Valley Of The Vapours: Arkansas Part 11

Her father followed his gaze to Tisha, a triumphant gleam lighting their depths. "I have no objection."

"Would your sister's studio be all right?" Roarke inquired with correct politeness that grated Tisha's already raw nerves.

"Certainly," her father agreed.

If Tisha hadn't wanted so badly to see Roarke and put an end to this talk of a marriage between them, she would have refused outright to see him. As it was, she was forced to lead the way to the studio.

The instant the door was closed behind them, she turned on Roarke with a vengeance. "I told you to meet me at eleven o'clock!" she hissed.

"You didn't think I was going to fall into that trap again?" he drawled coldly.

Unconsciously she stiffened at his slas.h.i.+ng tone, staring into the unrelenting hardness of his carved face with a confused frown on hers.

"What trap?"

"This has to be the oldest trick in the book. I expected something more original from you, Red." One hand was hooked in the waistband of his trousers as his arrogant gaze insolently raked her slender body, ignoring the bewildered expression in her eyes.

"What are you talking about?"

A twisted smile lifted one corner of his mouth. "I wonder how many men have been trapped into marriage after spending a night with a girl, however innocently, while the outraged father appears on the doorstep in the morning."

With a gasp of dismay, Tisha realized he thought she had planned the whole thing. "You don't think that I-" she rushed. "You can't believe that I engineered this! I swear to you I had no idea my father would be coming to visit me today. I never intended any of this to happen. Roarke, you've got to believe me!" The last desperate flurry of words brought her closer to his imposing figure while her eyes pleaded with him.

"My dear girl," a sardonic glint appeared in his eyes, "if I thought for one moment that you'd arranged this, I would wring your neck."

For a moment, Tisha was unable to believe that his accusation had been in jest. Then the ghost of suppressed laughter glittered in his eyes.

"This is no time to be joking!" stamping her foot on the floor with childish ill-temper.

"I only wanted to see how it might look from my point of view," he murmured complacently.

"You did it deliberately," she accused, "just as you ignored me when I told you to meet me at eleven."

"If I'd met you at eleven as you wanted, in some dark lane, and if your father had found out, what kind of construction do you think he would have put on it?" Roarke demanded. "He would have come to the same conclusion he did this morning and hurried his plans for the wedding."

Tisha couldn't meet the force of his gaze. There was too much truth in his statement for her to shrug it off, and he knew it.

"This way," he went on, "coming to the house, keeping everything open and above board, he may be persuaded to trust us."

"What good is it going to do to have him trust us," she grumbled, "if we can't get him to change his mind about this stupid marriage idea?"

"With a man like your father, you can't expect him to make an about-face overnight. You have to change his mind by degrees."

"In other words, it will take several small miracles instead of one large one," she murmured bitterly.

"Something like that," Roarke agreed.

"And how do you propose to begin?" The tilt to her head challenged him to come up with an answer. "Are you going to produce a wife out of mid-air to convince him you'd be committing bigamy if you married me now?"

"That's rather drastic," he answered with a dry smile. "I had thought we might convince him to extend our engagement from a few days to a few months."

"And in those few months, he'll see how incompatible we are and agree to our breaking the engagement," Tisha concluded for him. "He'll never go along with it."

"Why?"

"You don't know my father," she grimaced. "He's like a bulldog. Once he gets hold of an idea, he won't let go."

"I'm sure he'll put your happiness first."

"I'm not." She shook her head grimly and slumped against a stool. "He's completely discarded Kevin in favour of you. He thinks you can handle me."

A quick glance in his direction caught the look of amus.e.m.e.nt her words aroused, a look that ignited her temper.

"This is all your fault anyway," she declared viciously. "If you and Dad hadn't conspired between you to make me leave this morning, we wouldn't be in this horrid predicament. Why did you let him bully you into agreeing to marry me?"

"Guilt, I suppose," Roarke answered calmly, not the least bit upset by her sarcasm.

"Guilt?" she flared. "There was nothing to be guilty about! Nothing happened! If you'd backed me up when I was trying to convince him of that, he might have believed us!"

"You're right. Physically nothing happened except a torrid love scene that never reached a climax." An eyebrow quirked as his gaze roamed familiarly over her, producing again the sensation that he was touching her. "But in my mind, let's say that it didn't end with kisses, little girl"

His suggestive statement did not pa.s.s without a response as blood raced with disturbing swiftness to her face. At the moment his potency was too much for her to handle.

"Stop...Stop calling me that," she replied, fighting the breathlessness that attacked her lungs. "I'm not a little girl."

