My Darling Melissa (24 page)

Helga’s eyes got wider and wider as Melissa talked, and she couldn’t contain an occasional “You don’t say!” When the story was over she walked into the bathroom and started Melissa’s bath, and when she came out again she still looked like a happy sleepwalker.

“I just love weddings,” she said as she wheeled the cart out of the room.

Melissa was feeling better by the time she’d finished her bath and used some of the talcum and perfume she’d brought from home. Wearing a lemon-yellow wrapper of lace-trimmed taffeta, she brushed her hair until it glimmered and then pinned it atop her head in a simple but elegant arrangement.

She put on her lavender silk and even managed to button
it herself, but the exercise left her in a testy mood, and when Quinn appeared just as she was clasping her diamond and amethyst necklace she spurned his offer of help with an impatient “I can do it myself!”

Although his eyes darkened with annoyance, he bent his head and kissed the alabaster smoothness of her shoulder by way of a greeting. “You’re tired,” he said. “I’ll understand if you don’t want to go to the party.”

Melissa turned into his arms, wanting peace with him but unsure how to get past her formidable pride to reach out to him. “Do you love me, Quinn?” she asked.

This time there was no doubting that he’d heard her. His hands slid from her waist, and he gave her a bewildered look. “Do I what?” he countered.

“Do you love me?” Melissa repeated.

Quinn sighed and reached for her, then let his hands fall back to his sides. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I feel something, but whether it’s love or not...”

Melissa thought of the lady who’d brought her water when she was sick behind the railroad depot that day. The woman had assumed that she was pregnant, and maybe she’d been right. The future looked bleak, for her and for her baby, if she was carrying one, without her husband’s love. She dropped her eyes to hide the tears that came too readily these days. “I understand,” she said at last.

“I don’t think you do,” Quinn said thickly. “But we can talk about this later.” For the first time Melissa noticed what he was wearing—a very formal and beautifully tailored suit. “Right now we’re late for dinner.”

Fury restored Melissa as nothing else could have done. Now she knew what was really important to Quinn—his hotel—and she could plan her life accordingly.

The first thing she would do was learn to live without love.

Fourteen

The dining room of Quinn’s new Seaside Hotel was huge, and it was filled to capacity with guests and well-wishers. Melissa smiled broadly, waving to her friend Dana, who sat at a distant table with her aunt and uncle. She pretended that all was well as Quinn escorted her to the head table and seated her before taking the chair beside hers. Gillian, who sat to his immediate right, gave Melissa a brief nod and then devoured Quinn with her luminous violet eyes.

Under other circumstances Melissa would have shown the poise she’d been schooled in since childhood, but she was tired, she feared that she might be pregnant, and she felt very much alone in the world. These elements combined to shake her considerable self-confidence.

Quinn tried several times to engage her in conversation, but she only stared dully at her plate and continually rearranged its contents with the tines of her fork. While her earlier nausea had passed, she certainly didn’t possess an appetite.

Quinn eventually turned to Gillian, who was more than
willing to chat, and each of her trilling, melodic little giggles increased Melissa’s ire until her lethargy was burned away. She was simmering inside when the interminable meal finally ended and the orchestra began to tune up in the ballroom.

Catching her hand in his, Quinn pulled his wife into one of the offices and rested his hands on her bare, silken shoulders. “Melissa, do you want me to take you home?” he asked indulgently. “It’s obvious that you’re not up to all this.”

So, Melissa deduced, he wanted to get rid of her. Probably so that he could have a high old time with his “partner,” Gillian Aires. Without warning she drew back her hand and slapped Quinn across the face.

For a moment he looked stunned, but then his brown eyes took on a veiled expression. His fingers came back to Melissa’s shoulders, and he gave her a slight shake. “What was that for?” he demanded in a raspy voice.

