Heartstrings (16 page)

Disturbed by the intensity of her own emotions, she quickly gathered the remains of the lunch and packed them away. “I suppose our feelings are very similar, really,” she announced in the most normal voice she could muster. “I have not found a reason to cease fearing lightning, and you have found none to alter your dislike toward women. It occurs to me now that I have no right to question your feelings when mine parallel them. Therefore, please nurture your loathing for women, just as I will undoubtedly maintain my dread of lightning.”

She picked up the basket with one hand, her parrot with the other, and stood. “There is one point I shall add, though. My terror of lightning hurts no one but myself. However, your hostility toward women will be a source of great pain for any unsuspecting woman who might fall in love with you.”

He rose from the ground and loomed above her. “Let me save you the task of tricking me into telling you what I think about your point. Women don’t fall in love, Miss Worth. They fall in
want.
Now, there’s some food for your hungry little analytical mind, isn’t there?”

She met his blazing gaze straight on. “A veritable banquet.”

He didn’t miss the oh-so-slight tilt of her beautiful lips. No doubt she thought she would win their verbal sparring.

He vowed she wouldn’t. “Eat hearty.”

“I shall stuff myself until I cannot hold another bite.” She crossed to the buckboard and deposited the basket in the wagon bed and her parrot on the seat. “And when I am hungry again, I assure you, Mr. Montana, I shall come back for more.”

He picked the blanket off the ground and joined her by the buckboard. “The kitchen is closed.”

“Ah, but the cook often forgets to lock the door.”

He stepped nearer to her, close enough that her breasts touched his chest. “You’d be entering at your own risk. The cook needs fire to work. It’s hot in there.” Slowly, he raised his hands and curled them around her hips. “It might melt you.”

Exquisite heat flashed through her.

The second he saw her flush, he set about showing her just how hot the fire really was.

His lips came down on hers hard. His tongue slid deeply into her mouth, then he withdrew it only to thrust it between her lips again and again and again. Each time he entered her mouth, he pulled her toward him. His hands kneading her bottom, his thighs pressing against hers, he circled his hips upon hers in a rhythm he knew her body would recognize and imitate.

Theodosia began to move. Against him. With him, to the cadence he’d set. She trembled. She rocked and wavered.

He felt her soften in his arms. His lips still molded to hers, he lifted her off the ground and gently sat her in the wagon. Drawing away from her, he smoothed the tips of his fingers across her forehead. “In this mind of yours are a thousand things. Lessons you haven’t forgotten. It’s time you learned another. Where there’s heat, there’s fire, Miss Worth. Fire burns”—he slid his fingers to her breast and traced the stiff circle of her nipple— “and it melts.”

Still shaking with unappeased desire, Theodosia watched him mount and urge his stallion back to the road. She longed desperately to call out a crushing comeback that would end the encounter in her favor.

But for the first time in her life, words failed her. Roman Montana had beaten her soundly.

Chapter Seven

T
heodosia padded her sleeping pallet
with every article of clothing she’d brought to Texas, but she could still feel the rocky ground beneath her. She’d never been given to cursing, but as annoyed as she felt now, several colorful epithets shot through her mind.

Across from the fire a few feet away, sitting upon his own pallet and leaning against a birch tree, Roman watched her struggle. “Something the matter, Miss Worth?” He laid down the sheet of paper he’d been studying and stuck his pencil behind his ear.

“Something the matter, Miss Worth?” John the Baptist repeated, then threw water every which way. “Where there’s heat, there’s fire, Miss Worth.”

Theodosia squirmed away from a rock pressing into her hip, only to move herself into a cluster that jabbed at her side. “You chose this spot out of pure spite, Mr. Montana. We have passed a multitude of grassy fields, leaf-strewn woods, and flowered meadows, and yet you deliberately stopped here in this—this boulder-filled pit to spend the night.”

