Out of the Dark

by Justine Davis

  “Hobie—”

  “Don’t be late or I’ll throw it out.”

  She stepped over beside him and stood there until he looked at her. “What is it?” she repeated.

  Hobie sighed. “Ralph Hudson was here this morning.”

  She fought off a sudden hollow feeling. “He pulled Starwalker?”

  Hobie nodded.

  They’d been expecting this. She’d thought she was prepared for it, this first sign that maybe things really weren’t going to be all right. But she wasn’t, though she couldn’t let Hobie see that.

  “Well,” she said, “we knew it was coming.”

  “Guess we couldn’t keep it a secret forever. News travels too damned fast in this business.”

  “We’ll be all right,” she said, wishing she could believe it.

  “Where’s Cole?”

  “I don’t know. I’m going to go take a shower,” she said, changing the subject abruptly and retreating to her room.

  She didn’t know where Cole was. Didn’t want to know. She’d spent the afternoon trying not to know. She couldn’t bear to face him, not until she’d dealt—mentally at least—with what had happened between them this morning.

  She’d never seen a man with the look that had flared in his eyes in the moment after she’d jokingly mentioned giving him a rubdown. But she’d known immediately what it was. She’d seen stallions with that kind of fire in their eyes, the stark, ravenous heat of aroused male.

  She sank down on the edge of her bed, clasping her trembling hands tightly between her knees. Her one college experience with sex had been painfully dismal, her one experience since hadn’t been much better, and she’d never gone in much for fantasizing. So why was she now fighting off a flood of heated, wildly erotic fantasies, that started with her massaging Cole’s naked back and legs, and progressed rapidly on to stroking every massive, powerful inch of him. Every inch. And doing it with more than just her hands.

  She drew up her knees and lay back on the bed in a fetal curl. What was wrong with her? Was she that desperate, had she been that isolated, that the first eligible man that came along—

  No, there were other men around. She just chose not to see them. She liked it that way. At least that’s what she’d told herself for the past five years. So what had happened? After years of treating too-handsome men as pariahs, had she suddenly forgotten why? Had she forgotten the anguish and humiliation her mother had lived with, forgotten her own blissful ignorance, which had no doubt caused her mother even more pain? Was she going to throw her hard-learned caution to the winds just because one of those too-handsome men deigned to notice her? Because he seemed to touch places in her she’d never known were there? Because of those rare moments when something flashed in the depths of a pair of steel blue eyes and she caught herself wondering if it hinted at a man who felt, and felt deeply?

  Was she going to make a fool of herself because of the way a man, climbing a rock face with careless, controlled grace, had taken her breath away? Because, when that sudden fire had flared in his eyes, she’d felt the shocking urge to let it consume her?

  With a shiver, she drew up into a tighter curl on the bed. Only when the tempting odor drifting upstairs from the kitchen made it obvious that dinner was almost ready did she rise. She took a swift shower, left her damp hair loose, then dressed in a long, dark green knit dress she sometimes wore in the evenings because it was soft, comfortable and a change from the jeans she seemed to live in. For a moment, after she’d slipped it on, she wondered if she had subconsciously picked it tonight because Cole was here. She rebelled at the idea, and left her face devoid of any makeup to prove that wasn’t the reason at all.

  It was after the meal, and after Hobie had glumly relayed to Cole the loss of Starwalker—a promising cutting prospect—that Hobie’s expression changed, giving Tory some slight warning.

  “Your dad called this afternoon.”

  She felt that familiar knot tighten in her stomach. “Oh,” she merely said, her voice even as she continued to stack the dinner plates.

  Hobie nodded. “I told him you were out rounding up stock. Didn’t figure you’d changed your mind about talking to him.”

  She let out a breath. “No.”

  “You know he still wants you to come home.”

  “I am home.”

  Hobie smiled, not hiding his pleasure at her words. Then, with a note of concern, “He sounded...pretty adamant this time. Angry. And nasty. Accused me of keeping you from talking to him.”

