Tender Triumph Read online

  The Lear was his plane, not the corporation's, but like everything else he owned, including the houses, the island and the yacht, he had put the small jet up as collateral against loans the corporation had need­ed and now could not repay. What would have been the point of flying Katie to Puerto Rico in the Lear today, of giving her a taste of the luxurious life he could have offered her—when doing so would only make the life he was now able to afford appear even more drab and impoverished by comparison?

  Wearily, he leaned his head against the back of his seat and closed his eyes. He had no right to ask Katie to share his exile, to take her from her fashionable apartment, her career, and ask her to live on a farm in a renovated cottage. It was selfish and wrong of him, but he couldn't bear to think of life without her. Once he could have given her everything, now he could give her nothing—not even honesty. Not yet.

  Tomorrow he was scheduled for several meetings, one of which was with his accountant, and he was clinging to the slender hope that his personal finan­cial situation might not be as disastrous as it now seemed. After the meeting he would know exactly where he stood, and then he would have to find some way to explain to Katie who he was and what he had been. He had insisted on honesty between them, and although he had not actually lied to her, he now owed her the truth—the whole truth. The thought of telling Katie that he was a failure twisted his insides into knots. He didn't care if the whole world thought of him that way, but it hurt unbear­ably to know he would be a failure in Katie's eyes.

  It had been bad enough explaining the situation to Katie's father at breakfast Friday morning. Fond­ness for his future father-in-law softened Ramon's taut features as he recalled the unexpectedly hostile beginning of that meal.

  When Ramon had walked into the private men's club where they had agreed to meet, Ryan Connelly had been waiting for him with suppressed anger ra­diating from his entire body. "What the hell kind of game are you playing, Galverra?" the older man had demanded in a low, furious voice as soon as Ramon sat down. "You're no more a small-time Puerto Rican farmer than I am. It's been driving me crazy why you looked so familiar to me. It wasn't just your name that seemed familiar, it was your face. Last night I remembered the article about you in Time Magazine, and—"

  As Ramon had explained to Katie's father about the impending collapse of Galverra International, Ryan Connelly's fury had given way first to amaze­ment and then to compassionate understanding. Ramon had tried not to smile when Katie's father volunteered financial help. Ryan Connelly was a wealthy man, but as Ramon had explained to him, it would take one hundred investors like Ryan to shore up Galverra International. Otherwise it would still collapse beneath its own weight and take everyone who had invested in the corporation with it.

  The big jet dropped sickeningly into a powerful downdraft, then soared upward with a stomach-tightening lurch. "Are we landing?" Katie mum­bled.

  "No," Ramon said. He brushed his lips against her fragrant hair. "Go back to sleep. I will awaken you when we begin our final approach at Miami." Obediently, Katie closed her eyes and snuggled closer to him.

  The cockpit door opened and the pilot started down the aisle toward the rest room. The passenger seated in front of Ramon stopped him with some questions and as the pilot bent down to reply, Ramon watched his eyes rove appreciatively over Katie's face, lingering there as he answered. Ramon felt a flash of annoyance that he immediately recog­nized as jealousy.

  Jealousy—another new emotion with which he must learn to cope because of Katie. After bestow­ing a glacial look on the unfortunate pilot, Ramon reached for Katie's hand and laced his fingers through hers. He sighed. At this rate, jealousy was going to be his constant companion.

  Just walking through the airport with her and watching the men who turned to stare as she passed had set his teeth on edge. Dressed in a turquoise silk dress that showed off her long, shapely legs in their high heels, she looked like a model. No—the models he had known did not have Katie's lush curves or elegant perfection of features. They had glamour. Katie had beauty. Katie flexed his fingers, and Ramon realized that he'd been possessively tightening his grip on her hand. Lightly, sensuously, he stroked his thumb against her palm. Even in her sleep Katie responded to his touch and moved closer against him. God, how he wanted her! Just having her nestled against his shoulder made him throb with desire and ache with tenderness.

  Leaning his head back, Ramon closed his eyes and sighed with profound pleasure. He had done it! He had actually gotten Katie on this plane with him! She was coming to Puerto Rico. She was going to be his. He admired her independence and intelligence, and he adored the vulnerability and softness within her. She was the embodiment of everything he liked in women: she was feminine without being vapid or helpless; proud without being haughty; assertive without being aggressive. Sexually, she was liberated in her thinking but not her actions, which pleased him immensely. He knew he would have hated it if Katie had casually given her beautiful body to other men. She was infinitely more special, more precious to him because she had chosen not to indulge in casual sex. Which, he supposed, made him guilty of applying the double standard for men and women's morality, considering the number of women from St. Moritz to St. Croix he'd had in the last decade.

  Ramon smiled inwardly, thinking of how irate Katie would be if she knew he felt this way about her morals. She would accuse him of being everything from outrageously old-fashioned to hopelessly Latin, which was rather humorous, because he sus­pected that the reason Katie was drawn to him was—

  The brief pleasure he'd been feeling was promptly strangled by the same doubt that had been winding tighter and tighter within him for the past several days. He didn't know why Katie was drawn to him. He didn't know why she thought she should marry him, had no idea what reasons she was giving herself for doing so. The only valid reason would be that she loved him.

  But she didn't.

  Mentally, Ramon recoiled from that truth, yet he knew he had to face it and come to terms with it. Not once had Katie so much as mentioned the word love. Three nights ago, when he had told her that he loved her, the words had burst out of him, yet Katie had chosen to act as if she hadn't heard him. How ironic that when, for the first time in his life, he told a woman he loved her, she hadn't even been able to say she loved him, too.

  Grimly, he wondered if this was fate's way of re­paying him for all the times women had said they loved him and he had responded with silence, or a noncommittal smile, because he refused to claim an emotion he didn't feel.

  If Katie didn't think she loved him, why was she on this plane? Sexually, she wanted him, he knew that. From the first moment he had taken her into his arms he had been forcing her to want him more, relentlessly fanning the flames of her body's desire for his. Apparently passion was the only thing she felt for him; desire her only reason for being on this plane.

  No, dammit! That couldn't be true. Katie was too intelligent to consider marrying him solely for sexual gratification. She must feel something else for him. After all, there had always been a tremendous mag­netic pull between them, and it was emotional as well as physical. If she didn't love him, could he possibly bind her to him with her body alone? Even if he was able to, could he bear to live with her, knowing his feelings for her were so much deeper than hers for him?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Returning from the ladies' room in San Juan air­port, Katie made her way toward the baggage claim area where the luggage was arriving from their Miami-San Juan flight.

  A thrill of anticipation danced up her spine as she listened to the tide of incomprehensible rapid-fire Spanish interspersed with English, being spoken all around her. To her left, a group of distinguished, fair-haired men were speaking what Katie was cer­tain must be Swedish. Behind her was a large cluster of tourists conversing in flowing French. Puerto Rico, she realized with surprised delight, must be a vacation place for more than just Americans.

  She scanned the throngs of people and saw Ra­mon nod towar