Her eyes gleaming, Thena smiled. “She’s the best. I watched her being born and that makes her even more special to me. My father taught me how to train horses, and I put everything I learned into training her.”
“What’s that name of hers mean?”
“It’s old French for ‘Cinderella.’ She was stunted and ugly when she was born, and no one except me ever thought she’d grow out of it. She had hidden beauty.”
Thena continued talking about Cendrillon and the island’s other animals for several more minutes. When she finished, Jed seemed mesmerized, as if he couldn’t think of anything to say. Finally he told her in a low voice, “You love everything here, I figure, and everything here loves you. I see why.”
Thena caught her breath. How could the man put so much sexiness into such ordinary words? This conversation could quickly get out of hand. She stood up and jabbed a finger at his half-eaten food. “Yes, well. Hurry and eat. I’ll call one of the other horses up for you. I’ve trained a few besides Cendrillon.”
“You just want to watch me get stomped by a half-wild stallion,” he joked. “But I made my livin’ for a lot of years ridin’ rodeo broncs, so don’t get your hopes up.”
“Why did you stop competing?”
“I got stomped by a half-wild stallion.” He smiled a little and pointed to his neck. “Cracked two vertebrae. That was when I decided to train quarter horses for a livin’. Right now I’m huntin’ for a ranch to buy. I’m gonna have the best quarter horse ranch in the country, one of these days.”
“That costs money. You must have inherited a lot.” She looked at him in a disapproving way that told him exactly what she thought of his sour attitude toward a family that had done him the favor of making him rich.
That was a mistake. His eyes immediately hardened. “It was my mother’s money, meant for her.” Jed squinted up, and his deep voice cut her attitude to shreds. “If she’d had it years ago, she’d still be alive. I didn’t ask for the money or this island, but I got it. And I don’t feel one damned bit bad about havin’ what should have been hers.”
Thena felt her face turning pink. “I … there’s probably a lot I don’t know about all that,” she said hurriedly. “And it’s none of my business. I didn’t mean to sound judgmental. All I care about is what you intend to do with my … the island.”
Jed’s anger dissolved under her earnest response. “I reckon I look real bad to you, and I’m sorry about that. I don’t expect you to understand the way I feel about this old Gregg family place.”
Thena measured the stoic quality in his voice and the strong resolve in his face, but behind his hazel eyes she believed she saw genuine sadness on her account.
“You don’t look bad to me,” she told him. Why she wanted to soothe this man’s feelings, she didn’t know. Thena sighed in dismay at her jumbled emotions. “You just look like a mainlander who has to be educated.”
“So teach me, gal.”
For a breathless second they stared at each other in awkward anticipation—anticipation of what, Thena didn’t want to consider. She began backing away.
“Eat,” she urged. “I’ll go get the horses.”
Jed watched her until she disappeared into the forest. You don’t look bad to me, she’d said. He felt like a half-grown boy on the verge of giving a giddy whoop.
Thena knew the minute Jed settled onto JackJaw’s buckskin back that she was in the presence of a man who understood and loved horses as well as she did. Already astride Cendrillon, she watched Jed expertly guide the stallion in loping circles on the beach. JackJaw wore nothing but a blue nylon halter and rope reins.
It was a powerful sight, lithe man and fluid horse moving so gracefully together on her beach, and Thena felt sweet tears rise under her dark eyelashes. Jed Powers couldn’t be heartless enough to sell her island—it was impossible. His expression was serene and his smile was honest. Honest and very attractive.
She became aware of molten warmth shimmering through her body. She suddenly seemed too hot, as if she had her own internal sun, and when a bird trilled in the pines nearby, she felt an odd, poignant emotion race up her spine. She thought her island had strong powers. Well, perhaps this unusual man had powers too. His last name might be appropriate.
Jed slid the stallion to a halt beside Cendrillon, and Thena smiled weakly at him.
“You understand horses,” she said.
“Been ridin’ since I was in diapers.”
“You must have used a lot of baby powder.”
“Itched like a sonuvagun.”
He grinned at her and the sun inside her nearly went nova. Deep lines etched his eyes, his strong jaw softened, his whole handsome self became an example of Mother Nature’s intention that men should be irresistibly attractive for the sake of the species. Thena stared at him with unabashed rediscovery.
