by Diana Palmer
He let out a rough breath between his teeth and ran an angry hand around the back of his neck. “She never was before,” he said defensively.
“That’s right,” she said. “Before she was married, she never once thought that a man would be physically cruel to her.”
He rammed his hands into his pockets. “Damned little toad,” he said huskily. “I pitied him, and there he was, feeding me lies about her to keep me angry, to keep me away so that I wouldn’t know what he was doing to her!”
“Would you have cared?” Sandy challenged with a mocking laugh. “You’re the last person on earth Coreen would look to for help!”
His broad chest rose and fell heavily as he struggled with memories that hurt him. “Then, or now?” he asked.
“What’s the difference?” she replied. “You don’t have to worry about her watching you anymore, by the way. She won’t go near the window in her room, even to open it.”
He made a sound under his breath and left the room, staring straight ahead with eyes that didn’t even see.
Coreen had wandered outside on shaky legs to watch the horses. Ted was gone. She’d made sure before she’d even left the house.
The jeans she was wearing were her own, the single pair she had. She wore sneakers and a loose top over it. It was overcast, with threatening weather, and she wondered if it would rain. The parched fields looked as if they could use some rain.
She paused at the stable door and frowned because she heard voices in the back, down the clean-straw aisle that ran widely from one open door to the other.
When Ted came out into the aisle, she turned quickly and started back toward the house. “Coreen!”
His voice stopped her. She turned, her deep blue eyes wide and wary as they met his pale ones under the brim of his Stetson.
He was wearing working clothes, stained jeans with chaps and a patterned Western-cut shirt. His face was grim and he looked out of humor—as usual.
“I didn’t know you were out here,” she began defensively, coloring as he stared down at her.
“Oh, I know that,” he said bitterly. “You leave rooms when I walk into them, you stay in your bedroom until I leave in the mornings, you won’t even come out on the damned porch if you think I’m within a mile of my own house!”
Her lips parted on a shaky breath and she backed away from him.
“No…!” He bit down hard on his anger and took a deep breath. “Here, now, it’s all right,” he said, forcing himself to talk softly. “I’m not going to hurt you, Coreen,” he added quizzically when her rigid posture showed no sign of relaxing.
She folded her arms over her breasts and just watched him, her whole stance wary, apprehensive.
He took off his Stetson and wiped his sweaty forehead on his sleeve. “Do you remember Amarillo, the horse Sandy used to let you borrow? He sired a foal by Merry Midnight. She’s a two-year-old filly. We call her Topper. Want to see her?”
She softened toward him. She loved the horses. “Yes,” she said after a minute.
He held out a hand. “Come on, then.”
She moved toward him, but her arms stayed where they were.
He pretended not to notice that she wouldn’t touch him. It was her feelings that mattered right now, not his own. He led her into the stable and to the back of the stable where the beautiful black horse with the white blaze and stockings stood in her big, clean stall grazing on fresh corn in a trough.
“Hello, Topper,” he said to the horse. “Hello, girl.”
He opened the stall door and motioned for Coreen to follow him. He smoothed his hand over the velvet nose and turned the horse’s head so that Coreen could stroke her.
“Why, she’s soft,” she exclaimed.
“Like velvet, isn’t she?” he mused, liking the way her eyes lit up with pleasure. He hadn’t seen them that way in a long, long time.
“Why is she called Topper?”
He shrugged. “No particular reason. It seemed to fit. She’s a two-year-old, and we hope she’s going to make a Thoroughbred racer. I’ve got a trainer coming soon to start working with her.”
“A racer,” she echoed. “You mean, like in the Kentucky Derby?”
“That’s what we’re hoping for next year,” he confessed.
“Well, she’s certainly beautiful enough,” she had to admit.
He watched her stroke the horse’s mane and ears. Topper paid her very little attention. She was intent on her breakfast.
A sudden clap of thunder made Topper jump. Coreen made a similar movement, gasping at the unexpected noise.
