Wild Midnight Read online

Page 16


  “You said you wanted me! More than you’d ever wanted a woman before. When you were making love to me you said you’d waited all your life for someone like me!”

  “Honey, I always say that.” He stared at her, eyes narrowed. “Look—there’s nothing you can do about talk, just ignore it.”

  “Ignore it?” she cried. “They don’t talk about you—they talk about me!”

  His hand snaked out to seize her wrist. “You knew what the hell you were doing,” he growled, “You’ve been married, it wasn’t exactly a mystery, was it? And don’t say you weren’t willing as hell, because we both know better. What’s the complaint?”

  She stared at him, even now unable to drag her eyes away from the sculpted planes of that beautiful face. “I want you to stop hurting me,” she told him.

  He dropped her hand quickly. Abruptly he raked his fingers through thick sun-streaked hair. “I was crazy to start this damned thing,” he muttered. “I told you that.” When she didn’t move, when she said nothing, he went on, “All right, there’s nothing I can do about it now.”

  He bent his head to her and studied her so quietly, so intently, that she trembled. “You don’t need me in your life, do you, Rachel?” he said very softly.

  It was a statement, not a question. Startled, Rachel shook her head.

  The cold, closed look returned to his face. “Well, that’s too bad. Because if you’re not in my life, you’re in somebody else’s, and I’m not going to let that happen. Who are you going to go to bed with, anyway? Claxton? Some inbred Charleston fart D’Arcy’s got lined up for you? I staked my claim first. You’ll just have to live with your regrets.”

  She recoiled from him. “I’ll never understand you!” she cried.

  “Nobody understands me.”

  He reached for her, one hand around her waist, and pulled her to him. He watched her with narrowed, crystal eyes as his hand dropped, his palm flattened against her abdomen and the smooth flesh just above the belt of the silky dress. While she stood stiffly he moved his fingers back and forth, softly stroking. Without taking his eyes from her face he murmured, “You’re wasting yourself, Rachel. You ought to get married, have kids—you want to have children, don’t you?”

  The gesture, the roughness of his voice, mesmerized her.

  Her body was captive under the intent, heavy pressure of his hand at her middle. She could only whisper, lightheaded, “Are you proposing?”

  His smile was gentle, consciously dazzling. “You’d make a good mother, honey, you have that look. It would be easy for you to love your children, wouldn’t it?” He took his hand away. Still gently he said, “I’m not proposing, Rachel. You’re still stuck with our agreement.”

  Rachel stared at him, baffled as always by these sudden chameleon changes. “Why do you always have to say things like that?” she burst out. “You told the lawyer this ridiculous thing too!”

  “I didn’t tell him every damned thing. I’m not crazy.”

  “There is no agreement!” she flung at him. “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “Isn’t there? Tell me what the hell we’re doing then.” His look was stony. “I’m in your bed, and you’re getting the use of my road. If that isn’t an agreement, then I don’t know what one is.”

  Her lips trembled. She had to turn her head away so that he wouldn’t see the sudden glistening of tears in her eyes. “You don’t trust anyone,” she said, her voice shaking. “Anyone at all.”

  “Why should I? If you mean why don’t I trust you—why would I want to? I don’t know who the hell you are. We’re strangers.”

  “We made love!”

  “What does that prove? I got to bed with strangers. So do you,” he said with deadly softness. “That’s what shakes you up, isn’t it? That we get into bed and make love and get out of bed again and we still don’t know each other? Hell, you’re just learning the facts of life!”

  She turned back to him. “You’re not a stranger now. I know what you say to me when you make love to me.” When he sucked in his breath, eyes glittering, she went on, “It’s very different from what you say to me now. But I am not afraid of you.”

  He quickly grabbed her, hands digging painfully into the soft skin of her upper arms as he dragged her to him. “Shut up.” His voice grated. “Shut up, Rachel.” He lowered his head. “You’re just another redheaded hellcat, even if you do look like an angel. All I want from you is this.”

