by Diana Palmer
“Why?” she asked and tried not to sound afraid.
His eyes ran the length of her, from her loosened wavy dark hair to her trim figure and long, elegant legs in the short black dress.
“Maybe I’m tired of playing games,” he said enigmatically.
“With me or Leslie Holton?” she demanded.
“You don’t know why I played up to Leslie?” he drawled. “You can’t guess?”
Her face colored delicately. “I don’t want to know why. I want to go to bed, Dawson,” she said, measuring the distance to the door.
He let out a long, weary sigh and moved closer, noticing with resignation her rigid posture and the fear that came into her eyes.
“You run. I run. What the hell difference has it made?” he asked. His hands shot out and caught her shoulders. He pulled her to him, ignoring her struggles, and held her against the lean warmth of his powerful body. “If I ruined your young life, you damn sure ruined mine,” he said under his breath, staring at her mouth. “I thought we were getting closer and now we’re worlds apart, all over again. Come here.”
Two neat whiskies had loosened all his inhibitions. He dragged her to him without caring that he couldn’t feel anything physically. He could kiss her, at least…
And he did, with aching need, his mind yielded to the feel and touch and taste of her. He groaned as he drew her even closer, feeling her go rigid against him as his mouth parted her soft lips. But her resistance didn’t stop him. He gave in to his hunger without any thought except to show her that he couldn’t be aroused by even the most ardent kiss.
But what he expected to happen, didn’t. He drew her hips to his and the sudden touch of her long legs against his made him shudder and all at once, his body exploded with hunger, need, anguished desire. His intake of breath was audible, shocking as he felt a full, raging arousal for the first time in almost five years.
He dragged his mouth from hers and looked down at her with horror and dawning realization. The curse he spat out shocked even Barrie, who’d heard them all at one time or another from very modern grammar school students. His face looked frightening and his hands tightened until they hurt.
She reacted purely with instinct, fighting the pain he was unknowingly inflicting. She struggled away from him, breathing roughly, rubbing the arms he’d held in that steely grip.
He wasn’t even aware of having hurt her. He just stood there, glaring at her, shivering with the force of his desire for her. He wanted her with pure obsession and she couldn’t bear him to touch her. It was ironic. Tragic. He’d only just discovered that he was still capable with one woman at least, and she had to be the one woman on earth who couldn’t bear him to touch her.
He stared at her with narrow, bitter eyes. “God, that was all it needed!” he said in anguish, his face tormented as he met her eyes. “That was damn all!”
He was looking at her as if he hated her, with wild eyes, while she stood gaping at him. He’d said he couldn’t feel anything! She didn’t realize that she’d said it aloud.
He ran a rough hand through his wavy blond hair and drew it over his brow as he turned away. “I thought I was dead from the waist down, that I was immune to any woman. I never realized why, even if I suspected it…I might as well be dead!” he said huskily. “My God, I might as well be!”
He threw open the door and went out it as if he’d forgotten Barrie’s presence altogether, reaching his car in long, angry strides. He jerked the door open, started it, and took off.
Barrie watched him as if she were a sleepwalker until it suddenly dawned on her that he was acting totally unlike himself. She’d seen him down two neat whiskies, but would that have been enough to make him lose control so completely?
“Dawson,” she said to herself, because he was already out of sight.
She stood helplessly in the doorway, trying to decide what to do. He was in no condition to be driving. How could she go to bed now? On the other hand, how could she stay down here? He might be even more violent when he returned. She remembered, oh, too well, what Dawson was like when he was out of control. Corlie and Rodge had gone to bed. She couldn’t bear the thought of being alone with him…But the way he’d driven off had been frightening too. What if he hurt himself?
With a concern that grew by the minute, she rushed to get her wrap and purse and the keys to Dawson’s MG that hung by the back door. She’d drive down the road, she thought, just to make sure he hadn’t run into a ditch or something. That would make her feel better. And if she didn’t see him, she could assume that he was all right and go back to her room. Not that it was going to make her stop worrying. She’d never seen him so shaken, so wild. Dawson never lost control. Well, only that once. But even that hadn’t been such a total loss of reason. The alcohol would have made it worse, too.