The horses stood so close that her bare knee met the taut rope of muscles in Jed’s thigh. JackJaw shifted, took a step forward, and her knee slid sensuously along the surface of Jed’s outer leg. Thena was shocked to find out that her knee contained an erogenous zone.
Apparently his leg was even more affected than her knee, because his grin faded and she sat, hypnotized, as he studied her intently.
“You make a fine horse trainer,” he said gruffly. “This stud moves like he’s been taught to step between eggs without breakin’ them.” Through a subtle movement of his leg, he eased JackJaw a few inches away from Cendrillon. Thena shivered with relief.
“Let’s go,” she said abruptly. “I have a lot to show you.”
“I’m ready and waitin’ to be shown.”
She gave him a long, assessing look, then nudged Cendrillon toward the dark mysteries of the forest.
Jed half-expected elves to pop into sight at any minute, then huffed at his foolishness. He began to feel the way he had as a boy, sitting next to Aunt Lucy in church. He felt like whispering.
They were in an area of huge, twisted live oaks covered in lichens and Spanish moss and ferns. Clumps of palmetto bushes rattled against the horses’ legs; magnolia trees hung paddle-leafed branches out to caress Jed’s arms and face. Thena rode beside him, and from time to time she made comments about the island.
“What’s that nice smell?” he asked.
“Bayberries and wild grapes. I always think of Tasoneela and Gabel Boisfeuillet when I smell it.”
“Who?” Jed inquired, as she had hoped he would. Now she’d catch his imagination for sure.
“Tasoneela and Gabel Boisfeuillet. They were lovers here back before the Revolutionary War. They died on the island.”
“From eatin’ bayberries and wild grapes?”
Thena clucked her tongue in dismay. “Don’t make fun. Do you want to hear the story? If you believe in spirits, you’ll like it.”
“I believe in spirits like Jack Daniel’s and Johnnie Walker.” Jed smiled ruefully at the piqued look she gave him. “But I like ghost stories.”
Thena nodded and tried to be patient. He thought he knew so much. Mainlanders always thought they knew so much.
She inhaled slowly and began. “Tasoneela was a beautiful Indian girl.” Thena pulled her shoulders back. “She was strong and courageous and proud.” She glanced at Jed and found his eyes directly on her. Best to look away from those eyes of his, she thought quickly, and did. “The Spanish held this coast then, and they took anything they wanted from the land and the Indians. One man, a cruel captain named Miguel de Leturiondo, wanted Tasoneela.” Thena arched one brow in feminine disdain. “To be his mistress.”
Jed would have smiled at her melodramatic style, but he was too charmed by it.
“He came to her village to take her, but Tasoneela escaped.” Thena held out both hands to the island. “She traveled to Sancia to hide, all alone. A year passed, and she fell in love with her island. Even alone, she was happy.” Thena lowered her voice. “Then one day she found a badly injured man, nearly dead, lying on the eastern beach. He was a French pirat
e named Gabel Boisfeuillet, and his ship and crew had been destroyed by Spanish forces.”
She cleared her throat. Despite every intention he had of remaining cynical, Jed felt his pulse hesitate every time she paused for effect.
“Keep goin’,” he ordered.
“Tasoneela was afraid of him, but she couldn’t bring herself to let him die. She cared for him, and when Gabel regained consciousness and looked up into her sweet face, he fell in love. Tasoneela learned quickly that her handsome pirate was a man worth loving in return. Gabel begged her to leave her island and travel the oceans with him, and for love’s sake, she did.”
Thena paused again to take a deep breath of fragrant air. “And?” Jed asked immediately. “What happened?”
Thena repressed a victorious smiled. “Tasoneela loved Gabel, but she missed her island. She was desperately miserable, and Gabel couldn’t bear to let her suffer. He brought her back here and stayed with her. They were going to farm the land.”
Thena stopped talking as she gently shooed a butterfly away from her face. “What happened?” Jed demanded.
