Hard to Handle (28 page)

“We might find some common ground one day,” Derek replied.

Margie only smiled. “Are you all staying for my Halloween party?” she asked the brothers.

Zeke finished his coffee and got up. “I don’t do parties. Excuse me. I have to call the airline.”

“I’m right behind you,” Josiah said, following his brother with an apologetic smile.

“Well, I guess it’s just me,” Derek said. “What do you think, Marge, how about if I borrow one of Alex’s suits and come as a college professor?”

She burst out laughing.

Alexander caught Jodie by the hand and pulled her out of the kitchen with him.

“Where are we going?” she asked.

“For a walk, now that nobody’s shooting at us,” he said, linking her fingers into his.

He led her out the front door and around to the side of the house, by the long fences that kept the cattle in.

“When do you have to go back to work?” he asked Jodie reluctantly.

“That wasn’t exactly discussed,” she confessed, with a secret smile, because he didn’t know which job she was returning to take. “But I suppose next week will do nicely.”

“I still think Brody Vance is involved in this somehow,” he said flatly, turning to her. “I can’t prove it yet, but I’m certain he’s not as innocent as he’s pretending to be.”

“That’s exactly what I think,” she agreed, surprising him. “By the way,” she added, “I quit my job before we came down here.”

“You quit…good for you!” he exclaimed, hugging her close. “I’m proud of you, Jodie!”

She laughed, holding on tight. “Don’t be too proud. I’m still working for Mr. Ritter. But it’s going to be in a totally different capacity.”

“Doing what?” he asked flatly.

“I’m going to be working with Colby Lane as a computer security consultant,” she told him.

“What about Hunter?” he asked.

“He’s going back to Arizona with his wife. They’re expecting a second child, and I think they want a little less excitement in their life right now,” she confided with a grin. “So Colby Lane is taking over security. Mr. Ritter said I might have to do some traveling later on as a troubleshooter, but it wouldn’t be often.”

He was studying her with soft, quiet eyes. “As long as it’s sporadic and not for too long, that’s fine. You’ll do well in security,” he said. “Old man Ritter isn’t as dense as I thought he was. I’m glad he’s still keeping an eye on the company. Colby Lane will keep his security people on their toes just as well as Hunter did.”

“I think Mr. Hunter is irritated that Cara managed to get into that warehouse parking lot,” she ventured.

“He is. But it could have happened to anyone. Brody Vance is our wild card. He’s going to need watching. And no, you can’t offer to do it,” he added firmly. “Let Lane set up his own surveillance. You stick to the job you’re given and stop sticking your neck out.”

“I like that!” she exclaimed. “And who was it who encouraged me to stick my neck out in the first place planting bugs near people in coffeehouses?”

He searched her eyes quietly. “You did a great job. I was proud of you. I always thought we might work well together.”

“We did, didn’t we?” she mused.

He pushed back wispy strands of loose hair from her cheek and studied her hungrily. “I have in mind another opportunity for mutual cooperation,” he said, bending to her mouth.

“W
hat sort of mutual cooperation?” she whispered against his searching lips. “Does it involve guns and bugs?”

He smiled against her soft mouth. “I was thinking more of prophylactics…”

While Jodie was trying to let the extraordinary statement filter into her brain, and trying to decide whether to slug him or kiss him back, a loud voice penetrated their oblivion.

“Jodie!” Margie yelled. “Where are you?”

Alexander lifted his head. He seemed as dazed as she felt.

“Jodie!” Margie yelled more insistently.

“On my way!” Jodie yelled back.

“Sisters are a pain,” he murmured on a long sigh.

She smiled at him. “I’m sure it’s a minor disaster that only I can cope with,” she assured him.

He chuckled. “Go ahead. But tonight,” he added in a deep, husky tone, “you’re mine.”

She flushed at the way he said it. She started to argue, but Margie was yelling again, so she ran toward the house instead.

Alexander stared hungrily at Jodie when she came down the stairs just before the first party guest arrived the next evening. They’d spent the day together, riding around the ranch and talking. There hadn’t been any more physical encounters, but there was a new closeness between them that everyone noticed.

Jodie’s blond hair was long and wavy. She was wearing a red dress with a long, ruffled hem, an elasticized neckline that was pushed off the shoulders, leaving her creamy skin visible. She was wearing high heels and more makeup than she usually put on. And she was breathtaking. He just shook his head, his eyes eating her as she came down the staircase, holding on to the banister.

“You could be dessert,” he murmured when she reached him.

“So could you,” she replied, adoring him with her eyes. “But you aren’t even wearing a costume.”

“I am so,” he argued with a wry smile. “I’m disguised as a government agent.”

“Alexander!” she wailed.

He chuckled and caught her fingers in his. “I look better than Derek does. He’s coming as a rodeo cowboy, complete with banged-up chaps, worn-out boots, and a championship belt buckle the size of my foot.”

“He’ll look authentic,” she replied.

He smiled. “So do I. Don’t I?”

She sighed, loving the way he looked. “I suppose you do, at that. There’s going to be a big crowd, Margie says.”

