CHAPTER ELEVEN

“So it’s back on again,” Coreen said with a nod, eyeing her son warily as he and a somber Arabella broke the news to her. “Uh-huh. For how long this time?”

“For good.” He lifted his chin. “You took the gown back, I suppose,” he added.

“No, I didn’t take the gown back,” Coreen replied. “I stuck it in the closet because I was reasonably sure that you inherited enough of my common sense not to duplicate the worst mistake of your life.”

He stared at her. “You kept it?”

“Yes.” She smiled at Arabella. “I hoped he’d come to his senses. I just wasn’t sure that he could get past his old doubts. Especially,” she added, with a grim glance in Miriam’s direction, “when the past started to interfere with the present.”

“I’ll tell you all about that, someday,” Ethan promised his mother. “In the meantime, how about those plans for the wedding?”

“I’ll call Shelby tonight. Is that all right with you, Arabella?”

“I’d like that,” Arabella said with downcast eyes. “Are you sure Shelby will have time to help us?”

“She’ll make it. Her mother and I were best friends, many years ago. This time, don’t let Arabella get away,” Coreen cautioned her son.

He looked down at Arabella with open hunger. “Not on your life. Not this time.”

Arabella was trying not to look as nervous as she felt. That hunger in Ethan’s eyes was real, even if he didn’t love her, and she was suddenly uncertain about being able to satisfy it. If it hadn’t dimmed in four years, how was she, a virgin, going to be woman enough to quench it?

He saw that fear in her eyes and misinterpreted it. He drew her to one side, scowling. “You aren’t getting cold feet?”

“It’s a big step, marriage,” she said, hedging. “I’ll get my nerve back.”

“I’ll give you anything you want,” he said curtly. “You can have the moon, if you like.”

She averted her gaze to Miriam and her fiancé. They looked the picture of coming nuptial bliss. Nothing like Arabella and Ethan, so tense and nervous with each other, stepping gingerly around the big issues they still had to face.

“I don’t want the moon,” she said. “I’ll settle for a good marriage.”

“We come from similar backgrounds and we have a lot in common,” he said stubbornly. “We’ll make it.”

* * *

Shelby Jacobs Ballenger came by the next morning to talk to Arabella while Coreen and Mary listened in. She was a beautiful woman, much prettier than Miriam, and there had been a lot of gossip about the rocky romance she and her husband, Justin, had weathered. If it was true, none of it showed on her supremely happy face, and even the birth of two sons hadn’t ruined her slender figure.

“I can’t tell you how much we appreciate your help,” Arabella said, smiling at Shelby. “I’ve never had to worry about arrangements of this sort before.”

“It’s my pleasure,” Shelby replied, beaming. “I have a special place in my heart for weddings. My own was something to remember—unfortunately, for all the wrong reasons. But even with a bad start, it’s been a miracle of togetherness. Justin is all I ever wanted, he and my boys.”

“How do you manage any free time?” Arabella asked.

“It’s not easy, with preschoolers,” Shelby laughed, “but my sister-in-law is a jewel. Abby’s keeping them while she’s confined to the house. It’s their third child on the way, you know. Justin said he was going to have a long talk with Calhoun and see if he knew what was causing them!”

Everyone laughed. It was well known around Jacobsville that Calhoun and Abby would have loved an even dozen.

“Now.” Shelby got out a notebook. “Let me run you through the possibilities and then we’ll sort out the particulars.”

It took the better part of the morning. Shelby left just before lunch and Arabella’s head was swimming with it all.

“I don’t want a wedding,” she moaned to Coreen. “It’s too complicated.”

“We could elope,” Ethan suggested.

Coreen glared at him. “Mary and Matt already did that. I won’t let you. It’s a church wedding or you’ll live in sin!”

“Mother!” Ethan gave a theatrical expression of shock.

“It won’t be that difficult. We already have the bride and the dress; all we have to worry about are invitations and food.”

“Well, we could phone the guests and have a barbecue,” he replied.

“Go away, Ethan,” Coreen invited.

“Only if Arabella comes with me. I thought she might like to see the kittens. They’ve grown since she’s been away,” he added offhandedly.

She was tempted, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to be alone with him. She’d successfully avoided him the night before, because of that look in his eyes that made her skin tingle.

“Come on, chicken,” he taunted, so handsome in his jeans and chambray shirt that he looked the epitome of the movie cowboy.

“All right.” She capitulated, following him out the door, to Coreen and Mary’s amusement.

