Texas Heroes: Volume 1

by Jean Brashear

  She has your eyes.

  A sister. She had a sister? For years and years, she’d prayed for one. Had imagined one at her tea parties. While playing dress-up. At night when she went to bed alone.

  And had Dev mentioned brothers?

  It hurt too much. She couldn’t bear it.

  But she wanted to know their names.

  No. She didn’t. Not if she had to ask Dev.

  Why had he showered her with sweetness, set fire to her blood…shown her rapture? Why had Dev lied to her with every breath?

  Revenge was a potent motive. One of the best.

  Lacey’s stomach burned, but she couldn’t bear entering that bedroom again to get at a new roll of antacids. Carefully, she forced her mind to empty, her breathing to slow.

  Concentrate on the painting over the fireplace. Not on people. Not on what’s happened.

  With careful, steady discipline, Lacey aped the woman who wasn’t really her mother…and summoned her formidable will to the aid of her rebellious stomach.

  Finally, wrung out and exhausted, she dozed.

  When she awoke, she was logy, muzzy with sleep. The fire in her belly had died to embers, and in its place was a longing that mocked her. She realized that, despite everything, the only person she wanted to see, the only one she thought would understand, was Dev. He hadn’t liked her money, had encouraged her at every step to break away from the life that had stifled her.

  But all along, she’d been only a means to an end. A way to get back at her father for another grievous wrong.

  She didn’t doubt now that her father—that Charles had done something terrible to Dev’s father. Whatever it was, she was sorry for all he and his family had suffered.

  But she was even more sorry that Devlin Marlowe had ever stepped back into her life—and wrecked it.

  You said you didn’t fit. You said you wanted something more. Here’s your chance, she told herself.

  Lacey tried to summon the energy to feel liberated, to rejoice that she was free to choose. She should thank them all, she realized. They’d freed her. Old loyalties, old responsibilities…old dreams—all were useless. All were the past, fractured from the present like a fault line divides the land.

  But all she felt was tired to the bone.

  Her future lay ahead, an empty road.

  But it was shrouded in mist, and Lacey had no map.

  She was there at last, thank God, but she wasn’t answering her phone.

  Dev was going to knock. If she didn’t answer the door, he was picking her locks. It might be illegal, but he didn’t care. He had to know that she was all right.

  That she wasn’t planning something drastic.

  Dev damned his palms for sweating. She’d better be angry. She’d better be spitting fire.

  He didn’t think he could bear to see her so fragile again. So much like a baby’s breath could knock her down.

  She might not want to see him, but he had to know that she wasn’t in trouble. He didn’t mind looking like ten kinds of fool if only he could find her inside painting her toenails.

  He’d bet the farm that she wasn’t.

  Lacey heard the pounding but ignored it. She had learned to ignore the ringing of the phone. She’d had to seek the antacids after all, then she’d donned her oldest, most comforting nightgown. All she wanted now was to sleep, but sleep seemed a million miles away.

  The pounding stopped, mercifully. Lacey rolled over and tried to find a comfortable spot on a bed that still smelled of Dev and long, slow loving. The scent of him, the memories…

  They broke her heart.

  Then she heard the door open, and that same heart began to race.

  Footsteps echoed down the polished wooden hallway floor. Her bedroom door burst open, and there he stood.

  “A new look for you, Princess.” Dev forced calm into his voice and leaned against the doorjamb lazily, trying to still his rapid pulse. When she hadn’t answered, he’d been unable to erase the thought that he might find her lifeless, that he’d be responsible for sending her over the edge.

  “Go away,” she said too quietly.

  She looked like hell, but she was breathing. Blessed anger did a tap-dance through his veins. He strolled to her bedside and studied her, shocked at the damage. Her skin was translucent, her eyes dark holes in her face.

  The fault lay squarely at his doorstep. He had started her down the road to this hell.

  He had to find a way to bring her back.

  His apologies would have to wait. She was too raw to talk about this now, even if he had any idea what to say. She needed the basics first.

