Heartless Read online

  She had thought their first time had given her the greatest pleasure possible, but she learned in the long night that she’d only grazed the surface of ecstasy. Jason was over her, then under her, then beside her as his hands explored her yielding body. The mutual tension built to such a flashpoint that she dragged him down against her and almost forcibly joined her body to his in a tempest of physical delight that made her sob with escalating pleasure.

  Each long, slow thrust was an agony of patience that brought her to some precipice of anguish that she could hardly bear.

  “You’re torturing me,” she wailed, pushing her hips up to meet his.

  “I’m getting you ready,” he corrected breathlessly, as he stilled her thrashing hips and pushed down with long, measured thrusts.

  “Ready?” she pleaded.

  “Ready,” he whispered. “Hold on tight, sweetheart. We’re going right over a cliff…”

  He increased the rhythm so suddenly that she was left hanging in midair. She felt him swelling even more as he pushed harder, his body buffeting hers noisily against the white sheets in the filtered moonlight.

  She cried out and her nails bit into his hips.

  “That’s it,” he groaned at her ear. “Hold me. Feel me driving into you. Feel me…exploding…inside you!”

  “Jason!” She shuddered and arched up, the pleasure growing so unbearable that she sobbed and sobbed, rigid as a board under the fierce rhythm of his hips. “Harder, Jason, harder, harder…!”

  “Oh…God!”

  He arched and stiffened, and then suddenly convulsed with a groan so harsh that he sounded as if he’d been wounded.

  Gracie held on for dear life, her body so attuned to his that she shot up into the heat with him, arching into the sleek curve of his body so that they seemed no longer two people, but one, melted together like molten iron.

  She opened her eyes just at the last and saw his face clenched, his eyes closed, his mouth a thin line as he endured the agony of climax. Her own body was just past that exquisite burst of tension, echoing with little stabs of delight as he moved helplessly inside her.

  One last shudder and his eyes opened, right into hers. Incredibly, the sight of her, watching him, brought another explosion of pleasure that shook him over her. He looked down at her swollen breasts, her flat belly pressed so tightly to his, and he trembled, closing his eyes so that he could feel the tight, hot press of her all around him as he spent himself.

  Finally his body unclenched and he relaxed, flowing down over her.

  “We’re going to kill each other, eventually,” she whispered shakily.

  “I noticed that.”

  She moved experimentally, enjoying the little echoes of pleasure that shivered in her. “Gosh! It just keeps going,” she cried.

  “Yes.” He shifted his lean hips and lifted his head to watch her, grinning as her face expressed the pleasure he was giving her.

  “Conceited,” she managed.

  He shook his head. “Incredibly talented.”

  She laughed. “Yes.”

  He rolled over onto his back and drew her over him, his eyes dark and warm. “And just think, this is supposed to get better with practice.”

  “I’ll die,” she lamented, moving closer.

  “Yes, honey, but what a way to go,” he whispered at her ear, and laughed with her.

  “BUT YOU HAVE TO have a proper wedding,” Glory fussed when Jason and Gracie got home. She was still upset because they’d waited two days to call her and tell her about the ceremony.

  “We did,” Jason said reasonably. “One without fanfare and cameras.”

  “You could at least have a reception in San Antonio,” she continued doggedly.

  Gracie and Jason looked at each other with resignation. “I guess we could,” Gracie said. She hugged her stepsister. “We meant to call you, honestly. But we just forgot about everything.”

  Jason grinned sheepishly. “It was a pretty intense honeymoon.”

  Glory gave in, laughing. “I can’t say I was even surprised,” she pointed out. “The two of you were pretty obvious, even months ago.”

  “We were?” they echoed.

  Glory just shook her head. “I’m meeting Rodrigo for lunch, but you have to go with us to the charity dinner in San Antonio Friday night. All the old crowd is going to be there, and they can’t wait to congratulate both of you.”

