To Desire a Scoundrel: A Christmas Seduction (Novella) (Southern Heat) Page 6

  Once, they even rolled off, slick-skinned, to the floor.

  Oh, if only they were in his bed again, she thought, and groaned low in her throat.

  “Christ,” he whispered, ragged and breathless, and shouldered her into the wall. His lips left hers, trailing a moist path across her cheek. He sucked her earlobe into his mouth, his tongue hot and rough, seeking what she struggled to give. Heat washed over her—directly from her pulsing earlobe to her curled toes. She remembered this feeling, one as clear and familiar as his voice. Their attraction was not an illusion, a fantasy she’d created to excuse her recklessness.

  It was real. It had always been real and would always be real.

  “Princess.” He laid his lips against her cheek. “Princess.” He stepped back just enough to let a whisper of air slide between them. Pressing his forehead to hers, he sighed, shivered.

  A heavy step sounded behind them, followed by a shocked stutter.

  The promised glass of Syllabub had arrived.

  Tanner drew a final breath of sandalwood and cinnamon, the first true contentment he’d experienced in almost two years trickling away. Opening his eyes, he forced himself to remember just where the hell he was. He searched Kate’s face, fighting the urge to smooth the uncertainty from her brow. He lifted her hand to his mouth and placed a kiss on her bandaged fingertip.

  I love you, he thought, willing her to understand. Please, Kat, please understand.

  But she only blinked and stared, her face pinched.

  With a sigh, Tanner pasted on a counterfeit grin and turned to the garland retriever. He nodded to the glass. “Do you mind?” Without waiting for an answer, he snatched it from the man’s hand and slung back the contents. He stifled a grimace. He needed a drink more than air right now but this was not the remedy.

  “Sir, I brought that for the lady.”

  “Definitely better suited to a woman’s delicate constitution, I agree.”

  The garland retriever muttered an oath, pivoted on his heel, and stumbled straight into the Christmas tree.

  Ornaments clinked off the pine floor as Tanner shoved his hand between the branches and yanked the tree steady. A muffled laugh had him turning faster than the garland retriever, almost unsettling the tree again.

  Kate. Lovely Kate. One arm circling her ribs, fingers splayed on the side of her breast, her hand clasped over her mouth.

  Tanner felt the smile lift his lips from his teeth. “What?”

  “You.” She dipped her head. A swift headshake released rusty strands into her face.

  Tanner watched his hand close in upon her as if it were not his own. Just to wind a velvet curl about his finger, lift it to his nose and breathe her into his soul.

  Take care, Tanner. You’ll have her running the other way if she realizes what you’re thinking. With a suppressed sigh, he shoved his hands in his pockets.

  Oblivious to his frustration, Kate raised her head, wiped a finger beneath each eye. “That was ridiculous.”

  Tanner shrugged, a meager movement due to the stitched skin that was paining him in escalating amounts. “Yeah, so I guess it was. Sorry I scared off another potential suitor.”

  Kate’s cheeks smoothed. The light their kiss had sparked in her eyes dimmed.

  “Whatever you’re thinking, just wait a damn minute.” He snatched his hands free and closed in on her, her mistletoe twig snapping beneath his boot.

  “Don’t,” she said and halted his movement by slapping her palm flat on his chest. She shoved him back for emphasis. “Don’t.”

  “For God’s sake, Kat.” He shifted his gaze to the flame flickering above her head and rubbed his hand over his face. Her scent clung to his skin. Somehow, this primitive awareness fortified his resolve. Leaning in before she could dash away, he tipped her chin until her eyes met his. “Admittedly, I deserve your censure. Most of it, anyway. I made a few tactical errors. Lacked judgment at times. Misread responses, yours and mine. Acted impulsively instead of intelligently. I admit all that. But, you can trust me when I say—”

  “I can’t trust you as far as I can spit, Mr. Barkley.”

  “That’s a little harsh, I think. And, drop the Mr. Barkley, will you please?”

  “Harsh?” She jerked her chin from his grasp. “I entrusted you with a precious gift. A gift you threw out like day old rubbish. A gift that’s given to you so often, and so freely, that you think nothing of it. While I...I thought” —she glanced away— “oh, what does it matter to tell you now?” Her mouth flattened into a thin line. “I thought I loved you.”

