A Man to Call My Own

Chapter 54

CHAD LEFT MARIAN'S ROOM, even managed not to slam the door on his way out. She opened the door behind him just to slam it shut on him. He turned back, stared at the door a moment, then smiled. If she could do something that emotional and—silly, then there was hope. At least she wasn't as indifferent to him as he'd begun to think.

The door slamming caused a few other doors in the corridor to open, though. Most of the occupants just had a quick look, saw that nothing was happening that interested them, and went back into their respective rooms. Not so with Amanda. She leaned against her doorframe, waiting for him to pass her. She was the very last person he cared to talk to about anything.

Just the sight of her raised his ire again. Amanda might be secretly enjoying her own marriage, according to Spencer, but she had left Chad's life in an emotional shambles with her selfish, one-track campaign to get her hands on her damn inheritance. And she had paid no price for it. Did she always get away unscathed by the hell she left behind her? She probably did.

He would have gone a different way to avoid her, but there was no other way to go. The room he'd just left was at the end of the corridor and his own room and the stairs were beyond Amanda's room. He could just stand there and wait for her to go away, but she looked too determined to speak to him for him to wait her out.

He decided to beat her to it, marched past her, and said, "At this precise moment, if you weren't her sister, I'd wring your neck. So don't say a—"

"So she finally told you the truth? It certainly took her long enough."

He swung around. "What truth? That she can't bear the sight of me now after what you did?"

"If you believe that, you're a fool, cowboy. She tried to convince me of the same thing. I even believed it until I opened her—"

"I have news for you, Amanda. You've lied, tricked, and manipulated once too often for anyone to believe a word you say. So save your breath, please."

"Well, I never," she huffed indignantly, her nose raised in the air. "And here I was going to do you a favor since I'm feeling so benevolent."

"Did it ever occur to you that I was making love to her, or thought I was, because I cared about her? Because I wanted to marry her. Her, not you. So the only favor you could possibly do for me is to tell me it wasn't you that day. But since that isn't possible—"

He stopped when she started to laugh. "You don't trust your own instincts much, do you, cowboy? I hate to break up a great rant, but you get your wish. It wasn't me. So I lied a little," she added with a shrug. "You got out of marrying me, so no harm was done."

He stared at her incredulously. "What the hell do you mean it wasn't you?"

She tsked at him. "Exactly that. I saw the two of you enter the stable that day, and since I was bored to tears, I went down to find out what you were up to. I overheard you making love and decided to take advantage of that knowledge. It was a gamble. If nothing else, your little secret would have been let out of the bag. But Mari was too shocked to call me a liar, and you were too dense not to know which sister you'd made love to. Like I said, you should have trusted your own instincts. If you'd called my bluff, Mari probably would have supported you, and it would have ended right there. But either way, you got out of it, so no harm was done."

"You're lying."

"Actually, for a change I'm not. Ask her. If she denies it, you'll know she's lying. She's not very good at it. Or you could just look in her trunk. She's got a couple paintings of you—one is rather revealing. I found them the day Kathleen taught her to ride. Yes, I snoop. So what? Being on that ranch was driving me mad with boredom."

She chuckled again at his expression before she stepped back into her room and closed the door on him. She'd done what she'd intended, shocked him so thoroughly that he just stood there, unable to absorb it all.

She was deliberately causing trouble again. What other reason could there be, for her? A favor? She'd probably never done anyone a favor in her life.

That he wanted to believe her was almost proof that he shouldn't, since she so often set up situations to shock or severely disappoint people. Of course it wasn't true. Marian would have told him. She wouldn't have let him go on this long, berating himself for having made such a colossal mistake.

He glanced back down the corridor. She was alone in her room. If nothing else, Amanda had given him a reason to talk to Marian again. They could get angry at Amanda together. Find some common ground.

He didn't knock. Actually, he expected the door to be locked this time. It wasn't. She'd probably been too angry to think about locking it when she'd slammed it shut on him.

He found her sitting on the edge of her bed, staring at a canvas she'd unrolled. She was so deep in thought she hadn't even heard him enter and close the door again, though she did hear his footsteps as he approached. She glanced up and gasped.

But instead of telling him immediately to get out, she quickly rolled the canvas back up and shoved it on the bed behind her. She stood up, and only then started glaring at him.

"What are you doing back here?"

Without answering he nodded toward the canvas behind her, and asked, "Mind if I have a look at that?"

