Mail-order Bridegroom Part 67

She gave him a hopeful smile.

"I try."

Joe grinned.

"You got him to the' altar That says it all. You got it made."

"We'll see about that," Damon said, but he was smiling, too.

And there was still a hint of that smile hovering on his face as they bounced

their way through the jungle towards the house. Kate found herself wis.h.i.+ng

that smile would disappear.All week long she'd wished he wouldn't be so crabby and remote. Now shethought it might have been a blessing. He was gorgeous when he smiled!

At last the moke halted at the end of the road behind the huge two storey house Damon had pointed out from the plane. Its tall, narrow windows and broad white porches reminded Kate of something out of a nineteenth-century seafaring novel.

She was charmed. Also relieved. In a place this big she and Damon would

have no trouble avoiding each other.

Before she could say anything, down the path towards them bustled a tall, robust woman in a yellow dress.

"Mr Damon! Your mama call last Monday and say you got married! Let me see this lucky lady!"

Damon said to Kate under his breath, "Her name is Teresa, and she's as quick as they come."

"I'll keep it in mind." Kate pasted on a bright smile as Damon stepped out

and dragged her out after him into Teresa's embrace.

It was like being hugged by a pillow, warm and sweet-smelling, and Kate felt an irresistible urge to return it.

"Let me look at you, honey," Teresa said at last, pulling back and holding

Kate out at arm's length, beaming at her. Kate's gaze slid guiltily away."She shy?" Teresa demanded of Damon."You don' need to be shy, honey.Not with me. Why, you're just as pretty as the missus said you is.She's so pleased! I always knew Mr Damon would find his self a beauty. "

She turned an a.s.sessing gaze on Damon.

"Had to find one to match him, didn't he?" she said to Kate with a grin.

Kate was surprised to see Damon's cheekbones lined with red.

"You're blind, Teresa," he said gruffly, reaching for the suitcases, hauling

them out of the back of the moke.Teresa laughed."You want to eat first or unpack."Damon looked at Kate.She shrugged."We'll unpack," Damon decided, heading towards the house."You ain't sleepin' here;' Teresa said."Your mama said to get the cottage ready."Damon stopped dead."The cottage?" The colour seemed to drain from his face."That belongs to Sophia and Stephanos."Teresa's teeth gleamed in a broad smile."No. It don't. It belongs to married folk. You got a right to it now."

She grinned even more widely.

"You don' want

to be rattlin' round in here with me on your honeymoon, boy.

You want some privacy. Leastways, that's what your mama said." She c.o.c.ked her head.

"She wrong?"

"Of course not," Damon said irritably. He turned and strode up a narrowtree-lined path without looking back.Kate stared after him for a split second, nonplussed. Then seeing him disappear around the corner of the house, she followed."What cottage?" she asked his back."What's going on? Why can't we stay in the main house?""Because Mother is manipulating again." He didn't stop until they reached a small one-storey white house. One of the tiny buildings she'd seen from theair. It was set closer to the ocean than the main house. With itstangerine-coloured shutters and narrow veranda, it looked as if it had beendesigned and painted as a counterpoint to the main house.

It was darling. It was charming. It was homey. It wasn't big enough.Kate, with sinking desperation, said so."You think I don't know that!" Damon almost shouted at her.Wincing, Kate opened the door and went in. The living-room-kitchen was bright and airy, painted white and fitted out with a table and chairs as wellas a white wicker set tee and matching chairs with gaily flowered cus.h.i.+ons.Ten steps took her across the room and through the only other door.

It was a bedroom. Equally bright. Equally airy. Just as tiny.

With one double bed.

Kate looked at him narrowly.

Damon said an extremely rude word.

"The cottage wasn't my idea."

"The marriage was. Honestly, Damon, this gets worse and worse. Didn't youthink at all before you proposed this stupid scheme?"He rubbed a hand through his hair."It seemed like i good idea at the time.""Do you always make spur-of-the-moment business lecisions.""Of course not.""Well, then. . .?"He shrugged and leaned against the wall, closing his yes.

"Put it down to stress."Kate thought he did indeed look stressed. If she'd ia red she would havereached out and touched his ;heek, perhaps brushed that stray lock of hairback off lis forehead. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her skirt.

She looked around the tiny bedroom with its soft white walls and light wickerfurniture, its lazily spin- ling ceiling fan and its flower-quilted bed. She couldn't lelp thinking what a really lovely place it would be if he were on areal honeymoon.

Deliberately she went back into the other room.

"At east you can sleep in the living-room here," she said )ffhandedly.

Damon said a very rude word.

he let Kate have the bedroom.

She told him he was a gentleman.

He could think of another word for it.

