Chapter
Three
To Laura’s amusement, the doorman’s expression
didn’t so much as flicker when she stuck a high-heeled foot out of
the Porsche and stood up, swaddled Indian-style in a blanket while
clutching her evening clothes. She waited by the hotel steps for
Sebastian to join her, head up and the slightest hint of a naughty
smile touching the corners of her lips.
She tipped her head to him. “You are
coming in with me, aren’t you? I may need your assistance with
little things like doors and elevator buttons.”
“Of course.” His smile was quick and
warm, his eyes echoing the sparkle of amusement in her own. Turning
to the doorman, he handed him the car keys and some folded bills,
then swung back to Laura and escorted her up the hotel
steps.
“I hope you were generous with your
tip.”
“I was,” Sebastian assured
her.
“Good. The man was the absolute epitome
of tact. For all the notice he took of my clothes, I could have
been wearing a mink. I considered giving him a quick flash, but he
didn’t seem to be interested.”
Sebastian reached ahead of her and
opened the door. “Perhaps he’s gay.”
“A gay Italian.” Laura released a soft,
incredulous laugh. “That sounds like an oxymoron.”
“It does, rather.” He guided her to the
elevators and pushed the button to summon one. Almost instantly a
set of doors glided open with a faint whoosh.
Laura entered the elevator car ahead of
him and began the awkward task of searching through the folded
clothes for her purse while still maintaining an adequate grip on
the blanket. Giving up, she turned to Sebastian. “Find my evening
bag, will you? It has my room key in it. And I certainly don’t want
to wake up Tara.”
“Do you share a room with your aunt?”
In quick order, Sebastian located her beaded bag and extracted the
computerized room key from it.
“No. We have separate suites. And Tara
isn’t actually my aunt,” Laura declared on a breezily offhand note.
“I just call her that to avoid lengthy explanations. Technically we
aren’t related at all.”
“How’s that?” He eyed her
curiously.
“Tara was my father’s first wife.
Several years after their divorce, he married my mother. That’s
when Trey and I entered the picture.”
“Trey is your brother,” Sebastian
guessed.
“My twin. He favors the Calder side of
the family—tall and big-shouldered, with dark hair and dark eyes;
hard, angular features. While I—”
“Take after your
great-great-grandmother,” he inserted.
“Who may or may not also be Lady
Elaine,” Laura finished.
Sebastian smiled at that and returned
to the original subject as the elevator doors opened on the
designated floor. “So you are traveling with your father’s ex.
That’s a bit unusual.”
Laura laughed at the understatement.
“Over the years it has raised more than a few eyebrows.” She exited
the elevator and added over her shoulder, “Tara definitely isn’t
popular with the rest of my family or anyone else on the ranch, for
that matter. My grandfather is convinced she is a horrible
influence on me. My mother has never actually said so, but I know
she agrees. I think she long ago reconciled herself to the fact
that I am my own person.”
“That”—his mouth curved wryly—“is very
obvious.” He inserted the room card into the slot, waited for the
light, and opened the door, then stepped back to admit
her.
Laura sailed past him into the suite,
paused long enough to deposit her bundle of clothes on the sofa’s
damask-covered cushion, then walked straight to the steps that led
to a private terrace without ever once glancing back at
him.
After an instant’s hesitation Sebastian
returned the room card to her purse, entered the suite, and closed
the door behind him. By the time he crossed the room, Laura had
already disappeared onto the terrace. He left her evening bag with
her clothes and followed her outside.
She stood at the outer wall, gazing
into the night, indifferent to the terrace’s spectacular view of
the Spanish Steps and the sprawl of Via Conditti.
He wandered over to the wall and
briefly surveyed the view. A smattering of stars dusted the sky,
their light dimmed by the city’s bright glow. The view of the city
and its landmarks was a familiar one, though the same couldn’t be
said about the woman beside him.
Angling his head in her direction, he
let his glance run over her and studied the play of light and
shadow on her face, accenting the high, strong line of her
cheekbones and marble perfection of her skin. The night gave a
silvery sheen to her hair, lightening the color of that glorious
blond mane tumbling about her shoulders.
