Chapter Two

Beth went rock-still and listened, then sat up straight on her couch and looked intently around the room.

A light over the sink in the kitchen and the floor lamp next to the couch in the great room illuminated the downstairs of the small house, but left the corners in shadows when dusk fell.

The couch bisected the large room, separating her living quarters from her sleeping area. She climbed onto her knees and looked over the back of the couch into the shadows of what had become her bedroom. A double-sized iron bed was piled high with old quilts. Standing next to the bed was Louie’s massive, marble-topped dresser with an attached mirror. Having an iron bed in the middle of the living room had rather a dampening effect on her entertaining, to be sure. Housecleaning, however, was a breeze.

The arrangement also made it tougher for apparitions to hide.

The cast-iron potbelly stove occupied the middle of the far wall, near the bathroom Beth had installed. If she was truly paranoid, she would have to inspect the bathroom and the attic before she was satisfied she hadn’t been hearing things.

Harlan’s voice. How long since she had conjured up his deep, sexy drawl? Years, probably.

Not true.

She sank back and pulled a quilt over her feet, not wishing to face the truth.

The truth was that she had conjured up his voice, his laughter, his smile—the feel of his body curved around hers as they slept—night after night since Stubborn Yankee had crossed the finish line and won the Kentucky Derby that spring.

“Can you give me a hand? I can’t get the door.”

This was madness. She wouldn’t listen.

“Beth, you’re there. I know you are.”

In the morning she would telephone a psychiatrist. It was the only thing left to do.

“Beth, I’ll break down the damned door if I have to!”

Something was kicking at her attic door; the wrought-iron latch and hinges vibrated. Beth jumped up, jarred out of her stupor.

“Harlan Rockwood, I swear I’ll...”

She tore open the door, half expecting thin air. There he was, seventy-four inches of taut muscle and Tennessean charm. One of the most eligible men in the South—according to an article Char had clipped and sent Beth during her own brief stay in Rockwood country. Smart, easygoing, tawny-haired and rich were the words used to describe Harlan. What more could a woman want?

His lanky frame became visible as he stiffly walked down the narrow, steep attic stairs. He was wearing jeans, a rumpled pale yellow cotton shirt that appeared to be buttoned up crooked and socks without shoes.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Beth demanded, not sure she really wanted to know.

“Catching my breath. Want to give me a hand?”

“No, dammit, I don’t want to give you a hand! I want you out of there—”

“Beth, I can’t.”

“What do you mean? Move it, Rockwood. I don’t like the idea of having strange men holed up in my attic. Now march.”

He sighed. “I’ll need a hand.”

“What, afraid my stairs will give out?”

She grabbed his forearm and helped him down the stairs, even as she wondered about this helpless act. One thing Harlan Rockwood wasn’t was helpless.

“Didn’t think all my working out was going to come in handy jerking my ex-husband around,” she grumbled, heaving him against the door jamb. “Honestly, Harlan. People are looking all over for you, and here you are—Harlan?”

He couldn’t speak. She could see that. He had sagged against the doorjamb, wincing, as pale as death.

“Oh, Harlan,” Beth breathed. “What now?”

No longer fuming, she could see how his jaw and left eye were split and swollen. Coagulated blood and purple and yellow bruises marred his handsome, aristocratic face. He hadn’t shaved in several days, and his tawny hair stuck out in the wrong places.

He was clearly in a great deal of pain. He held one arm across his abdomen and tried to smile. “It’s nothing serious.”

“Are you going to be sick?”

“No.”

“The bathroom’s right behind you if you are.”

“I know,” he said.

She knew she sounded snappish and decidedly unsympathetic. Well, why not? If anyone had told her that morning that by nightfall she’d have fended off a private investigator, called her in-laws and hauled her ex-husband down her attic stairs, she’d have either taken the first plane out of Vermont or laughed herself into a padded cell.

She recalled having nursed Harlan back to health after more than one good pummeling.

As social as ever, he added, “I’ll be fine.”

