Tempestuous/Restless Heart (11 page)

She packed their dishes away while he watched her.

“You’re very quiet,” he commented, sitting up and draping one arm across a drawn-up knee.

“Mmmm… just thinking…”

“What about?”

Alex swallowed the fist-sized knot in her throat. “Us.”

He straightened subtly. His eyes never left her face. “What about us?”

Lips pursed, she gave a little shrug that made her look very Italian. She busied her hands fussing with the picnic basket. “I just wondered… where we go from here.”

Christian reached out to set the basket beyond her reach, then hooked a finger under her chin and tilted her face up so she had to meet his gaze. The intensity in her tawny eyes brought out the flecks of gold in the iris, dazzling him, but not quite hiding the wariness from him. Again he cursed the man who had put that look there, and again he vowed to do whatever was necessary to erase it. He wanted Alex so badly, he sometimes thought he wouldn’t be able to endure the wait. But wait he would. He had no intention of rushing her into anything.

“That’s entirely up to you, sweetheart,” he murmured. “I’ll do whatever you like.”

“Will you?” Alex asked softly, afraid at how badly she needed to believe in him. If he let her down… If she let him down…

“Tell me what you want,” he murmured. “I’ll give you anything, Alex.”

He couldn’t give her back her past or her belief in the greater good of humankind, but he could give her a future, and he could give her his love. That was what shone in the blue of his eyes as he stared down at her, holding his breath, waiting for her answer.

Alex lifted a hand to brush her fingertips along the lean line of his cheek, as if she didn’t quite believe he was real. “Will you make love to me?” she asked, her voice as soft as the wings of butterflies that skimmed over the green meadow, as soft as the breeze that brought the rich scents of the Virginia countryside.

“No,” Christian whispered, taking her hand in his. “But I’ll make love
with
you. I’ll gladly make love
with
you, Alexandra.”

Lifting her hand to his mouth, he pressed a kiss to each of her knuckles, never taking his eyes from hers. She watched him, her own eyes darkening with passion, her lips parting slightly.

“Are you afraid of me, Alex?” he asked.

She shook her head slowly. “No.” A tiny smile twitched up one corner of her mouth. “I’m afraid of me.”

“I’m not afraid of you.”

To prove it he brought both her hands to his chest and abandoned them there in invitation. Alex screwed up her courage and reached back in her mind, past fear of rejection, past the horror of what had happened to her, back to when it had been all right to want and to please. She slid her palms down the solid wall of his chest, across his flat, hard belly to the waist of his jeans, and dragged his shirttail out. Then she reversed the process, letting her fingers explore the smooth contours of his body as she raised the hem of his shirt.

Christian discarded the garment, tossing it aside carelessly. His own gaze still locked on Alex, he let her look her fill as the sun beat down on the well-defined muscles of his shoulders, arms, and back. Years of demanding physical work had toned his sleek body to perfection. Alex caressed every smooth, hard plane, every mark of delineation. When she ceased her exploration, it was only to take Christian’s hand and draw it to the hem of her shirt.

He undressed her slowly, checking his own rampant desire in favor of building her own. What he revealed was the embodiment of femininity. She was dainty and delicate, and she brought out every possessive instinct he had buried beneath his layers of sophistication. Her breasts were small but full, fitting perfectly into his hands, with pouting, dusky pink nipples that tightened at the touch of the breeze. Ever so gently he drew the pads of his thumbs across the turgid tips and groaned appreciatively as they rose to attention.

Alex sighed and let her head fall back and her eyes drift shut. It felt so good to be touched, touched with reverence and care and sweet longing. She leaned back and drank in the sensation as Christian’s gentle hands cupped her and caressed her. He blocked out the sun as he leaned down to kiss her, but Alex felt filled with golden light. She wrapped her arms around his neck and opened her mouth beneath his, inviting the intimacy she had so long been denied. His tongue slid along hers, velvety warm, stroking and retreating. And heat swirled through her, chasing out all the cold shadows of the past.

