Page 67 of Just Imagine
“Either you can come in here or I’ll join you in your bedroom. Which is it going to be?”
She pressed her eyes shut for a moment. Choices. He presented them to her and then took them away. Slowly she walked to the door and turned the knob.
He stood across the sitting room, a glass of brandy in his hand, his hair rumpled.
“Tell me you’ve changed your mind,” she said.
“You know I haven’t.”
“Can you even imagine what it’s like to have another person control your life?”
“No. That’s why I fought for the Union cause. And I’m not trying to control your life, Kit. Despite what you think, I’m trying to do what’s right.”
“I’m sure that’s what you’ve told yourself.”
“You don’t want him.”
“I have nothing else to say to you.”
She turned and headed back to her room, but he caught her in the doorway. “Stop being so stubborn and use your head! He’s a weakling, not the kind of man who could ever make you happy. He lives in the past and whines because things aren’t the way they used to be. He was born and bred for only one thing, and that’s running a plantation on slave labor. He’s the past, Kit. You’re the future.”
There was more truth in what he was saying than she would admit. But Cain didn’t know the real reason she wanted to marry Brandon. “He’s a fine man, and I would have been privileged to call him my husband.”
He gazed down at her. “But would he have made your heart pound the way it did at the pond when I held you in my arms?”
No, Brandon would never have made her heart pound like that, and she’d have been glad of it. What she’d done with Cain made her feel weak. “It was fear that made my heart pound, nothing else.”
He turned away. Took a sip of brandy. “This is no good.”
“All you had to do was say yes, and you’d have been rid of me.”
He lifted his glass and tossed down the rest of his drink. “I’m sending you back to New York. You’re leaving on Saturday.”
“What?”
Even before Cain turned and saw her stricken expression, he knew he’d driven a knife into her heart.
She was one of the most intelligent women he’d ever known, so why did she have to be so stupid about this? He knew she wouldn’t listen to him, but he still tried to think of something he could say that would penetrate her stubborn will and make her see reason, but there was nothing. With a muffled curse, he left the sitting room and headed downstairs.
He sat in the library for some time, his head bowed, a muscle twitching in his cheek. Kit Weston had gotten under his skin, and it scared the hell out of him. All his life he’d watched men make fools of themselves over women, and now he was in danger of doing the same.
It was more than her wild beauty that stirred him, more than the sensuality she hadn’t yet entirely claimed. There was something sweet and vulnerable about her that unearthed feelings inside him he hadn’t known he possessed. Feelings that made him want to laugh with her instead of snarl, that made him want to make love with her until her face lit up with a joy meant for him alone.
He leaned his head back. He’d told her he was sending her back to New York, but he couldn’t do it. Tomorrow he’d tell her. And then he was going to do his best to start over with her. For once in his life, he was going to set his cynicism aside and reach out to a woman.
The thought made him feel young and foolishly happy.
The clock chimed midnight when Kit heard Cain go to his room. On Saturday she would have to leave Risen Glory. It was a blow so devastating, so unexpected, she couldn’t comprehend how to deal with it. This time there would be no schemes to sustain her as there’d been during her three years at the Academy. He’d won. He’d finally beaten her.
Rage at her powerlessness overcame her pain. She wanted vengeance. She wanted to destroy something he cared about, to ruin him as he’d just ruined her.
But there was nothing he cared about, not even Risen Glory itself. Hadn’t he turned the plantation over to Magnus while he completed his cotton mill?
The mill . . . She stopped her pacing. The mill was important to him, more important than the plantation, because it was his alone.
Devils of rage and hurt whispered to her what she could do. So simple. So perfect. So very wrong.
But no more wrong than what he’d done to her.
