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that they could siphon off profits from, he'd have gone the rest of his life without ever knowing the
truth. His mother had kept her secret for thirty-six years. His whole life.
He remembered Jack Winthrop's temper, the vicious attacks, the hateful attitude. No wonder the man
hated him. It made sense now, when it was too late to matter. Leta's fault. His mother's fault. Not that
she hadn't suffered, too.
He leaned his head against the wall. He didn't want it to clear. He didn't want to think about what he'd
learned. Not now. It was too much. He needed to sleep.
He fell into his bed and all but passed out on a single six-pack of beer, which had hit him hard because
he didn't ordinarily drink. The next morning he woke with a headache and a renewed burst of bad
temper.
Cecily had lied to him. She'd lied to him. Well, she wasn't going to get away with it. He was going to
her office and he was going to tell her a thing or two!
It was midday of an otherwise unremarkable day when Cecily's head lifted with surprise at the force
with which her office door was pushed open and then closed. Her secretary was at lunch. The office
was deserted. And a furious black-eyed man stood over her desk looking as if he planned to come
right across it after her. She knew what had happened, even before a weeping Leta had phoned her the
night before to give her the latest news. She'd coaxed Leta into getting on a plane Tuesday and coming
to stay with her before the news media ran the scandal and destroyed her privacy at Wapiti.
"Did you think I wouldn't find out eventually?" Tate asked in a bitter tone.
She wasn't sure how to handle him. He looked completely out of control.
"Find out what?" she asked, even though she had a pretty good idea.
"Matt Holden finally got around to telling me who my father was," he said with an unpleasant smile.
His calm voice belied the storms in his eyes.
It was no use pretending innocence anymore. She sighed heavily.
"We were all trying to protect you," she began. "If we could have gotten enough on the syndicate,
they'd never have dared print what they knew. But we didn't count on them doing it for revenge
because Matt threw a spanner into their nasty plan. Matt decided that you had to be told, and there was
only him to do it. Your mother wouldn't."
"My mother had no right to keep such a secret from me. Neither did he.
Neither did you!" He pointed at her.
"You had no right, Cecily!"
"I gave my word to Senator Holden, and to your mother, that I wouldn't say anything," she said softly,
rising from her desk. She walked around it slowly, approached him cautiously as if he were
completely wild. In fact, he was. He was vibrating with frustration, shock, hurt, fury.
"I knew it was going to be impossible to keep the secret, but they wanted to try, to spare you the truth."
"All my life, I knew who I was," he told her.
"I
knew what I was, where I belonged, where I was going in life. In the space of a day, I've been set
adrift. Suddenly I'm an outsider among my own people. My ancestry is a lie. My life. is a lie! "
"That isn't true," she replied gently.
"Your mother didn't dare tell your father the truth. His wife hated Native Americans. She could have
hurt your mother. She could have hurt you. Even the knowledge of you could have cost him his
career."
"Jack Winthrop knew the truth," he said huskily.
"It's why he hated us so much--her for loving another man, me for not being his child. He made us
pay every day we lived, and until yesterday, I never knew why!"
She winced, feeling his pain. She started to reach out to him. He backed up a step.
"Don't," he warned softly, his eyes glittering with conflicting emotions. "So help me God, if you
touch me," he breathed, "I'll have you right here on the carpet!"
He made it sound like a threat, but in fact, it was what he needed, perhaps why he'd come here. He
needed comfort and he'd come to her for it, bristling with bad temper to disguise the need. She wasn't
afraid of him. She loved him too much to be bothered by sizzling black eyes and a straight line of a
mouth. He had every reason to be angry, to be hurt. But what he needed from her wasn't words. She
could give him what he really yearned for. It might be the last time he ever would touch her, now,
when he was out of control and not thinking clearly. He wasn't a particularly forgiving man, and she'd
betrayed him.
She went to lock the door before she went back to him. She reached up and pulled his mouth down
over hers without a word.
He actually trembled before his arms caught her, held her, lifted her into the viciously aroused
contours of his body. His mouth was devouring on her lips. He was bruising her a little with the
ferocity of the embrace, but it was oh, so sweet, to be needed like that. She sighed into his lips. It
seemed like forever since he'd kissed her.
It seemed that way to him as well. He was losing himself in her and she was seducing him deliberately.
He didn't want to do this. It wasn't right. But he wanted her to the point of madness, needed her, ached
to have her. He'd come to her for comfort, even if he couldn't admit it. All the long weeks he'd denied
himself were over. Feast after the famine, even if he was angry. Somehow, the anger was translated
into the hottest, fiercest passion he'd ever expressed to a woman.
Inevitably kisses weren't enough. Oblivious to the time, the place, their surroundings, he carried her
down with him to the floor.
Fastenings were loosened, obstacles moved aside, hands searching for bare skin in a frenzy of heat.
Then she lay under the slow, hard thrust of his body on the imported Persian rug with her eyes closed,
her mouth answering the deep, hungry kisses, smiling under the ferocity of his lips. It was feverish
and rough and even a little dangerous, here in her own office, even with the door locked. The danger
made it even more passionate. She pulled him closer, dimly aware that they were still almost fully
clothed. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered except the . pleasure!
He covered her mouth quickly to stifle the surprised sob of joy that prefaced the violent tremor of her
body under him. He held her to him with a lean hand at her hip, jerking her up to him as the rhythm
grew more violent, more demanding. He groaned into her welcoming mouth as the fever rose high
and bright and suddenly exploded into fiery particles of pleasure that shot through his body like
cellular fireworks. He stiffened helplessly as the spasms shook him and felt her eyes on him. He
groaned harshly at the overwhelming pleasure it provoked to know that she was watching him.
When he could breathe again, he lifted his face from her throat and looked down into her eyes, his
own eyes strange and turbulent.
"You watched," he said coldly.
"Yes." She opened the buttons of his shirt and slid her hand over his smooth muscles to where she
could feel his heart beating. She could feel him intimately and she moved deliberately, knowing that
he was still fiercely aroused and that her movements would renew the passion.
She lifted her hips, gasped at the sensation.
"Are you... going to watch... this time?" she whispered, pulling his head back down to her.
He went right over the edge. His eyes were as hostile as the look on his face when he pushed down
with a fierce surge, impaling her further.
It aroused him even more than her restless movements had. He did it again. His eyes blazed. His body
shuddered.
"Yes, that's it," she whispered feverishly. Her hands slid down his back, under his slacks. "Yes. Do it
again. Make it last. Make it last forever! You can watch me, too...!"
"Damn you, Cecily," he bit off with helpless desire, trembling with new urgency as he found her
mouth and his taut body moved helplessly on hers all over again. It shouldn't even have been possible.
She was demanding this time, fiercely enjoying everything he did to her, and he'd never been so
aroused. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]