Wild Midnight (43 page)

“God, you’ll be lucky if you don’t get pneumonia,” he exclaimed, lifting her in his arms and lowering her into the front seat of the jeep. The plastic and canvas top had been put up during the rain, and it was like being in a close, humid box. “Remind me to beat you later for doing this whole damned thing, will you?”
 

“Yes,” Rachel murmured, burrowing into the depths of the raincoat and shivering as he got in beside her. But she smiled. “Shouldn’t we find Til and Loretha? It’s getting dark, they won’t know where we are.”
 

“They’ll get in Til’s car when they think about it. Right now I’ve got to get you warmed up.” He pulled her close to his half-naked torso, his work-roughened hands sliding under the old slicker to briskly chafe the smooth skin of her back and then of her hips and bottom. “Oh, Rachel,” he growled, his breath growing heavy against her ear as he nuzzled her hair and the side of her cheek, “I don’t need any company right now. I just want to hold you.” He tried to move closer, lifting one long leg to put over her knees in spite of the obstruction of the jeep’s gearshift. “Besides, Till and Loretha argue all the time, about going to Atlanta, about their kid, about making love—I don’t want to have to hear it. At the moment I’ve got other things on my mind. Like just putting my arms around you and forgetting how damned miserable I’ve been without you.
 

Rachel pushed him away slightly to look up into his face. She was already flushed, growing warm with what his caressing hands under the slicker were doing. “But Til and Loretha are back together again, aren’t they?” she asked with a troubled expression. “I thought when I left—”
 

“Will you stop worrying?” The virile heat of his bare chest and arms, and the pressure of his jeans-covered legs, soaked into her. “They’re happy as hell, they’re always going to fight as long as she’s got to push him to do anything, and he lets her. If that’s their life-style, they’ll work it out.” He pulled the front of the raincoat apart to hold her against him, and he groaned, his strength straining against her. “Do you know how much I’ve missed the feel of you? If I weren’t so stinking and dirty, I’d make love to you right here. Are you getting warmer?”
 

“Yes,” she murmured, the troubled look still in her eyes.
 

He wanted her and needed her, she thought, holding him close; she had told herself all the way from Charleston that would have to be enough.
 

“However,” he muttered in her ear, “I’m not going to be able to hold you in my lap the way I want to, unless I can figure out a way to tear off this gearshift that’s keeping us apart.
 

As Rachel lifted her face to him, his firm, cool mouth took hers with all the hunger and yearning of weeks of separation, his half-naked body trembling with the sudden force of it. Rachel twined her fingers in his thick bright hair, drowning in his kiss as his hand pushed aside the raincoat to explore her taut silky breasts. He muttered something inaudible against her mouth, stroking her skin, defining her fullness gently.
 

He pushed the slicker down over her shoulders and then looked at her quickly, concerned. “Are you cold?”
 

“No.” She sighed. “Not now.”
 

“I just want to look at you, Rachel. I can’t seem to believe that you’re here. It’s going to take days. Wonderful days.” He pulled her closer with sudden urgency. “When we’re married I want a king-sized bed.” His lips were in her hair. “I’ve spent my whole life on army cots, hospital beds, and antiques made for midgets. I want a bed big enough to roll around in when I ravish you.”
 

“Did you say m-married?” she managed on an indrawn breath. “Did you say that?”
 

“Damn.” He suddenly pulled back to jerk the offending gearshift into fourth position, cursing under his breath. “Now,” he said, pulling her so that she half sprawled in his lap. He put his lips to her forehead. “Where were we?”
 

“I don’t know.” She shut her eyes and breathed a quick prayer. “You said you wanted a king-sized bed to ravish me in.
 

“When we’re married.” He looked down at her, his jeweled eyes questioning. “You will marry me, won’t you, Rachel? I have to make up for a lot of things I’ve said and done to you. I’m sorry as hell, but I’ll make it right, I promise. Just don’t pay any attention to me when I lose my damned foul temper—I’ll try to remember. I’ll be good to you and the baby. You don’t have to worry.”
 

