Eye of the Tiger (12 page)

He felt so solid and muscular, his skin cool under her searching hands, the thick growth of hair tangling in her fingers. She remembered much too well how that hair had felt against her bare breasts the night he’d made love to her. The memories were so intimate that she could hardly bear them. Even now, his heart was shaking him with its beat, and she remembered that it had been like that the night he’d taken her out.

“Keegan…” She began to protest.

“Shhh,” he whispered. His mouth moved tenderly across her eyebrows, her closed eyelids. “Don’t think. Touch me some more.”

He guided her hands down to his rib cage, his flat stomach. He shuddered a little as her hands caressed him there. But she hesitated as he tried to move them lower, until he put his mouth over hers again and probed delicately with his tongue.

“It’s all right,” he whispered. “It’s all right, baby, don’t be embarrassed….”

She let him move her hands again, and he shuddered, moaning as she touched him. Immediately she drew back, shocked at her own boldness, at his groan.

“I can’t!” she exclaimed.

“All right,” he murmured. He drew her completely into his arms and wrapped her up against him, letting her keep a discreet distance from his legs as he rocked her in his warm embrace. “You’re still very innocent in some ways, little one. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I like you just the way you are.”

“You mustn’t do things like that,” she said firmly. Her voice was trembling, which robbed the little speech of its force.

“Aren’t you curious about my body?” he asked quietly. “I am about yours.”

“You already know all there is to know,” she said tautly.

“No. I know a little.” He lifted his head and searched her shy, soft eyes. “I’d like to know you in passion, Ellie. I’d like to see you the way you saw me that night, burning up with fulfillment.”

Her face colored and she tried to tear out of his arms, but still he held her.

“I cheated you that night,” he said, searching her face. “I want to make it up to you.”

“I won’t sleep with you again,” she said shortly.

His eyes were calculating, watchful. He framed her face in his lean hands and made her look into his eyes. “I want to make love to you. That isn’t the same thing as sex.”

“It is with you,” she burst out. “You just want to get me under your thumb again, Keegan Taber. You don’t really want me, you just don’t want Wade to have me. You see, I know you now,” she continued coldly. “I know how your mind works. And what you have to offer me, I don’t want, is that clear enough? Now let me go!”

The fear was still there, behind the harsh words. He saw it, and hated it. He let her go because this wasn’t accomplishing anything.

“I have work to do,” she muttered, embarrassed. She turned and walked away. Later, she knew, she was going to be very angry with herself for this show of weakness. She could hardly bear the thought of having let him see it again. Why couldn’t she fight him off? Didn’t she have a single instinct for survival left in her body? She wondered if she was ever going to rid herself of the hopeless attraction she felt for him.

“Why won’t you listen to me?” he called gruffly. “You always assume you know exactly what I’m feeling, what I want. But I can’t begin to explain it to you, because you won’t hear what I’m saying!”

She turned to glare at him. “If I listen, I’ll just wind
up in the same shape I was in four years ago,” she replied. “I’m not stupid anymore, Keegan.”

“No,” he agreed, “just deaf and blind.” Frustrated, he stuck his hands in his belt and drew in a deep, slow breath. “Well, you may be stubborn, honey, but so am I. And despite all those fine words about how you feel and how you don’t feel, all I have to do is touch you and watch you melt.”

Her face colored, but she didn’t look away. “You have that effect on other women, I’m sure.”

“I don’t care how I affect other women. Only you.” He let his eyes run over her slowly, absorbed. “Suppose we go off someplace alone and talk for a few hours? I’ll tell you exactly how I feel.”

Showing her exactly how he felt was more likely, and she knew it. She managed a smile, then shrugged. “Sorry, boss man. I have a great instinct for self-preservation. You just stand back and watch me exercise it!” She cast him a defiant glare, then turned and stormed back toward the house.

Watching her, Keegan felt as if the world had swallowed him up. It was always like this. He could only get close by forcing her to yield, and he disliked the tactic. But she didn’t trust him. Perhaps she never would again, and he had only himself to blame. If only he could tell her how he regretted that night four years ago, how he’d cursed his own behavior. Lorraine had left a bitter taste in his mouth, all because of Eleanor, because she’d bewitched him with her innocent body and her ardent eagerness to do whatever he wanted of her.

