by Diana Palmer
“It’s all right, honey,” he whispered. “I won’t hurt you. All right?”
She relaxed, nervous but curious and hungry. “All—all right,” she managed through her tight throat.
He bent again. This time, his mouth swallowed her up whole and his tongue worked at the nipple, arousing sensations she’d never felt. She grasped his shoulders with both hands, and her nails bit in as he suddenly began to suckle her.
She cried out, moaning as if she were dying, arching up to him, shuddering, crying.
“Don’t...stop, oh, please, Ren, don’t...stop!” she sobbed.
He had no intention of stopping. His body levered itself over hers and pressed down, letting her feel the hardness of him intimately. His knee moved between her legs as he fed on her breast, almost drunk with her response, with the sweetness of her skin under his lips.
She knew that she should stop him. It was just that it felt so good, so right! The warm brandy had her so relaxed that her mind had gone soft. She was crazy about Ren. And surely it was more than just desire on his part. It had to be. He cared about her, of course he did. It would be all right. She could let him go this far, just this far. It would have killed her to make him stop, when she was so rapt with pleasure that she thought her body might explode.
“Are you on the pill, or do I need to use something?” he asked huskily as his mouth worked its way down her body to her soft belly.
“The pill?” she gasped.
“I don’t want to make you pregnant,” he said easily.
This wasn’t what she’d expected. She forced her body to lie still as she fought to get her dulled brain to work. She pushed at his chest gently. It was bare. When had his shirt come off? She didn’t realize her hands were buried in the thick hair that covered the hard muscles.
“Pregnant,” she chanted.
He lifted his head and looked at the creamy beauty of her body. “Pregnant.” He cocked his head and looked at her with what she dimly recognized as cynicism. “Oh, come on, Meredith, you’re Randall’s woman. He told me you were. He likes his women hot and experienced. It’s all right. He doesn’t mind sharing. It wouldn’t be the first time,” he added with faint sarcasm, and he looked down at her as if she were someone he’d bought for the night.
Merrie suddenly felt cold and sick and ashamed. The physical delight she’d been feeling left as if she’d never felt it. She tugged at her dress and pulled it over her bare breasts. “Please let me up,” she said in a tone choked with shame.
“Let you up?” he exclaimed. “For God’s sake, you come in here with me, get me hotter than a chili pepper, and now you want to stop?”
She looked at him with sad, dull eyes. “I’m not Randall’s woman, Ren,” she said miserably. “I’m his friend. Just his friend. I’ve never...” She swallowed and averted her gaze. “I’ve never done this with anyone.”
“Pull the other one, lady,” he said angrily. He got to his feet, raging with unsatisfied desire. “You weren’t resisting very much.”
She sat up. She felt dirty. She got to her feet and fumbled the frogs on her dress closed, enough to make her decent. She started toward the door.
Ren was furious. He wanted to hit something. “Is it money?” he asked harshly. “You can have anything you want. More dresses like that one, more coats like the ones I paid for.”
She winced. He didn’t know that she’d paid for them. She might have told him, but she was too sick. The brandy had gone to her head. She loved Ren. She’d thought he cared for her, too. But he thought she was Randall’s woman, and that made her fair game for an affair. Angie had also been Randall’s woman, she recalled. Ren was used to Randall’s women coming on to him, apparently, and he thought Merrie was just another in a long line of brief conquests. He didn’t want forever. He just needed a woman for the night. Nothing had ever hurt so much.
“I’m going to bed,” she said in a fog of misery.
“You might as well,” he said harshly. “I’ve had too many of Randall’s castoffs as it is. You turn my stomach.”
She closed her eyes and winced, but she didn’t let him see her do it. “I’m sorry,” she choked.
“Get out of my sight!”
She didn’t realize that it was frustrated desire talking. He hadn’t had a woman in months, and his poor, starving body was trying to cope with the loss. He turned away and went toward his study.