“Miguel de Leturiondo learned that Tasoneela and a French pirate were living on Sancia, and he sent a detachment of soldiers to capture them.” Thena pointed to the north. “They trapped Tasoneela and Gabel on the beach near that end of Sancia. Gabel stood in front of her, protecting her with his body, and fired at the soldiers. Several fired back, and a bullet killed Tasoneela.”
She paused again. Jed leaned towards Thena without realizing he was doing it. “Was Gabel killed too?”
Her face somber, she nodded. “He asked the soldiers to kill him. They refused. But they let him carry Tasoneela’s body to a glade she’d loved, and he buried her there. He asked them again to kill him, and this time—touched by his grief, and knowing that torture and hanging waited for him on the mainland—they did. They buried him next to Tasoneela.”
Thena looked quietly at Jed and was pleased to find belief in his expression. Then he began to come back to reality a little, and his dark eyes gauged her with mild suspicion.
“Is that tale true?” he asked, almost smiling.
“It is. I swear.” Thena was sincere. She’d heard the story of Tasoneela and Gabel so many times and from so many people that she had no doubt it was true.
They rode in silence for several minutes, Jed assessing the strange feeling of wonder her story evoked, Thena assessing Jed. The forest floor began to slope downward. Abruptly the horses stepped into a cove surrounded by the dense woodland. Deep, shimmering water beckoned with soft arms of sand. A murmuring creek wound back through the forest from it.
Jed breathed in the cool, sweet air of a heaven on earth. The elves, he was sure, would appear at any minute to greet Thena, their goddess of the woods.
She slipped down from Cendrillon’s back and walked to the water’s edge, her senses acutely aware of every sound as Jed jumped down from JackJaw and followed. She sat in the warm sand and he sat also, very close beside her. Too close. That primitive sexual innuendo again, she thought with a quiver.
“This is it,” she whispered. “This is where Tasoneela and Gabel are buried.”
His heart pounding, Jed twisted his head and looked at her in surprise. She met his gaze and his pleasant, musky breath touched her face. Her lips parted slightly as she inhaled his life, his nearness.
“Here?” he murmured.
Thena’s nerve endings felt stretched by the magnetic pull of his gaze, and suddenly she knew she’d made a terrible mistake by telling him the lovers’ story. Not only had the story captured him, it had captured her as well. Her pulse raced, and the insides of her thighs, already made sensitive by Cendrillon’s coarse hair, tingled.
“Here,” Thena said breathlessly. “Sometimes … sometimes I hear them laughing … I think they made love here.” She couldn’t stop looking into the seductive depths of his eyes. “I’m going to call you Jedidiah from now on,” Thena whispered.
A look of bewilderment and delight came into his face at the abrupt announcement. “I’m too ordinary to be a Jedidiah. Jed suits my plain nature better. But thank you.”
Thena shook her head very slowly, never taking her eyes from his. “No, Jedidiah. You see yourself through harsh eyes. I don’t.”
“Oh, gal, you’re sweet talkin’ me for this island’s sake.”
“No.” Her eyes shamed him with their rebuke. “I don’t play flattery games. I don’t know how.”
Jed lifted his chin proudly. “I don’t know how either.”
“Then believe me. I see the beauty in you, Jedidiah.”
Jed did the only thing a man in love-at-first-sight could do, given such encouragement in such a romantic setting. Lost in her serious eyes, lost in the flowerlike scent of her body and her gentle insistence that he was beautiful, he leaned forward and settled a kiss on her startled mouth.
Four
The warm, firm feel of his lips pressing tightly to hers was a foreign sensation that stunned her. Thena kept her mouth clamped shut, and she knew—or at least she thought—that she wasn’t kissing him back. But she felt herself succumbing. Perhaps she was Tasoneela, reborn under another identity to fall in love with a reborn Gable Boisfeuillet who came to her in the guise of this weathered horseman.
She came to her senses and started to move away. Jed’s hand rose to her cheek and his callused fingers touched her skin almost reverently. Despite his aura of implacable calm, his fingers trembled. A puzzling sense of pleasure filled Thena as she realized that he was trying to calm her, that he was telling her that he meant her no harm. She wanted to trust this Wyoming pirate. She wanted to keep kissing him.
