When Night Falls (14 page)

Trying to figure out how to deal with you
. “I like the fresh air,” she said, and regretted the trembling of her body.

He blew those tendrils again. “Tell Dani that I’m your boyfriend. Let her get used to the idea before this all breaks and someone says the wrong thing to her about me. Putting dates together is easy enough with all the gossip in this town.”

“No.”

He shoved back from her and Shelly pivoted around to face him, her hands behind her, locked to the counter. Roman served her one of those hot leveling looks at her faded shirt, cut-off shorts, and tennis shoes, and walked to the refrigerator. He jerked it open and took out a can of soda, popped the top, and lifted it to drink.

Raw and masculine, the appealing package was all there—the shaggy sweat-damp hair, the gleam of tanned sweaty skin over his arms, his lean and powerful chest, and that flat plane of his stomach and lower where his jeans sagged just a bit. From there on down to his bare feet, he was all long and strong.

Shelly breathed uneasily; life in close quarters with Roman set her on edge, her senses clanging with big warning bells.

He tossed the can into the trash, braced a hand on the refrigerator, and leveled one of those dark, burning looks at her. “I’ve got a bum knee and no money to speak of. I got into that fight the first night I was here because of a woman. But
that’s not happening again, not unless the woman is you. I can’t make it up to you, but I can help you with Dani now. You don’t have a clue about the darker side of life and that’s where she’s headed—I’ve been there.”

What might happen to Dani terrified her. She’d read of girls who’d run away, but Roman in their lives now wasn’t possible. More than once those honey-colored eyes had ripped down and up her body, leaving a tingling path. “I’ve managed this far—”

“Deceive yourself, if you want. You need help on this one, honey. Call me a dreamer, but I’d like her to know that I’m her father.”

“You didn’t come back because you knew that. You might not have come back at all.”

His hand slapped at the refrigerator hard enough to shake it, rattling the apple-shaped cookie jar on top. “Well, I’m here now and the kid is making moves on me. I’m not leaving. I had a mother who ran out, and I wasn’t here for you or for her. I know what a kid feels like, all torn up inside because a parent didn’t care enough to stay around and see her grow up. I’m staying, honey. Get used to it, and I’m going to talk with
your
mother, too. She’s Dani’s grandmother, for God’s sake.”

Shelly’s secret had been her own—with the exception of Uma—for all those years. She couldn’t bear to reopen the past, the heartbreaking arguments, the venomous accusation that her “whoring” was responsible for her father’s death. “You can’t just come in here and—”

“Try me.”

The words hung in the air. Roman made his way to the back door, never taking his eyes from Shelly. Horrified at what he might do, she couldn’t move—then she heard him say, “Hi, Dani. I’m just leaving—going out for a ride.”

Panic drove Shelly to the door; Dani wanted more than anything to ride behind Roman on the Harley. “I’ll be with
you in just a minute, Roman. I’ve never had a motorcycle ride.”

Their stunned faces did look alike, the same light brown eyes, the same turn of their parted lips—father and daughter. Roman stopped drawing on his T-shirt, almost comical as it paused above his stomach. Then Dani frowned. “Maybe you’re too old to hold on, Mom,” she stated nastily.

“Nah,” Roman said easily, jerking his T-shirt fully down. “If you want a ride later, kid, that’s okay, but I’d already asked your mother. See if you can’t fold those towels on top of the dryer while we’re gone. If there’s one thing that makes a woman look bad, it’s not carrying her share of the work. Work hard, play hard.”

Dani blinked, and Shelly caught the subtle taunt—Dani already thought she was a woman. “I carry my share,” she tossed back and slammed into the house.

“Hurry up, honey,” Roman said, watching Shelly. “Or would you rather not finish what you started?”

“I
really shouldn’t. I need to make canapes for Pearl’s dinner party tomorrow night. Some caterers are coming in, but Pearl—I don’t know what to do. I’ve never ridden a motorcycle before,” she said honestly as Roman carefully fitted the extra helmet to her. She didn’t know what to do about anything—Dani glaring at her through the kitchen window, the music blasting loudly enough to disturb the elderly couple next door, the man who wanted to be a part of Dani’s life.

