It had been years since she had seen him. Since he had stolen her father’s attention, and she had been both infuriated by him… And fascinated.
He was no stranger; she knew him. Yet he had changed in those years since she had seen him.
She had been young, but she had come to know him. She knew his deep, probing attention when something intrigued him. She remembered the passion and intensity with which he had asked her father questions, the determination he had shown to learn, and his capacity to absorb what was taught him.
Ian McKenzie.
Oh God! What had she done to deserve this? What ironic cruelty fate had cast upon her!
She hadn’t even realized he was home. She hadn’t seen him at Tara McKenzie’s afternoon tea; but then, she had fled from it rather quickly.
And it seemed he must have somehow witnessed at least a part of the exchange between her and Peter O’Neill.
Could humiliation kill? Dear Lord, what had he heard, what did he know?
What had he seen?
Then? Now?
What had he…
Touched?
Oh, God, but she wanted to die. Fall straight back into the cool, encompassing depths and never break surface again.
“Ian!” At last she managed to speak. To gasp out his name.
Then, perhaps, the greatest insult of a sadly humiliating day assailed her.
“Do I know you?” he inquired with polite amusement and a slight edge of wariness.
She stared at him, astonished, then let out a furious oath and turned to swim away.
But a hand fell upon her naked shoulder as he jettisoned past her.
A hand that had touched her before. Slid proprietarily over breast, down her ribs… between her thighs. Again she burned, her flesh burned, the water couldn’t cool her.
“Wait!” he demanded.
Wait! Never! She tried to shake off his touch, the steel grip of his fingers. She stared at him furiously, near tears, but determined she wouldn’t cry, no matter what. She was naked in the water with him. With Ian McKenzie. Like the wildest hussy in all the world. Indecent. It had been easy to tell herself she didn’t give a fig about her reputation when she knew in her heart she was innocent of wrongdoing, that she’d done nothing to sully her name, but now…
“No, I will not wait! How dare you, how dare you, how dare you?” Her words came in a tumble, fast and furious. “How dare you touch me—”
“The dramatics are completely unnecessary,” he said irritably. “Hold still. I don’t know who you are, but I thought you were someone else,” he informed her. His eyes swept over her in a way that bluntly reminded her of her state of undress. “And apparently you were expecting someone else as well.”
She swore, violently, thrashing the water, trying to strike him. He caught her wrist. She was mortified to realize anew just how clear the water was. She could see every inch of his naked body within it.
He could see every inch of hers.
“I was not expecting anyone! I—”
“You weren’t waiting for Peter O’Neill?”
She would have to kill him—or implode and die herself. “Damn you, I am not Peter O’Neill’s mistress, I—”
“Indeed? Just whose mistress are you?” His voice had grown very grave; the deep, dark blue of his eyes was touched by the sun’s reflection on the water in a disturbing way. She realized both his strength and sensuality at the same time, and damned herself more viciously as hysteria grew within her. Her frantic twisting and struggling wasn’t doing her the least bit of good. Oh, dear God, her father lived in the clouds, but this kind of scandal involving his precious one and only daughter would surely kill him!
“Let me go, let me go, this instant!” she shrieked, her nails tearing against his wrist as he held her.
But his fingers tightened angrily around her wrist.
“Who are you?” he demanded heatedly.
“Let me go!”
“Who are you?”
“You’re supposed to be such a great, damned gentleman! Let me go!”
“My pool, my property. You’re a trespasser.”
“I’m a guest!”
“Spare us both; tell me who you are.”
He wasn’t going to let her go. His grip remained as sure as iron. They would stay here together, naked in the water, treading water forever.
“I’m Alaina, Alaina McMann, and I used to see you rather frequently when you visited your aunt and uncle—and my father—down near the remnants of Fort Dallas. Now let me go!”
He did release her, not because she had demanded he do so, she was certain, but because he was just so completely surprised. And she would have moved then, except that it seemed that his eyes, so piercing a cobalt against the bronze of his strong features, had pinioned her there, in the water. “Alaina!” he gasped in a voice rich with both fury and contempt. “Alaina? Alaina!” One kick brought him skimming through the water once again. His hands were on her shoulders as he easily tread the water with legs only. He didn’t even seem to realize that he had touched her again, he seemed so outraged. His eyes appeared black; his hold upon her was brutal. His voice thundered. “Alaina McMann, swimming naked in a pool, waiting to meet Peter O’Neill? Sweet Jesu, young woman, someone should have taken a switch to you years ago. What in God’s name would your father say?”
“How dare you! I wasn’t here to meet Peter—”
“Peter O’Neill! That absurd dandy?” he lashed out, not hearing her protest.
“He’s behaved no worse than you!” she informed him, astounded that she was defending Peter; but in such a shattered state, by then it didn’t matter to her.
Yet he continued to stare at her as if she were the most disobedient and evil young child he had ever seen. “You apparently don’t begin to see how stupidly you’ve behaved. Something should be done. You’re not a child, but you’re acting as recklessly as one. You should indeed be cast over someone’s knee and seriously reprimanded!” He again repeated the one question that ripped cruelly into her heart. “What were you thinking? What would your father say?”