Never breaking the kiss, Christian rose slowly to his feet, lifting Alex with him. Simultaneously each found the button on the other’s jeans and popped them free. Zippers rasped in a descending duet. Denim dropped to the checked cloth at their feet.

With trembling hands Alex lowered Christian’s snug black briefs, freeing his manhood to her touch. He was smooth and hard, hot and ready, and the stunning sense of need that burned inside her as she stroked him filled her with a dizzying sense of relief. She pressed herself against him, kissing his chest, flicking her tongue over his flat male nipples, all the while rubbing and stroking the essence of what made him male.

Christian groaned at the exquisite torture. Desire doubled and tripled its hold on him as Alex’s hold tormented him. He dragged her plain cotton panties down, splaying his hands over the soft fullness of her tight, well-rounded buttocks. He lifted her against him again so that she had to wrap her arms around his neck. His mouth took hers hungrily as her body arched into his, the downy thatch of curls at the apex of her thighs brushing sensually against his belly.

Slowly he lowered them both to the ground, settling Alex on her back and himself on his side next to her. He set off on an exploration of her body with his hands and lips that was meant to be unhurried. It was meant to slowly stoke the fire in both of them, to slowly bring the level of desire to a fever pitch. But Christian was already bordering on delirium. All the smooth, calm, thorough technique he had honed over the years deserted him. With Alex he knew an almost frantic urge to make her his, to purge every other man from her mind and stake his claim in the most basic way he could.

Struggling with the inner battle, he forced himself to slow the pace, knowing he wouldn’t be able to stand it much longer, but fearing he would be rushing Alex if he gave in to his own needs. Gently he swept his hand down across her belly to the slick satin heat between her thighs. Kissing her deeply, he parted the delicate petals and eased a finger into the tight pocket of her womanhood, wringing a moan of unmistakable pleasure from her. Her hips pushed off the blanket, urging him, begging him until she was gasping for air.

“Christian, please,” she whispered, clutching at his shoulders and trying to pull him onto her. “I need you. Please don’t make me wait.”

“Anything you ask, darling,” he murmured, pulling away from her for the brief instant it took to dig into the hip pocket of his discarded jeans and pull out the familiar foil packet he’d tucked there in hope.

Alex stared up at him as he positioned himself above her, and felt a quick stab of apprehension. She didn’t want to disappoint him. She didn’t want to be disappointed. She wanted this to end as beautifully as it had progressed so far.

Christian leaned over her with a gentle smile and brushed her hair back. There was only one thing he could think to say that would allay her fears. He’d said it countless hundreds of times to more women than he cared to remember. But this time when he said it, it wasn’t casual, and it came straight from his heart.

“I love you, Alex.”

She succeeded in pulling him down to her then and lifted her hips to take him inside her. He filled her slowly, carefully, and when he was embedded deep within her, he checked to make sure she was all right, that she wasn’t afraid or hurt. She was incredibly hot and tight around him, and his control was slipping through his grasp like a wet rope, but Alex’s needs were uppermost in his mind.

“Oh, Christian.” She sighed, her mouth curving into the most sensual of smiles beneath his.
“Tante gmzie.”

She arched against him, savoring the feel of him inside her, celebrating the joy and the relief that washed through her. There were no dark memories, only pleasure—wondrous, exquisite pleasure. She felt new and whole and powerfully feminine. It was a feeling more intoxicating than the wine they’d shared.

“I only want to please you, Alex,” Christian murmured, every word a kiss as he eased back and slowly moved into her again.

His muscles trembled with the effort to hold back. Alex moved beneath him, inviting him, luring him toward the edge of sexual bliss. Her small hands stroked down the arch of his back to his hips to knead his tight buttocks, to pull him even deeper into her heat.