Her mind made up, she started off in the general direction Dawson had taken. The headlights of the sports car picked up nothing on the side of the road for at least two miles down the deserted highway, and she breathed a sigh of relief. He was probably on his way back to the house even…
Her heart jumped when she saw the flashing lights over the next rise. She knew, somewhere deep inside her, that Dawson was where they were. She stepped on the accelerator and began to pray as a cold sickness grew in the pit of her stomach.
It could have been worse, but not much. The car had overturned. She caught sight of skid marks on the black pavement, and the sheriff’s deputy’s patrol car on the side of the road. Even as she pulled off the road and stopped, she could hear an ambulance in the distance.
She threw the MG out of gear and left it idling and ran frantically to the median where Dawson’s Jaguar lay crushed with its wheels in the air.
“Dawson!” she screamed. Her heart was beating so fast that she shook with it. “Oh, God!”
The sheriff’s deputy stopped her headlong flight.
“Let me go.” She wept piteously, fighting him. “Please, please…!”
“You can’t help him like this,” he said firmly. “You recognize the car?”
“It’s Dawson,” she whispered. “Dawson Rutherford. My stepbrother…is he…dead?”
It seemed forever before he answered. “Not yet,” he said. “Calm down.”
She looked up at him in the glare of the flashing lights. “Please!” she whispered, reduced to begging as she tugged against his firm hold. “Oh, God, please, please…!”
The officer was basically a kind man, and that look would have touched a career criminal. With a rough sigh, he let go of her.
Heart pounding savagely, eyes wide with fear, she ran headlong to the car, where Dawson lay in a curious position in the wreckage. Blood was coming from somewhere. When she touched his jacket, she felt it on her hands. She knew not to try to move him. His face was turned away. She touched his hair with trembling hands. It was icy cold, like the skin on his face. Her hands cradled what she could reach of him, as if by touching and holding, she could keep him alive.
“You mustn’t…die,” she whispered brokenly. “Dawson, please! Oh, God, please, Dawson, you mustn’t die!”
There was no movement at all, no answer. He seemed to be pinned. She couldn’t tell where in the darkness. Behind her, the ambulance siren came closer. She heard it stop, heard voices. Another vehicle pulled up, too.
Gentle, but firm hands moved her away, back into the care of the deputy. This time she stood silently, unmoving, watching, waiting. She’d thought so many times that she hated Dawson, especially since he’d played up to Leslie, but she’d only been lying to herself. She might have legions of dates, men who wanted her, but there was only one man that she loved. Despite the pain and anguish of the past, her heart was lying in that tangled wreckage. And she knew then, for certain, that if Dawson died, part of her would die with him. She only wished that she’d had time to tell him so.
* * *
They had to cut him out of the Jaguar. When they put him on the stretcher, he didn’t move. His face was
almost white. They covered him with a blanket and carried him to the waiting ambulance. Barrie stared at him, at the ambulance, with dull, dead eyes. Was he gone? He didn’t move. Perhaps he was already dead and they didn’t want to cover him up in front of her. But her heart was still beating. She was still breathing. Surely if he was dead, she would be, too.
“Come on,” the deputy said gently. “I’ll drive you to the hospital.”
“The…car,” she faltered numbly.
“I’ll take care of it.” With the ease of years of practice, he attended to the car, loaded her into the patrol car and followed the ambulance back to the private hospital in Sheridan.
Barrie drank five cups of coffee before anyone came to tell her how he was. She didn’t think at all. She sat staring out the window into the darkness, praying.
“Miss Rutherford?”
She looked up. “Bell,” she corrected dully. “Dawson is my stepbrother.” Her eyes pleaded for miracles.
