by Diana Palmer
She grinned, refusing to be intimidated. That was the first spark of interest she’d seen since they’d told him he couldn’t work. “That’s better,” she said. “How about a cup of coffee?”
He hesitated. But after a minute, he gave in to the irritating need to be fussed over. He nodded and she almost ran in her haste to get to the coffee machine down the hall. He stared after her with helpless need. He’d never been treated like this by a woman, by any woman. It was new and unsettling to have someone care about him, want to do things for him. With his mother, and especially Jane, it had been, “What can you do for me?” Tess was different. Too different. She was getting under his skin, and not just with her warm affection. He looked at her body and felt a kind of desire he hadn’t experienced in years. She aroused him as Jane never had. That, he thought worriedly, could present some problems later on. She was only nineteen, even if she was probably experienced. Most girls were these days. He closed his eyes. Well, he’d cross that bridge later. Not now.
He began to think about what she’d said, about a new profession. His lips pursed thoughtfully and all at once he began to smile as wheels turned in his mind.
As the weeks passed, Tess came with time-clock regularity, sitting with him, talking to him. He accepted her presence and finally began to let his guard down with her. They grew closer, even as he fought his headlong attraction to her.
The attraction slowly began to undermine his efforts to be kind to her. He was overly irritable one Monday morning when she came to his apartment and found him lying listlessly in bed.
“You again? What the hell do you want?” he’d asked coldly.
Used to his flashes of temper by now, she only smiled. “I want you to get well,” she said simply.
He lay back and closed his eyes. “Go away. Aren’t you late for school?”
“I graduated. It’s summer.”
“Then get a job.”
“I’m going to secretarial school at night.”
“And working during the day?”
“Sort of.”
His head turned on the pillow. “Sort of?”
She smiled. “Dad thinks I’m doing enough of a job helping you get back on your feet.” She didn’t add that her father had only agreed absently with her own comment on that score. Nita had been to see her son just that once, and had stayed less than five minutes. But Tess adored him. She’d worked to lose weight, to improve her appearance, so that he might notice her during his long recovery. It hadn’t worked, but she was hopeful that it might one day.
“Are you qualified to practice psychiatry and physical therapy?” he asked with biting sarcasm.
It bounced right off. She knew he was hurting, so she didn’t mind being a target. She put her purse aside and stood up, her ponytail swinging as she leaned over him.
“My father is going to marry your mother. When that happens, you’ll be my big brother. I need to practice looking out for you,” she said.
He glared at her. “I don’t need looking after.”
“Yes, you do,” she replied pleasantly. Her eyes went to the visible scars on his upper arm in its white T-shirt. There were worse ones on his back. She’d seen them, though he didn’t know she had. “It must hurt terribly,” she said, her voice as gentle as the look she gave him. “I’m sorry you got hurt, Richard.”
“Dane,” he corrected. “Nobody calls me Richard.”
“Okay.”
“And I don’t need a schoolgirl for a nursemaid.”
“Why doesn’t your mother come to see you more often?” she asked curiously.
He averted his eyes. “Because she hated my father. I look like him.”
“Oh.” She moved a little closer, hesitant but determined. “Wouldn’t you like to be part of a family?” she asked, sounding more plaintive than she realized. “I’ve only ever had my grandmother, really, and she only kept me because she had to. My mother died when I was just little. Dad…” She shrugged. “Dad was never much of a family person. So I’ve really got nobody. And…I’m sorry…but it seems as if now you haven’t got anybody, either.” She clasped her hands tightly at her waist. “We could be each other’s family.”
His face had gone hard, and his eyes glittered at her. “I don’t want a family,” he said deliberately. “Least of all, you!”
“I might grow on you,” she said, and smiled to hide the hurt caused by his words. Of course he didn’t want her. Nobody ever really had.
