The Renegade

by J. R. Ward

  “So will you do it?” Frankie asked.

  “Do what?” Cass replied while taking off her coat and stepping into the kitchen.

  “Be our architect and general contractor.”

  Cass stopped, but not only because of the question. Alex was across the room, sitting at the table.

  With a flush, she saw his body arching up under her hand.

  She looked down quickly.

  Which was actually a good thing. Because she’d just dropped her coat on the dog.

  “Well?” Frankie prompted. “We can pay you. The insurance company is going after the manufacturer of the gas stove that started the fire. Money’s not going to be a problem.”

  “I, uh—”

  Actually, I’d like to go lie down now. Because being in the same room with your brother this morning is making me dizzy and incoherent.

  Sean stepped forward. “Cass, are your bags packed? We gotta hit the road, woman.”

  She cleared her throat. “Yes. They’re in my room.”

  “I’ll get them.” As Sean strode through the kitchen, he nodded at Alex. “Moorehouse.”

  “O’Banyon,” Alex shot back.

  The sound of the rough, low voice took Cass right back to the man’s bedside. Where she’d touched his body. Where she’d watched him move. Where he’d—

  Get a grip.

  Well, she’d sure had one last night….

  Cass shut her eyes, wondering if anyone else in the room had noticed the floor was weaving underfoot.

  “Cassandra, I saw the way you looked at our house,” Frankie said. “You’re perfect for this project.”

  Cass shook herself to attention and sensed Alex’s eyes narrowing on her. She had a feeling he wouldn’t appreciate her working on his family’s home.

  “Why don’t the three of you talk it over,” she hedged. “I’ll go back to my office, check in with my partners, see what the schedule looks like. I know you’re going to want this project to move fast if you hope to open for the season in—when was it?”

  “June,” Frankie said. “If you started around the first of December, you’d have seven months.”

  Sean came back, Vuitton duffel bags and suitcases hanging off him like he was a bellboy.

  “I still can’t believe how much stuff you pack,” he said as he headed to the back door. “Gray, you sure you know what you’re in for, signing on for one of these fashion types?”

  “I’m buying a trolley,” the man said as he tucked his new wife under his arm.

  “Good idea. It’s either that or a back brace.” Sean shot Cass a wink as he went on by. “Now let’s do it, beautiful.”

  The assembled masses filed outside with Ernest leading the way. Libby went with them, no doubt to catch the dog before he tore off.

  Cass stayed behind, swallowing through a dry throat.

  She couldn’t leave without one last look at Alex.

  Lifting her eyes, she met his own. They were what she expected. Cool. Remote.

  “I hope everything goes well for you tomorrow at the doctor’s,” she said.

  He nodded once. “Thanks.”

  It’s you, Miracle. It’s truly you.

  Please. Touch me. Just once more.

  I love you….

  Who is your woman, she thought as she stared at him. And where is she when you’re going through this hell? Why are you alone now?

  She cleared her throat. “Look, I don’t want you to feel awkward about saying no. You know, about me working on your family’s house. I wanted to give you an out, which was why I suggested—”

  “I’m a big boy. If I don’t like something, I’m perfectly capable of letting people know it.”

  “Oh, of course.” As if she needed a reminder that he didn’t like women who mothered him.

  “Something else on your mind, Cassandra?” he said softly.

  The back door opened. Sean put his head inside.

  “Yo, Cass. I’ve got a meeting at Rhodes Lewis this afternoon. We’ve got to move.”

  “On a Sunday?” she blurted.

  “You know me, twenty-four seven. Come on, woman.” The door banged shut.

  When she looked back at Alex, she was glad she was leaving. His eyes had turned dangerous.

  “Better run along,” he drawled. “Your friend’s obviously the impatient type.”

  The word friend was pronounced more like lover, she thought. And his disapproval would have freeze-dried an open flame.

  He obviously thought she was seeing Sean, and that it was way too soon after Reese’s death for her to be with another man, but she wasn’t going to waste time correcting the misconception. Given his tight face, she wasn’t going to change his mind without working him over with a chisel and a hammer.

