HE DIDN’T LOOK SHOCKED, she thought. In fact, he was smiling. “No. It feels like that all the time, all the way,” he said gently. “Especially when two people want each other so desperately.”
“Oh.” She squared her shoulders. “I’ve been lonely,” she said abruptly, so that he wouldn’t get the wrong idea about her headlong response.
It didn’t work. He was looking more smug by the minute. “You were lonely,” he echoed.
She glared at him. “Very lonely. I couldn’t help it.”
“Do I look as if I feel taken advantage of?” he asked pleasantly.
She searched for words and couldn’t find any.
He leaned back against the desk, watching her. “You hated intimacy with Barry, didn’t you?”
She hesitated. Then she nodded. “He said things...” She couldn’t bear to remember them. “He hated the way I froze when he touched me. I couldn’t bear for him to touch me. He liked to talk about what he did with other women—” She broke off and turned away. “Oh, God, you can’t imagine what it was like!”
He moved behind her. His lean hands held her shoulders without pressure. “I’m getting a pretty raw picture of it,” he said curtly. “But it’s over now. You have to start putting it behind you.”
She turned in his grasp, her blue eyes wide and frightened. “What if I can’t? What if I really am cold, like he said?”
He pursed his lips and his eyes smiled at her. “Corrie,” he said softly, “if I hadn’t pulled back when I did, could you have stopped me?”
She felt the color whip up in her cheeks like a soufflé.
“You’re not cold,” he assured her.
“But we didn’t...!”
“If we had,” he emphasized, “it wouldn’t have been any different.” His eyes held hers. She couldn’t drag them away, and heat ran through her body like fire. “You might draw back at first, but it would only be a momentary withdrawal. I can make you so hungry that you could take me without preliminaries at all.”
Her eyes showed the faint curiosity the remark brought forth.
“You don’t understand? For a woman who was married, Corrie, you’re singularly naive.” He told her, bluntly, exactly what he meant, and her indrawn breath was audible.
“You don’t know very much about your body, do you?” he asked quietly. “I’m sorry that you think sex is something dark and cruel. It isn’t. It’s a way of expressing feelings and needs that we can’t put into words.”
“Have you ever done it with someone you loved?” she asked, just as bluntly.
He hesitated. His chest rose and fell slowly. “No,” he said after a minute. “I’ve enjoyed women and they’ve enjoyed me, on a no-strings basis. But I’ve been very careful about my liaisons. There’s never been a commitment.”
“And never will be,” she said, echoing what he’d said before. “You’ve said so often enough.”
His pale eyes narrowed as he studied her face. “You’ll want to marry again,” he said. “You’re not the sort of woman who would feel comfortable having children without a husband.”
She turned away, feeling empty as his hands left her shoulders. She wouldn’t want children because they wouldn’t be Ted’s. How could she tell him that? “I don’t want marriage or children anymore,” she said dully.
“Coreen, all men aren’t like Barry!”
She looked back at him solemnly. “How does a woman know before she marries a man what he’ll be like as a husband? How does she know that he won’t hurt her or abuse her, or be unfaithful to her?”
“If he loves her, that will all fall into place,” he said curtly.
“Some men can’t be tied down to just one woman,” she replied. “You ought to know. You change your women like you change your saddles,” she added ruefully. “Every other newspaper has you pictured with some new woman.”
“Gossip pages run on gossip,” he said shortly. “I enjoy the company of pretty women when I go out.”
“Of course, and why shouldn’t you? You’re a bachelor. You have no ties, no responsibilities.” She looked away from his curious expression. “But a married man should care enough to give up other women. Or at least, I used to think so. Barry never gave up anything.”
“Barry didn’t love you,” he said flatly.
“He owned me,” she replied. “He used to say that he bought and paid for me, and maybe he did. God knows, Dad would never have been so comfortable at the end if he hadn’t intervened. And I’d have had no place at all to go.”
Ted didn’t like remembering that. He’d given her no help, offered no comfort. Even if he’d wanted to, Barry made sure that he kept the two of them separated. He was jealous, Ted realized now. Barry had noticed the looks Ted was giving Coreen and it had made him want her, but only to keep her from Ted. Why hadn’t he ever realized that Barry competed with him? Barry had lied to both of them, to keep them apart. And he hadn’t known.
Coreen noticed Ted’s angry scowl and turned away. “Sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to keep dragging the past up.”