  “Love? Me...Kat...what? What did you say?”

  “I thought I loved you. Dear God, how could you believe anything else?”

  “Love?”

  “Yes, love. Absurd notion, isn’t it? After all, I did not even know you.” She laughed—a ragged, disagreeable sound.

  Tanner nearly tripped over his feet getting to her. He gripped her shoulders, hands shaking. “No, no, Kat. It’s not absurd.” He would not let bitter laughter be the only thing to follow her telling him she loved him for the first time. “Jesus, why didn’t you ever tell me?”

  She tilted her chin, flashed a mocking half smile. “Oh, that would have been an amusing tale around the club, wouldn’t it?”

  “No, Kat.” He pulled her close. “Don’t you see? I loved you, too. I tried to tell you, all those times you turned me away.”

  “Of course, you did, Mr. Barkley.”

  The shatter of glass across the room had them dancing apart. Tanner glanced back to find Kate studying her bandaged finger. “How, goddammit, can I convince you?”

  “That summer is as dead as Charlie’s Christmas tree will be in another week.” A huff of breath, laugh or sigh, slipped from her. “Although, the attraction between us seems to linger. Wouldn’t you know, my mother was right? She always told me, the charming ones are the vipers.”

  He took a moment to study the mistletoe under his boot, allowing the pounding in his head to slack off, the steady pulse beneath his skin to abate. With a deep inhalation, he gazed into her face. Color reddened her cheeks; her eyes were rounded, wary. He was getting nowhere quickly. Stepping back, he raised his hands in surrender.

  She glanced around him, no doubt plotting her escape.

  “Kat, we need to talk. You must understand we have to talk. Not now, not with all this” —he lifted his shoulder, gestured to the people on the other side of the tree— “going on. Meet me tonight. After the party.”

  She frowned. “Talk? I don’t need to talk.”

  “Is that right?”

  “What happened between us tonight” —she threw her arm out, watched it tremble for a moment, then jerked the offending limb by her side— “is your idea of talking.”

  “No...no kissing. I won’t, oh, all right, I won’t touch you. Okay?”

  She snorted.

  “I swear.”

  “To use your vernacular: like hell.”

  “We can talk about...about what happened. In Richmond. Anything. I’ll tell you anything. I just want you to give me some time to try and work this out.” Tanner sputtered to a halt, his voice low and strained, tense. Scared he would frighten her further, he coughed, swallowed, and tried again. “I’ll meet you behind your mother’s shop. Eleven o’clock.”

  Kate blinked once. “I’m to freeze to death for this belated, and rather precipitate, spectacle of honesty?”

  “Twenty minutes.”

  “No.”

  “Ten.” Jesus, he hated her for making him grovel—respected her for making him grovel.

  She shook her head, but he noted the lack of conviction.

  “I’ll be there, so you might as well show up.”

  The wall sconce flickered, spilling golden light across her face. She drew her gaze to his, her eyes gleaming. She pressed her lips together, sucking the bottom one between her teeth.

  Tanner had never felt a stronger urge to kiss someone in his life.

  “Oh, here, I almost fo
rgot.” She shoved a wadded cloth into his hand and brushed past him.

  Tanner followed her retreat, a hollow ache gripping him. When she exited his vision, he glanced down. His bloodstained handkerchief, the monogram stark against the white linen. Crushing it in his fist, he stared, seeing nothing, hearing nothing.

  I thought I loved you.

  Tanner blinked the mist from his vision, threw his head back, and swallowed deeply. Kat had loved him once and, oh, God...if he had only known. He had not thought himself good enough for her to love.

  And he had a sinking feeling she had spoken the truth. For her, their love was as dead as Charlie’s Christmas tree was doomed to be.

  ***

  Kate pressed her brow against the windowpane and watched Tanner pace the length of her mother’s store. His hands were knotted behind his back, his head bent, seeming to search the ground before him. He halted, glaring at the row of windows above him. His eyes glittered in a sudden splash of moonlight, blue-black. Fortunately, he didn’t know which window was hers. She would not put it past him to climb the ivy trellis and pound on the glass until it shattered.

