by Diana Palmer
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You didn’t want to know, Ted,” she replied honestly. “You hate Corrie. That was the last thing she said to me before I left, and there was a look in her eyes…” She grimaced. “She said something about my trying to remember the good times she and I had. It was an odd way of putting it, and I was afraid then that she planned to go up. She loves skydiving, but she’s clumsy.”
“I only remember Coreen ever being clumsy one time before she married,” he said curtly. “How long has she been acting this way?”
She looked at him levelly. “Since about a month after she married Barry…about the same time he decided that Corrie and I shouldn’t spend so much time together.”
He was shocked. His white face told its own story, added to the way he was smoking. He wondered if his attitude at the funeral had driven Corrie into that airplane. Had he made her feel so much guilt that she couldn’t even live with it? He hadn’t really meant to, but he’d been fond of his young cousin, who’d always looked to him for advice and support, even above that of his own parents. And Coreen had let Barry drive drunk. That was the thing that haunted him. It was as if she’d condemned him to death.
“Well, I’ll go over to the house in a day or so and have Henry open it up for me, so that I can get her clothes and things,” Sandy said heavily. She finished her coffee. “Tina will probably have the locks changed soon and Corrie will have no place to go at all. I’ll take her up to the apartment in Victoria with me….”
“We’ll bring her to the ranch,” Ted said firmly. “We can watch her, without letting her know that we are.”
Sandy searched his face. “You won’t be cruel to her?”
His jaw tautened. “I’ll keep out of her way,” he said, angry at the implication that he could hurt her now, when she could have been killed. His blue eyes impaled her. “That should please her.”
He got up and moved down the corridor. Sandy stared after him with open curiosity.
Coreen was lying quietly in bed, feeling the bruises and cuts and breaks as if they were living things. The door opened and a familiar man walked in.
“Hello,” she said groggily, and without smiling. “Did you come to gloat? Sorry to disappoint you, but one funeral is all you get this week.”
He put his hands into his pockets and stood over her. Bravado, he concluded when he saw the faint fear in her eyes that underlaid the anger.
“How are you?” he asked.
She put a hand to her bruised forehead. “Tired,” she said flatly.
“Jumping out of airplanes,” he said with disgust, his eyes flaring at her. “In a damned thunderstorm! You haven’t grown up at all.”
Her dark blue eyes stared into his pale ones with weary resignation. “Leave me alone, Ted,” she said in a drained voice. “I can’t fight you right now.”
He moved closer to the bed, his heart contracting at the sight of her lying there that way. “You little fool!” he said huskily. Suddenly he bent, one lean hand resting beside her head on the pillow, and his mouth covered hers so unexpectedly that she flinched.
He felt her involuntary movement and quickly lifted his lips from hers. His eyes stabbed into her own. He didn’t know what he’d expected, but her rigid posture surprised him.
“That’s new,” he said, frowning absently.
She couldn’t breathe. “Don’t do that,” she whispered.
“Why not?” he asked angrily. His chest rose and fell raggedly. “You wanted it once. Your eyes begged me for it every time you looked at me. But you don’t feel that way now, do you? Did you know that Barry cried when he told me how frigid you were, that you wouldn’t let him touch you… Corrie!”
She was crying, great tearing sobs that pulsed out of her like blood out of a wound.
“That was a low thing to say.” He ground out his words. “I’m sorry. Corrie, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” He bent, his face contorting with self-contempt, and his mouth traveled over her wan face in soft, tender kisses that sipped away the tears and the pain and the hurt, finally ending against the soft trembling of her mouth. “Corrie,” he groaned as he nibbled at her lips.
She put her hand up to his face and pressed it hard against his mouth. “Don’t,” she pleaded.
The hand was trembling. He warmed it in his own and brought it hungrily to his mouth, palm up.
“How could you take such a risk?” he demanded huskily, lifting his mouth from her hand. She tried to pull it away, but he didn’t let go of it even then, and his face was hard, like the glittery eyes that watched her without even blinking.