Eleanor had loved him. That hurt most of all, that
he’d been so careless of her young emotions and so callously indifferent to her feelings for him. Now he’d give anything to have her throw herself at him and whisper that she loved him. And now she never would. He’d robbed her of self-respect, of confidence. He’d paid for it in double measure, but he couldn’t tell her that because she didn’t care anymore. She was crazy about Wade, emotionally at least, and the pain of that knowledge cut deep inside him. All he could do was watch and hope that Wade didn’t put a ring on her finger before he could win her back. If he could win her back.

He, who had always been bristling with confidence, suddenly had none. All he could do was play a waiting game. And even then, it might be too late.

He sighed and followed her into the house. Well, she still wanted him. That was something. And he hadn’t expected her to capitulate without a fight. She had to save her pride; after all, she couldn’t make it too easy for him. He smiled ruefully. He was just going to have to think up some way to cut Wade Granger out.

Blissfully unaware of the train of his thoughts, Eleanor stomped back into the kitchen and slammed dishes around angrily.

He came in behind her, closing the door gently.

She glared at him. “Don’t you have something to do?”

“I’m going to play your father another game of chess in a few minutes,” he said. “He’s on the phone right now with old man Jenkins.”

“Oh.” So that was why she wasn’t being deprived of Keegan’s company.

“Why won’t you come out with me?” he asked unexpectedly.

“You know very well why.”

He pulled out a kitchen chair and straddled it, then lit another cigarette. “We talked last Sunday,” he reminded her. “Really talked, I mean. I liked that.”

She had, also, but being alone with him, talking and growing close, was too risky. She’d just had proof of her own vulnerability.

“You still want me, Ellie,” he observed quietly. “Yes, I know, you don’t like having me know that,” he added when she jerked around to deny it. “But it’s true. And I feel the same way.”

“I won’t have an affair with you,” she said, turning to stare at him with dark eyes. She seemed to be making a life’s work of telling this to men, she thought with a flash of humor.

“I’m glad. An affair isn’t what I want,” he replied.

“You’re more in the mood for a one-night stand, I gather?” she asked, smiling coolly.

“If you want the truth…”

But before he could continue, her father ambled into the room, grinning from ear to ear.

“Old man Jenkins is finally willing to sell me that bench press I wanted for my woodworking shop,” he said gleefully. “He’s decided that his arthritis is just too bad to do that kind of work anymore. Now I can throw out that piece of junk I’m using and do some decent work.”

“When can you pick it up? I’ll drive you over,” Keegan offered.

“You wouldn’t mind?” asked Barnett. “Then can we go now, before the old goat changes his mind?”

“What a way to talk about your best friend,” Eleanor chided.

He grinned at her. “Why not? You ought to hear what he called me when I won that bet on the World Series.”

She threw up her hands. “I quit.”

“Only after the tenth one,” Keegan said as her father left. He grinned at her expression. “The tenth son, remember? We’ll call him Quits.”

She flushed as she met his level blue gaze. “We?”

He let his eyes run slowly down her body, and the faint smile on his lips made her uneasy. “My wife and I, of course,” he said smoothly.

Wife…? Was the Irish girl getting to him? She searched his face, confused.

“I’ll be back, so don’t go off with Romeo,” he told her.

“As if I care whether or not you’ll be back,” she replied defiantly, her gaze averted.

“I’ll make you care, somehow,” he said. When she glanced up, however, he was gone.

It only took the two men an hour to get the bench press and return home, and then they spent another hour or two in the workshop behind the house setting it up and working with it.

Eleanor hadn’t known that Keegan liked woodworking, but she should have realized that he and her father couldn’t talk about chess and work all the time. She went out to see the bench press and watched Keegan
run up a table leg on the lathe with quick, precise movements of his deft hands. He was good at it.

He was good at anything, she thought. Except maybe one thing… and even then, it had been her body’s response that had caused her discomfort. It would have been uncomfortable with any man, but her headlong ardor had probably caused Keegan to be less gentle than he intended. And he hadn’t known that she was a virgin, either.

