Page 27 of Comanche Magic

  "Oh, Franny . . ."

  "And now I love you. Don't you see? Now I love you."

  With that, she dissolved into tears again. Chase pressed his face into the curve of her neck and hunched his shoulders around her. She loved him. God, he'd worked like a dog to drag those words out of her, and now that she'd finally said them, all he wanted to do was weep with her.

  "Now I love you. "

  There was a wealth of heartache in those four words. She didn't have to say anything more, for that said it all. Now I love you. Chase groaned, finally seeing and wishing to God he didn't.

  The mystery of Franny. Like he might have a beauti­ful, intricate puzzle, he'd been taking her apart, piece by little piece, studying, analyzing, trying desperately to understand her. Her Christian faith. Her belief in her sinfulness. Yet he'd overlooked what should have been glaringly apparent, especially to a Catholic. Penance. In Franny's mind, she had to be punished for all her wrong­ful acts, and what better way for God to punish her than to take from her anything she could love and have for her very own.

  Toodles and Chase, the two stupid ones who wouldn't stay away, no matter what she did. Who kept coming back, again and again. Who knew all the bad things about her and loved her anyway. Her family didn't qualify, for to keep their love, she felt she had to con­ceal the truth from them. Impotent rage filled him. But it died as quickly as it came. He couldn't help her if he was blind with anger.

  He searched for something, anything, he might say to ease her mind, but there was nothing. He could talk himself blue. Her beliefs were too ingrained to be erased with words. Franny, the prostitute, was by defi­nition unlovable. Anyone or anything who dared to break that unspoken law would be stolen from her.

  Toodles and him.

  Chase did the only thing he knew to do, and that was simply hold her. With Franny, he seemed to be reduced to that more times than not. She clung to him and cried until she exhausted herself. Until she had no more tears to shed. Then she lay quietly in his arms, running the fingertips of one hand over his hair, down the back of his neck, over his shoulder.

  The way in which she touched him broke Chase's heart. For she touched him wondrously, as though she were trying to memorize everything about him. He could better understand her reluctance to have a wed­ding now. And God forbid that she should wear white. All his life, he'd heard people jokingly say that the roof of the church would cave in if they entered. In a sense, Franny felt the same way. But her paranoia extended beyond that into her life. She was a bad person. And if she dared to forget that, if she presumed too much, the vengeance of God would surely strike.

  Loving and being loved was, to her, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, something bestowed upon only deserving individuals. He had sensed how deeply she yearned for a wedding, but for her to have one? In her mind, walking down the aisle in white would be tantamount to thumbing her nose at God and inviting His wrath. To accept and be accepted by his family? The same. She wasn't deserving, and if she admitted, even to herself, how much she wanted the life he offered her, God would surely take it away from her.

  Chase felt as if he were trapped inside brick walls that stood twenty feet high. Now that he had identified Franny's problem, he had no idea how to solve it.

  No idea at all.

  In time, perhaps. Surely she'd eventually get over this. But Chase hated to let her suffer until then. "Franny," he said gently. "How would you feel about talking to Father O'Grady?"

  She stiffened. "About what?"

  About what. Now that was a damned good question. "Oh, just about things. Toodles, maybe. And me. About how you feel."

  "To a priest?"

  She said priest as though it were a dirty word. Chase smiled in spite of himself. "Preacher Elias, then?"

  That brought her head up. "Are you mad? I can't talk about this to Preacher Elias. If I did, then he'd know."

  "Know what?"

  "That I'm—" She broke off and reared up on an elbow to fix him with an incredulous gaze. "You know very well what!"

  "Franny, he's a man of the cloth. He has surely seen and heard just about everything. Do you think he'd die of shock if he found out about you?"

  "Probably. And he'd hate me. He might—well, he might tell my mother!"

  The way Chase saw it, Mary Graham already knew. "Would that be so bad?"

  Her pupils dilated. "Bad? Would it be that bad? She'd never feel the same about me. Never." She pushed to free herself of his hold. "Don't even think it. Do you understand? I've gone to elaborate lengths to keep all my family ignorant, and now you'd have me risk exposure by speaking to Preacher Elias?"