“You don’t care if I die,” she accused shakenly.
He winced. “Do you think I want you dead?” he asked roughly.
Her eyes were sad and bitter. “Don’t you?” she asked on a harsh laugh. “Would you forgive me for Barry’s death if I died, too?”
He drew in a harsh breath. It had become painfully clear to him that he could hurt her badly.
There was a soft knock on the door and Sandy walked in, raising her eyebrows at the sight of Ted standing by Coreen’s bed, holding her hand.
“Did Ted tell you that you’re coming home with me?” Sandy asked gently.
“That isn’t necessary…!”
“Yes, it is,” Ted said curtly. “We’ll get a nurse for you.”
Coreen panicked. “No!” she said. “No, I won’t!”
“You will,” he replied coldly. “If I have to pick you up and carry you in my arms every step of the way!”
Coreen felt the words in her heart. She averted her eyes. He hadn’t meant it personally, of course. But the phrasing touched her deeply.
“You need to get some sleep,” Sandy said gently. “I’ll be back later.”
“We’ll be back later,” Ted corrected, his eyes daring Coreen to argue with him. He glanced at Sandy. “She’s on the fifth floor, and she might try to tie a few sheets together and parachute out of here.”
Sandy laughed. Coreen’s eyes were so tragic that it didn’t last. “It’s all right,” she told her friend. “You’ll be fine.”
“Will I?” she asked, looking at Ted with open fear.
Sandy saw the way they were staring at each other, made an excuse and left them alone.
“What is it?” Ted asked softly.
She didn’t reply. She simply shook her head, confusedly.
He stood beside her, watching her eyes. “It was only a kiss,” he said quietly. “I know I shouldn’t have done it, but you frightened me.”
She searched his lean face. “Frightened you?”
He pushed his hands deep into his pockets to keep from reaching for her. His emotions were teetering on a knife-edge. “We thought you were dying until we got here.”
“I’m not suicidal,” she said firmly, “regardless of what you think. I love skydiving. I only wanted to get away from the world for a little while.”
“You almost got away permanently. Skydiving in a thunderstorm!”
“It wasn’t raining when I went up. Haven’t you ever done anything the least bit dangerous?” she asked.
“Why, yes,” he replied, holding her eyes. “I kissed you,” he said dryly, and walked out of the room before she could respond.
Ted lifted a rigid Coreen out of the wheelchair and carried her to the car, while Sandy held the door open. Coreen thanked the nurses and hesitantly linked her arms around Ted’s neck.
“I’m heavy,” she protested when he picked her up.
His face was very close to hers, so close that his eyes filled the world. “You hardly weigh anything at all,” he said bitterly.
She grimaced. “That isn’t what that tiny intern said when he had to heft me onto the cart.”
He laughed. It was a sound that Coreen had never heard before, and her expression said so.
Her eyes were drowning him in warm, unfamiliar feelings. He shifted her a little roughly as he turned and started toward the car, still holding her eyes. “Is this
how you got your claws into Barry?” he asked under his breath. “Looking at him with those soft, hungry eyes?”
She averted her face and stiffened even more in his arms. “Think what you like about me, Ted. I don’t care.”
“Yes, you do,” he said through his teeth. “That’s what makes it so damned unforgivable.”
“What?”
He glared down at her. “You were married and you still lusted after me,” he said harshly. “You denied your husband because of it, and he knew it. It was why he drank. It was why he died,” he added, growing colder inside as the guilt ate at him. “He told me, didn’t you know? Do you think I could ever forgive you for that?”
The bitterness in him was damning. She couldn’t deny it now because they were within Sandy’s earshot. It wouldn’t have mattered regardless, because he had his own opinion and he wouldn’t change it. She hadn’t used him to hurt Barry, it was the other way around. But he liked his opinion of her. It reinforced his warped view of women.
