Day Dreamer (21 page)

He was waiting for a logical explanation, when all she had was the truth. Celine pulled her knees up to her chest and began brushing sand off her toes.

“Well?” Despite the heat, Cord felt a chill run though him. He had a feeling that whatever she told him would not bode well.

“Yes, there’s more to it,” she admitted softly. “But I don’t know where to start.”

When he did not comment right away, she looked over at him. He was frowning in concentration, watching her as if he believed she had actually cursed Dundee and wondered what else she was capable of.

“Why don’t you start at the beginning?”

“I’m not certain when it all began, and I certainly don’t know why or how. All I know is that from my earliest memory, I have always been able to see images of other people’s pasts.”

She glanced over at him. If she had just told him she had grown another head he couldn’t have looked more skeptical.

“It’s more or less like fortune-telling in reverse,” she said, fighting hard to find words to explain. “When I was a little girl I realized the visions only came to me when I touched someone. Does that shock you?”

“Let’s just say if I hadn’t seen you use this … this power with my own eyes, I’d be certain you were having sunstroke. But I heard what you told Dundee and I saw what happened this morning when you held Bobo’s wife’s hand.”

“And?”

“Does it happen every time you touch someone?” Cord leaned on his elbows in the sand, his mind working, thinking back, racing ahead.

“It only happens when I will it, when I open my mind and let the images in. I rarely use my gift.”

“Gift?”

“My guardian, Persa, always called it that, although sometimes I wonder if it isn’t really a curse. When I was little, I thought everyone was like me. My mother soon convinced me otherwise.”

“When you held that girl’s hand today, I thought you were going to faint dead away. You lost all color. Does it cause you pain?”

“Only insofar as I can feel what the person who owns the images feels, although never as deeply as they did when the experience was new.”

“So you have the uncanny ability to eavesdrop on someone else’s memories,” His blue gaze was chilling. “When I first laid eyes on you, I felt as if you could see into my soul. Have you used this … this
gift
on me?”

Celine looked out to the horizon, unable to meet his eyes.

“Yes,” she finally admitted. “I have.”

He sat up.

It was a nightmare. Cord tried to fathom her lurking in his memory, seeing all the things he had fought so hard to hide from himself. Did she know all of it? The trials and loss that had caused him such pain—pain he had tried to hide behind a wall of detachment, or drown in a bottle.

“You’ve looked into my past? Crawled into my mind?”

“It wasn’t like that, Cord …”

He was visibly angry, more so than she had ever seen him. His cool-hearted detachment she could handle; this hard, angry man frightened her.

“When, Celine? When did you steal my memories?”

“When we went aboard the
Adelaide
, I wanted to know what manner of man I had married. And then the night of the storm at sea, when you held me in your arms … I hadn’t meant for it to happen, it just did. I was so exhausted I was not on guard and—”

In one lithe movement he pushed up and loomed over her.

“What about last night? Did you creep into my mind last night when we were—”

“No! I did nothing of the sort.” She hadn’t thought he could get any angrier, but he surprised her.

“Why not? It seems the perfect opportunity. Here.” He thrust his hand at her. “Touch me now and read my mind.”

“Cord, please, don’t do this—”

He whipped his hand back and indicated the emerald sugarcane field stretched out behind them. “I should have known things were too good to be true. The plantation is salvageable. I have a wife who pleases me in bed. I should have known by now that / never have this kind of luck. Is there anything else you have to tell me? Do you possess any more little secrets or hidden talents that I should know of?”

Secrets?

He was so furious that there was no way she could tell him why she had so readily agreed to take Jemma O’Hurley’s place, that she had married because she was afraid for her life and had to flee the police in New Orleans.

He didn’t wait for a reply, but headed for his horse. He was scared he might kill her, and was afraid at the same time that he might take her in his arms and forgive her everything just to have her beneath him again.