  The knot in Tory’s stomach tightened another notch. “I’m sorry he said that.”

  Hobie shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

  “He shouldn’t keep taking it out on you, because I left. After five years, he should believe I meant what I said.” She bit her lip. “I...I’m sorry you had to lie for me.”

  Hobie shrugged. “I could lie from now ‘til doomsday, and still not catch up with Jack.”

  Her gaze lifted to her uncle’s face. He wore an expression of gentle understanding. Both of them had long ago lost any remaining illusions about Jack Flynn. She glanced at Cole; his expression was unreadable. She felt as if she’d been sent a reminder, a sign that she was headed for trouble if she let herself fall for a man who seemed the same kind of man as her father.

  God, was this how my mother felt, helplessly drawn to a man whose flame would sear her beyond repair? Hastily she gathered up the rest of the dishes and carried them to the kitchen counter. It caught up with her there, that sinking, sick feeling that rose in her every time she remembered her mother’s face—waxen, pale and at last at peace in death.

  Without looking back, she set down the stack of plates and silverware and walked hastily out through the screen door into the fading afternoon sun.

  * * *

  It was nearly dark when Cole found her sitting on the porch swing, her arms wrapped around knees pulled up in front of her. Her hair was loose and falling over her shoulders. The long dress swirled around her, and draped nearly down to the porch. And he couldn’t get out of his mind how the color of it turned her eyes an astonishing sea green.

  He leaned a hip against the porch railing in front of her, then bent one knee and swung his foot up to rest flat on the rail as he leaned back against the upright post.

  “Want to talk about it?” he asked after a moment.

  He sensed her sudden stiffness. “No.” Then, sounding a little forced. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

  Interesting, he thought. He hadn’t suggested that it was. “Isn’t it?”

  Her eyes flicked to his face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He shrugged. “Just that I’m still wondering who we were really talking about last night.”

  Suspicion narrowed her gaze. “Has Hobie been talking to you?”

  “A little,” he admitted. “Only because I asked. I always wondered why he never talked about his brother. I didn’t even know he had one for years.”

  “So,” she said, bitterness tinging her voice, “did he tell you that my father is as charming as a politician running for reelection? That women come after him like lemmings going over a cliff, and he picks a new one every week? That he’s been on that magazine list of the fifty most beautiful people in the country twice? That he’s rich enough to buy half of Texas? Or anything—or anyone—else he wants?”

  He saw her arms tighten, drawing her knees up even closer. She laid her cheek on her knees, facing away from him.

  “No,” he said softly, then hesitated. He wasn’t even sure why he was pursuing this, only that it seemed very important somehow. “Hobie told me that his brother expected all the adulation as his due. And that he hurt a lot of people.”

  “Yes. Yes he did.”

  “And that he really wants you to come home.”

  She let out a sharp little breath of disgust. “Oh, he does. He’s been after me for months now. Lord knows why.”

  “Couldn’t he just want you home because he loves you?”<
br />
  Her head came up sharply, and she faced him once more. “My father doesn’t love anyone, except himself. If he wants me home, he’s got a reason. Some private agenda. He always has a motive.”

  He paused again, knowing she would be naturally protective of her own pain. But his years in the field had taught him that if you could get someone talking about something else first, then talking about the real subject sometimes came easier. And he knew where at least one weak spot of Tory’s was.

  “I got the feeling,” he said slowly, “that one of those people he hurt was Hobie.”

  Her head came swiftly up. “Yes,” she said, a little fiercely. “He did hurt Hobie. Often. Called him useless, a failure, a loser. Said being a clown was what he’d been born for, since he’d been a joke most of his life.”

  And that hurt you, too, Cole guessed. Probably more than it had hurt Hobie. “And you fought with him over it?”

  She made a tiny, choking sound. She sprang to her feet, sending the porch swing swaying violently. She looked about to run, then stopped, her hands going out to grip the porch railing a couple of feet from Cole’s boot.