He caught her hand in his as they walked, linking her fingers sensuously through his own. He glanced down, his silver eyes approving of her gray slacks and gray-and-yellow patterned sweater. “You look good with your hair down like that.”

She smiled. “It gets in my eyes.”

He tilted his hat low over his eyes as they went out into the sunlight. “It’s going to get hot today. We might go swimming.”

“No, thanks,” she said. Too quickly. She felt his eyes probing.

“Afraid history might repeat itself?” he asked softly. He stopped at the barn door and turned her, his hands gentle, his eyes questioning. “We’re engaged. I might not draw back this time. I might take you.”

She dropped her eyes to his chest. “I want a white wedding.”

His own eyes were looking for telltale signs, for anything that would give him a hint of what she really was feeling. “So do I. Will it be any less white if we express what we feel for each other with our bodies?”

Her gaze shot up, her face flaming with bad temper. “That’s all you feel for me, though. You said so. Wanting. You want me. I’m something you’d like to use…!”

He let her go abruptly, literally pushing her away from him. “My God, I can’t get through to you, can I?” he asked bitterly.

She wrapped her arms across her breasts. “I wouldn’t put it like that,” she replied. “You wanted me four years ago, but you married Miriam. You loved her, not me.”

“Four years ago, Miriam told me she was pregnant,” he said, his face hardening at the memory. “By the time I realized she wasn’t, we were married.”

Her face tightened. She knew what he was saying. He and Miriam had anticipated their wedding vows. Probably by the time he’d made love to her at the swimming hole, he’d already been intimate with Miriam. She felt sick.

She started past him, but he caught her arms and held her. “No!” he said roughly. “It wasn’t like that! It was you from the very beginning. Miriam was the substitute, Arabella, not you.” He pulled her back against him, his teeth grinding together in anguish. “I knew that afternoon that if I didn’t do something, I’d have you in spite of all my noble intentions. Miriam was handy and willing.” He bent his head over hers. “I used her, and she knew it, and hated me for it. I cheated all three of us. She came to me and told me she thought she was pregnant, so I married her. You had your career and I didn’t think you were old enough to cope with marriage, so I let you go. My God, don’t you think I paid for that decision? I paid for it for four long years. I’m still paying!”

Time slowed to a standstill as what he was saying penetrated her mind. “You made love to Miriam because you wanted me?” she asked wanly. That was just what Miriam had said. That it had been a physical obsession on his part.

“Yes,” he said with a heavy sigh. His fingers smoothed over the fabric of her sweater, caressing her shoulders. “And couldn’t have you.” His mouth pressed her hair away from her neck and sought it, warm and hard and fiercely passionate. “I wouldn’t have been able to stop, Arabella,” he whispered huskily. “Once I had you, I couldn’t have stopped.” His mouth opened, warm and moist against the tender flesh, arousing and slow. “You’d never have been able to leave, don’t you see, baby? You’d have been mine. Totally mine.”

Her eyes closed as the arousing movement of his lips made her knees go weak. He was seducing her with words. She shouldn’t let him do this to her. She was weak.

He edged her into the deserted barn, against the inside of the closed door, so that the weight of his lean body pinned her there from breast to thighs. He shuddered with his need.

“I’m going to make you marry me,” he said into her mouth. “If it takes seduction, that’s all right, too. I’ll get you to the altar anyway I have to.”

“Blackmailer,” she protested shakenly.

“Kiss me back.” He moved against her and felt her begin to tremble. Her mouth lifted and he took it with slow, aching movements that made her moan under the crush of the kiss, that made her give it back in a feverish surge of passion.

A long time later, he dragged her arms from around his neck and stepped away from her, a reddish burn along his cheeks, a tremor in the lean, sure hands that held her wrists.

“You can have a month,” he said with savage hunger just barely held in check. “If the ring isn’t on your finger by then, look out. I won’t wait a night longer.”

He turned and left her there, still shaking, with her back to the wall.

* * *

Exactly one month later, she spoke her vows in the small Jacobsville Methodist church with her father there to give her away and half of Jacobsville in attendance. Ethan hadn’t touched her since that day in the barn, but his eyes threatened her every time he looked at her. He might not love her, but his passion for her was as alive and hot as the weather.

Miriam had long since gone back to the Caribbean with Jared, and she’d sent them a wedding invitation. She’d beaten Ethan to the altar by two weeks, but Ethan hadn’t seemed to mind. He’d been busy, and away a good bit recently on ranch business. Coreen remarked dryly that it was probably just as well, because his moods were making everyone nervous.