  His mouth found hers and quickly seized it, rocking hungrily against her trembling lips, his tongue probing to make them open to him. When Rachel moaned, he filled her mouth with a searing sensuousness calculated to make her submit to him. But as she flowed against him willingly he shuddered and grabbed her tightly, all mockery vanishing. He devoured her in a kiss of such violent need that he virtually lifted her from her feet, only her toes touching the floor as she strained against him.

  Suddenly he dragged his mouth away. He stared down at her with eyes hooded by thick dark lashes, the wide curve of his mouth still wet with the kiss. “I never wanted to hurt you,” he said thickly. “But you’d never believe that.”

  She stared up at him, not able to move. He let her go. “I’ve got to get the hell out of here,” he muttered, picking the battered black Stetson from the table.

  Rachel still held her hands up to hold him. He jammed the muddy hat on his head and started for the front door. He didn’t turn as he said, “Leave the door open tonight. It takes too damned much time to pick the lock in the dark.”

  Then he’ was gone.

  It was only a little past two in the afternoon. Rachel picked up the co-op’s worksheets from the table and carried them to the desk, where she put them away with the rest of the records. She tried to keep her thoughts from racing madly, but it was no use. Beau Tillson came into her house, her consciousness, her life, like a hurricane. She had written a list of things she had to do on a piece of paper and couldn’t find it. A few minutes later she found herself at the kitchen sink, staring down at the plate on which she’d served him his sandwich and the empty cup that had held his coffee, thinking of what he’d said to her. I never wanted to hurt you.

  Rachel told herself that this time she was not going to respond to the feelings this cruel, beautiful man aroused in her, but she was wearily surprised at the depths of her pain. She had never thought she could be so helpless and baffled, as confused as an infatuated teenager. She had to put a stop to it. He was destroying her. And destroying her work.

  Standing by the kitchen counter, she made a call to the high school and left a message that she’d like Til Coffee to get in touch with her. She went back info the bedroom to find something to wear, something far different from the subdued gray shirtwaist dress she’d chosen to go to the bank that morning. She picked out one of the two dressy outfits she’d brought with her from Philadelphia—summery silk crepe from Strawbridge and Clothier with a low neckline, the fabric covered with embroidered sprigs of flowers against a cream background. It hugged her waist and breasts, and the colors turned her hair a dark auburn. She looked as though she were going to a party, not to visit the banks in Hazel Gardens. Why not? she told herself as she studied her reflection in the dresser mirror.

  She had seldom in her life thought in terms of self-preservation; she had always believed there was nothing in the world that could not be met with faith and courage. Now she was not so sure.

  She lifted her hands and pulled down the heavy braid from the top of her head and slipped it off its rubber band, shaking out her long hair. In the mirror a young woman with serious dark eyes in a lovely pale face surrounded by a luxurious cloud of dark red waves looked back. In spite of herself, Rachel shivered.

  She slid open the dresser drawer and found the scissors. She lifted them, took one last look at her reflection, and began to cut her hair.

  Jim Claxton sounded unbearably happy just to hear her voice. “Where are you?” he wanted to know. “Are you here in town? How about a dinner, a movie
? How about a few minutes to discuss agriculture, soil conditions, the joys of farmers’ cooperatives?”

  She couldn’t help smiling. “I have to come to Hazel Gardens this afternoon to see the banks about a loan. But dinner, yes. I don’t know about the movie.”

  “I don’t know about a movie either,” his deep pleasant voice admitted, “I’m swamped with work. I can’t get away until about six or six-thirty, and I have to check with the baby-sitter. But we can put something together, Miz Rachel, you can count on it. How’s your tomato crop?”

  “We can talk about it when I get there,” she told him.

  Chapter Twelve

  Hazel Gardens was a small city in the coastal piney-woods flatlands along old Highway 17, a route still taken by large numbers of tourists bypassing the endless traffic of the Interstate on their way from Savannah to Charleston. The area had a restaurant strip along Route 17 all out of proportion to its size. To Rachel, accustomed to Draytonville’s Downton Cafe or the Polar Bear Drive-In, the number of choices were dazzling.

  “Paris on the Ashepoo,” she cried. “Lights, music, gaiety—I can’t get over it.”

