Matt was doing almost a hundred miles an hour on the long highway that led to Victoria. He couldn’t get Leslie’s face out of his mind. That hadn’t been anger or even fear in her gray eyes. It went beyond those emotions. She had been terrified; not of him, but of something she could see that he couldn’t. Her tortured gaze had hurt him in a vulnerable spot he didn’t know he had. When she fainted, he hated himself. He’d never thought of himself as a particularly cruel man, but he was with Leslie. He couldn’t understand the hostility she roused in him. She was fragile, for all her independence and strength of will. Fragile. Vulnerable. Tender.
He remembered the touch of her soft fingers smoothing back his hair and he groaned out loud with self-hatred. He’d been tormenting her, and she’d seen right through the harsh words to the pain that lay underneath them. In return for his insensitivity, she’d reached up and touched him with genuine compassion. He’d rewarded that exquisite tenderness with treatment he wouldn’t have offered to a hardened prostitute.
He realized that the speed he was going exceeded the limit by a factor of two and took his foot off the pedal. He didn’t even know where the hell he was going. He was running for cover, he supposed, and laughed coldly at his own reaction to Leslie’s fainting spell. All his life he’d been kind to stray animals and people down on their luck. He’d followed up that record by torturing a crippled young woman who felt sorry for him. Next, he supposed, he’d be kicking lame dogs down steps.
He pulled off on the side of the highway, into a lay-by, and stopped the car, resting his head on the steering wheel. He didn’t recognize himself since Leslie Murry had walked into his life. She brought out monstrous qualities in him. He was ashamed of the way he’d treated her. She was a sweet woman who always seemed surprised when people did kind things for her. On the other hand, Matt’s antagonism and hostility didn’t seem to surprise her. Was that what she’d had the most of in her life? Had people been so cruel to her that now she expected and accepted cruelty as her lot in life?
He leaned back in the seat and stared at the flat horizon. His mother’s desertion and his recent notoriety had soured him on the whole female sex. His mother was an old wound. The assault suit had made him bitter, yet again, despite the fact that he’d avenged himself on the perpetrator. But he remembered her coy, sweet personality very well. She’d pretended innocence and helplessness and when the disguise had come off, he’d found himself the object of vicious public humiliation. His name had been cleared, but the anger and resentment had remained.
But none of that excused his recent behavior. He’d overreacted with Leslie. He was sorry and ashamed for making her suffer for something that wasn’t her fault. He took a long breath and put the car in gear. Well, he couldn’t run away. He might as well go back to work. Ed would probably be waiting with blood in his eye, and he wouldn’t blame him. He deserved a little discomfort.
* * *
Ed did read him the riot act, and he took it. He couldn’t deny that he’d been unfair to Leslie. He wished he could understand what it was about her that raised the devil in him.
“If you genuinely don’t like her,” Ed concluded, “can’t you just ignore her?”
“Probably,” Matt said without meeting his cousin’s accusing eyes.
“Then would you? Matt, she needs this job,” he continued solemnly.
Matt studied him sharply. “Why does she need it?” he asked. “And why doesn’t she have anyplace to go?”
“I can’t tell you. I gave my word.”
“Is she in some sort of trouble with the law?”
Ed laughed softly. “Leslie?”
“Never mind.” He moved back toward the door. He stopped and turned as he reached it. “When she fainted, she said something.”
“What?” Ed asked curiously.
“She said, ‘Mike, don’t.”’ He didn’t blink. “Who’s Mike?”
“A dead man,” Ed replied. “Years dead.”
“The man she and her mother competed for.”
“That’s right,” Ed said. “If you mention his name in front of her, I’ll walk out the door with her, and I won’t come back. Ever.”
That was serious business to Ed, he realized. He frowned thoughtfully. “Did she love him?”
“She thought she did,” Ed replied. His eyes went cold. “He destroyed her life.”
“How?”
Ed didn’t reply. He folded his hands on the desk and just stared at Matt.
The older man let out an irritated breath. “Has it occurred to you that all this secrecy is only complicating matters?”
“It’s occurred. But if you want answers, you’ll have to ask Leslie. I don’t break promises.”
Matt muttered to himself as he opened the door and went out. Ed stared after him worriedly. He hoped he’d done the right thing. He was trying to protect Leslie, but for all he knew, he might just have made matters worse. Matt didn’t like mysteries. God forbid that he should try to force Leslie to talk about something she only wanted to forget. He was also worried about Matt’s potential reaction to the old scandal. How would he feel if he knew how notorious Leslie really was, if he knew that her mother was serving a sentence for murder?
* * *
Ed was worried enough to talk to Leslie about it that evening when he stopped by to see how she was.
“I don’t want him to know,” she said when Ed questioned her. “Ever.”
