Betina Krahn (35 page)

She was just trying to help, Diamond thought miserably. The same way she helped missionaries and businessmen and inventors and the poor people who lined up outside her gates. It was just a part of her nature. It was her mission in life. Why didn’t he understand that? He was willing enough to take her money and take her passion and take her dreams. Why was he so determined to keep her from being any part of his dream, of the central goal and desire of his life?

She pulled up her skirt and dried her face on her petticoat. She looked around the opulent parlor of the private car and wondered for the ten-thousandth time what her life would have been like if she had been born without money, without the burden of expectation, without the responsibility of constant giving.

Perhaps the fault lay within her. Would Bear have loved her if she had had nothing? Would she have had anything worthwhile to offer him? Her breath caught. Did she have anything now?

The door opened and she looked up from the settee and from the depths of despair to find Bear staring down at her with a turbulent look. In the dim light of the kerosene lamp his eyes shone darkly, his features were taut, his
shoulders had lost their squared edge. He looked heart-breakingly human.

She could scarcely get her breath as he edged forward, focused on her, clearly wrestling with something inside him.

“I need to apologize.” His voice was low and laden with suppressed emotion. “I was a jackass—a pure jackass—to you earlier. I appreciate what you did. Getting the tools. It’s just that … well … I’m not used to letting other people do things for me. I don’t like feeling beholden to anybody. And I already owe you too damned much.”

That was it? Explained his way, his harsh behavior sounded somehow excusable, almost virtuous. Diamond searched his countenance and posture, and sensed there was more than that to his rejection of her a while ago. It struck her that even in apologizing, he refused to acknowledge either his true motives or the depth of the pain they had caused. And he obviously expected her to be pacified by that shallow apology … made in private, without the audience they had had when he spurned her efforts on his behalf.

Pain-roused defiance raced up her spine, straightening it.

“That’s hogwash, Bear McQuaid, and you know it.” She was surprised by the vehemence of the words coming from her mouth, but she instantly owned the sentiment. “People do things for you all the time.” She rose and faced him with a new sense of strength and clarity. “They wash your shirts and cook your meals … they’re even building your blessed railroad for you. You don’t have problems with people doing things for you at all—not when you’re in
control of them. But let somebody do something for you that you aren’t paying for, that you haven’t given orders for, that you can’t control … and you can’t bear it. You don’t like feeling beholden? Well, at least that part is true … nobody likes feeling indebted.

“But do you honestly think you can go through life paying your own way?” She stalked closer. “Nobody, no matter how rich or how powerful, pays his own entire freight. Everyone has to depend on someone else, sometime.”

He stared at her, completely taken aback by her reaction.

“Everyone?” he countered. “Even
you
?”

She drew her chin back, searching herself, testing her assertion against her own experience, her own heart. And she found it appallingly true.

“Even me,” she said, her voice softening in spite of her. Then some perversely needy part of her added in a choked whisper: “Especially me.”

He came even more alert, examining that half-strangled admission of need. She groaned inwardly. What on earth had she said that for? Her heart began to pound as she noticed him moving closer.

“What could you possibly need, Diamond McQuaid?” he said, every muscle taut and poised … for what she could scarcely bear to think.

“Whatever money
can’t
buy.” She backed up a step then forced herself to stand fast. “Things like friendship and loyalty and caring and joy and love.” She lifted her head, struggling to get her thoughts back on track. “No one can have those things by himself. A person needs others to help him claim and experience them.”

“And who helps
you
claim them?” He moved still closer.

“This isn’t about me,” she declared.

“Oh?”

“It’s all about your damnable independence.” She
jabbed a finger at him. “Your stubbornness … your ingratitude … your—”

“Stupidity?” he supplied.

“Your stupidity.”

“My pride?”

“Your blasted male pride!”

With the naming of each fault he had stepped closer and was suddenly towering over her, radiating heat and tension, demanding her attention and filling her every sense.

“And what about
your
pride?” he demanded.

That brought her up short. “My pride?”

“You can’t bear to think I only wanted you for your money. That’s what all that fuss was about back in Baltimore.”

“That’s not true.” Her face began to flame.

“The hell it’s not. Otherwise, you’d have come out and listened to me like a reasonable person instead of hiding in the privy and crying your eyes out.”

She gasped, staring at him in disbelief. “That is the cruelest thing I’ve ever heard anyone—” She started past him for the sleeping compartment.

“Oh, no.” He grabbed her arm and held her. “You’re not leaving here until we reach some understanding.”

“I believe I’ve had all the ‘understanding’ I can stomach for one night,” she said, fighting back tears, refusing to break down in front of him.

He saw her struggling with her emotions and realized that the shell she had drawn around her since their wedding night was thinner than he expected.

“No, Diamond, you don’t understand at all,” he said, his voice and grip both desperate. “I knew that if I asked you about the loan before we were married, you’d end up thinking … just what you ended up thinking.” He could see that his words made little impact and realized he was
doing it again, refusing to confess the truth, failing to say what he really felt. If he had been honest with her before, he wouldn’t be on the verge of losing her now.
Tell her
.

“I … I wanted
you
. Not your money or your companies. Not your name or position. I didn’t want to marry some rich heiress … or the progressive owner of the Wingate Companies … or Baltimore’s famous soft touch. I wanted
you
.”

“Then you really don’t understand. Because I am a rich heiress … and a progress-minded business owner … and Baltimore’s soft touch. That’s who I am. If you didn’t marry any of them, who did you marry?”