“Looks as if we may be in for a spring shower,” he remarked, looking toward the sudden darkness outside the stable.
“Or a tornado,” she added nervously.
“Oh, I don’t think so,” he said to reassure her. They moved out of the stall and he snapped the lock shut again before he strode to the back of the stable and looked out.
The sky was very dark, with blue-black clouds just over the horizon. Lightning flashed and a rumble of thunder followed it. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he remarked as he noticed her out of the corner of his eye. “Nature, in all her splendor.”
“Violence,” she corrected, shivering. Her eyes were apprehensive as she watched the lightning fork. “I hate loud noises.”
He leaned against the wall and watched her curiously, his eyes intent on her wan face. “Loud noises, like a raised voice?” he asked gently.
She didn’t look at him. “Something like that.”
He moved away from the wall, and her eyes swept to encompass him, the same fear in them as the storm produced.
“Is it only loud noises, or is it men who come too close as well?” he queried.
She put up a defensive hand when he took another step toward her.
He saw her body tense. His pale eyes narrowed. Outside, the wind was growing bolder as the storm clouds darkened.
“Storms increase the number of negative ions in the atmosphere. Scientists say that we feel better when that happens,” he remarked.
“Do they?” she murmured.
He drew in a slow, steady breath. “Coreen, I know about your marriage.”
She laughed coldly. “Do you?”
“Henry told us. Everything.”
The pseudosmile left her lips. She searched his eyes, looking for the truth. He hid his feelings very well. Nothing, nothing showed there.
“And you believed him?” she said after a shocked minute. “How amazing.”
He grimaced. “Yes. I suppose that’s how I thought you’d take it.”
She averted her eyes to the storm and stiffened again when a violent thunderclap shook the ground. Rain was peppering down, splattering in the dust just outside the door. It would be impossible to get to the house now without getting wet. She couldn’t run this time.
“Nothing’s changed,” she said. “Nothing at all.”
He tossed his Stetson to one side and propped a boot on a bale of hay while they watched the rain come down. “We need that,” he remarked. “We’ve just started planting hay.”
“Have you?”
He started to reach for a cigarette to calm his nerves when he realized that Sandy had taken his last pack out of his shirt pocket. He laughed softly.
Coreen glanced at him.
“Sandy’s stolen my smokes,” he explained lazily. “She thinks cigarettes will kill me. She can’t talk me into stopping, so she’s gone militant.”
“Oh.”
He raised an eyebrow and smiled amusedly. “Don’t you have any two-syllable words in your vocabulary?”
He was trying to be kind. She understood that, but she didn’t want any more trouble than she already had. She stared toward the house, hating the rain that imprisoned her here with Ted.
He saw her impatience to leave and it angered him out of all proportion.
“Damn it!” he burst out.
Her face jerked toward his. Her eyes were enormous, frightened.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he groaned. “I’ve never hit a woman in my life! I lose my temper from time to time. I’m impatient and when things upset me, I say so. That doesn’t mean I’m going to hurt you, honey!”
The endearment went through her as if it were electricity. He’d never once used an endearment when they spoke. She’d never even heard him use them with Sandy. Her eyes dropped, embarrassed.
He looked at her openly, curious, astonished at her reaction to what had been an involuntary slip of the tongue.
He moved a step closer, slowly, so that he wouldn’t alarm her. She looked up, but she didn’t back away. He stopped an arm’s length from her, because that was when she tensed. His pale eyes wandered over her face and from the distance, he could see the deep hollows in it, the shadows under her eyes.
“You don’t sleep at all, do you?” he asked gently.
“There’s been so much,” she faltered. “You can’t imagine—”
“I think I can,” he interrupted bluntly. “Coreen, I think some therapy would be a good idea. You must have realized that a warped relationship can damage you emotionally.”