Merrie ran upstairs into her room and locked the door. She threw off the red dress and everything under it, threw all of it in the wastebasket. She grabbed some clean clothes and went into the bathroom to shower off the scent of Ren. She knew she’d never be able to face him again, after what had happened.
When she put on clean jeans and a sweatshirt, and boots, she packed a few things in a backpack. She put on her warmest coat and waited until she heard Ren go past her room to bed.
He stopped at her door, feeling betrayed and angry. But he couldn’t get the taste of her out of his mouth. She was like honey. He’d gotten used to having her around. He liked being with her. He loved the person she was. He was sorry that he’d treated her in such a manner. She couldn’t help what she was. Maybe she’d loved Randall, and that was why she’d been his woman. He could overlook that. He could overlook anything, if it meant not losing her. He hated hurting her feelings like that. He stood at her door, trying to find the right words to undo the hurt he’d caused. But he couldn’t find them. A neat whiskey on top of the brandy had fuddled his brain.
He went down the hall, reluctantly. He could apologize in the morning. Maybe he could smooth things over. She was under enough stress with a killer stalking her. Now she had Ren’s unkindness to add to the mix. He was genuinely sorry.
* * *
MERRIE HEARD HIS FOOTSTEPS stop at her door. She sat on her bed with her teeth clenched. If he opened the door...but he didn’t have a key. She relaxed a little. No, he didn’t have a key, and he didn’t want her anymore. He’d made that very plain. She wouldn’t give out, so he was probably going to tell her to get out. She closed her eyes, hurting, and listened. After a minute, his footsteps continued down the hall and slowly faded. A door closed. Merrie let out the breath she’d been holding.
She brushed away another wave of tears. What had she expected, after all? She knew that he’d been engaged to Angie, who’d been one of Randall’s women. Apparently, a lot of Randall’s women had stayed here and given their full attention to Ren.
He thought Merrie was like that, too. She’d been out of her mind with delight when he kissed her, held her, touched her. She thought it was love. It was only lust. He wanted her, but only for a night or two. Not forever.
Maybe the sort of love she read about in her romantic novels wasn’t even real. Then she thought of Paul and Sari, and realized that it was real for some people. Just not for her. Not with this man. Not ever.
She waited until she was sure Ren wasn’t coming back out of his room. She got her small bag, with her credit card and money in it, and opened the door. She’d have to leave everything else; she couldn’t carry it. She went downstairs and looked through the phone book for a cab company. There wasn’t one in Catelow that ran after dark. So she phoned Billings and had a limo company agree to come and get her. She gave them her credit card number and the address of the ranch, and asked them to please hurry. They said the driver was on the way.
She went out the door, feeling sick. She hadn’t left a note, but Ren would know why she’d gone. She was sorry she wouldn’t get to tell Delsey goodbye, as well.
Snow was falling harder. She looked around, but there was nobody she could ask for a ride to the main gate, which was at least a fourth of a mile from the highway. Actually, that was the distance from the stables, on another road. The main gate, where the limo would come, looked much farther, and she had to go through two gates to get to it.
&nbs
p; Well, they said the longest journey began with a single step, didn’t they?
* * *
BY THE TIME she got to the first fence, she wished she’d worn gloves and a better hat than her colorful knitted one. Her socks, inside her new ankle-high dress boots, were soaked because the snow came in over them. Her feet felt as frozen as her poor hands.
The gate had a simple latch. She was surprised, because she thought Ren had said that there were alarms that went off when anyone tried to open gates at night. She recalled that he had facial recognition software on hidden cameras that weren’t readily seen. Looking around, she wasn’t aware of any cameras in the snow-lit darkness. So perhaps they weren’t really looking at the gates at this hour of the morning.
She closed the gate back and kept walking. She was shivering from the cold. There was another gate in the distance. Heavens, it was a far walk! In Texas at this time of year, it wouldn’t have been a problem. But Wyoming was very different. She wasn’t used to the cold and the snow. And it looked as if she wouldn’t have the chance to get used to them.
