Eyes of the Cat (25 page)

Suddenly not caring whether it was proper or sensible or safe, she dove headlong into that kiss—desperate for more—winding her arms about his neck and near blistering his lips with the force of her response. Pouring herself over him, like honey fresh from the hive. If it were possible, she’d have climbed right inside him. She couldn’t get close enough.

The chair toppled backward with an unnoticed thud, and they rolled together onto the floorboards in a fevered tangle of arms and legs—a wild, double-backed creature of groans and groping hands and panting mouths—all fire and frenzy and devastating, driving need.

Drowning in a steamy flood of kisses, lost in the ecstatic feel of that masculine body burning against hers, it took several seconds for the piercing cries to penetrate Tabitha’s awareness. But when realization hit, she twisted away and stumbled across the room, leaving Alan panting for breath and sprawled on the floor behind her, like the victim of a dynamite blast. Which, in a way, he was.

Tabitha, too. But she had that inbred feminine ability to push personal concerns out the window when a young one was sounding an alarm call.

“Rosita, what’s the matter,
niña
?
Que esta
?” She gathered the trembling little figure into her arms. “Did you have a bad dream, a… Oh, heck, what’s the Spanish for nightmare?” she muttered to herself.

“
Pesadilla
,” Alan offered hoarsely, slowly hauling to his feet, like a diver coming up from the deep.

“Thank you,” Tabitha said absently. Then stiffened and blushed as the sight and sound of the man reopened the window, and all the sensations she’d previously bumped out swept back in. Good Lord,
what
had she been doing?

Or…what had she been
made
to do?

Her eyes narrowed and her arms tightened around Rosa, as Alan came toward them.

He was brought up short against a wall of the toddler’s shrieks. “Bloody hell, what’s the matter with her?”

“You,” Tabitha breathed, feeling chills as she guessed what had frightened the
niña
. So high on the bed and surrounded by pillows, she hadn’t thought Rosa could have seen them on the floor, but the noise of the chair tipping must have woken her and…
Oh, God
…

“I think Rosa saw what happened to her mother and sisters,” she said, staring at him with a dull horror. “When she saw us, she must have thought you were trying…trying to…”

Her voice trailed off. Perhaps Rosa had been right. Was it any less of an attack if the victim had somehow been mesmerized into accepting it?

With a low curse, Alan lifted Rosa out of Tabitha’s arms before she realized what he’d intended.

“Stop that! You’re frightening her!”

“And the sooner she sees I mean no harm, the sooner she’ll stop being frightened.” He angled away as Tabitha angrily tried to retrieve her.

“You’re hardly harmless,” she said.

“I’m not the one who toppled the chair,” he replied smoothly, and began speaking softly to Rosa in Spanish.

The little traitor quieted almost immediately, staring up at him as Tabitha stood fuming at them both.

“Now, if only I could convince you as easily.” Alan glanced at her, the ghost of a grin haunting his face. He jerked slightly when Rosa caught him off guard by grabbing for his nose, as though she had wanted to make sure it was real.

Tabitha’s breath snagged in her throat. Rosa had made the same mistake she had. That was why the little thing had panicked. Just like herself, Rosa had thought Alan was the man with the ragged holes where his nose should have been. Why was that so disturbing, she wondered, a weird chill crawling over her flesh.

Because it implied the two men were more similar than she had decided back at the Garcias’. Comparing them that morning, she’d been struck by the opposition in their energies. But that was actually a rather subjective judgment, wasn’t it? If you ignored the differences in bearing and expression—and the nose—their physical similarities were a little…well, uncanny. It was difficult to imagine there being even one physique like Alan’s in the world, let alone two. It was almost as if they were…

She gave her head a quick shake to drive the thought out.
Impossible.
As short a time as she’d been here, wouldn’t someone have spoken of it before now? Even Gabrina had mentioned nothing of the kind. Granted, the Scots girl really hadn’t known that much about her so-called betrothed, but surely she would have been aware of something like that.

Possibly not, though. That whole overseas engagement had been such a preposterous thing to start with. Tabitha was half inclined to believe the entire affair had been arranged by some malicious quirk of fate simply to land her in the spot she was now: Trapped in a make-believe marriage with a man who was more puzzling than the pyramids.

She couldn’t even understand him based on the rest of his eccentric family. In many ways, he was so little like them. His coloring was darker than most of the MacAllisters—not to mention his temperament. His accent was lighter. He was their black sheep, and didn’t appear to be overly fond of the rest of the flock. A feeling that might be mutual. Although, whether or not the MacAllisters liked their laird, it seemed obvious many of them were intimidated by him. Hardly surprising, Tabitha supposed. He certainly intimidated her. Even if he had turned out to be remarkably good with Rosa. In a matter of moments, the exhausted toddler had drifted straight back to sleep in Alan’s arms.

Watching him gently settle the tiny figure onto the bed, Tabitha tried to juxtapose that image with the one of him galloping down on the outlaws, like an avenging angel of death. The two pictures wouldn’t fit together. But then, neither did anything else about the man. He was a towering mass of muscle and mysteries. Mysteries that were only increasing…

“Tabitha, what is it? You’re staring as though you’ve no idea who I am.”

“I don’t.” Averting her gaze, she began backing across the room. It was unnerving enough to be caught staring—especially when she hadn’t realized she’d been doing it—but it was more unnerving to have him stalking toward her like this.

“I don’t know who you are,” she said, hastily trying to refasten her dressing gown as she moved. She’d just noticed it was hanging open.
Gulp.
When had that happened, she wondered right before she nearly tripped over the upended chair—which jogged her memory, of course. “I don’t know anything about you,” she added, blushing deeper than the burgundy upholstery she was awkwardly skirting past.

