Regan's Pride (11 page)

“Tell me!” she demanded.

He ground his teeth together. “Barry said that what she loved was my money. When I wouldn't play ball, she settled for his.”

“And you believed him.”

“It made sense. Look at me,” he muttered. “I'm sixteen years her senior. Barry said we looked ridiculous together, that people laughed at the age difference.”

“Barry was jealous of you, and he played on your conscience,” Sandy replied. “You don't really believe these things, Ted. You can't.”

He pushed the coffee cup away from his restless fingers and leaned back. “It happened once before,” he reminded her. “When I was twenty-six, and I thought I might marry Edie.”

“And then discovered that she was already bragging to her friends about all the expensive things she was
going to buy herself when she got you to the altar. I remember.”

He smiled faintly. “So do I,” he said. “Coreen wants me, all right. She always has. But wanting isn't enough. And right now, I can't be sure that she isn't trying to gain back the self-esteem she lost because Barry called her frigid.”

“Maybe she is,” she said. “If that's the case, it's Barney who's helping her get it back.”

His face went hard. “He's closer to her own age.”

“Yes, he is,” she agreed pleasantly. “And they get on like a house on fire. He treats her so gently. Nothing like Barry did. He takes her out and buys her flowers and even cooks supper for her when she's tired. Quite a guy, Barney.”

He felt, and looked, sick to his stomach. He hadn't thought it was serious. From the tidbits of gossip Sandy let slip, he'd convinced himself that as far as Coreen was concerned, Barney was more like a girlfriend with chest hair than a boyfriend. Now, he wasn't so sure.

“I see.”

“I'm glad you've decided to let go, Ted,” she said gently. “It's a kindness, if you have nothing to give her. She's finding her own way now, standing on her own feet for the first time in her life. Away from you, she's a different woman.”

“Different how?” he asked.

“She's happy,” she said.

He got up from the table and left the room without another word. Watching him go, Sandy regretted what she'd said. If Coreen was just putting on an act, if she did still love Ted, then what Sandy had just told him might have destroyed her last chance for happiness.

 

It was Sunday. Coreen had gone to church with Barney and seen him off on a two-day business trip at the Victoria airport afterward. The apartment was very quiet now, and she couldn't find anything on television that she really wanted to watch.

The buzz of the doorbell was almost welcome, except that it was probably going to be a salesman or a neighbor wanting to chat. She wasn't in the mood for either.

Jeaned and T-shirted, and barefoot, she went to the door muttering and peeped through the keyhole. Her hand froze on the chain latch. She stared, drinking in the angry face of the man she'd hoped she might forget. Her eyes closed and she leaned against the door with her heart pounding audibly in her chest. Ted! It was Ted, and she loved him and wanted him. And he wanted no part of her.

“Open the door, Coreen,” he said shortly.

“How do you know I'm home?” she demanded angrily. “I might be out, for all you know!”

“Obviously you aren't.”

She sighed. If she'd kept her big mouth shut…

She pulled aside the chain latch and unwillingly opened the door. “Come in,” she said in a subdued tone. “It's your apartment after all. I'm just the tenant.”

He paused to close the door behind him before he followed her into the living room and sailed his cream-colored Stetson onto the counter of the bar. He was dressed in a suit and tie and he looked formal. His eyes drifted down to her pretty bare feet and he concealed a smile. Her slender figure was very well outlined in the close-fitting jeans she had on, and the T-shirt was
almost see-through, despite its colorful message that invited people to visit Texas.

“How are you?” he asked.

She sat down on the arm of the big armchair. “As you see.”

His pale eyes went around the room. There was no sign of occupation. She was here, but she'd made no mark on the room at all.

“I haven't trashed the furniture,” she said, misunderstanding his scrutiny.

“No wrestling matches with Barney on my sofa on Friday nights?” he chided with more venom than he knew.

She lifted her chin. “We can always watch movies at Barney's apartment if you don't like me bringing him here,” she said.

His eyes flashed angrily. They pinned her, making her feel like backing away. But she didn't. She'd gained new self-confidence over the weeks since Barry's death—mainly because of Ted himself. She stood her ground, and admiration filtered through the anger in his eyes.

“I don't give a damn what you do with Barney,” he said.

As if she didn't already know that. His absence from her life in recent weeks had made his lack of interest plain.

But he looked worn. There was no other word to describe it. His lean face had deep hollows in it, and there were new lines around his firm mouth and between his eyes.

“You look tired,” she said with involuntary gentleness.

Her words hardened him visibly, and at once.

“Oh, I know,” she said heavily, “you don't want concern from me. God forbid that I should worry about you.”