“Then go in and have a seat. I’d like to know what’s going on around here. My God, Harlan. If you didn’t already have a fat lip, I’d probably give you one. How long have you been upstairs?”

“A couple of days.’’

“A couple of days?”

She gritted her teeth. No, she wouldn’t let Harlan get to her. If she had to put another thousand miles between him and herself, she would. She would sell Louie’s old place and move to Quebec. She’d...

“I’m going crazy,” she muttered, watching Harlan limp to the couch. No, she wasn’t going to let him get to her. He was on her turf now, something he had managed to avoid throughout their marriage.

Harlan eased himself onto the couch and patted the spaniel’s head. The tabby cat jumped up at once and curled up on his lap. Harlan scratched her ear.

The squatter had obviously made a few friends in the past two days.

“I want you out of my house,” Beth told him, deliberately not mincing words.

He glanced up at her. “I’d like to explain.”

“Nope. I’m not getting sucked into whatever mess you’re in. No way. You have your things upstairs, I assume? Allow me.”

Ignoring his pain-wracked cough, Beth climbed the stairs to the attic. A naked bulb threw seventy-five watts of light into the center of the large, unheated room. Two eyebrow windows brought in little light, even in the daytime.

Harlan had apparently managed to transform ten square feet under the light bulb into serviceable living quarters. Beth’s old sleeping bag was spread out on a twin-sized mattress she had stored. A footlocker served as a table. One of Louie’s cast-off metal lawn-chairs sat in the best light, with Beth’s copy of Scaramouche hanging open over the arm. Harlan had set one of her pottery plates on the floor, and an empty Chinese food container stood next to it. There was the empty bottle of her last beer! Presumably he’d remembered that whatever went into their refrigerator never came out again in recognizable form.

His leather suitcase lay open at the end of his makeshift bed, everything in it neatly packed. Beth closed it and hauled it downstairs.

She plunked it at his feet.

He sighed. “You have no idea what it cost me to get that thing upstairs.”

“Missed your valet, did you?”

“Beth, you know I don’t have a valet.”

While she’d been upstairs, he had gotten ice for his face, wrapped it in a plastic bag and applied it to his swollen eye.

Beth didn’t give him any sympathy. “If you’ve been here a couple of days, you must be on the mend. I can have your bag sent, if you can’t carry it.”

“How charitable,” he said dryly.

“It’s the best you’re going to get from me.”

“You’d throw an injured man out into the cold, cruel night?”

“It’s not cold, and about the cruelest thing out there is a sleeping chicken. Besides, you, Harlan Rockwood, aren’t just any injured man. You’re my ex-husband—a sneak.” She clenched her fists at her sides, the shock of seeing him wearing off and the full measure of his effrontery sinking in. “I want you out of my house.”

He kept the ice on his blackened eye. “You’re overreacting.”

“That’s what a man says when he knows he doesn’t have a leg to stand on.” She jerked her thumb toward the front door. “Out.”

He didn’t move, and Beth was reminded that Harlan Rockwood had never done anything in his life he didn’t want to do. When it suited him, he could be remarkably single-minded. “It hurts to walk,” he said.

Beth was unmoved. “I’ll help you.”

“I’d collapse before I made it out of your driveway.”

“Then I’ll scrape you up in the morning.”

He half smiled. “You talk a tough game, Beth darlin’.”

“Don’t you Beth darlin’ me. Harlan, I’m not kidding. Look at it this way, you have a better chance of staying alive out in the cold, cruel night than you do staying in here with me.”

“Classic hyperbole,” he said dismissively. ‘The last two days, your various critters around here and I have been talking, and we agree that for all your talk about skewers and stewpots and whatnot, at heart you’re a big softie.”

Being called hard-hearted would have offended her less than being called a big softie. Harlan knew that. She crossed her arms over her chest and assumed a grim expression—the one she used when her dogs and cats assumed they had equal access to her counters.