"No," Roarke agreed smoothly. His hand caught a long strand of her hair. He let it spin through his fingers to fall across the agitated movement of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. "You're very much a woman, with a woman's instinctive abilities to arouse a man, as you proved last night."

"We're...er...getting off the track," Tisha stammered, turning away from him while taking a quick step to put some distance between them.

His hands settled around her waist in a provocative caress. "I thought we were on the track." He nuzzled her hair, following it as it flowed down her neck to her shoulders.

"Don't do that," she protested weakly, trying to move away, only to have him hold her tighter against him.

"Why not?" he mocked. "We're engaged. We should enjoy some of the pleasures that go along with it."

Tisha gulped quickly for air as her resistance started to melt. She twisted in his arms, trying to use her body as a wedge to halt his searching lips.

"You forget, we're trying to find a way out of this engagement."

"Are we?"

She saw his lazy, half-closed look dwelling on her mouth and she moistened it nervously with the tip of her tongue. An imperceptible movement of his head signalled his intention to taste the parted sweetness of her lips.

"Roarke-" she began, only to be silenced quite effectively by his kiss.

She turned the rest of the way into his arms, not sure if it was by her design or his. Her fingers were slowly inching their way towards his neck to yield completely to his embrace when there was a rap on the door followed immediately by the turning of the k.n.o.b. Some sixth sense told Tisha even before she broke away from Roarke's kiss that it would be her father in the doorway. It was his twinkling brown eyes that met the guilty darkness of her olive-green look.

"I was going to see if you two wanted some coffee," he grinned, while Tisha attempted to struggle out of Roarke's arms without appearing to do so, but he held her easily in their circle. "Maybe later." And her father closed the door.

"Now you've done it!" Tisha stormed, wrenching herself free of Roarke's no longer restraining hold. "Now we'll never be able to convince him that we don't want to get married! Why did you have to do that? I can't marry you! I just can't!"

"How was I to know your father would choose such an inopportune moment to play the host?" Roarke shrugged indifferently. "But it's done."

"It's done! Is that all you can say?" she raged. "Here I am trying to figure out a way to get out of this mess while all you're doing is trying to find a way to take advantage of it! You're the most self-centred, egotistical-" She searched wildly for another deflating adjective.

"Repulsive," he offered.

"Yes, repulsive! I couldn't stand being married to an overbearing pig like you!" she finished triumphantly.

"Do you think I want a screaming shrew of a wife hanging around my neck for the rest of my life?" he asked, studying her with a bland look. "Although I'll admit it would be a novelty to marry, someone with a split personality."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Tisha muttered sullenly.

"You're always so ready to hurl insults at me. Repulsive?" he mocked. "You say you find me repulsive, yet you're always so ready to respond to my advances. Have you ever wondered why?"

"It's strictly an animal attraction." Self-contempt lowered her chin, but it didn't take the sarcasm out of her voice. "I'll never marry you."

"Do you have an alternative suggestion to the one I made?"

"I'd run away before I would marry you!"

"Running never solves anything," Roarke reminded her quietly.

"It would eliminate you as my husband," she retorted.

"And what about your father?"

"What about him?"

"Are you prepared for the estrangement your running away would bring? The relations.h.i.+p between parent and child is tenuous at best. Once the bond of love and trust has been broken, it's difficult to go back. You two fight and argue now, but isn't that better than silence?"

Tisha s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably. She didn't need Roarke to tell her that her father was only doing what he thought was best for her. Running away would break his heart. Except for Blanche, she was the only family he had left. He loved her as much, if not more than she loved him.

A pain-filled sigh shuddered through her. "I don't know what to do. I love my father, but I can't marry someone just because he wants me to either."

The hands that touched her shoulders conveyed none of the intimacy of before. Their contact was friendly and consoling as though they wanted to guide her through a dark pa.s.sage into the light. She raised her eyes to his understanding smile.

"I may not have any right to ask you this, Tisha, but would you leave this to me?" Roarke asked gently. "Would you trust me to find the solution that will make us both happy? I'm asking you to put your future in my hands."

She searched the warm brown eyes, soft like velvet with its hidden resilience. He wanted out of this forced marriage as much as she did, she reminded herself. There was no ulterior motive to his request. What one could there be?

"Yes," she murmured, "I trust you."

"Good." He winked as if to laugh at the seriousness in her voice. "Leave everything to me. No more arguments with your father. Say and do nothing that will make him more stubborn. The more you try to convince him that he's wrong, the more certain he'll become that he's right. Okay?"