He stuck his hands into the pockets of his expensive slacks and went to stand by the window. It was a hazy summer day. He watched the clouds shift on the horizon, dark and threatening clouds that carried the promise of rain.

“Why did you come, Ted?” she asked after the long silence grew tedious.

He didn't turn. “I wanted to make sure that you were all right.”

She didn't read anything into that statement. She stared at his back without blinking. “I'm fine. I have a good job and I'm making friends. I'll be able to do without that allowance, in fact. If I refuse it, can you give it to charity?”

He turned, frowning. “There's no need for gestures,” he said coldly.

“It isn't a gesture. I don't want Barry's money. I never did.” She smiled at his expression. “Disappointed? I know you'd rather think that I married him for all that nice money.”

He didn't react at all. “There's no provision if you refuse the money. The trust will remain untouched.”

She shrugged. “Then do what you like about it. But I won't accept it. I wouldn't have married Barry if it hadn't been for Papa, anyway. At least one good thing came out of it—he had the medical care he needed.”

“Why didn't you ask me for help?” he demanded.

She lifted both eyebrows, astonished. “It never would have occurred to me,” she stammered.

“Your father was a friend of mine, as well as a business acquaintance,” he said curtly. “I would have done anything I could for him.”

She averted her eyes.

He moved closer. Something about her posture disturbed him. “You're hiding something.”

She hesitated, but he looked capable of standing there all night until he got an answer. “Barry warned me not to ask you for any financial help. He said that you'd told him you wanted me to marry him and get out of your hair. He made sure that I knew not to ask you.”

His breath left in a violent rush. “My God,” he said roughly. “So that was it.”

“I didn't really need telling, Ted,” she added quietly. “You'd made it clear that you wanted nothing to do with me. Even when Dad was so sick, you hardly came near the place. And when you did…”

“When I did, I had nothing kind to say to you,” he finished for her. “Barry kept me upset. He wouldn't let me near you, did you know that? He said that you hated me.”

Her eyes lifted to his in time to see the flash of pain those memories kindled in his face.

“But I told him no such thing,” she said hesitantly.

“Didn't you?” He laughed bitterly. “He said that you'd agreed to marry him because you thought he had more money than I did.”

C
oreen just stared at him. She wasn't going to make any more denials. If he believed her mercenary, let him.

He smiled at her stony countenance. “Yes, I know,” he murmured, “I always think the worst of you, don't I? But he made it all sound so logical. Lie after lie, for two years and more, and I swallowed every one.”

She traced a tiny smear of oil on the knee of her jeans. “They weren't all lies,” she said. “He told you I was frigid, and I am.”

“Not with me.”

She lifted her eyes to his face. “There's more to intimacy than a few kisses, and you know it. You know what I mean, too. I destroyed him in bed. I made him incapable, every time…”

His face fascinated her. It looked like an image frozen in ice. “Do you realize what you're telling me?” he asked slowly.

“Yes,” she said stiffly. “I'm telling you that I wasn't woman enough…”

“No!” He knelt beside the armchair, his eyes so close to hers that they filled the world. “Did he ever make love to you completely?”

“Completely?”

He told her, explicitly.

“Ted, for God's sake…!” She exploded.

She got up, and so did he. He caught her arms before she could move away. His face was drawn, almost white. He shook her gently. “Tell me!” he demanded.

“All right! No, he…he didn't!”

He didn't react for several seconds. When he did, it changed him. All the color rushed back into his lean face. He looked at Coreen with wonder, with fascination.

“You're still a virgin,” he said unsteadily.

She glared at him. “Rub it in.”

He couldn't seem to accept what he'd heard. He bit off a curse, moving away from her. It had been bad enough before. Now it was unbearable. Corrie had never had a man. She'd been married, abused, tormented, but she'd never been intimate with Barry. She was chaste, in every real respect.

He ran his hand over his forehead, feeling perspiration there despite the air-conditioning in the apartment.

“What difference does it make now?” she asked angrily. “He's dead!”

“You really don't know, do you?” he asked. He didn't look at her.

“Know what?”

His hands balled into fists in his pockets. His head
was bowed while he fought needs and desires that almost exploded into action.

He took a long breath and stared out the window. “How do you feel about Barney?” He glanced over his shoulder at her. “And please don't, for God's sake, tell me it's none of my business.”

“It isn't,” she said doggedly. But she relented. “He's my friend. We enjoy the same things.”

“Do you love him?”

Her eyes answered him long before she averted them. “I like him,” she hedged. “I'm not ready to love anyone,” she added firmly. “I've just come through a disastrous marriage.”

“I know that.” He let out a long breath and turned to look at her, looking belligerent and pretty. “Are you happy, Corrie?”