Harlan didn’t exactly run for the door. Calmly and deliberately, he removed the ice from his eye and gazed at his ex-wife. He didn’t say a word. He had wonderful eyes, even when they were rimmed with black and blue bruises. Nine years had added sprays of lines at their corners, but had not lessened their spark and vitality. They were emerald green, darker around the irises. Eyes that had once seemed capable of penetrating to her very soul.

“Give me until morning,” he said softly, all wry-ness gone. “Then I’ll be out of your way.”

Beth didn’t want to give him another five minutes, never mind until morning. It wasn’t a question of being hard-hearted. It was a question of self-preservation, of maintaining the precarious and treasured balance she had established in her life. Already it was teetering. She had been thinking far too much about Harlan Rockwood these past weeks. By morning he could be back under her skin. Then what?

“You don’t have a good effect on my life, you know,” she admitted.

“Sorry.”

He wasn’t sorry. He loved it, she knew. Back in Nashville all those years ago, he had relished stirring up her life. She was the nose-to-the-grindstone Yankee; he was the easy-going southerner. Of course, it wasn’t that simple. Nothing ever was. Intelligent, athletic and scion of a family that had ventured down the Cumberland River deep into Tennessee with the Robertsons and Donelsons, Harlan Rockwood often fooled people with his deceptively easygoing manner. It had taken a while for even Beth to realize he was every inch a Rockwood.

Looking at his swollen, blackened eye and his bruised and bloodied jaw, she knew she couldn’t kick him out into the night.

“All right.” She could hear the surrender in her voice. “You can stay the night. I want you out of here by 7:00 a.m. Don’t talk to me. Go on back upstairs, and I’ll pretend you’re not here.”

“I thought you wanted an explanation,” he said mildly.

“Changed my mind.” She spun around, headed for the kitchen and dug around on top of the refrigerator for a bottle of aspirin. She returned with it and a glass of water to the great room and handed them to Harlan. “There. Don’t think I’m hard-hearted.”

“I don’t have to think it, I know it.” But he took the water and aspirin. “Going upstairs hurts even more than coming down.”

“Should have thought of that before you snuck into my house.”

“I didn’t sneak in. The door was unlocked.”

“Because there isn’t a lock. I can assure you there will be one by noon tomorrow.”

“You’re peeved because I pulled one over on you. I’ve had the run of your place for two days and you didn’t even know it.” Some of the old fire blazed in his eyes. “That galls you, doesn’t it?”

“Not really.” Harlan Rockwood couldn’t put her over the edge, not anymore. “I’ve been putting in long hours at the mill. I know that hard work can make a person too tired to notice somebody creeping around in their attic.”

“Call that an attic, do you? Feels more like a hayloft. It’s a comfortable little place you’ve got here.” He stretched out his long legs, obviously disinclined to move. “Except for your tub. I tried the shower, but nearly froze before I realized there was no hot water. So I followed your lead and tried that galvanized wash tub of yours. I don’t fit in it as well as you do.”

“You spied on me?” Beth asked hollowly.

“Didn’t mean to. There’s this little hole above the kitchen, next to the old chimney. I heard this racket— kettles whistling, dogs barking, scuffing and slamming—and thought I’d better investigate. There you were, easing yourself into a washtub of suds.”

Beth just managed to keep herself from going after him with her poker. “Upstairs or out of here. Now, Harlan. I don’t want to know anything. I...” She inhaled deeply, trying to control herself. “Up or out.”

“As you wish.”

He slowly climbed to his feet, appearing, if possible, even more worn and battered than before. A boxer in college and law school, he had endured his share of beatings. That had been a long time ago. Now Harlan Rockwood was closing in on forty and the owner of world-renowned thoroughbred stables. After all, what did she know about him anymore?

He was a stranger.

She reddened at the thought of having this man— this stranger—peering down at her in her washtub in the middle of her sagging kitchen floor. Thank heaven for all those weeks of conditioning! She was trim and solid, and even if Harlan had seen her naked, it couldn’t have been that sorry a sight.

Small comfort that was.

“You can make it upstairs without my help,” she declared. “If you’ve been prowling through my cupboards for two days, you’ve managed before.”

