Читать книгу Diana Palmer Christmas Collection: The Rancher / Christmas Cowboy / A Man of Means / True Blue / Carrera's Bride / Will of Steel / Winter Roses - Diana Palmer - Страница 25

First she did the accounts. Her mind was still reeling from Corrigan’s ardor, and she had to be collected when she spoke to his brothers. She deciphered his scribbled numbers, balanced the books, checked her figures and put down a total.

They certainly weren’t broke, and there was enough money in the account to feed Patton’s Third Army. She left them a note saying so, amused at the pathetic picture they’d painted of their finances. Probably, the reason for that was part of their master plan.

She went outside to look for them after she’d done the books. They were all four in the barn, standing close together. They stopped talking the minute she came into view, and she knew for certain that they’d been talking about her.

“I’m not marrying him,” she told them clearly, and pointed at Corrigan.

“Okay,” Leo said easily.

“The thought never crossed my mind,” Rey remarked.

Cag just shrugged.

Corrigan grinned.

“I’m through with the books,” she said uneasily. “I want to go home now.”

“You haven’t eaten lunch,” Rey said.

“It’s only eleven o’clock,” she said pointedly.

“We have an early lunch, because we work until dark,” Cag volunteered.

“Mrs. Culbertson just left,” Rey said. He sighed. “She put some beef and gravy in the oven to warm. But she didn’t make us any biscuits.”

“We don’t have anything to put gravy on,” Leo agreed.

“Can’t work all afternoon without a biscuit,” Cag said, nodding.

Corrigan grinned.

Dorie had thought that Corrigan was making up that story about the brothers’ mania for biscuits. Apparently it was the gospel truth.

“Just one pan full,” Leo coaxed. “It wouldn’t take five minutes.” He eyed her warily. “If you can really make them. Maybe you can’t. Maybe you were just saying you could, to impress us.”

“That’s right,” Rey added.

“I can make biscuits,” she said, needled. “You just point me to the kitchen and I’ll show you.”

Leo grinned. “Right this way!”

Half an hour later, the pan of biscuits were gone so fast that they might have disintegrated. Leo and Corrigan were actually fighting over the last one, pulled it apart in their rush, and ended up splitting it while the other two sat there gloating. They’d had more than their share because they had faster hands.

“Next time, you’ve got to make two pans,” Corrigan told her. “One doesn’t fill Leo’s hollow tooth.”

“I noticed,” she said, surprisingly touched by the way they’d eaten her biscuits with such enjoyment. “I’ll make you a pan of rolls to go with them next time.”

“Rolls?” Leo looked faint. “You can make homemade rolls?”

“I’ll see about the wedding rings right now,” Rey said, wiping his mouth and pushing away from the table.

“I’ve got the corrected invitation in my pocket,” Cag murmured as he got up, too.

Leo joined the other two at the door. “They said they can get the dress here from Paris in two weeks,” Leo said.

Dorie gaped at them. But before she could say a word, all three of them had rushed out the door and closed it, talking animatedly among themselves.

“But, I didn’t say…!” she exclaimed.

“There, there,” Corrigan said, deftly adding another spoonful of gravy to his own remaining half of a biscuit. “It’s all right. They forgot to call the minister and book him.”

Just at that moment, the door opened and Leo stuck his head in. “Are you Methodist, Baptist or Presbyterian?” he asked her.

“I’m… Presbyterian,” she faltered.

He scowled. “Nearest Presbyterian minister is in Victoria,” he murmured thoughtfully, “but don’t worry, I’ll get him here.” He closed the door.

“Just a minute!” she called.

The doors of the pickup closed three times. The engine roared. “Too late,” Corrigan said imperturbably.

“But didn’t you hear him?” she burst out. “For heaven’s sake, they’re going to get a minister!”

“Hard to get married in church without one,” he insisted. He gestured toward her plate with a fork to the remaining chunk of beef. “Don’t waste that. It’s one of our own steers. Corn fed, no hormones, no antibiotics, no insecticides. We run a clean, environmentally safe operation here.”

She was diverted. “Really?”

“We’re renegades,” he told her. “They groan when they see us coming at cattle conventions. Usually we go with Donavan. He’s just like us about cattle. He and the Ballenger brothers have gone several rounds over cattle prods and feed additives. He’s mellowed a bit since his nephew came to live with him and he got married. But he likes the way we do things.”

“I guess so.” She savored the last of the beef. “It’s really good.”

“Beats eating pigs,” he remarked, and grinned.

She burst out laughing. “Your brother Cag had plenty to say on that subject.”

