His fingertips traced her spine in one stroke, skimming over invisible, downy hairs, and his touch sent a sensual chill through her. Swallowing tightly, she reached around to the back of her pantalets to unfasten them. As she fumbled with the button, he slid his arms around her and took her hands, squeezing them briefly before moving them aside and freeing the button with a twist of his fingers. The pantalets dropped to the floor.
Heath lifted her up in his arms and carried her to the bed effortlessly. As she hooked her arms around his neck and was clasped against the hard sinew of his body, she began to relish the feeling that had once frightened her. It was actually pleasant to feel so disarmed and vulnerable, exciting to be held by a man who could throw her off balance so easily, a man who didn’t shy away from arguments, a man so far above embarrassment or prudishness that she knew nothing she did could ever shock him.
He lowered her down to the bed and shed his robe. His tanned skin seemed to trap the glow of the light as he bent over her, his gaze moving from her toes all the way up to her face. Hungry blue eyes met hers, shining with dark fire. “You’re beautiful, Lucy,” he whispered.
They were words that he had said to her before, but in this moment of discovery it seemed that this was the first time she had ever heard them. Her gaze faltered and her eyelashes lowered as he kissed her, his hand sliding beneath her head to cradle it possessively. His mouth demanded that she respond to him, his stroking hand insisted on venturing to the most secret places of her body. All of the hesitation and the shyness that Lucy had expected to feel crumbled and burnt to ashes in the face of his passion. Were those really her arms, pulling his head down to make his kisses deeper? Were those muted, smothered sounds coming from her throat? Oh, she had never dreamed, never thought, never imagined how good his naked skin would feel against hers. She wanted to know what every inch of him felt like. Her hands slid up his back to his heavy, powerful shoulders, her palms smoothing over the faint edges of sears and back down to his lean waist. Boldly she let her fingertips drift to the hard surface of his buttocks and he groaned against her lips.
“It’s been such a long time. I’ve wanted you for so long . . .” Heath slid down her body and pressed his mouth in the fragrant valley between her breasts. His thoughts careened into a haphazard jumble. The needs and the forceful demands of his body took the place of caution. His hands were filled with the softness of her; his mouth parched for the taste of her skin. She had fought him and denied him, turned his world upside down, set countless obstacles in his way, and suddenly here she was in his arms, yielding to him freely. All his frustrated desire was aroused to an acute pitch, and he was too far gone now to stop, think, or slow down. It seemed that his whole life was balanced on the outcome of this moment, and he knew that he had to have her or die of hunger.
Lucy gasped as his probing mouth found her nipple and surrounded the sensitive peak. His tongue stroked wetly over the very tip; then, his teeth caught at the contracting flesh and pulled at it delicately. Writhing, she felt the sensation extending to the pulsing softness between her thighs. Helplessly she let him spread her legs with his hands. She was so consumed by desire that she was shaking. He was kissing her everywhere. His hands caressed her thighs, and his body moved further down the mattress. His lips were on the inside of her thigh and they were sliding upwards. Suddenly she knew what he was going to do.
“Heath, wait—”
“Shhh.” He nipped the tender skin at the top of her leg and nuzzled into the soft, dark triangle of curls. “Let me . . . you’re my wife.” As he reached the burning flesh between her legs and his tongue flickered over the tiny, well-hidden cache of nerves, Lucy’s knees drew up and her toes curled into the bed. Heath’s hands cupped her buttocks, raising her up to the sensitive exploration of his lips.
Catching a sob back in her throat, she clenched her teeth and turned her face to the side, aware of every subtle, dancing touch of his mouth, conscious of nothing else but what he was doing to her. Her buttocks tensed in his palms as she was overwhelmed by pleasure. Suddenly his tongue flickered inside her, and she arched involuntarily, her senses expanding until she was hurtled through an explosion of feeling.
Gasping heavily, she floated in a warm sea of weakness, her eyes heavy-lidded with passion as she saw Heath’s face above her. She was too exhausted, too limp to protest as the weight of his hard-muscled body settled over hers. “Just relax.” His tone was caressing and low in her ear. “I won’t be rough. Let me love you . . .” There was an intrusion between her thighs, and somehow she was shifting her legs to make it easier for him, and then she gasped at the powerful invasion as he pushed into her. There was pain and the shocking realization that he was inside her. Responding to the gentle encouragements he whispered to her, she moved her legs further apart and he slid even deeper, huge and scalding as he moved within her. She flinched at the unfamiliar sensation and the discomfort, but his hands were there to soothe her quivering body, and his voice was soft and strangely broken. “You’re so sweet . . . Cinda . . . I knew you would feel like this . . . I knew it would be this way. Put your arms around me . . .”
Thrusting with a controlled rhythm, he gathered her more closely against him and showed her how to follow him. He was uninhibited and utterly abandoned, just as she had known he would be, ruthlessly stripping away her privacy and demanding with his hands and mouth for her to tell him what gave her pleasure. As Lucy looked up at the tawny features of the man she had married, she couldn’t imagine sharing this closeness with anyone else, and she knew that after tonight nothing would ever be the same. Confused, she turned her face into his gleaming shoulder and felt a wash of heat inside her; she felt his body driving in and staying there as he stilled and buried his face against her neck. His hands clenched into fists that depressed the pillow on either side of her head.
