Regan's Pride

by Diana Palmer

  “Why didn’t anybody bring food?” he asked her bluntly. He smiled coldly. “Do your neighbors think you killed him, too?”

  Coreen felt the nausea in the pit of her stomach. She swallowed it down and lifted cool blue eyes to his. She ignored the blatant insult. “We had no close neighbors, nor did we have any close friends. Barry didn’t like people around us.”

  His expression tautened as he glared at her. “And you didn’t like Barry around you,” he said with soft venom. “He told me all about you, Coreen. Everything.”

  She could imagine the sort of things Barry had confided. He liked having people think she was frigid. She closed her eyes and rubbed at her forehead, where the beginnings of a headache were forming. “Don’t you have a business to run?” she asked heavily. “Several businesses, in fact?”

  He crossed one long leg over the other. “My favorite cousin is dead,” he reminded her. “I’m here for the funeral.”

  “The funeral is over,” she said pointedly.

  “And you’re four million dollars to the good. At least, until the will is read. Tina’s on the way back from the cemetery.”

  “Urged on by you, no doubt,” she said.

  His eyebrows arched. “I didn’t need to urge her.”

  The pain and torment of the past two years ate at her like acid. Her eyes were haunted. “No, of course you didn’t.”

  She got up from the sofa, elegant in the expensive black dress that clung to her slender—too slender— body. He didn’t like noticing how drawn she looked. He knew that she hadn’t loved Barry; she certainly wasn’t mourning him.

  “Don’t expect much,” he said with a cold smile.

  The accusation in his eyes hurt. “I didn’t kill Barry,” she said.

  He stood up, too, slowly. “You let him get into a car and drive when he’d had five neat whiskeys.” He nodded at her look of surprise. “I grew up in Jacobsville. I’m acquainted with most people who live here, and you know that Sandy and I have just moved back into the old homestead. Everybody’s been talking about Barry’s death. You were at a party and he wanted you to drive him home. You refused. So he went alone, and shot right off a bridge.”

  So that was how the gossips had twisted it. She stared at Ted without speaking. Sandy hadn’t mentioned that they were coming home to Jacobsville. How was she going to survive living in the same town with Ted?

  “No defense?” he challenged mockingly. “No excuses?”

  “Why bother?” she returned wearily. “You wouldn’t believe me.”

  “That’s a fact.” He stuck his hands into his pockets, aware of loud noises in the kitchen. Sandy, reminding him that she was still around.

  Coreen folded her hands in front of her to keep them from trembling. Did he have to look at her with such cold accusation?

  “Barry wrote to me two weeks ago. He said that he’d changed his will and that I was mentioned in it.” He stared at her mockingly. “Didn’t you know?”

  She didn’t. She only knew that Barry had changed the will. She knew nothing of what was in it.

  “Tina’s in it, too, I imagine,” he continued with a smile so smug that it made her hands curl.

  She was tired. Tired of the aftermath of the nightmare she’d been living, tired of his endless prodding. She pushed back her short hair with a heavy sigh. “Go away, Ted,” she said miserably. “Please…”

  She was dead on her feet. The ordeal had crushed her spirit. She felt tears threatening and she turned away to hide them, just as their betraying glitter began to show. She caught her toe in the rug and stumbled as she wheeled around. She gasped as she saw the floor coming up to meet her.

  Incredibly he moved forward and caught her by the shoulders. He pulled her around and looked into her pale, drawn face. Then without a word, he slid his arms around her and stood holding her, gently, without passion.

  “How did you manage that?” he asked, as if he thought she’d done it deliberately.

  She hadn’t. She was always tripping over her own feet these days. Tears stung her eyes as she stood rigidly in his hold, her heart breaking. He didn’t know, couldn’t know, how it had been.

  “I didn’t manage it,” she whispered in a raw tone. “I tripped, and not because I couldn’t wait to get your arms around me! I don’t need anything from you!”

  Her tone made him bristle with bad temper. “Not even my love?” he asked mockingly, at her ear. “You begged for it, once,” he reminded her coldly.