“What if he starts digging and finds out by himself?” Ed asked bluntly. “He’ll read everyone’s point of view except yours, and even if he reads every tabloid that ran the story, he still won’t know the truth of what happened.”
“I don’t care what he thinks,” she lied. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter now.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not coming back to work,” she said evenly, avoiding his shocked gaze. “They need a typist at the Jacobsville sewing plant. I applied this afternoon and they accepted me.”
“How did you get there?” he asked.
“Cabs run even in Jacobsville, Ed, and I’m not totally penniless.” She lifted her head proudly. “I’ll pay your cousin back the price of my operation, however long it takes. But I won’t take one more day of the sort of treatment I’ve been getting from him. I’m sorry if he hates women, but I’m not going to become a scapegoat. I’ve had enough misery.”
“I’ll agree there,” he said. “But I wish you’d reconsider. I had a long talk with him…”
“You didn’t tell him?” she exclaimed, horrified.
“No, I didn’t tell him,” he replied. “But I think you should.”
“It’s none of his business,” she said through her teeth. “I don’t owe him an explanation.”
“I know it doesn’t seem like it, Leslie,” he began, “but he’s not a bad man.” He frowned, searching for a way to explain it to her. “I don’t pretend to understand why you set him off, but I’m sure he realizes that he’s being unfair.”
“He can be unfair as long as he likes, but I’m not giving him any more free shots at me. I mean it, Ed. I’m not coming back.”
He leaned forward, feeling defeated. “Well, I’ll be around if you need me. You’re still my best friend.”
She reached out and touched his hand where it rested on his knee. “You’re mine, too. I don’t know how I’d have managed if it hadn’t been for you and your father.”
He smiled. “You’d have found a way. Whatever you’re lacking, it isn’t courage.”
She sighed, looking down at her hand resting on his. “I don’t know if that’s true anymore,” she confessed. “I’m so tired of fighting. I thought I could come to Jacobsville and get my life in order, get some peace. And the first man I run headlong into is a male chauvinist with a grudge against the whole female sex. I feel like I’ve been through the ringer backward.”
“What did he say to you today?” he asked.
She blotted out the physical insult. “The usual things, most vividly the way I’d upset Carolyn by lying about her phone call.”
“Some lie!” he muttered.
“He believes her.”
“I can’t imagine why. I used to think he was intelligent.”
“He is, or he wouldn’t be a millionaire.” She got up. “Now go home, Ed. I’ve got to get some rest so I can be bright and cheerful my first day at my new job.”
He winced. “I wanted things to be better than this for you.”
She laughed gently. “And just think what a terrible world we’d have if we always got what we think we want.”
He had to admit that she had a point. “That sewing plant isn’t a very good place to work,” he added worriedly.
“It’s only temporary,” she assured him.
He grimaced. “Well, if you need me, you know where I am.”
She smiled. “Thanks.”
* * *
He went home and ate supper and was watching the news when Matt knocked at the door just before opening it and walking in. And why not, Ed thought, when Matt had been raised here, just as he had. He grinned at his cousin as he came into the living room and sprawled over an easy chair.
“How does the Jag drive?” he asked.
“Like an airplane on the ground,” he chuckled. He stared at the television screen for a minute. “How’s Leslie?”
He grimaced. “She’s got a new job.”
Matt went very still. “What?”
“She said she doesn’t want to work for me anymore. She got a job at the sewing plant, typing. I tried to talk her out of it. She won’t budge.” He glanced at Matt apologetically. “She knew I wouldn’t let you fire her. She said you’d made sure she wanted to quit.” He shrugged. “I guess you did. I’ve known Leslie for six years. I’ve never known her to faint.”
Matt’s dark eyes slid to the television screen and seemed to be glued there for a time. The garment company paid minimum wage. He doubted she’d have enough left over after her rent and grocery bill to pay for the medicine she had to take for pain. He couldn’t remember a time in his life when he’d been so ashamed of himself. She wasn’t going to like working in that plant. He knew the manager, a penny-pinching social climber who didn’t believe in holidays, sick days, or paid vacation. He’d work her to death for her pittance and complain because she couldn’t do more.
Matt’s mouth thinned. He’d landed Leslie in hell with his bad temper and unreasonable prejudice.
Matt got up from the chair and walked out the door without a goodbye. Ed went back to the news without much real enthusiasm. Matt had what he wanted. He didn’t look very pleased with it, though.
* * *
After a long night fraught with even more nightmares, Leslie got up early and took a cab to the manufacturing company, hobbling in on her crutches to the personnel office where Judy Blakely, the personnel manager, was waiting with her usual kind smile.
“Nice to see you, Miss Murry!”
“Nice to see you, too,” she replied. “I’m looking forward to my new job.”
