"I assume that's what you meant, that if I go back she'll change her will again, leaving it all to me?"
"Yes," she whispered.
"Then you're a fool," he whispered derisively in return, and released her face.
"Look, why don't you trot on back, like the good little lapdog you're turned into, and tell her you gave it your best shot but I'm not interested."
She absorbed the pain of that blow, too, and shoved it into her inner shell where the damage wouldn't show. The expression she turned to him was as smooth and blank as a doll's.
"I want you to come home, too. Please." She could feel his intensifying focus as it settled on her, like a laser beam finding its target.
"Now, why would you want that?" he asked softly.
"Unless you really are a fool. Are you a fool, Roanna?"
She opened her mouth to answer but he laid one callused finger across her lips.
"Ten years ago you started it all by offering me a taste of that skinny little body. At the time, I thought you were too innocent to know what you were doing, but I've thought about it a lot since then, and now I think you knew exactly how I was reacting, didn't you?"
His finger was still covering her lips, lightly tracing the sensitive outline. This was what she had dreaded most, having to face his bitter accusations. She closed her eyes and nodded.
"Did you know Jessie was coming down?"
"No!" Her denial moved her lips against his finger, making her mouth tingle.
"So you kissed me because you wanted me?"
What did pride matter? she thought. She had loved him, in some form, her entire life. First she had loved him with a child's hero worship, then with an adolescent's violent crush, and finally with a woman's passion. The last change had, perhaps, taken place when she had watched Jessie cheating on him with another man and knew she couldn't tell, because to do so would hurt Webb. When she'd been younger, she would have been gleeful at the prospect of getting Jessie in trouble, and told immediately. That time she had put Webb's welfare above her own impulses, but then she had surrendered to another impulse when she kissed him, and he had ended up paying the price anyway.
His finger pressed harder.
"Did you?" he insisted.
"Did you want me?"
"Yes," she breathed, abandoning any scrap of pride or self-protection.
"I always wanted you."
"What about now?" His voice was hard, inexorable, pushing her toward an end she couldn't see.
"Do you want me now?"
What did he want her to say? Maybe he just wanted her complete humiliation. If he blamed her for everything that had happened, perhaps this was the price he wanted her to pay.
She nodded.
"How much do you want me?" Abruptly his hand slipped inside the jacket and closed over her breast.
"Just enough to give me a feel, tease me? Or enough to give me what you offered ten years ago?"
Roanna's breath wheezed to a stop in her chest, frozen with shock. She stared helplessly at him, her dark eyes so huge that they dominated her pale face.
"Tell you what," he murmured, his big hand still burning her breast, lightly squeezing as if testing the firm resilience of her flesh.
"I paid for this ten years ago, but I never got it. I'll go back and take care of business for Lucinda-if you'll give me what everyone thought I'd had then."
Numbly, she realized what he meant, realized that the years had made him even harder than she'd suspected. The old Webb never would have done such a thing-or perhaps he'd always had the capability for such ruthlessness but hadn't needed to use it. The iron was much closer to the surface now.
This, then, was his revenge against her for her juvenile romantic ambush, which had cost him so much. If he went back home he would have Davencourt as his payment, but he wanted Roanna's personal payment, too, and his price was her body.
She looked at him, at this man she had loved forever.
"All right," she whispered. The motel room was small and dingy, with a chill that went all the way to her bones. Roanna was certain there had to be better motels in Nogales, so why had he brought her here? Because it was closest or to show her how little she meant to him?
It would take a great deal of ego to think she meant anything to him at all, and ego was on-, thing Roanna didn't have. She felt small and shriveled inside, and a new guilt had been added to the burden she already carried: he thought he was punishing her, and in a way he was, but a secret part of her was suddenly, dizzily ecstatic that soon she would be lying in his arms.
The secret part was small, and deeply buried. She felt the shame he meant her to feel, and the humiliation. She didn't know if she'd have the courage to go through with it, and desperately she thought of Lucinda, ill and diminished with age, needing Webb's forgiveness before she could die in peace. Could she do this, lie down and let him coldly use her body, even for Lucinda?
But it wasn't just for Lucinda. Webb needed revenge just as much as Lucinda needed forgiveness. If this would help
him even the scales, if he could then return to Davencourt, then Roanna was willing to do it. And deep inside, that secret little part of her was giddy with selfish delight. No matter what his reasoning, for a brief time he would be hers, the experience held to her heart and savored during the empty years ahead.
He tossed his hat onto the chair and sprawled on his back on the bed, bunching the pillow up behind his head for support. His narrowed green eyes raked down her body.
"Take off your clothes."
Stunned again, she stood there with her arms hanging at her sides. He wanted her to strip down naked, just like that, with him lying there watching?