  Chase caught her arm. Holding her gaze, he said, "You need to talk to someone, honey. Someone you can trust. Someone who can understand your fears and put your mind at rest. Do you know someone?"

  "You?" she said thinly.

  Chase sighed. "Franny, I can't ease your mind. I've tried. You're carrying around a load of guilt. You believe God's going to punish you. You can't go on feeling this way. It isn't healthy for you or our baby."

  "I can't risk my family finding out," she cried. "I won't! They're all I have. Don't you see? They love me."

  "And they won't if they learn the truth about you?"

  "How could they?"

  Chase groaned and released her to drape his forearm across his eyes. "Jesus." Moving his arm slightly to regard her, he said, "The same way I do. It's easy to love you, Franny. And your family isn't all you have. Not anymore. You have me. You have my folks and Indigo."

  "For now."

  "For always! Do you think God's going to strike us all dead?"

  She pushed to her knees. "I don't want to talk about this."

  "Because I'm making sense, and you know it. Honey, I'm telling you, your family is going to love you, no matter what. Because you're you. And just think. Wouldn't it be a relief if they knew the truth? All those people who would know everything there is to know about you, and who'd love you anyway."

  She shook her head. Chase could see talking to her about it was useless. She fixed those big green eyes on him. "Chase, promise me. Promise you won't ever tell Mamma. That you won't even hint. If you do, I'll never forgive you. Never."

  "I'd never do such a thing, and you know it."

  "You threatened as much just yesterday."

  "Yeah. I threatened. And we both knew it was just that, a threat." He sat up, brushing pine needles and parched leaves off his shirt. Leveling a gaze at her, he said, "You knew I'd never make that trip to Grants Pass. Deep down, you knew it. Which brings us to another subject all together. You want this marriage, Franny. You want it all. My name, the baby, the life I've promised you. Only you're afraid to reach out and take it. If I know that, don't you think God's probably got it figured out as well?" He raised his hands and looked skyward. "Do you really think He's so damned stupid?"

  She bent her head and toyed nervously with her collar.

  "Life is a gamble, Franny. We're all born. We all have to die. All there is in between is getting the most out of life that we can. Bad things happen sometimes, and I can't promise you they won't happen to us. But I can tell you this. God isn't up there picking people out as targets because they did something wrong."

  She looked up, her eyes filled with uncertainty.

  Sensing his edge, Chase pointed to an Indian paint­brush. "Think of your flower arrangements under glass, how you feel when you make them."

  "What about them?"

  Chase draped his arms over his knees and gazed off into the woods. "How many times have you made one of those arrangements, noticed a flaw, and then thrown it onto the floor to shatter it?"

  She eyed him in complete bewilderment. "Never."

  "Why?"

  "Well, because, I—" She shook her head slightly as if to clear it. "I work really hard to make them. And I think they're pretty. Why on earth would I want to ruin one because it had a flaw? I'd simply lift the glass and rearrange the—" She broke off as though it had
just occurred to her what she was saying. "I'd fix it, not throw it away."

  She flushed slightly and looked away. But Chase could tell he was making sense to her.

  "Let God lift the glass and rearrange things," he said softly. "Think of yourself as a flower that's been mis­placed in the arrangement. He's plucked you up out of one spot and put you in another. Here, with me. It's where you should be. Where you belong. Have faith that this is where He wants you."

  Chase pushed to his feet and gazed down at her where she knelt before him. "Do you love me?" he asked.

  "Yes," she admitted tremulously.

  "Do you want a life with me?"

  "Oh, yes."

  With the toe of his boot, he drew a line in the dirt and held out a hand to her. "Then step over here with me," he said huskily. "Leave the last nine years on the other side. We'll make a world just for us, where nothing can touch us, where we can make our wishes come true. A dream place, sweetheart. Only it'll be our reality."

  She gazed with open yearning at his hand.

  "Come on."

  "But what if—" She broke off and spread her fingers over her chest. "What if something bad does happen, Chase? What if I let myself love you, and something awful happens?"