  Jason smiled at Gracie. “We really have to go,” he agreed. “We do have friends.”

  Gracie nodded. She’d forgotten her socializing since her move to Jacobsville. “I was trying to get back to my roots,” she explained quietly. “And prove that I could take care of myself.”

  “Which you did,” Jason said firmly. “You can keep your job at the college. I won’t say a word. You can lecture at the elementary school. But we’ve already proven that you can have an occasional night out without staining your working girl image,” he added persuasively.

  She sighed. “I guess I can.” She smiled up at him tentatively. “If you won’t mind when I fall down the steps occasionally or trip over my own feet.”

  He pulled her close, very solemnly. “I’ll always be there to catch you,” he said. “And it won’t matter. It never did.”

  THEY WENT HOME RELUCTANTLY. Rodrigo and Glory met them at the San Antonio mansion with a beautiful cut crystal bowl for a wedding present, and a few recriminations. But long before they got to those, Glory just hugged Gracie with all her strength. She had to bite back tears. This was a love match if she’d ever seen one. She wondered why it had taken these two stubborn people so long to see it.

  “You’re going to be very happy together,” she said absently.

  They both smiled at her. “Of course we are,” Gracie said, and there were dreams in her eyes.

  The charity shindig proved to Gracie that her friendships weren’t a matter of Jason’s money. People were honestly happy to see her, and she had more invitations than she could ever accept. She was asked to serve on committees, and she promised to work some of them into her busy schedule. When she told her friends about her new job, they were elated to see that she was using all her talents, not just the ones she had for hostessing and planning parties. She realized finally that it was her own personality, her own self, that these people valued. She’d always assumed it was position and money. Nothing was farther from the truth.

  There was only one sour note. One of Jason’s business associates, a little tipsy, asked him what happened to the gorgeous redhead he was going to marry.

  “Gracie happened,” Jason said without batting an eye, and he pulled Gracie close and kissed the tip of her nose.

  The tipsy man smiled self-consciously at the people frowning at him, and went away.

  Glory and Rodrigo took them by a Latin club for a nightcap.

  “Your friend the General is trying to get enough money for a coup,” Rodrigo told her. “We can’t help him, much as we’d like to. Word on the street is that he’s given up kidnapping because he doesn’t like the way the Fuentes bunch do business. But he can’t leave Mexico until he has enough to hire some good mercenaries to help him kick out his adversary.”

  “He was kind to me,” Gracie said. “I wish we could help him.”

  “So do I,” Rodrigo replied. “He’s something of a pirate, but he’s progressive and democratic in his politics and he has a soft spot for helpless people. His replacement has been sending people to secret prisons and he’s starting to nationalize the government. He has friends in some very dicey places. We’d love to see him retired.”

  “Bad time politically to meddle in foreign affairs,” Jason remarked.

  Rodrigo nodded. “Very bad. Ah, well,” he added, sipping his drink and smiling. “We don’t always get what we want.”

  Jason looked down at Gracie with aching tenderness. “Sometimes we do.”

  “Oh, yes,” Gracie agreed breathlessly.

  Glory and Rodrigo laughed and lifted their glasses in a toast to the n
ewlyweds.

  JASON AND GRACIE HAD planned to spend the night at the San Antonio mansion, but when they drove up to the gate, they discovered a satellite truck and at least one local news team standing at the closed gates and trying to gain entrance.

  “I’ll get out and see what’s going on,” Jason began.

  Gracie caught his arm. “Turn around and get out of here before somebody recognizes us,” she said urgently. “Please, Jason.”

  He gave her an odd look, but he did as she asked. Fortunately they were far enough away that they only got curious looks. Nobody tried to follow them.

  “They’ve heard about the wedding, that’s all,” he teased. “We should have given them an interview.”

  Gracie gritted her teeth. This was going to be hard. “Jason, there are things going on that you don’t know about,” she said gently. “And I’m afraid there may be more reporters at the ranch.”