She held her breath. It was the question that had haunted her for years. Her secret despair. Her constant battle. What could he—could anyone—see in her that wasn’t some manifestation of her massive fortune?

She really didn’t know, he thought, seeing the anxiety in her face. She honestly didn’t know what anyone would see in her besides dollar signs. In that moment, he glimpsed the magnitude of the pain and loneliness she had lived with as a child and the depths of the defenses guarding her heart. He began to grope for words and memories to explain, to build a bridge across that sizable gulf.

“I married that little girl who stored her dreams in a toy train car,” he said, praying that would make some kind of sense to her. “And who grew up to love railroads. I married the little girl who tried to give away a fortune and grew up to change a whole city for the better with her generosity. I married a smart, stubborn, independent woman who refused to cave in under a mountain of riches and an even bigger mountain of pressures.”

She raised her chin to meet his gaze and in it he glimpsed the first flickers of hope. It was painful to witness, but it was the first hopeful sign he’d had from her in days, weeks. And as that small flame struggled and threatened
to disappear, he understood that his explanation wasn’t quite enough.

“Hell, Diamond, can’t you see? This isn’t about pride or stubbornness or money or who’s going to be in control. It’s about this need for you that uncoils out of my gut every time I see you, every time I hear your voice, every time I think about the way you looked that day at Gracemont … out by the orchards … the day after we were married. It’s about the way my blood boils whenever I see you smile. It’s about the way I can’t wait to see you each morning and talk to you each night. It’s about this constant urge I have to touch your skin.”

He brought his hand up to trace the curve of her cheek.

She found herself being engulfed in his special kind of sensory heat. Her throat constricted. Her mouth dried. Her insides began sliding toward her knees.

“This … this is why I married you … why I brought you out here,” he murmured, lowering his mouth toward hers. “I’m crazy about you, Diamond Wingate McQuaid. When I said ‘I do,’ I meant I
do
.”

Her resistance was melting. Her much-denied hunger for him and for the closeness they once had shared was rising to the surface to meet his confessed desire for her. Then he pulled her into his arms and kissed her with all the need he’d suppressed and redirected for two long weeks.

This—she thought dizzily as drafts of pleasure tore her senses from their surroundings—this was real. Bear wanted her. Halt was right. He wanted her—
he really wanted her!

Joy erupted in her and she slid her arms around him, covering, caressing, claiming every inch of him she could reach. His back, his shoulders, his waist, his neck. He was hers; every muscle and sinew, every strained and aching
nerve, every proud and stubborn impulse. Just as she was his.

She drew back, her lips throbbing and her eyes dark and glistening. She was his. The fear that had shrouded that fact in her mind and heart was fading. It was an admission, a surrender that both of them were making, and the fact that they were in this growing spiral of desire and acceptance together made all the difference in the world. Surrender, she realized with a soaring sense of freedom, could be a release, an unburdening. And it could be oh, so sweet.

He had braced and lifted her against him, lowering hot, ravenous kisses down the side of her neck and nuzzling open the first button of her blouse. She bent her head back, offering him more, abandoning herself to the pleasure surging hot and viscous through her veins.

She felt herself moving and realized he was half walking her, half carrying her back to the desk at the far end of the car. Then she felt the edge of the desk against her bottom and he settled her on a pile of papers to free his hands. She was trembling as she tried to unfasten buttons, first hers, then his, then hers again. His hands were trembling, too, and he was panting, groaning softly with frustration as he struggled to open her blouse, then loosen her skirt, and then find the ties of her corset.

She laughed softly and licked and nipped at his taut nipple, pushing his shirt back, teasing him with the fact that the task of getting through his clothes had been much easier than his in getting through hers. With a sharp, in-drawn breath he renewed his attack on her knotted corset strings and she felt his victory before he knew it had occurred. The garment’s grip loosened, releasing her like a reluctant lover, and she sighed as she pulled the boned satin away.

A moment later his kisses and hungry nibbles were setting
the tips of her breasts on fire. The erotic well deep inside her tightened, growing hot and moist and ready. She wriggled against the papers beneath her, her body seeking and hungry for sensations only he could provide. Then he thrust a hand beneath her bottom, pulling her up and against him, and she writhed luxuriantly against his palm and questing fingers.

“Well, Jesus H.—”

That appallingly familiar voice and even more recognizable profanity caused them both to freeze. Her heart was pounding, her loins and her lips and breasts were throbbing. She could hear Bear’s heart pounding, too, beneath the heavy rasp of his breathing. His whole body had tensed defensively. Shielded by his big frame, she managed to swallow her horror enough to peer around him.

“Oh, Lord,” she uttered on a moan.

There stood Robbie in his nightshirt, his eyes as big as saucers.

“Robbie,” she said in a hoarse whisper, gripping Bear’s arms to keep him from turning. They had forgotten all about Robbie. Clearing the passion from her throat, she managed to sound marginally parental.

“What are you doing out of bed? Get back in bed this instant!”

His lascivious grin faded as he was shoved back into the morass of boyhood.

“Well, I jus’ wanted a drink. An’ I heard voices and groanin’—”

“Robbie!” Bear thundered, without turning.

“All right, all right—I’m goin’.” He turned away with a scowl, muttering: “It ain’t like I never seen it done before.”

The sound of the door to the sleeping compartment slamming seemed to send a wave of chilled night air over them. They looked at each other, both somewhat embarrassed by the reckless urgency of their desire. But as they
gazed into each others faces, neither showed the slightest regret that their long-banked passions had finally exploded into flame. She straightened and slid her hands down his shoulders. He drew back reluctantly, sliding his hands from her bottom and waist.