“I want to take you to paradise, darling,” he whispered, kissing her earlobe, tracing the shell of her ear with the tip of his tongue. He drove his hips against her again, slowly, strongly, stroking her in a way he knew would wring a startled gasp of pleasure from her.

Moaning, Alex breathed a stream of reverent Italian. Her nails raked down Christian’s back as she murmured, “Paradise … let’s go there together.”

They moved in unison, both their bodies betraying a wonderful kind of urgency, until they were straining into each other, panting and smiling and, finally, replete.

Alex was so happy, she never wanted to move from the spot. She thought she could have stayed forever under the warm spring sun with bees buzzing lazily in the distance and Christian in her arms. But she knew there were horses waiting to be ridden, including Terminator, who had won his class the past Sunday, then proceeded to spend the week trying to throw her. He had succeeded once, flinging her headlong into the bars.

After a while she sat up and began to dress, pulling her shirt on over her head and handing Christian’s to him. They kissed and giggled like teenagers as they put themselves back together. Alex found the torn foil wrapper and arched a brow.

“Always prepared?”

Christian flashed her his brilliant grin. “A useful motto I picked up in the Boy Scouts.”

Alex shoved him playfully. “You liar. You were never a Boy Scout.”

“I most certainly was,” he insisted, lifting his square chin. “Until that camping incident with the Girl Guides, which got me chucked out.”

“You’re too much.” Alex groaned, rolling her eyes as she reached for her panties.

“That’s not what you were saying a moment ago,” Christian murmured in a dark velvet voice as he pulled her against him.

The gold in Alex’s eyes glittered like pyrite as she snuggled into him. “Wicked.”

“Thoroughly.”

He leaned down to kiss her, but something on her hip caught his eye, and he pulled back suddenly with a scowl as black as a thundercloud. “What the bloody hell is that?”

Alex’s gaze flicked down over her right hip. The bruise was three days old, just turning a truly putrid shade of green. It was a good five inches across, and while it looked horrible, it marked only a small area of what actually hurt. As bumps and bruises were typical in her line of work, she had ignored it. Nothing was broken, that was all that really mattered.

Christian was standing in front of her with his hands planted at the waist of his jeans, his brows drawn low and tight over his eyes. “How?”

Alex gave her classic little shrug. “I had a fall. It was nothing.”

“It was that bastard Terminator, wasn’t it?” he demanded. Her stubborn silence was enough of an answer. “Dammit, Alex, get rid of him! He’s dangerous. I’ll send you horses from the QF string if you need the rides that badly. I’ll fix it with Rylan. I’ll pay the bloody training fees myself.”

“You won’t,” Alex snapped, her chin going up. The mounts she got, she got on her own.

“You deserve better, Alex!”

No, I don’t.
The thought came instantly, but she didn’t put it into words. She turned away from him instead and pulled on her underwear.

Christian heaved a sigh and raked a hand back through his hair, tilting his head down. He was trying to run her life for her, and she was determined to be independent. He could understand her need to make it on her own, but in his heart, where new love was taking fragile root, he was terrified. He wanted to take care of Alex. He wanted to keep her safe. But she wouldn’t let him.

Adding to his frustration was the fact that he had never wanted to interfere in anyone’s life before. His old bachelor philosophies warred with these new desires, until his head pounded from the struggle.

“Don’t let’s fight,” he said quietly, rubbing his temples. “It’s been such a perfect afternoon.”

Alex’s temper evaporated like so much steam. Fighting was the last thing she wanted to do. She went directly into Christian’s arms when he opened them to her.

They kissed, each desperate to reassure the other that all was forgiven. And as they sank back down to the blanket, the fight was forgotten and paradise was revisited.

eight

THE DAY BEGAN WITH A HEAT WAVE AND A
dozen red roses. The heat now permeated everything, making a mockery of the efforts of the groaning old fan Alex had stuck in her bedroom window. The roses now stood in their cut-glass vase, elegant and out of place on the old walnut dresser in the tiny beige-walled bedroom.