“Only because I knew you’d have just rolled me outside and let me rot like a dead cat if I’d collapsed.”

“No. I bury dead cats.”

To her annoyance, he grinned at her. ‘‘Your bark’s still bigger than your bite, Beth darlin’.”

“Don’t count on it. You collapse and see what I do.”

He hobbled to the attic door. Beth didn’t move as she listened to him mount the steep, narrow stairs.

Then she heard a curse and the unmistakable sound of a lanky Tennessean tumbling down seven steps. Harlan groaned and cursed as he fell. Beth raced over to the base of the stairs.

He was stretched out across several steps, still hanging on to the railing, which had become dislodged from the ancient wallboard. His gray color and the variety of curses coming from his oh, so proper mouth indicated he wasn’t faking. Picking her way through chunks of plaster and railing, she climbed the steps and crouched next to his chest.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

He managed to glare at her, a good sign. “No, dammit, I’m not all right!”

“I withdraw the question.” He was clutching his chest. “Ribs?”

He nodded painfully. “Think I cracked a couple.”

“Right now?”

“No—before.”

Before. Someone had given Harlan Rockwood a good thrashing. Beth was thankful that he wasn’t planning to tell her who. She shuddered at the prospect of being drawn into Harlan’s troubles. Accidents didn’t happen to Harlan Rockwood, and he was never a victim. “Lucky you didn’t puncture a lung,”’ she said.

“Trust you to put a pleasant spin on things.” He groaned as he tried to adjust his position, then gave up. “Give me a second to catch my breath....”

“You should have told me you had cracked ribs. I’d have driven you to an inn instead of making you go back upstairs.”

“Such a saint.”

“Come on.” She looked for a spot to grab hold of to help him to his feet. There wasn’t a man alive whose body she’d known better than this one’s. “Let me give you a hand.”

His pain-wracked gaze fastened on her without amusement. “Going to kick me the rest of the way downstairs?”

“I might, if you don’t quit talking about me like I’m some kind of sadist.”

He came close to a smile, even if it was a nasty one. “Florence Nightingale you aren’t.”

He slung one long arm over her shoulder and pulled himself into a sitting position. He let go of the loosened railing. Harlan had always been remarkably stoic about physical injury. Staying crouched, they managed to get downstairs without further incident. Beth ignored his curses and tried to ignore the feel of his sinewy, male body against hers, focusing on the task at hand. I cannot get sucked back into this man’s world. I have got to send him packing.

At the bottom of the stairs, Harlan removed his arm from Beth’s shoulder and made his way to the couch on his own. To her dismay, she had to admit that nine years had not diminished his raw sexuality. She’d just have to disregard it.

His face pallid, he slumped back against the cushions and shut his eyes. “Why didn’t you just kill me?”

She shrugged. “I figured quick and painful was better than slow and painful. Shall I call a doctor?”

His eyes opened and fixed on her with seriousness. “No.”

A chill went through Beth, and she looked again at her ex-husband’s battered face. “You’re in some kind of trouble, aren’t you?”

He sighed.

“Never mind.” Beth began to pace, folding her arms across her chest in a futile effort to ward off her anxiety. “I don’t want to know. I’ll do what I can to get you on your feet and out of here.”

“I’m sorry.” He winced. “I shouldn’t have come here.”

Unable to stop herself, she asked softly, “Why did you?”

He half smiled. “I’d had the hell beaten out of me. Where else would I go?”

The hospital, the police and a hundred other places. He was attempting to charm her.

Beth felt herself weakening.

“If I can get my chest wrapped and rest a bit,” Harlan said, “I should be all right.”

With brisk efficiency, Beth helped him off with his shirt, which could have used a spin through a washing machine. She tried not to dwell on the dried blood on the collar and sleeve.

“Sure you didn’t just get run over by a train?”

Harlan didn’t answer. His breath was warm on her face as he slipped off his shirt, blanching in pain. He wore no undershirt. His chest and shoulder muscles were more developed than Beth remembered. She attempted to regard him impersonally, but couldn’t. Objectivity for her where Harlan Rockwood was concerned was impossible—and a primary reason why she had never gotten in touch with him after their divorce. With no children, they had easily gone their separate ways. Had to stay separate and whole and get on with their lives.