“Is that why you’re marrying me?” she said. She turned her head away, trying not to let him see her expression. “Because I’m going to have your child? Because,” she said, remembering, “you don’t want the Beaumonts to die out?”
 

His forefinger and thumb turned her face back to him.
 

“I love you, Rachel,” he said. When her eyes flew open, wide and dark, he looked down at her with a sudden brilliant smile of tenderness. “Hell, I’ve been fighting it from the moment I put my arms around you and kissed you in the rain in Poke Screven’s parking lot. I wanted to choke you that day, get you out of my hair and make love to you all at the same time. Rachel, somehow, suddenly, you became all of my life. I would never have believed I’d need anybody so much.” The confusion, the wonder was in his face. “Everything’s a hellish, empty, useless void when you’re not with me now. I thought I knew all the hellish empty voids these last few years, but I was wrong. My life,” he murmured, “only makes sense when you’re with me, can you understand that? These past few weeks I’ve needed like hell to have you around somewhere so I can just look up and see you. I needed to have you so I can talk to you. I needed you in bed with me at night—that’s the coldest damned miserable place in the world when I can’t sleep with my arms around you, breathing your hair and your body and just the warmth of you. God, Rachel, I’ve been just plain damned lonely for you. That’s something new for me, but I’m learning.” She saw him hesitate. “You’re the biggest miracle of all, that you can touch me, want me the way I am, even love me. I was afraid it couldn’t happen. I’ll try like hell to love you the way you should be loved. Will you marry me?”
 

“I ... I’ll think about it,” she said, dazed, trying to keep the sheer joy out of her voice.
 

“The hell you will,” he growled. “You need me to make an honest woman of you, Rachel, you haven’t got a choice.” The rough teasing died from his voice. “I can’t believe that you love me, that we’re having a kid, that all this is happening. What did I do to deserve living again?” His lips brushed the side of her face softly. “What did I do to deserve being happy for the first time in my life? Are you sure you want me, angel? I don’t have too damned much to bring to you—and you bring me everything.”
 

“Oh, I want you,” she said, lightheaded. “You’re really much too ... much too good-looking to turn down.”
 

He swooped over her with a suddenness that made Rachel gasp. “You’re marrying me for my looks,” he accused. “And I thought you respected me for my wonderful disposition.”
 

As he wound his arms around her and she felt his mouth seize hers, Rachel knew that he loved her, just as he said. Her beautiful man was wild and reckless, as fascinating as storm clouds slashed with bolts of lightning, passionate and even violent. Life with him wouldn’t be easy, but it would be breathtaking, turbulently exciting. She knew that he would probably pounce on her in the dark when the mood seized him, drag her into bed, thunder at her, embarrass her with his blatant desire—she would need every ounce of her inner resources just to tame him a little. And every ounce to hold him, and keep on loving him.
 

As he pressed her to him, all but uncovering her naked body as his hands slid under the raincoat, the entire world began shaking. The ground trembled heavily as Rachel held him tightly, preparing for the passionate earthquake that was always theirs when they kissed.
 

Instead Beau paused and lifted his golden head, the scowl returning. He listened intently. “Goddamn, it would have to go right at this particular minute.” At her alarmed look he said, “Don’t worry, we’re too far away. I think. But maybe I ought to move the jeep.”
 

Rachel grabbed the rubber folds of the slicker around her and tried to sit up. She followed his eyes as the earth continued to move.
 

The greensward at the back of Belle Haven fell away, as neatly as though an invisible carving knife were slicing at the rich black earth just beyond the hole where they’d been filling sandbags not many minutes ago. The clouded waters of the river rushed in, a brown froth on the crest of the first few waves, and then it gurgled to a stop, its impetus not carrying it quite as far as the back terrace and the stand of towering magnolia trees. But the bricks of the terrace trembled like flesh touched by a premonition of destruction. An answering echo quivered through the spreading structure of the beautiful old house.
 

