The Darkest Heart (28 page)

When she opened them, she thought she was dreaming.

Standing in the doorway of the salon was Jack Savage.

And he was staring right at her.

Candice stared back, feeling as shocked as Jack seemed to be, and then her heart started pounding painfully in her chest. Jack’s gaze dropped, and suddenly she was ashamed. Ashamed he was seeing her like this. He stared at Anderson’s hand on her bare, exposed breast, kneading the lush flesh. His gaze went back to her face, and their eyes met. His were blazing with fury.

Anderson released her breast, standing and pulling her to her feet. He had one arm clamped around her waist. Candice frantically began to tuck herself into the snug bodice, and Anderson laughed. “What’s the bother, honey? I’m just gonna pull it down in another minute. You shy about showing your tits?”

It was a nightmare. She watched Jack stalking toward them, his face so tight and strained it looked like it might crack. Anderson followed her gaze, then stiffened when he saw Jack and his obvious anger. “Who’s that?” he hissed.

“Take your hands off her,
pindah,”
Jack said in a low, controlled voice.

Anderson scowled. “I paid for her, she’s mine. Find yourself another gal.”

Jack did not spare another glance at Candice. “Take your hands off her now,” he said, his tone softer but more ruthless.

“Oh, Christ!” Anderson cried, dropping his arm. “No two-bit whore is worth getting killed for.” He looked at Candice. “I’ll be back for you, honey.” He turned.

Jack grabbed him by the shirt and spun him around and backward. Anderson crashed into a table and landed on his back on it, spilling drinks and causing the occupants to cry out and leap to their feet. Jack leaned over him, a hand on each of Anderson’s arms, his face inches from his. “No you won’t,
pindah
, not if you know what’s good for you.”

He jerked upright.

Candice was trembling—with relief, elation, and anxiety all at once. She saw Lorna approaching, and she moved closer to Jack. He still didn’t look at her. His gaze was cold and
controlled when he turned its full force on Lorna. “How much for the whore?” he asked.

Lorna opened her mouth and closed it. For a full minute she did not speak.

“Jack,” Candice croaked.

“Shut up. How much?”

“Five dollars.”

Jack stared at her. “She’s a little overpriced. Or does she have some special talents I haven’t tried yet?”

“Five dollars. She was otherwise engaged.”

“I saw how engaged she was,” Jack said. He removed one of his guns from his holster and handed it to her. “That should cover it and then some.”

Lorna looked as if she were about to protest, and then changed her mind. She gingerly took the gun and handed it to Jim. “Take this to my office, Jim.”

“But—”

“It’s all right.”

Jack turned to Candice, who knew he could not be serious. This was a scheme to free her—it had to be. She took his arm and gave him a tremulous smile. There was no warmth to greet her in his eyes. “Let’s go—whore.”

He dragged her down the corridor, despite the fact that she kept stumbling in her high heels, and threw her into the room, slamming the door behind her. “All right, whore,” he began.

Candice bit her knuckle and shrank away from him.

Jack leaned against the door and hated himself, hated her, hated the way he felt. He closed his eyes, knowing he couldn’t take her in violent anger even though a part of him primitively wanted to.

Then the last thing he’d expected happened. She catapulted herself at him with a small sob. Clinging, pressing against him, crying out his name, again and again. “Jack, God, Jack, oh, Jack …”

And then there were the hundred questions racing through his mind, and the damning evidence of his own eyes. He wrenched her hands away from his neck and threw her backward. She landed on the bed and stared at him, wide-eyed, propping herself up.

“I came here to find a whore,” he said hoarsely. “And it looks like I found one.”

“No,” she whimpered. “It’s not true.”

“A whore who’s also my wife,” he said, and the pain almost knocked him over.

She stared, her eyes huge, her mouth open, breathing just as hard as he was. “Jack—”

“God,” he cried, an anguished, wrenching sound. He turned his back to her and leaned panting against the door.
“Usen.”

Candice flung her arms around him from behind, and he went stiff and rigid. Her breasts were soft against his back. He heard her sobbing his name. And he felt her shaking against him with the force of her weeping.

He turned.

