And then his lips were on hers, and his arms were around her, and she remembered what an aching eternity it had been since a man had held her so, before she forgot because she’d never known a kiss like his. It was gentle, demanding, loving, and lusty all at once. He was warm and sweet-smelling as the crushed ferns and bracken around them, his mustache was silken, and his mouth made her grow hot and cold as she leaned in deeper to him in a confused, vain attempt to have him protect her from what she was feeling. But when his tongue finally sought hers, she remembered other intrusive things, and tried to pull away. He let her go at once.
There was as much puzzlement as frustration in his eyes as he stood and looked at her. Letting her go was one of the hardest things he’d ever done, and now he regretted it as much as he failed to understand the reason for it. She’d been warm and willing, and that damned sweet mouth of hers had tasted even better than he thought it could, so it was shocking that he’d forgotten it in the wonder of the scent and feel of the rest of her.
“Was it the mustache?” he asked after, amazingly enough to him, he’d had to catch his breath. “Or that you didn’t like the kiss?”
She sought the simplest of her many reasons, and like all light things, found it had risen to the top of all her other roiled thoughts.
“I don’t know you,” she said.
“I can take care of that,” he said, taking her hand again.
“And…and, you don’t know me,” she said in a rush, withdrawing her hand, for that was the truest thing of all.
“You’ll have to see to that,” he said. “Isn’t that what this walk’s about?”
“It was supposed to be about giving Peggy and Royal some privacy, because you said he was serious,” she said, looking into his eyes, trying to keep her tongue from her lips, where she swore she could still taste him as much as his eyes told her he could still taste her.
“He is. But there are other things a man can be serious about,” he answered, finally looking away.
She’d no immediate answer for that but a shiver. And though he looked as though he’d a remedy for that, he only took her hand again, more tightly this time, before he led her on.
Chapter Nine
“I know something about the theater,” Gray commented, as they waited for Royal and Peggy to return. He leaned back against a tree trunk and watched Hannah lift her face to the afternoon sun, “And believe me, you were never meant to play a chaperon, except maybe, in some French farce. Because they couldn’t have one looking the way you do, unless they wanted to make a point about the stupidity of trying to protect a healthy young man from a healthy young woman. Don’t look at me like that, I’m only stating facts. Don’t you folks cast to type?”
“Sometimes we play against type,” Hannah said, raising her parasol over her face as though she were trying to prevent freckles, not blushes, “so as to make a stronger point. Be that as it may. I’ve no intention of playing what you want me to. So might we forget it, please?” she asked, with more of a plea in her voice than she’d intended. “I’d like Peggy to have her moment, as you suggested, but I will not stand here and be insulted.”
“Well, it was praised you were being, and I think you know it, but all right,” Gray said. He then added with interest, “What would you like to stand here and be?”
“Informed,” she said, after thinking about it for a moment and smiling at the thought, added, “Kyle—Mr. Harper, said you were as at home in New York as you are out here. You do seem to know and love the theater—for whatever reasons,” she added with a grin, “so why do you stay out here?”
“Just what my big brother keeps asking me,” Gray answered, staring upward as if for inspiration, before he absently snatched a leaf from the tree he was under and pointed up to the sky. “Mostly because of that. Can you see anything like that in New York? If I could have western days and eastern nights, I guess I’d be in heaven. Literally. Because that’s the only place they’d have that. I love this country, I was born here—but my big brother grew up in the East, our family was originally from New York, that’s why he loves it so much, I guess.”
“But you were educated in the East,” she prompted, as he fell still.
At that, he left off studying the sky and looked at her and smiled again.
“Right again. Educated to a turn. Just enough to make me realize what I was missing culturally—here, and aesthetically, there. No, I know not many cowboys toss around ten-dollar words. But then again, not many stockbrokers start itching for the wilds after a week of desk work, either. My education fair ruined me,” he said, shaking his head. “But my brother meant the best by it. What else would you like to know while we wait for Peggy to have her moment?” he asked quizzically.
“Well,” he went on before she could think what to ask, as he smoothed the leaf between his long fingers. “As far as the basics go, I’m a rancher; I’ve got a good bit of land decorated with some highly bred cattle, due west and north of here. I fool around with investments, and horses, too. I’m a bachelor. But unlike Royal, fixing to remain so for a little while longer; my brother’s preserving the family name just fine by himself—well, not exactly by himself, you understand, my sister-in-law’s helping him considerable with that.”
He looked for her reaction, and saw she was smiling.
“Your brother must mean a great deal to you,” she said, curiously pleased at how often he’d mentioned him. Perhaps it was because she knew that a man who had no respect for a woman would never discuss his family with her, perhaps because she sensed he was being more honest with her than he’d intended. That would mean she wasn’t the only one to feel this odd sense of friendship, along with the undeniable, frightening lure of more.
He nodded. “Funny thing, that,” he said softly, cocking his head to the side as he saw how raptly Hannah was listening to him. “He’s on my mind a lot these days. I guess I’m feeling guilty, and not just because I’m not working. But because he’s stepping up his campaign to have me come East—for good.”
“You say that with such finality,” she commented.
“I suppose I do,” he agreed as he stripped a bit of leaf, his head down as he did, so that the brim of his Stetson shaded his eyes. “But that’s the way I think of it— like an ending, not a beginning. And that can make a man feel considerably tom up, as m’ friend Royal says. I’d like to please my brother as well as myself. He gave up his youth to work for the family, now he’s the only family I’ve got. But for all I love him for it and more, it’s damned hard to live a life in his shadow. He’s rich as the devil and made our fortune twice over, but he’s as kind as he’s clever, and that’s something. Sometimes I think…Sorry,” he said quickly when he saw herexpression change at his words, “for the profanity…and the monologue. But you must be used to that in the theater—soliloquies, I mean. But not on the subject of me. Lord, who started this?” he asked, looking up as though he’d just realized where he was.
“It’s your fault, you know,” he said after a second, gazing at her, surprised and amused that what he’d thought would be a light flirtation had turned to something very different.
“Lord, you listen as well as you talk,” he explained with a pronounced and satirical drawl. “Must be your training. People on the stage are fun to watch when someone else is talking to them; folks in real life fidget or tear up bits of paper, or leaves, like I’m doing now,” he laughed. “But a good actress just listens the stuffing out a conversation, doesn’t she?”
“I suppose she does,” Hannah said, “but I’m not an actress. I teach acting. I really was listening—and envying you.”
“There you go!” he said, nodding. “That’s just it. Multiply what you said by as many people as you meet in a lifetime. Do you know what it’s like to have everyone telling you about the silver spoon in your mouth, as if you didn’t know you had one there? Especially when it’s one your brother gave you? It can near choke you.”
