But was it just that, an image? An image concocted not, as she’d assumed, to charm and finagle, as her father had done, but a facade designed to hide the fact that he really, truly felt there was nothing behind it? And for the first time she really thought about his words the time he’d spoken so viciously about his looks.
My looks didn’t matter a hoot to any of the horses or bulls I rode. Or to my DI’s...except to make them want to push me even harder.... And my looks sure as hell didn’t stop that bomb....
She’d wondered then, with a kind of morbid curiosity, what he’d been about to say when he’d let slip those last words about a bomb. But now she found herself thinking unexpectedly that looks like his could be a curse. She’d heard enough about women who weren’t taken seriously because they were too attractive, but she’d never thought of that kind of thing in a male context.
And Kyra, at least, had chosen another man despite Cole’s obvious attractiveness. Or maybe, Tory thought suddenly, because of it.
For different reasons, she has the same feeling about guys like me as you do.... She was too afraid of me to trust me until it was too late.
Guys like me.
She’d spent too much time acknowledging that she was different from many women not to hear the isolation in those simple words. She’d just never thought of Cole like this before.
She’d never thought about any man at all as much as she’d thought about him. And she’d never been so confused, either.
And on that thought, she knew what to do—what she always did when she couldn’t seem to thrash her way through a problem. She would go to the one man in the world she trusted completely.
* * *
She couldn’t get the words out. She sat there looking at Hobie as they swayed slightly on the porch swing, and didn’t know what to say. Never before had she felt constrained like this. Since she’d come to him at twenty-two, humbly apologizing for having taken her father’s word about him—since he’d opened his door and his heart to her without judging, without a trace of vindictiveness for the humiliation her father had heaped on him—she had been able to talk to Hobie about anything.
But then, she’d never been in the position of trying to find the words to tell him she was a confused mess because of a man, a man who happened to be an old friend of his.
“You’re looking a mite distracted tonight, honey.”
She managed a faint smile. “Perceptive of you,” she said ruefully as she tugged off the strappy sandals she’d worn to town.
“Nope,” Hobie denied. “I just know my girl.”
Tory sighed. “I wish I was your girl. Really, I mean.”
She’d said it more than once, that she wished he’d been her father, but before it had always made Hobie smile. Never had he responded with the thoughtful, almost wistful expression he wore now.
“You could have been, you know.” His mouth quirked beneath the mustache. “Always thought it’d happen that way.”
Tory stared at him. “What... What do you mean?”
He didn’t answer right away. He tugged at his mustache as he stared out over the ranch. Then, at last, he met her puzzled gaze.
“I loved your mother, Tory. I’d loved her since we were in high school together.”
Tory smothered a gasp. She’d never known. True, her mother had done her best to counteract Jack Flynn’s diatribes about his useless brother, but never, even after she’d realized the truth about Jack Flynn, had Tory ever suspected there was more to it than simply her mother’s desire for fairness where there was none.
“We went steady for years.” Tory’s eyes widened as he continued to astonish her with his quiet words. “Used to talk about when we’d get married. How we’d settle down on our own place someday, raise cattle and horses and a passel of kids.”
“I never knew,” she whispered, shaking her head in stunned slow motion.
“I know you didn’t. It wasn’t something your father would advertise.”
Hardly, she thought, somewhat numbly. Jack Flynn would never want anyone to know that his wife had once dated his despised little brother.
“My God,” she said in sudden realization, “that’s why, isn’t it? He hated you because mother was yours first.”
Hobie shrugged. “I don’t know. I never thought I mattered to him that much. But maybe.”
“No wonder it galled him when Mother defended you.”
Hobie’s eyes, so like her own, widened. “Jeanie defended me?”
“All the time. He would get off on these tirades, you know the kind, and she would just sit and listen. Until he started on you. Then she would tell him to be quiet. That it was all lies, and he knew it.” Tory tried to smile, but she knew she didn’t quite succeed. “It was the only time, other than for me, that she ever stood up to him.”
