Children of Destiny Books 1-3 (Texas: Children of Destiny Book 9) Page 28

  He unpinned the golden rose from his lapel and tucked it into her hair. “There.” He bent his dark head, and his lips slanted against her temple in a feather-light kiss. “I’ve wanted to do that all night. You were meant to wear flowers in your hair. I couldn’t take my eyes off you.”

  “That’s why I left.”

  “Why?” The single word was thick with passion.

  “Because you were there,” she said tremulously. “Because you kept following me. Because every time I saw you, I couldn’t forget that one night of madness, of weakness.”

  He smiled faintly. “So you admit that it was unforgettable.”

  “You are a rogue, a devil.”

  “Because I don’t deny that I want you.” He smiled. “There are women who find such men attractive.”

  “Not me.”

  “You seemed to—once.”

  “I’m an employee and you’re my boss, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “You’re more than that now.” His lips touched her on her brow. “Much more.”

  “So you keep telling me. What happened never should have happened.”

  “But I can’t forget it. I don’t even want to.”

  “I want to.”

  “Do you?” His mouth was very near hers. “You have a magic for me that no other woman has ever had. I couldn’t feel so much for you if you felt nothing for me.

  “You belong with a woman in pearls or diamonds and designer gowns.”

  “Promise me you’ll never wear pearls...or diamonds or designer gowns.” He chuckled. His hand smoothed back a silken tangle of russet hair. “Not till you’re quite old—at least thirty-nine. Until then, I want you just as you are now—in soft green dresses with flowers in your hair. In blue jeans. In Piper Cubs.”

  She stared at him. His black hair waved down over his brown forehead, and his eyes shone darkly with some intense emotion. Shaken, she murmured a wordless reply.

  There was only the wild throb of the music, the thick, softly scented warmth of the darkness. He lifted her arms and looped them around his neck. At his molding of her body against his, a wild tremor raced along her nerves. Her skin burned as though touched by fire.

  His hands tightened on her waist, and Megan felt another tremulous wave of longing course through her body.

  His mouth nuzzled into the hot pulse beat near her collarbone, and she shuddered with some new yet anciently vital desire.

  His hand slid down her spine. She held her breath, her skin tingling with need and anticipation.

  His mouth was a hard, sensual line that beckoned her excitingly.

  “Kiss me,” she murmured soundlessly. But he didn’t. He continued stroking her slowly, rhythmically.

  She could no longer resist the temptation of his mouth, and finally an unbearable wave of sensuality made her lean up and kiss him.

  Her mouth was soft, hot satin sliding against his. She felt the sudden harsh rasp of his breathing as his tongue slid inside. His mouth slanted demandingly across hers, filling her everywhere with a melting, tingling warmth.

  His arms crushed her against him. The breath caught in her throat, and she pressed her body into his. He made a faint groaning sound, then combed his fingers through the long, thick spirals of flame that spilled everywhere. His mouth left her mouth, and he pressed little kisses everywhere, kissing her earlobe, her throat, softly at first and then with a swift gradation of intensity that made her tremble.

  Something raw and elemental leapt between the contact of hard male lips and velvety female flesh. She stood motionless under his caresses, sighing in dizzying surrender until at last he pulled away.

  “I love you,” she whispered, clinging to him.

  She caught a glimpse of his face as he exhaled a deep breath of shock. His eyes were wide and brilliant with some emotion that terrified her.

  It was then that she realized the horror of what she had admitted.

  “I knew you felt it, too.” His voice was hoarse with triumph.

  She let him go. “Yes, I feel it,” she moaned. “I feel it, and it’s making me miserable.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was happier hating you. Don’t you understand? I know you. You drove my father away.”

  “You’re wrong about that,” he said quietly.

  “All you’ve ever wanted is land and money and power, and you’ll do anything and use anybody to get them. You chose your first wife because she was rich. Because she was the kind of woman Jacksons marry. You need money now, so you’ll marry for it again.”