  She shivered. The memory, like most others of the past two years, wasn’t that pleasant. She started to step back but his big hands flattened on her shoulder blades and held her against him. She was aware, too aware, of the clean scent of his whipcord lean body, of the rough sigh of his breath, the movement of his broad chest so close that the tips of her breasts almost touched it. Ted, she thought achingly. Ted!

  Her hands were clenched against his chest, to keep them honest. She closed her eyes and ground her teeth together.

  The hands on her back had become reluctantly caressing, and she felt his warm breath at the hair above her temple. He was so tall that she barely came up to his nose.

  Under the warmth of his shirtfront, she could feel hard muscle and thick hair. He was offering her comfort, something she hadn’t had in two long years. But he was like Barry, a strong, domineering man, and she was no longer the young woman who’d worshiped him. She knew what men were under their civilized veneer, and now she couldn’t stand this close to a man without feeling threatened and afraid; Barry had made sure of it. She made a choked, involuntary sound as she felt Ted’s hands contract around her upper arms. He was bruising her without even realizing it. Or did he realize it? Was he thinking of ways to punish her, ways that Barry hadn’t gotten to?

  Ted heard the pitiful sound she made, and the control he thought he had went into eclipse. “Oh, for God’s sake,” he groaned, and suddenly wrapped her up tight so that she was standing completely against him from head to toe. His tall body seemed to ripple with plea sure as he felt her against it.

  Coreen shuddered. Two years ago, it would have been heaven to stand this close to Ted. But now, there were only vague memories of Ted and bitter, violent ones of Barry. Physical contact made her afraid now.

  The tears came, and she stood rigidly in Ted’s embrace and let them fall hotly to her cheeks as she gave in to the pain. The sobs shook her whole body. She cried for Barry, whom she never loved. She cried for herself, because Ted held her in contempt, and even if he hadn’t, Barry had destroyed her as a woman. She wept until she was exhausted, drained.

  Sandy stopped at the doorway, her eyes on Ted’s expression as he bent over Coreen’s dark head. Shocked, Sandy quickly made a noise to alert him to her presence, because she knew he wouldn’t want anyone to see the look on his face in that one brief, unguarded moment.

  “Coffee!” she announced brightly, and without looking directly at him.

  Ted released Coreen slowly, producing a handkerchief that he pressed angrily into her trembling hands. She wouldn’t look up at him. That registered, along with her rigid posture that hadn’t relaxed even when she cried in his arms, and the deep ache inside him that holding her had created.

  “Sit down, Corrie, and have a buttered biscuit,” Sandy said as Ted moved quickly away and sat down again. “I found these wrapped up on the table.”

  “Mrs. Masterson came early this morning and made breakfast,” Coreen recalled shakily. “I don’t think I ate any.”

  “Tina said that she’s staying at a motel,” Ted remarked. He was furious at his own weakness. He hadn’t meant to let it go that far.

  She wiped her eyes and looked at him then. “She and I don’t get along. She didn’t want to stay here,” she replied. “I did offer.”

  He averted his eyes to the cup of black coffee that Sandy handed him.

  “You should take a few days to rest,” Sandy told her friend. “Go down to the Caribbean or somewhere and get away from here.”

&
nbsp; “Why not?” Ted drawled, staring coldly at the widow. “You can afford it.”

  “Stop,” Coreen said wildly, her eyes like saucers in her white face. “Stop it, can’t you?”

  “Ted, please!” Sandy added.

  The sound of a car coming up the driveway diverted him. He got up and went to the door, refusing to look at Coreen again. His loss of control had shaken him.

  “I can’t stand this,” Coreen whispered frantically. “He does nothing but try to get at me!”

  “Barry said something to him,” Sandy revealed curtly. “I don’t know what. He mentioned at the cemetery that he’d seen him quite often and that Barry had told him things about you.”

  “Knowing Barry, he invented some of them to make himself look even more pitiful,” Coreen said softly. “I was his scapegoat, his excuse for every terrible thing he did. He drank because of me, didn’t you know?”