  She was giddy and filled with frivolous high spirits, not acting like herself at all, and literally lightheaded. Without the weight of her hair, she felt strangely liberated.

  “I can’t get over it either.” Jim Claxton’s blue eyes were admiring, still a little surprised as he viewed the somewhat ragged edges of the dark red waves that brushed her shoulders. “You look totally different. Even prettier,” he added shyly.

  “It’s still long.” Rachel was still uncertain about her hair. “It’s not as short as I could have cut it.”

  “It looks great,” he assured her. He was obviously elated that she had taken him up on his offer for dinner. He couldn’t seem to take his, eyes off the figure-hugging embroidered dress either. “Now that you’re here, consider that the big city is yours. We can tour the sights—we have a J.C. Penny’s and a Sears, and our main attraction is the courthouse fountain just installed last year by special bond issue. Most of the time it has water in it.” When she laughed he dropped his voice and said, “We have the whole wild crazy evening before us, anything you want to do, as long as I pick up the kids from the baby-sitter before nine o’clock.”

  After a tour of the restaurant strip they finally narrowed their choice for dining down between Captain Ed’s World Famous Shrimp Boat and the Count DeRenne Inn, settling on the latter because it advertised candlelight dining, complete with coach boys in livery for valet parking.

  They ordered steak dinners in the dining room, where their table overlooked a mill wheel spilling a stream of rushing water into a green, floodlit pond. When the bill came Rachel belatedly realized the Count DeRenne Inn was terribly expensive, especially for a county agricultural agent with two small children to raise. But Jim seemed pleased as he laid three twenty-dollar bills in the server beside the check.

  “I haven’t had such a darn good time in a long time.” The intensely blue eyes in his rugged, tanned face sent her an obvious message as he moved his hand casually close to hers on the tablecloth. “This has been pretty special for me. I guess you know that.”

  “It has been for me too,” Rachel agreed quickly. She slid her hand to one side at the last moment to keep him from capturing it with his big one. The magic of the evening was only that of two people enjoying themselves, she reminded herself, and nothing more. She studied the tall blond man a little guiltily from under her lashes. Cutting her hair had taken him by surprise, but he’d seemed fascinated with the difference it made; her high-spirited mood entranced him even more. Had she been flirting with him? she wondered idly. If she had, it was the first time she’d ever done something like that in her life.

  They had been discussing the Ashepoo River Farmers Cooperative on and off all evening, using it to keep conversation flowing. Her excuse for being in Hazel Gardens was to visit the banks and ask Jim Claxton for his professional advice. As they lingered over their second cup of coffee Rachel said, “What do you think of soybeans?”

  “Oh, I like them,” he said mischievously. “Why, what’s wrong with them?”

  She smiled. “I mean for a cash crop now, instead of trying to replant tomatoes. It would really be getting away from the whole concept of the co-op,” she said quickly, “which was to set up truck crops the small farmers could market themselves. If we grew soybeans, wouldn’t we have to sell them to a grain wholesaler somewhere? Most of us don’t know much about that sort of thing.”

  He stirred his coffee for a long moment, giving it his full attention. Jim Claxton was wearing a tan sharkskin business suit, and his short, wheat-colored hair was carefully combed and smelled of a citrusy men’s cologne. He looked very neat, very consciously dressed-up for dinner with Rachel, and very attractive. There was something ruggedly appealing about him, Rachel thought, but the naked admiration in his eyes made her uncomfortable.

  “Soybeans are a good cash crop,” he said, weighing it, “and a lot of the farmers up-country are big on it. It might solve some of your problems, although I can see where’d you want to stick to your original project. Who told you about soybeans?”

  Rachel sidestepped the question and said, “We’d have to borrow money for it. But then we’re going to have to borrow money no matter what we do.” She sighed. “I didn’t make much headway with the banks here in Hazel Gardens this afternoon. They don’t think much of tenant farmers’ cooperatives either.”

  He looked at her keenly. “What are you going to do?”

  “It’s the board of directors’ decision, actually. The grant, this whole project, is set up so the members can learn to help themselves. I’ll be the one to make the recommendation to look for funding to plant another crop. We may have to get a co-signer for our loan, if nothing else.”

