Sunrise Surrender--Jarrett Family Sagas--Book Three Page 8

  Your humble servant,

  Brett Reall

  For one brief instant her reservations about the man vanished beneath the romantic nature of his apology. But Brett Real was nobody’s “humble servant” and she would be anybody’s fool to believe otherwise.

  She finished the article on Cape Girardeau—to post from Cairo the following day—and was still in a dither when Mama Rachael returned from playing poker with that scoundrel.

  “Delta, child, he’s such a nice young man,” Mama Rachael insisted after Delta informed her of Brett’s invitation, saying, “He even went so far as to cancel my invitation at the captain’s table. The nerve of him! Now I must remain in this tiny cabin and have Orville fetch me a cold dinner.”

  “There’s no reason for you to refuse the man’s dinner invitation,” Mama Rachael argued. “Land sakes, what harm could he do you in a dining hall full of people?”

  He could stare at me, Delta thought, feeling herself warm beneath Brett’s intense perusal, even as she envisioned it. Her eyes involuntarily went to the roses and she thought of the startled look in his eyes when she glanced up from the rose garden—startled, yet suffused with a warm, welcoming glow.

  She winced. What had turned his mood sour, his gaze to ice?

  “M’sieur Reall is a very good gambler,” Mama Rachael continued. “And he’s a gentleman. Nothing like those slick-fingered, silver-tongued heathens who frequent saloons on shore. Why, you could write an article about him.”

  Delta smiled in spite of her gloom. The article she had planned to write about Brett Reall would not extol his virtues, but his vices. The article she planned would set the man in his place, once and for all.

  Her spirits began to lift at the thought. Why not go ahead with it? If she played things right, asked just the right questions, she might get all the leads she needed from this one dinner engagement. Why not?

  “This once,” she agreed at length, eyeing Mama Rachael sternly. “But you must promise to find me at the end of the meal. I don’t want to be left alone with him after dinner.”

  Mama Rachael shook her finger in Delta’s direction. “Delta, child, how do you expect to catch a man with an old lady like me tagging along?”

  Delta’s mouth fell open at the astonishing remark. “I’m not out to catch a man, Mama Rachael.” I’m out to catch a pirate. The thought raised goosebumps along her arms.

  Mama Rachael busied herself pulling garments from the chiffonier. “This yellow gown is perfect.” She withdrew the matching yellow wrap, then hastily thrust it back inside the wardrobe. “If your shoulders get cold, he can lend you his jacket.”

  “Mama Rachael!”

  Ignoring Delta’s outburst, the little lady continued to flit around the room preparing Delta for her dinner engagement. She found the curling iron and placed it over the chimney of a lamp. “We’ll curl your hair and pin in a couple of those lovely yellow roses. My, my what lovely roses. I knew that man was a gentleman. Haven’t I told you so all along?”

  Delta couldn’t believe her ears. “Hollis sent you as a chaperon, not a matchmaker.”

  “I can be both.”

  “No, a chaperon protects her charge from the wolf. You’re trying to throw me to him.”

  Mama Rachael huffed and Delta dutifully dressed in the yellow silk gown, thinking all the while that perhaps she should have awakened her eager chaperon the night before. What would Mama Rachael have thought about the way this gentleman forced himself on her reluctant charge in the dead of night?

  Not the dead of night, her brain rejected. By the light of a golden moon.

  Tugging on over-the-elbow white gloves, she heeded Mama Rachael’s advice to leave the wrap behind—not because she intended to let Brett Reall drape his jacket around her shoulders. She vowed to return to her own stateroom long before the chill of night set in.

  But her knees almost buckled on the last carpeted step leading to the observation deck. Already she regretted her decision to accept this invitation, and she hadn’t even looked into Brett’s stormy eyes yet. Perhaps he wouldn’t show up.

  Luck was not with her, however. A crowd thronged about the doors to the dining room, but Brett Reall caught her eye the moment she stepped off the staircase. And the inspection she received was one she recognized instantly. Not the strange, intense perusal of a phantom from her past, this look was purely sensual, one of approval and promises from a handsome man to a woman he obviously found attractive.