  “Goodbye, Alex,” she whispered.

  He said nothing.

  As she left the house, she was quite convinced she was never going to see him again.

  Somehow the pain of the loss was stunning.

  Chapter Five

  A month later Alex stared out of the workshop’s picture window and measured the milky sky. Snow was coming over the weekend and it wasn’t going to be the picturesque, flurry variety. This was going to be a shut-in special, the kind of load that would bring out the county plows that were as big as houses and sounded like thunder when they went by.

  God, he loved the north. There was real weather up here.

  He shifted his eyes. The lake down below was the color of a dove, mostly gray with paler blushes on the tips of restless waves. The mountains were likewise subdued, their rock faces revealed now that the leaves were off the trees. December wasn’t so much dour at Saranac Lake as muted, and he liked the rugged isolation of the place. No tourists, no seasonal fruitcakes. Just the hard-core natives and Mother Nature. Bliss.

  He frowned, wondering whether Cassandra would like all the quiet. Probably not. She lived a fast, flashy life in Manhattan, and was always showing up in the New York Times style section and Vanity Fair, or at least that was what Reese had said. A woman like her wouldn’t want to be stuck in a house with a blazing fire and nothing to do but make love and watch the snow fall.

  Alex drove his cane into the floor and limped over to the bathroom. On the way, he picked up a PowerBar, his third of the day. As he got up on his scale, he ripped back the wrapper and took a hunk out of the thing.

  202 pounds. Up from an all-time low in the hospital of 186.

  Good. This was good.

  He grabbed for his cane, not having to reach far for it. The shop’s bathroom was about the size of a closet.

  Stepping off the scale, he gently eased his full weight onto his left leg. The limb responded with a shot of pain and he backed off, looking down at it. The plaster cast had been replaced with a plastic one that had Velcro straps. Talk about improvements in quality of life. Even a half hour without the thing on was heaven.

  He finished the PowerBar and tossed the wrapper.

  A nine-pound gain in four weeks. Maybe his pants would stop hanging off his hips soon.

  At six-four, he liked to weigh in at around 230. His big frame carried that kind of poundage well, all thick muscle, no fat. He figured it was going to take him three months to get back there if he gained two to three pounds a week. Which was doable. Every day, he was sucking back about five thousand calories. It was a lot to ask of the hot plate and dorm-size refrigerator he’d moved into the shop, but he was managing.

  Man, he couldn’t imagine Cassandra putting up with such a rudimentary kitchen. She’d want gourmet food for dinner. At a restaurant with a French chef and waiters in tuxedos—

  Alex cursed. He really needed to put a lid on this compare-and-contrast thing he had going. Problem was, the closer her arrival date came, the more he looked at the way he lived from her perspective.

  But the mental aerobics were useless. First of all, he wasn’t going to be in the shop forever and second, it wasn’t like she was moving in with him. She’d be staying at Gray’s
as she worked on White Caps.

  So he needed to reel it in.

  Hobbling out of the head, he crossed the shop with efficiency. The single room was not all that big and the floor wasn’t cluttered. He was a neat guy to begin with, but considering how close he’d cut it with that leg of his, he wasn’t taking a chance that he’d trip on something and take a nosedive.

  He went over to the Nautilus cage he’d bought three weeks ago, its weight sets and benches gleaming silver and black. The piece of exercise equipment was by far the largest thing in the shop, about seven feet tall and four feet square with stations for isolating different muscle groups. One good thing about not having a life except for sailing was that what little money he’d accumulated had grown. Cutting a check for a professional-quality set up was no sacrifice.

  He put on his earphones and clipped his MP3 player to the waistband of his nylon sweatpants. He worked out with no shirt because within minutes he was going to be covered with sweat and glad to have a bare chest. Sitting down on one of the benches, he eased onto his back and gripped a bar. When he pushed up, he felt his pectorals tighten as they accepted the weight.