She didn’t like remembering. Leaving the men to their work and their talk, she went back into the house, set a carafe of coffee on the warmer and a plate of wrapped cake slices on the table with a note, and went to bed. She couldn’t take one more minute of Keegan tonight. She’d had enough.

E
leanor got up an hour earlier the next morning, even though sleep had been long in coming. Wade had called after she’d gone to bed. Her father had knocked on her door to tell her Wade was on the phone, but she hadn’t wanted to see Keegan again, so she’d had him tell Wade to call her the next day. She’d hated to do it, but Keegan was getting to her.

She was making biscuits when the phone rang. Her father was still in bed, so she dusted off her hands and answered it.

“Eleanor?”

The voice was male and familiar, but she couldn’t place it. “Yes?”

“This is Gene Taber,” he replied, sounding a little frantic. “Eleanor, I hate to ask, but could you come up to the house? Something’s wrong with Keegan….”

Her heart gave a sickening lurch. “What’s the matter?” she asked, gripping the receiver tightly.

“Nausea, diarrhea…he’s in a bad way.”

She took a deep breath. Be calm. Above all, be calm. She was no use to him hysterical. “When did it start?”

“About three hours ago,” he groaned. “I thought it would quit eventually, but it hasn’t. He can’t lift his head, and he’s having damned bad stomach cramps. I tried to give him something for it, but he can’t keep it in his stomach. What should I do?”

“Call an ambulance,” she said immediately. “I’ll come right up. See you in five minutes.”

What good she could possibly do she wasn’t sure, but she had to go. It could be anything from simple food poisoning to a rupturing appendix; only a doctor would know for sure.

She dressed in a feverish rush, telling herself that it would be all right, that Keegan wouldn’t die. But she kept thinking back to the day before, to what she’d said to him, the way she’d avoided him, and she felt guilty. He couldn’t help being himself; he was just a playboy. She shouldn’t keep blaming him for the past. And now he was desperately ill…. She had to fight the tears. Keegan was indestructible. He was never sick. But for Gene to get upset, it had to be bad. Gene wasn’t one to panic.

She got into her uniform and didn’t stop to fix her face. Two minutes later she was pounding on her father’s door.

“Keegan’s sick,” she said without preamble when he called for her to come in. “I’m on my way up to the house. I’ll phone you later.”

“Keegan?” He sat up. “What is it?”

“I don’t know,” she said, worry showing in her face. She ran down the hall and out to her car. Even as she cranked it, she was hoping the ambulance would be right behind her. Dehydration, whatever its cause, could be fatal.

When Eleanor drove up at Flintlock, the front lights were on. She rushed up the steps onto the long porch, and Gene met her at the door in his robe. Except for some graying hair and the lines in his face, he was very much like his son, redheaded and tall.

“The ambulance?” she asked.

“On its way. He’s in his room.”

He led the way upstairs, filling her in as best he could. “He cooked himself some chicken for lunch yesterday. Mary June’s been laid up with an ankle—she’s just now able to hobble around a bit. I don’t know if the chicken could have done it….”

Eleanor added it all up in her mind. The incubation period would be just about right for salmonella. Especially if he’d laid the cooked chicken in the same plate where he’d had the raw chicken, something a man not used to cooking might do.

Gene led her into a huge room done in greens and whites with a king-size bed in which Keegan lay moaning, half-unconscious. She went to his side, shocked at his weakness and pallor. He didn’t stir when she took his pulse. His eyes didn’t open. And even as she put his wrist down, he was sick again.

There was a pan beside the bed, obviously put there by Gene, and a wet washcloth in a bowl on the table. She grabbed at the pan and got it under his mouth just
in the nick of time. She mopped his brow with the cloth and soothed him until the bout was over, and then she eased him back onto the pillows. He was very nearly unconscious. Probably half-dead of nausea, too, she thought pityingly. Poor, poor man. She touched his red hair with a tender hand, pushing it away from his pale brow. She couldn’t remember a time in their turbulent relationship when he’d been helpless. She cradled his head in her hands and bit her lip to keep from crying. He was sick all right, and he was going to need some intravenous fluid and bed rest in a hospital at the very least.