She felt the throwaway phone in her pocket. It was charged, so she could call Paul from the airport and have him bring the Grayling jet up to pick her up. It wasn’t involved in the money laundering charges, so, like the racehorses, it still belonged to the family.
She laughed at her own stupidity. She’d been falling in love. But Ren had only seen her as an easy mark, because he thought she was Randall’s woman. It was heartbreaking. She’d never felt anything like this before, and she had to feel it for the first time with a jaded man who looked on women as party favors.
She recalled with anguish the tenderness of Ren’s lips on her soft mouth, the slow, easy motion of his hands on her body, the patience he took with her. That Angie woman had said he was a terrible lover. Now she knew it wasn’t true. Ren was practiced and sophisticated, a master of sensuality. If she’d been the experienced woman he expected her to be, she would probably have had no qualms about sleeping with him. But Merrie was religious. She didn’t go with the crowd.
She felt betrayed. She felt cheap and dirty. She wanted her sister and her home. If the killer found her, that would be all right. She couldn’t see a future for herself without Ren, and he didn’t want her, except one way. It hurt so much that tears rained down her cold cheeks. She brushed them away angrily. He wasn’t worth tears.
She kept walking.
* * *
REN HAD BEEN sitting under a tree with Meredith in his arms. She was smiling up at him, her eyes full of love. There was an odd ringing in his ears. She looked at him quizzically, and all at once he woke to the sound of the phone ringing.
He picked up the receiver, half-asleep. “What?” he asked.
“Did you know that your houseguest is past the first fence and headed to the main road walking in the snow, without a muffler or even a pair of gloves on?” J.C. asked.
“What?”
He was out of bed in a flash, hunting clothing. “Lock that second gate, and I mean lock it,” he said shortly. “I’m on my way.”
“You bet, boss.”
He ran down the stairs, snapping his shirt buttons as he ran. He grabbed a coat and hat and scarf and the key to the Jaguar and darted out the door. The Jaguar was still parked at the steps. He grimaced at the memories it brought back. He jumped into it, cranked it and shot down the driveway.
He keyed the first gate, drove through and closed it, and kept going. He noted that the electronic lock hadn’t been put back on. He’d forgotten to do that when they came home, anticipating untold delights with Meredith. It was careless. He caught up to her about a fourth of a mile to the last gate.
She heard the car before she saw it, and she knew who was driving it. She started running, fighting tears.
He caught her easily before she got very far. He picked her up in his arms, ignoring her struggles, and stuffed her into the passenger seat.
“Stay put!” he said icily when she tried to get back out.
Her lower lip trembled. Tears rained down her cheeks. She was too tired to even care, and she felt frozen clean through. She wrapped her arms around her chest and refused to even look at him.
He felt the pain to his toes. He wanted to apologize, but he couldn’t find the right words. She looked devastated. That wasn’t the way any experienced woman would have behaved. He’d had enough of them to be certain of it. She wouldn’t even look at him. She’d left the ranch walking, in a snowstorm. Pride, he thought. She was proud. She wouldn’t stay where she’d been treated so badly.
“I called a limo service,” she said tightly. “The driver will be waiting at the main gate. Please tell him he can charge me for the inconvenience and I’m sorry.”
He called up J.C. and relayed the message. He hung up. Soon they were at the front door.
Just as he pulled up, so did Delsey, in a small SUV. She parked next to them and was surprised when they got out, both wearing regular clothes instead of their fancy evening clothes.
“My goodness, what happened?” Delsey asked, shocked to see Merrie crying.
“We had a little blowup,” Ren said tautly. “Get her upstairs and into a bath. She’s half-frozen.”
“I’ll do that. Come on, sweetheart, I’ll take care of you,” Delsey said, putting an arm around her.
Merrie burst into tears, sobbing as she went with the older woman into the house. Ren stood at the doorstep, snow pelting down on him, and he didn’t even feel the flakes on his face. It hurt him, to see Merrie like that, and know he was the cause of it.