He put her in the backseat, so that she could stretch out, and she didn’t say another word. She left all the conversation to him and Sandy. There wasn’t much.
The bedroom they gave her was done in soft beiges and pinks, and the bed was a huge four-poster.
“The bed was Ted’s once,” Sandy said when she’d tucked her friend up, “but he wanted something less antiquated when we redecorated the house.”
Coreen tingled all over, thinking that Ted had once slept where she was lying. It would probably be the closest she ever got to him, she thought on a silent laugh. Now he had even more reason to blame her for Barry’s death. He would feel guilty that Barry was denied a happy marriage because his wife didn’t want him, she wanted Ted.
“I’ll go see about something for us to eat. We drove up without lunch. Are you hungry?”
“I had a little gelatin and some soup,” Corrie recalled. “It was nice, but I could eat a sandwich.”
“No sooner said than done.”
She left and Coreen shifted the pillows behind her. She was wearing a sleeveless white cotton gown with a high neckline and a tiny blue and pink embroidered flower pattern in the bodice that drew no attention at all to her small, high breasts. She wished she had a robe, but she’d forgotten to ask Sandy to stop by the house and get one. It didn’t matter. She was covered the way a Victorian spinster might be. She grimaced when she remembered the low-cut fashions she’d worn only two years before, things she could never wear again. Not now.
The door opened and Ted walked in. He’d changed into jeans and boots and an open-necked chambray shirt, and he looked rangy and dangerous.
Her eyes fell to the opening at his throat where thick hair peeked out. She’d never seen Ted without a shirt. She’d never seen Ted much at all, except in the distance.
If she was looking, so was he. His eyes had found the embroidery and he was staring at it with interest.
She jerked the sheet up to her collarbone irritably. “They’re just marbles,” she said without thinking.
He smiled. It was unconscious and instinctive, because she looked so angry, lying there with her poor bruised face. “Not quite,” he mused.
She glared at him. “Sandy’s fixing something to eat.”
“I know. When she’s through destroying the kitchen, I’ll cook a few omelets.”
“She said she was making sandwiches. Anyone can make a sandwich.”
“Not without bread, and Mrs. Bird told me at breakfast that she’d made toast with the last of it. Sandy’s trying to cook steaks.”
“Oh, dear,” she said, because she’d been threatened with Sandy’s steaks several times in the past.
Ted’s head lifted. He heard the muttered curses coming from the kitchen and smelled smoke. “There goes the first one.”
“You might stop her,” she suggested.
“Not with all those knives in there,” he replied. He moved closer to the bed and sat down beside her. He held her eyes and suddenly pulled the sheet away, staying it when she tried to make a grab for it.
“Let go of it, Ted,” she warned.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked with a quizzical smile. “Sandy’s within shouting range.”
“What are you doing?” she returned uneasily.
His lean hand pressed palm-down over her breast-bone, shocking her into stillness. His hand was so big that his fingers spread halfway over one small breast. He let it rest there, waiting for her to react.
Coreen grabbed his wrist, trying to remove his hand. She was sore there, and she didn’t want him to feel the stitches. She tugged hard and then lay there gaping at him, with eyes so big they looked like blue china saucers.
He might have found that reaction very strange in a woman who’d been married for almost two years, if he hadn’t known she was frigid. Her resistance to his touch after the funeral and now was beginning to eat at his curiosity. If Barry had told the truth, and Coreen had harbored a dark passion for Ted, then why was she avoiding his touch so arduously? It disturbed him somehow to know that she didn’t hunger for his kisses anymore. Her actions had implications that he wasn’t certain he was ready to face just yet. She hadn’t been frigid two years ago….
He scowled as he finally let her lift his hand away and push it aside.
“What did you think you were doing?” she asked, flustered.
“Experimenting,” he said. “For a woman who’s panting lustfully after me, you’re surprisingly reluctant to be touched.”