“Yes, I know.” His eyes were faintly sad as they searched over her. “I’m sorry that we can’t change it.”
She shrugged. “Everyone goes through unpleasantness. We just have to remember that there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel.”
“Is there?” He held her eyes with his. “You’re vulnerable with me. Is it because Barry was cruel to you, or is it because we never made love and you’re curious?”
She lifted her chin. “Maybe it’s both.”
“Maybe it’s neither.” He stuck his hands into his pockets and studied her mutinous face. “But the years are still wrong. You need a young man.”
“So you keep saying. If you believe it, why did you send Barney away?”
He glared at her. “Don’t you have something to do?”
She sighed. “I wish I did. Sandy once said you needed help in here. I can type. And I can take dictation, if you don’t go too fast.”
He glanced at the desk irritably, noticing its disorder and remembering how it came to be in such a mess.
“You can start with that,” he said, nodding his head toward it. “And next time I lay you down, I won’t stop,” he added unexpectedly.
She lifted both eyebrows in what she hoped was sophisticated cynicism. “If you don’t, you’ll marry me,” she said with equal candor.
Once, the very word marriage would have stopped him in his tracks. Now, he didn’t find it so threatening. And the more he was around Coreen, the hungrier and lonelier he felt. He glared at her.
“I’d better practice more control, in that case,” he said mockingly.
“Yes, perhaps you should.” She wasn’t going to back down ever again, she decided. Her eyes met his bravely. “I’m not taking anything these days.”
His cheeks went ruddy and she noticed that his eyes began to darken as they fell suddenly, explicitly, to her waistline.
“You’re too old for children, remember?” she said with pure sarcasm.
He looked back up. His eyebrows arched. “I’m not too old to make them,” he said with a soft threat in his deep voice. “So don’t push too hard.”
She felt alive; more alive than she had since she was single and Ted had been her whole world. She didn’t understand her own bravado. But she did know that she wasn’t afraid of what he was threatening. She wasn’t afraid of him at all.
“If we had a child,” she said deliberately, “it would have blue eyes.”
His jaw tautened. He didn’t reply. He turned away from her to look for his hat. “I have some business to take care of. If you want to tidy the office, go ahead. But don’t move anything off the desk. I’ll never be able to find it again.”
“Okay.”
“Where’s Shep?”
“Over there.” She gestured at the corner, and grinned. “Mrs. Bird boiled him a drumstick but he left it, to follow me.”
He smiled at her. “You and that pup.”
“He’s the most wonderful present I ever had. I mean it.”
“I know.” He paused beside her on his way out and tilted her face up to his with a tender hand so that he could search her eyes. “I like seeing you smile. You don’t do it very often these days.”
“I’m getting better.”
He nodded. His gaze fell to her mouth and the fingers on her chin went rigid.
“Afraid to kiss me?” she whispered boldly.
He smiled faintly. “Maybe I am. You and I are explosive.”
Her eyes were curious. “Isn’t it always like that, for a man?”
His thumb slid over her chin and moved up to tug at her soft lower lip. “Not for me,” he confessed quietly. “I only feel this fever with you, Corrie,” he whispered against her mouth as he took it.
It was a mistake. He knew it the minute he felt her lips part beneath the ardent pressure of his mouth. He groaned and dropped his hat on the floor in the rush of his need to get her against him. He half lifted her into his aroused body and his tongue penetrated the soft depths of her mouth. He felt her shiver and heard her moan, and the world spun away.
Someone was knocking at the door. He heard it, as if from deep in a well. He lifted his head and found himself fighting to breathe. Coreen’s eyes were half-closed with desire, her mouth swollen and red, her body arched slightly, yielding, waiting. His hand was smoothing hungrily over her undamaged breast and he felt her heart beating like mad under it.
“What is it?” His voice sounded hoarse, even when he raised it.
“That man’s here about the new combine, Mr. Regan!” one of his men called through the door.
“Tell him I’ll be there in ten minutes!” he yelled back.
“Yes, sir!”
Footsteps died away. Coreen hadn’t moved, or protested, or tried to pull away.
“Do you want more?” he asked coolly, angered by his own weakness.
She had no pride left. “Yes,” she whispered, “please.”
“Corrie...!”
“Please,” she whispered again, tugging at his head.
Her eyes closed as he bent helplessly to her waiting mouth. The kiss was deeper this time, slower, more achingly thorough than ever before. His powerful legs trembled as she pushed closer to his aroused body and he felt her softness and warmth against him.