It wasn’t premeditated. It was the most natural thing in the world to turn and open his arms and close them around
her, pressing her face in his chest and burying his mouth in her hair. She moaned, lifting her face, and he stared for an instant at her navy eyes, laced with pain and hope, at the tears tracking her cheeks, and he was lost. His mouth brushed hers. She clung and opened. Their tongues touched. He groaned in complete capitulation and kissed her hotly, deeply—frantic and demanding. “Candice,” he cried, “Candice,” and he was pressing her as close as he could, rejoicing in the perfect fit of her body, throbbing with a wild, explosive need for her, kissing her uncontrollably.

They were falling onto the bed.

Jack wrapped his hands in her hair and held her face still so his mouth could plunder hers, everything forgotten, all the anger and hate. She arched frantically against him, her long legs going around his waist, drawing his bulging manhood into the warm valley between her legs. An electric desire coursed between them.

He couldn’t stand it. Never had his need been so uncontrollable and so frenzied. He tore off her scandalously short drawers and yanked open his fly, his mouth still plundering with a savage desperation. He could feel her body shuddering beneath his, and he raised himself briefly and plunged violently into her.

The union took his senses up and away.

Right now, this instant, she was his and no one else’s.

He moved hard and fast, in that frantic, steady, wild climb toward ecstasy, and she moved with him, insistent, demanding, her nails clawing his back, shredding his shirt. Her tremors began first, and he felt them immediately, the tight, sharp spasming of her sheath, and then another contraction followed, and another.… Candice gasped, wrenching her mouth away from his. In that one instant, Jack saw her face in the throes of release, and then he felt his own explosion as he surged even deeper within her, deeper, harder, exploding again and again.

He lay on top of her, in her, panting, his heart beating wildly. Remembrance and reality returned. Candice. Candice, who had betrayed him. Candice, who had chosen Kincaid over him. Candice here, a whore in a whorehouse. Without moving his body, he raised his head and looked down at her.

She was so damn beautiful. He watched as she breathed unsteadily through parted, swollen lips, black lashes fluttering against her golden skin. Her eyes opened, and she looked right into his. Tears shimmered. “I love you, Jack.”

Candice lay beneath him and held him tightly, closing her eyes, her cheek pressed in the smooth joining of his neck and shoulder. She wondered if he had heard her; he was so very still. Her heart was still racing, and an exultant joy was coursing through her. How could she have ever given this man up? She turned her head to press her mouth against his flesh, which was musk-scented and wet from exertion. She inhaled his scent deeply, listening to his heartbeat.

He slipped to her side, onto his back, placing a small breath of space between them. Candice felt his withdrawal on an emotional level. She immediately curled against him, her arms going around him, refusing to allow him to pull away, either physically or emotionally. “Oh, Jack,” she said, her voice unsteady. “God, I’ve missed you.” Tears threatened to overwhelm her but she fought them back.

“Right.” He sat up, pulling away from her.

Candice sat too, grasping his arm. His eyes were ice cold, like the desert frozen with a dusting of frost in winter, and the glitter in their depths was dangerous. “Jack? Wait. You don’t understand.”

He laughed again. She hated the sound of this laugh. It was full of contempt. “You’re right. I don’t understand.”

“Let me explain.”

He stood, tightening the drawstring of his pants. “What kind of explanation could there possibly be for a man finding his wife in a whorehouse?” He looked at her. “How many men do you sleep with every day? Three? Six? Ten?”

She felt as if he had punched her in the chest, and for a moment she couldn’t breathe.

“Do you enjoy it?”

“No! Jack, I’m not a whore,” she cried.

His jaw clenched. But his gaze roamed over her costume and her bared breasts.

“No, I’m not,” she cried, yanking up the bodice, grabbing him. Tears filled her eyes. “I didn’t want to go with Kincaid. I had no choice. He forced me and hurt me. He promised me he’d let me go when he was tired of me—except
he’s lied!” Her voice was high, and she could feel a wild hysteria threatening to engulf her. “Tonight he was going to make me sleep with Anderson—he said he was tired of me, that I bored him. Tonight was the first time, I swear it.” She moaned, and tears trickled down her face. Why was he just looking at her like that? Like she was a freak and he couldn’t care less? There was no compassion or comprehension in his eyes, just coldness.

