, she twisted and his hand swept down to the base of her spine to hold her still, even as a groan burst from his lips.

He lifted his head, and his eyes frightened her with their wild glitter.

"Don't move against me that way," he whispered hoarsely. "It arouses me unbearably."

She blushed, but he bent his head again, and his mouth stifled the words she was about to utter.

Her fingers let go of his shirt to slide under it. She sighed as she felt the curly hair covering his muscles, and her fingers tangled in it. She felt his body tauten even more and sensed that he was reacting to the gentle movement of her hands. Her education in sensual things was sadly behind that of most people; there'd been no one to ask except girlfriends, and most of them knew as little as she did.

"Sabina, for God's sake, don't, baby," he whispered, stilling her hands. He drew away slightly, looking more formidable than ever, his eyes glazed, his face taut.

She slid her hands out from under his shirt, shaken by the fierce ardor she'd provoked, and by her headlong response to it.

She could hardly breathe and Thorn's heart was pounding like a trip-hammer. He laughed softly, strangely, and his chest rose and fell in irregular jerks. "You burn me up," he said huskily. "The smell of you, the feel of you...It's been years since I felt like this."

His words were flattering, but she was getting nervous. They were in a deserted place, where no one would look for them, and Al wouldn't be back for hours. There was a wildness in Thorn that she hadn't expected at the beginning, a reckless passion that matched her own free spirit.

"Thorn," she whispered.

His mouth took the whisper and inhaled it, opening her soft lips to a deep, slow, probing kiss. His hands slid down her sides to her hips and drew them lazily against his in easy, dragging movements. She was so lost in the warm teasing of his mouth that she didn't protest this time. His body and its responses and demands were becoming familiar now. He was like a part of her already.

"I've never made love standing up," he whispered in a voice that was deep and a little unsteady. "You make me wonder how it would be."

A tiny wild sound escaped from her throat, and he smiled against her lips. "I want you," he growled softly. His hands slid to the backs of her thighs and lifted and pressed until she thought she'd go crazy with the sweet, piercing pleasure. He laughed again, roughly. "I want you. I want to lay you down in the grass and let my body melt into yours. But that would be playing right into your hands, wouldn't it, witch woman? You'd love that, making me lose my head with you. You'd hold it over me like a scimitar...."

"Thorn!" she exclaimed, dragging her mouth from his. "I'm not like that, I'm not!" Her drowsy eyes sought his and she searched their cool blue depths slowly, remembering all at once what Al had said over the breakfast table about the blonde who'd betrayed Thorn. Her fingers lifted to his mouth, touching it gently, liking the hard warmth of it. "She was crazy, wanting money instead of you...."

His eyes flashed. The whispered words seemed to anger him. He caught her long hair and jerked her face up to his. "She was a tease, too," he said curtly. "A woman with an eye to the main chance.

The words came out like an insult, and she knew that whatever had been growing between them had wilted. "You're hurting me," she said quietly.

His nostrils flared and his face hardened, but slowly he released his cruel hold on her hair and let her move away from him. His gaze went down to the small fingers still pressed against his chest, and he lifted them away.

He wasn't a man at the mercy of his emotions now, she thought, watching him light a cigarette with cool, steady hands. He'd become as cold as stone.

His mouth curled slowly. "You've got one hell of a lot of spirit. Al may miss you, after all."

"He isn't going anywhere."

"No. But you are." He lifted his head, studying her insolently. "I'm working on a little surprise for you, tulip. Just another day or so, and I'll have everything I need."

"How exciting," she murmured. "I can hardly wait. Does Al know?"

The smile faded. "I don't want him hurt any more than he has to be. Not that you seem to mind playing around with me behind his back."

How could she tell him that the engagement was a bogus one, that Thorn appealed to her senses in a way that left her completely at his mercy? That she loved him, wanted him, needed him. It was a maelstrom of discovery that left her knees weak. It couldn't happen so quickly, could it? He was arrogant and ruthless and narrow-minded. But he was more man, pound for pound, than any male she'd ever run across in her life. Her eyes coveted the very sight of him. And because of that, she turned away and wouldn't let him see her face again.