He tilted her chin up to his eyes. “There won’t be anyone here except the two of us, Jodie,” he said quietly.

The way he was looking at her, she could almost believe it.

“I think Margie feels that way with Derek,” she murmured absently. “Too bad his brothers wouldn’t stay.”

“They aren’t the partying type,” he said. “Neither are we, really.”

She nodded. Her eyes searched his and she felt giddy all over at the shift in their relationship. It was as if all the arguments of years past were blown away like sand. She felt new, young, on top of the world. And if his expression was anything to go by, he felt the same way.

He traced her face with his eyes. “How do you feel about short engagements?” he asked out of the blue.

She was sure that it was a rhetorical question. “I suppose it depends on the people involved. If they knew each other well…”

“I’ve known you longer than any other woman in my life except my sister,” he interrupted. His face tightened as he stared down at her with narrow, hungry eyes. “I want to marry you, Jodie.”

She opened her mouth to speak and couldn’t even manage words. The shock robbed her of speech.

He grimaced. “I thought it might come as a shock. You don’t have to answer me this minute,” he said easily, taking her hand. “You think about it for a while. Let’s go mingle with the guests as they come in and spend the night dancing. Then I’ll ask you again.”

She went along with him unprotesting, but she was certain she was hearing things. Alexander wasn’t a marrying man. He must be temporarily out of his mind with worry over his unsolved case. But he didn’t look like the product of a deranged mind, and the way he held Jodie’s hand tight in his, and the way he watched her, were convincing.

Not only that, but he had eyes for her alone. Kirry didn’t come, but there were plenty of other attractive women at the party. None of them attracted so much as a glance from Alexander. He danced only with Jodie, and held her so closely that people who knew both of them started to speculate openly on their changed relationship.

“People are watching us,” Jodie murmured as they finished one dance only to start right into another one.

“Let them watch,” he said huskily. His eyes fell to her soft mouth. “I’m glad you work in Houston, Jodie. I won’t have to find excuses to commute to Jacobsville to see you.”

“You never liked me before,” she murmured out loud.

“I never got this close to you before,” he countered. “I’ve lived my whole life trying to forget the way my mother was, Jodie,” he confessed. “She gave me emotional scars that I still carry. I kept women at a safe distance. I actually thought I had you at a safe distance, too,” he added on a chuckle. “And then I started taking you around for business reasons and got caught in my own web.”

“Did you, really?” she murmured with wonder.

“Careful,” he whispered. “I’m dead serious.” He bent and brushed his mouth beside hers, nuzzling her cheek with his nose. “It’s too late to go back, Jodie. I can’t let go.”

His arm contracted. She gasped softly at the increased intimacy of the contact. She could feel the hunger in him. Her own body began to vibrate faintly as she realized how susceptible she was.

“You be careful,” she countered breathlessly. “I’m on fire! You could find yourself on the floor in a closet, being ravished, if you keep this up.”

“If that’s a promise, lead me to a closet,” he said, only half joking.

She laughed. He didn’t.

In fact, his arm contracted even more and he groaned softly at her ear. “Jodie,” he said in a choked tone, “how do you feel about runaway marriages?”

“Excuse me?”

He lifted his head and looked down into her eyes with dark intensity. “Runaway marriage. You get in a car, run away to Mexico in the middle of somebody’s Halloween party and get married.” His arm brought her closer. “They’re binding even in this country. We could get to the airport in about six minutes, and onto a plane in less than an hour.”

“To where?” she burst out, aghast.

“Anywhere in Mexico,” he groaned, his eyes biting into hers as he lifted his head. “We can be married again in Jacobsville whenever you like.”

“Then why go to Mexico tonight?” she asked, flustered.

His hand slid low on her spine and pulled her hips into his with a look that made her blush.

“That is not a good reason to go to Mexico on the spur of the moment,” she said, while her body told her brain to shut up.

“That’s what you think.” His expression was eloquent.

“But what if I said yes?” she burst out. “You could end up tied to me for life, when all you want is immediate relief! And speaking of relief, there’s a bedroom right up the stairs…!”

He stopped dancing. His face was solemn. “Tell me you wouldn’t mind a quick fling in my bed, Jodie,” he challenged. “Tell me your conscience wouldn’t bother you at all.”

She sighed. “I’d like to,” she began.

“But your parents didn’t raise you that way,” he concluded for her. “In fact, my father was like that,” he added quietly. “He was old-fashioned and I’m like him. There haven’t even been that many
women, if you’d like to know, Jodie,” he confessed. “And right now, I wish there hadn’t been even one.”

“That is the sweetest thing to say,” she whispered, and pulled his face down so that she could kiss him.

“As it happens, I mean it.” He kissed her back, very lightly. “Run away with me,” he challenged. “Right now!”

It was crazy. He had to be out of his mind. But the temptation to get him to a minister before he changed his mind was all-consuming. She was suddenly caught up in the same excitement she saw in his face. “But you’re so conventional!”

“I’ll be very conventional again first thing tomorrow,” he promised. “Tonight, I’m going for broke. Grab a coat. Don’t tell anybody where we’re going I’ll think up something to say to Margie.”