  "Then it happens. Life doesn't come with any guar­antees. Not for anybody. That's why it's so damned important that we don't waste time worrying about yesterday. All anybody's got is right now and hope for tomorrow."

  She pushed shakily to her feet, her gaze still fixed on his outstretched palm. Chase wanted to say it was only a stupid line in the dirt. He wanted to reach over and grab her. But it was a step he knew she had to take by herself.

  She finally looked up at his face. Her green eyes darkened to the color of water on a stormy winter day. "You won't ever leave me? You won't let me start lov­ing you and then decide you don't love me?"

  "As long as there's breath left in my body, I'll never leave you," he said solemnly. "I swear it."

  Instead of taking his hand, she launched herself at him. Chase caught her in his arms and spun in a dizzy­ing circle, his face pressed against her hair. She held onto him as though she might never let him go.

  He hoped she didn't.

  18

  As Chase turned with Franny in his arms, she closed her eyes at the sheer glory of sensation that swept through her. His embrace surrounded her like warm silk over steel. His strength buoyed her. Letting her head fall back, she lifted her lashes just enough to see the trees and sky above her.

  A dream place. A place where there was only the two of them and their baby, where nothing could touch them. Last night, she hadn't believed it was possible to go with him into such a place. But now they were there. Only it wasn't a place she'd created inside her head. It was real. Absolutely real. And all the more beautiful to her because it was.

  Chase. Oh, how she loved him. When he finally stopped whirling and allowed her feet to touch the ground, Franny felt as though the world around her was still spinning, a sensation he amplified with a kiss.

  Not a kiss such as they had shared last night, but a deep, soul-searching kiss that made her mind reel.

  Without reservation, Franny opened her mouth to him, for to do otherwise with this man was impossible. His lips settled over hers, moist, impossibly hot and silken, his tongue searching, finding. Sensation rolled through her in waves that splintered into molten silver ribbons that warmed every part of her. Shimmering ribbons that combusted into fire. Franny lost all sense of self and sank against him, loving the feel of his hands on her back, on her sides, at her breasts.

  She recalled the morning he had walked toward her through the shadows cast by the trees outside Indigo's little house, how lean and powerful he had looked. Now all that lean strength surrounded her. Yet he touched her as though she were made of fragile glass. Her breath was coming in short bursts when he finally drew back to regard her. His midnight blue eyes held a ques­tion, and within hers, he must have read an answer, for he started unbuttoning her shirtwaist.

  Franny's eyes drifted partway closed.

  "Don't leave me," he whispered raggedly. He rained kisses across her face as he drew her bodice open and peeled the cloth over her shoulders. "Please don't, Franny love. I swear you won't regret it. Stay with me."

  The sleeves of her dress caught at her elbows and held her arms to her sides like ropes. When his hot mouth trailed from her cheek to her throat and lower, she could do nothing to stop him. The question was, did she want to? A shiver ran the length of her as his tongue began making light circles over the upper swells of her breasts. With every touch, her skin became more electrified. She moaned and whispered his name. Chase. It slipped through her mind as sweetly and softly as a breeze. Chase.

  He tugged on the ribbon of her chemise. The drawn cloth went lax and fell away, baring her breasts. Fran­ny's lungs ceased to function and her spine snapped taut. Memories mantled black wings over her pleasure, and for an awful moment, she surfaced, knowing what he meant to do and dreading it. As if he felt the change in her, he raised his dark head. His blue eyes searched hers, and his firm lips tipped in a crooked smile.

  "Do you love me?"

  Franny lost herself in his gaze. "Oh, yes."

  "Then trust me, hm?"

  Her pulse quickened. "Yes. Trust."

  Tightening his hold at her waist, he bent her back over his arm and freed her arms from her sleeves. Franny clutched his shirt, rigid, filled with a haunting anguish because the memories were winning the war inside her. She felt flanked on all sides by them. To stay with him while he did these things . . . It was to invite recollection. It was to drown in it. And that was too ugly to face.