“Who is?” she replied quietly, with a cynicism far beyond her years. She tucked a lock of hair behind one small ear. “I'm content.”

“Content.” What a lukewarm word. It didn't suit someone like Corrie, who had been bright and beautiful before Barry made a hell of her life. Truthfully he hadn't done much to make her happy himself. All these years, he'd been thinking about himself, about protecting his heart from being broken, about preventing Corrie from taking over his life. He hadn't given a thought to how badly he was hurting her with his indifference, his cruelty.

“There must have been times when you blamed me for a lot of your problems,” he said.

“Don't flatter yourself. I can make my own mistakes and pay for them. I don't have to blame them on other people.”

He traced a pattern on the bar next to him. “I used to think that I didn't, either.” His eyes were faraway, wistful. “Perhaps our view of ourselves is corrupted.”

“You don't need anyone.” She laughed. “You're completely self-sufficient.”

His head turned toward her. “All I have is Sandy,” he said quietly. “No one else. When she marries, I'll be completely alone with my principles and my conscience and my noble ideals. Do you think they'll keep me warm on long winter nights, Corrie, when I'm hungry for a woman in my arms in the darkness?”

She didn't like that thought. “You don't have any trouble getting women.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Getting them, no. I'm sinfully rich.”

“Everyone knows that.”

He nodded. “That's the problem. At my age, I never know the real motive when women come on to me.”

It sounded as if he might be trying to tell her something. She didn't know what. A brief silence fell between them. “Would you like some coffee?” she asked finally.

He nodded.

She went into the kitchen to make it, aware at intervals of his studious gaze from the living room. But he didn't join her, not until she had everything on a tray. He met her at the kitchen door and carried the tray to the coffee table.

“I made some sugar cookies yesterday,” she said, indicating several of them on a small platter.

“And you think I have a sweet tooth?” he asked with a faint smile as he sat down beside her on the sofa. He'd taken off his suit jacket and tie and rolled up the
sleeves of his white linen shirt. He looked rakish with the top buttons of that shirt undone. She had to stifle a memory of opening them herself and touching him, kissing him, where the hair was thickest over those warm, firm muscles.

“You used to have one,” she said finally.

“I'm partial to lemon….” He bit into one and chuckled. She'd used lemon flavoring. “Were you expecting me?” he asked.

She was outraged. “Of course not! I like lemon myself, so don't get arrogant, if you please.”

“Oh, I've given up arrogance, Corrie. It got too damned expensive. Put cream into this coffee for me, will you? No sugar.”

She complied. He couldn't do it himself, of course. He sat there in his lordly way watching her perform these menial tasks for him with the arrogance he said he'd forsaken. Fat chance!

She handed him the china cup and watched him balance it, in its saucer, on his broad, muscular thigh. She realized that she was staring and averted her attention to her own cup.

“Did you really bake the cookies?” he asked conversationally.

She nodded. “I've been studying cookbooks lately. I haven't made desserts in a long time. Dad was a borderline diabetic, remember? He wasn't supposed to have sweets and I didn't like to eat them in front of him.”

“You can make these as often as you like,” he murmured, finishing off another one. “They're good.”

“Thanks.” She nibbled on one without tasting it. “How's Sandy?”

“Missing you. So is Shep.”

“She brought him to see me,” she said.

“I know. He cries at night.”

Her face stiffened. “When I get a place of my own, I'll bring him home.”

“There's an easier way. Why don't you come home?”

She dropped her eyes. “The ranch isn't my home.”

He finished his coffee and put the cup and saucer down on the table. Then he leaned back and slowly undid the rest of the buttons of his shirt, his eyes holding Coreen's relentlessly while he slid the fabric back from the thick salt-and-pepper hair that covered his broad chest.

Her lips parted as she tried to breathe normally. “Would you like some more coffee?” she asked a little breathlessly.

He shook his head slowly. He tugged the fabric out of his slacks and unfastened his belt. He slipped it out of the loops and tossed it to one side. Then he leaned back again, his legs splayed, and smiled at her with cool, dark arrogance. When he spoke, his voice was like velvet.

“Come here,” he said.

Her eyes widened like saucers. Her heart began to run. It wasn't fair of him to taunt her this way, to invite her to make a fool of herself twice in one lifetime. Her lower lip trembled as she clamped down hard on her passion for him.

He began to smile, because he knew how hard it was for her to resist him. He'd always known.

“Afraid of me?” he taunted gently. “We'll go at your pace. I won't make you do anything you don't want to.”

Her eyes burned with sudden tears as she remembered her own weakness, and what had followed it. “Are you having fun, Ted?” she asked, her voice choked. “Why don't you hit me and see if that feels as good as mocking me does?” She got up and started to leave the room.