“I’m not…lusting after you.” She choked, averting her eyes.
“So I noticed. Then why did you hold me over Barry’s head?” he asked with faint distaste.
It wasn’t easy to appear calm when she was churning inside. “I didn’t,” she said wearily.
“No?” One lean hand was resting beside her body. He looked down at her breasts and she tugged the sheet over them. He lifted an eyebrow. “Overreacting a bit, aren’t you? I haven’t touched you there.”
“I’m not an art exhibit,” she informed him. “And you needn’t say that you wouldn’t buy any tickets, because I know it already! You told me why over two years ago.”
His pale eyes slid over her face and up to meet her angry gaze. “In the most cruel way I could find,” he agreed, and there was a hint of regret in his voice. “Did Sandy ever tell you why?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I never hurt you.”
“No, although you were pretty persistent for a while there.” His eyes searched hers quietly. “I wanted you out of my hair.”
“Congratulations. You succeeded.”
His jaw tautened. “Why did you marry Barry?”
The question came like a lightning bolt. She started from the sudden shock of it. She couldn’t bear to tell him the truth. She averted her eyes. “He asked me.”
“And you accepted, just like that?” he asked impatiently.
“He looked after Dad when no one else bothered,” she said simply. “We were down to our last dollar. He not only bought the feed store, but he also advanced us the cash to keep Dad’s doctor bills paid while the paperwork was finalized. I owed him so much. Marriage seemed a very small price to pay for my father’s peace of mind,” she finished, without telling him the whole truth of it, that his own attitude had pushed her right into Barry’s arms. If Ted had been just a little more sympathetic…but it didn’t bear thinking about.
He got up from the bed abruptly and strode to the window. He rested one shoulder against the window frame and stared out at the lush green pastures where black-coated cattle were grazing; his prize Black Angus.
“Did you love him?” he asked.
She twisted the pretty edging of the sheet. “I was…fond of him, at first.”
He looked at her. “Did you ever want him, even at the beginning?”
She shuddered. She wasn’t quick enough to hide it.
“You wanted me,” he said coldly. “I haven’t forgotten the party at the gun club, even if you have. You wo
uld have given me anything that night.”
“You wouldn’t have taken it,” she said somberly, staring at him unblinking. “You even told me why. Remember?”
He averted his gaze back to the pasture. He didn’t like remembering the things he’d said to her. Absently he pulled a cigarette out of his pocket. But he only looked at it for a minute and pushed it back into the pack with a wry smile in her direction.
“I promised Sandy I’d quit,” he explained.
“Imagine you doing something a mere woman wanted,” she murmured.
“Sandy’s my sister.”
“And the only woman you like.”
He turned, leaning his back against the frame. He folded his arms and crossed his long legs, surveying her with pursed lips and an odd little smile. “I could like you, if I tried,” he said. He jerked away from the window. “But I’m not going to try.”
“Of course not,” she agreed. “What would be the point?”
He paused beside the bed. “You aren’t going to be able to do much for a few weeks, in your condition,” he said. “I hope you like it here, because you’re staying for the duration, even if I have to tie you up.”
She sat up in bed, grimacing at the pain, her blue eyes angry. “I could go home…”
“You don’t have a home anymore,” he said bluntly.
She lay back down, wincing at the pain. She felt broken and bruised. Her eyes closed, to shut him out. “No. I haven’t, have I?” she agreed.
He hated her lack of spirit. His pale eyes lanced over her dark hair and narrowed as he saw the silver threads that meandered through it. “Why, you’re going gray, Coreen,” he said, surprised.
“Yes.” Her eyes opened. “Your hair used to be the color of mine, didn’t it?” she asked.
“Not since I turned thirty. It grayed prematurely. It’s even gone gray on my chest.”
“Has it? I didn’t notice.”
He lifted an eyebrow, because her gaze had seemed to be locked to his throat when he’d first entered the room.