Blindly she raised her mouth to his, her lips parted and eager. The hours drifted by as their two forms entwined and touched, sometimes urgently and sometimes at a languorous pace. Lucy matched his desire with her own, returning his passion with an equal measure and giving no heed to thoughts of yesterday or tomorrow. She didn’t notice when the lamp burned out. She only knew that as the night deepened she became part of the darkness, part of a dream that was now long past innocence, wrapped in a sensual spell that would be broken as soon as morning arrived. With every touch Heath made her more a part of him, and in the hours beyond midnight she began to fear that he had taken more from her than just her innocence.
Chapter 7
Disturbed by questions that had no obvious answers, Lucy busied herself with small tasks all day as she pondered the intricacies of her situation. It had been disappointing to wake up and find that Heath had already left, but it had also been a relief to be alone with her thoughts. Everything seemed to have changed since last night. Heath had taken away many of her illusions. It would be a lie to say that she had not found pleasure with him—and that was puzzling when she had believed for so long that the only man she wanted was Daniel. But had her feelings for Daniel been merely a habit? Had she shared an “understanding” with him for so long because it was safer and easier than opening her heart to someone else? I cared for him sincerely, she told herself, confused by doubts that she had never allowed herself to consider before. I still care for him. But had it really been love, or just something she had mistaken for love?
Now she was starting to care for her husband in a way that she hadn’t expected, though he was the most exasperating, unpredictable, and complicated man she had ever met. Despite his claims to the contrary, he almost always managed to get his own way, and he had no qualms about shedding gentlemanly scruples when they prevented him from getting what he wanted. There were two sides to him. He could be a scoundrel just as easily as he could be a gentleman, and the art of dealing with him in either case was something she just hadn’t been able to learn yet.
Heath arrived home well after dinner. As he walked in the front door, Lucy took his coat, her
fingers curling into the smooth, dark cloth before she hung it up. There was a strange expression on his face. He looked strained and a little tired, but there was a barely suppressed energy about him, an air of triumph. Something had happened today—she knew it just by looking at him. She had a premonition that she was not going to like what he had to tell her.
“We have to talk, Lucy.”
“Is it good news or bad news?”
“That depends on how you look at it.”
“That doesn’t sound very promising.”
Heath smiled briefly and then gestured to the sofa. “You’d better sit down. It’s going to be a long conversation.” The way he looked, the exaggerated calmness of his tone—all of it indicated without a doubt that he was going to say something important.
“A conversation about what?”
“About all those meetings I’ve had in Boston. I should have talked to you about them sooner. But the longer I let it go, the harder it was to approach you . . . and with things between us the way they were, it was easier to keep putting it off—”
“I understand,” Lucy said, sitting down suddenly, wondering if her earlier suspicions had been right after all. What if he had been visiting some woman in Boston? Oh, it was too awful to think about!
Heath sat down beside her and picked up a glass she had been drinking out of earlier. It was empty, and he turned it idly in his hands as he spoke. “I wasn’t sure about how things were going to turn out, so I’ve been biding my time. Now the moment is right, and we’ve got to take care of everything quickly.”
She nodded slowly. Was he trying to tell her about another woman? Would he be so cruel as to tell her something like that after last night? No, no, even if it was true, there was no reason for him to tell her about someone else . . . was there?
“Have you ever read the Boston Examiner?” he asked.
The question was so far off from what she had expected that she looked at him in blank surprise. “What? I . . . no, I don’t think so . . .”
“I’ve done research on all the papers in the area. The Herald has the highest circulation, about ninety thousand . . . and the Journal has about half that many subscribers. Then come all the rest, none of them any higher than seventeen thousand subscribers each. The Examiner could be called the best contender for third place—a very weak third place.”
Newspapers. He was talking to her about newspapers. What did they have to do with anything? “That’s very interesting,” she said dutifully, and he grinned at her lack of enthusiasm.
“The Examiner is being killed off by the combined efforts of the Herald and the Journal. They’re stealing away advertisers and subscribers, and pulling all kinds of underhanded—”
“Heath,” she interrupted impatiently, “I don’t want to hear about all of that right now. I just want to know what you were going to tell me.”
“All right.” The reckless sparkle in his eyes intensified. “The paper has been put up for sale. After approaching the publisher and looking through the books, I decided it could be made into a competitive enterprise. As of today, we’re the new owners of the Examiner.”
Lucy stared at him in dawning amazement. “The whole thing? The whole newspaper? A Boston newspaper, Heath . . .”
“Actually, not the whole thing . . . just a little over half. The rest of it belongs to Damon Redmond—he’s from a family in Boston that—”
“Redmond? As in the Lowells, the Saltonstalls, and the Redmonds?”
“Yes. That family. Third son of John Redmond III. I met Damon when I was abroad, just before the war started.”
“But . . . do either of you have enough experience to make the newspaper successful?” Lucy asked, too taken aback to be tactful.