He was older than she, but not by that much, only by five years. Yet it still seemed he was thinking of her as the little girl he had seen so many times years before. He hadn’t realized that she had grown up, that she was a mature and independent woman now.
Able to fight her own battles.
She would force him to realize it, she determined.
“Me? I should be switched? You bastard! You are the one at incredible fault here. You should be beaten senseless. Hanged, no less. What would your father say about you? Swimming naked in a pool. Recklessly, irresponsibly. Like a child. A—a—grown child. Diving in here, accosting a young lady, a guest in your home. Damn you, damn you, a thousand times over, accosting me—”
“When you wished to be accosted by someone else?” he demanded. His eyes narrowed sharply upon her. “I didn’t accost you, Alaina McMann, but perhaps you should be forewarned: A naked nymph swimming bare as a jaybird in a pool certainly appears to be inviting a man’s intentions,” he said angrily. “Any man’s intentions.”
“Oh! Oh!” What a fool she had been. It was a private spring pool, yes, private to the McKenzies.
And Ian McKenzie was here.
Again she tried to wrench free from him. He was incredibly strong and determined. She slammed at him with such a vehemence that she heard a grunt from him, but he didn’t intend to let her go. Suddenly his arms swept completely around her as he struggled to her keep her still. It was far more wretched a position than any she had been in before; she was flush against his naked body, and thereby forced to stillness at last.
No, she was actually desperate to be dead still then. Because his body was all but meshed with hers. She could feel the crispness of his chest hair against the softness of her breasts, touching her so tightly in the water. It was such an acute sensation she wanted to scream.
There was more to feel. More of him. oh, it was al
l so much worse! She could feel the hardness and heat of his muscled form, feel his hips, his thighs… feel…
Her cheeks burned. The very length of her body burned.
Dear God, oh, God…
Her struggle with Peter O’Neill now seemed like such a petty nuisance. She’d known how to move then, how to get the upper hand, how to hurt him and free herself. Her father had taught her how to fight. He’d taught her a great deal himself, and he’d given in to her every whim as well, hiring a fencing master when she declared an interest in swords, teaching her how to ride, how to aim, how to shoot, how to dislodge an attacker.
But now, when she so desperately needed her lessons to pay off, she couldn’t free herself.
And even the pounding of her heart seemed to bring her more closely against the force of this man. More aware of the length of him.
She couldn’t meet his eyes.
Had to meet his eyes.
Had to…
Find a way to escape his touch.
Swearing beneath her breath and pathetically close to tears, she tried very hard to stare defiantly up into his eyes.
Fighting wasn’t working.
She could take no more of this. Feeling him. The heat, the fire, the sheer strength of his hold. How could he do this? Perhaps it didn’t occur to him that this could be the most humiliatingly uncomfortable moment of her entire life; perhaps he thought that her nudity was a casual thing to her, since he was convinced she had been intending to entertain Peter O’Neill and had probably entertained him—or other men—before.
She wanted so badly to hurt Ian McKenzie for the way he was looking at her—slash him through with a sword!—but she was further infuriated to find herself absolutely impotent against him.
She couldn’t bear it. Not a second longer. Pride be damned, truth be damned, nothing mattered but that she escape him and the fiery brand his length seemed to be imprinting upon her.
“Please…” she just barely managed to breathe the word.
She shook.
The whole of her seemed to burn. She had never known such physical distress in all her life.
She was ready to beg for release and agree with anything the man had to say just to gain her distance from him and put some clothing between them.
Too late.
For even as her whispered plea sounded from her lips, she heard the movement of foliage.
And voices.
People…
“Oh!” An appalled hurt feminine sound.
“Oh!” A furious, shocked masculine sound.
“Ohhhh …” spoken simultaneously.
She froze. Indeed, there were people behind her. She wanted to sink into the water and disappear. Forever.
There was, certainly, something of the gentleman in Ian McKenzie. For several seconds he was as frozen as she. Then he moved: swiftly, deliberately. Alaina discovered that she was no longer flush against his chest, but propelled protectively behind his back.
Yet over his shoulder she could see that the McKenzies’ private Eden was not so very private.
The very, very rich, elegant, and beautiful Mrs. Lavinia Trehorn, her brown hair artfully piled in a riot of curls atop her head, stood at the water’s edge near Ian’s discarded military-issue blue dress uniform and Alaina’s own neatly folded feminine attire.
Peter O’Neill, his cheeks lobster red, his breath rushing in and out of pursed lips, stood at her side, taut and rigid with fury.
“Oh, Lavinia, you were right!” he grated out, shaking. “You do know Ian, and indeed, you knew where he could be found, and Miss McMann is very definitely with him, so it appears! Yes, they are certainly together. And he is—what was it you said, Lavinia? He is ‘comforting the poor lamb’—and doing so quite well. In fact they both looked damned comfortable, I’d say!”
“Ian McKenzie!” Lavinia said with stark reproach, her perfectly formed lips trembling ever so slightly with an even more perfectly formulated dramatic touch. “Ian, I thought that, oh…”
She appeared angelic, and wounded. She looked as if she would faint.