And the doctor had one. He smiled wearily, his green mask dangling from his neck, lying on his stained surgical uniform. Blood, she noticed idly. Dawson’s blood.
“He’ll make it,” he told her abruptly. “He was unconscious when they brought him in, probably due to the concussion he’s sustained. But, miraculously, there was no internal damage. He didn’t even break any bones, isn’t that…Miss Bell!”
She came to lying on a bed in the emergency room. She saw the lights overhead and the whiteness of the ceiling. Dawson was going to live. The doctor had said so. Or had she dreamed it?
She turned her head, and a nurse smiled at her.
“Feeling better?” she asked. “You’ve had quite a night, I gather. Mr. Rutherford is in a private room, and he’s doing fine. He came around a little while ago and asked about you.”
Her heart jumped. “He was conscious?”
“Oh, very,” she replied dryly. “We assured him that you were in the waiting room and he didn’t say another word. He’s going to be all right.”
“Thank God,” she breathed, closing her eyes again. “Oh, thank God.”
“You must be very close,” the nurse remarked.
Barrie could have laughed. “We don’t have family,” she said evasively. “Only each other.”
“I see. Well, what a lucky thing that he was wearing his seat belt. He’s very handsome,” she added, and Barrie looked again, noticing the nurse’s pretty blond hair and brown eyes.
“Yes, he is, isn’t he?” Barrie replied.
The nurse finished working on her chart. “He’s on my ward. Lucky me.” She grinned.
Yes. Lucky you, Barrie thought, but she didn’t say anything. She got up, with the nurse’s help, and went to the restroom to freshen up. She tried not to think on the way. She’d had enough for one night.
* * *
After she’d bathed her face and retouched her makeup and combed her hair, she went along to Dawson’s room. She peered around the door cautiously, but he was in a private room and alone. He was conscious, as the nurse had said.
His head turned as he heard her step and she grimaced at the cuts on one side of his handsome face. There was a bruise on his cheek and at his temple. He seemed a little disoriented, and it wasn’t surprising, considering the condition the Jaguar had been in. She shuddered, remembering how he’d looked then.
His eyes narrowed. He breathed slowly, watching her approach. “Sorry,” he managed to say in a hoarse tone.
She winced and tears overflowed her eyes. “You idiot!” she raged, sobbing. “You crazy idiot, you could have been killed!”
“Barrie,” he said softly, holding out a hand.
She ran to him. The walls were well and truly down, as if they’d never existed. She all but fell into the chair beside the bed and lay across him, careless of the IV they were giving him, shivering as she felt his hands on her shoulders, holding her while she wept.
“Here, now,” he chided weakly. “I’m all right. Lucky I hit my head and not some more vital part.”
She didn’t answer. Her body shook with sobs. She clung. She felt his hand in her hair, smoothing it, soothing her.
“Damn,” he breathed roughly. “I’m so weak, Barrie.”
“Weak is better than dead,” she muttered as she finally lifted her head. Her red, swollen eyes met his. “You’re going to have a dandy bruise,” she told him, sniffing, dabbing with her fingers at her wet cheeks and eyes.
“No doubt.” He moved and winced. “God, what a headache. I don’t know if it’s the whiskey or the wreck.” He frowned. “Why was I driving?” he added, struggling to regain complete control of his faculties after the concussion.
Her heart jumped. “I don’t know, exactly,” she said evasively. “You…got angry and stormed out to the car.”
He whistled softly through pursed lips and smiled half-humorously. “Nice epitaph—dead for unknown reasons.”
“Don’t,” she said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue from the box by his bed. “It isn’t funny.”
“Were we arguing again?” he asked.
She shook her head. “Not really.”
He frowned. “Then what…?”
The door opened again, and the pretty blonde nurse danced in with a clipboard. “Time for vital signs again,” she informed them. “This will only take a minute.” She glanced at Barrie. “If you’d like to get a cup of coffee…?”
She didn’t have the heart for an argument. “I’ll be back soon,” she said.