“I’m not ready for that now,” she said evenly. “I’m tired and I hurt all over. I just want to rest and not have to think about things that disturb me.” She drew in a long, weary breath. Her hand went to her short hair and toyed with a strand of it beside her flushed cheek. “I know you don’t want me here, Ted. Why won’t you let me go to Victoria and stay with Sandy?”
His jutting chin raised and one eye narrowed. “Who says I won’t?”
“Sandy. She said you kept finding excuses why we can’t use the apartment.”
“They’re not excuses,” he said. “They’re reasons. Good reasons.”
Her thin shoulders rose and fell impotently.
“You’d be alone during the day, when Sandy’s working,” he explained quietly. “At least I’m somewhere nearby when she’s gone, or Mrs. Bird is.”
“You aren’t responsible for me.”
“Yes, I am,” he said. “I’m responsible for the trust Barry left you. That makes you my concern.”
“Oh, I don’t want the money,” she said wearily, turning away. “Money was never why I married him!”
“The money is yours,” he argued. “And you’ll take it, all right.”
Her head came up. For an instant he thought he’d found the spark he’d been looking for, a way to bring her out of her shell and back into the world. But the spark died even as he watched.
“I don’t feel like fighting,” she said. “When I’m back on my feet, I’ll find a job and a place to stay. Then I’ll be out of your hair for good.”
That was what he was afraid of. He wanted to talk to her, to explain how he felt, but the rain began to fall more slowly, and the instant it lessened to a sprinkle Coreen was out of the stable and on her way to the house as if pack dogs were nipping at her heels.
Chapter 6
“He’s so restless lately, have you noticed?” Sandy asked Coreen one afternoon when Ted was working on a truck with two of his men. “I’ve never heard him use language like that within earshot of the house.”
The language was audible, all right. Coreen peeked out the window toward the metal building where the ranch vehicles were kept. One of the men with Ted had thrown down a wrench and he was stomping off in disgust.
“Hawkins, get back here or get another job!” Ted yelled after him.
“I’ll get another job, then!” came the angry reply. “Can’t be worse than this!”
“Coward!” the third man called after him gleefully.
“Do you want to go with him, Charlie?” Ted asked with a dangerous smile.
Charlie picked up the dropped wrench and offered it to the greasy man bending over the engine of the truck.
Coreen was shivering. Angry voices still made her uneasy, and Ted was much more volatile than she’d ever realized. At home, without any social restraints on his temper, it seemed to be terrible.
“How do you stand it?” Coreen asked Sandy nervously, as they set the table.
Sandy stopped what she was doing and turned to her friend, hardly aware of a cessation of the noise outside. “He isn’t like Barry,” she said softly. “He isn’t a violent man. It takes a lot to make him fight, and he doesn’t hit women. He’s just upset because he’s been unkind to you, and that’s why he’s being impossible to live with. He’s sorry about the way he’s treated you and too proud to apologize for it.”
“He’s very loud,” Coreen muttered.
“He’s a marshmallow inside” came the musing reply. “What you see isn’t the real man. Ted hides what he feels under that prickly exterior. It keeps people from finding out how vulnerable he really is.”
“In a pig’s eye,” Coreen retorted. “He’s steel right through.”
Sandy put a plate down a little noisily. “But you don’t hate him,” she added, her voice as clear as a bell in the room.
Coreen flushed. She started to argue, aware of Sandy’s level stare and a tiny flicker of diverted attention that was quickly concealed.
“Do you?” she persisted.
“No,” Coreen confessed, her eyes lowered. “But it might have been easier for me if I had, once. Barry made my life so miserable. You can’t imagine what it’s like to have someone taunt you with feelings you can’t help, to hold another man’s rejection over your head for years, reminding you over and over again that you weren’t worth loving. He was so jealous of Ted…insanely jealous, even though he didn’t really want me himself. He couldn’t stand it when he found out how I felt about Ted. I think he would have killed me, that last night…”
A faint sound from behind her brought her head around. Ted had been standing in the open doorway. His face was hard and drawn, oddly pale.