When Melissa remained stubbornly silent, Quinn released her and walked out, leaving her to stand in that small, shadowy office, gnawing at her lower lip and wondering what on earth was the matter with her. Tears came to the surface—dear God, how she hated them—and she lingered in her hiding place until she was sure that all traces of them were gone. Music had been swelling from the ballroom for a long time before she dared walk into that room.

She held her head high and her shoulders straight. Only Quinn was close enough to Melissa to know that she was falling apart inside. But he was dancing with Gillian in the center of the ballroom, and the two of them made a spectacular couple.

Melissa realized that everyone who knew she was Quinn’s wife was watching her, waiting to gauge her reaction. She smiled and lingered in the doorway for a moment, as she’d been taught, and then strolled in as though she were Queen Victoria herself and all the guests were her subjects.

Mitch Williams approached her almost immediately, looking handsomer than ever in his fancy evening clothes.
His blue eyes glittered as they swept over her low-cut lavender gown, and he gave a slight bow before offering one hand. “May I have this dance?” he asked.

At least, Melissa reflected sourly behind her fixed smile, there was one gentleman in this place. She swept into Mitch’s arms for the waltz that was just beginning and decided to forgive him for telling Quinn she’d asked him for money when she hadn’t.

Quinn gave her a look of glaring disapproval as she and Mitch whirled past him and Gillian, and from that moment on Melissa flirted outrageously. She smiled up at Mr. Williams as though he’d just been elected president, drinking in whatever he said, batting her eyelashes at him, allowing him to bring her punch, and dancing every dance with him.

Finally Quinn could bear it no longer—that was exactly the end that Melissa had had in mind—and he walked up to her, took her hand, and pulled her out of the ballroom. He dragged her across the lobby and up the stairs, and on the first landing Melissa realized that she had pushed him too far. She tried to pull free of his grasp, but that effort proved hopeless, for Quinn only lifted her into his arms and continued on his way. His jawline looked hard as tamarack, and his brash eyes were snapping with fury as he strode along the upper hallway and pushed open the door to the exquisite suite he had shown Melissa before. To her utter amazement, he hurled her onto the bed and snarled, “There are a great many things I will tolerate, Calico, but being taunted in public is not one of them.”

Melissa had recovered some of her aplomb; she sat up on the silken coverlet and fanned herself with one hand. “Well, then,” she said with grudging primness, “I’m sorry.”

“Not good enough,” Quinn replied coldly.

Melissa felt her eyes go wide. “What do you want, then?”

He drew her up so that she was kneeling on the bed and bent his head to touch his mouth to hers. It was not a loving kiss, but one meant to demonstrate mastery, and, to Melissa’s eternal mortification, it succeeded.

She was breathless when Quinn finally let her go, and she would have agreed to anything.

But he was not ready to discuss terms; he clearly meant to conquer her fully. He unfastened the top few buttons at the back of her gown and then lowered the bodice, bearing her breasts to his view.

Melissa trembled, waiting for him to touch her with either his mouth or his hands, but he did nothing—not then. He simply looked at her, and under his smoldering eyes her nipples grew taut and her breasts took on a fullness that only he could relieve.

“I don’t like to be teased, Melissa,” he said evenly, and at last he encircled one straining nipple with the tip of his finger. “Do you?”

No one else had ever had the power, or the opportunity, to tease Melissa. Now, as she yearned to give herself to a man who would not take her, she knew a grinding regret. “Please,” she whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Quinn strode across the room, and for a moment Melissa believed that he was going to leave her. Relief and wild disappointment battled within her, and she didn’t know whether she’d achieved victory or suffered defeat when he locked the door and turned down the gaslights until the room was shadowy.

She was still kneeling on the bed, but Quinn brought her to sit in his lap, and when he bent to taste one aching nipple she let her head fall back and moaned in sheer, shameless pleasure.

Quinn took his time at her breasts, stopping every now and then to madden her with another rebuke. Presently, when Melissa was almost crazed with the need of him, he laid her down gently and lifted her skirts and petticoat, then brought down her smooth taffeta drawers.