Hobie lowered his head, and Tory pretended not to notice when he made a quick swipe at his eyes. It took her a long, silent few moments before she worked herself up to go on.
“What happened?” she finally asked, already certain she didn’t want to hear this. But if Hobie was telling her this now, after all this time, he must have a reason.
“We were in love, but we knew we had to wait until we graduated school. So the day afterward, I brought her home with me. Like they say, to meet the family.” He tugged at his mustache again. “Well, she did. She met your grandma and grandpa. And your great-grandma, Martha.” He let out a breath. “And then she met Jack.”
Your uncle Hobie has been hurt badly in his life, Victoria, but he had the gumption to go on. He deserves respect, not the misery your father heaps on him.
Her mother’s voice came back to her as if from a tape played so often the words were becoming faint.
“You were engaged...and she left you for him?”
“Now, don’t be looking like that, honey. We were young, and naive. And Jack was home from that fancy east coast college. He’d always been high, wide and handsome, but now he was sophisticated too, and flashier than anything either one of us had ever seen. And when Jack put his mind to getting a woman, he usually got her.”
“But if she loved you—”
“I know, it sounds like it was pretty simple. But it wasn’t, Tory. It never is as simple as it seems. People’s hearts tangle it all up with old ideas, old hurts, until you’re not sure what you’re really seeing now.”
Tory went very still. She stared at her uncle, wondering if he’d somehow read her mind and understood her confusion without her having said a word.
“Jack swept your mother off her feet. She had stars in her eyes so fast, I don’t think she ever had a chance.” Hobie shrugged. “Neither did I, once Jack set his sights on her.”
Impulsively she slid over to hug him. “I’m sorry, Uncle Hobie. My mother was a fool.”
“People make foolish choices, honey. That doesn’t always make them a fool.”
“She was,” Tory said sadly. “Because she was unhappy for most of the rest of her life.”
“And that’s the saddest part of all.”
She pulled back, and sat up to look at him intently. “You can say that? After what she did to you, after the way my father treated you?”
Hobie reached out and took her hands in his. “I’ve had five years of loving the woman who could have been our daughter. That’s more important than any old hurts, Tory. Much more important.”
Moisture sprang to her eyes, and in seconds she was blinking away tears at her uncle’s simple declaration. This time she hugged him fiercely.
“She was a fool. She went for the flash, when she could have had the best man in the world.”
“Thank you for thinking that, honey.”
Hobie hugged her back, tightly, and Tory felt a moment of thankfulness as she realized his strength was returning. For that alone, for the hope he’d given her uncle, she owed Cole Bannister a great deal. But not, she thought, her heart.
“I won’t be that kind of fool,” she murmured, half to herself, as if
saying the words made it true.
Hobie seemed to go very still then, and she knew he’d heard her. She almost wished she hadn’t said it at all, but when he spoke, it seemed he was going to let her words pass.
“I’ve been thinking about Jeanie a lot lately,” he said quietly. “Hell, I haven’t been able to do much else but think. And I know some would say I should hate her. But I can’t, Tory. I loved her then, and I love her now.”
“Oh, Hobie,” Tory began, aching for him.
“And I’ll tell you something else. I’d trade everything I’ve got, except you, just to have one night with Jeanie to look back on.”
This time it was Tory who went very still. “One...night? You mean you never...?”
“No. Oh, it was a close thing, and God knows we were young and hot, but I wanted to wait until we were married.” He made a small, pained sound. “In case she got pregnant. Birth control wasn’t so easy, back then.” He let out a deep breath. “If I hadn’t been so damned careful, you might really have been mine.”
She snuggled closer to him. “I wish you hadn’t been.”
“Think about that, too, honey. I know you’ve been looking at the world through glasses colored by your father. But don’t paint every man you’re attracted to with that brush.”