“Boulder-filled?” Roman clicked his tongue. “That is a very poor choice of words, Miss Worth. The rocks around here aren’t any bigger than my fist. And this is not a pit. It’s a dried-up creek bed.”

“Nevertheless, you went out of your way to find the most unwelcoming site possible. And I assure you that I know why you did.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind that you do. Hell, you know almost everything
else
about me, don’t you?” He picked up the paper again, upon which he’d written the amounts of the savings he had in the eight different towns.

“Not only do you remain piqued over the fact that I learned a bit about your past this afternoon, but you also seek to prove to me that you have no consideration toward me whatsoever,” Theodosia continued, still shifting on her lumpy bed. “You knew I would have a wretched time trying to sleep on rocks—”

“Sleep in the wagon bed.”

“It is too small, and you know it.”

“Then get up and push the rocks away.”

“I have already attempted the process of elapidation, to no avail.”

Rubbing his chin, he stared at her. “Elapidation?”

“Elapidation is the clearing away of stones.”

He almost laughed. The woman had a brainy word for the simplest of things!

“Beneath one layer of rocks is another,” Theodosia said, “and then another, and then—”

“When this was a creek, it was called Bedrock Creek.”

“How utterly appropriate.” Completely frustrated, Theodosia sat up and swiped her hair out of her face. “And just how can it be that
you
are so comfortable?”

He picked up a handful of pebbles, and one by one, he flung them toward Theodosia. When he was finished, they lay in a neat pile in her lap. “Rocks don’t bother me. I’ve slept on them before and will probably sleep on them again. Why do you keep wearing that thick nightgown, by the way? It must be ninety degrees out here. Aren’t you hot?”

John the Baptist spat another stream of water. “Well, I bedded my first wench when I was fourteen,” he said, “and I ain’t let up since.”

At her parrot’s words, Theodosia rolled her eyes, then patted the velvet ribbons that closed the front of her flannel gown. “No doubt you would like me to sleep naked, Mr. Montana.”

“No doubt at all, Miss Worth.”

Roman Montana embodied the truest definition of
rake,
she thought while battling anger and desire. The moment an opportunity arrived for discussing or practicing anything having to do with sensuality, he seized it instantly. “I have never slept without a nightrail on, nor will I ever do so. And I would appreciate it if you would please refrain from mentioning intimate subjects such as my nightwear.”

He considered her request for exactly a half a second before rejecting it. “You’ve never felt cool sheets next to your skin?”

“No.”

“It feels good.”

“Mr. Montana, I have enjoyed restful nights with my nightgown on for many, many years. I feel it safe to presume that I will continue to enjoy them.”

He shook his head. “You’ll have to be naked with the guy you pick to get you with child.”

Unconsciously, she crossed her hands over her breasts. “I will not.”

He scratched his chin. “Then how do you plan to—”

“I will bare my lower half.”

“The man’s going to want to see and touch your upper half, too.”

“He will not see any part of me, and he will most certainly not touch me. I shall be under the blankets, there will be no light in the room, and I shall concentrate on unrelated matters during penetration and the spilling of his seed. The entire procedure will be over in only minutes. Besides, his wants will not concern me in the least.”

Roman smiled. She was in for a shock. No man in the world, genius or not, was going to follow her bedding rules. Not with the kind of breasts she had, they weren’t. And if the man had a shred of talent between the blankets, she wouldn’t be concentrating on unrelated matters, either. Nor would she want the procedure to be over in only minutes.

“Excuse me for a minute, will you? I have to add this.” He bent his leg at the knee, placed the paper on his upper thigh, and pretended to jot down a few numbers. He had no intention of doing the tiresome arithmetic. Why should he? A genius sat straight across from him.

Because she was mad at him, she wouldn’t offer to help. But he planned to prove to her that he knew just as much about mind tricks as she did. And when he was through, she’d be angrier, and he’d have the answers to the arithmetic.

