Tender Triumph Read online

  God! How could she not love him, when he loved her so damned much.

  Katie's image danced before him: Katie coming up the hill toward him with that graceful leggy walk of hers and the breeze teasing her glorious hair; Katie looking at him, her deep blue eyes sparkling with laughter or dark with concern because he look­ed tired.

  Ramon closed his eyes, trying to postpone the mo­ment when he would have to make a decision, but it was no use. The decision had already been made. He was going to have to send her home. He would send her home tomorrow. No, not tomorrow, the next day. He had to keep her with him one more day. and one more night. Just one more. One more day to watch her moving around the cottage, to memo­rize the way she looked in each room—so that he could remember her there when she was gone. One more night to make love to her in the bedroom she had decorated for him, to join his ravenous body with hers and lose himself in her. He would lavish her senses with every exquisite pleasure a man could give a woman, make her moan with delight and cry out with rapture, and then bring her again and again to shuddering ecstasy.

  One day and one night to accumulate memories: memories that would bring him as much torment as they would pleasure, but it didn't matter. He had to have them.

  And then he would send her home. She would be relieved, he knew that now. He had always known it. Whatever her reasons for agreeing to marry him had been, she was never entirely committed to the idea. If she were, she would not have decorated her future home as a handsome bachelor retreat without a trace of her own personality.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Padre Gregorio greeted Katie with polite reserve when the housekeeper showed her into his office the next morning. He waited for her to take a seat, then sat down behind his desk.

  Katie tried to match his composed expression. "Ramon said that you feel I lack meekness, docili­ty and respect for authority."

  "I said that, yes." He leaned back in his chair. "Do you disagree?"

  Katie slowly shook her head, a smile touching her lips. "Not at all. In fact, I consider it a great compliment." When his expression didn't alter, she hesitated, and then continued. "Obviously you don't see it that way. You told Ramon that was the reason you didn't want to marry us."

  "Would you have preferred that I tell him the main reason—that the woman he loves does not love him?"

  Katie's long, tapered fingernails dug into her palms. "I didn't say—"

  "Senorita Connelly!" he interrupted in a low, controlled voice. "We are not going to waste any more time waltzing each other around in circles that more time waltzing each other around in circles that go nowhere. You are looking for a way to avoid this marriage, and I have given it to you."

  Katie was stricken. "How can you possibly say a thing like that?"

  "Because it is true. I sensed it from our first meeting. When I asked you how long you have known Ramon, you told me 'only' two weeks. You deliberately led me to think you are the sort of woman who frequents cantinas in the hope of meeting men, men whom you let publicly caress you in parking lots. You are nothing of the kind, senorita, and we both know it."

  He held up an imperious hand to silence Katie's outburst. "It is too late for that now. There are other reasons I believe what I do: I told you that if you would simply say you love Ramon, we would finalize the marriage plans. If you really wanted to marry him, you would have said it whether it was true or not, so that I would agree to the ceremony. "When I told you that, instead, I would accept your word that you intended to make Ramon a good wife, your face turned as white as a sheet. Ten seconds later you jumped up and accused me of trying to make you promise to respect his authority and obey him."

  Katie's gaze dropped to her lap. She rubbed her moist palms against her knees. "There's nothing I can say to prove you're wrong, is there?"

  "You do not want to prove I am wrong, senorita. In your heart, you want to avoid this marriage." He took off his glasses and wearily rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Perhaps you are afraid of commitment, of giving your love. I do not know. But I do know this—when Ramon realizes that you can give him only your body, and not your heart, he will not be satisfied. No man with any pride will let himself continue to care deeply for someone who does not care for him. Ramon's love for you will wither and die, because he will make certain that it does; he will kill it himself. When that happens, he must be free to find another, and to marry if he chooses. Know­ing all of this, I cannot, I will not bind him to you for the rest of his life with the unbreakable ties of Holy Matrimony."

  Katie's eyes were burning with tears she refused to shed, and there was a lump in her throat the size of a boulder as he finished: "It would be best for both of you if you went back to the States immediately. If you lack the courage and decency to do that, then live with him in sin or marry him in a civil ceremony. I cannot stop you. I have given you a way out of this, I expect you to give Ramon a way out, too—do not bind him to you in the church."

  Katie stood up stiffly. "And that's your final decision?"

  It seemed to take Padre Gregorio forever to rise to his feet. "If you must phrase it that way, yes, it is my final decision. I will leave it to you to tell Ramon." His blue eyes turned almost sympathetic. "Do not feel guilty because you cannot love him, senorita. Ramon is the sort of man who is attractive to women. Many have loved him in the past; there will be many who will love him in the future, and be more than eager to be his wife."

  Katie's head was proudly erect, but her eyes were swimming with tears. "I don't feel guilty, I feel furious!" Turning on her heel she walked to the door.

  Padre Gregorio's voice sounded incredibly sad. "Senorita...."

  Katie kept her face averted, unwilling to give him the satisfaction of seeing her cry. "Yes?"

  "God bless you."

  The tears clogging her throat prevented Katie from answering. She opened the door and walked out.

  Katie drove up to the cottage, half-blinded with tears of humiliation and fear. Padre Gregorio was right. She had been looking for a way out—no, not a way out, a way to gain more time. "Damn you, David!" she whispered thickly. This awful mess she was making of her life was his fault. Even dead he was haunting her; literally haunting her. It was because of him that she couldn't overcome this slumbering panic that she might be making the same mistake twice.

  Once before she had married a man who her own instinct had warned her wasn't what he appeared to be. Now she wanted to marry another man and she felt that way again. She couldn't shake that feeling.

  She pulled up in front of the little storybook cot­tage and let herself inside, relieved that Ramon wasn't there. She didn't want to have to explain her ravaged face. How would she? How could she say, there is something about you that is scaring me, Ramon.

  Katie wandered into the kitchen and methodically spooned coffee into the new percolator she had pur­chased. When it was made she poured it into a mug and carried it over to the kitchen table. With her hands wrapped around the hot mug, she gazed out at the terraced hills stretching in two directions, let­ting the magnificent view quiet her rioting emotions.

  She thought back to the way she had felt about David before they were married. Some intuition, some instinct, had warned her that David Caldwell was not the man he wanted her to believe he was. She should have listened to herself.

  And now she wanted to marry Ramon—and every instinct she possessed was telling her that he was not the man he wanted her to believe he was, either.

  Katie rubbed her fingertips against her temples. Never had she felt so afraid and confused. There was no time left to stall. Either she was going to ig­nore her instinctive fears and marry Ramon, or she had to go back to the States.

  The thought of leaving him made her almost physically ill. She adored him!

  She loved his dark eyes and dazzling smile, the reassuring strength in his firmly chiseled features, and the quiet authority in the line of his jaw. He was six feet three inches of taut, powerful muscle, yet he was gentle and tender with he