Only Arabella understood exactly what those moods were about, and tonight she was going to have to cope with the cause of them. He’d reserved a hotel room for them at a resort on the Gulf of Mexico, and she was more nervous than she’d ever been in her life. All the walls were going to come down and she’d be alone with Ethan and his fierce desire for her. She didn’t know how she was going to survive a possession that was purely physical.

“You made a beautiful bride,” Coreen said, kissing her just before she went upstairs to change. She wiped away tears. “I just know you and Ethan are going to make it this time.”

“I hope so,” Arabella confessed, radiant despite her fears as she paused to kiss Mary and Matt and to thank Shelby.

“It was my pleasure,” Shelby assured her, and tightened her grip on her tall husband’s hand. Justin Ballenger was altogether too much man for the average woman, but Shelby had moved in under his heart, and he looked as if he didn’t mind one bit. He smiled down at her, his lean face briefly radiant as his dark eyes swept over her with possession and pride.

“I won’t forget all you’ve done for me,” Arabella murmured, a little shy of Justin. She leaned forward and kissed Shelby’s cheek. “Thank you.”

“I hope you’ll be very happy,” Shelby said gently.

“You get out of marriage what you put into it,” Justin added and smiled at her. “Give a little and take a little. You’ll do fine.”

“Thanks,” Arabella replied.

He and Shelby moved off, hand in hand, and Arabella watched them with pure envy.

Ethan caught her hand, pulling her around. He searched her eyes with a light in his that puzzled her. It was the first time he’d come near her since he’d said, “I do,” and he hadn’t kissed her at the altar, to everyone’s surprise and puzzlement.

“The luggage is in the car. Let’s go,” he said quietly, his eyes narrowing as they smoothed over her body. “I want you to myself.”

“But…aren’t we going to change?” she faltered.

“No.” He framed her face in his lean hands and pulled it up to the descent of his. “I want to take that dress off you myself,” he whispered, and his lips touched hers in a promise of a kiss that made her knees go weak. “Come along, Mrs. Hardeman.”

He made the name sound new and sweet. She took his hand and let him lead her out, coping somehow with the shock and amusement of all the people who’d gathered around them here. The reception was supposed to be held in the fellowship hall, but Ethan had apparently decided that they were going to forego the traditional celebration. He grinned, whispered something to his delighted mother, and they left in a hail of rice and confetti and good wishes.

They drove to Galveston in his mother’s Mercedes-Benz, since his own car had been left as a decoy for well-wishers with their soap and tin cans. His mother’s car was untouched, and he grinned at Arabella’s expression when she saw it.

“We’re too old for all that,” he chided as he put her in the car. “Tin cans and soaped windows—my God.”

She made a face at him. “Some of us sure grow up too fast,” she muttered.

“Not quite fast enough, in your case.” He started the car and took off around the back of the church, glancing with amusement at the rear-view mirror where he could see a few friends were just staring after them with astonished faces. “I could very happily have married you at the age of sixteen, but I had a guilty conscience about robbing the cradle.”

She was faintly shocked at the admission, not sure if she should even take the remark seriously. But he wasn’t smiling.

“Don’t believe me?” he asked with a quick glance. “Wait until we get to Galveston. You’ve got a lot of surprises coming.”

“Have I?” She wondered what they were. She had a feeling the biggest one was going to be the wedding night she’d secretly dreaded. Love on one side wasn’t going to be enough to get her through that, and she knew it.

He kept music playing until they reached the lovely brick hotel on the beach and checked in. Their room overlooked the beach and Galveston Bay, and it was a remote spot, for all its closeness to town. Sea gulls dipped down on the beach and she watched them wistfully.

“Change into some jeans and a top and we’ll walk down the beach,” he suggested, sensing her discomfort. “It’s a bit cool today for swimming.”

“Okay.” She hesitated, wondering if he was going to expect her to undress in front of him.

“You can have the bathroom. I’ll change in here,” he said easily.

She gave him a grateful smile and got her things out of her suitcase. By the time she’d changed into her jeans and a gray pullover shirt, he was wearing jeans and a blue-and-white striped shirt.

“Let’s go.” He didn’t give her time to be self-conscious about sharing the big room with its two double beds. He led her out onto the beach and they spent the afternoon looking for shells and talking. Later they had a seafood supper in a restaurant located in an old lighthouse, and sat on the big deck after dark and watched the ships pass.