His lean hands found her hips and tugged her rhythmically against him while he kissed her until he had to stop for air.
“Do you realize that I could take you right here, standing up, right now?” he asked in a rough whisper.
“Yes,” she said simply.
He parted her lips with his, and pushed his tongue slowly past her teeth once, twice, deeper with each movement. “Open your mouth a little more,” he whispered raggedly. “Let me touch you...more deeply...inside!”
She cried out at the imagery and her whole body vibrated as he deepened the kiss to blatant intimacy. His legs parted and he pulled her between them, raising her so that they were perfectly matched, male to female. He groaned so harshly that her nails bit into him as she tried to get even closer, to satisfy the hunger in him that she could almost taste.
Her fingers went, trembling in their haste, to the buttons on his shirt. He made a feeble attempt to stay them, knowing too well what was going to happen to him if she touched his chest. But he didn’t really want to stop her. Seconds later, when he felt her fingers caressing through the thick mat of hair that covered him to the waist and below, he shuddered and cried out.
She caught her breath at the unfamiliar sound. It excited her even more to know that she could arouse him so easily. Instinctively, her mouth moved down to his chest and pressed hungrily against it through the thick mat of hair. His heartbeat shook her for the one, long instant that he gave in to his own need.
“No,” he ground out, shuddering as he finally managed to pull her away and hold her back from him with bruising hands while there was still time. “Oh, God...no, Corrie!” he said hoarsely.
She lifted her face and looked into his ravaged eyes with slowly dawning comprehension. “I’d let you,” she whispered feverishly.
His eyes closed and his teeth ground together. His hands on her shoulders hurt her while he fought his own desperate need.
“Ted, I’d let you,” she repeated brokenly.
He rested his damp forehead against hers and dragged in enough breath to fill his lungs. “No. I could make you pregnant,” he whispered, shaken.
He sounded as if that would be the end of the world as far as he was concerned. He didn’t want a child. He didn’t want commitment. In the fever of their kisses, she’d forgotten. But he hadn’t. He was shaken, but not enough to forget the possible consequences of making love to her.
She took a long, shaky breath. “Yes,” she said a minute later, “that’s right. Silly of me...not to remember.”
He barely heard her. His body was in the grip of a kind of pain he hadn’t experienced since adolescence. “Stand still, honey,” he whispered roughly. “Don’t make it worse....”
She hadn’t realized that she was shifting restlessly, brushing his hard body. She stood very still while he concentrated on his breathing until the rigor of his body began to relax. She watched him unashamedly, learning things about him, about men, that she hadn’t known. Her eyes were curious, running over him like hands, searching out all the signs that gave away his raging desire and its slow—very slow—containment.
He felt her rapt eyes on his face. “Stop staring,” he muttered as he took one last breath and the steely fingers on her shoulders began to relax.
“I’m curious,” she said simply, and her gaze was faintly self-conscious. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
His eyes speared into hers. “Proud of yourself?” he asked curtly.
She nodded. “In a way. Nobody ever wanted me that much. Does it hurt?”
He laughed coldly. “My God...!”
“Well, does it?” she persisted. “Some books say it does and some say it doesn’t, but they all agree that a man can control it if he has to. Barry said he couldn’t, and that was why he hurt me. But it wasn’t true, was it?”
He let out one last deep breath. “It depends on how aroused he is.” His eyes narrowed. “Did you work him up the way you just worked me up, and then refuse him?”
The light went out of her. He couldn’t seem to accept that it wasn’t her fault. She didn’t realize that it was frustration talking.
She moved back from him. “I couldn’t have worked him up if I’d been a born seductress,” she said with quiet pride. “He pretended that I was cold. The fact was, he didn’t want me. He never wanted me, not physically. He was...” She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t get the word out.
He was still straining to breathe normally. “He was what?”
“It doesn’t really matter, does it? He’s dead.” She went to the office door and opened it. “I’d like a cup of coffee. I’ll start working in here after I’ve had it, if that’s all right.”
“I’ll be gone in five minutes,” he said flatly. “You can start when I leave.”
She nodded. She didn’t look back on her way to the kitchen.