  “No,” she said at last, her voice heavy with remorse. “He was my father. My daddy. And I was daddy’s girl. The worst kind of daddy’s girl. I thought that man hung the moon. So I...”

  Cole could practically feel the tightness in her throat as she took in a quick little breath.

  “I believed him. For years Hobie was just my crazy uncle, the family clown. Literally. My mother told me I was wrong, that Hobie was a good, fine man. And the few times I saw him, I thought she was right. He was funny. He made me laugh. And he was good to me. But he never stayed.”

  “How could he?” Cole hadn’t meant to say it, but the thought of Hobie going through such humiliation made him furious.

  “Of course he couldn’t. I should have seen that. Just like I should have seen the truth. But I had to believe my father. Because I was daddy’s little girl, and that’s what daddys’ girls do.”

  Cole shifted uncomfortably, something about the pain in her voice was digging at him in a way he wasn’t used to. Guilt, he thought. She felt guilty about this. He recognized the feeling all too well.

  “It wasn’t your fault—” he began.

  She whirled on him. “No? Maybe not when I was five, or six or seven. But I kept on believing him. Even after my mother died, I believed him. I never even realized that she’d been hanging on, hoping I’d see the truth. When I reached sixteen and still worshipped Jack Flynn, she gave up. She just gave up and died.”

  The way she talked about him, using his full name as if he were some species too deadly for familiarity, told Cole a lot about the way she’d reacted to him. God, first Kyra, who’d been burned by her husband, and now Tory. Was he going to pay the price for his unasked-for-looks, a price driven up by men he’d never even met, forever?

  “And Hobie,” Tory persisted, her voice shaky. “All those years, wasted. Years I can never get back. Years he spent thinking I was laughing at him just like my father. Because I didn’t have the courage to stop believing in the god, and the little fantasy world he created.”

  She turned back to grip the porch railing once more, so tightly her knuckles gleamed white even in the gradually fading light.

  “Then I went away to school. For the first time, daddy wasn’t there to charm me into believing his version of the truth. I started to see things differently.” She laughed harshly. “I started to see things, period. People would show me newspaper pictures of my father and the flavor-of-the-week bimbette. Girls would laugh at me, saying it must be weird to have my father dating all those women who were my age. That’s when I found out it had been going on for years. Long before Mom died.”

  She stopped and took a shuddering breath. “And guys...admired him. He got things done, they said. And using people, either charming them or seducing them, was just a way to get the job done. To them, it was something to be proud of.”

  Another shaky breath. “And they seemed to think...like father like daughter. After a while I got tired of fighting them off, and I didn’t go out at all. Even the one man who...seemed to understand, only had his eye on my father’s money.”

  “Tory, stop. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pried.” He meant it. The anguish in her voice was drowning him, making it hard for him to breathe, causing the kind of pain he’d worked so hard to become immune to.

  “I hate him.” It broke from her as if forced out under impossible pressure. “I know you’re not supposed to say things like that about your own parents, but I hate him. I hate Jack Flynn.”

  “Or anyone who reminds you of him?”

  Cole didn’t know if he’d finally asked it because he wanted to know, or because he was desperate to stop the flow of her words. She turned on him again, and he could feel her eyes on him as if they were projecting the heat he heard in her voice.

  “Yes,” she snapped. “Anyone who oozes that charm, or has looks enough to stop a stampede. I’ve had a lifetime of a man who used what God gave him as a weapon, a tool, to get whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. And to hell with anyone who got hurt in the process. In his business, or in his family.”

  “And if I went and got myself caught in that stampede, Tory? Would you trust me then, if I looked like I’d been trampled into the dust? Even though I’d be the same man I am now?”

  This was crazy, Cole thought as she stared at him. He didn’t want her to trust him. He didn’t want to get any closer than he already—dangerously—had. But he couldn’t seem to stop himself.