  He pulled off the road into the parking lot of an all-night fast food joint and cut the engine. “Why?”

  She felt sick. This was going to wound him. But she knew that the reporters wouldn’t have been there unless Kittie had made good on her threat. Some of the people she knew in San Antonio would surely have told her about Jason’s marriage. She probably was out for revenge now, instead of money, and she was using Mrs. Harcourt’s secret to get it. Gracie couldn’t let him walk into this blind. She had to tell him the truth.

  “Kittie knows something about Mrs. Harcourt.”

  Jason frowned. “So?”

  She clutched her purse so hard that her nails made marks in the leather. “Jason, haven’t you ever wondered why you don’t look like your mother?”

  He scowled. “I don’t look like my father, either. He said I resemble my grandfather.”

  “Your eyes are coal-black,” she began slowly, meeting them with her own.

  All at once, he went rigid. He was remembering things from his childhood. Mrs. Harcourt’s coddling. His father’s coldness to her. Arguments that he overheard and didn’t understand. But the reference to his eyes was like a body blow. He’d wondered about that, too, sometimes, thinking that Mrs. Harcourt might be a cousin or distant relation that his snobbish father hadn’t wanted to claim. Now, however, he was seeing his father’s elitist attitude in a totally different light.

  “Mrs. Harcourt isn’t just my housekeeper. She’s my mother!” Even as he said it, he knew it was the truth. It had been right in front of him all these years.

  “Yes,” Gracie said heavily. “She was horrified that you laughed off Kittie’s threats. She said it would disgrace you if it ever came out. Not to mention what it will do to her,” she added sadly. “She’s a churchgoing woman, you know. She had a child by a married man, out of wedlock. How do you think she’s going to react when everybody knows? You aren’t the only one who’s going to be hurt by this.”

  He glared at her. “You knew.”

  She grimaced. “Yes…”

  “You knew, and you didn’t tell me?”

  “She made me promise, Jason,” she said quietly.

  He was thinking that she never trusted him with any secret, beginning with her own past. It hurt him that she still felt that way, regardless of how close they’d become.

  “Reporters will have her trapped at the house,” he guessed, starting the car.

  “I don’t think so,” Gracie said, pulling out her cell phone. “Comanche Wells is very small. Somebody would have seen the trucks coming, even if they didn’t know why, and told her. She’d have a good idea why they were coming.”

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Calling her cell,” she replied. It rang and rang. Finally a timid voice said hello. “Mrs. Harcourt, it’s me,” she said gently.

  “Miss Gracie? Thank God! Miss Kittie called and said she was getting ready to break the story to the whole world,” she said, sobbing. “She said newspeople are heading this way. I’m at Barbara’s house. She’s going to get people in Jacobsville and Comanche Wells organized. Nobody is going to speak to anybody with a camera. But I don’t know how long she can hide me. Does he know? Is he mad? He hates me, doesn’t he?”

  “Of course he doesn’t hate you,” Gracie said, daring Jason to argue.

  “What will we do?” Mrs. Harcourt wailed.

  “We’ll think of something. We’ll see you when we get there. We’re on our way.”

  “All right. Be careful,” the older woman sniffed.

  “We will.” She hung up. “She’s at Barbara’s.”

  He didn’t reply. He was furious, and growing more furious by the minute. He felt as if he’d been betrayed by everybody. His whole life was upside down. And the woman he thought would never sell him out was sitting beside him, wearing his wedding band.

  Gracie felt that deep anger, even though he didn’t speak. She could have knocked Kittie over a table for putting Mrs. Harcourt and Jason through this. The greedy, heartless woman shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

  “It was cruel, doing it this way,” Gracie spat out.

  Jason glanced at her. “Secrets are dangerous,” he said bluntly.

  She flushed. She knew what he meant. “All right, I’ll agree that I shouldn’t have kept things from you. I didn’t tell you about my own past because I was so ashamed of it. But I didn’t tell you about Mrs. Harcourt because I gave my word.”