Dawson looked as if he wanted to say something, but the nurse popped her electronic thermometer in his mouth and he grimaced.
* * *
Later, Barrie went back to the house and phoned Antonia to tell her what was going on. She’d called Corlie and Rodge the night before, and they were waiting for her when she arrived. She took time to fill them in on Dawson’s condition before she phoned her best friend in Bighorn.
“Do you want me to come over and sit with you?” Antonia asked.
“No,” Barrie said. “I just needed someone to talk to. He’ll be in for another day or so. I didn’t want you to worry in case you tried to get in touch with me and wondered where I was. Especially after I’d told you I’d be back in Tucson today.”
“Can we do anything?”
Barrie laughed. “No, but thanks. I’ll keep you in mind. He’s getting plenty of attention right now from a very pretty young nurse. I don’t think he’ll even miss me when I go.”
There was a pause. “You aren’t going to leave before they release him?”
“No,” Barrie said reluctantly.
“You don’t know why he was driving so recklessly?”
“Yes, I think I do,” she said miserably. “It was partly my fault. But he’d had too much to drink, too. And he’s the one who’s always lecturing people about not driving under the influence.”
“We can blackmail him for years on this,” Antonia replied with a smile in her voice. “Thank God he’ll be alive so that we can.”
“I’ll tell him you said so. If I can get his attention.”
She hung up and went into the study, because she felt closer to Dawson there. She hadn’t told him the truth about last night. She had a suspicion about why he’d gone out. He’d said it himself. He was only capable with one woman…the one woman he’d scarred too much to ever want sex again. And he couldn’t bear the thought of it. How horribly ironic.
It did make sense, somehow. She went to the window to look out. The sky was gray and low with dark clouds. It was going to snow. She needed to get out before the roads became impassible, but she couldn’t leave Dawson. What was she going to do? The first thing was to go back to the hospital.
But Corlie refused to let her. “You need food and rest. You’ve been up all night. Rodge and I will sit with him until you have a little rest.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she began.
“Barrie, you know better than that. He’s like our own child, mine and Rodge’s. You eat something and we’l
l stay until you get back to be with him tonight.”
“Okay.”
Corlie seemed to take it for granted that Barrie was going to stay the night with him. Of course. Everyone still thought they were engaged. She grimaced. Dawson wasn’t going to like that one bit. When he was back to himself he was going to hate her all over again. She was his one and only big mistake. He’d been furious at her when he’d stormed out. He seemed to actually hate her because he was aroused by her.
But he was subtly different. When she arrived back at the hospital, he watched her come in with eyes that were alert and searching.
“Feel better?” he asked quietly.
“That’s my line,” she murmured, smiling at Corlie and Rodge.
Corlie got up and hugged her warmly. “Honey, you’re freezing,” she chided. “Don’t you have something heavier than that windbreaker to wear?”
“It doesn’t exactly freeze in Tucson,” Barrie reminded her.
“Go to Harper’s and buy a coat,” Dawson said. “I’ve got an account there.”
“I don’t need a coat,” she said on a nervous laugh. “And I won’t be here long enough to use it. Anyway, it’s just a little nip in the air. It’s spring.”
He didn’t reply. His eyes were watchful, curious. “Corlie, you know what size to buy?”
“Yes,” Corlie said, grinning.
“Get her one.”
“I’ll do it first thing tomorrow.”
“But…!” Barrie began.
“Hush, child. He’s right, you’ll freeze in that thing you’re wearing. We’ll be back early in the morning.” She hugged Barrie again.
“Might as well not argue,” Rodge said with a grin. “I haven’t won an argument with her in thirty-five years. What chance would you have?”
“Not much,” Barrie sighed.
They said their goodbyes to Dawson and went out the door, waving.
Barrie edged toward the chair beside the bed, feeling vulnerable now that they were alone. He was much too alert to suit her.
He watched her sit down, his eyes following her. He caught her gaze and held it relentlessly until she flushed and looked away.
“I’ve remembered,” he said.