Rational thought left her as the skillful movement of his mouth sent shivers down her spine. A mixture of surprise and confusion made her heart race wildly. Thena had no idea a man’s kiss could be this overwhelming. None of the prim lip contact that passed for kissing in the old movies she rented had prepared her for the hot, liquid feeling that threatened to burn her from the inside out. She pursed her lips against Jed’s tentatively, and he encouraged her response by moving his mouth over hers in a capricious series of caresses.
Her mind blank, her eyes squinted shut, she ducked her head to escape the intriguing smell and taste of him. For a second her mouth was free, and she gasped for breath. Her voice came out crisp and rebuking. “The aggressive male tendency to dominate is a sign of—”
“Pure friendliness,” he drawled softly. “I’m not tryin’ to dominate you, I’m tryin’ to kiss you.”
Thena’s head jerked up at the teasing sound of his voice. She met his hazel eyes and found them darkened by sexual urgency. This cowboy knew how to look at a woman with disarmingly honest need, she thought dimly. He was just a lusty, basic example of mating capabilities—and she was going to sit very still and let him kiss her again.
Which he did, and this time his tongue slipped forward and nudged the center of her lips provocatively. What did he want? she puzzled. Thena’s hands, clenched in her lap, jumped with alarm as she understood. French kissing. She’d read about it in the sex manuals she’d bought when she was trying to unravel the secrets of Nate’s resistance.
Oh, no, she didn’t know how to kiss like that, and she wasn’t going to make it obvious. Part of her simply didn’t intend for this laconic Lothario to be amused at her clumsiness, and part of her ached with humiliation, knowing that she didn’t have the skill to give him the pleasure he sought.
Thena scooted away from him, her chest heaving with sudden anger. His fingers trailed away from her face and hung in the air for a moment, as if reaching for her. He frowned mildly, looking concerned by her sudden change of heart.
“I didn’t bring you here to … to spoon with you,” she said firmly.
“Spoon with me?” His mouth widened in a flat smile at the archaic term. “Spoon?”
Thena’s face flushed with embarrassment. It was a word she’d heard Jimmy Stewart use in The Glenn Miller Story a few nights earl
ier on TV. Cloistered here on her island, she didn’t know the current slang for what Jed had just done. Now she knew it wasn’t spoon. “Whatever you want to call it, I didn’t intend to make you think I’m interested in a physical relationship with you,” she retorted.
What Jed lacked in verbal skills, he more than made up for in solid instinct and observation. He could read a horse’s mood just by looking into its eyes. It was the same with women, and he knew that this island wildflower, for all her protests, had enjoyed his touch, his kiss. He didn’t know if he could tease her into caring about him, a cowboy with too many rough edges, but the kiss made a good start in the right direction.
“Do you have a man?” he asked bluntly.
Her eyes narrowed in defense. “No. Should I?”
“Well, most gals put a high value on us handsome devils.”
“I find value in things other people don’t understand,” she informed him. “I paint pictures of sea life with a detail most artists don’t care about. I’m also an amateur scientist. I spend a lot of my time making intricate notes about the island flora and fauna. I send them to a biologist at the University of Georgia.”
Thena sighed dramatically. “I just don’t have time to indulge in superficial sexual encounters. Sexual attraction is nothing more than a complex interaction of hormonal chemicals, anyway. It’s been tested many times in laboratory experiments.”
Jed grunted. “When I kissed you, wildflower, your lips weren’t thinkin’ about white mice.”
“My chemicals were simply reacting to yours.” She and Nate had discussed this subject in great detail. Jedidiah Powers couldn’t confuse her.
“Uh-huh. Like a volcano. You were scared to kiss me back the way you wanted to.” His eyes held enormous self-satisfaction. “Guess you thought your chemicals might boil over.”
Thena decided to take the offensive. “Do you have a woman?”
“Not lately.”
“Well, I refuse to fill the temporary gap in your lurid sex life.” She was surprised to see a wounded, soulful look pass briefly across his face. Thena kicked herself mentally. This man didn’t fit her idea of a lecherous playboy, despite his bold attentions. He looked as if he’d spent most of his life on the outside looking in at everyone else’s happiness. She was a loner too. She understood.