He was faster. She'd barely gone two feet before he had her. She was caught and turned and held, her cheek against thick hair and damp muscle, the clean scent of him in her nostrils, the warmth of his body enveloping her.

“Don't cry,” he whispered at her temple. His voice wasn't quite steady, and his hands were bruising against her back. “I'm not playing. Not this time.”

“It will be just like it was before,” she whispered brokenly, hitting him impotently with her fist. “You've hurt me enough…!”

His chest rose heavily under her cheek. “Yes. You, and myself. Now it all seems rather futile, although I meant well, at the time.” He tilted her chin up so that he could see her ravaged face. “Take a good look, honey. I'm not a young man anymore.”

“Did you ever notice how much younger Abby Ballenger is than Calhoun?” she asked solemnly.

He'd tried not to. The age difference between the long-married couple was pretty much the same as that between Ted and Coreen.

He frowned down at her. “Oh, yes,” he said. “I've noticed.”

“They have three sons,” she reminded him. “And they've been married forever. Abby would die for Calhoun.”

His jaw clenched. “No doubt he would for her, too.”

Her eyes fell to his jutting chin and just above it to the long, firm lines of his mouth. The warm embrace was making her weak, just as being close to him always had. She wanted to crawl into his arms and stay there forever. But she had to remember that her time with him was limited to brief kisses that he always regretted and, somehow, made her pay for.

She let her eyes fall to his chest with a long sigh. “Isn't my time about up?” she asked.

“Up?”

“And by now, you should be feeling enough guilt to say something unpleasant and chase me away.”

He grimaced as he stared over her head toward the wall beyond. “Is that what I do?”

“It used to seem like it.”

He smoothed a lean hand over her hair and pressed her cheek closer to his bare flesh. The contact made his body ripple with pleasure. “I'll probably always feel a little guilt,” he said deeply. “I could have spared you Barry.”

“How? By sacrificing yourself in his place?” she asked with soft bitterness.

“It wouldn't have been a sacrifice.” His mouth eased down to her forehead and pressed there softly, moving lazily to close both her eyes in turn. His warm hand cradled her cheek while his thumb moved over her lips. “Can you hear my heartbeat?” he whispered huskily. “It's…very fast.”

His hand moved down, slowly, over her breast to cup it tenderly. The heel of his palm pushed against her. “So is yours,” he murmured. “Fast and hard.”

She had no secrets from him now. Her trembling seemed to accelerate at their proximity.

“Come closer,” he murmured as his mouth hovered over hers. “I want to feel your legs against mine.”

“Isn't it…dangerous?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

The tender amusement belied the threat. She moved forward a step and caught her breath at the feel of his body so intimately.

“Don't pull away,” he said at her lips. “I don't mind if you know how aroused I am. It doesn't matter anymore.”

Her hands spread out on his bare chest, and they tingled at the contact.

“Caress me,” he said huskily, nibbling her lips. “Drive me mad.”

She brushed her palms against him and looked up into eyes that darkened with pleasure. “Do you like it?”

“I like it.” He nuzzled her nose with his, her mouth with his lips. The silence in the room was shattered by the sound of their ragged breathing. “I'd like it better if I could feel you with nothing between us.”

She must be crazy. In fact, she was convinced of it when her hands went to the fastening at her back and slipped it while her mouth answered the teasing of his lips. She pushed up her T-shirt and suddenly felt her breasts starkly bare against the thick mat of hair that covered his damp skin.

“God!” he groaned, going rigid.

She stood very still, her wide eyes seeking his for reassurance.

His hands were tremulous on her face as he tilted it
up to his blazing eyes. “Open your mouth.” He bit off the words against her lips.

It was the last thing she understood in the turbulent minutes that followed. His hands, his mouth, the burning fever that no amount of contact seemed to quench made her mindless. His skin dragged against hers and she wept because she couldn't get close enough. She told him so in shaky whispers against his devouring mouth.

“There's only one way you and I will ever get close enough to each other,” he said roughly. “And you know exactly what it is.”

“Yes,” she moaned. Her arms contracted around his bare back, her hands digging into the hard muscles of his shoulders. “Ted!”

He bent suddenly and lifted her into his arms. His eyes frightened her with their glitter. He hesitated, asking a question that he didn't have to put into words.

She buried her face in his throat and clung to him, shivering. Whatever he did now, it would be all right. If she had nothing else, she'd have now.

His arms shuddered as he stood there, feverish, aching for her.

“At least…make me pregnant,” she whispered, anguished. “Give me that, if I can have nothing more.”