“Then it’s time you learned. You look about seventeen yourself just now, all steamy mad and frustrated. Only you were sweet back then and now you’re ready to fight for what you want. You learned plenty and you managed. You’ll learn this,” he said, tipping up her chin with his finger and smiling down at her.

It was an intimate, heart-stopping smile, and though she knew he’d given it to many other women, it was still very dangerous. “Maybe I won’t.”

He swung onto the seat. He turned to look at her, challenging her with that steady half-lidded look. “Hop on.”

“You wear your helmet, too.” She wondered how she could sit on that seat without touching him.

He shrugged and reached for his helmet. “Anything else?”

She looked down Tabor Street and saw the elderly couples walking at sunset. They’d seen Roman’s motorcycle in her driveway for the past week. They’d seen him use Mitchell’s truck to haul boards and plumbing supplies to the house. “Heaven only knows what they’re thinking,” she muttered, as she eased into the narrow black leather seat behind him.

He back-walked the bike with both of them on it, and ordered, “Put your arms around me.”

She placed her hands on his waist, then gripped his shirt in her fists as he revved the motor. “Doesn’t this hurt your knee?”

“Everything hurts my knee. But I’m not on painkillers any more. I’m not going through that mess again, if that’s worrying you.”

The instant small lurch of the mechanical beast threw her backward, then Roman stopped it, only to jerk once more. “Told you to hang on. Put your feet on the pedals.”

Shelly glanced at the newlyweds just down the street, the bride snuggling against her husband, as they watched. “You know what this looks like.”

When he didn’t answer, but jerked the motorcycle again, Shelly eased her arms around him. He was hard, inflexible, powerful, the muscles rippling as he drove the motorcycle from Tabor Street on to Main Street, where the whole town watched them pass.

She wanted to fly, to let the wind flow through her hair and over her body, to laugh with the pleasure and the freedom of the ride. Images of houses and trees and of Lonny sitting in his police car sped by her, then a green spread of pastures dotted with Hereford or Angus cattle.

Glorious, mindless freedom. Shelly inhaled escape as though it were heaven, if only for a moment.

She realized she was smiling, just a silly, pleased, mindless smile, when Roman drove onto the old Warren spread. She
was still smiling when Roman parked the bike and she was still gripping him tight.

“Off,” he said in the quiet of the sunset.

Shelly realized that her escape to momentary freedom with Roman had landed her alone with him. She scampered from the machine and Roman eased off more slowly, favoring his knee and freeing his helmet.

He reached to take Shelly’s and hang it beside his. When he turned to her, she couldn’t move, pinned by the dark intent in his eyes.

“Let’s start all over again, shall we?” he asked huskily as the old windmill whirred and the stormclouds brewed and the wind rose to tug at her hair, licking at the ends.

She couldn’t move as he bent to brush his lips against hers, gently asking, wooing…

She found herself leaning into the kiss just as Roman stepped back, studying her. “You’re just as sweet, Shell.”

Blushing, she turned away into the sunset and the rising storm and the wind. The contrast of beautiful day and incoming storm was as mixed as her emotions. “We can’t go back, Roman. And I’m not—”

“What I’m used to? A fancy woman, if the other words are too hard for you to say?”

“I was going to say, you’re very experienced. I have a daughter to raise, I can’t just—”

“
Our
daughter, Shell. It’s time she knew.”

The secret that only he and Uma shared shook violently within Shelly, trapped by years of silence.

Roman looked off into the storm coming toward them, its furious dark churning clouds. The wind lifted his hair, pulling it back from his face, the bones stark and thrusting against his skin, the resemblance to Dani caught in the last gold of sunset. “I haven’t got anything to offer her, or you, to make it up. But I’d like to try. I’m asking you to give me a chance. To let me be in your lives. I’d like to get to know my
own daughter, Shell. And I’m really sorry about what you went through. Just—please…”

The word quivered in the air, as if Roman had asked for little, but this was important enough for him now to bend his pride. “Dammit, Shell. I am really sorry. I’ll do the best I can from here on out to be a father to my daughter.”

