Heather's Song

He murmured something harsh under his breath before he leaned back in the chair with a violent motion, throwing one muscular arm over the back of it so that his shirt was stretched taut over his broad, hair-shadowed chest. His eyes narrowed as he took another draw from the cigarette and expelled it forcefully. “Will you look at me, damn it?”

Her eyes jerked up apprehensively. Everything she felt, the confusion and the hurt, showed in her face.

“Didn’t you realize,” he said quietly, “that every look you’ve given me lately has been an open invitation? We’ve lived like brother and sister for the past seven years, but the fact remains that there isn’t a drop of blood between us. We don’t even share a mutual cousin. There’s nothing to stop me, Heather.”

She averted her eyes to the colorful arrangement of mums on the table and she swallowed hard. “I…wasn’t trying to…to tempt you,” she said. “I’ve looked at you…like I always have.”

“No,” he said.

Her eyes flashed at him. “I’ll wear blinders from now on, that’s for sure,” she threw back.

“Afraid of me?” he asked with a slow, sensual smile.

“Terrified!” she replied.

He finished the cigarette and crushed it out in the ashtray beside his plate. “Why, because I hurt you?”

“You weren’t gentle,” she said in a subdued tone.

His eyes caught hers. “I’m not a gentle man. I’m hot-blooded and I like my women the same way. I’ve never made love to an adolescent before. I was rough with you because I’m used to women who know the rules. You don’t.”

Her face was the color of a boiled beet when he got through. Her pride was in shreds as she glared at him. “I’m not an adolescent!”

“You kiss like one.”

Her eyes flashed blue sparks at him, and he smiled lazily at the indignation in them.

“That wasn’t a kiss,” she returned furiously. “It was an assault!”

He threw back his head and laughed, the sound of it deep and pleasant and maddening.

“Well, it was!” she grumbled, toying with her coffee cup.

“Have you ever been made love to properly?” he asked with a gleam in his eye.

She avoided his patient stare. “What’s that got to do with it?” she asked uneasily.

“A lot. Apparently you’re used to men who’ll settle for light pecks on the lips and an occasional embrace.” His eyes dropped to her mouth. “I like my kisses hard and rough and deep. I like to feel a woman’s body against every inch of mine.”

“So I noticed,” she said, trying to ignore the wave of embarrassment that swept over her.

“Did you? You were standing there so rigid you felt like stone. If you’d let that soft young body relax against mine, it wouldn’t have hurt.” One corner of his chiseled mouth went up in a wicked smile. “You might even have enjoyed it.”

“Cole!” she gasped, outraged.

He chuckled, pushing back his chair. “We’ll try it again when you grow up a little,” he said, lifting an arrogant eyebrow at her as he started out of the room. “I don’t like making love to children.”

“You…egomaniacal beast!” she ground out.

But he only kept walking. She drained her coffee cup with a furious disregard for the temperature of the coffee, so angry she wanted to throw things. No other man had ever inspired in her the violence of emotion that Cole did. He could make her feel positively murderous.

* * *

“I see flames rising from your hair,” Emma remarked as Heather joined her in the living room later that afternoon.

“I want to burn Cole at the stake,” she said without thinking.

“What’s he done now?” the older woman asked with amusement in her dark eyes.

“What hasn’t he done!” Heather’s blue eyes burned. “He’s the most maddening, irritating man I’ve ever known!”

“Fire and ice,” Emma agreed with a tender smile, “just like his father. Jason was that way, too.”

Heather studied the softness in the other woman’s face as she spoke. “You loved him very much, didn’t you?”

The brown eyes were wistful. “All the way to my soul. It very nearly killed me when he died. Cole was the only reason I didn’t throw myself over a cliff. Oh, your father was a great comfort to me in later years, but Jason was…everything.”

“Did he look like Cole?” she asked.

“Exactly. He was a handsome devil, all right. Always had women chasing him—even after we were married! Why, your own mother used to flirt with him outrageously. It didn’t bother me, though. Jason never had eyes for anyone but me.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“At a rodeo.” Emma laughed. “He was one of the suppliers, and my brother was riding one of the broncs he supplied. I looked at him and I knew I’d die if I couldn’t have him. He must have felt the same way—” she sighed “—because we married six days later.”

“My goodness!” Heather gasped. She and Emma had never talked about Cole’s father until now, and she was fascinated. “Talk about whirlwind courtships!”

“It was crazy, all right, but Jason always did impulsive things. Like riding that bronc…” The light in her eyes seemed to go out, like a candle extinguished by a strong, bitter wind.

“Tell me how your day-care center is going,” Heather said quickly, changing the subject.

Emma’s face brightened again as she launched into the details of her latest project.

* * *

The tension between Cole and Heather was almost palpable, and Emma glanced suspiciously from one to the other at the supper table. “It’s cold out today,” she said finally.

“Arctic,” Cole agreed with a glance. “We’re going to Nassau in the morning.”

“In the morning!” Emma burst out. “But we haven’t even packed…!”

“To hell with packing,” he growled. “Buy what you need when we get there. I’m not dragging along a truckload of suitcases.”

Heather stared at him in bewilderment. “You said we’d go the first of the month,” she murmured.

His eyes narrowed on her face. “And I’ve changed my mind. Did you have any other plans…like visiting that damned reporter?”

She gaped at him. “You told Gil he couldn’t come here,” she reminded him.

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