If she had tried to stay in touch, maintaining the illusion of an amiable parting, they’d have kept on landing in bed together. How could she ever have fashioned a new life for herself tied, however tenuously, to her former husband?

“I’ll see what I can find to wrap you with.” She jumped to her feet, glad to put herself at a safer distance from him.

Given her zest for physical fitness, she had a drawer full of various sizes of Ace bandages. She grabbed three and returned to Harlan, half wishing he had been an apparition and had vanished. There he was, stretched on her couch, battered, beaten and impossibly sexy. A good thing he had cracked ribs. Without them, they might: have ended up together in her iron bed.

Unexpectedly, Harlan was all business. ‘Tell me about your visit from Jimmy Sessoms,” he said as Beth briskly began wrapping his chest.

“You didn’t eavesdrop?”

“Tried, but I didn’t want to risk moving, in case either of you heard me upstairs. If you’d taken him in here instead of the kitchen, I’d have heard more.”

“I’ll remember that next time,” she said sarcastically.

Since there was no reason not to, Beth repeated her conversations with Jimmy Sessoms and with Eleanor and Taylor Rockwood.

When she finished wrapping and talking, she sat back on the floor. Harlan looked thoroughly absorbed by his thoughts. Beth yawned. It was getting late, and she had to be at the mill early in the morning. How much did she want to know about the trouble Harlan was in?

How much did she need to know?

“I’d forgotten that comment I made to my father,” Harlan said after a few minutes. “I should never have involved you, Beth. I had no idea Mother would hire a private investigator. I thought Vermont was the last place anyone would look for me. If I could leave now,

I would. But I wouldn’t get far, and I can’t risk having anyone find out I came here, for your sake.”

Beth felt increasingly jittery. ‘Then you want me to pretend I never saw you tonight?”

His expression was graver than anything she had ever seen on the face of fun-loving Harlan Rockwood. “Yes.” Then he leaned toward her, reached down and took her hand in his. The effort drained even more color from his face. “7:00 a.m. Then I’ll be out of your life for good. I promise.”

The last thing she needed was Harlan Rockwood back messing around in her life, and yet his words made her feel unreasonably sad and alone. Disregarding her ambivalence, she said, “Okay, it’s a deal.”

“I’ll just stretch out right here,” he went on, “and sleep on the couch, if you don’t mind.”

“You’re too tall. You can sleep in my bed.” Then she added quickly, “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

He squeezed her hand and managed to smile. “Sleeping in your bed without you would only frustrate me.”

She smiled. “Even now?”

His sad, sensual smile seemed to express his own sense of loss. “You mean after nine years or in my condition?”

“Both.”

“Nine years is a long time. I don’t mind telling you I’ve never met a woman like you, Beth. Whatever went wrong between us, we did have our moments.

As for my condition...” He winced when he tried to move, then grinned that luscious, rakish grin of her dreams. “Hell, I’d die happy.”

She covered him with a quilt. “Enjoy the couch.”

Harlan awoke at dawn feeling stiff and sore and more miserable than he had in years. Sleeping on the couch mere yards from Beth had brought its own measure of frustration. He threw the old quilt she’d covered him with onto the floor. He had to have been insane to come here. He couldn’t have anticipated Jimmy Sessoms’ visit; nonetheless, he should never have taken the risk of involving his unwilling ex-wife in his problems. It was inexcusable—an act of desperation and selfishness.

He had to get out of Vermont.

He was bruised and broken, all right. The pain in his chest had lasted through the night. At least his facial wounds were showing signs of improvement. He could probably manage to eat a decent breakfast today. Those two mornings listening to Beth hum and putter around in her kitchen had been more than he could bear. She would listen to a news program on public radio while she made coffee and pulled together breakfast.

Listening to her bathe at night had been sheer torment.