At that moment she had the cool,
untouchable look of a goddess, beyond the reach of any mere mortal.
But Sebastian knew she had but to turn those sultry dark eyes on
him and the impression would change to that of a siren, tantalizing
in her beauty, with glistening lips promising rapture.
He smiled inwardly at such fanciful
thoughts while simultaneously aware that there was more than a
little truth in them. Just being near her aroused all his male
instincts. Sebastian suspected he was in danger of completely
losing his head over this woman. But that only seemed to add some
spice.
“You seem to be in deep thought,” he
observed, seeking to pull her attention back to him.
She drew in a long breath and released
it in a slow and soft exhalation. “I guess I was.” A small curve
lifted the corners of her mouth.
“What could possibly require such heavy
contemplation at this late hour?” he asked in mild
jest.
“The future,” Laura replied without any
hesitation and continued to face the city. “I have some important
decisions that I need to make.”
“Such as?” Sebastian prompted,
determined to engage her attention.
With a slight toss of her head, she
turned at right angles to face him and leaned a hip against the
terrace wall. “Oh, very important things,” she assured him in mock
earnestness and dipped her chin, her head cocking in a pose that
was provocative and alluring. “Whether to travel the world or rule
it, whether to feed the starving children in Africa or . . . go to
bed with you.”
Heat surged through him with rocketing
force. Desire was a hard, stony ache in his loins that somehow
managed to thicken his voice. “Personally, I am highly in favor of
the latter.”
Her smile widened, Cheshire-like. She
moved toward him, maintaining her hold on the blanket edges as she
opened her arms, the material winging from them in a gesture that
reminded him of an exotic butterfly emerging from its chrysalis.
But his view of her body was brief as she curved her arms around
his neck, wrapping him inside the blanket with her.
Head back and lips parted, she
challenged huskily, “Show me.”
His hands had already moved around the
bareness of her waist to mold her more firmly against him. This
time her skin was hot to the touch, but just as silky smooth as
before.
Before he could take possession of her
mouth, she began eating at his lips, taking playful bites of them
with her teeth. In all such previous occasions, Sebastian had been
the one doing the seducing. But Laura was the aggressive one now.
Something told him that was a dangerous precedent. Seeking to claim
the initiative, he scooped her off her feet and swung her toward
the suite entrance.
Laughter gurgled in her throat. “How
masterful,” she purred and stroked a hand along his jaw before
sliding her fingers into his hair.
“I assure you I am well-equipped for
the role,” he murmured, matching the racy lightness of her
tone.
His response surprised a laugh from
her, and her dark eyes took a new measure of him, a suggestive
gleam in their depths. “Is that boast or brag?”
“I’ll let you be the judge of that.” He
negotiated the steps into the suite’s sitting room.
“That will be my pleasure,” she
informed him as her fingers found the top button of his
shirt.
“Indeed it will.”
“Have you always been so confident of
your prowess in bed?” she teased while her fingers continued to
undo more buttons.
“I have never heard a single
complaint.” He carried her through the sitting room into the
suite’s sumptuous bedroom.
“Ah, but men never do—not if a woman is
smart. The male ego tends to be much too fragile.”
Control: he could sense her subtle
attempt to exert it again. “And I have never met a woman willing to
concede that she might be a disappointment in the
bedroom.”
He stopped near the bed. A single lamp
burned on the bedside table, throwing a pool of light over the
downturned bedcovers. He let her feet sink to the floor while
keeping an arm around her. The blanket fell away, only a corner of
it caught by his encircling arm.
“That’s hitting a bit below the belt,
isn’t it?” she challenged lightly while her hands glided down the
opened front of his shirt, halting when they reached the waistband
of his slacks.
“But that’s often what happens when
Mars and Venus collide.”
“But what a magnificent collision it
can be,” she murmured, her dark eyes shining with
promise.
“Indeed,” Sebastian agreed and stayed
her attempt to unfasten his trousers, catching hold of her hands
and pulling them away despite the hot and hungry part of him that
was eager for her to continue. “But you are rushing things.” He set
her away from him and made a quick, appreciative skim of her
uptilted breasts, slender waist and curved hips. “We men tend to be
dreadful creatures of habit.” He steered her toward the bed,
maintaining discreet pressure until the back of her knees made
contact with the mattress. Then he gave her a little push that
forced her to sit down. All the while she watched with intense
curiosity and interest. “Each of us has our own particular routine
when it comes to disrobing. Some prefer to start at the bottom and
remove their shoes first. Others begin with the tie.”
