Texas! Lucky (18 page)

"Yes, yes, I was," she stammered. "Thank you. You behaved…" She faltered and swallowed with difficulty. "You were a perfect gentleman about that."

His crooked grin was self-deprecating. "If I'd been a perfect gentleman, I wouldn't have tracked you down, tricked my way into your room, and coerced you into letting me stay the night."

"You were injured. By the way, how's the knife wound?" She lowered her gaze to his midsection.

"It's okay. You can barely see it anymore."

"Oh."

He didn't know at exactly what point in the conversation they had started whispering. It was silly, really, but somehow the topic, the setting, and the mood called for soft, confidential voices.

They simultaneously realized that their eyes seemed locked to each other and that he was still stroking her palm. Guiltily she pulled her hand from his grasp, though he was reluctant to let it go. Taking his cue from her, he resumed eating, but his appetite for food had deserted him, to be replaced by hunger for her.

The only sounds in the silent house were those of the rain pelting the windows and of cutlery against their plates. However, if sexual awareness and suppressed longings were capable of generating sound, the noise would have been as blaring as a brass band.

"More pizza?" she asked.

"No thanks."

"Salad?"

He shook his head. As she cleared the dishes from the table, he refilled both their wineglasses. When she returned to the table, he noticed their reflections in the window glass. It was a portrait of intimacy, a man and a woman sharing a candlelight dinner. Devon noticed it too.

"Appearances can be deceiving."

"Yes," she answered softly.

After a moment he said, "Devon, I'm going to shoot straight with you. You don't know me very well, but I assure you that shooting straight is not something I usually do with a woman."

"I don't find that at all hard to believe." She was smiling as she raised her wineglass to her lips.

"No, I guess not," he said ruefully. Leaning back in his chair, he contemplated the candle's flame through the ruby contents of his wineglass. "There's this girl in Milton Point that I've been seeing for a couple of months."

"Rest assured that I don't intend to make trouble between you and your girlfriend."

"That's not what this is about," he said crossly.

"Then why bring it up?"

"Because you need to know about her."

"What makes you think I'm interested in your romances?"

"This isn't about romance. Just hear me out, okay? Then you'll get your turn." She gave him a small nod of concession. "This girl's daddy is a big shot at the bank that's holding a loan on my business."

"Is that why you were dating her?"

He got the impression that she would be disappointed if he said yes. "No. I started seeing Susan because she was one of the few available women in town that I hadn't been to bed with yet."

She cast her eyes downward. "I see."

"I told you I was going to shoot straight, Devon."

"And I appreciate your honesty," she replied huskily. "Go on."

"Susan is spoiled rotten. Accustomed to winding her daddy and everybody else around her little finger. Selfish. Self-centered." He could go on and on, but felt that he had captured the essence of Susan's personality and didn't want to be accused of overkill.

"Anyway, she's made up her mind that she wants to be Mrs. Lucky Tyler."

"Why?"

He shrugged. "My sister says because it would distinguish her."

"That's considered a distinction in Milton Point?"

"By some," he said testily.

"I take it you're not too keen on the idea of marrying her."

"There's no chance in hell that I'm going to marry her."

"Have you told her that?"

"Twice."

"Apparently she doesn't take no for an answer either."

His temper snapped. Scowling, he said, "I'm pouring out my guts here, trying to explain things to you, and all you can do is make these snide little remarks."

"Your romantic intrigues might be fascinating to some women, but I don't see what your problems with this Susan have to do with me."

"I'm getting to that."

"Please do."

"Last week Susan volunteered to lie to the authorities, saying that she had slept with me the night of the fire."

"In exchange for a wedding ring, I suppose."

"Bingo."

"To which you said…?"

"Nothing. I didn't take it seriously. I thought maybe if I ignored her, she'd give up and go away."

"No such luck?"

"No such luck. Today she called and insisted on seeing me."

"What happened?"

"She's threatened to tell another lie. Only this time she says she'll tell them that I outlined to her my plan to torch our garage and use the insurance money to pay off the bank note."

"They would never believe her."

"The hell they wouldn't. To their way of thinking, she would be making an ultimate sacrifice. She's willing to squander her reputation as a Goody Two Shoes by making it public that she's been sleeping with me."

"Has she?"

He could tell that she regretted asking the question almost before she'd completed it. That gave him a glimmer of hope. She cared enough to wonder about his other lovers. Could she also be a tad jealous?