"Idiot' sprang o mind. And the longer he lay on the hard wood floor and

listened to her humming in the bedroom, imagining her with her long. hair loose and free, her face reshly scrubbed, her nightgown barely covering the curves he knew were a part of her, the more certain he was.

d.a.m.n! What was he doing here?

Damon didn't like it when things got out of control, and there was no doubt that, as far as his marriage to Kate went, things had. Not that Teresa didn't believe in their wedded bliss. She did. But that was thanks to Kate, not him.

Kate had done everything she should have with Teresa, laughing and smiling over dinner, answering her questions with the right amount of eagerness, even appearing suitably smitten with Damon when it seemed to be required.

It had been his own behaviour that had caused Teresa to lift her brows in.

wonder He'd been reluctant to touch Kate when they sat on the sofa side by side. When Teresa had teasingly asked him some silly question about his love-life, he'd almost bitten her head off. And when they were leaving and Kate had casually put her hand on his arm, he'd jumped.

Why? Because he wanted her.

He'd hoped that ignoring her the past week would put a damper on his desire.

He'd hoped that she would do something or say something that would turn him off.

She hadn't yet.

He saw the light in the bedroom flick off and heard the bed creak. He remembered the nights last week when he'd lain on the floor of the bedroom and watched her slip into bed. Here he didn't even have the pleasure or pain of doing that.

He cursed and rolled over. Something small and dark scuttled across the moonlit floor.

He muttered a word as unprintable as the one he'd used earlier. It was going to be a long night.

Night? Hah. It was going to be a h.e.l.l of a long week. He tried not to think about the year of marriage that lay ahead of him.

When he did, he told himself that it was purely a natter of hormones. He hadn't had a woman in a long time. Most of the time it didn't matter. Now it did imply because of the propinquity.

Everywhere he went, there she was.

And he couldn't have her.

d.a.m.n it, why hadn't he found a woman who liked ;asual s.e.x? It would be so much easier to be married :o her if she did!

He shut his eyes; he dreamed of Kate.

He dreamed of stripping off her nightgown and earning the line of thosecurves, discovering the iepths of her. He dreamed of making love to heruntil he was senseless with desire. And then he dreamed of her hands on him light hands, delicate hands- tempting, teasing as they tripped up his barecalf. His need woke him, made him moan.

And then in that half-awake and half-dreaming state, he realised he couldstill feel that light touch.

It wasn't Kate.

He yelped, leaping to his feet. A palmetto bug fell :o the floor andscurried out of sight under the up board Damon stood, white-faced andshaking, stunned and muttering. He spoke English now without second thought.He'd used it every day, all day, since le'd been sixteen. But swearing inGreek was far more atisfying.

He muttered one last curse and shuddered, then aked his fingers through hishair and looked longingly . t the closed bedroom door. But it didn't take much imagination to conjure up the furore that would result if he invadedthat sacred domain.

Muttering, he dragged the sheet over and folded limself onto the short narrowset tee He tucked the ;dges of the sheet around him, letting none of ittouch he floor, and willed himself to sleep again.

This time he dreamed of plate-sized palmetto bugs, of tarantulas and scorpions, of blue lizards and snakes. He awoke in a cold sweat so often that, at last, he gave up and hauled himself to his feet. There would be no sleep tonight, that was certain.

And no point in sitting there staring at the door that separated him from hiswife.

Tossing the sheet on to the set tee Damon strode to the door, then lethimself out into the darkness.

The moon had sunk lower and was now behind the trees. He heard soft scuttling sounds in the underbrush, but in reality they posed no menace.Damon didn't even think about them. He stalked straight ahead down the pathtowards the beach.

The tide was going out and there was almost no surf. The ocean lay like astill sleeping pool. Damon walked without stopping straight across the dampsand and plunged in.

To wash off the touch of the palmetto bug, to cleanse himself of the dreamsof tarantulas and snakes, he told himself.

And he did that.

But even when he'd swum for over an hour, even when his lungs were near tobursting and his body longed for rest, even when he finally hauled himselfout of the water and dropped down belly-first on to the sand, he stillcouldn't sleep.

Because it wasn't the memory of the palmetto bug that was keeping him awake.Or the tarantulas and snakes of his nightmares.

It was Kate.

"Yes sir," Teresa said with awful cheer as she spooned scrambled eggs on totheir plates that morning at breakfast, 'you do got the look of a man on ahoneymoon. Them bloodshot eyes and deep sockets is a dead giveaway. " She gave Damon a broad wink.

"Had a lot of experience, have you?" he asked sourly into his mug of coffee.

Kate nudged him with her elbow. If she had to be polite, there was ho reasonhe shouldn't be.He raised his eyes to glare at her. He'd been glaring at her all morning, ever since he'd come in at half- past seven, looking as if he'd been dragged backwards under the reef, and she'd asked,