Mrs. Blakely looked worried and reticent. She folded her hands in a tight clasp on her desk. “Oh, I don’t know how to tell you this,” she wailed. She grimaced. “Miss Murry, the girl you were hired to replace just came back a few minutes ago and begged me to let her keep her job. It seems she has serious family problems and can’t do without her salary. I’m so sorry. If we had anything else open, even on the floor, I’d offer it to you temporarily. But we just don’t.”
The poor woman looked as if the situation tormented her. Leslie smiled gently. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Blakely, I’ll find something else,” she assured the older woman. “It’s not the end of the world.”
“I’d be furious,” she said, her eyes wrinkled up with worry. “And you’re being so nice…I feel like a dog!”
“You can’t help it that things worked out like this.” Leslie got to her feet a little heavily, still smiling. “Could you call me a cab?”
“Certainly! And we’ll pay for it, too,” she said firmly. “Honestly, I feel so awful!”
“It’s all right. Sometimes we have setbacks that really turn into opportunities, you know.”
Mrs. Blakely studied her intently. “You’re such a positive person. I wish I was. I always seem to dwell on the negative.”
“You might as well be optimistic, I always think,” Leslie told her. “It doesn’t cost extra.”
Mrs. Blakely chuckled. “No, it doesn’t, does it?” She phoned the cab and apologized again as Leslie went outside to wait for it.
She felt desolate, but she wasn’t going to make that poor woman feel worse than she already did.
She was tired and sleepy. She wished the cab would come. She eased down onto the bench the company had placed out front for its employees, so they’d have a place to sit during their breaks. It was hard and uncomfortable, but much better than standing.
She wondered what she would do now. She had no prospects, no place to go. The only alternative was to look for something else or go back to Ed, and the latter choice wasn’t a choice at all. She could never look Matt Caldwell in the face again without remembering how he’d treated her.
The sun glinted off the windshield of an approaching car, and she recognized Matt’s new red Jaguar at once. She stood up, clutching her purse, stiff and defensive as he parked the car and got out to approach her.
He stopped an arm’s length away. He looked as tired and worn-out as she did. His eyes were heavily lined. His black, wavy hair was disheveled. He put his hands on his hips and looked at her with pure malice.
She stared back with something approaching hatred.
“Oh, what the hell,” he muttered, adding something about being hanged for sheep as well as lambs.
He bent and swooped her up in his arms and started walking toward the Jaguar. She hit him with her purse.
“Stop that,” he muttered. “You’ll make me drop you. Considering the weight of that damned cast, you’d probably sink halfway through the planet.”
“You put me down!” she raged, and hit him again. “I won’t go as far as the street with you!”
He paused beside the passenger door of the Jag and searched her hostile eyes. “I hate secrets,” he said.
“I can’t imagine you have any, with Carolyn shouting them to all and sundry!”
His eyes fell to her mouth. “I didn’t tell Carolyn that you were easy,” he said in a voice so tender that it made her want to cry.
Her lips trembled as she tried valiantly not to.
He made a husky sound and his mouth settled right on her misty eyes, closing them with soft, tender kisses.
She bawled.
He took a long breath and opened the passenger door, shifting her as he slid her into the low-slung vehicle. “I’ve noticed that about you,” he murmured as he fastened her seat belt.
“Noticed…what?” she sobbed, sniffling.
He pulled a handkerchief out of his dress slacks and put it in her hands. “You react very oddly to tenderness.”
He closed the door on her surprised expression and fetched her crutches before he went around to get in behind the wheel. He paused to fasten his own seat belt and give her a quick scrutiny before he started the powerful engine and pulled out into the road.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked when the tears stopped.
“Ed told me.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “Beats me. I guess he thought I might be interested.”
“Fat chance!”
He chuckled. It was the first time she’d heard him laugh naturally, without mockery or sarcasm. He shifted gears. “You don’t know the guy who owns that little enterprise,” he said conversationally, “but the plant is a sweatshop.”
“That isn’t funny.”
“Do you think I’m joking?” he replied. “He likes to lure illegal immigrants in here with promises of big salaries and health benefits, and then when he’s got them where he wants them, he threatens them with the immigration service if they don’t work hard and accept the pittance he pays. We’ve all tried to get his operation closed down, but he’s slippery as an eel.” He glanced at her with narrowed dark eyes. “I’m not going to let you sell yourself into that just to get away from me.”
“Let me?” She rose immediately to the challenge, eyes flashing. “You don’t tell me what to do!”
He grinned. “That’s better.”
She hit her hand against the cast, furious. “Where are you taking me?”
“Home.”
“You’re going the wrong way.”
“My home.”
“No,” she said icily. “Not again. Not ever again!”
He shifted gears, accelerated, and shifted again. He loved the smoothness of the engine, the ride. He loved the speed. He wondered if Leslie had loved fast cars before her disillusionment.
He glanced at her set features. “When your leg heals, I’ll let you drive it.”
“No, thanks,” she almost choked.
“Don’t you like cars?”