And all the time they heard a low, growling moan that seemed to come from the depths under them as the earth adjusted itself to a new shape.
 

“What is it?” she whispered, clutching his arm.
 

“Hold on.” Beau flung open the door of the jeep. “If I tell you to run, make for the top of the hill there, under the biggest trees.”
 

The water had stopped. But the muddy ground and green lawn still moved, shimmering around them in liquid waves as the earth’s straining moans rose to an ominous roar. The huge shapes of the gray cattle were on their feet, lumbering swiftly to the highest spot under the trees. Rachel saw Til and Loretha scampering for their car parked at the end of the driveway.
 

Then the world seemed to stop. There was a breathless, airless moment of suspense. A weird, faint whistling of compressing space somewhere unseen came softly.
 

The big pink house was slowly folding, crumbling toward the waterlogged earth. It came down in curious slow motion, dragging the roof, which flexed like rubber sheet, then bricks scattering, falling into the drive, baring the upper floors.
 

Then the walls. The wings folded into themselves and came down in a puff of mortar and dust. Stray scraps of brocade drapery caught in the implosion wagged like struggling arms before they were buried. A tinkle of glass, a shriek of beams breaking, the thunder of plaster and wood giving way filled the air. It took only minutes, but it went on and on as though it were hours.
 

Rachel started to scramble from the jeep but Beau dragged her back. “Wait,” he yelled over the noise. “It’s only the house and part of the riverbank.”
 

She shot him a frightened look. That handsome face was rigid, emotionless, but he was watching, eyes narrowed, listening intently to the old house’s death rattle.
 

When the sound had faded a little she heard him say under his breath, “The dikes are still holding. I guess I can thank Harborside for that extra dirt after all.” His eyes narrowed, appraising the heap of rubble that had once been Belle Haven’s glory. “A couple of bulldozers can shove that mess toward the back—it will just about fill up the hole where the bank gave way.”
 

“What?” Nothing he could have said at that moment would have startled her more.
 

He turned back to her, still impassive. “Those bricks will be as good as a levee, and it will keep out the river down on this end. Some of my best pasture is right beyond the point.”
 

She was still trembling. “Oh, Beau, how can you say that?” she cried. “Don’t you care about anything?”
 

“I care about you, Rachel,” he said shortly. “And that’s enough. Forget it, we’ll build a house.” He pulled her to him again. His warm, seeking lips trailed across her mouth, nibbled at her ear teasingly, softly bit the white curve of her throat and shoulder. “That is, as soon as I figure out a way to borrow some money. We’ll build a house back up near Monck’s property, where the water can’t get at it, in the high ground in the pines. I’ve been looking at a few sites, pacing off the foundations just for the hell of it. Think the kids ought to have a swimming pool.” He was smiling now. “How about a nice modern ranch style? Everything on one floor, with a barbecue pit out back?”
 

“Kids?” Her head was whirling, she couldn’t keep up with these sudden changes in him. She strained to look at the shuddering facade of Belle Haven, which had yet to fall. “Kids—plural?”
 

“Kids plural,” he assured her. He gave her a little shake, to make her look at him. “Don’t look at the past, Rachel. Let the damned thing fall down. I’m talking about the future.”
 

Now was not the time, she knew, regarding him numbly, to tell him about her fortune. She moaned a little at the feel of his hard warm lips trailing over her breastbone, distracting her. He was going to be horrified at how much money she had. Most people were when they knew the solid, well-tended enormity of her trust fund, a testimony to more than a century of Friendly prudence and financial conservatism.
 

“Wh-what sort of a house would
you
like?” she asked as she closed her eyes against the fire of his hard hand on her breast. She supposed that almost anything was possible if he wanted it. A few thousand acres of land as a buffer against the hated developers, perhaps a gift of a wilderness park along the Ashepoo River to the state. But certainly a nice, comfortable house for the children. Definitely a swimming pool.