Celine pushed herself out of the sand and shook off her skirt as she hurried to catch up to him. He paid her no mind, simply gathered up his boots and shirt. When he had buttoned his shirt up again, he tied his boots to the back of his saddle, then reached for the reins.

Celine grabbed his arm. When he jerked away from her touch as though it had scorched him, his blatant rejection wounded her deeply. She protectively crossed her arms at her waist and pressed her palms against her midriff.

Persa had warned her that there were those who would never trust her, those who would view her with suspicion if they knew she could glimpse the shadows of the past hidden in their minds. The anger and betrayal she had seen in Cord’s eyes only confirmed Persa’s predictions. But from anyone else the rejection would not have hurt so much.

She tried to tell herself that he would calm down. She even tried to tell herself that it shouldn’t really matter what Cord thought since, no matter how much she might wish it were different, their marriage was not a love match. Why, then, did she feel as if she were coming apart inside?

She stared at his rigid stance, at the hard line of his jaw in profile. Then, when he slowly turned to stare down at her as if he had never laid eyes on her before, Celine realized with sudden, blinding insight that somehow, someway, over the past few weeks, she had fallen in love with Cordero Moreau.

She had never intended to love him, but surely she must, she reasoned, for why else would it matter to her what he thought?

Why else would it hurt so much to think that he might never touch her again?

What would he do if he ever found out she had done the one thing he had warned her not to do?

She had fallen in love with him.

“Cord, please. I promise, I’ll never open my mind to your memories again without your knowledge.”

He reached out, almost grabbed her shoulders, checked himself, and then quickly dropped his hands. He ached to touch her, to pull her to him and tell her it was all right. The witch. She had him hard for her even now that he knew of her perfidy, of her deception—and surely it was a cruel deception to keep such a dark secret.

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“Because we can’t go on like this for the rest of our lives,” she said softly.

He could barely hear her words over the roar of the rolling waves as they ground into the sand. Unshed tears shimmered in her eyes. He read something deep inside them that he didn’t want to acknowledge. She was looking up at him as if his forgiveness and trust truly mattered to her. It frightened him to know she cared.

He turned his back on her, intent on mounting up but knowing he would have to touch her, that he couldn’t very well ride off without her.

He was about to put a foot in the stirrup when Celine realized she could not let this go any further without trying to break through his anger and stubborn pride.

She closed off that accursed portion of her mind that wandered through the embers of memories and reached for him just as he shoved his foot in the stirrup. She was stirred in another more primitive, sensual way by the contact with his heated skin through the fine chambray of his shirtsleeve.

“Cord, listen …”

At her touch, heat reverberated through him. He jerked his foot down, widened his stance and, throwing caution to the wind, clasped his hands on her shoulders.

Her head was thrown back, her eyes closed. A single tear leaked from beneath her dark lashes and spilled off the slope of her cheek to fall lost in the sand at their feet. The sea breeze played havoc with her waist-length hair.

This woman, this witch, this wife of his, Cord thought, had been slowly weaving her spell around his heart—through his mind.

“You’re right, Celine,” he said, tightening his hold on her shoulders, forcing her to open her eyes and see him. “We can’t go on like this for the rest of our lives.”

His driving need overrode his fear. He pulled her even closer, stared deep into the secret depths of her eyes, taunted her with his nearness as he dared her to take another glimpse into his soul.

“You want to be a voyeur into my past, go ahead, sweet Celine. If that is the price I have to pay to bury myself in you, then there’s nothing for me to do but pay it.”

He slipped an arm around her and held her imprisoned against him while he reached down with his other hand and began to unfasten his trousers. Half expecting her to struggle, he found her blessedly still, waiting, staring back into his eyes.

“I want you, Celine. Damn you, but I want you again.”

She couldn’t argue, not when she was experiencing her own mounting need. He went down on one knee and pulled her down into the shade of the banyan. The sand was surprisingly cool, nothing like it had felt out in the hot sun.

There was so much she wanted to say to him, so much she wished his stubborn heart and mind would hear and accept, but she already knew him well enough to know that soft words of love and promises would only become links in a chain that would weigh like a shackle around his heart that he had never wanted to bear.