Why doesn’t he get tarred with your father’s brush?
Cole’s question echoed in her mind. God, was that it? She’d known her father had skewed her outlook, but since she didn’t react that way to all men, since she’d been able to see some as decent and honest, she had thought herself fairly balanced. But was Hobie right? And Cole? Was it only the ones she was attracted to that caused that reaction? Was it some sort of instinctive, automatic self-protective urge that had made her so certain Cole was just like her father? Because she was more attracted to him than she’d ever been to a man in her life? She didn’t want to believe it, but it made a sort of painful sense.
But not nearly as painful as the sight of Cole in that bar, with Cindy wrapped around him. She was probably a fool for even looking for an innocent explanation. After all, Cole had told her straight out she’d been right, hadn’t he? It was only her obviously too-fertile imagination that had her half-believing there was more to his words than that.
“I wonder when our crack investigator will wander in to take a look at what his office sent,” she said sourly. Only after the words were out did she realize what she had given away by bringing Cole up after the conversation she and Hobie had just had. Hobie, bless him, merely looked at her curiously.
“He’s been back for a long time.”
Tory straightened up to look at her uncle. “What?”
“He came back long before you did. Nearly two hours ago.”
Two hours. That meant he’d left almost right after she had, and had come straight here. No time for dallying with the available Cindy. But had he meant to, before her interruption? Or had he been telling the truth, and merely been probing for information?
He’d told her that, but she hadn’t believed him. And only after she’d continued to needle him had he finally gotten that resigned look in his eyes and told her she was right. On all counts.
“I...didn’t see his truck,” Tory said lamely, knowing that Hobie knew as well as she did that Cole had taken to parking the slightly battered vehicle out of sight behind the house.
“Hmm.” Hobie lifted a brow, but said no more about her obvious dissembling. “He’s in the office, going over the files that were in that package. I’ve been feeding him coffee. He didn’t want to eat. Seemed in a pretty poor mood.”
Because she’d interrupted his liaison? Or because she’d misjudged him? God, she didn’t know. She felt like she didn’t know anything anymore. Maybe he’d meant to take Cindy up on her offer. But the point was, she supposed, that he hadn’t. For whatever reason, he’d walked away.
“He’s a good man, Tory,” Hobie said gently. “He may be a little confused right now, and he’s like that cat of his, been through some hard times he ain’t talking about, but that doesn’t change what he is at the core.”
With that, Hobie said good-night, and went inside to bed. Tory stayed on the swing, staring out into the darkness, trying to sort through her tangled emotions.
What had Hobie been trying to tell her? Obviously he’d realized she was attracted to Cole. But then, that would only be reasonable. Take any woman, let alone one who’d been tucked away on this ranch, isolated for most of the year except when she went to shows and competitions, put her in the same room with Cole Bannister, and there was a darned good chance she was going to react. If she was still breathing, anyway.
But it had almost seemed as if Hobie had been reassuring her about Cole, almost as if he’d been encouraging her. She grimaced at that thought. Hobie looked at Cole as an old friend. He was that, but she doubted he was still the man her uncle remembered. And Hobie would hardly look at him the way a wary woman would.
She sighed, knowing there were no easy answers. But she stayed, liking the comforting rock of the swing. She stayed even when the air at last began to cool, and she felt the chill on her bare arms. She was still there when Rocky, finished for now with the excursions that were playing havoc with the local mouse population, glided up onto the porch to sit in front of her.
The cat waited, head tilted to one side, until Tory, smiling despite her distraction, reached down to pet him. One long stroke over the soft fur, and a passing tickle of the ragged ear was all that she was permitted before the cat disappeared behind the swing, came out dragging the now dusty red bandanna, leapt to the porch rail and settled down to survey his new domain. She’d found Rocky disliked sitting on the swaying swing, finding such movement excessive and unnecessary and not conducive to peaceful napping.
“You have been through some hard times, haven’t you, Rocky?” she whispered.