“You have a head start there.” She
reclined onto the bed with languorous ease, bending one leg over
the other to show him the full rounded curve of her cheek
bottom.
“And I have been remiss in not thanking
you for that before now.” Which was the truth. There was hardly a
part of him that didn’t feel thick and rigidly swollen. Sebastian
doubted that in his present condition his fingers could have
managed the intricacies of unknotting a tie or unbuttoning his
shirt. Clamping down on a very primitive urge to rip off his
clothes and join her on that bed, he pulled the tie from around his
neck, striving for a leisurely air that he was far from feeling.
“Myself, I do a combination of top and bottom.” He draped the tie
across the overstuffed armrest of a nearby chair and shrugged out
of his suit jacket. “After the tie, comes the jacket.” After making
a show of precisely folding it, he laid it on the chair. “Then the
shirt.” He pulled the tails loose from his pants and proceeded to
remove it as well, conscious all the while of her avid
gaze.
Again, he was anything but casual about
the way he arranged it on the chair. At that point he paused and
faced her once more. Her eyes made a greedy, almost tactile
inspection of the muscled width of his chest and shoulders, taking
special note of the curly mat of auburn chest hair.
“This is where I reverse the procedure
and begin from the bottom.” He sat down on the edge of the
cushioned seat, careful not to muss the clothes already there, and
began removing his shoes. After he had arranged them neatly side by
side next to the chair, he peeled off his socks, shook them out,
and laid them precisely one on top of the other.
“First the top, then the bottom. The
middle must be next,” she declared, her dark eyes agleam with
anticipation.
“An astute deduction.” He smiled lazily
as he stood up, unzipped his trousers, and stepped out of them.
Wearing only his briefs, he folded the dress pants together, leg
crease against leg crease, draped them over their suit jacket, and
gripped the elastic waist of his lone remaining garment. “Last, but
far from least, I remove my briefs.” As he stripped them off, he
turned his back to the bed and fixed them on the chair with the
rest of the clothes.
“Thus the deed is done,” he announced,
squaring around to face her once more, quick to notice the way her
gaze instantly zeroed in on his erection.
After a moment’s pause, she lifted her
glance to his face. “Are you quite sure you’re British and not
Greek?”
“Quite sure.” He arched an eyebrow in
silent question.
“You look like Adonis.” Her voice, like
the smoldering heat of her gaze, had the breathiness of
arousal.
“That’s a relief.” A smile twitched the
corners of his mouth. “For a moment I thought you were going to
compare me with Michelangelo’s young David, able to show off only
big hands.”
Her head fell back against the pillow
as she broke into laughter. Sebastian took advantage of her
distraction to climb into bed with her, stretching out on the
inside, keeping her in the lamp’s pooling light. Quick to recover,
she rolled toward him and arched her body closer, her hands
reaching to spread her fingers over his chest and the mat of hair
on his chest.
“I understand,” he began in a voice
husky with suppressed desire, “that lovemaking techniques may vary
from man to man as well. Some”—with his fingertips, he brushed
wayward strands of hair off her cheek—“start at the
top.”
Featherlight in his pressure, he
nuzzled the corner of her eye and the prominent ridge of her
cheekbone, followed the curve of her cheek to the corner of her
lips, and rubbed his mouth over them, exploring their shape and
softness. When he felt her straining toward him, inviting his full
possession, he took a couple of tasting kisses, lipping their moist
softness, then backtracked along the sculpted line of her jaw to
her ear.
He took his time tracing the outline of
its delicate shell with his tongue, nibbling at her lobe and
nuzzling the sensitive hollow behind it. An involuntary quiver
traveled through her when he located her particular erotic spot. He
went back to ignite it again and again, taking satisfaction in the
faint, animal sounds of pleasure and need that came from her
throat.