“More lies?”

“No, it’s the truth! Jack, dammit, aren’t you listening? I love you! But it’s hopeless for us, and I didn’t want to be in love with you. But now, with the baby—”

He grabbed her. “Baby? What baby?”

She bit her lip, managed a smile, eyes glistening. “I’m going to have your baby, Jack.”

He stared. “Is this another lie, Candice? So help me, if it is, you’ll live to regret it.”

“I haven’t had my monthly time since before we met. I know I’m carrying your child.” And she smiled, fighting the tears.

He swung away and cursed.

She could feel him fighting her. “Jack, will you help me get away from him? Help me get home?” Her voice was tense and low. When he didn’t move, she said, “If you don’t believe how bad it is, look at that window.”

Jack turned his head, but his expression remained hard and unreadable as he stared at the boarded-up window.

“Jack—listen. Virgil will be back any time now. Jim, that big red-haired brute, is guarding me. We have to do something soon!”

His face was a dangerous mask. “I’ll kill Kincaid for you, Candice.”

“Jack!” She was on her feet, clinging to him. “No, Jack, I’m afraid!”

He looked at her as if she were an annoying nuisance and a stranger.

“He’ll shoot you in the back,” she cried. “Jack, just help me get out of here.”

He grabbed her and shook her. “This had better not be a lie, Candice,” he rasped. “You have some feelings left over for Kincaid?”

“No,” Candice said. “But I’m afraid for you. Please don’t confront him, you don’t know how cruel he is. Let’s just run away.”

“How cruel is he?” Jack asked impassively, still clasping her shoulders.

She met his gaze directly. “He likes hurting me. He likes raping me.”

Jack’s jaw tightened. “A man can’t rape his own wife.”

Candice bit down on her lip, hard. She was afraid to tell him the rest of it, that Kincaid was not her husband. Oh, God, she was afraid. “Jack, please.”

He released her abruptly, “I’ll wait for him downstairs.”

“No! Didn’t you hear me? If he sees you first, he’ll murder you without thinking twice!”

That stopped him, the hysteria in her voice, and Candice saw by the way he was looking at her that he was wondering if she had really meant what she’d said before—that she loved him.

“Don’t take the chance,” she begged, clutching his shirt. “Jack, how I feel about you isn’t a lie, I love you, and I don’t want you to die.”

An expression of unbearable intensity swept his face briefly. He was at the door, opening it. And then he was gone.

The tension in Jack was coiled and strained, explosive. He paced deliberately through the salon and found a chair, which he promptly placed against a wall. He sat, his back to the wall, facing the entrance to the salon and, beyond that, the foyer and the stairs.

Even if Kincaid used the back entrance, there was only one way up those stairs to Candice’s room.

Candice. God, he couldn’t believe his passion for her.

It hadn’t died—just the opposite. It had grown even hotter.

And a baby. Usen had willed it—she was carrying his baby.

He was filled with fierce resolution. The urge to protect and comfort her had nearly choked his breathing. But fighting that urge, equally strong, was his pride—and she had wounded it mortally.

He wanted her and their child more than anything, but he vowed she would never again make him feel powerless.

And he was glad to have any excuse to kill Kincaid.

One question tormented him. If she really had been forced to leave with Kincaid against her will, then why hadn’t she come to him for protection? It wouldn’t have mattered to him that Kincaid was her husband. But she hadn’t turned to him for help, when she damn well knew he could end Kincaid’s life in the hair’s breadth of time it took for him to draw his two Colts. He glanced down at his one empty holster grimly.

The answer was too obvious. In front of her family and Tucson, Candice would not and could not acknowledge her relationship with him. He smiled tightly. He no longer cared what she wanted or what she was afraid of. His child was not going to be born a bastard.

He would gladly kill Kincaid. Kincaid had taken
his
wife, and it didn’t matter whether it was against her will or not. Kincaid had taken his wife, and he had used her and possibly abused her. For that he would die.

The salon was crowded and noisy now with drinking
customers. A pianist was playing a hearty tune, and one of the half-clad girls was singing along, the others roaming and entertaining. Jack was aware of every movement around him, his senses tuned in to nothing but Kincaid’s arrival.