"I do mind."

He was standing next to her now. "I've been advised to look at it anyway, so I think I will."

"No!" she exclaimed.

Her protest wasn't going to stop him at that point. If he had to apologize afterward, so be it, but he was going to see what she was hiding. He grabbed the canvas and turned away from her when she tried to snatch it back from him.

He unrolled it, heard her say, "Damn you, you have no right."

He was disappointed. It was a portrait of him. A damn good one, but it told him nothing. So she'd painted him. It was her hobby, something she enjoyed doing, and she was very good at it.

He turned back around, blushed a little as he handed the canvas back to her. "I'm sorry. My father would probably buy that from you. It's an amazing likeness."

"My paintings aren't for sale," she said stiffly.

He started to shrug, then remembered there were supposedly two canvases, and said, "Where's the other one?"

"What other one?"

"You painted two of me."

"I didn't," she insisted, but now she was blushing. "Who told you that?"

"Your sister just told me."

She snorted. "And you believed her?"

He frowned. "If you weren't blushing, I'd say no. But she was right, you're not very good at lying."

"I'm very good at kicking unwelcome intruders out of my room. I'm going to start screaming in one second if you aren't on your way out the door."

"Go ahead," he dared her. "Then the entire floor can find out what you're hiding."

He'd already spotted her trunks in the corner. He headed toward them. She didn't scream. She raced around him and sat down firmly on one trunk.

She pointed a finger at him. "That's far enough. You are not going to rifle through my personal belongings."

He shook his head at her. "Mari, do you realize how oddly you're behaving? And why? Over an exceptional talent that you want to keep to yourself?"

He didn't wait for an answer. He lifted her off the trunk, held her back with one arm while he opened it. There were two rolled canvases resting on top of the clothes she hadn't unpacked. He reached for one and howled—she'd slammed the trunk lid down on his arm.

He managed to get his arm out, and he turned toward her. But before he could say anything, she threw herself at him. And kissed him. He knew she was doing it to distract him from her trunk, and, damn, it worked.

He gathered her close, molded her body to his. She locked her arms around his neck. There was desperation in her efforts, but it was so close to passion it took him a while to note the difference. He still wasn't going to refuse what she was offering, when he'd been starving for the taste of her for too long.

He lifted her hips against the swelling in his loins. Her groan was lost in his mouth, slanting across hers. Her feet already off the floor, he started walking toward her bed, reached it, managed to get them on it without breaking the embrace, his body half-covering hers. She was clinging tightly to him still, as caught up in the kiss as he was. She wasn't in shock this time, knew what she was doing, which gave him hope. He let his desire reign unchecked, touching her, he couldn't get enough of touching her. His lips moved to her neck, kissing her there next to her ear. He reached for her skirt...

She immediately wiggled out from under him and shot off the bed. Now why didn't that surprise him?

"You know, darlin', you can only push a man so far," he warned as he stood up.

She was standing there panting for each breath, her lips swollen from his kisses, her blue eyes almost black they'd turned so dark. But Amanda wasn't the only twin who could have a one-track mind, and Marian's was still on what she was hiding from him.

As if he hadn't spoken, she said, "All right, I'll tell you what's in the trunk if you'll stop this nonsense. It's not something that I'm hiding from you, it's something I don't want anyone to see. It's a nude, the first I ever attempted, and since I didn't have a model, it's not the least bit accurate. I can easily paint from memory, but in this case I simply used my imagination. I'd always wanted to do a nude, I just never had an interesting enough subject to attempt it before, and I painted it prior to you and Amanda ..."

She didn't finish. She didn't have to. She was blushing again, but it could just be because of the subject, rather than a lie.

Interesting she called him. She saw him as interesting—artistically. Under the circumstances, that was about as unflattering as she could get.

And he was starting to feel like an ass. So she'd painted a nude of him. Nudes were common. For all he knew, all artists painted them. And while he'd like to see it, it would prove nothing. As usual, Amanda had merely caused emotional turmoil by suggesting otherwise.

He tried to relieve her embarrassment—as well as his own. With a grin, he asked, "You want a model?"

"No!"

He shrugged. "Didn't think so." He turned to leave, then paused. "My apologies, Mari. You'll think about what I said earlier?"

"Absolutely."

Too strong a word, which meant she wouldn't. Just as he'd feared, all his chances to win her had died the moment she'd heard that he had made love to her sister.