He hadn’t looked at her, that muscle in his cheek contracting. “I’m not like my mother. I don’t run off when things get rough—I wouldn’t have run then either…if I had known.”

“I don’t know what is right now,” she stated honestly, feeling the storm wrap around them just as fiercely as their emotions.

“Neither do I. But I want to try.”

Her life was so safe now, but Roman wasn’t. She believed him and yet she feared Dani’s reaction; the tempest of father and daughter could rock all their lives. Her link with Dani was tenuous at best, the teenager ready for flight.

Roman was right about one thing—he understood Dani’s wild side better than Shelly did. “I’ll think about it.”

Clyde lifted his face to the wind, inhaling the dampness of it. Excitement throbbed in the storm, because tonight he felt the strength of gods swelling in him; he tasted revenge. Once he had been powerless and ridiculed, and now he was strong. Those who had taken what was his would pay.

While the thunderstorm raged outside, rain slashing at the windows, Uma sat in candlelight, folding laundry and brooding about Mitchell’s so-called dinner invitation. As often happened in Madrid, telephone service was out, and with the violent weather outside, Mitchell couldn’t possibly expect her to arrive at his house.

She hadn’t had dinner with a single man, other than Everett and her father, in her lifetime. The situation would have been far too uncomfortable because Mitchell wasn’t an
easy man to understand; she was better off staying at home and catching up on laundry and dusting.

Dusting was therapeutic, the scent of lemon polish filling the room, the old heavy antique furniture from the 1880s gleaming in the candlelight. After her father’s ancestors had staked their land rush claims, the furniture had followed in wagons. It was old and dear and she loved easy nights when she could wear old clothes, have a glass of wine, and polish the old wood.

She smiled to herself, wrapping the safety of the house around her. Her father was thrilled with his Arizona friend’s collection, swapping stories and pots, and his visit might take at least two months as they scouted possible historical sites. No doubt her father would hear of Mitchell’s pickup cruising beside her this morning, and that she had gone to the ranch with him—and then, and then there was certain to be another revival of the “damned Warrens” and the Lawrence feud with them.

Uma pushed away the future discussion with her father. When he’d had his heart attack, her move back into the house had served their purposes—she’d needed some thinking room in her marriage—but the silent understanding was that once she was uncomfortable, she might move. Clarence’s expectations and most of Madrid’s were that she would remarry Everett.

Everett deserved better. She’d just have to work more on finding him someone to date, a wifey sort of woman—just as she had been. She reached for the pad on the sofa beside her and wrote, “Charis Column, due next week—Expectations: Wifey or Partner or Single Lane?”

Mitchell was definitely an alpha-single male. He clearly wasn’t going to move into the intimacy lane. Next to her note, Uma added, “He who wants sex alone may not be partner material.” Many of her notes sounded like fortune cookie readings, but it was true enough.

Sexual need fairly hummed from Mitchell. The problem was, she was picking up those vibrations, and they had moved restlessly within her.

Did
she
want a life partner, or even a temporary one? She added to the note, “One must understand one’s self prior to a relationship, the goals and expectations. What are they?”

She shook her head and folded a fluffy seafoam-green bath towel, running her hand across the soft texture before slapping it on the stack near her. Mitchell wasn’t pushing her around, making her feel unneighborly.

Making her feel
. Her hand shook as she reached for the laundry basket at her feet.

She wondered what it would be like—

A shadow moved on the front porch, and in the flash of lightning a man’s large form was silhouetted in the glass of the front door. Uma’s hand went to her chest, the rapid fearful beat of her heart. Lauren had been killed, and the murderer of that man had never been found…

“Uma, open this door,” Mitchell’s deep voice demanded after the next roll of thunder.

Fearing that he might be hurt, or struck by lightning, Uma hurried to the door.