  “He drank because he wanted to,” Sandy corrected.

  “You’re the only person in Jacobsville who believes that,” her friend said. She sipped her coffee, aware of voices in the hall, one deep and gentle, the other sharp and impatient.

  “I thought that lawyer would be here by now,” Tina Tarleton said irritably, stripping off her white gloves as she joined the women. She was resplendent in a black suit by Chanel and had on only the finest accessories to match.

  “I imagine he had to go by his office and get the paperwork first,” Coreen said.

  Tina glared at her. “No doubt he’ll be here soon. I’d start packing if I were you.”

  “I already have,” Coreen said. “It didn’t take long,” she added enigmatically.

  Another car came up. Sandy went to the hall window. “The lawyer,” she announced, and went to open the door.

  “Finally,” Tina snapped. “It’s about time!”

  Coreen didn’t reply. She was staring at the chair where Barry used to sit, remembering. Her eyes were suddenly haunted, almost afraid.

  Ted glared at her from his own chair. So she felt guilty, did she? And well she should. He hoped her conscience hurt her. He hoped she never had another minute’s peace.

  She felt his glare and looked at him. His hands almost broke the arms of the chair he was occupying as he stared into her dead eyes with violence in his own.

  The lawyer, a tall, graying gentleman, came into the room with Sandy and broke the spell. Coreen was ready to give thanks. She couldn’t really understand why Ted should hate her so much over the death of a cousin he wasn’t really that close to. But, then, he’d always hated her. Or at least, he’d given the appearance of hating her. He’d been hostile since that first time, two years ago, when he’d found himself forced into her company….

  Chapter 2

  Coreen had been friends with Sandy Regan for four years, but she was in her second year of college before she really got to know Ted Regan. She was helping her father in his feed store in Jacobsville and Ted had come in with the new foreman at his ranch to open an account.

  In the past, he’d always done business with a rival feed store, but it had just gone out of business. He was forced to buy from Coreen’s father, or drive to Victoria for supplies. He was courteous to Coreen, but not overly friendly. That wasn’t new. From the beginning of her friendship with his sister, he’d been cool to her.

  Coreen had found him fascinating from the first time she’d looked into those pale eyes, when Sandy had introduced them. Ted had given her a long, careful appraisal, and obviously found the sight of her offensive because he absented himself immediately after the introduction and thereafter maintained a careful distance whenever Coreen came out to the ranch.

  Coreen wasn’t hurt; she took it for granted that a sophisticated man like Ted wouldn’t want to encourage her by being friendly. She’d been gangly and tomboyish in her jeans and sweatshirt and sneakers. Ted was almost a generation older, and already a millionaire. His name had been linked with some of the most beautiful and eligible women around Texas, even if his distaste for marriage was well-known.

  But he noticed Coreen. Although it might have been reluctant on his part, his pale eyes followed her around the store every week while she filled his orders. But he came no closer than necessary.

  As time went by, Coreen heard about him from Sandy and got to know him in a secondhand sort of way. Slowly she began to fall in love, until two years ago, he had become her whole life. He pretended not to see her interest, but it became more obvious as she fumbled and stammered when he came around the store.

  It was inevitable that he would touch her from time to time as they passed paperwork back and forth, and suddenly it was like electricity between them. Once, she stood with her back to the counter and suddenly looked up into his eyes. He was standing so close that she could breathe in the very masculine scent of his cologne. He hadn’t moved, hadn’t blinked, and the intensity of the stare had made her knees weak. His gaze had dropped abruptly to her soft, pink mouth and her heartbeat had gone wild. She might be innocent, but even a novice could recognize the sort of desire that had flared unexpectedly in Ted’s hard, lean face at that moment. It was the first time he’d ever really looked at her, she knew. It was as if, before, he’d forced himself not to notice her slender body and pretty face.

  Her father’s arrival had broken the spell, and Ted’s expression had become one of self-contempt mingled with anger and something much more violent. He’d left the store at once.