  As she had for nine years, Franny quailed before the invasion. Only this time, in order to save herself, she would have to hurt this man, and she loved him better than herself. Stay with me. The meadow filled with daisies beckoned to her. She could almost hear the water rushing, almost feel the sunlight touching her skin. It would be so simple to slip away, to separate herself from this. But he had asked her to stay, and stay she would.

  Moving her hands into his hair, Franny held his head as his mouth moved over her breast. Heat. A wet, draw­ing heat. With a flick of his tongue, he laid bare every nerve ending in the hardened nub of flesh at the crest of her nipple. His teeth entered the play, closing, tugging, lightly grazing. She shuddered and nearly choked on a low cry. No. That was the word she wanted to scream.

  "My God, you are so sweet," he whispered. "Oh, Franny, my precious angel. You are so wonderfully, impossibly sweet."

  At the sound of his voice, the blackness within Fran­ny's mind began to splinter. When his mouth covered her breast again, she concentrated, not on the memories, but on the sensations he evoked within her. Pleasure, not pain. A sweet, tingling pleasure. His large, strong hands bracketed her ribs, lifting her up to his mouth. She real­ized that her hands in his hair were guiding him, holding him close. She let her head fall back and closed her eyes for a moment, revelling in the feelings that rocked her.

  This was nothing like what she had suffered before. This was— She gasped at a wondrous shock of feeling. "Oh, Chase."

  "I’m right here."

  And he was. Like a shimmering blanket of magic all around her. The heat of him seared her. Franny opened her eyes and gazed at the sky, drifting with the feelings he evoked, each more wondrous than the last. He bent her farther back over his arm and sank with her onto the grass again.

  "My God, I can't believe how perfect you are," he whispered against her breast.

  Perfect . . . Tears filled Franny's eyes as his warm, leathery hands slid over her skin, the callouses on his palms slightly abrasive, reminding her of when she caressed the underside of silk against the grain. Chase.

  Dark hair. A fierce visage sculptured in a lighter shade of mahogany. Eyes that held hers, fiery with passion. He was as elemental as the earth. With a low curse, he jerked at the front of his shirt. Buttons flew. Groaning low in his throat, he rec
laimed her mouth in another kiss and drew her to him. Bare skin against bare skin. The rhythm of his heartbeat slugging against her breast. Sweat, bunched muscle. Yet he held her to him with quivering reverence.

  Breathless, they parted mouths to look into one another's eyes again. Messages given and received. His gaze clouded with tenderness. Franny felt as if she had vertigo. The world was upside down, right side up, then tipping crazily. His breath came in deep, ragged gusts, fanning her face with moist warmth. He held her so close to him that his pulse throbbed though her.

  "I love you," he whispered.

  "Oh, Chase, I love you, too."

  Sunlight shafted into Franny's face, touching him and everything around her with gold. He drew her hands to his shoulders. Smiling down at her, he tugged her dress, then her chemise to her waist. Franny didn't protest. Couldn't protest. She felt as if she'd been wait­ing for this all her life.

  Blackness, shifting shadows, strange voices. Those were the things of her nightmares. How right it seemed that Chase was making love to her in sunlight. She felt the kiss of gold against her skin and reveled in the brightness.

  No more nightmares. Only dreams. Wonderful dreams that had magically become her reality.

  With gentle hands, he drew away the rest of her clothing. Franny felt no awkwardness, not even when

  he had difficulty unfastening her shoes. When she finally lay naked, he knelt beside her, his gaze sweep­ing boldly over every curve of her body.

  "You are absolutely beautiful," he whispered.

  Her breath caught when he reached to lift her breast. Sunlight warmed her nipple, but that was nothing com­pared to the burning heat of his fingertips. He bent to lave a peak with his tongue, and she cried out at the pleasure that raced through her. Dropping onto an elbow, he stretched out beside her.

  Loving Chase. Being loved by him. For Franny, there was nothing beyond that. He became her everything. There, in the sunlight, where there were no secrets, could be no secrets, he taught her how to love and be loved. Sunlight and Chase. It seemed to her that the two com­bined and became a searing flame. With his hands, with his mouth, with his body, he worshipped her, and in the face of such love, she surrendered all that she was to him.