He hadn’t said anything else. He’d tried ignoring her, but she wouldn’t go away. She came every single day, bringing books for him to read, tapes for him to listen to. She cooked for him and sat with him and talked to him, argued with him and encouraged him, and despite his hostility and lack of encouragement, she very quietly fell in love with him.
She didn’t realize that her love for him was so obvious. It was impossible not to notice how she felt, when her face was radiant with it. Neither had she known that Dane noticed her without wanting to, his dark eyes growing more covetous by the day as his recovery brought her close and kept her there. He became used to her, enjoyed her, wanted her. She was so different from all the women he’d had in his life. Tess was loving and gentle, and there was an odd kind of vulnerability about her. He thrived on her attentions. He began to look forward to her company.
But even so, he eventually grew uneasy when he began to realize how attached he was becoming to her. He was afraid of involvement, terrified of it, after the disaster of his marriage. Even if he’d married Jane to spite his hard-hearted mother, who didn’t approve of her, he’d been attracted to Jane at first, and she’d pretended to be in love with him. Then had come marriage and her distaste of intimacy with him. The crowning touch had been her reckless affair with his old partner on the Houston police force. That had been revenge, he knew, and she’d left him more crippled than the shooting had. Tess was a woman. She could very easily be deceiving him, too, overcome with compassion and what was probably physical infatuation.
His doubts led to a return of his former moodiness, and then to open hostility. He pushed Tess away at every opportunity, but she was stubborn and refused to believe that he really didn’t want her around.
He got back on his feet and grew strong much more quickly than anyone thought he would. With good health came a revived male vitality that responded suddenly, and with devastating results, to Tess’s femininity….
With her blond hair around her shoulders and wearing a white peasant dress with a colorful belt, she danced into his apartment at lunchtime one day carrying a homemade cake. Dane was in jeans and barefoot, his white T-shirt over his muscular chest damp with sweat from the workout he’d been having in his improvised gym. He limped a little because of his wounds, but he could walk. Now he was intent on walking without the limp, getting fit. But Tess was making him vulnerable all over again, draining him of strength.
He wanted her desperately, even if it was totally against his will. He’d been without a woman for a long time, and he needed someone. Tess was tempting him beyond bearing. She looked at him with eyes that wanted him, and the need had smoldered so long that it got away from him.
She hadn’t seen the calculating look he’d given her as she deposited the cake on the counter in the kitchen, or the warning glitter of his black eyes.
“What’s this?” he asked in a sensual tone he’d never used with her before, moving close.
“Just a pound cake,” she said breathlessly, her eyes shyly glancing off his as she registered the devastating impact of his nearness on her pulse rate. Her eyes adored him. “I thought you might have a sweet tooth. How do you feel? You look…much better.” Her eyes had dropped, as if the sight of him delighted her, embarrassed her.
He hadn’t thought about her love life, or lack of it, or it might have prevented what happened next. His only intent at the time had been to ease the ache devouring him, in the quickest possible way.
“I’ve got a sweet tooth, all right,” he’d said softly as h
e backed her up against the counter and leaned his body into hers. “You must have one, too. You spend half your life devouring me with those sultry eyes. I’d have to be blind not to know what you feel for me. Is this what you want, Tess?” he asked huskily, and moved his hips blatantly against hers, letting her feel the stark evidence of his desire for her. She blushed, but he wasn’t looking. His eyes were on her parted lips. “God knows, I want you beyond bearing!”
Her mind had stopped working, shock mingling with fear. Before she could find the words to protest, his hard, hungry mouth covered hers, his hips pushing her against the counter behind her. His hands lifted her into the stark aroused curve of his body, and his tongue went into her mouth with enough lust to make even a virgin aware of his intent.
Tess had only been kissed once or twice, always by men who knew how sheltered her life was. Now she was being subjected to an embrace that only an experienced woman could have responded to, and it scared her to death.
She stiffened and pushed at his chest frantically, but her actions didn’t penetrate the haze in his mind. One lean hand possessed her breast roughly while his leg suddenly stabbed between hers in an explicit movement that made her panic.