  “When’s the last time you ate?”

  “I don’t know.” Her voice was hollow. He’d sell his soul to hear that snotty princess-to-peasant tone right now.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, he swept her up in his arms and strode across the room.

  She stirred only faintly. “How did you get in here?”

  “I picked your locks,” he drawled. “Wanna make something of it?” He kept striding, heading back toward her kitchen. Once there, he set her down on the counter between refrigerator and sink. “Answer me—when’s the last time you ate something?”

  “I don’t know…the picnic maybe,” she whispered. Her eyes were dull and haunted.

  Dev wanted to smash something. Wanted to howl out his own anguish.

  “Go away, Dev.” Her voice broke.

  His heart cracked right along with it. Ruthlessly, he clamped down on the urge to fall to his knees. “The phone’s over there. Call the cops. I’m not leaving.” He bent down and began rummaging through her refrigerator.

  “What are you doing?”

  He straightened, holding eggs, milk, butter and cheese in his hands. With two long strides, he crossed to the island and dumped his booty.

  She started to get down.

  “You move from that spot and you’ll regret it.” His voice went fierce.

  She didn’t respond. She was scaring the hell out of him.

  “I broke into your house. Don’t you care?”

  She didn’t answer, staring at the floor.

  Dev studied the part in her hair and wished she would scream at him, curse him—anything but this defeat.

  He decided to push. “I know you’re a pampered princess, but surely you have more guts than this.”

  Her head rose swiftly, the quick spark of anger the best thing he’d seen in days. “Get out of my house.”

  Then he grinned, quick and crooked and rakish. “Make me.”

  When she slid off the counter, her knees buckled. In a split-second, he was by her side, steadying her against him.

  “Sit down. Damn it, sit down.” Fear made him rough. He helped her to a chair, then carefully stepped back because he wanted to hold her too much. “I’ll have an omelet ready in a minute.”

  Lacey watched him, those big eyes studying his every move. “I don’t know what to do,” she said so softly he almost didn’t hear it.

  Dev wondered then, just how many times a heart could break. How he could ever fix this.

  When he could finally speak, his voice was gentle. “Eat first, Lacey. Let your mind rest.”

  He scooped the omelet onto a plate and poured her a glass of milk, setting both in front of her. Pulling out the chair beside her and turning it backwards, he straddled it. When she made no move, he picked up the fork.

  She opened her mouth to speak, but he was too quick with a forkful of omelet.

  “No more talking. Eat.”

  Rebellion leapt into her eyes.

  He welcomed the heat, the spark. She would need all of it and more as she rebuilt her life.

  Then Lacey opened her mouth. The sight of those lips parted…the pink of her tongue…

  Memory scorched Dev down to his toes.

  When she took the fork from his hands and averted her gaze from his, Dev was painfully aware of what he’d lost.

  But at least Lacey was eating her eggs.
<
br />   “You need to sleep. I’ll clean up.” Dev took her empty plate and headed for the sink.

  The relief from that piercing green gaze was welcome. Every bite had come at a cost, but Lacey knew he was right. The basics were important. She had decisions to make, a new life to build.

  The burning returned.

  She wanted to sink into the comforting darkness of sleep, to see if all this would vanish before she must wake.

  But that’s what she’d always done. Hide behind what was proper, what was safe. She couldn’t sleep yet. “I want answers, Dev.”

  He finished loading the dishwasher and took his time drying his hands before he turned. For a long moment he watched her, his expression shifting from the dark shadows of guilt to a painful longing—and back again.

  Why, Dev? Why was revenge more important than my love?

  His gaze dropped to the hand that was rubbing her stomach. “Why don’t you sleep first?” he asked gently.

  Suddenly she was furious at him, at all of them for thinking they knew what was best for her. “You didn’t care enough to be honest with me—don’t you tell me what I need,” she snapped.

  He looked like she’d slapped him. Strong fingers raked through his black hair, shoving that rebellious lock backward.