* * *
MERRIE HAD A hot shower, but she put her jeans and sweatshirt back on. Then while she was waiting for Delsey to bring her some hot tea, she took out the throwaway phone and called home.
“Merrie?” Sari asked sleepily. There was a pause. “Baby, it’s three o’clock in the morning! What’s wrong?”
Merrie tried not to cry. “I had a little...problem here.”
“The killer...!”
“No. I had a blowup with Ren,” Merrie said, leaving out why. “Can Paul come get me, right now? I’m sorry it’s so late, but I can’t stay here! I’ll ask Delsey to drive me in to the airport in Catelow. It will take a baby jet, I checked.” She paused. “I’m so sorry. I know you thought I’d be safer here,” she began.
“There’s a new problem,” Sari said. “I’ll let Paul tell you about it when he gets there. It’s just as well that you want to come home. We planned to ask you to tomorrow.”
“What’s happened?” Merrie asked. “You’re not in danger, are you?”
“No,” Sari said softly. “No, I’m fine. I’m overly protected,” she said with a laugh. She paused. Her hand was over the phone and she was talking to Paul. A minute later she came back on. “Paul said he’s headed to the airport as soon as he’s dressed and gets the pilot out of bed.”
“I’m sorry,” Merrie began.
“You’re my sister. I love you. Shut up.”
Merrie laughed. “Okay. Thanks.”
“I’ll see you soon.”
* * *
DELSEY BROUGHT IN a cup of steaming-hot tea and put it on the bedside table.
“That will help warm you up. Why don’t you have your gown on?” she asked.
“Because I’m going home, Delsey. Sari is sending Paul to get me. He’ll be in the airport in about two hours. Can I get someone to drive me over there?”
“Of course you can. Two hours? Commuter planes are pretty slow...”
“We have a Learjet,” Merrie said heavily. “It’s very fast.”
“A Learjet?”
Merrie picked up her tea and sipped it. “Thank you for the tea. I’m going to stay up here until Paul calls. Is that all right?”
Delsey saw more than Merrie realized. She patted the other
woman’s shoulder. “You know,” she said softly, “Ren isn’t used to women like you. He’s used to who Randall usually brings home. That Angie person was one of Randall’s women. Ren thought that since Randall brought you home with him, you were the same sort of person.” She grimaced. “I could have told him different, but you just don’t bring up subjects like that with him. He’s so self-contained.” She drew a breath. “He doesn’t show what he feels. But he does feel things. He’s sensitive.”
Merrie sipped tea.
“Well, enough said. You drink your tea. Sure you’re okay?”
“Just cold,” Merrie said. “I didn’t stop to look for gloves or a scarf. I really should have. And my boots are soaked. They were dressy ones. I forgot how deep the snow was.” She held up her sneakered feet. “I won’t walk far in these, but at least they’re dry.” She shook her head. “I thought it would be easy to get to the road.”
“Nothing easy about Wyoming when the snow starts falling,” Delsey replied. “If you need me, you call, okay, dear?”
“Okay.”
* * *
REN WAS SITTING at the table with a cup of hot coffee that he’d brewed himself. He looked up when Delsey came into the room.
“She’s called her sister,” Delsey said. “Her brother-in-law is coming to get her. He’ll be at the airport soon. I’ll drive her there.”
Ren felt cold inside. He focused on his coffee. “I see.”
“She isn’t what you think she is,” Delsey blurted out, uncomfortable. “She told me that her father never let her go on dates, not her whole life. She said she’d never even been kissed. She’s not one of Randall’s women.”
Ren paled at the revelation. If it was true, he’d made one hell of a monumental mistake. It was even worse than he thought. He sipped more coffee.
“We’ll have someone meet him at the airport and bring him here,” he said shortly. “I want to talk to him before she leaves.”
* * *
PAUL WAS MET at the airport by a man in a truck with the Skyhorn logo on the side, crossed bull horns in a red field.