She glanced toward the back of the room, where Margie was watching them excitedly and whispering something to Derek that made him laugh.

“All right. We’re both crazy, but I’m not arguing with you. Tell her whatever you like. Make it good,” she told him, and dashed up the staircase.

He was waiting for her at the front door. He looked irritated.

“What’s wrong?” Jodie asked when she reached him. Her heart plummeted. “Changed your mind?”

“Not on your life!” He caught her arm and pulled her out the door, closing it quickly behind them. “Margie’s too smart for her own good. Or Derek is.”

“You can’t put anything past Margie,” she said, laughing with relief as they ran down the steps and toward the garage, where he kept his Jaguar.

“Or Derek,” he murmured, chuckling.

He unlocked the door with his keyless entry and popped out the laser key with his thumb on the button. He looked down at her hesitantly. “I’m game if you are,” he told her. “But you can still back out if you want to.”

She shook her head, her eyes full of dreams. “You might never be in the mood again.”

“That’s a laugh.” He put her inside and minutes later, they were en route to the airport.

Holding hands all the way during the flight, making plans, they arrived in El Paso with bated breath. Alexander rented a car at the airport and they drove across the border, stopping at customs and looking so radiant that the guard guessed their purpose immediately.

“You’re going over to get married, I’d bet,” the man said with a huge grin.
“Buena suerte,”
he added, handing back their identification. “And drive carefully!”

“You bet!” Alexander told him as he drove off.

They found a small chapel and a minister willing to perform the ceremony after a short conversation with a police officer near a traffic light.

Jodie borrowed a peso from the minister’s wife for luck and was handed a small bouquet of silk flowers to hold while the words were spoken, in Spanish, that would make them man and wife.

Alexander translated for her, his eyes soft and warm and possessive as the minister pronounced them man and wife at last. He drew a ring out of his pocket, a beautiful embossed gold band, which he slid onto her finger. It was a perfect fit. She recognized it as one she’d sighed over years ago in a jewelry shop she’d gone to with Margie when they were dreaming about marriage in the distant future.
She’d been back to the shop over the years to make sure it was still there. Apparently Margie had told Alexander about it.

They signed the necessary documents, Alexander paid the minister, and they got back into the car with a marriage license.

Jodie stared at her ring and her new husband with wide-eyed wonder. “We must be crazy,” she commented.

He laughed. “We’re not crazy. We’re very sensible. First we have an elopement, then we have a honeymoon, then we have a normal wedding with Margie and our friends.” He glanced at her with twinkling eyes. “You said you didn’t have to be back at work until next week. We’ll have our honeymoon before you go back.”

“Where, exactly, did you have in mind for a honeymoon?” she asked.

Three hours later, tangled with Alexander in a big king-size bed with waves pounding the shore outside the window, she lay in the shadows of the moonlit Gulf of Mexico. The hotel was first class, the food was supposed to be the best in Galveston, the beach was like sugar sand. But all she saw was Alexander’s face above hers as her body throbbed in the molasses slow rhythm of his kisses on her breasts on cool, crisp sheets.

“You taste like candy,” he whispered against her belly.

“You never said I was sweet before,” she teased breathlessly.

“You always were. I didn’t know how to say it. You gave me the shakes every time I got near you.” His mouth opened on her diaphragm and pressed down, hard.

She gasped at the warm pleasure of it. Her hands tangled in his thick, dark hair. “That was mutual, too.” She drew his face to her breasts and coaxed his mouth onto them. “This is very nice,” she murmured unsteadily.

“It gets better.” His hands found her in a new and invasive way. She started to protest, only to find his mouth crushing down over her parted lips about the same time that his movements lifted her completely off the bed in a throbbing wave of unexpected pleasure.

“Oh, you like that, do you?” he murmured against her mouth. “How about this…?”

She cried out. His lips stifled the sound and his leg moved between both of hers. He kissed her passionately while his lean hips shifted and she felt him in an intimacy they hadn’t yet shared.

He felt her body jerk as she tried to reject the shock of invasion, but his mouth gentled hers, his hands soothed her, teased her, coaxed her into allowing the slow merging of their bodies.

She gasped, her hands biting into his back in mingled fear and excitement.

“It won’t hurt long,” he whispered reassuringly, and his tongue probed her lips as he began a slow, steady rhythm that rippled down her nerves like pure joy on a roller coaster of pleasure.

“That’s it,” he murmured against her eager lips. “Come up against me and find the pressure and the rhythm that you need. That’s it. That’s…it!”

She was amazed that he didn’t mind letting her experiment, that he was willing to help her experience him. She’d heard some horror stories about wedding nights from former friends. This wasn’t one. She’d found a man who wanted eager participation, not passive acceptance. She moved and shifted and he laughed roughly, his deep voice throbbing with pleasure, as her seeking body kindled waves of delight in his own.

She was on fire with power. She moved under him, invited him, challenged him, provoked him. And he went with her, every step
of the way up the ladder to a mutual climax that groaned out at her ear in ripples of satiation. She clung to him, shivering in the explosive aftermath of an experience that exceeded her wildest hopes.