Tender Triumph

Overhead, the powder-blue sky was heaped with piles of whipped cream clouds. The hills rose around her, carpeted in emerald green and splashed with pink and red flowers. With a contented sigh, Katie lifted her face to the balmy breeze and started across the front yard toward the dirt driveway that led through the trees out to the main road.

She had felt a little lost being among strangers all day, and she had missed Ramon's reassuring pres­ence. She hadn't seen him since he introduced her to Gabriella and her husband last night, then left an hour later to go back to Rafael's house.

"Katie!" The familiar voice stopped her in her tracks. Turning her head, Katie saw Ramon about fifty yards away on her left. He was cutting across the hillside from Rafael's house, and she had ob­viously just crossed directly in his path as she walked toward the road. He stopped, waiting for her to come to him. With a cheery wave, Katie turned and started up the hill.

Ramon forced himself to stay where he was, to luxuriate in the sheer pleasure of knowing she had come out to meet him. His gaze moved over her in a tender caress, watching the way her hair was blowing across her shoulders in a shining tumble of red gold. Her deep blue eyes were laughing up at him, and a welcoming smile was curving the inviting full­ness of her lips. She moved with a natural, unaf­fected grace, her slim hips swaying just enough to be exquisitely provocative.

His heart pounded with the yearning to snatch her into his arms and crush her against him, to absorb her into himself. He wanted to cover her mouth with his and whisper over and over, I love you, I love you, I love you. He wanted to say that to her, but not enough to risk the possibility that Katie's response—or lack of it—would tell him that she did not love him. That he could not bear.

A few yards from him Katie stopped, immobilized by a strange combination of happiness and shyness. Ramon's dark blue shirt was open halfway to his waist, revealing an expanse of tanned chest covered with curling black hairs; his dark pants hugged his lean hips and hard thighs, faithfully following every line of his long legs. The raw, potent sexuality he was exuding made Katie feel strangely fragile and vulnerable. She swallowed, searching for something to say, and finally said with soft uncertainty, "Hello."

Ramon's arms opened wide to her. Huskily he re­plied, "Hello, mi amor."

Katie hesitated, and then flung herself into his welcoming embrace. His arms closed around her, holding her to him as if he would never let her go.

"Did you miss me?" he whispered thickly, when his mouth at last released hers.

Katie pressed her lips to the base of his throat, in­haling the heady scent of warm, masculine skin and spicy after-shave. "Yes. Did you miss me?"

"No."

Leaning back, Katie looked up at him, her smile quizzical. "You didn't?"

"No," he said with quiet gravity. "Because since ten o'clock this morning I have kept you with me; I have not let you leave my side."

"Since ten o'clock—?" Katie started to ask, then something in his voice made her look at him more closely. Intuitively she recognized the ravaged emo­tions hidden in the depths of those onyx eyes. Reaching up, she took his chin between her thumb and forefinger, turning his surprised face first to the left, then the right. Keeping her expression bright, she asked teasingly, "How do the other men look?"

"What other men?"

"The ones who tried to beat you up."

"You mean I look as if I have been in a fight?" Ramon said.

Slowly, Katie nodded, her smile widening. "With at least six armed men and a demented bulldozer."

"That bad?" he grinned wryly.

Katie nodded again, then sobered. "It must be very hard, very depressing working for a company that you know is going out of business."

His stunned look told Katie that her conclusion was correct. "Do you know," he said with a be­mused shake of his head, "I have been told by many men from many countries that I have a face that is absolutely unreadable when I wish it to be."

"And you wanted it to be unreadable tonight, with me?" Katie guessed. "Because you didn't want me to see that you're tired and depressed?"

"Yes."

"Did you have any of your own money invested in the company?"

"Virtually all of my money and most of my life," Ramon admitted smiling at her in amazement. "You are very perceptive. But there is no need for you to worry. After today it will be much easier, and I will not have to be there for so many hours each day. Tomorrow afternoon I can begin helping the men who are working on our home.''

Dinner at Rafael's house was a relaxed affair with much joking and laughing around the table. Senora Villegas, Rafael's wife, was a stout, bustling woman who treated Ramon with the same solicitude she lav­ished on her husband and children—two boys in their early twenties and a girl of about fourteen. For Katie's benefit most of the conversation was in English, which the young members could not speak but apparently understood a little, because several times Katie saw them smile at something Rafael or Ramon said.

After dinner the men went into the lounge while the women cleared the table and did the dishes. When they were through, they joined the men for coffee. As if he had been watching for her, Ramon's gaze lifted and he held 6ut a beckoning hand to her. Katie slid her hand into his firm grasp, and he exert­ed just enough pressure to pull her down beside him. She listened to Rafael Villegas talking to Ramon, making suggestions about the farm, but every mo­ment she was vitally aware of Ramon's hard thigh pressing against hers. His arm was resting along the back of the sofa, his hand imperceptibly caressing her shoulder, his thumb moving idly against her nape beneath the cloak of her heavy hair. Except there was nothing idle about what he was doing—he was deliberately keeping her fully aware of his nearness. Or was he, Katie wondered suddenly. She thought about what he had said earlier about keep­ing her beside him, implying that he had needed her to get through his day. Was he keeping her physical­ly close now, touching her this way because he need­ed her to get through the evening as well?

Katie stole a glance at his chiseled profile and, with a pang of sympathy, she recognized the preoccupation in his features.

Katie delicately faked a yawn behind her fingers, and Ramon's eyes were instantly on her. "Are you tired?"

"A little," Katie lied.

In three minutes, Ramon had seized on her com­ment, made their excuses to the Villegases, and whisked her out the front door. "Do you feel up to walking back, or would you rather I drove you?"

"I feel up to almost anything," Katie smiled soft­ly, "but you looked tired and distracted, so I used that as a way of excusing you from being there."

Ramon didn't deny it. "Thank you," he said ten­derly.

Gabriella and her husband had already gone to bed, but they had left the front door unlatched.

Katie stopped to turn on a mellow lamp while Ramon walked over and sat down on the sofa. As she neared him, he reached out and captured her arms, starting to pull her down onto his lap. Firmly disentangling herself from his grip, Katie went around behind him.

Beneath her ministering hands his broad shoul­ders were taut as she began to massage the tenseness from his thick muscles. She felt so strange with him in this mood. There was a relaxed closeness between them that had never been present before; Ramon always seemed to have a leashed sexual energy that kept her senses in a state of trembling anticipation. Tonight that energy was a quiet magnetism. "How does that feel?" she asked, kneading the tendons at the base of the neck.

"Better than you can imagine," he said, bending his dark head forward to give her better access to his neck. "Where did you learn to do that?" he asked a few minutes later as Katie began quickly chopping the sides of her hands over his shoulders and back.

Katie's hands froze. "I don't remember," she lied.

Something in her voice made Ramon turn around sharply. He saw the haunted expression in her eyes, caught her arms and brought her around in front of him, pulling her down onto his lap. "Now I will make you feel better," he stated, his hands un­fastening the button of her shirt, delving into the lacy cups of her bra, and pushing her breasts up and out of them.