TED WENT OUT the door in a flaming rage. Twice in one day he’d let her knock his legs out from under him. She’d seen how vulnerable he was to her, and put a weapon in her hands that she could break him with if she chose. He’d never been so helpless. Did she know? Of course she knew! And she had every reason in the world to use his own weakness against him. He didn’t know how he was going to protect himself.
He couldn’t come straight back home, he knew that. What he needed was breathing space. That was it. He needed a business trip. He walked toward the waiting mechanic down by the garage where the combine sat, racking his brain all the way for a legitimate reason to leave the ranch.
COREEN SAT DOWN to supper with Sandy, who seemed unusually quiet and puzzled. They started without Ted, and Mrs. Bird had only set two places.
“Is something wrong?” Coreen asked Sandy.
“I don’t know.” She studied the younger woman with evident puzzlement. “Have you and Ted had an argument?”
Coreen quickly lowered her eyes. “Sort of,” she said. “Why?”
“He phoned Mrs. Bird and said that he was going to Nassau this afternoon. Without coming home to change, without packing...”
Coreen felt the blow all the way to her knees. So his opinion of her was really that low, was it? Now he thought she’d be laying in wait for him, trying to seduce him into marriage. He already thought she’d teased Barry into suicide by denying him her body. God knew what he thought of her after this afternoon’s episode.
“I see,” she said when she realized that Sandy was waiting for an answer.
“And he took Lillian with him, apparently.”
That was the final straw. Coreen put down her fork and burst into tears.
“That’s what I thought,” Sandy murmured sadly. She got up and took Coreen into her arms. “Poor baby,” she sympathized soothingly. “Love doesn’t die just because we want it to, does it? Even after the way he’s treated you, you can’t stop.”
“I hate him!” She choked. “I hate him!”
“Of course you do,” Sandy said, comforting her. “He’s an animal.”
“He thinks I drove Barry to suicide by teasing him.” She whimpered. “He still thinks I killed him!”
“No, he doesn’t. He’s just fighting a rear-guard action. He’s convinced himself that he’s too old for you and he isn’t going to give in. He’s let our childhood warp his whole life. I’m sorry that he’s hurting you like this.”
Coreen cried until her throat was raw. Then she dabbed at her eyes with the hem of her blouse and took the tissue Sandy handed her and blew her nose.
“I can’t stay here anymore,” she told Sandy when she was calm. “It’s tearing me apart.”
“I know. But you’re not strong enough.”
“I am. If you’ll let me rent the apartment, and Ted will give me the living allowance he promised, I think I’m well enough to get a job. I can type and I can take dictation. There must be somebody in Victoria who’ll hire me.”
Sandy grimaced. “This won’t do,” she said. “You can’t...”
“I have to!” Coreen’s eyes were tortured. “I’d go to him on my knees, begging for anything he cared to give me, if I stayed. Don’t you see? I love him!”
Sandy ground her teeth. “That bad, huh?”
“Oh, yes.” Coreen laughed bitterly. “That bad. And he doesn’t want commitment, children, or me in that order. He said so before he left.” She didn’t mention what had prompted it, or the close call they’d had in Ted’s study.
She didn’t need to. Sandy’s eyes were shrewd and she wasn’t blind to the tension between her best friend and her brother.
“He’ll kill me when he comes back and finds you gone,” she told Coreen.
“No, he won’t. He’ll be relieved,” came the weary reply. “Will you help me?”
Sandy sighed heavily. “I don’t suppose I have a choice.”
Coreen smiled. “No. Neither do I. I’ll be fine,” she added reassuringly. “I’m much better.”
Sandy didn’t argue. Heaven knew, it was going to be unbearable for Coreen if Ted was as determined as usual to keep her at arm’s length. The evidence of two years ago was still disturbing.
“What about Shep?” she asked.
Coreen didn’t like thinking about leaving her puppy. “He’ll have to stay here,” she said miserably.
“I’ll bring him to visit on weekends, how about that?” Sandy asked.
Coreen smiled through her tears. “You’re the best friend I have.”
“And you’re mine. I wish my brother was less of a trial to both of us!”
A wish that Coreen silently affirmed.
TWO DAYS LATER, packed and silent, she rode to Victoria ahead of Sandy with her bags in the small foreign car that Sandy had loaned her to drive. Her ribs were still a little sore, but she was more than capable of getting around by herself.
The apartment was spacious, big enough for two people to share and not run into each other. It even had a nice view. The girls stocked the refrigerator and shelves and then it was time for Sandy to go.
