French Silk(11)

Ariel had lost a lot of weight since marrying Josh's father three years earlier. Then she'd been rather plump. Her breasts were smaller now, but the areolas were still wide and the nipples large and protrudent. Josh hated himself for noticing them beneath her soft cotton T-shirt as she propped her hands on her hips.

"Jackson Wilde was a mean-spirited, spiteful, self-centered son of a bitch." Her blue eyes didn't blink once. "His death isn't going to spoil my appetite because I'm not sorry he's dead. Except for how it might effect the ministry."

"And you took care of that during the press conference."

"That's right, Josh. I've already laid the groundwork for continuing the ministry. Somebody around here should be thinking about the future," she added snidely.

As though suffering a splitting headache, Josh pressed the tips of his long, slender, musician's fingers against his hairline and squeezed his eyes shut. "Christ, you're cold. Always scheming. Always planning. Relentless."

"Because I've always had to be. I didn't grow up rich like you, Josh. You call your grandparents' place outside of Nashville a farm," She scoffed. "My family had a real farm. It was dirty and stank of manure. I didn't help groom fancy horses like you did only when you felt like it. Whether I wanted to or not, I had to weed the vegetable garden and shell peas and slop a hog so he'd be fat in November when we butchered him.

"I only owned one pair of shoes at a time. The girls at school laughed at me for wearing hand-me-downs. And from the time I was twelve, I had to ward off the groping hands of drunken uncles on Saturday nights, then look into their smug faces from the choir loft on Sunday mornings. Oh, yes, we always went to church on Sundays and listened to sermons that glorified poverty. But I never believed a word of it."

She shook her long, straight, platinum-blond hair. "I've been poor, Josh. And poor sucks. It makes you mean. It makes you desperate. You reach a point where you'll do anything to escape it. That's why my little brother is in prison for the rest of his life. After he got sent up, I knew I had to do something drastic or wind up worse off than he is. So, yes, I cried for your daddy. And if he'd asked me to wipe his butt or give him a blow job on the spot, I would have done that, too.

"I learned from him that money makes all the difference. Being rich and mean is a whole lot better than being poor and mean. When you're poor, you go to jail for your meanness, but if you're rich, you can do what you please and nobody can touch you. I'm a schemer, all right. I will be for the rest of my life because I'm never going to be poor again."

She paused to take a breath. "Don't try to tell me you're sorry he's gone, Josh. You hated him as much as I did, if not more."

He couldn't quite meet her direct gaze. "I guess my feelings could be classified as ambivalent. I don't feel any remorse. But I don't feel relieved, as I imagined I would."

She moved toward him and slid her arms around his neck. "Don't you see, Josh? If we play it smart, this can be a beginning for us. The public loves us. We can go on as before, except that life will be so much better without him harping on us all the time."

"Do you really think our adoring public will accept us as a couple, Ariel?" He smiled wanly over her na?veté. Or was it her rapacity that amused him?

He couldn't hold any of it against her, really. She had not had the advantages he'd grown up with and taken for granted. Even before Jackson Wilde had become a household word, he'd had a faithful and generous following. The offering plates were always full. In addition to Martha's inheritance, it amounted to a sizable income. Josh had never lacked for anything material.

The first time he'd seen Ariel, she was wearing a cheap, loud dress and too much costume jewelry. Her speech and crude accent had been offensive to his ears. Even so, he'd admired the audacity it had taken for her to approach his father and solicit prayers for her convicted brother.

Today she was slim, articulate, and immaculately groomed. But Josh knew that when she looked into the mirror Ariel still saw a plump, disheveled, desperate young woman making a last-ditch effort to alter the course of her life. When she gazed at her manicured hands, she saw garden dirt beneath her fingernails.

"The public will accept our new relationship in time," she was saying, "if we bring the Lord into it often enough. We can say we fought our romantic love for each other because it didn't seem right. But then through prayer and Bible study, God convinced us that it had been His will all along. They'll eat it up. Everybody loves a happy ending." She kissed his lips softly, teasingly, releasing a slender thread of her breath into his mouth. "I need you now, Josh."

He shut his eyes tightly, trying valiantly to ward off the lust that was gathering in his center. "Ariel, we shouldn't be together for a while. They'll think—"

She moved closer, bumping his pelvis with her own. "Who'll think what?"

"The police … that Mr. Cassidy from the D.A.'s office. We're bound to be suspects."

"Don't be silly, Josh. We have each other for our alibis, remember?"

Her nonchalance was exasperating, but his attraction to her was based on frustration and forbiddenness. Rather than shaking her, as he felt like doing, he slipped his hands beneath her T-shirt and clasped her around the waist, pulling her roughly against him. His lips ground over hers. He pressed his tongue into her eager, wet mouth while the heels of his hands caressed her pelvic bones.