Melissa trembled as he stroked the bare flesh of her inner thighs, parting them so subtly that she never felt the motion. He nuzzled the warm, silken mound where her womanhood was hidden, and she gave a little cry, catching her hands in his hair.

He lapped at her, and her hips ground against the mattress as ferocious pleasure fanned out from his tongue to scald her blood. For a seeming eternity Quinn pleasured her, driving her to the edge of madness again and again, only to draw back each time.

Finally, when Melissa could bear no more, she pleaded aloud, “Oh, God, Quinn, please—”

It was then that he withdrew and rose back to his feet. Even in the dim light of the gas lamps she saw the cold glitter in his eyes. Unbelievably, he turned away.

Melissa found the strength to right her skirt and sit partway up to stare at him. “Quinn,” she whispered brokenly, unable to grasp what he’d done to her.

In the light from the hallway she saw him shrug. “As you’re so fond of telling me,” he said in a hoarse drawl, “you can take care of yourself. I guess you’ll have to do that now, won’t you?”

It was impossible to discern which was worse: the ache of humiliation in her soul or the physical disappointment her body had endured. Melissa held back her tears until Quinn had closed the door, and then she wept in earnest.

Her regret was bitter, and considerable time passed before she rose from the bed and went into the washroom to splash cold water over her face. She hurried now, remembering how Quinn had told her that all the rooms in the hotel were rented. She wouldn’t be able to stand it if someone came in and found her in such a state.

When she was again presentable, her hair tidy and the worst of the wrinkles smoothed out of her gown, Melissa found a smile to wear and walked regally down the stairs, her head held high. She had reviewed her options and decided to stay, as much to vex Quinn as to prove to herself that she was no scared rabbit. Every inch the woman of the world, Melissa walked into the ballroom and straight up to her husband. He was standing near one of the tall windows on the opposite side, looking murderous, and his expression did not soften when he found his wife standing before him.

“I will despise you all my life for what you just did to me,”
she said, smiling up at him warmly, her cheeks flushed, her eyes adoring.

A flamboyant Strauss waltz began, and Quinn pulled Melissa into his arms without warning and thrust her against him, hard, before swirling her into the sweeping richness of the music.

“And I thought you’d come to apologize for your infantile behavior,” he said belatedly.

Melissa beamed at him, not wanting anyone to read her real feelings and perhaps guess at the mortification she had undergone earlier. If that ever became public knowledge, she would be ruined. “Apologize?” she chimed. “I’ll see you sizzle in hell before I apologize to you, my dearest darling.”

Quinn scowled down at her for a beat or two, then gave a grudging laugh. “My God, but you’ve got brass enough for ten women, you little hellcat. I ought to take you over my knee.”

“You try that, Quinn Rafferty, and you won’t live long enough to pass on the story.”

He arched one eyebrow. “First teasing, now threats. You’ve got a lot to learn about wifely obedience, precious.”

“Wifely obedience, hell,” she spat back, batting her eyelashes in a convincing display of worship. “As far as I’m concerned, Mr. Rafferty, you and I are at war.”

“So be it,” Quinn sighed. “Have you considered the possibility that you might lose, my dear? If not, be advised that I’m taking no prisoners.”

A thrill, made up partly of sweet challenge and partly of something else that she didn’t care to examine too closely, raced through Melissa. She reached up and touched Quinn’s face very gently just where she’d slapped him before. “Neither am I,” she replied with a dazzling smile. The music came to a graceful halt, and Melissa lingered in Quinn’s wooden embrace, waiting for the orchestra to begin playing again. She deliberately brushed her breasts against his chest as, with an almost inaudible groan, he drew her into another dance.

They spent the rest of the evening that way, whirling
around the crowded ballroom, beaming at each other and exchanging veiled insults, until the party finally ended at one o’clock.