Page 56 of Once an Angel
She had been dancing for him as long as she could remember. She had always imagined Cecille would twist her ankle and she would be forced to take the lead in the recital. Her guardian would materialize from the fog-shrouded night and slip into the back of the recital room. As she collapsed in a graceful heap of organdy, his beautiful baritone would ring out, crying, "Bravo, bravo! There's my girl!" to the shocked stares of Miss Winters and the other girls.
Tears pricked Emily's eyes. She blinked them away, then wished she hadn't as Justin's face came clearly into focus. Lust and tenderness and hopeless longing warred in his gaze. She closed her eyes, dizzied by his strength and the warm, spicy scent of his skin. The windy beach vanished. They might have been dancing alone in a darkened ballroom beneath the tinkling fingers of a thousand chandeliers.
He folded her deeper into his embrace. She lay her head against his chest, half expecting to feel a crisp waistcoat instead of the warmth of his bare chest.
He rubbed his cheek against her curls. A shuddering breath escaped her. They were merely swaying
now, clinging to any excuse to remain entangled in the tender web they'd woven. As the last pure note of the Maori song rang between them, the solution came to Emily, a revenge so simple and so diabolical, it could not fail to destroy him.
Tansy had always said there was only one way to bring a good man to his knees.
The music died and she quivered in the sudden hush.
The silence seemed too harsh, too penetrating. Justin reached to tilt her face upward. She tore herself out of his arms and ran, fleeing both herself and him, yet knowing in her heart that he would follow.
Chapter 12
As rich as our mine may be, it cannot compare to
the wealth I've always found
in your company. . . .
A laughing mob of dancers streamed around him, but Justin stood in a daze, staring at the spot where Emily had been as if he expected her to reappear in a puff of smoke. Blood rushed through his veins, flooding uninvited to his loins, his heart, his pounding head. The roaring in his ears had nothing to do
with the sea. It was the same roar he had heard on the night he found Emily, the same relentless ebb and flow of warning and desire that had taunted his waking moments and colored his dreams with madness.
He plunged forward, shoving his way through the Maori, deaf for the first time to the lilting intricacies
of their song. A woman's hand touched his arm, but he shook it away, blinded to all else by the lithe shadow growing smaller in the distance.
The ribbon of beach unfurled beneath his pounding feet. A shy moon peeked through the sparse clouds, scattering diamonds of light across the sand. Emily stayed just ahead of him, a whisper of movement between the shallow dunes. His nostrils twitched. He would almost swear he could scent her on the
wind, an alluring blend of vanilla and musk.
As he ran, the lights from the feast faded to a rosy glow in the sky. The echoes of music and laughter were drowned in the crash of the waves. He rounded a high dune and staggered to a halt. Emily stood alone on the stretch of beach where he had first found her.
Justin knew he would never forget the way she looked at that moment. She was as rare and exotic as a wild English rose blooming in the desert. The wind tousled her curls and whipped at her skirt. Her chin tilted in defiance even as she twisted her hands together for courage. He couldn't have said which made her more beautiful to him —her vulnerability or her pride. She might have been a defiant Eve dangling a juicy apple in front of Adam's nose.
As he angled toward her, he could feel his face hardening in ruthless lines of desperation.
"I don't like you," he said.
"I don't like you either."
Each weighted step through the damp sand carried him nearer to his destruction. "I'm too old for you."
"Much."
He was near enough to touch her now. "I have gray hair."
She reached up, wound a silvery strand around her finger, and jerked it out. "Not anymore."
He tangled his hand in her curls, drawing her head back until her mouth was a scant breath from his own. "I won't marry you."
Her hand crept around his nape. "I wouldn't have you."
"Oh, you'll have me."
