Love, Come to Me(62)

Heath soothed the deepening indentation between her eyebrows with his thumb, and then his lips pressed against the tiny spot until the frown was smoothed out. As his hand slid down to her breast, she made a small gesture of protest, attempting to turn away from him. “I’m tired,” she said sullenly, “or does playing the part of Mrs. Rayne include having to pretend that I’m not?”

He was exasperated by her stubbornness, and he stifled her words with his mouth until her lips parted and her arms crept around his neck. Then he lifted his head and sighed. “I know it won’t be easy for you to leave here. But you’re going to have to trust me and swallow your pride long enough to give this a chance.”

“You haven’t given me any alternatives. You just like to hand out your decisions as if—”

“There isn’t an alternative. Everything’s been set in motion. I couldn’t back out even if I wanted to.”

Lucy was silent. The choice, she thought. I can stand by him . . . or leave him for good.

No choice. There wasn’t anything she could do except back down. She could not leave him, and in her heart she knew she didn’t want to. Not after what they had shared, not after what they had been through. Still, that didn’t make his bullying any easier to tolerate! As Heath interpreted her silence as continuing obstinacy, his mouth hardened in determination and he pulled her closer, intending to subdue any remaining resistance. “Heath!” she protested, making an effort to evade him, “I told you I’m tired, and—”

“Remember,” he said against the corner of her mouth, “what I said before . . . Mrs. Rayne.”

Lucy did remember, and her temper was sparked by his arrogant reminder of the role she was to assume from now on. Then an idea came to her that caused a pleased smile to spread across her face. She would turn everything around to her own advantage. If she had to move to Boston and make the best of things, then she would do it without one more word of protest. Heath expected her to concede to him grudgingly. Well, she would do more than that—she would bewilder him by playing her role to perfection. He wanted her to be sweet, docile and obedient. Well, she would be so sugary and forbearing and saintly that he wouldn’t know his right hand from his left, and eventually she would have him wrapped around her finger. Then she would find some way to make him swallow his pride. The thought was a balm to her bruised ego, and she held onto it with no little satisfaction until the touch of his hands and his lips drove away all thought.

She could hear the distant pounding of a door, and someone was calling her name with annoying persistence. “Lucy . . . Lucy? . . . Lucy! . . .”

“Heath,” she mumbled sleepily, her hand venturing across the mattress to find his arm, “get the door . . . tell whoever it is not to—” She stopped speaking as her fingertips encountered nothing but empty space. Heath was not there.

“Lucy! ” came the voice from outside, and she realized that it belonged to her father. Rolling over and mumbling a heartfelt curse, she staggered out of the warm bed and went to the window. Yes, the caller was definitely her father. His hair shone white in the bright sunshine of a crisp autumn day, while the cool wind scattered yellow leaves across the ground. She could hear the rustle of the trees through the half-open window. Shivering slightly, she wandered to the closet, pulled out a thick robe and went downstairs in her bare feet. As she opened the front door and let Lucas in, she was the recipient of an appalled stare. Disapproval was plainly and clearly written all over his face. He looked her over from head to toe and clicked his tongue slowly at her appearance.

Even without having glanced in a mirror, Lucy knew what she looked like. She could feel the puffiness of a sleepless night underneath her eyes, and the mass of tangles in her long hair, and the tender, swollen curves of her lips. She looked, in fact, like a woman who had spent the whole night making love. Lucy was aware of several small aches and twinges in her body, and she was tired and relaxed—and strangely contented. She felt a slight smile coming to her lips, a private, secret smile that she couldn’t have explained to anyone, least of all herself.

“Father, please . . . I just got up, and I haven’t had any coffee—”

“It’s eleven o’clock in the morning, and you just got up? I’ve never known you to sleep until this hour, unless you were ill or—”

“I stayed up late last night,” Lucy said, turning and going to the kitchen, rubbing her eyes and yawning. All totaled, she couldn’t have had more than two or three hours of rest. Heath had been insatiable. “Please sit down while I make the coffee,” she said over her shoulder while Lucas followed her into the kitchen. “Would you care for a cup?”

“I would,” he replied, sitting down at the table, fingering his mustache as he watched her. “I heard that you have a couple of maids to do your work.” There was unmistakable censure in his tone. “Glad to see you haven’t forgotten how to find your way around a kitchen.”

Lucy kept her back to him, making an effort to smooth the wild locks of her hair with her hands. “They don’t come in until early in the afternoon. What about the woman you hired? Is she proving to be a help?”

“She keeps things clean enough, but her cooking isn’t as good as yours.”

“Thank you,” Lucy said, smiling at his gruff admission. As she set the coffeepot on a burner, she noticed a tiny red mark on the inside of her arm—a whisker burn, she surmised—and raised her fingertips to the base of her throat, where she felt more of the telltale marks. A vision flashed through her mind, of Heath’s head bending over her body as he had kissed her intimately, and she blushed lightly, aware of an exciting pang of pleasure inside. Perhaps if he had not left so early this morning, he would have gathered her in his arms and given her a lazy grin. He might have murmured something in her ear about last night, maybe teased her a little.