Next had come the dress. It was now being arranged over her lithe body by her fairy godmothers, Maggie Quaid and Katie Leone, while Alex fidgeted from black-stockinged foot to black-stockinged foot.

Katie and Nick had volunteered to take Isabella for the night, since Pearl had been called away to spend a few days with one of her nieces, who had just had some minor surgery. Katie and Maggie had shown up together just as Alex had been taking the dress out of its protective bag. They had both insisted on seeing her in it before they left.

“It’s gorgeous, Alex,” Katie murmured, zipping up the low back. “You say Christian just had it delivered?”

Alex nibbled at her lower lip nervously, frowning at her reflection. She stood on the lumpy green-brocade footstool that had been pilfered from the living room so she could see most of herself in the mirror above the dresser. Her bangs spilled over her forehead in a riot of humidity-enhanced curls. Heavy gold hoops hung from her earlobes. She was wearing makeup for the first time in ages and wondered absently if it would all just melt off before she got where she was going.

“I told him I didn’t have anything to wear to this party at Green Hills,” she said, shrugging expressively. “He said he wasn’t going to let me get away with that tired old line. This morning
this
shows up by special delivery,” she said, twitching the royal blue flounced skirt.

“How do you like that?” Maggie said dryly, planting her hands on her hips. “He sends you this fabulous dress just for a date. Do y’all know what Rylan gave me for my birthday this year? A garden weasel. You know, one of those hoe things with the spiky teeth on it.” She shook her head in woeful resignation. “He’s the soul of romance, isn’t he?”

She sounded disgusted, but as usual when she talked about her husband, her face lit up with a loving glow.

They all turned their attention back to Alex’s reflection in the mirror, including Isabella, who was playing on the bed. Her dark eyes grew round with wonder as she stared at her mother.

“Isn’t Mama pretty?” Katie said, sitting on the brown quilted spread and letting Isabella scramble onto her lap. The baby, clad only in a diaper because of the heat, immediately grabbed the end of Katie’s long braid and tickled her nose with it.

“Don’t you think it’s a little too…” Alex’s hands fluttered helplessly as words failed her. She felt naked. She hadn’t worn anything so… provocative … in a long time. It felt foreign and forbidden.

“Good heavens, sugar.” Maggie clucked. “It doesn’t even show any cleavage.” She sounded vaguely disappointed in Christian’s lack of foresight.

“That’s because I haven’t got any,” Alex declared. She skimmed her hands across the black sequins that covered her stomach, her brows pulling together in concern. “Don’t you think it’s a little … snug?”

“It’s perfect,” Maggie announced with a note of finality as she adjusted the large taffeta bow at Alex’s hip. “You’re a pretty young lady, going out with a man most women would give their eyeteeth for, Alex. Why not show off a little bit?”

Because she’d spent the past eighteen months trying to hide herself and her femininity, Alex thought. What had begun as a concerted effort had become second nature to her. She would have felt much more at ease in an oversize shirt and a baggy pair of jeans.

She stared at herself and tried to be objective. It
was
lovely. Whisper-thin straps led down over her shoulders to a simple, fitted bodice of shimmering black sequins that hugged her slender body, nipping in at her tiny waist and stretching slightly over her slim hips. The skirt was of royal blue taffeta edged in fine black lace. It was attached in a wrap-around style set at a sassy angle higher on her left hip, where the bow was perched, and lower on her right. There really wasn’t anything revealing about it. It was tasteful and chic and obviously expensive.

“Don’t you think it might be too fancy?” she asked, determined to find a reason not to wear it. “This is an outdoor party.”