"Okay," she repeated, surprised that he had coaxed a smile out of her. She had thought there was nothing left to smile about. "I bet you regret not letting me walk home last night."

"If I'd dreamt that you had an outraged father waiting in the wings," he chuckled, "I would have carried you home! I might have got some sleep last night, too, instead of stiff muscles."

"The next time something like this happens to you, you can send the girl home and sleep in your own bed," she teased.

"There won't be any next time," he said firmly, but with a strange enigmatic expression darkening his eyes. "Let's take your father up on his offer of coffee before he comes back to find out what we're doing now." His hand touched her elbow. "And remember, leave everything to me."

"I will, Roarke," she promised, and wondered why she felt so secure in the hands of a man she professed not to like.

During the next few days, Tisha began to wonder if she hadn't made a mistake in trusting Roarke to find a way out of the marriage proposed by her father. Following Roarke's instructions, she had complied with all of her father's requests without a murmur of protest. Now it was Thursday and so far her father's stand hadn't taken a step in any direction except towards the marriage.

Using some influence he had, her father had rushed their blood tests through in record time. This morning their marriage licence had been obtained. Panic was beginning to set in as Tisha realized she was one step away from walking down the aisle. All her attempts to speak to Roarke alone were thwarted, mostly by her father.

Even Blanche, whom she had considered an ally, seemed to be deserting her. The rare times they had been able to talk, her aunt had plagued her with questions concerning Tisha's feelings for Roarke. Was she certain she didn't care for him? Did the physical attraction go deeper? It was obvious that Blanche considered the marriage to be inevitable.

Tisha was beginning to wonder herself. If Roarke was going to make a move, surely he would have done so by now. Her father had already made arrangements for them to be married in a local church this Sat.u.r.day. Time was running out.

Slowly she trudged along the faint animal path through the forested hillside. Her father was off on some mysterious errand this afternoon and Tisha had hoped to find Roarke at home. The walk through the woods had been to confuse Blanche about her destination. The route had been longer than if she had followed the road and when she had finally reached his house, it was to find Roarke gone. Her useless hike had only succeeded in making her tired and irritable and more depressed.

Billy Goat Gruff lifted his head when she entered the clearing below her aunt's house. After a pa.s.sing glance her way, he lowered his head to tear at the gra.s.s, accustomed now to her comings and goings. With a slight change of direction, Tisha headed for the kitchen door, glumly wondering how she could see Roarke tonight.

When she reached the side entrance, she glanced through the window pane of the door and saw Roarke sitting at the kitchen table with Blanche. The troubled expression on his face stopped her hand as it reached for the k.n.o.b. It was eavesdropping, she knew, but she paused anyway to listen.

"Are you positive she said she was just going for a walk?" Roarke asked.

"Yes," her aunt returned patiently, a solemn expression on her usually animated face. "Besides, her car is still here and her clothes. I know she hasn't run away."

Tisha wasn't certain what she thought she was going to hear, perhaps some comment that would reveal they were all conspiring to get her to marry Roarke, but they seemed to be only concerned with her whereabouts. With a resigned sigh, she opened the door and walked in.

"There you are!" Blanche rose quickly to her feet, a forced smile of brightness on her face. "We were wondering where you'd gone."

"First I considered throwing myself off the steepest cliff, but I couldn't find one," said Trisha. "Then I thought about getting lost in the woods, but I kept ending up in somebody's back yard. So here I am," she finished bitterly.

"Don't joke about things like that." her aunt murmured, a worried frown lining her forehead.

"I'm sorry, Blanche," Tisha sighed wearily. "Chalk it up to pre-wedding nerves," darting a resentful glance at Roarke, who was watching her closely. "And how's the prospective bridegroom?"

"Doing as well as can be expected," he answered. His gaze followed Tisha as she walked to the counter and poured a cup of coffee. "Grab a chair and sit down."

"I don't feel like it!" she snapped. The combination of her own strain and his unruffled demeanour unleashed her temper.

She intercepted the look he sent Blanche, who immediately got to her feet. "You two would probably like to be alone. I'll go and play with my paints for a while."

As soon as she heard the studio door close behind her aunt, Tisha turned towards Roarke, her green eyes blazing with anger.

"Well? The wedding is on Sat.u.r.day!"

"I know," he answered, calmly meeting the challenge of her gaze.

"If you know, why aren't you doing something about it?" she demanded.

Very slowly, he uncoiled his long length from the chair and walked over to the counter where she stood. "The world hasn't come to an end." The sunlight glinted on the bronzed gold highlights in his hair.