10
Sunlight glinted on the big jet as it streaked southeastward, thirty thousand feet above the earth.
Careful not to disturb Katie, who was asleep, her shining head resting against his shoulder, Ramon reached across her and pulled the shade down over the window, shielding her beautiful face from the glare of the sun. The flight had been extraordinarily rough, and many of the passengers were showing distinct signs of alarm. But not Katie, Ramon thought with a tender smile at her sleeping form. Beneath her delightfully soft, feminine exterior, Ramon was discovering that she possessed tremendous courage, strength and determination.
Even yesterday and today, when her parents’ obvious sadness over her impending departure had placed a terrible burden of guilt on Katie’s slim shoulders, she had borne their unhappiness with calm understanding and smiling resolve, despite the emotional strain Ramon could see she was feeling.
On Friday night Katie’s parents had volunteered to handle the subletting of her apartment and to pack the rest of her belongings for shipment to Puerto Rico. Then they had insisted that she spend the weekend at their home instead of her apartment. Although he had also stayed there over the weekend, Ramon had not had either the opportunity or the excuse to be alone with her since Friday.
As the hours had passed, he had watched Katie’s tension mounting, bracing himself for the time when she would weigh her uncertain future with him against the love and security her parents and job still offered, and tell him she had changed her mind about going to Puerto Rico. Selfishly, he had longed to get her back to her apartment and into his arms, where, with time and privacy, he knew he could make her passion overwhelm her mind. Yet, even without the physical stimulus of desire, Katie hadn’t wavered in her brave resolve to leave with him.
Her long curly lashes made shadows on her creamy cheeks, and he pleasured himself with the sheer beauty of her profile. He was glad he had booked first-class seats for them, because they were roomier. Katie had mistakenly assumed that the reason they were “lucky enough” to fly first class was that the airline had oversold the coach seats and had automatically offered them vacant first-class seats for the same price, and Ramon had let her believe it.
Bitterness seeped through him, hardening his jaw, and Ramon turned his head to stare out the window across the aisle. A few months ago he could have taken Katie to Puerto Rico in Galverra International’s private Boeing 727 jet, with its splendid bedroom, dining room and spacious living room, all furnished in magnificent antiques and carpeted in white. Katie would have enjoyed that, Ramon thought. But she would have been more thrilled with his own sleek Lear jet, which he had flown into St. Louis and which was now in a hangar at the St. Louis airport.
The Lear was his plane, not the corporation’s, but like everything else he owned, including the houses, the island and the yacht, he had put the small jet up as collateral against loans the corporation had needed and now could not repay. What would have been the point of flying Katie to Puerto Rico in the Lear today, of giving her a taste of the luxurious life he could have offered her—when doing so would only make the life he was now able to afford appear even more drab and impoverished by comparison?
Wearily, he leaned his head against the back of his seat and closed his eyes. He had no right to ask Katie to share his exile, to take her from her fashionable apartment, her career, and ask her to live on a farm in a renovated cottage. It was selfish and wrong of him, but he couldn’t bear to think of life without her. Once he could have given her everything, now he could give her nothing—not even honesty. Not yet.
Tomorrow he was scheduled for several meetings, one of which was with his accountant, and he was clinging to the slender hope that his personal financial situation might not be as disastrous as it now seemed. After the meeting he would know exactly where he stood, and then he would have to find some way to explain to Katie who he was and what he had been. He had insisted on honesty between them, and although he had not actually lied to her, he now owed her the truth—the whole truth. The thought of telling Katie that he was a failure twisted his insides into knots. He didn’t care if the whole world thought of him that way, but it hurt unbearably to know he would be a failure in Katie’s eyes.
It had been bad enough explaining the situation to Katie’s father at breakfast Friday morning. Fondness for his future father-in-law softened Ramon’s taut features as he recalled the unexpectedly hostile beginning of that meal.
When Ramon had walked into the private men’s club where they had agreed to meet, Ryan Connelly had been waiting for him with suppressed anger radiating from his entire body. “What the hell kind of game are you playing, Galverra?” the older man had demanded in a low, furious voice as soon as Ramon sat down. “You’re no more a small-time Puerto Rican farmer than I am. It’s been driving me crazy why you looked so familiar to me. It wasn’t just your name that seemed familiar, it was your face. Last night I remembered the article about you in Time magazine, and—”
As Ramon had explained to Katie’s father about the impending collapse of Galverra International, Ryan Connelly’s fury had given way first to amazement and then to compassionate understanding. Ramon had tried not to smile when Katie’s father volunteered financial help. Ryan Connelly was a wealthy man, but as Ramon had explained to him, it would take one hundred investors like Ryan to shore up Galverra International. Otherwise it would still collapse beneath its own weight and take everyone who had invested in the corporation with it.