“Honey, when Hayden Hill puts on a party, there is no such thing as too fancy,” Maggie said. “I heard they set up a tent big enough to hold a three-ring circus, which is probably what it will be. A black-tie, ball-gown circus. If I thought I had a snowball’s chance of squeezing myself into that dress, I’d go in your place.” She stood back and heaved a sigh up into her damp red bangs. “We were invited, but I couldn’t get Rylan there with a twenty-mule hitch.” She rolled her dark eyes expressively. “He still thinks Carter Hill has eyes for me. Can y’all believe that?” Shaking her head, she patted her rounded tummy through the madras-plaid cotton maternity jumper she wore.

Alex broke out of her apprehensive mood with a sparkling laugh as she hopped down from the footstool in a rustle of taffeta. It had been so long since she’d had real friends, she had forgotten what it was like to get together with them and gossip and tease. The wary shyness she had cultivated since the attack hadn’t stopped the gregarious Maggie from taking her into her fold of friends. Nor had it deterred sensible, sweet Katie in any way. If either of them suspected she had a dark secret in her past, they didn’t mention it, or they respected her right to keep it. They got together to chat as regularly as their various schedules allowed. They had even begun doing things together as couples.

Couples, Alex thought with a little shiver of excitement. She and Christian were a couple. It seemed so strange after she had convinced herself she would be alone indefinitely. He came over nearly every evening to help her or to cajole her into going into Briarwood with him for a cup of cappuccino at Nick’s, or a movie or a walk around the small town’s historic district, where a number of old homes had been restored and beautiful gardens overflowed with vibrant color and sweet fragrances.

Many nights Isabella accompanied them, but they had managed to get a few evenings all to themselves, and those had been magic. Christian was a wonderful lover. Under his devoted tutelage Alex found herself rediscovering her sexuality and reveling in it. She found herself falling more in love with him every day.

But with the love came a vague, distant sense of apprehension. She was afraid of becoming too dependent on him, too devoted to him. Experience had taught her to rely on no one and nothing, save herself. She couldn’t afford to let Christian run her life or her business, because there was no guarantee that he would always be there. To Michael DeGrazia she had pledged her love and trust unto death, but he was now more than two thousand miles away, as far removed from her life as the moon.

“Look at the time,” Maggie said, checking her watch. “I have to get out of here before Christian comes. The sight of that man in a tuxedo is enough to make me swoon.” She leaned over and gave Alex an affectionate hug, made awkward by her bulk. “Y’all have fun now, honey, and that’s an order—as my daddy the admiral always says.”

“Thanks, Maggie. Katie, you’re sure Isabella won’t be an imposition?”

“Don’t be silly,” Katie said, rising with the baby in her arms. “We’ll have a great time with her. Besides, it’ll be good practice. Nick and I are on a waiting list to adopt.”

That was apparently a bombshell, if the startled look on Maggie’s face was anything to go by, but there was no time to discuss it. The screen door banged, and Christian’s voice called out.

“Alex?”

With Isabella perched on her slim hip, Katie led the way out of the bedroom, as calm as if she’d just said she and Nick were getting a puppy. Maggie followed, bubbling over with curiosity. Alex trailed behind with a stomach full of butterflies.

Christian looked the part of the consummate gentleman in his pleated white dress shirt and black bow tie. No one would have guessed by looking at him that it was ninety-plus degrees. He looked cool and sophisticated, too well-bred to sweat. His tuxedo was the absolute latest in chic European styles with a double-breasted jacket that enhanced his lean handsomeness. He definitely belonged somewhere more glamorous than her shabby little kitchen with its cracked gray linoleum and outdated appliances, Alex thought.

Her breath fluttered out of her as their gazes locked. Christian smiled, a slow, devastatingly sexy smile. It generated a fire inside Alex that made the hot day seem like a day in Antarctica.

“Exquisite,” he murmured, his sapphire eyes glowing with male appreciation as they scanned Alex from head to toe.

“Don’t mind us homely stepsisters,” Katie said, grabbing up Alex’s diaper bag from the Formica tabletop. “We were just leaving. Come on along now, Mary Margaret.”