Still, it was Peter’s next single word that seemed to ring in the pine forest long moments after the two of them had spun about and departed back to Cimarron—with the latest, most incredible gossip.
For Peter stared long and hard at Alaina, cheeks red and puffed, eyes burning with offended fury as he lashed out, “Whore!”
Chapter 4
“He is an unmitigated ass, and I’ll kill the damned bastard!” Ian murmured in a deadly voice.
Alaina barely heard him.
She had to escape the pool. She had to get back to Cimarron and find her father before others did. She didn’t know what she was going to say.
The truth. Her father would believe her.
Yet as she streaked across the water, a sudden cramp knifed into her leg. She gasped, clutching her calf. Ian swam up beside her, eyes almost black now with fury, yet his voice, though very deep and husky, was surprisingly calm. “What is it?”
He was reaching for her.
“No! No! Don’t you touch me! Don’t you come near me again!”
He arched a brow, then swam past her, believing her words.
But the pain knifed through her again. She allowed herself to fall beneath the water’s surface while she tried valiantly to massage her cramped limb and bring functioning life back to it. She ran out of air and tried to surface. She couldn’t kick. Float! she commanded herself. She surfaced, but the pain was so intense she went down again.
Incredulous, she realized that she—Alaina McMann, who had been swimming all her life, who could hold her breath well over two minutes—was drowning. Again, little black dots were forming before her eyes. They were beginning to fuse together. She had to make the surface one more time. Once again. And no matter how awful and detestable, she was going to have to call out to Ian McKenzie with a word she could scarcely bear to issue to him at this time.
Her face broke the water. She managed a choked out, “Help!”
Then the blackness seemed to encompass her, leaving only the tiniest pinhole of light….
Her vision slowly returned, her mind dragging just behind it. She had been brought to the soft, grassy bank at the pool’s edge, near the fallen log. She lay naked on her stomach while a dripping naked man hovered over her, forcing the water from her lungs.
She coughed, sputtered, and swung around in horror, eyes wide as she stared up at Ian. “Oh, God!”
She leaped to her feet; too fast. She staggered. He steadied her. She struggled.
“Look at me!” he commanded fiercely.
She found herself doing so.
His eyes appeared blacker, fiercer than ever. His anger was such that she thought he did mean her harm.
“Were you trying to kill yourself over that fop? You little fool! He isn’t worth spit!”
“What? I wasn’t trying to kill myself!”
“But you were in love with him?”
“Oh, God!” She shook her head wildly, vehemently. “Please, dear God, will you let me get dressed—”
Still tense, he arched a dark brow. “You apparently didn’t mind jumping naked in a pool when you thought it was Peter O’Neill who’d be joining you.”
“Let me go!”
He did so. She raced straight for her clothing, fumbling terribly in her haste. She was aware that he dressed smoothly and competently at her side.
Naturally! she thought snidely. Men! He was far more accustomed to stripping and dressing than she. He was completely clothed, from uniform jacket to polished boots, scabbard, and sword, while she was still struggling with her corset.
“May I?” he inquired politely at her back, reaching for the strings.
“No, you—”
But he already had his hands upon the ribboned strings that constricted the corset, and he had a knee set gently against her back to wrench them in.
He was accustomed to corsets as well. Obviously. Lavinia had probably taught
him all about corsets. All that he hadn’t learned from previous experience. Oh, God, were all men such loathsome creatures? Interested in sex, prestige, and money, and not at all concerned if those things came in one package or in several!
She was shaking as he helped her into her afternoon tea gown as well, but when the dress was in place, she quickly pulled away from him to sit upon the log again, slip into her dress boots, and lace the ties. She realized that he was standing there, arms crossed over his chest, watching her with blue fire in his eyes all the while. When she was about to rise, one of his Union-issue-booted feet landed on the log beside her and he leaned low, more or less imprisoning her there upon the log.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.
She stared at him, incredulous and, despite herself, more than a little intimidated. Ian McKenzie stood very tall, and as she was quite aware from newly gained firsthand experience, he was composed of good solid muscle for all that length. He was an exceptionally striking man, with his strong features, pitch-black hair, unusual dark blue eyes, and cleanly defined brows. His five-year seniority suddenly seemed like quite a bit as well; his jaw was set in a fashion that told her he knew what repercussions would befall them both over what had occurred here. He was angry, quite naturally. She felt a little chill, thinking that surely he could not mean that he really intended to kill Peter O’Neill. Of course he did not. Still, looking at him at that moment, she was glad that she was not O’Neill.
Not that Ian seemed to regard her with much less contempt. Those penetrating eyes of his raked over her in a manner now that quite clearly condemned.
She returned his stare.
No. She would not let him cow her.
“I have to go back and talk to my father, and you should be quite worried about doing the same. Not that men aren’t given every license in the world to behave like absolute animals, but since this has all occurred at your father’s house, he just might be rather perturbed about the whole thing.”
“My father will understand what occurred from my end; he is a concern, naturally, but not my main concern at this time.”
“Boys will be boys, right? Your father certainly can’t be angry with a man acting like a man!” she muttered heatedly. “Well, this might surprise you, but my father is a rational human being who loves me—”