  She felt her skin glow and hoped her reaction did not show in her own eyes. When he touched her elbow she was glad to have the fabric of her gloves between their skin.

  Once inside the door he escorted her to a small table for two snuggled into a far corner from the dais—one of only a few such tables in the entire room.

  Desperate to break the tension between them, she struggled to think of something impersonal to say, finally observing, “I understand you and your traveling companion usually dine in seclusion.”

  Walking around the table, Brett seated himself opposite her. When she chanced a look at him, an amused grin tipped the corners of his lips. His eyes left hers briefly to travel the crowded room. “This is the table Pierre and I usually take, oui. I would not have called dining in a room this size filled with prattling strangers seclusion.” He shrugged. “But being a journalist, you must know more about words than I.”

  “I didn’t mean seclusion,” she admitted hastily. Unbuttoning the wrist of her right glove, she wriggled her hand from the mitt, then concentrated on tucking the fingers into the arm of the glove, freeing her hand to eat. “They say last night was the first time you’ve dined at the captain’s table.”

  The conversation was inane, and glancing up again she realized, unfortunate, as well. A discerning smile creased Brett Reall’s beautifully shaped lips. His black eyes questioned.

  She flushed. “I mean—” Stumbling, she sought some way to cover the fact that she had discussed him with others.

  He leaned back in his chair. “They’re right,” he admitted, then refused to let her off the hook so easily, adding, “whoever you questioned about me. Last night was my first time at the captain’s table. The reason, m’moiselle, contains little in the way of intrigue. It was the first time I had been invited.”

  A waiter appeared with their soup tureens. Delta escaped Brett’s arrogant expression by examining the image of the Mississippi Princess fired in gold on the bowl of her porcelain tureen. With equal attentiveness she unfolded the crisp linen napkin and pressed it across her lap.

  “A bottle of champagne,” she heard Brett order. “And none of that bubbly house stuff you pass off on us hapless gamblers in the cabin lounge.”

  Light danced from the brass candle fixture in the center of their table. Crystal tinkled nearby. A violinist strolled the room. The strains of his instrument added to an atmosphere that was already so charged it closed out the babbling voices around them, enveloping them as in their own private space. In spite of the warm feeling that was beginning to creep up her back, she felt awkward and was sorry she had come. She wanted to run from the room, but dared not. What did he think this was, a party? Why did he think she accepted his miserable invitation?

  “Champagne?” she questioned, but her voice cracked somewhere in the middle and she was surprised that he understood.

  “You don’t drink champagne?”

  “You needn’t waste it on me. The roses were enough, and—” She wanted to tell him that all the roses ever grown, all the champagne ever fermented could never make up for his actions the evening before. But she didn’t. For some reason she was reluctant to spoil the warmth growing inside her, relaxing her, truly relaxing her, for the first time she could remember since her nightmares had begun.

  “I suppose you picked them yourself from the beds around the city hall?”

  He laughed. It was a soft, rich sound that strummed her senses. Then he sobered. “If I thought it would make up for my appalling actions last night, I would
claim to have grown them myself. But the truth is, nothing can make up for that.”

  His admission shocked her. Her eyes flew to his. He looked sincere, but— First an apology, now an admission of the shamefulness of his actions, both from a man she would have thought too arrogant for either.

  She looked away when the waiter brought their champagne. Brett tasted it, accepted it, and after the waiter left, offered a toast.

  “To a new beginning.”

  The rims of their glasses touched as he spoke those words, and her hand trembled, causing the glasses to clink against each other, sending the tinkling sound of fine crystal rippling through the already impregnated air.

  Involuntarily her eyes sought his again, and she felt caught in his snare. She wanted to look away, but could not. It was as though he held her by some invisible bond that reached from his eyes to her very soul. As though he had held her like this before, as though he had held her like this forever.