“I’m adding how much money I’ve got now,” he said, “and how much I’ll have when I’m done paying what I owe and collecting what’s owed to me. But there are eight amounts, so I’m having to separate them to—”

“Well, if you think for one moment that I am going to assist you with the mathematics after you have made me sleep on these rocks, you are sadly mistaken.” Lips tightly pursed, she took hold of the sides of her nightgown and shook the pebbles out of her lap.

“I didn’t ask for your help, Miss Worth. Arithmetic happened to be my best subject in school.” He scribbled a few doodles on his paper. “Let’s see…twenty-two dollars and seventy-six cents plus forty-two dollars and eighty-six cents plus eleven dollars and nineteen cents equals…seventy-one dollars and eighty-nine cents.”

“You are off by four dollars and ninety-two cents,” Theodosia informed him, totally unable to resist correcting an error of any sort.

He looked up from the paper and saw moonlight and smugness shining in her eyes. The moonlight would remain, but he vowed that the glow of chagrin would soon replace the gleam of self-satisfaction.
“I
have the paper and pencil, Miss Worth. I also have the figures right in front of my eyes. Now, if you don’t mind, stop interrupting and let me finish.”

Suppressing a grin, he bent over his paper again. “Where was I? I already added three amounts, and they equaled seventy-one dollars and eighty-nine cents. All right…seventy-one dollars and eighty-nine cents plus thirty-one dollars and two cents plus six dollars and ninety-four cents equals…one hundred and twelve dollars and eighty-four cents.”

“You added the first set of numbers wrong, Mr. Montana. Your first sum should have been seventy-six dollars and eighty-one cents. That added to the other amounts you just mentioned comes to one hundred and fourteen dollars and seventy-seven cents.”

He feigned deafness and a frown. “One hundred and twelve dollars and eighty-four cents plus seventy-one dollars and fifty-nine cents plus twelve dollars and thirty-six cents equals the grand total of…two hundred and one dollars and six cents.”

Theodosia shook her head and sighed in exasperation. “You are giving yourself two dollars and thirty-four cents more than you have, Mr. Montana. The total of your savings come to one hundred ninety-eight dollars and seventy-two cents.”

He scratched down a few more circles and lines. “Of course, I have to settle a tab of three dollars at the Kidder Pass saloon, and a man in Caudle Corner owes me thirty dollars for a job I did for him, and I need fifteen dollars’ worth of supplies. Let’s see …zero from six is six, zero from zero is zero…borrow from the ten to make eleven; three from eleven—”

“Your figuring is grossly incorrect, Mr. Montana.”

He raised his head slowly. “Miss Worth, please. Can’t you see I’m trying to concentrate?” He dug into his pocket, withdrew a fistful of bills and some change, and counted it. “I’ve got thirty-seven dollars and fifty-four cents on me, so that means…” He scratched down more nothings on his paper.

“You will have two hundred forty-eight dollars and twenty-six cents after you have paid and collected all owed to you, all you owe, and all you will owe after purchasing your supplies. And that includes your pocket money.”

As fast as he could, he wrote down the sum she’d given him. “That’s the exact number I came up with,” he said, smiling. “See? I told you I didn’t need your help.”

She could tell by his crooked grin that he was lying through those perfect white teeth of his.

Her eyes widened when she realized he’d duped her. The arrogant rogue had beaten her again! “You —you—you—”

“Having trouble coming up with a good word choice?” He folded the paper and laid it aside. “Let me help you. I outwitted you? Fooled you? Deceived you?”

“You are—”

“A trickster? Hoodwinker? Scoundrel?”

“I would like nothing better than to—”

“Slap me? Pinch me? Kick me? Bite—”•

“
Would
you please stop?”

He was thoroughly enjoying making her mind spin. She’d certainly spun his enough times. “Of course I’ll stop. I don’t have any reason to go on. I’ve gotten what I wanted. Why don’t you get what you want?”