He wanted her. She needed him. Giving herself to him freely was the only way she could communicate with him now. Letting him satisfy himself in her was the only way she could reach out to comfort him, to give him solace. Sharing her body with him was the only way she could offer him all the love that he resisted out of fear of abandonment and lack of trust.

He let her go and drew back long enough to rid himself of his pants and reach for her skirt. The knots in the hem gave him pause, but he soon had them loosened and tugged the fabric up past her hips.

“Wrap your arms around me, Celine. Close your eyes and slip into my mind, but know this: I’ll only allow it when I can no longer deny myself the pleasures of your body.” He lowered himself over her, throbbing and ready, aching with need and hating himself for it.

“No,” she said, tossing her head from side to side even as she reached out for him. “I promise. I won’t—”

He reached between them, found her wet and stretched her gently, silencing her as he forced himself to put aside his anger for the moment. He had not always been an honorable man, but he had never physically harmed a woman.

He opened her wider, felt the slippery wetness between her thighs, picked up the rhythm of his fingers until she moaned and clung to him. With a thrust of her hips she told him without words that she wanted more, needed this as much as he did.

The breeze was tinted with salt and mist. The fragrance of frangipani wafted around them. Unable to wait, unwilling to weigh the consequences of his act, he buried his face in the curve of her neck and thrust himself into her. She was hot and tight and wholly his, at least for this one blissful moment in time.

She raised up to meet him when she felt him enter her, half expecting to feel the tearing, searing hurt of last night. But nothing of the sort happened. Just as he had promised, there was no physical pain, only the bittersweet knowledge that what he felt for her beyond his desire was worse than anger—it was nothing at all.

True to her promise, she did not slip into his mind, but concentrated instead on the sensations that he aroused in her. Cord began to move to a cadence set by the pounding surf, then, impatient with the slow, even tempo, he quickened his thrusts, reaching deeper with each powerful drive.

He was doing maddening things to her as he nipped at her neck and shoulder with his teeth. She could feel his warm breath against her neck, shivered as he traced his tongue around the pulse point in her throat.

She arched against him, wanting more, craving it all—his seed, his surrender, her own fulfillment. She called out his name, demanding he bring her release. Her cry was swallowed by the sound of the sea, carried away on the trade winds.

Fueled by her hunger, he couldn’t stem his own. He thrust deep, felt her quicken and pulse around him. He could not hold back, could not tempt or tease her, and so reveled in the pleasure of his release as he poured himself into her again and again.

He didn’t know if it was the surf he heard or the roaring of his own heartbeat. Forgetting his anger, he gathered Celine in his arms and held her close, smoothed her damp curls away from her face, felt the sand clinging to the back of her hair.

Then memory jolted him out of the idyllic moment. He let her go, rolled off her and sat up. He pulled his shirt over his head, tossed it aside and, buck naked, jogged across the sand and dove beneath the waves.

Celine sat up, unwilling to give in to the melancholy that threatened to settle over her. It was insane to grieve over the loss of something she’d never had and never intended to want. She got to her knees and pulled down her skirt, squinting against the sun as she watched Cord swim away from the shoreline with sure, steady strokes. His bare bottom flashed in the sunlight as he ducktailed up and then disappeared beneath the crystal blue water.

She envied him the freedom to escape into another realm, if only for a few minutes. She knew that as long as her memory was alive there was so much she could never really escape. But she also knew that it did little good to cry over the past—especially when an uncertain future was staring her in the face.

She stood up and hurried over the sand and then along the shoreline as Cord continued to swim with long, sure strokes, working out his frustration. She pulled up her skirt and waded through the waves at the edge of the beach. The water was warm but refreshingly cleansing as she walked in until it was nearly up to her waist. Juggling her skirt in one hand, she cupped water to splash over her face and neck, used it to tame her hair and then let it trickle between her breasts down the open neckline of the gown.