“That’s what marriage is for.” Alan reached down with one hand to set the armchair straight as he trailed her. “We’ll have the rest of our lives to become acquainted.”

“Is that supposed to be funny?” In unthinking anger, her eyes met his.

“No. ’Twas meant to get you to look at me.”

With a wrenching in her midsection at her mistake, Tabitha realized she’d been caught in those amber snares. Again. Alan’s gaze halted her in her tracks and held her motionless while he covered the last few steps between them.

“How do you do that?” she whispered as he stopped only heartbeats away.

“Do what?” he asked innocently, his eyes barely allowing her room to breathe.

Damn him.
He knows what I mean, she fumed, feeling herself slipping steadily deeper into the web those eyes were weaving.

“Why do you need me to look at you?” she countered, trying to use the words as grappling hooks to drag free.

They fell a little short of the mark.

“If you spent more time in front of a mirror, you’d know the answer to that,” he murmured, still holding her with nothing but his gaze. “Is it my turn now? I’ve a question or two, myself.”

I hope they’re spoken ones, Tabitha prayed, remembering his last attempt at communication. She doubted she could survive another discussion like that. Already her legs were starting to sizzle out from under her just from the heat of standing so close to him.

“I’d like to know why you’re so afraid of your own desire,” Alan said, his hands like hot steel as they flashed forward and captured her shoulders. “Why do you fight so hard against something you obviously want so much?”

It hit her like a slap in the face, twisting her out of his grip and driving her back several steps.
Amazing…
Here, she’d worried that anger would make her more susceptible to hypnotic control, but the opposite was true.

“How dare you! I’m not fighting anything
I
want. I don’t want any of this. It’s all
your
doing, not mine,” she declared, standing in her outrage like it was a suit of armor. “How dare you lay this at my feet? It isn’t you who’s been kidnapped and threatened and used. You’re not the one who’s the prisoner here!”

“Aren’t I?”

His hands were still poised in front of him, as though he refused to acknowledge she was no longer within them. To Tabitha, it looked like a veil had just been pulled from his eyes, exposing something that may never before have seen the light of day.

“I’ve been wondering about that. I’ve been remembering how you dropped out of the tree into my arms”—an odd roughness snagged at his voice—“and I’ve been asking myself who was the one who was
really
caught.”

“That’s absurd.” What she saw in those unbanked eyes gripped her heart like a fist. This was the dirtiest trick he had played on her yet. She couldn’t possibly accept what that gaze was offering. It wasn’t real. She knew it couldn’t be real. And even if it was, she didn’t want it.

Did she?

Of course I don’t, she told herself.

“You can’t mean that. It doesn’t make any sense,” she told Alan.

His hands reached forward slightly. And his eyes dove straight into her core. “Why not?”

Why…
She had known the answer to that a moment ago, hadn’t she? What had jerked it from her head?
Those amber magnets…

“Because what you’re suggesting is
fantasy
. It doesn’t happen that way in real life,” she blurted in a rush, desperation having jogged her memory.

“A week ago, I’d probably have agreed.” Alan moved one deliberate step toward her.

Tabitha moved a more deliberate step back.

“But a week ago, I hadn’t seen you,” he finished softly, that unbelievable something peaking around the edges of the veil once more.

It rooted her to the floor.

“This is preposterous,” she whispered. “There’s no such thing as…as…”

“Love at first sight?” he offered helpfully.

“Exactly!” she gasped out, finding her legs as he grabbed for her. She struggled to keep them working while backing down the length of the room in front of him. “You’re mistaking an…an
animal attraction
for something more.”

“I don’t think so. I’ve experienced enough ‘animal attraction’ in my life to know the difference,” he said at the exact moment Tabitha felt the wall bump her spine.

Pressing into it, she held her breath as he leaned forward, planting a hand by each of her shoulders, caging her between the cool adobe and the hot circle of his naked arms and chest.

“And I don’t think you’re finding this nearly as difficult to believe as you’re pretending.” He locked the cage with his gaze.

What a horrible thing to say!

Horrible, she realized with a small, sick shiver, because in a way…it was true. Not true that she actually believed any of this nonsense. She didn’t even think he believed it. It was merely the latest battle ploy, his diabolical version of what people called
sweet talk
, the sort of blarney men had been using to finagle women ever since Adam decided he needed to repay Eve for the apple episode. But why, in the name of sanity, did she suddenly
want
to believe it?

Those eyes… Damn, he was doing it again!

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” She shoved anger in front of herself like a shield. “You don’t know anything about me!”

“Aye. Perhaps you’re right,” he agreed with the same innocence the spider must have used when inviting the fly into his parlor. “But that’s part of the excitement. ’Twill be such an adventure probing into your secrets.”

Tabitha’s knee shot up so fast, he barely made the dodge away from it in time.

“Whoa— So you did know what you were aiming for the other night. I didn’t think you’d realized where you hit me,” he said, an insufferable amusement widening his eyes.

Hers narrowed into smoldering lines.

“I didn’t then. This was just a lucky guess.” She frowned, wishing her aim and timing had been as lucky. “But as long as we’re on the subject, what about
your
secrets? Care to tell me why your wife was running away from you? Or shall I try to guess that one, too?”

The question was out before she had time to consider how hateful it might sound—and how dangerous the answer might be to herself—one of those unfortunate cases of the mouth being quicker than the mind. Why on earth had she asked it? Because the subject had been roiling in her consciousness since dawn? Or had it simply been a verbal attempt to slap that devilish grin off his devilishly handsome face?

Whichever, it had been remarkably effective—unfortunately—about as effective as using a battle-axe to lance an annoying blister. Alan’s amusement vanished faster than money from a drunken sailor’s pocket. And with it, went the air space between them.