Wild Midnight (22 page)

“So I gather,” she said in the same steady tone. “Loretha Bulloch came out to the field this morning. I don’t know why. I think she was curious—I think she wanted to look me over.
 

“Loretha?” He smiled unpleasantly. “My, my, it must be all over town. Looks like Darla Jean’s been pretty busy. Did Poke Screven call you too?”
 

If he had struck her, his indifferent reaction could not have been any more brutal. But then he wouldn’t suffer from gossip, she thought, staring at him with widened eyes. His reputation as Beau Devil Tillson was already accepted.
 

It was a long moment before she could bring herself to say, “Does it give you so much pleasure to make a fool of me? Are you trying to drive me away, out of Draytonville—is that what you want?”
 

He lifted his head and shot her a strange, tawny look. “I can’t leave you alone,” he said in a soft, even voice. “I thought we’d already established that. You want it too. Don’t tell me you don’t.”
 

Their eyes locked; for once Rachel did not turn away. “I gave myself to you,” she whispered. “And for you it was nothing.”
 

“Rachel, don’t whine.” He slammed the coffee cup down on the table so violently it made the other dishes rattle. “You sound like every other damned woman when you do that.”
 

“You said you wanted me! More than you’d ever wanted a woman before. When you were making love to me you said you’d waited all your life for someone like me!”
 

“Honey, I always say that.” He stared at her, eyes narrowed. “Look—there’s nothing you can do about talk, just ignore it.”
 

“
Ignore
it?” she cried. “They don’t talk about you—they talk about
me
!”
 

His hand snaked out to seize her wrist. “You knew what the hell you were doing,” he growled, “You’ve been married, it wasn’t exactly a mystery, was it? And don’t say you weren’t willing as hell, because we both know better. What’s the complaint?”
 

She stared at him, even now unable to drag her eyes away from the sculpted planes of that beautiful face. “I want you to stop hurting me,” she told him.
 

He dropped her hand quickly. Abruptly he raked his fingers through thick sun-streaked hair. “I was crazy to start this damned thing,” he muttered. “I told you that.” When she didn’t move, when she said nothing, he went on, “All right, there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
 

He bent his head to her and studied her so quietly, so intently, that she trembled. “You don’t need me in your life, do you, Rachel?” he said very softly.
 

It was a statement, not a question. Startled, Rachel shook her head.
 

The cold, closed look returned to his face. “Well, that’s too bad. Because if you’re not in my life, you’re in somebody else’s, and I’m not going to let that happen. Who are you going to go to bed with, anyway? Claxton? Some inbred Charleston fart D’Arcy’s got lined up for you? I staked my claim first. You’ll just have to live with your regrets.”
 

She recoiled from him. “I’ll never understand you!” she cried.
 

“Nobody understands me.”
 

He reached for her, one hand around her waist, and pulled her to him. He watched her with narrowed, crystal eyes as his hand dropped, his palm flattened against her abdomen and the smooth flesh just above the belt of the silky dress. While she stood stiffly he moved his fingers back and forth, softly stroking. Without taking his eyes from her face he murmured, “You’re wasting yourself, Rachel. You ought to get married, have kids—you want to have children, don’t you?”
 

The gesture, the roughness of his voice, mesmerized her.
 

Her body was captive under the intent, heavy pressure of his hand at her middle. She could only whisper, lightheaded, “Are you proposing?”
 

His smile was gentle, consciously dazzling. “You’d make a good mother, honey, you have that look. It would be easy for you to love your children, wouldn’t it?” He took his hand away. Still gently he said, “I’m not proposing, Rachel. You’re still stuck with our agreement.”
 

Rachel stared at him, baffled as always by these sudden chameleon changes. “Why do you always have to say things like that?” she burst out. “You told the lawyer this ridiculous thing too!”
 

“I didn’t tell him every damned thing. I’m not crazy.”
 

“There is no agreement!” she flung at him. “Why do you keep saying that?”
 

“Isn’t there? Tell me what the hell we’re doing then.” His look was stony. “I’m in your bed, and you’re getting the use of my road. If that isn’t an agreement, then I don’t know what one is.”
 

Her lips trembled. She had to turn her head away so that he wouldn’t see the sudden glistening of tears in her eyes. “You don’t trust anyone,” she said, her voice shaking. “Anyone at all.”
 

“Why should I? If you mean why don’t I trust you—why would I want to? I don’t know who the hell you are. We’re strangers.”
 

“We made love!”
 

“What does that prove? I got to bed with strangers. So do you,” he said with deadly softness. “That’s what shakes you up, isn’t it? That we get into bed and make love and get out of bed again and we still don’t know each other? Hell, you’re just learning the facts of life!”
 

She turned back to him. “You’re not a stranger now. I know what you say to me when you make love to me.” When he sucked in his breath, eyes glittering, she went on, “It’s very different from what you say to me now. But I am not afraid of you.”
 

He quickly grabbed her, hands digging painfully into the soft skin of her upper arms as he dragged her to him. “Shut up.” His voice grated. “Shut up, Rachel.” He lowered his head. “You’re just another redheaded hellcat, even if you do look like an angel. All I want from you is this.”
 

His mouth found hers and quickly seized it, rocking hungrily against her trembling lips, his tongue probing to make them open to him. When Rachel moaned, he filled her mouth with a searing sensuousness calculated to make her submit to him. But as she flowed against him willingly he shuddered and grabbed her tightly, all mockery vanishing. He devoured her in a kiss of such violent need that he virtually lifted her from her feet, only her toes touching the floor as she strained against him.
 