  “Those are lies, Megan. Everybody else in your life walked out on you, so you can’t trust anybody.”

  “I know you, Jeb, and because I know you, I don’t want to feel anything for you. A long time ago I looked up to you. I trusted you and loved you, and you betrayed that love. You took everything from me that mattered. Everything—my father, my self-respect. I can’t let that happen a second time. All I want now is to be your employee. Nothing more.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  She backed away, her eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “Oh, please, please just leave me alone. Go back to Janelle.”

  Rage and other emotions she didn’t understand flamed in his dark eyes. “I don’t think that’s really what you want.”

  “It is!”

  Jeb stood in silence, his features haggard, with new lines biting deeply into his face. He was filled with frustration and fury and injured feelings. He did not trust himself to speak. Those were the emotions she’d aroused in him for years. But he felt something else too, something he no more welcomed than she: a keen need for her that was growing deeper every day.

  As Megan ran through the brush in the darkness, her gown snagged on something. He heard the sound of fabric shredding, her startled cry of dismay.

  He took a step toward her to help her. Then he remembered her scathing words, and the memory cut him to the quick. She’d said she didn’t want him.

  If only he could erase her from his mind, from his heart as easily.

  He reached into his pocket for a cigarette and finding only his lighter, he remembered he’d quit for her. He snapped his lighter several times. Watching the tiny flame, he stood in the darkness, trying to contemplate a life with the proper sort of moneyed wife, a life without Megan.

  He thought of never touching her, of never tilting her face to his, of never tasting her lips again, of never pressing her hot, naked body beneath his, and it was hell.

  He threw his lighter to the ground and crushed it with his heel. He needed to get drunk, to find a willing woman and forget.

  He strode back to the party and was immediately aware of the vaqueros watching him as he poured himself a whiskey. A dozen pairs of eyes were glued to him as he downed it quickly. He knew he looked drawn and tired, his face stamped with anguish and rage, but there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it. The vaqueros were silent, their eyes curious, as he lifted the bottle and poured a second. He wanted to snarl at them to stop staring at him almost accusingly. Doubtless they had seen Megan and taken note of her tumbled hair and her torn dress and thought he had abused her in some way. By tomorrow it would be all over the county.

  Suddenly he slammed his glass onto the nearest table so hard that the whiskey sloshed onto his fingers, onto the cloth, staining it.

  It was no good drinking to forget. No good taking another woman because the one he wanted wouldn’t have him.

  Without a word he left the party. But he was aware of the silent eyes, everywhere, watching him, judging him.

  On his way out of the party, he stumbled against a darkened table. His fingers clamped around the edge and he lifted it off its legs. He felt like hurling it into the darkness. Then the sight of his own name, clumsily scrawled across a rumpled red package, arrested him. Instantly he recognized Megan’s handwriting, as well as her sparkling emerald-green clutch lying forgotten beside the gift.

  The sharp breath he took cut into his chest like a knife.
He should go on to the house. It didn’t mean anything—her bringing him a gift. Slowly he set the table down and picked the package up, all the while cursing himself for the flicker of hope he felt. He carefully peeled the paper away.

  Incredibly his fingers touched something smooth and wooden. He pulled out the carved figure he had wanted for years, staring at it in numb amazement.

  Jeb held the carving, turning it over so that it gleamed in the muted light of the flickering candle. He remembered that day, so long ago, when she’d loved him, when she’d kissed him, when he’d picked flowers for her and she’d worn them in her hair. She’d offered herself freely to him when she’d been too damn young and much too confused.

  His fingers tightened convulsively around the figure. A smile crept across his dark face, its light softening his hard black eyes.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” he whispered.

  He would make her come to him again and offer herself to him again, if it was the last thing he ever did!

  But how?

  What method of persuasion did a man use on a woman as stubborn and hardheaded as Megan MacKay?

  Ten

  “Jeb! Oh, dear God! Help!”

  Megan was caught in a cage of fire. Tree trunks were wavering bars of flame. Vaguely she was aware of some alien sound screaming in the distance as she collapsed on the forest floor.