“Dane…no!” she panted, wild-eyed.
He barely heard her. “Yes,” he groaned unsteadily. “Oh, God, yes, yes…!” His powerful arm contracted. “You want me, don’t you, baby?” he’d asked blindly, his body shuddering as his mouth burned over her bare shoulders and throat, only to return, hot and heavy and rough on hers. “Don’t you? Right here.” He groaned harshly, his hands moving under her skirt, holding her bare thighs as he shifted her so that she could feel the blatant need of his body pressing hungrily at the threshold of her innocence.
She gasped, her heart shaking at the sensations the contact aroused. She moaned under his mouth, frightened.
“Here,” he growled. “Right here, baby, standing up,” he said shakily. His hands were on bare skin, touching her as no man ever had, as if his own need was paramount, as if she were simply a vessel for that need, to be used.
Then all at once, still breathing harshly, he let her slide to the floor and his head lifted briefly. His eyes were glazed, his body trembling faintly, like the strong, lean hands that smoothed roughly over her breasts as he crushed her mouth under his and groaned harshly. “This is too much for my back,” he’d whispered. “We’ll have to do it in bed, so that I can lie down….”
She knew it was the only chance she’d have to get away. She ducked and tore out of his arms. Her fear of him was so evident that it managed to penetrate the glaze in his eyes, the raging, headlong helplessness of his need. The threat of intimacy without emotion made her panic. She wept, her sobs loud in the room as she backed away from him, her gray eyes tragic and wide.
“Get away…from me!” she cried as he came toward her, his intentions written in his dark eyes. “Leave me alone!”
It registered, finally, that she was afraid of him. He’d been too drunk on her softness to realize it until he saw the wide, helpless terror in her eyes. He fought to breathe normally. He’d lost control. That was a first.
He stared at her, his expression slowly reverting to its usual impassivity, his eyes startlingly black. “That’s what you’ve been asking for,” he said in a cutting, harsh tone as he fought for sanity.
“No!” It was a cry from the heart.
“You wanted me,” he spat. “Why else do you keep coming here?”
“I love you,” she sobbed, shaken into telling the truth as she stood hugging her arms over her breasts.
“Love!” His eyes glared hotly at her as a visible shudder ran through his powerful body, still aroused and hurting. “All right, if you love me, come here. Prove it, you icy little tease,” he added with a mocking smile that hid overwhelming frustration.
Her heart went cold, like the tears on her face. She looked at him with anguish. “I can’t,” she whispered. “You…you hurt me!”
Her fear infuriated him. It was Jane all over again, hating his lovemaking, taunting him, her sarcasm vicious and unforgiving. “No?” he asked coolly. “Then if you won’t give out, get out,” he added. “All I wanted from you in the first place was sex. My God,” he ground out involuntarily as she shrank from him, “why not me? Surely to God you’ve had others…!”
Her eyes were as big as saucers, her flushed face red, her body shaking. And it dawned on him, too late, that there hadn’t been any others. She couldn’t look like that, even with him, if she were experienced.
He felt a surge of horror. “Tess, are you a virgin?”
She thought she might faint at the expression in his eyes. She couldn’t look at him after that. She grabbed her purse and ran from the apartment. Without a word Dane watched her leave. He didn’t go after her; he didn’t call later to apologize. It was, he told himself, the only out he was likely to get. Let her think he’d done it deliberately. She made him vulnerable. He had nothing to offer her. It would be a kindness, in a way. He turned back into the apartment, his eyes as cold as he felt inside. He’d never trust a woman again as long as he lived. Not even Tess. A virgin. How could he have not known? He hoped he hadn’t left too many scars….