  Forcefully she broke their gaze, took a gulp of champagne and again considered running from the table. With great effort she was able to remain in her seat. She started to taste the soup, but had to mentally steady her hand in order to keep her spoon from shaking.

  The soup, or perhaps the familiar actions of lifting spoon to mouth, swallowing the liquid, and repeating the process, calmed her. Finally she looked up to find him eating, as well.

  “You should have auditioned with Zanna for the role of leading man,” she told him.

  He studied her, silent a moment. “You’re comparing me to that pantywaist who fawned all over you last night and again this morning?”

  She laughed at his genuine consternation, then found herself staring at him, wide-eyed, when the implication of his words began to take form. Quickly she diverted her gaze.

  Brett shrugged. “I had trouble carrying on a conversation with you at dinner last night while he undressed you with his eyes from across the table.”

  “He did nothing of the sort,” she denied, watching the waiter remove her empty soup tureen and replace it with a dinner plate. Her head spun with a new phrase while she contemplated the meal—fresh catfish and scalloped potatoes. He had noticed. This handsome man who for some mysterious reason sent her senses reeling had noticed Nat’s attention. Whatever did that mean?

  She glanced up. “To answer your question, no, I’m not comparing you with anyone. You’re just a very good actor.” She watched his eyes narrow.

  “You think this is an act? The roses? The champagne, the dinner invitation—all an act to what? Seduce an innocent girl?”

  His suggestion caused her food to tumble in her stomach. “Well, you won’t.”

  The crease between his eyes deepened. “You don’t even know me, yet you cast me as a villain.”

  Her brain spun with the mercurial changes in this man. “You forget last night, m’sieur.”

  He held her angry gaze, his voice soft and dangerous. “No, ma chère, I will never forget last night.”

  She looked away, stared at her plate. The thought of eating with the lump in her throat almost made her choke.

  In a manner to which she was becoming accustomed, his voice changed from soft to harsh. “God’s bones, what else can I do? I apologized in every way I know how. I can’t change what happened, take everything back. But neither can you. Why did you come on deck dressed like you were out to seduce a man? Didn’t you know how you looked? Pierre and Gabriel were all eyes. Didn’t you care?”

  “I—” She bit off her words short of telling him about her nightmare, for that nightmare shot suddenly to mind with the force of a rocket on the Fourth of July. Horrified, she jumped from her chair and fled through the nearest door, running, stumbling along the deck until she felt his hand grasp her arm, bringing her to a halt.

  He jerked her into his arms with the same force he had used the evening before. But unlike the evening before he held her tightly against his body, clasped her head to his chest, and let her sob into his fine black jacket.

  The nightmare had returned suddenly with the verisimilitude she usually felt upon awakening from it. Beneath their feet the deck gently rocked, but Brett held her steady, never uttering a sound, while she cried against his rapidly beating heart.

  When at last her sobs ceased and her heart stopped racing, he drew her back and dried her eyes with his handkerchief.

  “Are you finished?” he asked in tones as gentle as the breeze.

  She nodded, snuffling.

  He held the handkerchief to her nose, ordering, “Blow.”

  Afterwards he stared solemnly into her face so long she began to wonder what he was thinking. Idly he began to push her gloves down her arms. Then he removed them in the same inadvertent manner. Finished, he tucked them into one of his jacket pockets, and his hands retraced their path, sending showers of warmth along her arms. All the while he looked intently into her eyes, as though searching for answers. When he spoke his voice carried a tone of confusion, of awe.

  “We can’t begin again, can we?”

  Her heart stopped. What was he saying? That this was the end? That couldn’t be. She could not, must not, allow such a thing. “Why do you say that?”

  The tone of his voice didn’t change when he spoke again, nor did the intensity in his eyes lessen. “Because we already are.”

  “Are what?” She watched his Adam’s apple bob above his starched collar.

  “We just are,” he said. “You and me. We are. It’s like we have been forever.”

