California Caress

I have to get out of here! she thought desperately as she watched Angelique rub against Drake for what had to be the fiftieth time this hour. Although she couldn’t stand the woman’s blatant manipulation, it was Drake’s apparent immunity to it that bothered her more.

Hope decided she couldn’t sit idly by and watch Angelique use Drake, then cast him aside again—as, she suspected, was the woman’s intent. The first time had almost destroyed him. She might not have known him immediately after his affair with Angelique, but she had seen the result of it. She didn’t want to see what a second disappointment would do to her proud, arrogant gunslinger.

It will break him, she thought, and break me right along with him.

If there was one thing Hope knew she could not stand, it was more heartbreak. Losing her family to the fire had been bad enough. This on top of it would destroy her. Deep down, she suspected the reason why, but she’d be damned if she’d admit it, to herself or anyone else!

With an aggravated sigh, she lifted the bright orange dinner napkin from her lap, folded it, then placed it beside her plate. She stood with such force that only luck kept the delicate chair from crashing to the floor.

“Leaving? So soon?” Angelique purred, a glint of victory glistening in her cat-like eyes as she affixed her arm to Drake’s elbow.

“Stay,” Charles insisted with a wave of his hand. “If the food isn’t to your taste, you can at least join us in an after-dinner brandy.”

Hope shuddered. The last time she had tasted liquor she had collapsed, drunk, in Drake Frazier’s arms. It had been the biggest mistake of her life.

“No,” she said, patiently but firmly. “I’m tired, I have a headache, and I didn’t get much sleep last night. I think I’ll retire early.” It was a lie, but a forgivable one. The last thing she intended to do was “retire,” early or otherwise. But there was no good reason they had to know that. She stifled a yawn with the back of her hand for effect. “If you’ll excuse me....”

“Why of course,” Angelique purred. She patted Drake’s arm and sent him a knowing smile. “She does so need her beauty rest, you know.”

Hope thought that if Drake leapt to her defense, she might just stay for that brandy after all. He didn’t. Instead he laughed as though the slut had made the most humorous comment he’d ever heard in his life. Hope fumed, caught between anger and betrayal. She hid her churning emotions behind the fists clenched tightly in the pockets of the worn trousers that she refused to trade in for one of Angelique’s cast-off dresses. Holding her head high, she swept from the room with as much dignity as the situation—and her ragged attire—would allow. It wasn’t until she reached the hall that she felt the sting of tears in her eyes.

She blotted the hated moistness away as she placed her foot on the first carpeted stair. The hand that wrapped suddenly around her arm prevented further progress. Angrily, she spun on her heel, pooling all her hostility into the palm that slapped Drake Frazier’s arrogant cheek.

His head snapped back with the blow, but no recrimination glimmered in his eyes. “I guess I deserved that,” he said, his hand straying up to the handprint that stood out in scarlet against his sun-kissed cheek. “After last night, I wouldn’t blame you if you shot me in my sleep.” His eyes darkened. “I’m sorry about what I said, Hope. I didn’t mean it the way it sounded.”

Her lips thinned, her gaze narrowed. “I told you I didn’t want to talk about that!” She tried to pull away, but his grip was too tight.

“You’ll damn well have to talk about it sometime,” he growled, annoyed with her stubbornness. “You can’t go around with these feelings bottled up inside you for the rest of your life. One day, you’re going to have to let them out. If you don’t, they’ll destroy you.”

“You’re a fine one to talk! What about the feelings you’ve harbored for your brother all these years? Or don’t they count?”

He let her arm go, positive she was too angry to flee. Crossing his arms over his chest, he scowled at her angrily. “Oh, they count all right, but the situation is completely different. At least I’m doing something with Charles. And what are you doing, sunshine? You wallow in self-pity over the family you can never have back instead of just dealing with their deaths. You push away anyone who tries to get close. You run in fear every time someone strikes a match without telling you! That’s one hell of a way to live, if you ask me.”

“No one asked you!”

She spun on her heel, determined to mount the stairs. Again, Drake’s hand prevented her. She fixed the strong fingers with a look of utter contempt, which seemed to have no effect on Drake as he abruptly whirled her back around.

“You’re getting my advice anyway, like it or not.”

She swallowed hard. His face was so close she could see each golden whisker on his sun-kissed jaw. A shiver rippled up her spine as she remembered the scratchy feel of them beneath her palm. She forced the thought away.

“Go ahead,” she prompted. “You’re so damned fired up to have your say that I don’t think anything I could say would stop you. So say it. Get it over with.”

“All right,” he growled, his grip loosening enough for the circulation to return to her fingers. “I want to know what the hell happened to the spitfire that burst into my hotel room, drunker than a skunk, desperate to find someone—anyone—who would fight in her brother’s place. What happened to the girl who was willing to do just about anything to save her precious brother’s life? And don’t tell me she’s standing in front of me now, because I’ll be the first one to call you a damn liar.”

She flinched when his grip turned hard, his gaze dark and unyielding. “That girl died in Thirsty Gulch, Frazier,” she whispered hoarsely. “She found out what it was like to lose everything she ever had and she grew bitter. You’d better get used to me as I am now, because she won’t be back.”

Drake dropped his hands and stepped away, shaking his head in disgust. “Pity,” he said through clenched teeth, “because that’s one thing I’ll never get used to.”

Turning on his heel, he stalked away.

His bootheels clomped over the finely polished floor long after his broad back had disappeared from view. Only when she was sure he was gone did Hope let her shoulders slump in weary defeat. She clutched the mahogany banister, her eyes misting over in tears she refused to shed.

No, she thought. I won’t cry. I won’t give the bastard the satisfaction of

knowing his words upset me so much.

She dashed the moistness from her eyes. Again, she realized just how desperately she needed to leave this place. She couldn’t tolerate Drake’s pursuit of Angelique for another minute, and if forced to endure another confrontation like this one, she would lose what little control she still had.