All the while her hands moved over his
back and shoulders, her fingers flexing and curling, while his own
made long, slow strokes down her spine and up the side of her
waist, allowing his thumb to only occasionally brush the outer
curve of her breast. Yet, ever so gradually, he worked his way
down, abandoning the erotic spot by her ear and transferring his
attention to the arcing curve of her throat and the hollow at its
base.
When his hand at last cupped the
underside of her breast, her body arched in anticipation. Its firm
roundness was nearly his undoing. Even as his thumb circled its
peak, feeling it grow hard under his stimulation, he struggled to
keep control. Drawn by its irresistible lure, his mouth began a
slow foray to it. Upon arrival, his tongue encircled her
button-hard nipple, and she breathed in sharply in
reaction.
She dug her fingers into his hair,
applying downward pressure. His mouth opened on her breast, drawing
its nipple inside. Conscious as he was of her every response, he
knew the exact moment when her inner thighs tightened and her hips
writhed slightly in an attempt to ease the building pressure. Heat
flamed through him. He knew he could easily take her over the brink
right now. But it was too soon.
While he still could, Sebastian pulled
away and worked to even his breathing. His glance lingered on her
parted lips, then lifted to her dark eyes, heavy-lidded with
desire.
“And, of course,” He ran a hand down
her leg, letting his gaze follow it, “there are those who prefer to
start at the bottom.”
As he shifted to focus his attention on
her feet, she murmured, “God, but you are a horrible tease.” Mixed
in with her frustrated tone was amusement and a touch of
curiosity.
The narrow heel, the delicate arch, the
ball of her foot, and each individual toe, his mouth wandered over
all of them before it began the upward journey to her slender ankle
and the curve of her calf.
As he nuzzled the back of her knee, the
bedside telephone rang. “Feel free to answer that,” he told her
while lightly rubbing his mouth along her inner thigh.
“Oh no, I’m not,” Laura rejected his
suggestion out of hand, unwilling to allow anything to intrude on
this new, exciting seduction and the desire that swirled around
her. “It’s probably a wrong number. If not, they can leave a
message.”
“Whatever you say,” he murmured,
continuing his leisurely ascent.
She dug her nails into the bedsheet,
gripped by an ache that was more intense than any she had ever
known. His teasing foreplay was fast becoming more than she could
stand.
In a voice tight and throbbing with
that need, she said, “I have one question.”
“What’s that?” His mouth brushed across
her pubic hair onto her lower stomach, his moist breath warming her
skin that already felt feverishly hot. The intimate touch only
intensified the powerful need. Her voice shook with it. “When do we
. . . meet in the middle?”
“Do you think it’s time?” Sebastian
countered on a dryly teasing note.
“Past time.” Laura replied with
impatience, aware she had never before been aroused like this—not
with this driving need to possess and be possessed. In open demand,
she reached for him. “No more.”
Hot with his own throbbing need,
Sebastian needed no second urging and levered himself up and onto
her. The driving pressure of his claiming kiss forced her lips
apart even as his hand slipped under her, lifting her hips, arching
in eagerness for his entry.
When he slid into the tight opening,
her astonished groan of pleasure nearly had him exploding on
contact. For a moment he went rigid to check it. She shifted under
him in grinding urgency.
Exerting every ounce of control he
could summon, he gripped her hips and held them still as he moved
slowly against them. But the pressure grew. Soon she was all motion
under him, her tongue pushing into his mouth to make demands from
him. He drove into her, letting the thing that rocked them both
take over. The tempo increased, sensation kicking through them in a
golden and violent storm.
The lingering dampness of perspiration
clung to her skin as Laura lay, arms and legs still tangled with
Sebastian, her body tingling with those delicious aftershocks. She
had never felt so gloriously spent or so incredibly energized in
her life.
Reaching up, she lifted a lock of
auburn hair off his forehead and idly curled it around her finger.
“You lied to me.”
“When was that?” His head faced hers on
the pillow, his mouth quirking in a lazy smile.
“When you claimed to be Sebastian
Dunshill. That’s merely an identity you have assumed.”
“Really? And just how did you come to
that conclusion?” Amusement gleamed in his eyes.