  Jim finished his coffee and looked at his watch. “Have anybody in mind?”

  “No, do you?” She couldn’t help smiling.

  He smiled back, his pleasant face breaking into little weathered lines at the corners of his eyes. “Miz Rachel, if I knew the answer to that—how to find money for farmers—I’d be the most popular man in DeRenne County. Look,” he interjected, “I hate to cut short the evening, but I’ve got to pick up my kids. Why don’t you come along and help me put them to bed, and I’ll offer you a cup of coffee.” When he saw her hesitate, he said, “A two-year-old and a four-year-old make darned good chaperones.”

  Rachel met his bright blue eyes. “I’d like to see them,” she said softly.

  Jim Claxton’s house was a fairly large red-brick ranch style on a tree-shaded lot on the Draytonville highway. Rachel parked her car in the driveway behind his Department of Agriculture pickup and helped carry the sleepy two-year-old—an adorable little girl with a headful of blond curls, who smelled wetly of milk and soggy diapers—from the baby-sitter’s house next door.

  “What a lovely house,” she murmured as Jim opened the front door, balancing the half-awake six-year-old on his shoulder, and turned on the lights in the living room.

  The pleasant house was decorated in inexpensive Early American furnishings: a flowered sofa, a cobbler’s bench for a coffee table, and a large braided rug in the living room. A screened terrace that led off the dining room overlooked a floodlit backyard with lush green grass and an assortment of children’s toys, tricycles, and a small plastic swimming pool. The big man carried the little boy, now staring owlishly at Rachel over his father’s shoulder, down the hall to the bedrooms, and she followed with the younger child.

  “I bought the house for Callie,” he told her as he set the little boy down gently. “Son,” he murmured, “you better go to the bathroom while I look for your pajamas.” As the four-year-old wavered sleepily out into the hallway Jim said, “It didn’t do any good. Callie couldn’t stand it here, she didn’t like Hazel Gardens, she didn’t like being a county agent’s wife, and most of all she didn’t like being a mother. At least that’s what she said whe
n she left.” He took the sleeping child out of Rachel’s arms and laid the little girl on her back in her crib with deft, experienced hands. She hardly stirred as he changed her diaper and replaced it with a new one, then covered her with a pink fluffy blanket. “Funny thing is, Callie got the divorce, went off to work in Atlanta, met some guy in her office, married him, and now they tell me she’s pregnant again. There are some things I guess you never figure out.”

  From the doorway the little boy, naked after having apparently shed his clothes in the bathroom, stared at Rachel with the same blue eyes as his father’s. “Are you my mother?” he wanted to know.

  Jim looked embarrassed. “You can see I don’t date much,” he muttered. “Scat, young’un,” he told the boy. Over his shoulder he said to Rachel, “Can you fix us some coffee? Just plug in the pot, it’s all ready. I was hoping we’d do this, that I could talk to you before you went back to Draytonville.”

  “I’ve never known any Quakers,” he said when he came out onto the porch to take the coffee Rachel handed him. “Except the one on the Quaker Oats box, and you sure don’t look like him.”

  She had heard this too many times, but she smiled. “We don’t wear plain dress anymore, no little gray bonnets or big black hats. In most ways we’re just like any other religious group. We are pacifists,” she added, “and we are dedicated to good works.”

  “I don’t miss the gray bonnet.” His eyes openly approved the pink dress which molded her breasts and clung to her slim waist. “I like what you’re wearing just fine.”

  Rachel didn’t resent the look; Jim’s admiration, his eagerness to reassure her about her new short hair, couldn’t possibly offend. She couldn’t help thinking that his wife was a terrible fool. How could any woman not have wanted him, and two such beautiful children?

  “Sometimes I think it would have been better,” she murmured, “if we’d kept some of the outward signs, plain dress, for instance, like the Mennonites. There’s some criticism that we’ve become too worldly.” She found she couldn’t meet his eyes. “But the way of Friends is still kindness and service to others. You wouldn’t be out of place,” she added impulsively, “in a Quaker meeting for worship.”