Judith E French by McKennas Bride Page B

blocked up a longtime ago. For an instant, Cerise’s image—as she was that first night in Jefferson—rose in his mind’s eye.
    Amid the smoke and clamor of Fat Rose’s whorehouse, a vision of fire and passion moved to the haunting throb of a Spanish guitar. A man couldn’t call what she was doing dancing, at least not dancing as he had ever seen it
.
    All fire and passion … flying night-black hair and come-hither eyes … Salome of the seven veils and all the wantons of Sodom and Gomorrah wrapped into one lush, copper-skinned body
.
    He broke into a sweat just watching her
.
    Around him, men clapped their hands and howled, but he didn’t hear them. Every fiber of his being concentrated on the woman in the green striped satin dancing dress as she whirled and thrust, stamped her bare feet, and parted her moist, red lips. Advancing, retreating, teasing, tantalizing … she made promises with heavy-lidded, almond-shaped eyes … and dared him with lush, heaving breasts and long, curvaceous legs
.
    Her pure sensuality stunned him as swiftly as the strike of a bolt of lightning, stealing his breath and scrambling his brain. He wanted her. God, how he wanted her!
    He forgot he was a married man … forgot what she was, and knew only that he had to have her no matter the cost
.
    “Cerise …”
    “Shane?”
    The swirl of the music grew fainter, and the blackness threatened him again. Shane felt himself falling, and instinctively he tightened his arms around Cerise’s body.
    And to his shock, he embraced thin air.
    “Lie still.”
    Not Cerise’s whiskey voice with its faintly French accent … and not Cerise’s scent. She favored a heavy rose, and this woman smelled of heather. He wonderedhow—“Ouch! Damn it! Are you trying to murder me?” Shane’s eyes flew open as he became aware of a sharp, burning ache along the side of his jaw.
    Caitlin leaned over him, a bloodstained cloth in her hands. “Welcome back.” Her tone was lamb gentle, but her ginger eyes radiated frost. “Congratulations. I won’t need to stitch your face.”
    Dumbly he raised his fingers to his cheek and brushed a shallow cut. “My beard? What have you done to—”
    “I had to shave around the injury to tend it,” she replied icily. He’d called out another woman’s name in his incoherent mumbling.
Cerise
. Justice’s mother.
    A thin needle of pain pierced through Caitlin’s chest and into the pit of her belly. Such a small thing shouldn’t hurt. She knew it shouldn’t hurt, but it did. She turned away and rinsed the cloth in the basin to keep him from seeing the tears in her eyes.
    Damn you to hell, Shane McKenna, she thought. Damn your black, cheating soul to everlasting flames.
    Fool. She was the fool to expect otherwise when they’d been apart so long. Hadn’t he tried to tell her the truth? Said that he was no saint?
    Ruthlessly she wrung out the washcloth she’d ripped from a worn cotton petticoat. How she wished that she had her sister Maureen or a woman friend here in Missouri she could confide in, who could give her advice. She was alone with no one to trust—least of all her husband.
    She’d tried to ignore her suspicions about Shane and Justice’s mother, but her worst fears were probably true. She was sure that Shane had been intimate with Cerise, maybe even in love with her. Shane’s affection for another woman seemed worse to her than his committing adultery.
    Caitlin wondered how many times Shane had madelove to Cerise. Pricks of jealousy made her want to jab him with the needle out of pure malice.
    She and Shane had known each other in the biblical sense only once. No, twice, she supposed, if she counted the hasty coming together just before he’d left her at daybreak on the morning after their wedding. She’d been frightened, and Shane had been awkward. She’d liked him holding her, and she’d loved the feeling of his bare skin against hers. But the actual sex had