“I deduced it.” Laura replied,
stretching and curling catlike against him. “You have such a
mastery of the art of lovemaking, it’s obvious that you must be
James Bond in disguise.” The impossibly beautiful thrill she had
felt still flowed through her. Lying there beside him, Laura had a
moment’s regret that he hadn’t been her first man—although her mind
told her it was best that he hadn’t been or she might have become
his slave.
“I hate to disillusion you, but 0-0-7 I
am not.”
“What a pity,” she declared and
released an exaggerated sigh.
“It is, isn’t it?” he murmured and bent
his head to nuzzle the rounded point of her shoulder. “How did I
overlook such a delectable shoulder?”
She felt that familiar shiver of
pleasure dance over her skin and closed her eyes to focus solely on
the sensation. “You seem to be making up for—” She broke off the
sentence, startled by a sudden series of hard, insistent raps. It
took her a full second to realize that someone was knocking on the
door to her suite.
The sharp rap, rap,
rap was repeated again. This time followed by a muffled
female voice calling, “Laura, are you in there?”
“It’s Tara,” she murmured in
recognition, unable to recall a single other time when Tara had
knocked on her door in the middle of the night. “I’d better see
what she wants.”
Laura quickly untangled herself from
Sebastian and rolled out of bed. On her way out of the room, she
grabbed the robe the night maid had left lying on a corner of the
bed and pulled it on.
“Just a minute,” she called when the
rapping came again. Hurriedly she knotted the sash and pulled the
door open.
“You are here,” Tara stated the obvious
as her glance made a rapid survey of Laura’s tousled appearance.
“I’m sorry to waken you, but your brother just called my
room.”
“Trey?” Laura said with some surprise.
“Why did he call you?”
“Evidently he has been trying to reach
you, but you haven’t answered your phone, so he called to see if I
knew where you were,” Tara explained. “He wants you to call him
right away. He said it was important, but he wouldn’t tell me why.”
Which clearly irritated her.
Laura dismissed the possibility his
reason was anything earthshaking. “Knowing Trey, he probably took
first place at some roping contest. I might as well call him,
though. Thanks,” she said and closed the door before Tara could
invite herself in. As she started back to the bedroom, the
telephone rang. Laura picked up the extension in the sitting room.
“Hello.”
“Where the hell have you been?” Trey’s
familiar voice responded. “I’ve been trying to reach you for over
an hour. I couldn’t even get you on your cell phone.”
“I didn’t take it with me tonight.”
Aware that Trey had absolutely no understanding of fashion, Laura
didn’t even attempt to explain that the cell phone added too much
bulk to her evening bag, ruining its line. “Why are you calling at
this hour? Do you have any idea what time it is here?”
“I don’t know. Maybe two or three
o’clock.” His tone made it clear that he didn’t know and didn’t
care. He had something else on his mind. “Mom will call you
tomorrow, I imagine, but . . .”
He paused, and in that hesitation,
Laura knew immediately that something bad happened. “Trey, what’s
wrong? It’s Granddad, isn’t it,” she guessed, tension knotting her
stomach muscles.
“No. No, he’s fine. It’s Quint,” he
said, referring to their older cousin, Quint Echohawk, who had
followed in his father’s footsteps and become a Treasury agent
right out of college.
“What about Quint?” She clutched the
receiver a little tighter, bracing herself for bad
news.
“He got shot in the leg. It broke one
of the bones.” After a barely perceptible pause, Trey added, “He’s
going to be worthless as a team-roping partner for a
while.”
Laura sensed his attempt to make light
of the incident, but she knew this had hit him hard. He and Quint
had always been as close as brothers. Taking Trey’s cue, Laura
searched for a light retort.
“What do you want to bet that when they
hauled him off in the ambulance, the only thing he wanted to know
was whether they got the bad guys.”
“Yeah, that would be Quint,” Trey
agreed with a smile in his voice. “He always wants to finish
anything he starts. It makes him real mule-headed
sometimes.”
“Where is he now?” She heard faint
stirrings of movement coming from the bedroom.
“In a Detroit hospital.”
“Aunt Cat must be worried sick about
him.”
