Melissa McClone – A Proposal Worth Waiting For: The Heir's Proposal / A Pregnancy, a Party & a Proposal / His Proposal, Their Forever (страница 22)
“Oh.” She felt so sad all of a sudden and she wasn’t sure why.
His face took on a faraway look.
“She was so beautiful, so tiny, so fragile, like a flower. I was pretty young and I fell like a ton of bricks. She enchanted me. She told me how her family had sold her to the plantation owner because they were desperately poor. They had eight other children to feed. She was one too many.”
“How terrible.”
“Yes. The plantation owner had promised to take good care of her, but he’d lied. She was so unhappy. She told me whispered tales of how cruel he was.”
He shook his head, remembering his naive reaction. “I was outraged. I burned to protect her. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. So I did something very stupid.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Yes. Uh-oh. You see, when my mission was complete, I took her with me.”
She’d known he would end up being the hero. “Good for you.”
“No. Not really.” He grimaced. “We travelled for two days and finally reached the city and I got us a hotel room. I had so many plans in my head. I thought...” He stopped, looked at her and his mouth curved in a bitter smile. “Hell, what does it matter what I thought? I woke up at dawn the next day and she was gone. And so was all my money.”
She gasped. “Oops.”
He looked at her and started to laugh. “It’s like you’ve got an alter ego just waiting inside you,” he noted. “She can only come out to play when you drink. Is that how it is?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said very primly, sitting up straight like a good girl.
He laughed again, then shook his head. She looked like an angel, her blond hair flying like gold threads around her face, her green eyes sparkling, her eyelids heavy with the effects of the wine. The need to kiss her came over him like an urgent wave, choking him for a moment. He had to look away and breathe hard a few times to get himself back on track.
“Okay, I’ll wrap this story up. The beautiful girl I thought I was in love with not only stole all my money, she fingered me to the local crime gang. I got away from them, but I took a little memento with me.”
Pulling up his shirt, he showed her the scar.
“See?” he said as she gasped, wide-eyed, at the ugly wound that contorted his beautiful skin just below his rib cage. “That’s what you get when you trust someone.”
Reaching out, she put her warm hand over the damage. And then, without thinking, she leaned down and pressed her lips to it.
As he felt the heat radiating from her mouth, he sucked in his breath, then reached to pull her up.
“Torie, you’d better not...”
She ended up in his arms and all his determination not to touch her melted away like April snow. What had he been saying? It was gone. All he could think about was her warm, wonderful body against his and her hot, tempting mouth so close.
He kissed her. He felt a twinge of guilt. After all, she might not be doing this if it weren’t for the wine. But it was too late to use that as a reason to pull away. He was kissing her and she was the most delicious thing he’d ever had.
She sighed and bent back as though offering him something more than a gesture. Something in that move hit him directly in his natural male response center.
Desire bloomed in him like a small explosion. He wanted her. He wanted his mouth on hers and his tongue exploring her heat, and he was getting that. But he needed more, and the need was beginning to grow in a way he wasn’t going to be able to control. He had to hold her hard against him and he had to touch her breasts and make her cry out so that it would make him even more crazy and... and...
He had to stop. It was becoming obvious that she wasn’t going to stop him and he’d counted on that. He’d have to do it himself.
“Torie.” He tried to pull back.
She whimpered when his mouth left hers and she reached with her warm, provoking hands to slide against his skin and lure him back.
“Torie.”
“No,” she whispered, flattening against him. “No, don’t leave me.”
“Torie, we have to stop.”
“No.” She shook her head, her eyes tightly closed, as though that would make his common-sense thoughts go away.
“Yes, Torie. We have to stop.”
She still pressed against him, her face to his chest. Her sigh was deep and heartfelt and he began to stroke her hair. In moments, she was asleep.
He held her there, taking in her fresh scent and her soft feel. An emotion swept through him and he wasn’t sure he knew exactly what it was—but it touched his heart. He knew that. A part of it contained a tug on his sensual responses, but there was more. He felt the warmth of affection, the strength of protectiveness, and he couldn’t stop looking at her and how pretty she was.
Still, it was all crazy. He’d been in love and it never came to anything good. It usually meant a certain type of heartbreak. It had been a good five years since he’d even chanced it, and he’d vowed never to let it happen again. So he was okay. He was protected, inoculated against the disease. He wasn’t going to worry about it.
But he was going to enjoy this. This, he could handle.
So he sat there and held her and waited for her to wake up. And he thought about his situation.
Why was he here? What exactly did he want out of all this? He wanted to save Shangri-La. That was it. He wanted his home to stay in the family. And since he was the only real Huntington left, that meant he wanted to keep it himself.
He’d tried to talk to Marge about him becoming caretaker while she went off and did what she felt she had to do, but she didn’t want to hear about it. Marge wanted money. She wanted enough cash in hand to leave the country and live on for the rest of her life. If she could get that from any of these people she had gathered here, she would be gone like a flash. And he just didn’t have that kind of a bankroll.
So what were his options? Few and far between—not to mention, weak. If the fortune-hunter crowd was right and the Don Carlos Treasure was hiding on the estate somewhere, things would be different. But he didn’t believe that for a minute. His father’s suicide note had been stark and emphatic. He thought the treasure was cursed and he wanted it at the bottom of the sea. Marc had no doubt his father had done what he said he would do.
So why was he helping Torie? Why was he letting her dream? Maybe because her dreams connected with his own in an odd way. She wanted to prove her father didn’t steal the treasure. He wanted to know what had actually happened. She wanted to clear her father, he wanted to exonerate his own. And maybe help to fix something that had haunted his family—if it could be fixed.
And that was why he wanted to help her find the journal. Who knew? There might be something written in there that could clear up a lot of questions—and put some ghosts to rest.
But that was a pretty slim thread to put his hopes on and he didn’t really expect anything even if the journal was found.
He looked down at Torie’s pretty face, her lashes making long shadows on her cheeks as she slept. He had to smile. To think that chubby little girl throwing apple cores on his car had grown up to be something like this—and possibly his only hope at getting to the truth. That made his grin wider.
Still, he wasn’t sure about her. There was a huge element of distrust in his gnarled soul. He’d been lied to one too many times. He didn’t trust anyone and, if he was honest with himself, he had to admit she hadn’t proved herself at all. She’d just become so appealing to him that he was willing to give her a pass—for now.
Wasn’t that it?
TORIE was somewhat surprised to wake up alone in the back seat of an ancient luxury car, but she stretched and yawned and smiled. She was still a little fuzzy in the head, but she knew that something good had happened. And then she remembered what it was and she sat up straighter and sighed happily. Now the only problem would be if Marc regretted it.
She wondered where he was, but then she heard someone rummaging around in the storage room at the end of the hall and she assumed it was him. She sighed. There wasn’t much point in sitting here waiting for him to come back as though she was hoping for a rerun. Something told her that wasn’t going to happen.
She ran her fingers over the leather seat and turned to look at the beautiful dashboard with its hand-rubbed mahogany trim. They just didn’t make them like this anymore. There was even a long shelf just under the dashboard, running the width of the car. Ladies probably stored their long kid gloves there after the party was over. She smiled at the thought, and then her gaze sharpened. There was something pushed far back into the shelf. You could hardly see it but when she bent low, she could just make it out. It looked like a small notebook of some kind. Maybe the sort of thing people wrote their mileage down in. Or...
Her heart began to beat like crazy and her breath choked in her throat. A journal? Her father’s journal? She pushed forward to the front seat and leaned to reach for it. And at just that moment, Marc came back into the room.
“Hey sleepyhead,” he said, carrying a couple of cans of car wax in and stowing them away on a shelf.