Of course, he hadn’t seen as much of her in the washtub as he had pretended last night. Not nearly enough. The angle was all wrong, and as much as he hated to admit it, he was too much of a gentleman to spy on an unsuspecting lady. Besides, if Beth had caught him, he’d have ended up in far worse shape than he was now. He grabbed his shirt and slipped it back on, leaving it unbuttoned.

Across the room, her brass bed was a tumble of ratty quilts, one dog and two cats. Obstinate and opinionated though Beth might be, no one had ever made him feel quite so alive. No one had ever matched her fiery spirit—or her ability to annoy him.

Harlan knew he should be on his way, but he had to have one last look. She was lying on her side, her tousled, sandy hair covering most of her face. She had on an electric-blue T-shirt nightgown, twisted and pulled tight across her breasts. He could see the outline of her nipples against the soft fabric and felt himself stirring, remembering.

His gaze lingered on the curve of her shoulders and arms, and he saw how fit and strong she was. He had always admired her boundless energy. In her habitually half-buttoned work shirts and jeans she appeared very, very sexy. None of that had changed. What you saw was what you got. Some people didn’t understand her honesty, considering her unmannerly and unbecomingly direct, preferring pretense to a laugh that was sometimes too loud and opinions that were sometimes too strong and uncompromising.

Beth had never been good at minding her manners. In fact, she had never even bothered to try.

Ancient history. Even nine years ago, Harlan hadn’t concerned himself with what anyone else thought about her. It was what she thought about herself and about him that mattered.

He didn’t dare touch her. Leaving her while she was asleep was difficult enough. If he woke her, he couldn’t be sure he would keep his promise to be gone by seven. It was just after five now.

She was a tough woman, this stubborn Yankee he had once loved. Once? His throat tightened.

He had never stopped loving her. Until her friend Char Bradford had come to Tennessee and asked his advice on horses, he had worked hard at keeping Beth out of his mind. He had gone on with his own life after their divorce, fully expecting to marry again, raise a family and have the kind of relationship that had eluded him with Beth. For better or worse, she had been his first true love. He’d continually compared other women who wandered into and out of his life with his memories of her. He wasn’t so much still in love with Beth as not out of love with her.

Char’s arrival in Nashville had changed all that. He’d wondered if Beth had put her friend up to contacting him—if Char’s interest in thoroughbreds was a part of a scheme they had cooked up for Beth to subtly worm her way back into his life.

He had been so far off base that he could have strangled himself. Char’s interest in thoroughbreds had been genuine. Beth had no more use for her ex-husband than she did for an old pair of shoes. Even less, given her frugal Yankee ways.

In her own way, the thirty-something woman asleep under her piles of quilts and pets was the same beautiful, outrageous and impossible person who’d taken so much pleasure in driving him crazy at twenty. The Beth he had fantasized about wasn’t the real Beth.

The real Beth hadn’t mellowed with age.

One of her tabby cats playfully nipped at his hand. Harlan backed off. No matter how much she could sometimes irritate him, he was acutely aware that he desperately wanted to crawl under that mountain of quilts and make love to Beth, the real one.

It was impossible to believe they hadn’t made love in nine long, long years.

He sighed, glad of the distraction of his cuts and bruises, even grateful for the hell of a mess he was in. He hadn’t divorced Beth because he had stopped loving her. He had known that then, and he knew it now. He had divorced her because he couldn’t bear to destroy her.

He still couldn’t.

He left quietly. Outside, he hardly noticed the cool rain. Her 1965 Chevrolet Bel Air started reliably, as it had back when Beth had roared into Nashville sitting behind its wheel.

“No one,” she informed him then, “touches my car.”

She had let him drive it only once. He doubted her attachment to the old jalopy had lessened over the years, but what was he supposed to do, call a cab?

Apparently the Bel Air was Beth’s only mode of transportation. All the same, even if he wrecked her favorite car, she could afford to buy a new one. Her pioneer ways were a deliberate choice. She would be taken aback, to say the least, when she discovered he’d borrowed—she’d say stolen—her car.

By then he’d be long gone.