“He only eats beef or fish. He won’t touch anything that comes from a pig. He says it’s because he doesn’t like the taste.” He leaned forward conspiratorially. “But I say it’s because of that movie he went to see. He used to love a nice ham.”

“What movie?”

“The one with the talking pig.”

“Cag went to see that?”

“He likes cartoons and sentimental movies.” He shrugged. “Odd, isn’t it? He’s the most staid of us. To look at him, you’d never know he had a sense of humor or that he was sentimental. He’s like the others in his lack of conventional good looks, though. Most women can’t get past that big nose and those eyes.”

“A cobra with a rabbit,” she said without thinking.

He chuckled. “Exactly.”

“Does he hate women as much as the rest of you?”

“Hard to tell. You haven’t seen him in a tuxedo at a social bash. Women, really beautiful women, followed him around all night dropping their room keys at his feet.”

“What did he do?”

“Kept walking.”

She put down her fork. “What do you do?”

He smiled mockingly. “They don’t drop room keys at my feet anymore. The limp puts them off.”

“Baloney,” she said. “You’re the handsomest of the four, and it isn’t just looks.”

He leaned back in his chair to look at her. His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “Does the limp bother you?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, lifting her gaze. “Why should it?”

“I can’t dance very well anymore.”

She smiled. “I don’t ever go to dances.”

“Why not?”

She sipped coffee. “I don’t like men touching me.”

His eyes changed. “You like me touching you.”

“You aren’t a stranger,” she said simply.

“Maybe I am,” he murmured quietly. “What do you know about me?”

She stared at him. “Well, you’re thirty-six, you’re a rancher, you’ve never married, you come from San Antonio.”

“And?”

“I don’t know any more than that,” she said slowly.

“We were a couple for several weeks before you left town. Is that all you learned?”

“You were always such a private person,” she reminded him. “You never talked about yourself or your brothers. And we never really talked that much when we were together.”

“We spent more time kissing,” he recalled. “I was too wrapped up in trying to get you into bed to care how well we knew each other,” he said with selfcontempt. “I wasted a lot of time.”

“You said that we shouldn’t look back.”

“I’m trying not to. It’s hard, sometimes.” He moved forward to take her hands under his on the table. “I like classical music, but I’m just as happy with country or pop. I like a good chess game. I enjoy science fiction movies and old Westerns, the silent kind. I’m an early riser, I work hard and I don’t cheat on my tax returns. I went to college to learn animal husbandry, but I never graduated.”

She smiled. “Do you like fried liver?”

He made a horrible face. “Do you?”

She made the same face. “But I don’t like sweets very much, either,” she said, remembering that he didn’t.

“Good thing. Nobody around here eats them.”

“I remember.” She looked around at the comfortably big kitchen. There was a new electric stove and a huge refrigerator, flanked by an upright freezer. The sink was a double stainless-steel one, with a window above it overlooking the pasture where the colts were kept. Next to that was a dishwasher. There was plenty of cabinet space, too.

“Like it?” he asked.

She smiled. “It’s a dream of a kitchen. I’ll bet Mrs. Culbertson loves working in here.”

“Would you?”

She met his eyes and felt her own flickering at the intensity of his stare.

“If you can make homemade bread, you have to be an accomplished cook,” he continued. “There’s a high-tech mixer in the cabinet, and every gourmet tool known to man. Or woman.”

“It’s very modern.”

“It’s going to be very deserted in about three weeks,” he informed.

“Why is Mrs. Culbertson quitting?”

“Her husband has cancer, and she wants to retire and stay at home with him, for as long as he’s got,” he said abruptly. He toyed with his coffee cup. “They’ve been married for fifty years.” He took a sharp breath, and his eyes were very dark as they met hers. “I’ve believed all my life that no marriage could possibly last longer than a few years. People change. Situations change. Jobs conflict.” He shrugged. “Then Mrs. Culbertson came here to work, with her husband. And I had to eat my words.” He lowered his eyes back to the cup. “They were forever holding hands, helping each other, walking in the early morning together and talking. She smiled at him, and she was beautiful. He smiled back. Nobody had to say that they loved each other. It was obvious.”

“My parents were like that,” she recalled. “Dad and Mom loved each other terribly. When she died, I almost lost him, too. He lived for me. But the last thing he said on his deathbed—” she swallowed, fighting tears “—was her name.”

He got up from the table abruptly and went to the window over the sink. He leaned against it, breathing heavily, as if what she’d said had affected him powerfully. And, in fact, it had.

She watched him through tears. “You don’t like hearing about happy marriages. Why?”

“Because I had that same chance once,” he said in a low, dull tone. “And I threw it away.”