Holding a big cardboard box covered with painters’ plastic under one arm, Mitchell stood towering over her, his hair plastered to his head, his black silk shirt damp against his chest, revealing the powerful width of his shoulders and chest. A blast of wind and rain tore at him and his hair caught the wild tempest; the man and the primitive elements seemed to be one. “Mitchell! What on earth are you doing out on a night like this?”

He smiled tightly at her and then stepped into the house, gently shouldering Uma aside. His foot kicked the door closed behind him. “Did you really think a little bad weather would keep me from you?”

Still wrapped in his dark mood, his plans for easing into a very personal relationship with Uma waylaid, Mitchell took one look at her wide gray eyes, her slightly parted mouth and lower, to where the men’s large T-shirt pressed against the twin shape of her uptilted nipples and draped loosely to her upper thighs. They were smooth and slender and probably very soft and with the candlelight behind her, he could see every curve of her body, the gentle flare of hips, and the place where her thighs met, and the wind swirled around him to press the thin material against her breasts.

Her hair was free and fragrant and waving to her shoulders, just the way he’d imagined it would be when he loosened that prim little knot on top of her head, or eased his fingers through those braids, the sensual softness dragging against his skin.

He forgot the danger, a chilling new discovery that murder still lurked in Madrid; he knew only what he wanted and had to taste
.

“There’s only one way to see if I’m reading your look right.” Mitchell placed the box on an elegant little carved walnut table, steadied it with one hand, and then reached for Uma with the other. He caught the back of her neck, tugged her to him, and brought his other arm around her, drawing that soft, curved body closer against his.

For a moment he couldn’t breathe. She felt so right, a part of him, flowing and soft and warm. He’d wanted that body heat and more, but he hadn’t expected the tenderness that came with it, pulsing along between them.

She angled her face up to his—stubborn, strong, and defiant. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t make your dinner invitation, such as it was. And the phones were out,” she said very properly.

Uma’s cheeks began to color, her eyes flashing beneath the shadowy lashes. “Well? What do you have to say for yourself?” she demanded huskily, as her eyes traced his hair and her
hands reached to smooth it back. “You’re all wet. You’ll probably catch cold and summer colds are really bad. I’m not taking care of you.”

She fascinated him and Mitchell couldn’t resist kissing her just a little, beside that soft mouth and then on the other side to see how she would react. She quivered and heated beautifully, her breath catching. The sensual package was all there, warm and trembling and aching—his instincts told him that he could make love with her.

But would she regret it? He couldn’t take the chance.

Taking a long, deep breath, Mitchell pushed down his instincts to take her and worry about the consequences later. He couldn’t resist kissing the soft palm that cradled his cheek.

“I’ve been cooking all day,” he said quietly, watching her, feeling her heart beat against his chest, and raised a hand to open on her back, pressing her lightly against him there. He should be warning her of the danger in Madrid, the fear that the sound of thunder could cover a spray of bullets from a Browning automatic rifle, a favorite of Clyde Barrow’s. Lonny’s report of the ballistics check had proved the Warren windmill had been laced with the same, a few dug from the weathered wood.

And the bullets Roman had dug from beneath the ivy on Shelly’s back door matched Clyde’s favorite Colt Model 1911 .45-caliber automatic. A thunderstorm had erupted the night Shelly had gotten her scar; it could have been the graze of a bullet fired at the same time, too. The murdered Pete Jones’s skull damage matched that type of handgun.

And Mike, an expert at that period of guns, wasn’t talking.

Mitchell should tell Uma that someone had recently sabotaged the steps at the old garage and sawed the rungs of his ladder.

Instead, all he could think of was the woman in his arms—holding her, loving her. “Spaghetti. It’s all I know how
to make. I made plenty of it when Roman and I were on our own. The salad is a premix, the dressing is bottled.”

She studied him, her brows lifting slightly, and he could feel the heat pulse from her, her bottom soft within the cup of his hands. “Your hands are wandering, Mitchell.”

His smile mocked himself and his uncertainty. He wasn’t usually distracted from his logic, which told him that Shelly was definitely in danger, and by way of her friendship, Uma was included. She should be told and he’d planned to gently ease into—