  With Nirvana blaring in his ears, he pumped through his exercises, tearing up his muscles so that they could rebuild stronger, better. The burn felt good. It felt healthy. It felt normal to him.

  And he was hungry for normal.

  He’d always made demands of his body and he expected it to respond with power. One of the hardest things about being laid up had been the weakness. Pain he could handle. Frailty was unbearable.

  After his first set, he sat up, breathing hard and resting his arms on his knees. Usually Spike worked out with him, but today the guy was busy. Which was kind of a bummer. He liked having a buddy with him. Made the time pass quicker, plus Spike was pretty damn amusing.

  Alex reached down and took a slug of water from a bottle.

  The shop was really working out for him, he thought. Even if Cassandra would no doubt—

  Stop it.

  The twin bed he slept in was right next to the potbellied stove. December was really cold stuff this far north, and with his tendency for kicking off the covers when the nightmares came, he needed to be close to a heat source at night. His clothes were in duffel bags lying open and pushed against the wall, like drawers on the floor. Shoes were in an orderly line in front of them. Fleeces and jackets were hanging on pegs. Laundry went into a wicker basket.

  Everything had its place.

  All of the order made him think about Cassandra. Why? Who the hell knew. What didn’t make him think of her?

  Tilting his head around, he glanced out of the shop’s picture window at White Caps. His family’s home looked as if it had been bombed and abandoned with all the plastic sheets covering burned-out windows and doors. It was hard to believe the place was ever going to be right again, but if anyone could fix it, Cassandra could.

  When Frankie and Joy had campaigned to have her take on the project, they’d shown him photographs of her work. She’d designed and constructed houses, additions and out-buildings all over America and specialized in rehabbing antiques. She had an absolute genius for making the new look old.

  So, professionally speaking, she was perfect for what they needed. There had been no way he could refuse.

  Alex lay back down and gripped the bar again.

  Plus he hadn’t really wanted to refuse.

  It had been so hard to see her leave Gray’s those many weeks ago. Like a pathetic idiot, he’d watched from a window as she’d walked out of the house with O’Banyon. The man had had his hand at the small of her back while he’d guided her to his Mercedes and settled her in it.

  The two of them going off together had made Alex grit his teeth so hard his gums had gone numb. He’d wanted to tear her out of that car and take her upstairs to the bed he slept in and keep her there by lying on her with his naked body.

  But of course he’d let her go. And as those taillights had flared at the end of the driveway, it was clear she belonged in a fancy car with a man like O’Banyon. She was a refined kind of woman who was used to being on Manhattan’s A-list. Living in a penthouse on Park Avenue. Wearing beautiful clothes.

  Alex was a comparative savage and he always had been. Since day one, he’d had a deep core inside of him that was uncivilized. And not as in cursing-in-mixed-company uncivilized, as in primitive-male uncivilized. The real world, the modern world, didn’t have a lot of places for a man like him. He belonged where the beast inside of him could be free to roam. He belonged on the ocean.

  O’Banyon, on the other hand, would be fine and dandy at one of Cassandra’s parties. That lady-killer had plenty of hard in him, that was obvious, but there was a high-gloss sheen over all that rough and tough. When he escorted Cassandra out on the town, no doubt he showed up in the right suit and treated her like a queen and pressed palms with the best of them.

  Mr. Slick probably even knew how to waltz.

  Alex let the bar go and sat up, grabbing a towel and using it to wipe his face.

  O’Banyon was definitely the type of man she should be with, though it was a little surprising she’d moved on, only a matter of months after Reese’s death. But then again, why should she be alone if she didn’t want to be? Mourning and a new lover didn’t have to be mutually exclusive. She could miss her husband and still not want to spend the nights by herself.

  O’Banyon was no doubt taking good care of her. Alex might not like the guy, but there hadn’t been a stupid bone in that big body. The man had to know the rarity of what he held in his hands.

  Alex lay back down, grabbed the bar and pushed up hard, feeling his pecs burn as though the muscles were shredding apart.