She wondered who the woman had been. Nobody had said that any of the Hart brothers had ever been engaged. But there could have been someone she hadn’t heard about.

“You’re the one who keeps saying we can’t look back,” she remarked, dabbing her eyes with her napkin.

“It’s impossible not to. The past makes us the people we are.” He sighed wearily. “My parents had five of us in ten years. My mother hadn’t wanted the first child. She didn’t have a choice. He took away her checkbook and kept her pregnant. She hated him and us in equal measure. When she left it was almost a relief.” He turned and looked across the room at her. “I’ve never been held with tenderness. None of us have. It’s why we’re the way we are, it’s why we don’t have women around. The only thing we know about women is that they’re treacherous and cold and cruel.”

“Oh, Corrigan,” she said softly, wincing.

His eyes narrowed. “Desire is a hot and unmanageable thing. Sex can be pleasant enough. But I’d gladly be impotent to have a woman hold me the way you did in my office and kiss my eyes.” His face went as hard as stone. “You can’t imagine how it felt.”

“But I can,” she replied. She smiled. “You kissed my eyes.”

“Yes.”

He looked so lost, so lonely. She got up from the table and went to him, paused in front of him. Her hands pressed gently against his broad chest as she looked up into his eyes.

“You know more about me than I’ve ever told anyone else,” he said quietly. “Now don’t you think it’s time you told me what happened to you in New York?”

She sighed worriedly. She’d been ashamed to tell him how stupid she’d been. But now there was a bigger reason. It was going to hurt him. She didn’t understand how she knew it, but she did. He was going to blame himself all over again for the way they’d separated.

“Not now,” she said.

“You’re holding back. Don’t let’s have secrets between us,” he said solemnly.

“It will hurt,” she said.

“Most everything does, these days,” he murmured, and rubbed his thigh.

She took his hand and held it warmly. “Come and sit down.”

“Not in here.”

He drew her into the living room. It was warm and dim and quiet. He led her to his big armchair, dropped into it and pulled her down into his arms.

“Now, tell me,” he said, when her cheek was pillowed on his hard chest.

“It’s not a nice story.”

“Tell me.”

She rubbed her hand against his shirt and closed her eyes. “I found an ad in the paper. It was one of those big ads that promise the stars, just the thing to appeal to a naive country girl who thinks she can just walk into a modeling career. I cut out the ad and called the number.”

“And?”

She grimaced. “It was a scam, but I didn’t know it at first. The man seemed very nice, and he had a studio in a good part of town. Belinda had gone to Europe for the week on an assignment for the magazine where she worked, and I didn’t know anyone else to ask about it. I assumed that it was legitimate.” Her eyes closed and she pressed closer, feeling his arm come around her tightly, as if he knew she was seeking comfort.

“Go ahead,” he coaxed gently.

“He gave me a few things to try on and he took pictures of me wearing them. But then I was sitting there, just in a two-piece bathing suit, and he told me to take it off.” His breathing stilled under her ear. “I couldn’t,” she snapped. “I just couldn’t let him look at me like that, no matter how good a job I could get, and I said so. Then he got ugly. He told me that he was in the business of producing nude calendars and that if I didn’t do the assignment, he’d take me to court and sue me for not fulfilling the contract I’d signed. No, I didn’t read it,” she said when he asked. “The fine print did say that I agreed to pose in any manner the photographer said for me to. I knew that I couldn’t afford a lawsuit.”

“And?” He sounded as cold as ice.

She bit her lower lip. “While I was thinking about alternatives, he laughed and came toward me. I could forget the contract, he said, if I was that prudish. But he’d have a return for the time he’d wasted on me. He said that he was going to make me sleep with him.”

“Good God!”

She smoothed his shirt, trying to calm him. Tears stung her eyes. “I fought him, but I wasn’t strong enough. He had me undressed before I knew it. We struggled there on the floor and he started hitting me.” Her voice broke and she felt Corrigan stiffen against her. “He had a diamond ring on his right hand. That’s how he cut my cheek. I didn’t even feel it until much later. He wore me down to the point that I couldn’t kick or bite or scream. I would never have been able to get away. But one of his girls, one of the ones who didn’t mind posing nude, came into the studio. She was his lover and she was furious when she saw him with me…like that. She started screaming and throwing things at him. I grabbed my clothes and ran.”

She shivered even then with the remembered humiliation, the fear that he was going to come after her. “I managed to get enough on to look halfway decent, and I walked all the way back to Belinda’s apartment.” She swallowed. “When I was rational enough to talk, I called the police. They arrested him and charged him with attempted rape. But he said that I’d signed a contract and I wasn’t happy with the money he offered me, and that I’d only yelled rape because I wanted to back out of the deal.”