  She thought about his words, words that made no sense. Yet, they expressed the same sentiment she had felt only moments before. Forcefully she pushed the nightmare aside, into the niche she had created for it in the back of her brain. If only it would remain there.

  “Whatever it is you’re talking about,” she declared, “I don’t believe in such things.”

  “Neither do I. But there’s something between us, Delta Jarrett. Something that’s been going on a long, long time. I feel it, and you do, too.”

  Later she thought how if another man had said these things she would have accused him of employing a unique if somewhat bizarre courting technique. But she couldn’t accuse Brett of such, because what he said was true.

  With studied slowness, he lifted her arms and placed them around his neck, then slid his own around her shoulders. Gradually, gently, giving her all the time she needed to pull away, he drew her closer. But she didn’t pull away. Such a thing never entered her mind.

  When his lips touched hers, she reached to meet them. And this time they set her on fire. This time they were soft and kind, turning her melancholy into something so poignant tears again filled her eyes. But they were no longer tears of trepidation. She tightened her arms around his neck, feeling her tensed muscles relax even as her body sprang to life with a thousand different sensations—sensations that were all new, yet deeply familiar at the same time.

  Consumed by a sense of anticipation, she opened her lips to his and accepted his sensuous exploration by returning his rising passion with passion of her own.

  His fingers slipped up her nape, cupping her head, and each place they touched came alive. The throb of his heart charged hers. The feel of his hard body pressed solidly against her own made her ache to feel his skin against her skin, soft and hot, like always—

  Like always. That thought unleashed her nightmare from its cage in the corner of her brain. She drew back, stared into his glazed eyes. Easing one hand from around his neck, she trailed her fingers in a tender line across his neck and up his jaw.

  The moonlight shone on his solemn face, deepening his eye sockets, hiding his eyes. His lips felt soft beneath her fingers, as she had known they would. She traced the chiseled outline of his mouth, her eyes riveted on those sensuous, passionate lips, those familiar, oh-so-familiar lips—

  From her nightmare.

  Some call him a pirate.

  Fear returned. Swiftly it swept up her neck, exploding inside her head.

  “Who are y
ou, Brett Reall?” she whispered. Her heart beat faster. “What do you want from me?”

  Bewitched by the magic of the moment Brett stood stunned by Delta’s sudden change in mood. One moment she had been willing and passionate, the next her body went rigid in his arms. He watched fear spread across her face, tightening the once-supple mouth, turning her eyes to rock-hard sapphires.

  Like her mood change, her questions stunned him. They had sprung like demons emerging incongruously out of the soft pools of her desire.

  “This,” he mumbled, lowering his lips. “This is what I want from you, chère.” He kissed her again. It took longer to quell her fears than the first time, but finally he felt her relax against him. Her arm crept tentatively back around his neck.

  With his hand to her back, he pressed her gently against him, nestling the soft mounds of her breasts into his chest. They tantalized, those breasts, they beckoned him. He ached to touch them, to kiss them, to suckle them like a babe.

  His hand swept down her back. He crushed her bustle of yellow silk in a palm and pulled her hips against him, knowing that somewhere beneath his wool trousers and her voluminous skirts they could find fulfillment, sweet and wild as a mountain stream, hot and steamy as bayou water.

  What he couldn’t do with his body, he attempted with his lips, and soon her mouth opened to his quest. Soon she reciprocated, seeking, he knew, the same wondrous destination as he—a summit where their passions could crest, spiraling them in mutual surrender toward the heavens.

  From the dining room behind them voices erupted, finally entering his engrossed brain. Befuddled, he set her aside with trembling arms. He held her shoulders with a firm grip, as much to support himself as to support her.

  Diners wandered onto the deck. He released her arms but remained standing too close for propriety’s sake. What the hell kind of spell had she cast over him?

  His heart hammered in his ears. Her now-puffy lips remained slightly open, inviting. Her wide-eyed, innocent vulnerability only added to his rising passion. And from somewhere deep within him, remnants of his earlier plan began to emerge.