  * * *

  Cassandra pulled up in front of White Caps and turned off the Range Rover’s engine. The Rover had been Reese’s birthday present to her the year before last. He’d maintained he felt safer with her in a big car, but she’d always thought it was more than she needed.

  Now, she could see his point. Here in Saranac Lake there was a dusting of snow on the ground already. As winter pressed on and the drifts piled up, she was going to appreciate the traction and the mass of the Rover. Besides, all her luggage had fit in the back.

  She looked at the house briefly, a clinical review that confirmed her first impressions and refreshed her memory. Then her eyes slid over to the large barn behind it. A tendril of white smoke drifted lazily from a chimney stack.

  Alex was living there now. His sister had told her so.

  And he was doing much better. His leg had been spared and he was healing up well.

  Cass got out of the car. The cold air felt good, a brisk handshake of sorts that welcomed her to the Adirondacks.

  She’d been tempted to go to Gray’s right away so she could unpack and relax a little. She’d driven up from the city after a breakfast meeting this morning and was still in the Escada suit she’d put on at 6:00 a.m. But she wanted to review the original set of plans over dinner, and according to Frankie, the drawings were somewhere in the workshop.

  Besides, she wanted to rip the Band-Aid off when it came to seeing Alex.

  It was going to be hard and she was dying to get the first meeting behind her. With him in the shop and her working on the house, she was going to be running into him a lot over the next three months, and she might as well get used to it.

  Walking over to the barn, she decided the out-building was a real charmer. Painted a deep red with bright white trim, it was cheery from the outside even though the roof was bowed and the walls listed a little. Then again, the imperfections were probably why the place appealed. Its good nature was amplified by its disabilities.

  She straightened the collar of her silk shirt. Fussed with the gold chain belt around her waist. She didn’t know why she bothered. The last thing Alex Moorehouse was going to care about was what she wore.

  Knowing him, his priority would be hustling her off to anywhere he wasn’t.

  The door
to the shop had no knocker or bell to ring so she rapped on it. When there was no answer, she tried again.

  As she waited, the cold became not so welcoming. It seeped through the fine wool of her suit, the chill nipping at her shoulder blades.

  She blew some warm air into her hands and gave the knocking another shot. Her knuckles stung as they hit the wood, and she rubbed them against her hip.

  Nothing. Maybe he wasn’t there.

  Stamping her high heels, she was debating whether to go back to the car when she heard something inside. A metal clinking sound.

  Cass took the toggle handle and lifted upward. The door opened easily.

  “Hello?”

  The noise, a rhythmic shifting of sorts, got louder.

  She slipped through the door and closed it, wanting to preserve the heat. As she turned around, her legs stopped working.

  Oh…good…Lord.

  Alex was flat on his back, pushing a tremendous amount of weight up and down on a Nautilus machine. He was shirtless, wearing only a pair of loose nylon pants. Sweat gleamed on his bare chest.

  She told herself to look away and couldn’t. His muscles moved with a coordinated power that was intimidating and…well, erotic. Under his smooth skin, all that bunching and releasing reminded her of the incredible moment they’d shared.

  The one only she knew had actually happened.

  He released the weights, a metal clank cutting through the room. Then he sat up and focused ahead as if in a trance. He was breathing deeply, and a hissing noise came out of the earphones he had on.

  She was about to clear her throat when his head snapped around.

  His frown was totally expected.

  “I knocked,” she said. “A number of times.”

  With a jerk of his hand, his earphones popped out and dangled between his legs.

  “I knocked,” she repeated.

  His eyes flicked over her, a quick head-to-toe review that was about as passionate as what she’d done to his family’s house out in her car. He reached to his waist and unclipped a little black square.

  Without saying a word, he picked a cane off the floor, stood up and limped away from her. His back was every bit as strong as the front of him was, the muscles fanning out from his spine. He had a black tattoo that covered his right shoulder blade: a beautiful, old-fashioned compass, like something you’d see on a medieval map.