He bit off a curse. “And then what?”

“He won,” she said in a flat, defeated tone. “He had friends and influence. But the story was a big deal locally for two or three days, and he was furious. His brother had a nasty temper and he started making obscene phone calls to me and making threats as well. I didn’t want to put Belinda in any danger, so I moved out while she was still in Europe and never told her a thing about what had happened. I got a job in New Jersey and worked there for two years. Then Belinda moved out to Long Island and asked me to come back. There was a good job going with a law firm that had an office pretty close to her house. I had good typing skills by then, so I took it.”

“What about the brother?” he asked.

“He didn’t know where to find me. I learned later that he and the photographer were having trouble with the police about some pornography ring they were involved in. Ironically they both went to prison soon after I left Manhattan. But for a long time, I was even afraid to come home, in case they had anyone watching me. I was afraid for my father.”

“You poor kid,” he said heavily. “Good God! And after what had happened here…” His teeth ground together as he remembered what he’d done to her.

“Don’t,” she said gently, smoothing out the frown between his heavy eyebrows. “I never blamed you. Never!”

He caught her hand and brought it to his mouth. “I wanted to come after you,” he said. “Your father stopped me. He said that you hated the very mention of my name.”

“I did, at first, but only because I was so hurt by the way things had worked out.” She looked at his firm chin. “But I would have been glad to see you, just the same.”

“I wasn’t sure of that.” He traced her mouth. “I thought that it might be as well to leave things the way they were. You were so young, and I was wary of complications in my life just then.” He sighed softly. “There’s one other thing you don’t know about me.”

“Can’t you tell me?”

He smiled softly. “We’re sharing our deepest secrets. I suppose I might as well. We have a fifth brother. His name is Simon.”

“You mentioned him the first time you came over, with that bouquet.”

He nodded. “He’s in San Antonio. Just after you left town, he was in a wreck and afterward, in a coma. We couldn’t all go back, and leave the ranch to itself. So I went. It was several weeks before I could leave him. By the time I got back, you weren’t living with Belinda anymore and I couldn’t make her tell me where you were. Soon after that, your father came down on my head like a brick and I lost heart.”

“You called Belinda?”

“Yes.”

“You wanted to find me?”

He searched her eyes quietly. “I wanted to know that you were safe, that I hadn’t hurt you too badly. At least I found that much out. I didn’t hope for more.”

She traced his eyebrows, lost in the sudden intimacy. “I dreamed about you,” she said. “But every time, you’d come toward me and I’d wake up.”

He traced the artery in her throat down to her collarbone. “My dreams were a bit more erotic.” His eyes darkened. “I had you in ways and places you can’t imagine, each more heated than the one before. I couldn’t wait to go to bed, so that I could have you again.”

She blushed. “At first, you mean, just after I left.”

His hand smoothed onto her throat. “For eight years. Every night of my life.”

She caught her breath. She could hardly get it at all. His eyes were glittering with feeling. “All that time?”

He nodded. He looked at her soft throat where the blouse had parted, and his face hardened. His fingers trailed lightly down onto her bodice, onto her breast. “I haven’t touched a woman since you left Jacobsville,” he said huskily. “I haven’t been a man since then.”

Her wide eyes filled with tears. She had a good idea of what it would be like for a man like Corrigan to be incapable with a woman. “Was it because we fought, at the last?”

“It was because we made love,” he whispered. “Have you forgotten what we did?”

She averted her eyes, hiding them in embarrassment.

“You left a virgin,” he said quietly, “but only technically. We had each other in your bed,” he reminded her, “naked in each other’s arms. We did everything except go those last few aching inches. Your body was almost open to me, I was against you, we were moving together…and you cried out when you felt me there. You squirmed out from under me and ran.”

“I was so afraid,” she whispered shamefully. “It hurt, and I kept remembering what I’d been told…”

“It wouldn’t have hurt for long,” he said gently. “And it wouldn’t have been traumatic, not for you. But you didn’t know that, and I was too excited to coax you. I lost my temper instead of reassuring you. And we spent so many years apart, suffering for it.”

She laid her hot cheek against his chest and closed her eyes. “I didn’t want to remember how far we went,” she said through a mist. “I hurt you terribly when I drew back…”

“Not that much,” he said. “We’d made love in so many ways already that I wasn’t that hungry.” He smoothed her soft hair. “I wanted an excuse to make you leave.”

“Why?”

His lips touched her hair. “Because I wanted to make you pregnant,” he whispered, feeling her body jump as he said it. “And it scared me to death. You see, modern women don’t want babies, because they’re a trap. My mother taught me that.”