“You know the number at the ranch if you need me,” she told Coreen, “and I’ll be up with Shep next Saturday. You’re sure you’ll be all right?”
“This is Victoria, not New York,” she murmured with a smile. “I’m perfectly safe here.”
“I do hope so. Mrs. Lowery and her husband live in the unit next door. They’re sweet old people. If you get in trouble, all you have to do is knock on the door. Mr. Lowery is a retired police officer,” she added with a grin.
“I’ll remember. Thanks, Sandy. For everything.”
Sandy glowered at her. “I should have done this sooner,” she said. “I kept hoping that Ted might relent. I should have known better. He’s too old to change his ways now.”
“That isn’t really surprising, is it?” Coreen asked sadly. “If he’d wanted to marry anyone, he’d have done it long before now. I’ve been living in dreams. I always thought that if you loved somebody enough, they’d have to love you back. But it isn’t like that.” She brushed back her thick, short hair. “Amazing, isn’t it, that I’m still mooning over the same man? And he still doesn’t want me.”
“I think you’re wrong about that,” Sandy said quietly. “I think he wants you very much.”
“But not for keeps” came the sad reply.
Sandy couldn’t deny it. Ted had made his choice very apparent. He was willing to leave the country with one woman to make another woman leave him alone. He gave hard lessons. Coreen wouldn’t forget this one very soon.
“I’ll see you Saturday. Call if you need anything.”
Coreen assured her that she would. When the door closed, she was truly alone for the first time in years. Once she got used to it, she told herself, she was probably going to enjoy it. It was getting used to it that was going to be hard.
She spent a lonely weekend, hoping all the time that the telephone would ring and Ted would tell her he’d made a terrible mistake. She listened for his knock at the door. But Monday came, and Ted didn’t. He was in Nassau with Lillian. Presumably he’d been making his feelings clear to Coreen. And he had. This time, she got the message. By Monday, she was resigned to a future that wouldn’t ever contain Ted.
Sandy had given her a couple of places to apply for work, and she went not only to those, but to four others that she found on the bulletin board in the labor office. And miracle of miracles, one of her job leads panned out the very same day. A local real estate office had an immediate opening for a receptionist, and Coreen was exactly what the woman who ran the office had in mind.
She started work Tuesday. Her typing speed suited the agency very well, and her personality proved an asset to the business. She fielded appointments for her boss and the other four agents who worked out of the small office as if she’d been born to it. She went home tired at the end of the long day, because she wasn’t used to this sort of work, but she loved what she was doing and it showed. She felt safe, secure in her own ability to hold down a job and pay the rent. Her self-esteem blossomed.
By Saturday, when Sandy arrived with an excited Shep in the car with her, Coreen was beaming. She’d had her hair trimmed and was wearing new clothes. She looked bright and happy, and the dark shadows under her blue eyes were beginning to recede.
“You look so much better!” Sandy exclaimed. “I can’t get over the change in you!”
“Isn’t it great?” came the bubbling reply. “I never dreamed how much fun it would be to work like this, with only myself to provide for. I make a salary with my own two hands and I don’t have to ask anybody for anything! I won’t even need the allowance from the trust, and I can pay rent on the apartment, too!”
Sandy looked hesitant. “Don’t get too independent too soon, will you? Take it easy. You’re still not completely well, and you could overextend yourself.”
“Don’t be such a worrywart,” Coreen teased. By this time, she was on the floor playing with Shep. “He’s grown, hasn’t he? Oh, I miss him so!”
She missed Ted, too, and watching the trainer work out with the horses. But she had to put up a good front. She couldn’t let them think that she was pining for the ranch. For him.
IT WAS SUCH a good front that she convinced Sandy entirely. The older woman went back home morose and quiet, so that Mrs. Bird walked around worrying for another week.
Ted came home two weeks after he’d left, and in between there hadn’t been a telephone call or even a postcard. He looked haggard. His tan was the only healthy-looking thing about him. His temper certainly hadn’t improved in his absence. He was out near the stable giving two of his men hell over some tasks he’d assigned that hadn’t gotten finished by his return.
He stormed back in just in time for supper. He sat down at the table and frowned when he noticed that Mrs. Bird had only set two places.
Sandy helped herself to roast and mashed potatoes while Ted fought not to ask the question he dreaded putting into words.
“Don’t bother looking for her,” Sandy said after a minute. “She’s gone.”