  It sprang forward again, spilling over his forehead. Then his face closed up. “I don’t expect you to understand what—”

  She leapt to her feet. “Oh, no—God forbid anyone should think that the poor little rich girl has any backbone. She’s such a hothouse flower that she can’t possibly take care of herself or know her own mind.” The torpor that had enveloped her vanished like mist in the sun. Now she felt everything—anger, resentment, the bitter knowledge that she’d drifted through her life and let everyone else call the shots.

  She paced the kitchen, one hand tightly gripping the fabric over her middle. Humiliation burned all the way up to her throat. “You made a mockery of me, Devlin Marlowe. I want you to tell me what my fath—what Charles DeMille did to your father that was important enough to take my heart and rip it open.”

  “Lacey, calm down. Your stomach is hurting, isn’t it? You need—”

  “Don’t you tell me what I need. You don’t know what I need. I thought you would understand, but you couldn’t possibly understand me and do that to me—” Razor-sharp pain ripped through her, and she bent over.

  Dev moved toward her.

  Lacey held her palm out in warning. “You stay away.” Her voice turned almost feral, half-wild with pain. “You stand over there and you explain to me what he did. You admit to me that I was only a means to an end.”

  Dev’s hands lifted from his sides. She couldn’t bear the look in his green eyes.

  “Admit it, damn you!” She forced herself to straighten against the pain. Her voice dropped lower. “And then you explain to me why you made love to me like that. How you could lie to me with every caress.” Half-blind with tears, she backed away from him, then felt the wall at her back.

  Dev looked suddenly older. The devilish rake was gone. In its place was a man full of shadows.

  He exhaled in a gust, his shoulders sinking.

  The look on his face made her wrap her arms tightly around her middle.

  “I did set out to seduce you back then, Lacey. I wanted to ruin the one thing Charles DeMille held most special, his pampered princess. He’d made it clear that we were beneath him and his blue-blooded family. I wanted to make him pay for every bit of charity he’d forced down our throats, for every time he’d made me feel worthless.”

  His eyes hurt her to look at them. Her stomach was on fire. She started to walk away, unable to hear any more, but he grabbed her arm and whirled her back.

  “That’s how it started, Lacey—but that’s not how it ended. My brilliant strategy blew up in my face when you turned out to be something so special and rare that even a revenge-seeking, hormone-driven boy could recognize it.” He dropped his hand. “I’m not proud of what I intended, but you need to know that I was so sick in love with you that it nearly killed me when you threw my love on the ground that night and walked away.”

  Harsh laughter scraped from his throat. “It was my just desserts, I guess. But I wanted you, God, how I wanted you. You were the finest, most precious thing I’d ever known. You have to believe that, if you believe nothing else.”

  She was so tired, so ravaged by emotion. Lacey wanted to burrow somewhere into the darkness until the nerve endings weren’t so raw. Wanted to flee the live coals burning from the inside out.

  She looked at this man before her and saw the teenager who had stolen her heart, then left without a word. The man who’d given her the most romantic night of her life, made love to her like something out of a dream—

  Then dropped the bombshell that had exploded her life.

  “How can I? After this, how?” She stared at him. “I loved you, Dev,” she whispered. “I would have done anything for you.”

  Dev laughed, and the sound of it was like grating metal. “You didn’t give all this up seventeen years ago—” He swept an arm out to include her luxurious surroundings. “You didn’t defy them for me then.” On his face was the bitterness that must have been festering all this time.

  The burning inside her belly spread to her heart. Her vision grayed.

  “Don’t lie to me, Lacey.” His voice was low and fierce. “Don’t lie to yourself. I begged you to come with me. You chose them.”

  Her father had been right. Dev had every reason to want revenge.

  Suddenly, jagged claws tore her open. The pain was so blinding that Lacey couldn’t hear any more, couldn’t see any more. Everything vanished behind a red haze of agony.

  She bent over double and sank to the floor with a cry.