"No, Devon. I've never slept with her. I swear." His eyes bore deeply into hers, trying to impress the truth into her mind. Her next question indicated that she had been persuaded.

"Then what have you got to worry about?"

"Plenty. Susan can be very convincing. Hell, this afternoon, I almost believed her myself when she began to cry and say that she couldn't hold in her ugly secret any longer. 'I can't go through the rest of my life with this on my conscience,' she said, or words to that effect. She was talking like it was fact, going on and on about how unhappy I'd made her by confiding my nefarious plan to her."

Devon's fingers absently trailed up and down the stem of her wineglass while she pondered what he'd told her. "I presume that the only way Susan would be happy again is if you proposed marriage, in which case she would conveniently forget that you're an arsonist."

"That was the implication, yeah. If we were formally engaged, she would switch her stories to 'protect' me."

"At the same time protecting your business from bankruptcy."

He nodded grimly. "I dismissed her threats until today. This afternoon I saw just how destructive she could be."

"Hell hath no fury, et cetera."

"Especially since I was supposed to be having dinner with her when I was in bed with you."

Devon's lips parted, but remained speechless.

"When she found out about that, well, that really capped it. My sister, Sage, tried to warn me about Susan. I laughed off her warnings. I shouldn't have. Susan is devious and audacious, willing to go to any lengths to get what she's after.

"Damn my own hide, I made it easy for her to trap me, and at the same time bring down my whole family. Out of pure spite, she's not above making our lives hell. She can and will do it."

"Unless I tell the authorities where you really were the night of the fire," Devon said slowly.

"That's right." With emotional gruffness he added, "Unless you tell them that I was making love to you."

"Don't call it that!" Devon's words were a whisper, but an exclamation just the same. She left her chair so hurriedly that her thigh bumped the rim of the table and rocked the candle.

Lucky left his chair just as quickly. Devon was leaning into the countertop, her hands curled into fists on the tiles along the edge. He stepped behind her and, for a split second, wrestled with his conscience. He shouldn't touch her. He shouldn't. Even knowing that, he placed one of his hands on the countertop beside hers and curved his other arm around her waist, flattening his hand on her stomach and burying his face in the nape of her neck. He luxuriated in the silky feel of her hair against his lips.

"That's what it was, Devon. Deny it with your dying breath if it soothes your conscience, but that won't ever change what it was."

"Leave me alone," she moaned. "Please."

"Listen to me," he said urgently. "That arson rap isn't the only reason I'm here. You know that. You knew it yesterday. I would have come looking for you whether or not I was in trouble. I had to see you again.

"You wanted to see me again just as badly. I don't care how many times you deny it, I know it's true. You're not only running from involvement in a criminal case and what effects it might have on your life. You're running from this." He lightly ground his hand over her belly, skimmed her mound, the top of her thigh.

"Don't! Don't touch me like that."

"Why?"

"Because … because…"

"Because it drives you as crazy as it does me."

"Stop."

"Only if you tell me I'm wrong about the way you feel. Tell me I'm wrong, Devon, then I'll stop."

"Please. Just leave me alone."

"I can't." He groaned. "I can't."

She turned her head toward her shoulder.

He lowered his. Their mouths met in a greedy kiss. She turned into the circle of his arms, which pulled her against him. Resting his hands on her hips, guiding them, he positioned her against him.

As his passions burned hotter, he also got angrier because he knew she was forbidden to him. Despite his penchant to misbehave during Sunday school, some spiritual training had penetrated his young mind. That formal religious instruction, plus all the moral lessons drilled into him by his conscientious parents, declared that this was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Yet he couldn't deny himself her kisses, not when her mouth was warm and sweet and eager. He kept telling himself that the next kiss would be the last—forever. But one only made him hungry for more.

"Dammit, Devon, resist me. Stop this. Stop me." He was so obsessed with her, he was seized by a primal urge to fight for her. Pressing her head between his hands, he tilted her head back drastically. "Where is he? Where is the slob you're married to? Where was he when you were traveling around East Texas alone? Is he crazy to give you that kind of freedom? Is he blind? Why isn't the bastard here now, protecting you from me, protecting you from yourself."

Lucky had posed the questions rhetorically. He didn't really expect answers. That's why he was shocked when she cried, "He's in prison!"

The lights suddenly came back on.

Chapter 12