“She and Logan took off about an hour
ago to fly there. According to Logan, Quint and his partner had
gone to a farmhouse, following a lead they had on some guy
suspected of illegally selling firearms. I guess they no more than
got out of the car when somebody in the house opened fire on
them.”
“At least he’s going to be all right.”
Laura chose to dwell on the positive aspect.
“Yeah.” But the flatness of his voice
revealed the apparent lack of comfort he took in that.
Sebastian emerged from the bedroom,
fully clothed. “Just a sec,” Laura said into the phone and promptly
covered the mouthpiece with her hand. “It’s my brother,” she said
to Sebastian as he moved toward her.
“I suspected as much,” he murmured and
caught her chin between his thumb and forefinger, lifting it to
press a warm kiss on her lips. “See you in England,” he said and
crossed to the door.
The life seemed to go out of the room
when he went, leaving it feeling empty and alien—something Laura
had never experienced before. Suddenly she was very, very glad Trey
was on the other end of the phone.
“Sorry,” she said into it.
“I guess Tara was there,” Trey guessed.
“I should have known she’d hang around to find out why I was
calling.”
Laura chose not to correct him. “Phone
calls in the middle of the night generally bring bad news. Where’s
Mother?”
“She and Laredo went into town for
supper. Did I tell you Harry’s is up for sale?” Harry’s was the
sole eating and drinking establishment in the small town of Blue
Moon, located some fifty miles from the headquarters of the Triple
C Ranch.
“I can’t imagine anyone buying that old
place.” Laura sank onto a nearby chair and curled her legs under
her, oddly eager to hear a bit of local gossip; gossip she wouldn’t
have cared a whit about an hour ago.
“Neither can I,” Trey agreed. “Ever
since Dy-Corp shut down the coal mine, Blue Moon has practically
become a ghost town.” They talked a while longer, with Trey filling
her in on the latest happenings in and around the ranch. “When are
you coming home, Laura?” he asked at last.
“Not for a while yet. We’re flying to
England the end of this week.” Laura smiled, anticipating seeing
Sebastian again and launched into an explanation of meeting
Sebastian, his acquaintance with the earl of Crawford and
subsequent invitation to visit the manor house.
Trey’s only reply to that was, “You
will be home in time for the big horse sale the first of June,
won’t you? Mom’s counting on you to help with it.”
“I’d forgotten all about it.” The sale
marked only the second time horses bred on the ranch had been sold
separately from the biennial livestock auction. Just like the
livestock auction, the horse sale was as much a large-scale social
event as it was an auction. And the lone bright spot in the usual
monotony of ranch life, as far as Laura was concerned. “I’ll be
home in time for that,” she promised.
After an exchange of good-byes, Trey
hung up and rocked back in an oversized swivel chair behind the
den’s massive desk, his thoughts still troubled by the news about
Quint. His glance drifted idly to the wide sweep of horns mounted
above the fireplace’s mantelpiece.
The sound of shuffling footsteps pulled
his attention from the old stone fireplace and swung it toward the
den’s open door into the hall as his grandfather, Chase Calder,
paused outside it. Age had stooped his tall frame and turned his
dark hair an iron gray. There was a sagging of the skin across his
hard and angular features, the cracked and weathered texture of it
resembling old saddle leather. At first glance, his grandfather
looked every bit of his eighty-plus years, but there was a vitality
burning in his dark eyes that couldn’t be ignored.
“I thought I heard you talking to your
mother,” Chase stated as if in explanation for his
presence.
“No, I just got off the phone with
Laura.” Trey gripped the armrest and pushed out of the chair,
driven by a restless feeling that demanded movement. “I called to
let her know about Quint.”
“Is she coming home?”
“No. She’s flying to London at the end
of the week.” Trey moved out from behind the desk and crossed to
the door.
“London,” Chase repeated in disgust.
“It’s high time she quit gallivanting all over Europe and came
home. This is where she belongs.”
Trey stopped in front of him. In
Chase’s younger days, the two men would have stood eye to eye. But
Trey was a good inch taller than Chase now. Despite the stark age
differences, the family resemblance was strong.
“No, Gramps, she doesn’t. I don’t know
where Laura belongs, but it isn’t here.” Trey had never felt more
certain of that than he did at that moment, and he couldn’t say
why.