He’d tried to consider it a lucky escape. Eventually, his pretended indifference and hostility had crushed the spontaneity right out of Tess, so that now she was quiet and polite and even a little shy when they were together. After her father died, Dane had offered her a job as a secretary. She had had nobody except him, and he’d wanted to help. It had worked fine, but only when he made her angry did he see any traces of the old Tess. Perhaps, he confessed silently, that was why he kept goading her.
Angrily, he started the car and drove to the office, to be met by the whole staff the minute he walked in the door. It shouldn’t have surprised him that his employees loved Tess. She was forever doing things for them.
“Will she be all right?” Helen got in first, her big dark eyes worried.
“She’s fine,” he assured them. “Still drowsy from the anesthetic, but there won’t be any impairment. She has to heal.”
“When does she come home?” Helen persisted. “She can stay with me. She’ll need looking after.”
“She’ll stay with me,” he said, shocking all of them, including himself. “I’ll take her down to the ranch. José and Beryl can take care of her when I have to be in the office. Did you get a temp for the next week or so?” he asked Helen.
“She’ll be here any minute,” she agreed. “Good typing and dictation speeds and her agency says she’s discreet. No worries about loose lips sinking ships.”
“Good.” His eyes went involuntarily to the desk where Tess worked. It wounded him to see it empty.
“See if you can make any sense out of her appointment book, will you?” he asked irritably, glancing at Helen. “I don’t even know what I have on my calendar today.”
“You’re having lunch with Harvey Barrett,” she reminded him. “That’s on the extortion case. This afternoon you were supposed to see a couple who want you to find their daughter—the Allisons—and a man who wants his wife watched.”
“And this morning?”
She stared at the appointment book and shook her head. “Nothing urgent.”
“Good. I’m going to the apartment to change and then I’ll be at the hospital until lunch.”
Helen frowned. “I thought you said she was okay.”
He moved toward the door without answering. “If there’s anything important, you can reach me in her room.” He gave her the number.
“Okay, boss. Tell her she’s missed.”
He nodded. His mind wasn’t on what was going on around him. It was on Tess.
Chapter Two
TESS MOANED IN HER SLEEP as the pain caught her unawares. She’d been dreaming. Probably about Dane, she thought drowsily. She never dreamed about anyone else. That was almost comical, considering how badly he’d hurt her.
A sound penetrated her semiaware state.
She opened her eyes in time to see Dane sitting down in the chair beside the bed.
“What are you doing back?” she asked, her body going rigid. “It’s a workday.”
“I’m working,” he said. “Looking after you.”
The wording brought back unbearable memories of the time that he’d been shot—and what had followed. She closed her eyes on a wave of pain. “Please go away,” she whispered huskily.
He took a slow breath. The anguish in her face made him uneasy. “You don’t have anyone else.”
That was true. Her grandmother had died a year ago.
Her eyes met his, and there was nothing in her face to betray what she really felt. “You’re just my boss, Dane,” she said quietly. “That doesn’t require you to look after me.”
He sat up, his forearms across his knees as he stared at her. “I’ve never asked. Maybe I need to. How much damage did I do that day?”
She flushed and averted her eyes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said stiffly.
“Don’t you?” he asked on a cold laugh. “We’ve waltzed around it for three years. I can’t get near you, even to apologize.”
“Why should you care?” she replied. “You wanted me out of your life. You got it. I wouldn’t come near you now for a handful of diamonds!”
“Me or any other man,” he said out of the blue.
She pulled the sheet closer, her eyes on the window, not on him. “Don’t you have something better to do than bait me?”
“I’m taking you down to the ranch to recuperate.”
She went white. She sat up in bed, her eyes like saucers in a face drained of life.
“Oh, my God, don’t!” he said harshly. “Don’t look like that!”
Her hand trembled on the sheet. “No,” she whispered, choking on the word. “Not in your house, with you. Not ever!”
His eyes closed. He couldn’t bear the way she looked. He got up jerkily and went to the window, lighting a cigarette as he stared out at nothing at all. He drew in a harsh breath of pungent smoke and let it out.