Suddenly he dragged his mouth away. He stared down at her with eyes hooded by thick dark lashes, the wide curve of his mouth still wet with the kiss. “I never wanted to hurt you,” he said thickly. “But you’d never believe that.”
 

She stared up at him, not able to move. He let her go. “I’ve got to get the hell out of here,” he muttered, picking the battered black Stetson from the table.
 

Rachel still held her hands up to hold him. He jammed the muddy hat on his head and started for the front door. He didn’t turn as he said, “Leave the door open tonight. It takes too damned much time to pick the lock in the dark.”
 

Then he’ was gone.
 

It was only a little past two in the afternoon. Rachel picked up the co-op’s worksheets from the table and carried them to the desk, where she put them away with the rest of the records. She tried to keep her thoughts from racing madly, but it was no use. Beau Tillson came into her house, her consciousness, her life, like a hurricane. She had written a list of things she had to do on a piece of paper and couldn’t find it. A few minutes later she found herself at the kitchen sink, staring down at the plate on which she’d served him his sandwich and the empty cup that had held his coffee, thinking of what he’d said to her.
I never wanted to hurt you.
 

Rachel told herself that this time she was not going to respond to the feelings this cruel, beautiful man aroused in her, but she was wearily surprised at the depths of her pain. She had never thought she could be so helpless and baffled, as confused as an infatuated teenager. She had to put a stop to it. He was destroying her. And destroying her work.
 

Standing by the kitchen counter, she made a call to the high school and left a message that she’d like Til Coffee to get in touch with her. She went back info the bedroom to find something to wear, something far different from the subdued gray shirtwaist dress she’d chosen to go to the bank that morning. She picked out one of the two dressy outfits she’d brought with her from Philadelphia—summery silk crepe from Strawbridge and Clothier with a low neckline, the fabric covered with embroidered sprigs of flowers against a cream background. It hugged her waist and breasts, and the colors turned her hair a dark auburn. She looked as though she were going to a party, not to visit the banks in Hazel Gardens.
Why not
? she told herself as she studied her reflection in the dresser mirror.
 

She had seldom in her life thought in terms of self-preservation; she had always believed there was nothing in the world that could not be met with faith and courage. Now she was not so sure.
 

She lifted her hands and pulled down the heavy braid from the top of her head and slipped it off its rubber band, shaking out her long hair. In the mirror a young woman with serious dark eyes in a lovely pale face surrounded by a luxurious cloud of dark red waves looked back. In spite of herself, Rachel shivered.
 

She slid open the dresser drawer and found the scissors. She lifted them, took one last look at her reflection, and began to cut her hair.
 

Jim Claxton sounded unbearably happy just to hear her voice. “Where are you?” he wanted to know. “Are you here in town? How about a dinner, a movie? How about a few minutes to discuss agriculture, soil conditions, the joys of farmers’ cooperatives?”
 

She couldn’t help smiling. “I have to come to Hazel Gardens this afternoon to see the banks about a loan. But dinner, yes. I don’t know about the movie.”
 

“I don’t know about a movie either,” his deep pleasant voice admitted, “I’m swamped with work. I can’t get away until about six or six-thirty, and I have to check with the baby-sitter. But we can put something together, Miz Rachel, you can count on it. How’s your tomato crop?”
 

“We can talk about it when I get there,” she told him.
 

Chapter Twelve

Hazel Gardens was a small city in the coastal piney-woods flatlands along old Highway 17, a route still taken by large numbers of tourists bypassing the endless traffic of the Interstate on their way from Savannah to Charleston. The area had a restaurant strip along Route 17 all out of proportion to its size. To Rachel, accustomed to Draytonville’s Downton Cafe or the Polar Bear Drive-In, the number of choices were dazzling.
 

“Paris on the Ashepoo,” she cried. “Lights, music, gaiety—I can’t get over it.”
 

She was giddy and filled with frivolous high spirits, not acting like herself at all, and literally lightheaded. Without the weight of her hair, she felt strangely liberated.
 

“I can’t get over it either.” Jim Claxton’s blue eyes were admiring, still a little surprised as he viewed the somewhat ragged edges of the dark red waves that brushed her shoulders. “You look totally different. Even prettier,” he added shyly.
 

“It’s still long.” Rachel was still uncertain about her hair. “It’s not as short as I could have cut it.”
 

“It looks great,” he assured her. He was obviously elated that she had taken him up on his offer for dinner. He couldn’t seem to take his, eyes off the figure-hugging embroidered dress either. “Now that you’re here, consider that the big city is yours. We can tour the sights—we have a J.C. Penny’s and a Sears, and our main attraction is the courthouse fountain just installed last year by special bond issue. Most of the time it has water in it.” When she laughed he dropped his voice and said, “We have the whole wild crazy evening before us, anything you want to do, as long as I pick up the kids from the baby-sitter before nine o’clock.”
 

After a tour of the restaurant strip they finally narrowed their choice for dining down between Captain Ed’s World Famous Shrimp Boat and the Count DeRenne Inn, settling on the latter because it advertised candlelight dining, complete with coach boys in livery for valet parking.
 

They ordered steak dinners in the dining room, where their table overlooked a mill wheel spilling a stream of rushing water into a green, floodlit pond. When the bill came Rachel belatedly realized the Count DeRenne Inn was terribly expensive, especially for a county agricultural agent with two small children to raise. But Jim seemed pleased as he laid three twenty-dollar bills in the server beside the check.
 

“I haven’t had such a darn good time in a long time.” The intensely blue eyes in his rugged, tanned face sent her an obvious message as he moved his hand casually close to hers on the tablecloth. “This has been pretty special for me. I guess you know that.”