The big jet dropped sickeningly into a powerful downdraft, then soared upward with a stomach tightening lurch. “Are we landing?” Katie mumbled.
“No,” Ramon said. He brushed his lips against her fragrant hair. “Go back to sleep. I will awaken you when we begin our final approach at Miami.” Obediently, Katie closed her eyes and snuggled closer to him.
The cockpit door opened and the pilot started down the aisle toward the rest room. The passenger seated in front of Ramon stopped him with some questions and as the pilot bent down to reply, Ramon watched his eyes rove appreciatively over Katie’s face, lingering there as he answered. Ramon felt a flash of annoyance that he immediately recognized as jealousy.
Jealousy—another new emotion with which he must learn to cope because of Katie. After bestowing a glacial look on the unfortunate pilot, Ramon reached for Katie’s hand and laced his fingers through hers. He sighed. At this rate, jealousy was going to be his constant companion.
Just walking through the airport with her and watching the men who turned to stare as she passed had set his teeth on edge. Dressed in a turquoise silk dress that showed off her long, shapely legs in their high heels, she looked like a model. No—the models he had known did not have Katie’s lush curves or elegant perfection of features. They had glamour. Katie had beauty.
Katie flexed his fingers, and Ramon realized that he’d been possessively tightening his grip on her hand. Lightly, sensuously, he stroked his thumb against her palm. Even in her sleep Katie responded to his touch and moved closer against him. God, how he wanted her! Just having her nestled against his shoulder made him throb with desire and ache with tenderness.
Leaning his head back, Ramon closed his eyes and sighed with profound pleasure. He had done it! He had actually gotten Katie on this plane with him! She was coming to Puerto Rico. She was going to be his. He admired her independence and intelligence, and he adored the vulnerability and softness within her. She was the embodiment of everything he liked in women: she was feminine without being vapid or helpless; proud without being haughty; assertive without being aggressive. Sexually, she was liberated in her thinking but not her actions, which pleased him immensely. He knew he would have hated it if Katie had casually given her beautiful body to other men. She was infinitely more special, more precious to him because she had chosen not to indulge in casual sex. Which, he supposed, made him guilty of applying the double standard for men and women’s morality, considering the number of women from St. Moritz to St. Croix he’d had in the last decade.
Ramon smiled inwardly, thinking of how irate Katie would be if she knew he felt this way about her morals. She would accuse him of being everything from outrageously old-fashioned to hopelessly Latin, which was rather humorous, because he suspected that the reason Katie was drawn to him was—
The brief pleasure he’d been feeling was promptly strangled by the same doubt that had been winding tighter and tighter within him for the past several days. He didn’t know why Katie was drawn to him. He didn’t know why she thought she should marry him, had no idea what reasons she was giving herself for doing so. The only valid reason would be that she loved him.
But she didn’t.
Mentally, Ramon recoiled from that truth, yet he knew he had to face it and come to terms with it. Not once had Katie so much as mentioned the word love. Three nights ago, when he had told her that he loved her, the words had burst out of him, yet Katie had chosen to act as if she hadn’t heard him. How ironic that when, for the first time in his life, he told a woman he loved her, she hadn’t even been able to say she loved him too.
Grimly, he wondered if this was fate’s way of repaying him for all the times women had said they loved him and he had responded with silence, or a noncommittal smile, because he refused to claim an emotion he didn’t feel.
If Katie didn’t think she loved him, why was she on this plane? Sexually, she wanted him, he knew that. From the first moment he had taken her into his arms he had been forcing her to want him more, relentlessly fanning the flames of her body’s desire for his. Apparently passion was the only thing she felt for him; desire her only reason for being on this plane.
No, dammit! That couldn’t be true. Katie was too intelligent to consider marrying him solely for sexual gratification. She must feel something else for him. After all, there had always been a tremendous magnetic pull between them, and it was emotional as well as physical. If she didn’t love him, could he possibly bind her to him with her body alone? Even if he was able to, could he bear to live with her, knowing his feelings for her were so much deeper than hers for him?