  Or she did.

  She pressed her hand against her chest, burrowing her fingers into wool, her heart tripping beneath her palm.

  Oh, Tanner.

  Her skin felt sticky from the tears she had shed since returning home. She scrubbed at her cheeks, rolled her tongue over her teeth. The faintest hint of whiskey, of him, remained. If only the same could be said for her heart.

  Doomed. She was doomed to remember this evening for a lifetime. As if she’d needed more memories of Tanner Barkley to shove in a trunk already chock-full. Little about him, about their wondrous summer together, had faded with time. No matter what lies she told him. She could remember everything.

  Sunlight pouring over him. Black hair tangled round her seeking fingers. His tongue, laving the warm hollow at the base of her throat. The weight of his chest, his hips, his legs, driving all judgment and worry of consequence from her mind. She flexed her hands, untangling the imaginary strands.

  Dear God, memories were dangerous.

  She shivered and draped one foot over the other, hugging her stomach, her arms unsteady. Tonight, she’d done the unimaginable and actively participated in her own downfall. Alcohol induced, perhaps, but still, there you had it.

  After Tanner’s newspaper article, she ceased all contact with him. For months after, he tried to destroy the barrier she’d erected between them. Letters she returned unopened, dogged-eared calling cards she threw in the rubbish bin, visits to her sister’s home she ignored.

  Finally—and, yes, absurd on her part that she hated him for it—he had given up.

  Blinking back tears, she searched the path behind the shop…and found only a yawning expanse of gray.

  Gone. Given up. Again.

  Kate’s chest hitched. She had come to Edgemont seeking answers, about Crawford, about her future, about her life.

  Instead, the answer provided was that she still loved Tanner Barkley.

  She stumbled to the bureau tucked against the bedroom wall and swept her hand across the marble top, scattering her mother’s bric-a-brac. A cologne bottle dropped to the floor and shattered. The scent of violets cracked the air. Kate did not blink, didn’t care if she sliced her feet to shreds on the glass.

  Where was it?

  There. She lifted the hairpin and traced the edge. She brought it close to her eyes, but didn’t really need to. Enough moonlight spilled into the room. Regardless, she did not see the crooked hairpin she held, but the one that bounced off the bricked courtyard by Tanner’s boot two years ago. Plated gold. At the time, all she believed he could afford. He bought them for her—an impulsive purchase on one of their rare trips to the city—two weeks before...well, two weeks before her world shattered into as many pieces as her mother’s cologne bottle.

  A trace of gold remained, winking in the light. She curled her hand into a tight fist, a rusted edge nicking her skin.

  Why had Tanner kept her hairpin all this time? And why had he admitted this to a roomful of strangers? During a stupid parlor game. She wanted to believe this meant he loved her, had always loved her.

  She shook her head. Not possible. Tanner Barkley didn’t love anyone but himself.

  ***

  Concealed by shadow, Tanner hoped Charlie couldn’t see him. He sighed, remembering the cheroot wedged between his fingers. The one with the glowing red tip.

  The porch swing tilted when Charlie grabbed the chain, groaned when she settled beside him. He rolled away from her and released a charcoal puff into the darkness. A motionless night, brittle, icy teeth nipping at his nose and cheeks. To make matters worse, his arm seemed to throb with each fragile snowflake that drifted to the ground.

  “Kate didn’t show?”

  Tanner flicked ashes from his thumb and lifted his gaze to the sky. A thousand stars visible away from the city. Woodsmoke. The sweet scent of rosemary. “No.”

  Charlie’s feet shuffled. Her lips parted, closed, parted.

  Tanner straightened his spine, preparing for advice.

  “I think Kate might have done it, until that stupid game,” she finally said.

  Tanner let his head drop back, exhausted. His arm thumped in time with the ache in his head. On a clouded exhalation, he whispered, “Before she went home, she made me give the hairpin to her. Ripped it right out of my hand. It’s all I have of her, all I had. She probably tossed it in the weeds on her way home.” He laughed, sensed how fragile it sounded, and tried again. No better.