  Coreen had built dreams on that look they’d shared. As if Ted was caught in the same web, his trips to the feed store became more frequent and always, he watched her.

  In her turn, she noticed that he usually came in on Wednesdays and on Saturdays, so she started dressing to the hilt on those days. Her slender, tomboyish figure could look elegant when she chose the right sort of clothes, and Ted didn’t, or couldn’t, hide his interest. His pale eyes followed her with visible hunger every time he came near her. The tension between them grew swiftly until one day things came to a head.

  They were in the storeroom together, looking for a particular kind of bridle bit he wanted for his tack room. Coreen tripped over some coiled rope and Ted caught her easily, his reflexes honed by years of dangerous ranch work.

  “Careful,” he’d murmured at her forehead. “You could have pitched headfirst into those shovels.”

  “With my hard head, I’d never have felt it.” She laughed, looking up at him. “I’m clumsy sometimes…”

  The laughter had stopped when she saw his face. The lean hands holding her had brought her quite suddenly against the length of his body and secured her there. She could feel his chest move against her breasts when he breathed, and his breathing was as ragged as her own.

  With a soft laugh full of self-contempt, he bent and brushed his open mouth roughly over her lips, teasing them with a skill that Coreen had never experienced. She stiffened, and he searched her eyes narrowly. Then he did it again, and this time she held her face up for him, poised like a sacrifice in his warm embrace.

  “Do you know how old I am?” he asked against her mouth in a voice gone deep and gravelly with emotion.

  “No.”

  “I’m thirty-eight,” he murmured. “You’re nearly twenty-two. I’m sixteen years your senior. We’re almost a generation apart.”

  “I don’t care…!” she began breathlessly.

  His head lifted. “There’s no future in it,” he said mercilessly as he searched her face with quick, hard eyes. “You’re infatuated and set on your first love affair, but it can’t, it won’t, be me. I’m long past the age of hand-holding and petting.”

  She stared at him uncomprehendingly. Her body was throbbing with emotion and she wanted nothing more than his mouth on hers.

  “You aren’t even listening,” he chided huskily. His gaze fell to her soft mouth. “Do you know what you’re inviting?” He drew her up on her tiptoes and his hard mouth closed slowly, expertly, on hers, teasing her lips apart with a steady insistent pressure that made
her body feel swollen and shivery. She hesitated, frightened by it.

  “No, you don’t,” he whispered, containing her instinctive withdrawal. “If I teach you nothing else, it’s going to be that desire isn’t a game.”

  One lean hand went to her nape, holding her head steady, and then his mouth began to torment hers in brief, rough, biting kisses. He aroused her so swiftly, so completely, that she pressed into him with a harsh whimper and clung, her legs trembling against his as her young body pleaded for relief from the torment that racked it.

  She had no control, but Ted never lost his. Tempestuous seconds later, he lifted his mouth from hers slowly, inch by inch, his hands contracting around her upper arms as he eased her away from him and looked down into her shattered eyes.

  She knew how she must look, with her swollen mouth still pleading for his kisses, her body trembling with the residue of what he’d aroused. She couldn’t hide her reaction. But none of his showed in his face.

  “Do you begin to see how dangerous it is?” he asked with unusual softness in his deep voice. “I could have you against the counter, right now. You’re too shaken, too curious, to deny me, and I’m fairly human in my needs. I can see everything you feel, everything you want, in your face. You have no defense at all.”

  “But you…don’t you…want me?” she stammered.

  His face contorted for an instant. Then suddenly, all expression left his face. His hands contracted and one corner of his mouth pulled up. “I want a woman,” he said mercilessly. “You’re handy. That’s all it is.”

  The revelation was shattering to her ego. “Oh. Oh, I…I see.”

  “I hope so. You’re very obvious lately, Coreen. You hang around the ranch waiting for me, you dress up when I come into the feed store. It’s flattering, but I don’t want your juvenile attention or your misplaced infatuation. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but that’s how it is. You aren’t the kind of woman who attracts me. You have the body and the outlook of an adolescent.”