“Well, get an earful, Ted,” Coreen muttered with the first show of spirit yet. An open sack of flour sat on the table beside her and she accidentally knocked it with her elbow, jumping to catch it before it fell. Even then she fumbled and had to clutch it to her.
“Miss Graceful,” Ted drawled without thinking.
To Coreen, it was the last straw. She could see the sudden recognition, the regret, in Ted’s face as he remembered too late what Henry had told them about Barry taunting her with her clumsiness. But her self-control was gone. It was one taunt too many.
She didn’t even think. She wheeled and threw the bag of flour at him without a single hesitation.
The bag was made of paper and it broke immediately. Ted’s shocked expression was coated in a white layer of flour, like the whole front of him. It mingled with the grease to give him a vaguely mottled look.
“Tarred and feathered,” Sandy remarked pleasantly and suddenly broke into gales of laughter.
Ted glared at her and then Coreen, who was as shocked by her own actions as Ted seemed to be.
Coreen saw the flash of anger in his pale eyes and the color that overlaid his cheekbones as he stared at her. She felt sick all over, remembering how Barry had reacted if she showed any spirit at all. She felt her knees shaking as she stared up at Ted, waiting for the explosion, waiting for him to hit her.
That expression in her eyes stopped Ted’s anger cold. He calmed down at once. “For a woman who hates violence,” he remarked through floury lips, “you have an absolutely amazing lack of restraint.”
With a rueful smile, he turned and left a white trail behind him on his way out of the kitchen.
“And let that be a lesson to you!” Sandy yelled after him. “Never make a woman mad when she’s cooking!”
The cowboy who was helping him must have been standing on the front porch, because there was a cry of dismay followed by such howling laughter that muttered curses echoed from the hall.
Coreen was devastated by what she’d done. She was even more devastated by the fact that Ted hadn’t retaliated. It was such a relief that she started crying. Sandy hugged her, fighting her own amusement. “Now, now, he won’t d
ie from a coating of flour. Listen, Coreen, listen, if he doesn’t get it all off, we can toss him in the pan and fry him up nice and toasty. He’s already covered with grease and now he’s properly battered…”
Coreen felt the tears turn to laughter at the thought of a crispy Ted lying on a big platter.
Ted was cleaned up when he came to supper. He glared at both women, but he didn’t say a word about what had happened.
Coreen ate with a little more appetite than she’d had. She and Barry had rarely eaten together, except when they were first married. And that had only been so that he could torment her about Ted.
When they progressed to dessert, Ted picked up his second cup of coffee and walked out of the room without a word.
“He’s in a snit,” Sandy remarked. “But he’ll regret leaving that cake behind. Why don’t you take it to him and make up?”
“I don’t want to make up.”
“Yes, you do.” Sandy smiled at her. “Go on. It won’t hurt.”
“That’s what you think. You knew he was standing there, didn’t you?”
Sandy flushed. “I only wanted him to know that you didn’t hate him. I thought it might help. I’m sorry.”
Coreen didn’t answer. She got up and took the dish of cake to the room Ted used as a study. The door wasn’t closed. He was sitting behind his big oak desk staring blankly at the opposite wall with his coffee cup perched on one big hand.
“Didn’t you want any cake?” Coreen asked hesitantly.
He leaned back in the chair, still with the coffee cup in his hand, and stared at her. “Sandy sent you, didn’t she?” He laughed when her expression gave her away. “I didn’t think you’d come of your own accord.”
She moved into the room, ignoring the sarcastic remark, and put his cake on the desk.
“I didn’t mean to say what I did,” he said quietly. “I know that you aren’t normally a clumsy woman. It was a slip of the tongue that I regretted the minute I made it.”
“And I overreacted,” she confessed. She traced the grain of the wood on his desk. “I’m sorry, too.” She glanced up. “You didn’t try to hit me.”
