Valley of the Vapours (The Americana Series Book 4) Read online

  "I keep feeling this is a nightmare and if I could only pinch myself hard enough I would wake up. Thank heaven for all the modern formalities you have to go through before there can be a marriage. Dad would have had us married on the spot!" Tisha shuddered. "I always knew he was terribly old-fashioned, but I never dreamed he would resort to this."

  "Roarke has obviously agreed to this…marriage," her aunt said hesitantly. "Physically I know you attract him. I was wondering…have you fallen in love with him?"

  "Me? In love with Roarke?" In spite of all the indignation Tisha put in her voice, the negative shake of her head was one of uncertainty. "Never!" she added firmly, partially afraid to examine her emotions. She rose quickly to her feet again. "I have to speak to Father. Somehow I have to make him understand that I won't marry Roarke!"

  Chapter Eight

  FOR the rest of the morning and the better part of the afternoon, Tisha argued and pleaded with her father. Neither tears nor logic nor anger could persuade him to change his mind. She knew she would not be able to move him from his adamant stand as long as he believed that Roarke would marry her. She stormed into the studio where Blanche had discreetly retreated to allow them privacy.

  "Please, go and keep Dad occupied," Tisha pleaded, bitter tears of frustration scalding her eyes. "I have to call Roarke, and I don't want Dad accidentally picking up the phone and finding out."

  Blanche immediately set down her brush and began wiping her hands on a rag. "No luck?" she asked sympathetically, and the grim expression on her niece's face gave her a wordless answer of the futility of her attempts. "Roarke's number is in the address book by the telephone."

  Tisha sent a clipped thanks to her departing aunt and walked to the telephone. With fingers trembling with anger, she dialled the number and listened impatiently to the rings that went unanswered. She was all ready to slam down the receiver when she heard Roarke's voice.

  "Where have you been?" she demanded angrily.

  "Who is that? Tisha?"

  "Of course," she snapped.

  "Yes, of course." There was dry amusement in his voice. "Who else would greet anybody that rudely? As to where I've been, I work for my living, you know."

  "I haven't got time for idle conversation," Tisha retorted. The husky, mocking sound of his voice added more fuel for her fiery temper to feed on. "Father might find out any minute that I'm calling you."

  "After what he already suspects, what harm is there in a telephone call?"

  "Just shut up and listen! Father is always in bed by ten o'clock. I want you to meet me at eleven sharp down at the end of the lane. Have you got that?"

  "Yes—"

  She cut in on the rest of his words, "I'll see you there," and hung up the telephone. This was not the time for long-drawn-out conversation.

  Tisha stayed clear of her father until the evening meal, where she maintained an icy coolness and occasionally tossed barbed remarks at him so he would know she still did not accept his edict of marriage. But nothing shattered his resolve that he was doing the right thing. By the time she and Blanche had cleared the table her father had retreated to the living-room, she was beginning to wonder if there was any way to elude the proposed wedding ceremony short of running away. Roarke was the key to the solution, she decided, immersing her hands in the dishwater. Between the two of them, they would come up with a way out of this mess.

  Her gaze wandered idly to the window above the sink. With a start, Tisha recognized the white sports car pulling to a stop in front of the house. A glance at the clock told her it was only a few minutes past seven o'clock. Surely Roarke hadn't misunderstood her. She had said eleven, not seven.

  The dish in her hand slid back into the water as she reached for the towel in her aunt's hand. "It's Roarke! He's here now!" she exclaimed in a panicked whisper.

  "I thought you said you were going to meet him at eleven," Blanche frowned.

  "That's what I told him." Only the excess water was wiped from her hands. "I have to stop him before Dad sees him!"

  Before she was half-way across the kitchen, the doorbell rang. Richard Caldwell was already at the front door by the time Tisha reached the kitchen archway. She stopped in its frame, poised to take flight as she watched the calm, almost friendly way the two men greeted each other. Her heart was lodged somewhere in the vicinity of her throat, pulsing wildly at the sight of the tall composed man exchanging pleasantries with her father.

  "I hope you don't mind me dropping in this evening," he was saying in a condescending voice. His brown eyes glittered momentarily at Tisha. "I wanted to speak to your daughter. May I see her alone?"

  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 slashing 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 c
hallenged 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 amusement 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 pass 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 breasts. "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 knob. 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 relationship 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 shifted 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 passage 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 co
mes 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 Saturday. 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 passing glance her way, he lowered his head to tear at the grass, 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.