The cat turned his head to look at her, his distinctive, pale blue eyes seeming to gather what light there was and reflect it eerily, giving him a wise, almost mystical look. It made his ragged ear, and the other scars that marked his body insignificant.
“But you’ve made your peace with the world, haven’t you?” she said. “That’s the difference between you and Cole. You’ve come out of the dark. He hasn’t.”
Rocky blinked. And slowly, uncannily, inclined his head as if nodding at a particularly bright human who had reached an enlightened thought.
Tory nearly laughed at her own fancifulness. But Rocky truly was a most expressive cat. And right now, lying atop her old bandanna, he seemed utterly at peace with his world. She wished she could claim the same state.
Hobie’s words spun in her mind. There had been little less than pain in his voice when he’d spoken of trading everything except her for even just one night with the woman he’d so loved. It was hard for her to think of her mother as that woman. She’d been such a quiet, shadowy figure in Tory’s life for so long. But to Hobie, she’d been...young and hot, he’d said.
She herself had been young, Tory thought, but never...hot. Until now. Even sitting in the dark with only a cat for company, color flooded her cheeks. But it was true, she admitted honestly. For the first time in her life, it was true. Cole made her feel things—hot, swirling, frightening things that—were at the same time so tempting she woke in the night reaching for him, a moan of pleasure already on her lips.
Would there come a day, years from now, when she would regret this missed chance? When she would look back and sadly mourn not having at least one purely passionate fling to remember? That with Cole, that was all it would be, she knew. He would be gone soon, as soon as this mess was over. There would be no future in a relationship with him. But was that bad? Wouldn’t knowing that help her keep her heart intact?
We’re talking sex here. Not love, not romance, just raw, hot, out-of-control sex.
A shiver rippled through her as she remembered his words. It would be that way with him. Raw. Hot. The words repelled and drew her at the same time, just as
the man did. Made her weak in the knees while making her nerves quail. Made heat build in her, low and deep, while her mind screamed a warning her body didn’t want to hear.
No, she had few illusions about Cole. But then, it was the shattering of the illusion that hurt, wasn’t it? Like the shattering of her image of her father had hurt. If you don’t have the illusion in the first place, she told herself, you won’t be hurt when it vanishes, as it always does.
What she did have was the grim knowledge that she was twenty-seven years old, and had never really, truly wanted a man. Had never been possessed by the urge to touch, to hold, to caress...and to give whatever he asked. Until now. She’d never thought it would happen to her. Perhaps it never would again. And that thought filled her with a sadness that verged on desperation. That, and the memory of the quiet sorrow in her uncle’s eyes, decided it for her. She got to her feet.
Rocky looked at her.
“Am I a fool, Rocky?” she asked. “Is he really just an empty shell, like he said, or is he just lost, like you once were?”
The cat merely began to groom his coat with a rough, pink tongue, providing no answer this time. Or perhaps he was answering, Tory thought. Showing her that even a battered street fighter like himself could find enough peace to care about something other than simply staying alive.
She was going to find out, she thought, surrendering to a sense of inevitability. And if Cole truly was that empty shell, she could only hope she didn’t get cut to ribbons by the fragments if it shattered.
Chapter 11
Maybe his instincts weren’t as rusty as he thought. He’d known the instant the office door opened that it was Tory, long before he’d caught the faint trace of that sweet, jasmine scent she wore. And the moment she started across the room, he recognized the faint sound of bare feet on the polished wooden floor. It didn’t take her long. The ranch office was small, barely large enough for the big rolltop desk, the desk chair and the file cabinets against the wall.
Cole stifled the urge to shut the file he’d been reading—the one he’d asked the office to put together on her father, more out of curiosity than anything—and hide it from her. He didn’t move, just kept staring at the file in his lap, his booted feet up on the corner of the desk as he leaned the chair back on two legs, balancing somewhat precariously.
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