By the time they went back into their room, Arabella was relaxed and so much in love that she didn’t even protest when Ethan took her in his arms in the doorway and began to kiss her with fervent hunger.

He didn’t turn on the light. He closed and locked the door in the dark and picked Arabella up, carrying her to the first of the two beds.

She was lost in his hard, deep kisses, in the caressing movements of his lean hands as he undressed her with slow delight, discovering her body with his lips first, then his hands. She stretched like a cat while he undressed and when she felt the first touch of his naked skin against her own, she gasped with shocked pleasure.

His mouth covered hers then, gentling her. As the minutes began to move faster, as the heat began to burn inside her, as the kisses grew endless and his hands made her shiver and cry out, she forgot her fear and gave him what he wanted. When he moved over her, she welcomed the hard thrust of his body with trusting abandon.

He pushed down and she clung to him. There was a flash of pain, and then it was feverish movement and growing pleasure that finally exploded into an ecstasy that bordered on pain in its sweeping fulfillment.

“No,” he groaned when she made a hesitant movement, aeons later. His hands swept her back, hard against him, and he shuddered as he held her there, against his sweat-dampened body. “Stay here.”

“Are you all right?” she whispered into his throat.

“Now, I am,” he replied. His lips brushed tenderly over her face. “You love me. We couldn’t have made love like this out of desire alone,” he whispered huskily. “Not with this kind of tenderness.”

She closed her eyes. So he knew. It wasn’t surprising. That had probably been her biggest fear, that when he made love to her, he was going to realize how much she cared.

Her fingers moved gently in his thick, damp hair. “Yes,” she confessed then. “I love you. I always have. I don’t think they’ve invented a cure for it.”

“God forbid that they ever should,” he whispered back. He cradled her intimately in the curve of his legs with a long sigh. His hand smoothed over her waist, her breast, with slow possession and he laughed. “You’re mine,” he said with gruff amusement. “I’m never going to let you go now. You’re going to live with me and bear my children and we’re going to be everything to each other for the rest of our lives.”

“Even though you only want me?” she asked sadly.

“I want you, yes,” he replied. His hands smoothed her back against him, so that her body could feel the urgent press of his. “I want you to the point of madness and beyond. If it were only desire that I felt, any woman’s body would do. But that isn’t the case.” He held her hips to his. “Not only was there no Miriam, there was no other woman for four years. Is that enough proof of love?”

Her breath caught. She turned in his grasp, her eyes trying to see his through the moonlit darkness. “You love me?”

“My God, with all my heart,” he said huskily. “You little blind fool, didn’t you know? My mother did. Mary and Matt did. Everyone knew what I felt, including Miriam, so why didn’t you?”

She laughed, on fire with the first daring certainty of shared love, belonging. “Because I was a blind little fool! Oh, Ethan, I love you, I love you, I love…!”

That was as far as she got. He rolled her into him and his hands grew quickly urgent, like the hard mouth that had cut off her hasty admission. He moved against her and she moved to accommodate him, and for a long time, they said nothing while their bodies spoke in a new and intimate language of love.

“God knows how I’ll share you with the stage,” he groaned much later when they were propped up together sharing a soft drink he’d retrieved from the refrigerator in the room. “But I’ll manage.”

“Oh. That.” She grimaced and laid her face against his warm, bare shoulder. “Well, I sort of lied.”

“What?”

“I sort of lied,” she repeated. “I will be able to use my hand again, and play again, but not like I did before.” She sighed, nuzzling her cheek against him with a loving sigh. “I can teach, but I can’t perform. And before you say it, I’m not sorry. I’d rather have you than be as great as Van Cliburn.”

He couldn’t speak. If he needed proof of her love, that gave it to him. He bent and kissed her eyes with breathless tenderness. “Truly, Arabella?” he asked softly.

“Truly, Ethan.” She nibbled at his lips and simultaneously set the ice-cold bottom of the soft drink on his warm, flat belly.

His voice exploded in the darkness and he jumped. Arabella laughed with endless delight, anticipating a delicious reprisal.

“Why, you little…” he began, and she could see the smile, hear the loving threat, see the quick movement in her direction.

She put the drink on the bedside table and reached out to him, drawing him to her, accepting her fate with arms that would accept everything life had to offer for the rest of her life. Ethan in her arms. Heaven.

* * * * *