Heath smiled wryly. “In this case, I’m not sure experience has much to do with it. The more experience a man has, the more inclined he is to stick to what’s been done in the past . . . follow tradition . . . and that’s exactly what I don’t plan to do. The business is changing, and the way things were done ten years ago won’t survive much longer. Some papers are keeping up with the times—like the New York Tribune—and the ones that aren’t are going out of business. Now is the perfect time to take advantage of that. I want to develop a new kind of journalist and a new kind of newspaper—”
“It sounds like a gamble. What if it doesn’t work? What if we lose all our money?”
“We could always stay with your father above the store.”
“Don’t even joke about that!”
“Don’t worry. I won’t let you starve.”
“What about this . . . this Redmond person? Are you certain you can trust him as a business partner?”
“I have no doubt about it. He’s ambitious, intelligent, and he’ll pull his own weight—in fact, I suspect I’ll have to find some way of reminding him that this is going to be an ensemble effort. He’s the kind who likes to go his own way.”
“Surely it will take a long time to start turning a profit.”
“That depends on several things . . . if you’re really curious, I’ll go over the numbers and estimates with you in a day or two.”
“No, thank you.” Lucy had never entertained an interest in numbers of any kind. Still, she was surprised by his apparent willingness to talk with her about such things. Usually men didn’t care to discuss business with their wives, or with any woman at all . . . just as women didn’t tell men about their private discussions and activities. “All I want to know is if we’re going to have enough money to live on.”
“We will. Enough, at any rate, to keep you well supplied with hats and hair ribbons.”
“Running such a large newspaper . . . that will take so much work,” she said, frowning.
“More than a few late nights,” he admitted.
“And all that traveling back and forth . . . how are you going to manage it?”
There was a long pause, and then Heath looked up from the glass he held in his hand, his blue-green eyes locking with hers. “It would be impossible,” he said quietly. “I can’t live in Concord and run the paper.”
The implications of that hit her as soundly as a physical blow. If he couldn’t run the paper from Concord, he would want to move.
“If you want to own a paper,” she said rapidly, “you can buy a local one, or start one yourself. You don’t have to get one in Boston—”
“I can’t do what I want to do with just a local paper. I don’t want to report on how many eggs the Brooks’ chickens laid on Thursday, and how Billy Martinson got the beesting on his knee—”
“But . . . but . . .”
“But what?” Heath prompted, leaning forward to brace his elbows on his knees.
“Think of where you come from, and where you are. You don’t know Boston. You haven’t been here long enough to understand the people up here . . .” As she faltered, he set the glass down and took one of her hands, holding it in a warm, electrifying clasp, his fingers pressing into her palms as if he would wring the truth out of her.
“Go on,” he urged. “I don’t want to have to guess at your thoughts about this. Tell me.”
“You know better than I do that there’s no sympathy for Southerners here. Bostonians want to punish them for the war . . . and you . . . you’re thinking of taking over a big Northeastern newspaper? There won’t be any support for you, not from any direction. There are so many obstacles in your way, and . . . and I can’t begin to tell you how difficult, how impossible it’s all going to be. They’re not going to want to listen to what you have to say. There are so many intellectuals around here, with all their different ideas about Reconstruction, fighting it out right and left. I should know—I’ve been to enough political discussions and meetings in Concord to be certain that what I’m saying is the truth.”
“I know. And you’re right, it won’t be easy. But this is a battle that has to be fought, and it has to be here, in Boston. I can do more good for my people—and your people—here than anywhere else. This
is where decisions are made. It’s like stumbling around in a maze up here . . . they’re all wandering in circles, caught in the middle of issues that are too complex to understand, and no one’s taking a hard look at the truth. At the way things really are. The war is over, but nothing is solved—not states’ rights, not the problems of the freed slaves, not the economy, or political policies—”
“But no matter what you say, you won’t be heard,” Lucy said, becoming increasingly worried as she saw how determined he was. “They won’t listen—”
“Oh, I’ll be heard,” he assured her with a grim smile. “And they’ll listen. Because I’m going to use Damon Redmond as my front. I’m going to make him my managing editor, and through him and his editorials, every point I want to make will be made. He has the support and influence of one of the oldest families in Boston, and I’ll find a way to make use of that. I’m not going to hit anyone over the head with my beliefs—I won’t have to. I’ll sneak them in, here and there, and I’ll make them damned easy to swallow. I intend to produce a newspaper like no one else has ever seen before, appealing . . . seductive . . . and if I have to turn the entire profession of journalism upside down to do it, then I will.”
Much of what he said went by her completely. No one had ever talked about a newspaper being seductive before, and she didn’t understand how or in what way he planned to use Damon Redmond. All she focused on was the fire in his eyes, and the enthusiasm in his voice. His mind was firmly made up, and it would take a miracle to change it. “Can’t you just wait a year or two before rushing ahead with this?” Lucy begged. “It’s so soon. Wait until you get to know the area and—”
“I know enough to start now. The rest I’ll learn soon enough. I can’t wait—there won’t be another chance like this, not for a long time. The Examiner is a good newspaper with a small but established circulation, and the right kind of reputation. It just needs new guidance. It needs to be shaken up—”