  He swerved onto the Jacobsville road. “She’s working as my damned housekeeper,” he said shortly. “How is that going to play out in the press?”

  “Badly, if we don’t come up with a strategy before we get home,” she said. “Mrs. Harcourt will be hurt more than you will.”

  He shifted in the seat. “I know. She was always there when nobody else was. My mother was a socialite. She spent little time around me,” he said slowly. “But Mrs. Harcourt was always there to kiss the hurt places and cuddle me when I had nightmares.” He closed his eyes for an instant. “She’s been living on the fringes of my life since I was born, playing the part of the housekeeper, never asking for anything.”

  “It’s the way she is. When Kittie threatened her, it was you she was most concerned about. She said the media will make you look heartless. It made her cry.”

  He pursed his lips, scowling. “I’ve got a rental property in Jacobsville, down the street from Barbara’s house. It’s vacant right now, and already furnished. We can move her into it. We’ll have Neiman Marcus send down the right sort of clothes, in her size. I own that craft shop in Jacobsville, too. I’ll phone the manager at home. We can put her name on the bill of sale as owner and put some of those beautiful afghans she’s made in there for samples.”

  “Now you’re thinking straight,” Gracie said with a beaming smile.

  He drew in a long breath. “It’s going to be tricky.”

  “We can pull it off.”

  “We can’t turn my new mother into a socialite overnight,” he groaned. “She’s still herself. I don’t want to change her into something uncomfortable, but she can’t go on being my housekeeper, under the circumstances.”

  “She’s scared to death.”

  “I know. We’ll handle it.”

  Gracie relaxed. How many times had she heard him say that, in his deep, confident voice, when her world was falling apart? He never seemed to lose control of himself.

  “We’ll need Barbara to help.”

  “She will,” Gracie assured him.

  They drove the rest of the way in silence.

  JASON PARKED UNDER Barbara’s carport and escorted Gracie inside. Mrs. Harcourt was standing in the middle of the living room with a soaked handkerchief and red eyes. She stared at Jason with anguish.

  “I’m sorry,” she cried. “I never meant for you to know!”

  Jason stood in the doorway, unmoving, his face a mask. He didn’t know what to say. The news had come as a terrible shock.

  Gracie caught Barbara’s sleeve and tugged her out of the room. Only two people needed to be in on that discussion, and i
t wasn’t going to be easy for either of them.

  “WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME years ago?” Jason asked curtly.

  She dabbed at her eyes. “Myron made me sign a legal document,” she choked out. “He swore that if I told, he’d frame me for an awful crime and have me put away forever. I knew he wasn’t bluffing. Then, after he died…I didn’t know how to tell you. I was afraid he might have left some secret papers or something to incriminate me.” She bit her lip. “He was ruthless.”

  Jason knew that. His father hadn’t made his millions without walking on other people in the process. He was hard-hearted and calculating, and his enemies never thrived. Jason had never liked that part of him. It had put a barrier between them.

  “Our eyes are alike,” he said, watching her with his hands in his pockets. “Funny I never noticed.” He frowned. “Who did we inherit them from?”

  She smiled nervously. “My father. My grandfather was a Spanish duke,” she added. “He came to this country after the First World War to take over a ranch that belonged to someone in his family. He married my grandmother, who was the daughter of his cook.”

  “The ranch…my ranch?” he asked, fascinated.

  “Yes.”

  He frowned. “I bought it from you.”

  “There wasn’t much left of it,” she said. “It was just about bankrupt. It made me so proud, to see what you did with it. I knew you could stand on your own two feet. You didn’t need your father’s name or wealth or position to make a success.” Her eyes glittered. “He was sure you’d fall flat on your face. I knew you wouldn’t!”

  For the first time, his face relaxed. He moved a step closer. “How did you end up in this situation?”