Maggie was swaying on her feet, staring raptly at Christian and fanning herself with a pot holder she’d picked up from the counter.

“Maggie?” Katie called, tugging at the short sleeve of her friend’s pink T-shirt. “Oh, Maggie!”

“You’ll have to drive, sugar,” she mumbled, fishing in her patch pocket for her keys. “I feel positively overcome.”

Isabella took the keys and rattled them merrily.

“Say good-bye, Maggie,” Katie said, heading for the door.

“Good-bye, Maggie.”

“Bye-bye!” Isabella called, shaking the keys.

Tearing herself away from Christian’s magnetism, Alex rushed to the door to thank her friends again and to kiss her daughter good-bye. Feeling the return of the jitters, she watched through the screen door as they drove away in Maggie’s blue station wagon.

“I hope Isabella is good for Katie and Nick. She hasn’t been sleeping well.”

“She’ll be fine,” Christian murmured, slipping his arms around her from behind and bending down to kiss her neck. “And so will you, darling.”

Sometimes the man was too darn perceptive for his own good, Alex thought. He knew she was nervous about attending the Hills’ party. Everybody who was anybody in show jumping would be there. She was gradually getting over the feeling that everybody in the world knew about her past, but the equestrian community was a relatively small one. There was a very good chance that she would eventually run into someone who knew. She dreaded the thought.

“I am so very anxious to show you off,” Christian murmured, taking his arms from around her waist. A few seconds later he was fastening a necklace around her throat.

“Christian!” Alex said in protest as she fingered the beautiful piece. A vee of dark sapphires rested against her skin just above the neckline of her dress. The gold herringbone chain gleamed against her dark skin. “You’ve given me way too much already!”

Turning her, he took her in his arms again and bent toward her lips. “I haven’t given you even half of what’s in my heart,” he murmured as he settled his mouth over hers and kissed her deeply, with a hunger that never left him.

A low, rapturous sound rumbled deep in his throat as Alex rose up on tiptoe and twined her arms around his neck, tilting her head to give him better access. He trailed the kiss down the slender column of her throat to the spot where it joined her shoulder and nibbled at her smooth skin around the chain of necklace. Passion leapt to life instantly, a flame that would never be extinguished between them, but with it came something sweeter and softer—the glow of love.

There was still a part of him that shuddered at the thought of committing himself to one woman. But the tremors were gradually becoming weaker as his old rakish tendencies gave way to other feelings. With a certain sense of resignation Christian realized that he was becoming positively domestic.

As he held Alex to him, he murmured a little apology to dearly departed Uncle Dicky. The last of the Atherton black sheep was fading into respectability.

The lawn at Green Hills looked like an emerald carpet liberally dotted with the colors of partygoers—men in their formal black and white, women standing out like jewels among them in their richly colored evening wear. There was indeed an enormous green-and-white-striped tent, the sides of which had been rolled up to let through whatever cooling breeze the evening might bring. Under the big top was a lavish buffet with barbecued beef and pork, platters of fresh fruit, and seafood presented on beds of shaved ice. The bar had been set up directly across from the buffet and was doing a lively business, the heat and the conversation drumming up thirsts all around. One end of the shelter held a number of long tables draped in white and adorned with trailing green ivy plants for centerpieces. The remainder of the space beneath the tent was taken up by a portable dance floor. A five-piece combo nestled into one corner, playing contemporary hits, classics, and standards.

The level of energy and opulence about the place was impressive and infectious. The following day the show horses would take center stage. At present it was their owners and trainers who provided the spectacle.

Alex recognized some of the faces from the smaller shows she had been attending. Others she knew on sight from their photographs in the magazines—Katie Prudent and Debbie Shaffner, Greg Best and George Morris and Rodney Jenkins. Hayden Hill’s party was a virtual
Who’s Who
of show jumping. It was a thrill to rub shoulders with them, and an even bigger thrill to remember that Christian resided at the top of their ranks.