  In that final precious moment, she knew that more than anything she wanted to live. To love. She wanted Jeb, and she was filled with an overwhelming sadness that she would die and he would never know.

  She was being sucked down a blinding tunnel of fire.

  Megan bolted awake and sprang out of bed, gasping. It was her old nightmare, the same as always, yet different.

  Her nightshirt was soaked with sweat. The unvarnished floor stung like dry ice against her bare toes, but in that first, awful moment, she was just grateful to be alive. She sank down onto her bed, weak with relief and with a new terrible sensation of loneliness.

  The sound from her nightmare jangled, and she realized it was the telephone by her bed.

  The room was as black as death.

  The phone erupted again, and she jumped.

  Who...

  Terrified, she groped for the phone, only to send it crashing to the floor. She pulled it up by the cord.

  “Hello,” she murmured breathlessly, shakily.

  “What took you so long?” drawled an insolent male tone.

  “Jeb?”

  Her heart quickened. An ache rose in her to be held in his strong arms, to be crushed against his broad chest, to know all the tenderness she’d always longed for and never had, and yet there was a new jeering quality in his voice that made her wary.

  He laughed softly, ironically. “Who else would call you at this hour?”

  “What time...” She felt bewildered, out of her depth as she fumbled in the dark for her lamp chain.

  “What does it matter?” he asked derisively. “I’m the boss. You’re the employee—one of many.”

  There was a difference in his tone, and it made her shiver. “What do you want?” she whispered.

  “Janelle needs to go home first thing in the morning. Have the jet ready around ten. I don’t want her kept waiting.”

  Janelle... The tender core inside Megan froze, and she listened to him uncomprehendingly. Janelle. Megan’s fingers found the chain to her lamp and yanked.

  She read her watch, and she could feel the bitter coldness in her heart spreading. “Who do you think you are, calling me at 4:00 a.m.?”

  “Your boss, honey.”

  Anger churned her stomach as she suddenly realized what he was doing. He was getting even.

  “Jeb, I didn’t mean...”

  “Do you think I give a damn what you meant or didn’t mean? From now on you’ll do as I say. Or quit. This was your idea, remember?” His low, hard voice went on. “I want the plane serviced and immaculate. Arrange for coffee and light snacks to be brought on board. Make sure everything’s hot. I’ll expect a full briefing on the weather. I want to stop in Phoenix and take Janelle to lunch there at a favorite restaurant of hers.”

  Megan clenched the receiver in a death grip and imagined it was his darkly tanned throat. But it wasn’t, and the smooth, quiet voice continued, making demand after demand, every one of them a gratuitous insult in some way, until all the residual tenderness she’d felt toward him after her dream was gone. She was shaking and limp with fury.

  “I’m not some servant you can call up and order around at any hour of the day or night!”

  “Read the fine print of your contract and you’ll discover that’s exactly what you are,” he purred. “It’s what you said you wanted to be, remember?”

  At last he hung up, finally drawling softly, “Sweet dreams!”

  *

  In her hands the jet was metal made living flesh; a diamond point scratching the sky.

  Megan studied the ominous tranquility of the arid mesas and sheer rock peaks stretching out twenty thousand feet beneath her with an odd feeling of misgiving. Normally she loved flying; she loved the spaciousness of the sky; she loved the lonely peace high above the rumpled carpet of hills and valleys and mountains.

  But today a vague uneasiness disturbed her.

  The weather forecast had been acceptable—clear skies until the Pacific coast, and only isolated or widely scattered moderate rain showers and thunderstorms there. There were no sigmets or other severe weather advisories issued, but she instinctively grasped the controls tightly. Something she didn’t understand made every muscle in her body tense as though she were bracing herself for danger. Time and again she forced herself to relax; she reminded herself that this odd foreboding was probably nothing more than the tension of Jeb and Janelle’s presence in the cabin behind her.