  “But you wouldn’t be the same,” she insisted. “Not after living for a while like the rest of us, not able to get by on your looks—”

  Cole’s boots hit the porch with a sharp thud. “My looks,” he growled, “didn’t matter a hoot to any of the horses or bulls I rode. Or to my DI’s in the Army, except to make them want to push me even harder, because they thought I was ‘too darn pretty,’ as you put it. And my looks sure as hell didn’t stop that bomb from—”

  He broke off, appalled at what he’d almost said. He never talked about that. Never. To anyone. He went on before she could speak, before she could probe, before she could say whatever her shocked gaze told him she was working up to.

  “Maybe before you start talking about other people’s looks, you should look in a mirror, Victoria Flynn.”

  He swung over the porch rail, dropped to the ground and walked away without looking back. She made a faint sound, but he kept going. He heard a car out on the main road, but didn’t look. He saw Rocky darting around the side of the barn, but didn’t react.

  “Cole, wait.”

  He lowered his head and kept moving; he didn’t want to hear this. He wasn’t sure where he was going, just that he needed to put some distance between himself and this woman who was jeopardizing his self-control.

  “Please.”

  It was soft, entreating and a little breathless. It stopped him in his tracks.

  “I didn’t mean...” She trailed off as she came up beside him. “I don’t know why all that came out like that. I never...talk about him. Not like that, and especially not to...a stranger.”

  A stranger. That’s what he was, all right, Cole thought. And if he wanted to keep it that way, he’d better back away from this woman in a hurry.

  “Forget it.”

  “But—”

  “What you think of me doesn’t matter. What matters is that I find out who’s killing your horses. And why. Then I’ll get the hell out of here, and you can go on with your life.”

  “I’m sorry!” she exclaimed. “You’re Hobie’s friend and I’ve been inexcusably rude to you. I know he would never have asked you here if he didn’t trust you. It’s just...”

  “Just what?”

  She lowered her eyes. Her feet shifted, and Cole saw they were bare. He hadn’t noticed before. He’d been too stunned by the dress, flowing over her slender body, softly caressing each gentle curve and tu
rning her eyes to green fire. But he should have realized—she didn’t even come up to his chin.

  “I... You scare me,” she whispered.

  Cole’s breath caught. “I...what?”

  Her head came up. “You scare me. I feel...strange around you, and I don’t want to, but I can’t seem to help it. And I’m afraid that means I’m like her. She couldn’t help it, either, and... Oh, God, I’m not making any sense.”

  She might not be making sense, but she was making mincemeat out of him. When she looked up at him and he saw the sheen of moisture in her eyes, he almost lost it. How many times had he made a woman cry? Never meaning to, but doing it, anyway?

  And then, without even thinking about it—reacting from some gut-level instinct buried so deep he’d thought it didn’t exist any longer—he pulled her into his arms. She stiffened. And he, too, shivered at the feel of the little quivers that went through her.

  “Shh,” he whispered. “It’s okay.”

  It wasn’t, things were getting more mixed up by the minute. And this was only going to make matters worse—much worse—but he couldn’t let her go, not now, not when it felt so damn good to hold her like this.... God, he wasn’t making any more sense than she’d made.

  “I can’t explain it,” she said, her voice catching on a little gulp.

  “You don’t have to,” he said, sounding a little grim even to his own ears. “I understand.”

  He understood, all right. Because she scared the hell out of him, too. And that was a feeling he thought he’d put behind him, the day he’d pulled himself from the field and taken over a desk.

  The sudden flare of a car’s headlights made them both jump—Cole with a smothered oath, because he’d been so intent on Tory that he hadn’t realized the car he’d heard earlier had turned onto the ranch drive. He was worse than rusty, he was stupid. More so because, whereas Tory’s response had been to quickly pull away from him, his had been to pull her closer. And as he reluctantly let her go, he had an edgy feeling in his gut that the reaction had nothing to do with any protective instinct.

  “Well, well. I’m so glad I dropped in on my way back to L.A.”