  Chapter Twelve

  Dev closed the distance in one long stride, pulling Lacey close. Her arms clutched her stomach; her whole body locked in a spasm. “Is it your stomach? Talk to me, damn it. Who’s your doctor?”

  “I—I’ll be fine,” she answered, her face ash-white, her jaw locked against the pain.

  “Tell me your doctor’s name. This has gone on long enough. Don’t you know how dangerous it is to play around with an ulcer?”

  “It’s not an ulcer. It’ll go away,” she whispered through clenched teeth. But she curled into him, and a tiny moan escaped.

  “Fine. Don’t tell me. You’re going to let someone look at you.” Dev picked her up and headed for the door.

  Two minutes later, Lacey was lying in the back seat, curled up in a ball. He’d gotten her doctor’s name from Murphy and they were racing toward Methodist Hospital. Her doctor would meet them there. Murphy had promised not to tell the DeMilles yet—not until Lacey could decide if she wanted to see them. The last thing she needed was something else to upset her. In return, Dev had promised to call the old man the minute he knew anything.

  “Hold on, sweetheart,” Dev said, reaching back between the seats to clasp her hand.

  Lacey gripped his hand with a strength he didn’t know she had.

  I’m sorry, he wanted to say. Sorry I upset you, sorry I involved you, sorry I—

  The list was too long and time might be too short. Please, he begged whatever forces might be listening. Give me the chance to make it up to her. Let her be okay.

  Then they were there at the hospital. Dev pulled in close to the emergency entrance, out of the way of emergency vehicles but not caring what happened to his car. All that mattered was Lacey, getting her help. Now.

  Gathering her up in his arms, he ran for the door, steeling himself not to let his fear for her keep him from thinking straight.

  But she was so fragile. So wounded.

  They had to pry her out of his arms, but Dev drew the line at waiting outside when Lacey gripped his hand, looking frightened. “I’ll stay out of the way, but I’m not leaving. Go ahead and call security—just get ready for the guard to be your next patient.”

  “Are you family?” the nu
rse asked.

  Impotent fury kept him barely civil. “I’m all she’s got right now.”

  “Sir, you’ve got to move away. Please, we need you to give us some answers. And the patient needs privacy.”

  Her face stark with pain, Lacey gripped his fingers while she turned to the emergency room physician. “Please let him stay.”

  Dev’s heart thumped once, hard. “I’ve got to stand back so they can take care of you, sweetheart, but I’ll be right over there.” He gestured with his head. “All you have to do is call out. I am not leaving you, do you hear me?”

  Her eyes were huge and glassy with fear, but she nodded.

  “Everything’s going to be fine.” Dev kissed her knuckles, then let her hand go. It was the hardest thing he’d ever done to step away.

  It wasn’t easy finding a spot to be out of the way but still be within her sight, but Dev managed the dance. Every time Lacey’s eyes darted toward him, it was all he could do not to shove everyone out of his path. His reaction was primitive, he knew. He kept a rein on it, just barely.

  “Sir, please, I need some information,” a clerk requested.

  “Shoot.” Dev never gave her a glance, his eyes focused only on Lacey.

  He’d pushed her to this point, and he’d have to live with knowing that. She might never forgive him, but right now his only concern was getting her through this.

  If only she didn’t look so frail, gripped so hard by agony. He should have forced her to do something about it sooner. Shouldn’t have let her pass it off as nothing.

  Shouldn’t have gotten her involved in this nightmare in the first place—how about that, Devlin? She’s the innocent, and she’s the one writhing in pain. She’s the one whose world you blew apart.

  Dev rubbed his eyes, gritty with exhaustion, and asked the clerk to repeat the question.

  A few hours later, Dev strode toward her room. They’d given her something that made her drowsy, then admitted her for observation. She’d fallen asleep holding his hand, and he’d slipped out to make some calls. Tomorrow they’d run more tests, but her doctor had already confirmed what Dev had suspected.