  Megan had been furious at Jeb ever since his predawn phone call. Her anger had intensified when he arrived at the jet two hours late, deliberately, thoughtlessly having kept her waiting. He had strutted to the plane with Janelle’s hand laced tightly through his, and grinning cockily down at Megan, he had ordered her to take off immediately, saying that they were in a hurry and didn’t want to be kept waiting.

  Megan had swallowed her burning fury, crawled into the cockpit and prepared for takeoff. They were now over New Mexico.

  Behind her, Megan heard the door open and close, and involuntarily her fingers tightened on the controls. Jeb sprawled in the seat beside her, staring at her. Bold, dark eyes swept over her, and every muscle in her body buzzed in response.

  “I just came up to say that you’re flying my Lear jet, not some pickup truck on a bumpy ranch road. You’re scaring the hell out of Janelle!”

  “I know perfectly well I’m not flying a pick—” Megan’s voice cracked.

  He was grinning, smirking with triumph.

  He was trying to make her mad and she knew it.

  Her cheeks flushed with anger. She had never disliked anyone’s behavior so much in her entire life.

  “The food was cold!” he said cheerily.

  “Because you were late!”

  “A good employee—”

  His arrogance was like a spark set to dynamite.

  “Why don’t you go back to the cabin and torture Janelle?”

  “Janelle doesn’t call being with me torture,” he taunted in his silken, amused tone.

  “Whatever she calls it, why don’t you just leave?”

  His devilish grin flashed in her direction. “Because it’s more fun being up here.”

  He touched Megan’s shoulder, and she felt a shock go through her whole body. It was like electricity. It burned them both.

  She saw that his eyes were blazing. He felt it, too.

  “Megan,” he rasped, more softly than he’d ever spoken to her. “It doesn’t have to be this—”

  She felt a treacherous softening at the center of her being. “Just go,” she said with a look that glazed the warmth in his eyes with a layer of ice.
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br />   When he spoke, his voice was bitter and cold. “I will in a minute. But first, try to make a gentle landing in Phoenix. For once.”

  What was he trying to do, make her so mad she flew his plane straight into the ground?

  She sat there staring ahead into the deep, shimmering blue, her hands clenched rigidly on the controls. Megan sucked in her bottom lip and bit it until it bled.

  In Phoenix they were on the ground for four hours. Jeb didn’t like her landing and told her so in a cool, disdainful tone, right in front of Janelle, and Megan smoldered with ill-suppressed fury. Then he ordered Megan to stay with the jet while he and Janelle drove into town. Megan paced back and forth, drinking cup after cup of cold, stale tea while she waited, interrupting this pastime every so often to thumb through a dog-eared aviation magazine or to listen to another weather report. But all she could do was fume as she thought of Jeb and his new perplexing determination to keep her in this constant state of rage.

  When Jeb returned from lunch, he ignored Megan completely, and somehow that was even worse than his rudeness. Every time he looked at Janelle, Megan felt an emptiness echoing through her soul.

  When they took off again, the flight was uneventful at first. But as they neared California, a thick wall of clouds began to push up over the mountains. Megan talked to a controller and he gave her the latest weather, which didn’t sound nearly as ominous as things were beginning to look.

  By the time Megan was setting up her approach for the strip near the Jacobs’ ranch, monstrous cumulus clouds were puffed up on all sides of them, boxing them in. Somewhere at the base of those clouds, lost in the murk and rain, were the razor-sharp mountains of the Santa Lucia Range. And the strip.

  The news from the radio began to sound less reassuring. In the space of ten minutes a monstrous system of thunderstorms had sprung to life and grown with astonishing intensity around them. She talked back and forth to the controller only to learn that the weather at the nearest alternate airports was no better.

  They were trapped.

  Megan was tired, too tired for this life-and-death emergency. She hadn’t gotten enough sleep, and Jeb’s harassment had wearied her. Fatigue gnawed at her, numbing her mind and sapping her strength. She shifted in her seat, trying to find a more comfortable position.