  “Tanner, maybe I should help you to—”

  “No.” He extinguished his cheroot and rose to his feet. For a moment, black colored his vision. Closing his hand about the wooden railing, he gulped air like water. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Answering a question honestly, for once in my life.” Silly damned parlor game. Who in the hell needed to know the contents of a man’s pockets? And what each item signified? Jesus. Telling a roomful of people he kept a former lover’s hairpin?

  With the former lover in the room?

  He was losing his mind. Simply. Losing. His. Mind.

  “You love Kate, Tanner. You didn’t ask for it and you can’t make it stop. You can’t make love disappear. Believe me, I tried. Tried to hide my love for Adam. And, he tried to hide his love for me. You remember escorting me to the train station in Richmond. Oh, I reveled in my martyrdom. My supreme sacrifice. Then, I came back to Edgemont without him, and my life splintered, no better than rotting wood. My days didn’t matter if he wasn’t in them. And my nights....” The creak of the swing mingled with her soft laughter. “What did our stubbornness get us but three miserable months apart? What has denying gotten you? Or Kate?”

  Tanner glanced over his shoulder. Shadows revealed the lower half of Charlie’s face, the tender smile gracing her lips. Her gaze rested on her bedroom window, making him wonder if she missed her husband even now. Pushing the swift jab of envy aside, he stared across fields awash in silver and white. “So, you’ve decided I’m in love with her?” he asked, stretching to catch a snowflake on his finger.

  “Oh, Tanner. Those lovely blue eyes of yours smolder when you look at her.”

  He spanked his hand against the railing. “Maybe they do, dammit.”

  “If you tried to talk to her again—”

  “I did everything in my power to talk to her after the article went out.” He dropped his face to his hands and smelled cinnamon on his skin. His head pounded, persistent blows against his temple. “She didn’t understand that the man I was that summer was the only man inside me. The things we did, hell, the simple things, playing chess and riding horses, were everything to me. I foolishly believed I could tell her, would tell her, tomorrow...or the next day or the next. While loving her with my whole heart, giving every part of myself I deemed worthy.”

  “She didn’t tell me...didn’t say you—”

  “I’ll just bet she didn’t,” he grow
led. A dizzying burst of anger, not all self-directed, flooded him. “Tonight, standing behind that bonnet shop, it hit me like a bolt out of the blue: I killed her love for me. Ours is a relationship she wants to forget. And remembers only with a flash of emotion on her face that is painful is enough to bring me to my knees.” He tucked his hands beneath his armpits and shivered. “I thought telling her about my family, that goddamned bank, university, my life, my feelings for her, would bring her back to me.”

  “You’re convinced it won’t?”

  “Didn’t you hear me? She is marrying another man.” The world tilted, dimmed. He shook his head and drew a chest-deep breath.

  Charlie kicked a black boot high. “What about the kiss? You think she would kiss a man she didn’t love?”

  “How do you know—” He waved his hand, dismissive. “That doesn’t, well, we were always good like that. At that. Nothing more, nothing less.”

  She pleated Adam’s coat, and Tanner couldn’t help but recall Adam’s warning that Charlie fidgeted when she was plotting. “You’re quitting then?”

  “Yes.” The word dropped, dull and final, between them.

  Charlie’s fingers stilled. She threw a quick glance his way. “When will you leave?”

  “Day after tomorrow maybe. I promised Adam I’d do an editorial for him. Going into the Sentinel office in the morning. Some story about an agricultural” —he sighed, shrugged— “whatever.”

  She jerked her head, a flash of surprise, perhaps, or delight, streaking through sapphire. “Oh! The Sentinel office. Tomorrow.” She focused on a point high above his head, her fingers dancing along her braided coat pocket. “I mean, you can’t leave the day after tomorrow. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve. No stages on Christmas day. Plenty of time to write an editorial. Plenty of time. And, well...good. Plenty of time.”

  Christmas.

  Tanner wished he could summon even a glimmer of happiness about the holiday. He missed his family and desperately loved another man’s fiancé. A woman who used to be his.

  A woman who’d loved him once. Or so she said.

  Oh, yes, Merry Christmas.