She pushed back her hair. “I can’t drive,” she said absently.
“What?”
“Look out, you’re going to run us off the road!” she squealed.
He righted the car with a muffled curse and down-shifted. “Everybody drives, for God’s sake!”
“Not me,” she said flatly.
“Why?”
She folded her arms over her breasts. “I just never wanted to.”
More secrets. He was becoming accustomed to the idea that she never shared anything about her private life except, possibly, with Ed. He wanted her to open up, to trust him, to tell him what had happened to her. Then he laughed to himself at his own presumption. He’d been her mortal enemy since the first time he’d laid eyes on her, and he expected her to trust him?
“What are you laughing at?” she demanded.
He glanced at her as he slowed to turn into the ranch driveway. “I’ll tell you one day. Are you hungry?”
“I’m sleepy.”
He grimaced. “Let me see if I can guess why.”
She glared at him. His own eyes had dark circles. “You haven’t slept, either.”
“Misery loves company.”
“You started it!”
“Yes, I did!” he flashed back at her, eyes blazing. “Every time I look at you, I want to throw you down on the most convenient flat surface and ravish you! How’s that for blunt honesty?”
She stiffened, wide-eyed, and gaped at him. He pulled up at his front door and cut off the engine. He turned in his seat and looked at her as if he resented her intensely. At the moment, he did.
His dark eyes narrowed. They were steady, intimidating. She glared into them.
But after a minute, the anger went out of him. He looked at her, really looked, and he saw things he hadn’t noticed before. Her hair was dark just at her scalp. She was far too thin. Her eyes had dark circles so prominent that it looked as if she had two black eyes. There were harsh lines beside her mouth. She might pretend to be cheerful around Ed, but she wasn’t. It was an act.
“Take a picture,” she choked.
He sighed. “You really are fragile,” he remarked quietly. “You give as good as you get, but all your vulnerabilities come out when you’ve got your back to the wall.”
“I don’t need psychoanalysis, but thanks for the thought,” she said shortly.
He reached out, noticing how she shrank from his touch. It didn’t bother him now. He knew that it was tenderness that frightened her with him, not ardor. He touched her hair at her temple and brushed it back gently, staring curiously at the darkness that was more prevalent then.
“You’re a brunette,” he remarked. “Why do you color your hair?”
“I wanted to be a blonde,” she replied instantly, trying to withdraw further against the door.
“You keep secrets, Leslie,” he said, and for once he was serious, not sarcastic. “At your age, it’s unusual. You’re young and until that leg started to act up, you were even relatively healthy. You should be carefree. Your life is an adventure that’s only just beginning.”
She laughed hollowly. “I wouldn’t wish my life even on you,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Your worst enemy,” he concluded for her.
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
She averted her eyes to the windshield. She was tired, so tired. The day that had begun with such promise had ended in disappointment and more misery.
“I want to go home,” she said heavily.
“Not until I get some answers out of you…!”
“You have no right!” she exploded, her voice breaking on the words. “You have no right, no right…!”
He caught her by the nape of the neck and pulled her face into his throat, holding her there even as she struggled. He smoothed her hair, her back, whispering to her, his voice tender, coaxing.
“What did I ever do to deserve you?” she sobbed. “I’ve never willingly hurt another human being in my life, and look where it got me! Years of running and hiding and never feeling safe…!”
He heard the words without understanding them, soothing her while she cried brokenly. It hurt him to hear her cry. Nothing had ever hurt so much.
He dried the tears and kissed her swollen, red eyes tenderly, moving to her temples, her nose, her cheeks, her chin and, finally, her soft mouth. But it wasn’t passion that drove him now. It was concern.
“Hush, sweetheart,” he whispered. “It’s all right. It’s all right!”
She must be dotty, she thought, if she was hearing endearments from Attila the Hun here. She sniffed and wiped her eyes again, finally getting control of herself. She sat up and he let her, his arm over the back of her seat, his eyes watchful and quiet.
She took a steadying breath and slumped in the seat, exhausted.
“Please take me home,” she asked wearily.
He hesitated, but only for a minute. “If that’s what you really want.”
She nodded. He started the car and turned it around.
* * *
He helped her to the front door of the boardinghouse, visibly reluctant to leave her.
“You shouldn’t be alone in this condition,” he said flatly. “I’ll phone Ed and have him come over to see you.”
“I don’t need…” she protested.
His eyes flared. “The hell you don’t! You need someone you can talk to. Obviously it isn’t going to be your worst enemy, but then Ed knows all about you, doesn’t he? You don’t have secrets from him!”
He seemed to mind. She searched his angry face and wondered what he’d say if he knew those secrets. She gave him a lackluster smile.
“Some secrets are better kept,” she said heavily. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Leslie.”
She hesitated, looking back at him.
His face looked harder than ever. “Were you raped?”